The Suppression of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers: An Unpublished Letter from Lord Holland to Samuel Rogers

This article faithfully reproduces a letter from Lord Holland to Samuel Rogers, including deletions, hyphenated words, underlines, and paragraphs, to evidence how Samuel Rogers interceded in the suppression of a fifth edition of Byron’s English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. Rogers’s knowledge of the publishing market, its publishing houses and successful authors, made him one of the most formidable and important of Byron’s acquaintances and contemporaries in the 1810s. This article demonstrates the important role of Rogers as an individual whose political negotiations and literary advice impacted the literary landscape of the Romantic period. The decision to suppress the fifth edition of English Bards also shows how Byron navigated literary and political opinion, as well as the role of sociability in the production and genetics of literary text. Professional authorship in the Romantic period was performed within this context of social networks.

PollBasePro: Daily Estimates of Aggregate Voting Intention in Britain from 1955 to the Present Day

Political scientists often use public opinion polls to test their theories. Yet these data present some difficulties. First, they are noisy. Second, they occur at irregular intervals. Third, they measure both public preferences and pollsters’ survey design choices. We introduce a new dataset, PollBasePro, that accounts for these issues. It includes voting intention estimates for each of Britain’s three largest parties on each day between the 1955 general election and the present. As the dataset covers 24,106 days in total, it is perhaps more comprehensive than any other existing time series of British political opinion. We then use our estimates to test a question of pressing importance: how daily deaths attributable to COVID-19 have influenced support for the governing Conservative Party.

Persuasion using Argumentative Strategies, Presuppositions and Directives in Al-Aswany's Political Op-ed Articles

The study is concerned with Al-Aswany’s political opinion articles that have been published since 2011 until 2014. The study is concerned with argumentative persuasion. It aims at examining how the use of argumentative strategies, presuppositions and directives persuade the reader into accepting the proposed arguments and analyzing the degree of persuasion present in the text. Moreover, the study aims at examining whether there is an attempt to manipulate the reader. The data used, in this study, are drawn from Al-Aswany’s opinion articles that have been published in Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper. The researcher has selected two articles from each year: 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014. All in all, eight selected articles are gathered for a qualitative analysis. The findings of the study show that his articles are highly persuasive as he, extensively, uses cognitive directives, establishes a common ground through the use of topos of reality and presuppositions, evokes empathy towards the protesters and the revolutions through humanitarianism and justice while raising a feeling of threat/danger from Mubarak’s old regime. Furthermore, even though the texts are highly persuasive, to claim that there is a manipulation from Al-Aswany’s part , using these linguistic tools and models, can not be strongly suggested.

Persuasion or Manipulation: A Political Discourse Study of Al-Aswany’s Op-ed Post-Revolution Articles

The study is concerned with Al-Aswany’s political opinion articles that have been published since 2011 until 2014. The study investigates whether Al-Aswany persuades or manipulates the reader. Using VanDijk’s model, presuppositions as well as the directives in Hyland’s model of interaction, the study aims at analyzing how Al-Aswany manipulates the reader. Moreover, the study is set to find out whether a correlation between the use of directives and manipulation exists. The data used, in this study, are drawn from Al-Aswany’s opinion articles that have been published in Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper. The researcher has selected two articles from each year: 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014.

Persuasion or Manipulation: A Political Discourse Study of Al-Aswany’s Op-ed Post-Revolution Articles

The study is concerned with Al-Aswany’s political opinion articles that have been published since 2011 until 2014. The study investigates whether Al-Aswany persuades or manipulates the reader. Using VanDijk’s model, presuppositions as well as the directives in Hyland’s model of interaction, the study aims at analyzing how Al-Aswany manipulates the reader. Moreover, the study is set to find out whether a correlation between the use of directives and manipulation exists. The data used, in this study, are drawn from Al-Aswany’s opinion articles that have been published in Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper. The researcher has selected two articles from each year: 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014. All in all, eight selected articles are gathered for a qualitative analysis.

Discrimination on the Ground of Age in Uganda: Analysing Madrama Izama v. Attorney General (Constitutional Appeal No.01 of 2016) [2019] UGSC 1 (14 February 2019)

Article 21(2) of the Ugandan constitution provides that ‘a person shall not be discriminated against on the ground of sex, race, colour, ethnic origin, tribe, birth, creed or religion, social or economic standing, political opinion or disability’. Article 21(3) defines discrimination to mean ‘to give different treatment to different persons attributable only or mainly to their respective descriptions by sex, race, colour, ethnic origin, tribe, birth, creed or religion, social or economic standing, political opinion or disability’. Age is not one of the grounds mentioned in Article 21 against which a person may not be discriminated against. In Madrama Izama v. Attorney General the Ugandan Supreme Court dealt with the issue of whether, notwithstanding the fact that age is not mentioned under Article 21, a person could argue that he has a right not to be discriminated against on the basis of age. The majority judgment answered that question in the negative whereas the minority judgments came to the opposite conclusion. In this article, the author highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the majority and minority judgments.

Persuasion using Argumentative Strategies, Presuppositions and Directives in Al-Aswany's Political Op-ed Articles

The study is concerned with Al-Aswany’s political opinion articles that have been published since 2011 until 2014. The study is concerned with argumentative persuasion. It aims at examining how the use of argumentative strategies, presuppositions and directives persuade the reader into accepting the proposed arguments and analyzing the degree of persuasion present in the text. Moreover, the study aims at examining whether there is an attempt to manipulate the reader. The data used, in this study, are drawn from Al-Aswany’s opinion articles that have been published in Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper. The researcher has selected two articles from each year: 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014. All in all, eight selected articles are gathered for a qualitative analysis. The findings of the study show that his articles are highly persuasive as he, extensively, uses cognitive directives, establishes a common ground through the use of topos of reality and presuppositions, evokes empathy towards the protesters and the revolutions through humanitarianism and justice while raising a feeling of threat/danger from Mubarak’s old regime. Furthermore, even though the texts are highly persuasive, to claim that there is a manipulation from Al-Aswany’s part , using these linguistic tools and models, can not be strongly suggested. However, further studies using different linguistic instruments might yield more accurate results.

Political Opinion Analysis in Social Networks: Case of Twitter and Facebook

The 21st century has been characterized by an increased attention to social networks. Nowadays, going 24 hours without getting in touch with them in some way has become difficult. Facebook and Twitter, these social platforms are now part of everyday life. Thus, these social networks have become important sources to be aware of frequently discussed topics or public opinions on a current issue. A lot of people write messages about current events, give their opinion on any topic and discuss social issues more and more. The emergence and enormous popularity of these social networks have led to the emergence of several types of analysis to take advantage of them. One of them is the analysis of opinions in texts. It aims at automatically classifying opinions in order to position them on a sentiment scale, thus allowing to characterize a set of opinions without having to rely on a human to read them. Currently, opinion analysis offers us a lot of information related to public opinion, either in the commercial world or in the political world. Many studies have shown that machine learning techniques, such as the support vector machine (SVM) and the naive Bayes classifier (NB), perform well in this type of classification. In our study, we first propose an approach for tracking and analyzing political opinions in social networks. Then, we propose a trained and evaluated machine learning model for political opinion classification. And finally, the study aims at setting up a web interface to collect and analyze in real time political opinions from social networks

Negative e-WOM Resulting from Political Posts on Social Media: A Case Study of a Small Retailer’s Struggle over Time

Consumers have been advocating for a variety of causes, and in turn, retailers are expressing their political opinions through social-media posts in hopes of aligning with their customers’ views. This study looks at a single case in which customers reacted to a retailer’s political opinion posted on a social media account. Data was collected at the time of the retailer’s political post and up to three years afterward. Content analysis was employed to identify themes from the customer reviews posted, and four themes were identified. Of significance, this study found that customers of a retail store typically merge feelings on the retailer’s product and political post or the retailer’s service and the political post within their social media responses. Thus, a majority of customers in this case were not exclusively focused on battling the political post on social media. Also, a shift in customers’ opinions of the retailer shifted positively over time.