Legal Theory and the Anthropocene Challenge: The Implications of Law, Science, and Policy for Weapons of Mass Destruction and Climate Change: The Expanding the Constraining Boundaries of Legal Space and Time and the Challenge of the Anthropocene

The idea of legal theory as a self-conscious theory for inquiry about law has opened up the framework of observation and participation. It has heightened social responsibility in ways that have been creative and receptive to analogies and metaphors from the developments in modern science. This paper explores some of these dominant borrowed metaphors. It further emphasizes the importance of the wide range of concerns in law technically, as well as the law’s capacity to manage and manipulate space and time implicating such issues as weapons of mass destruction, rights of indigenous people, deforestation, and climate change. By giving the Anthropocene perspective a self-conscious focus on decision-making, this article explores the challenges and opportunities inherent in legal culture for addressing contemporary global crises

Mind the gap: gap factors in intercultural business communication : a study of German-Indian semi-virtual tech/engineering teams

While the affordances of technology have facilitated virtual modes of global collaboration, cultural variances and a geographically-dispersed environment can also lead to impaired group communication in team interaction. This qualitative study draws on data gathered from four organizations to investigate the miscommunication and cognitive dissonances reported by virtual German-Indian engineering/tech communities of practice. The study argues that it is not so much the performance or doing of a communicative act that creates dissonances, but the gaps, i.e., the absence or not-doing of certain communicative actions expected in a collaborative context. The gap factors are experienced as unfulfilled reciprocal expectations, and are classified and explored against three parameters: 1) the culture of a technological community of practice, 2) the power relations between the interactants, and 3) the consequences of virtual communication. The findings indicate a complementary divergence between the two groups regarding the nature of gaps. While the German teams report gaps in communicative efficiency and content caused e.g., by non-disclosure, euphemistic language and a deficiency in push communication, the Indian teams perceive gaps in relationality and affective signaling. At the same time, they are two sides of the same coin, with the divergences arising from the way in which the intersecting structural parameters are viewed as being salient in interaction. The study concludes with implications and suggestions for organizational practice

The list serves : the apparatuses of security and governmentality

Inspired by taxonomist Jack Goody's theorizing of 'ancient lists' as 'intellectual technologies,' this research analyzes listing practices in modern and contemporary formations of power, and how they operate in the installation and securing of the uncertain political economic milieus of circulation that characterize Michel Foucault's conception of governmentality. Propelling the list's critical operations in the delimitation and policing of 'threatening' movements from out of modern history, and into a contemporary analysis of power, this research demonstrates how the correlation of computer, statistical, and list technologies and techniques first installed under the Nazi regime , continues to factor significantly in the segmenting and constitution of a most critical classification of contemporary homo sapiens : the terrorist class, or homo sacer . Indeed, in this analysis of how lists serve formations of power, Foucault's populations and milieus of circulation installed through the apparatuses of security are reconciled with Giorgio Agamben's theorizing of 'bare life' as the fundamental political unit of modern and contemporary sovereignty. Investigating how lists served the emergence of modern computers , and continue to correlate power/knowledge in contemporary assemblages like no-fly lists ; as well as in a series of increasingly pervasive and ubiquitous watch-list conjunctures , this research characterizes the technoscientific cultural construction of the contemporary terrorist as a critical function of no-blank list culture . In this way, it is argued here that the list is not simply an innocuous tool of everyday life for administering the minutiae of mundane existence, but rather, operates as a security technology of contemporary governmentality--a critical support of juridical-disciplinary mechanisms and assemblages of police--with the dual role and double integration effect of self-elaborating and securing the classes of 'factual' knowledge it itself calls into 'truthful' reality

Communicating for development using social media: A case study of e-inclusion intermediaries in under-resourced communities

Philosophiae Doctor - PhDSouth Africa is committed to accelerating the roll-out of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to support development at all levels. E-inclusion intermediaries (e-IIs) are used in the country to bridge the digital divide and to create equal opportunities for citizens to benefit from using ICTs. E-IIs are established mainly in under-resourced communities by private, public and third-sector organisations to provide physical access to ICT services for free or at a very low cost. The aim of e-IIs is to make ICT services affordable for and accessible to marginalised and poor community members, who can use the ICT to support community development. The debate is ongoing regarding the contribution of e-IIs towards community development due to, in part, the lack of quantifiable evidence to support the impact that the e-IIs have on development in the communities. Furthermore, despite the existence of e-IIs in communities, there still are community members who do not use the e-IIs. This has been attributed to the lack of awareness of the e-IIs and the services they provide. This lack of awareness is often blamed on the ineffective communication strategies of e-IIs. E-IIs are accused of relying heavily on traditional communication channels and conventional mass media, which do not share information and create awareness effectively in the communities. The increased uptake of modern technologies, such as the Internet and mobile devices, in South Africa has created new opportunities to communicate with community members to share information and create awareness. Social media, for instance, which are mostly accessed through mobile devices, have made communication more accessible and inexpensive for community members with limited skills and resources. Social media have also become popular among development actors in their attempt to direct policy, create awareness and garner community members’ support for development interventions. Arguably, e-IIs could also benefit from using social media, which have become popular in some communities, to communicate with community members in order to create awareness of the e-IIs, the services they provide and the benefits of using ICTs to support community development. The investigation undertaken in this study was twofold. Firstly, the quick-scan analysis method was used to analyse fifty e-IIs. Using this method it was possible to explore the services that are provided by e-IIs as well as how e-IIs communicate with community members and other development actors. Secondly, using six in-depth case studies this study further investigated how e-IIs’ services support community development and how the e-IIs communicate for development, paying special attention to their use of social media

News as brands : branding television news channels in the Arab World : a case study of Aljazeera, AlArabiya, AlEkhbaria and Nile television news channels

This research is an attempt to examine the use of news programmes as a means of branding television news channels in the Arab World. The researcher used a quantitative content analysis of the news programmes as well as semi-structured interviews with officials representing the four selected television news channels to explore their strategies in branding their television news channels via news programmes. News of the four selected Arabian television news channels (Aljazeera and Al-Arabiya, as Pan-Arab television news channels and the Nile and Al-Ekhbariya as government supported television news channels representing their regions), were analysed to test how they were used as a means of branding their television news channels in order for them to compete in the Arab media landscape, which is described as a saturated media environment. The study aims, specifically, at testing the differences among the selected television news channels on utilising elements of branding via their news programmes. The other aim of the study is to investigate how these channels reflect their promises which are claimed in their slogan via their news coverage. Moreover, it tries to establish a theoretical and practical perspective based on the specific results of the study regarding to branding television news channels via their news programmes. The study indicates that television news channels used their news bulletin to build and / or enhance their brands through three main groups of elements (news content, news presenters and news production techniques). The study revealed that twenty-two elements of branding were found to be significant. Due to the lack of studies on television news channels in the Arab World, this study should be the first of its nature and contribute to the knowledge about the use of news as brands by television news channels in the Arab World

Play as an indicator of public opinion in online political commentary : a content analysis of online news forums leading up to the 2014 South African General Elections

This study seeks to look at play as an indicator of public opinion in online political commentary of online news forums leading to the 2014 South African general elections. A qualitative content analysis was used to analyse viewers’s comments about 2014 South African general elections posted online. The concepts of critical discourse analysis, frame analysis play theory and network analysis were applied to extend and inform the study. A corpus of all commentary appended to 2014 South African general election news reports published online by Media24, Times Media Group, Mail &Guardian, Independent Newspapers, Caxton CTP, and TNA Media were selected. The study employed a purposive sampling technique and 1000 comments were extracted. The sample began four weeks before the election and ended two weeks after the event. NVIVO 11 was utilized to code these readers’ comments into their respective categories. The core findings of this thesis reflect that online readers do not just engage in play but are more interactive and participative on these online public forums and their political discourse echo political affiliations with different political parties, bearing in mind that South Africa has 13 political parties that participated and are represented in parliament. In addition, the findings revealed that, play cannot be parted with and remains inseparable with "what is real"; instead, play renews the real world by giving it sense and meaning. Play does not "re-present" nor falsify certainty but it enunciates certainty. The findings also revealed that most participants identify themselves with the ANC as the ruling party, the DA as the main opposition, the EFF as the most vocal party and then other parties. The findings further revealed that participants have different perspectives on different economic and socio-political matters such as, entertainment, slate politics, and political affiliation, cadre deployment, political bias, economic meltdown, diaspora, and western influence, abuse of power by those in high places, land reform programme, political power struggles, leadership change and corruption