“In barbarous times and in uncivilized countries”: two centuries of the evolving uncivil in the Hansard Corpus

The ways in which politicians have discussed who, what, and where was considered “uncivilized’” across the past two centuries gives an insight into how speakers in a position of authority classified and constructed the world around them, and how those in power in Britain see the country and themselves. This article uses the Hansard Corpus 1803–2003 of speeches in the UK Parliament alongside data from the Historical Thesaurus of English to analyse diachronic variation in usage of words for persons, places and practices considered uncivil. It proposes new methods and offers quantitative data to describe the period’s shift in political attitudes towards not just the so-called “uncivil” but also the country as a whole

Doing IT for Themselves: Management versus Autonomy in Youth E-Citizenship

Part of the Volume on Civic Life Online: Learning How Digital Media Can Engage Youth. This chapter explores tensions between managed and autonomous conceptions of youth e-citizenship as manifested in six UK-based projects. Managed youth e-citizenship projects are characterized as seeking to establish "connections" between young people and institutions that have power over their lives. Regarding youth as apprentice citizens who need to learn appropriate ways of engaging with encrusted structures of governance, they seek to promote habits of civility, while at the same time encouraging young people to think of themselves as empowered social actors whose (virtual) voices deserve to be heard. In contrast, autonomous e-citizenship projects tend not to be funded by government, and express strong reservations about having relationship too close to the state. These projects are less interested in engaging with powerful institutions than in forming powerful networks of young people, engaged with one another to resist the power of institutions. Regarding youth as independent political agents, autonomous e-citizens expect less from the communicative potential of having their say; for them, empowerment entails an intimate relationship between voice and action. The chapter concludes by proposing a set of policy recommendations that might lead to a productive convergence between these two models of youth e-citizenship

The ticking time bomb : H-Block, the connection between nationalism and violence

This thesis argues that due to the intractable nature of the questions of national (imperial) identity and belonging, actors on both sides of "the Troubles" turned to violence to broadcast their voices. Lacking legitimate or effective outlets to articulate their perspectives, members of the PIRA turned to violence against themselves and others as a political tool. Studies of "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland and the H-Block Hunger Strike in 1981 are severely limited in scope and are primarily focused on providing a text-book style, all-encompassing history of the events. Most studies do not treat the H-Block Hunger Strike as a propaganda piece that embodies the connection between Irish republican nationalism and the consistent use of suffering as a method of rebellion against their perceived enemy, utilized by those who sought to fight against British imperialism. This thesis brings to light this connection while thoroughly examining the violent nature of the use of hunger strikes as a psychological weapon against the British government by the Provisional Irish Republican Army and their supporters. The central argument of this thesis focuses on the acts perpetrated by members of the Provisional IRA and the H-Block hunger strikers in 1981 and ties their use of the hunger strike to propaganda against the British government. This thesis is based on research conducted at the UK National Archives, the Irish Leftist Archive, and various writings by participants in the 1981 strike. The impact of this study will allow for further analysis of the utilization of hunger strikes and other violent methodologies as performative and psychological propaganda in historical and future nationalist endeavors similar to the 1981 H-Block Hunger Strike

Formulaic forms of address as (im)politeness markers in Prime Minister’s Questions: Margaret Thatcher versus Theresa May

Prime Minister’s Question Time (PMQs) is a political discourse genre with a long and distinguished history. Framed by formulaic forms of address, the exchanges follow a set of turn-taking “rules” that has evolved over time. The study presented here examines the (non)use of honorifics and other polite forms intrinsic to PMQs during interactions between two female Prime Ministers and their respective Leaders of the Opposition: Margaret Thatcher and Neil Kinnock, Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn. From diachronic and gendered perspectives, the study implements a mixed methods framework to address the following research questions: 1) has the use of formal politeness markers decreased over time? 2) Do gender dynamics influence impoliteness strategies in the context of PMQs? 3) In the shift from verbal to written discourse, what diamesic transformations appear in the official parliamentary transcriptions? The self-built corpus includes selected video recordings of PMQs from each of the Prime Ministers’ mandates, and the corresponding official transcripts published online by Hansard. The audiovisual texts were viewed and examined, the speech was manually transcribed, and then compared to Hansard’s version. Initial findings suggest that over time, across genders, and in Hansard’s digital transcripts, the use of politeness forms in PMQ exchanges appears to be diminishing as formulaic expressions are omitted or substituted with pronouns

The Commentariat: A Demographic, Ideological and Rhetorical Analysis of Twitter Power-Users

When political issues are discussed in the public sphere, whose opinions do we hear? This is a central democratic question, as those who commentate on political issues have a profound effect on public opinion (Zaller, 1992; Page, 1996). However, the way political commentary operates on social media has yet to be fully explored. This is a crucial omission, as political communication on social media platforms is dominated by a select few individuals (Bracciale et al., 2018). This subset of “power-users” – individual accounts who receive significant audience engagement – produce a large share of the political content that Twitter users are exposed to (Guo et al., 2020). Yet past literature has yet to answer three questions: 1) Who are Twitter’s political power-users from a professional and demographic perspective? 2) How extreme are power-users in terms of their issue opinions? And 3) To what extent do power-users influence the tone of political discussion on the platform? This thesis presents three empirical papers to investigate these questions, leveraging a dataset of 6.5 million tweets on Brexit, a highly salient issue which mobilised both elites and the public (Hobolt et al., 2018). The key contribution of this thesis is the identification of citizen opinion leaders – members of the public who possess a significant online political audience – as a new category of online political commentator. Citizen opinion leaders make up a large contingent of the most-shared accounts on Twitter (Paper #1) and play a central role in the spread of incivility in online political discussions (Paper #3). More broadly, this thesis provides evidence of how issue extremity and incivility on Twitter is driven by the platform’s political “commentariat”, a topic neglected by prior literature (Papers #2 and #3). Methodologically, it presents novel applications of text-scaling and time-series analysis to investigate such effects

They Cannot Catch Guerrillas in the Mountains Any More Than a Cow Can Catch Fleas : Guerrilla Warfare in Western Virginia, 1861-1865

The American Civil War unleashed great violence and chaos in the western mountains of Virginia. The guerrilla warfare there between Unionists and secessionists remained bitter throughout the war. No historical study has considered the entirety of pre-war western Virginia during the time it underwent a unique civil war within the context of the national struggle from 1861-1865. This study supports findings from studies of other areas of Appalachia that seek to explain the prevalence of such conflict in the mountains, challenges the myth of a Union Appalachia during the war, offers the backdrop for the political wrangling on both state and national levels that culminated in the creation of the state of West Virginia, and fills an important gap in the historiography of Civil War Virginia. Rather than using the traditional approach of studying irregular warfare according to the types of fighters involved, western Virginia guerrillas and their impact on their communities are best considered according to their motives for involvement: military strategy, personal advancement, or self-preservation. Although western Virginia guerrillas did not impact the ultimate direction of the war, they did establish a culture of violence that lingered in the area well after the Civil War ended

Credibility of a Creative Image: The Singaporean Approach

Singapore has embarked on an ambitious program to make the city-state into a significant player in the global creative economy. The country is being re-branded as a creative city. The government agrees that in the creative economy, the environment must be conducive to experimentation and innovation. As a result, more social and political spaces have been opened up to spur Singapore’s fledging creative economy and also to signal that the nation has become more transparent and tolerant. The authorities, however, still limit the freedom of public expression on political, ethnic and religious issues. The current state of ethnic-religious harmony and political status quo is to be preserved. Singapore remains a soft-authoritarian state. Can such a country then be branded as a place conducive to creativity and innovation? This paper shows how the Singaporean government: 1) introduces and implements a set of comprehensive policies to develop the creative economy; 2) brands and re-images the city-state as an exciting creative nation; 3) communicates the new creative vision and eventually engineers local acceptance of the creative economy; and 4) promotes the image of an open society and yet maintain tight social and political control. The re-making and re-imaging of Singapore are two sides of the same coin

I Deny Your Authority to Try My Conscience: Conscription and Conscientious Objectors In Britain During the Great War

During the Great War, the Military Service Act was introduced on January 27, 1916 and redefined British citizenship. Moreover, some men objected to the state’s military service mandate, adamant that compliance violated their conscience. This thesis investigates how the introduction of conscription reshaped British society, dismantled the “sacred principle” of volunteerism, and replaced it with conscription, resulting in political and popular debates, which altered the individual’s relationship with the state. British society transformed from a polity defined by the tenets of Liberalism and a free-will social contract to a society where citizenship was correlated to duty to the state. Building off Lois Bibbings’ research on conscientious objectors, this thesis nuances the analysis with the case studies of David Blelloch and Norman Gaudie. Framed by two theories—Benedict Anderson’s imagined community and Barbara Rosenwein’s emotional community—these case studies demonstrate how conscientious objectors exposed the incongruence of the British imagined and emotional community, and the redefinition of citizenship. By weaving these theories into the British Great War tapestry, this thesis contends that the British nation was imagined differently before the war than it was after the war because of the introduction of conscription. Drawing from parliamentary debate transcripts, newspaper articles, and archival material from the Imperial War Museum in London, and the Liddle Personal Collection at the University of Leeds, Blelloch’s and Gaudie’s respective case studies ultimately bait the question: “What does it mean to be British?

Leviathan Lost: The Impact of State Capacity on the Duration and Intensity of Civil Wars

While wars between nations have declined over the past twenty years, intrastate conflicts are on the rise. Scholars are now examining the conditions under which civil war is likely to break out, to last longer, and to intensify, and the strength of the local government has emerged as a critical factor that could potentially mitigate the harms posed by civil wars. This thesis addresses two research questions: what is the impact of state strength on (1) conflict duration and (2) conflict intensity? To answer these research questions, I conduct several quantitative analyses of all internal conflicts occurring in the years 1960-2015, examining the relationship between state strength and conflict duration and battle deaths per year. This thesis ultimately finds that state strength, as proxied by military, fiscal, and bureaucratic capacities, is negatively correlated with conflict intensity but is positively correlated with conflict duration. This thesis concludes with the presentation of two case studies – the First Congo War and the Troubles of Northern Ireland – to illustrate how strong states may experience longer, but less bloody, civil wars