Danish satisfaction and Austrian discontent with their governments’ measures during the Covid-19 crisis: Explanations from a citizenship perspective

The various interventions that governments took in the first wave of the Covid-19 outbreak impacted people severely. Given the low satisfaction with the government performance in Austria compared to Denmark, though both governments set out with a suppression strategy early on and were able to lower infection rates, we analyse the changes in civil, political and social citizenship and the governmental communicative practices during the first Covid response phase from March to August 2020. Employing a case-oriented qualitative comparison, we find that a combination of factors explains the different degree of satisfaction. In Austria, there was a combination of politics of fear, extensive and authoritarian regulations of civil citizenship, political citizenship was challenged and social citizenship undermined. In Denmark, an engaging and caring communicative strategy was employed, political citizenship was maintained and civil citizenship was curtailed less obstructively and was less policed. Social citizenship also was upheld for larger groups.

Digital Pitfalls: The Politics of Digitalization in Bangladesh

The state-led investment in digital infrastructure under the ruling party’s political agenda of “Digital Bangladesh” has given rise to scholarly and policy debates, especially around issues of digital surveillance and media censorship. Such concerns have intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic. This article analyzes contemporary Bangladesh in the context of emerging trends related to the digitalization of society. In particular, I employ the concept of “digital pitfalls” to explore the state’s use of surveillance and the politics of fear to limit freedom of expression and silence critical voices in the digital age.

The Age of Fear: Terrorism, Pandemic, and Refugees

Social scientists have defined modern times by different names and fear is one of them. As the driver for the historical flow in global range besides many other phenomena terror, epidemic and refugee issues direct the individual and social life of the age as a source of fear. This study aims to read how fear affects the social life of the time through the fear of terrorists, epidemics, and refugees. Secondly, it is to clarify what kind of fear is being constructed by these phenomenons and what is the interaction between them. Seeking control is constructed by a peculiar language produced by various actors, fear sources, which turn into an important device for the management and administration of people, become a perfect tool not only for those in power but also for power pretenders. Consequently, realistic or unrealistic sources of fear mutually feed the pursuit of control and the politics of fear.

Beyond Divisive Categorization in Young Adult Fiction: Lessons from Divergent

Veronica Roth’s Divergent is a young adult fiction and movie franchise that addresses issues of political power, social inequity, border control, politics of fear, gender, ethnicity, violence, surveillance, personal authenticity and mind control. It is possible a large part of the popularity of the series is its attention to these issues which young Western audiences are concerned about. The narrative makes heroes of protagonists who become activists for justice and struggle against oppressive social-political systems. What follows is a literary analysis of Divergent, evaluating its treatment of public theology and social justice themes, and discussing implications for Christian activism, especially for youth and young adults. It affirms the ethos in the books of resisting oppression, and questions assumptions about gender and abuse, violence and imperial control, personal authenticity and categorization, and difference and sameness.

The politics of fear in Hong Kong protest representations

This study gives a corpus-assisted discourse study of the representations of 2019 Hong Kong protests in the New York Times. With the corpus-analytic tools Wmatrix and Wordsmith, it examines both the dominant patterns in its representations and the specific strategies used. The findings suggest that while NYT still draws on the traditional patterns in its representations of Hong Kong protests, it deviates from the protest paradigm in its representations of concerned parties. Meanwhile, emotion discourse has emerged as a distinct strategy in its representations. This is most revealing in the emotion of fear, and a close analysis of its use in its context has revealed its role in the construction of concerned parties and the distrust of Hong Kong people towards the Chinese government.