Beyond Mainstream Media and Communication Perspectives on the Arab Uprisings

This editorial argues for more research connecting media and communication as a discipline and the Arab Uprisings that goes beyond the mainstream techno-deterministic perceptions. The contributions in this thematic issue can be summarized around three central arguments: First, mainstream media, like TV and journalism, are central and relevant actors in the post-Arab Uprisings phase which have often been overlooked in previous literature. Second, marginalized actors are still engaged in asymmetric power struggles due to their vulnerable status, the precarious political economy, or a marginalized geographic location outside centralized polities. Finally, the third strand of argument is the innovative transnational geographic and chronological synapses that studying media and Arab Uprisings can bring. The editorial calls for more critical and interdisciplinary approaches that follow a region marked by inherent instability and uncertainty.

Sea of bodies: a medical discourse of the refugee crisis in Tears of Salt: A Doctor’s Story

In the memoir Tears of Salt: A Doctor’s Story, Pietro Bartolo (2018) relates visceral descriptions of illness, injury and death endured by refugees on their journey of escape to the shores of Lampedusa in the Mediterranean. The medical gaze of the doctor/author further complicates the political and philosophical discourse of mass migration, foregrounding and calling into question the myriad ways in which the migrating human body is subjugated to forms of structural violence that render it ungrievable and inhuman. The migrating body, a production of and outcast from nation-states, is destined to make its way to news outlets where its suffering is gazed upon, sympathised with and later forgotten about. The surge of images revealing the realities of migrating bodies afflicted with pain, disease, trauma and sexual assault is illustrative of the asymmetric power of biopolitics at work, in which some bodies are, according to the formulations of Judith Butler and Giorgio Agamben, allowed to die or made killable. This paper will examine issues of illness, death and dying in relation to Bartolo’s accounts of refugees in order to observe what is gained and what is lost in applying a medical gaze to the ‘refugee crisis’. In addition to the memoir, we examine the scholarship of violence against the refugee body, the realities of ignoring their pain and how these exploited bodies are portrayed within a global narrative. This article reconfigures the detachment between the human as a socially constructed centre of subjectivity and the body in pain. The corporeality of illness and death that migrants face positions them in an abject position and distances them farther from the rhetoric of human rights. The ontological being of these individuals in medical discourse rarely goes beyond acknowledging that it is normal and expected for these bodies to be in pain. In what ways can we in the humanities gear the discussion towards the raw physicality of fragmentation, distortion and rejection of refugees and immigrants? What role can such a view play in building an ethic of lasting care for the dispossessed? Our research addresses these questions through our reading of the memoir.

A feminist Critique to digital consent

This paper presents a feminist critique to digital consent and argues that the current system is flawed. The online surveillance adtech industry that funds the web had to use a mechanism that commodifies people, rendering their behaviors into data - products that can be sold and traded for the highest bidder. This was made possible by objectifying, dehumanizing and decontextualizing human engagement and identity into measurable and quantifiable data units. In this way, digital consent serves as an authorizing and legalizing instrument to the business model of spying, selling and trading people in the online ecosystem. Using four key feminist approaches - process, embodiment, network and context - this article shows the way digital consent is a mechanism that transfers responsibility to people and enables an exploitative-extractivist market to exist. The design of digital consent creates a specific interface that teaches people to behave in ways that preserve the asymmetric power relations. Consequently, the article shows the broader educational effects of digital consent which conceives people as products with narrow agency and understanding of what they can do, think and imagine. The article concludes with a refusal to provide an easy solution to a flawed system.

Global Value Chain Governance and Power Asymmetry between Lead Firms and Suppliers: Case of Apple’s Global Value Chain and the State of Its Governance

The purpose of this paper is to elucidate modern production systems in which coordination and control among companies have become widespread globally. In particular, the authors aim to test the Global Value Chain (GVC) governance theory empirically with a focus on the state of Apple’s GVC governance. More specifically, the authors attempt to determine whether the relationships theoretically explained in Gereffi, Humphrey and Sturgeon (2005) can be observed in Apple’s GVC and contribute toward understanding Apple’s state of coordination. This study shows the state of coordination in Apple’s GVC does not necessarily correspond to the theoretical types. Simply put, the three determinants do not reflect the state of coordination in Apple’s GVC. This paper adopts augmenting and complementary explanations from the resource-dependence perspective to elucidate Apple’s GVC governance by empirically illustrating how Apple’s GVC governance are achieved through the accompanying asymmetric power relationships between the company and its suppliers.

Asymmetric Power Relations in Gynaecological Consultations for Cervical Cancer Prevention: Biomedical and Gender Issues

A generic qualitative research, using a poststructuralist feminist perspective, was conducted in a Spanish gynaecology unit with the following aims: (a) to analyse how asymmetric power relations in relation to biomedical knowledge and gender shape the medical encounters between gynaecologists and women diagnosed with cervical intraepithelial neoplasia and (b) to explore the cognitive, moral, and emotional responses expressed by patients. A total of 21 women diagnosed with cervical intraepithelial neoplasia were recruited through purposive sampling. Semi-structured interviews were recorded and transcribed, and a thematic analysis was carried out. Two major themes were identified: (a) gendered relations in cervical intraepithelial neoplasia medical encounters are based on hidden, judgmental moral assumptions, making women feel irresponsible and blamed for contracting the human papillomavirus infection; (b) biomedical power is based on the positivist assumption of a single truth (scientific knowledge), creating asymmetric relations rendering women ignorant and infantilised. Women reacted vehemently during the interviews, revealing a nexus of cognitive, moral, and emotional reactions. In medical encounters for management of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia, patients feel they are being morally judged and given limited information, generating emotional distress. Healthcare professionals should question whether their practices are based on stereotypical gender assumptions which lead to power asymmetries during encounters.

Modelling and Forecasting Volatility of Crude Oil Returns in Nigeria based on Six Error Innovations

Modeling price volatility of crude oil (PVCO) is pertinent because of the overbearing impact on any oil-producing economy. This study aimed at evaluating the performance of some volatility models in modeling and forecasting crude oil returns. Utilizing daily returns data from October 23, 2009, to March 23, 2020, this study attempted to capture the dynamics of crude oil price volatility in Nigeria using a symmetric and asymmetric GARCH models. In our research, we considered the generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedastic model (GARCH), Exponential (E-GARCH), Glosten, Jagannathan and Runkle (GJR-GARCH) and Asymmetric Power (AP-ARCH) under six error innovations that include the skewed variant of the student-t, generalized error and normal distribution. From the results obtained, it was discovered that the AP-ARCH (1, 1) model performed better in the fitting and performance evaluation phase. The skew Student’s t-distribution (SStD) was also reported to be the best performing error innovation in most of the models. Based upon these results, we conclude that the AP-ARCH (1, 1)-SStD model is the best model for capturing the dynamics of crude oil returns in Nigeria.

Noncompliance risk, asymmetric power and the design of enforcement of the European economic governance

In the European Union, states can distribute enforcement prerogatives between a supranational agency, over which they exercise equal influence, and a Council of ministers, where power resources mostly vary by country size. What shapes attitudes towards different enforcement designs? States at greater risk of noncompliance should eschew deeper cooperation and prefer procedures over which they can exercise more influence. Employing an original data set of positions on relevant contested issues during the negotiations over fiscal governance rules from 1997 to 2012, we show that governments at greater risk of noncompliance prefer greater discretion and, if they have higher voting power, more Council involvement in enforcement. These factors only partially explain positions on Commission empowerment. Given their greater indeterminacy, attitudes are also shaped by national public opinion.

Negotiating "cultural" identities: exploration of young Asian women's racialized-gendered experiences and mental well-being

Explanations of mental health outcomes of Asian women in diaspora are often invoked through the concepts of “culture” and “acculturation” with little consideration of asymmetric power relations and structural influences. Informed by critical theories and a narrative approach, this secondary research analyzed data of an exploratory study with fourteen 1.5 and second generation young Asian women living in Toronto, Canada. Research results include: (1) identity construction is a complex process shaped by participants’ experiences in both the “mainstream” and “heritage” contexts; (2) participants’ encounters of racialized-sexism, microaggressions, and “Othering” contributed to varying degrees of internalized oppressions, which compromised their mental well-being; (3) family support and community engagement enhanced participants’ positive self-concept and resilience; and (4) current conceptualizations of “acculturation” and “enculturation” are inadequate as they negate the structural determinants of integration. Nursing research, policy and practice must consider the effects of structural factors in identity construction and mental well-being.