Representation of Bakassi Peninsula Conflict in Nigeria and Cameroon Print Media: A Critical Discourse Approach

The media discursive representation of participants and their roles in conflict situations is the focus of this study. The Nigeria-Cameroon clashes over the oil rich Bakassi Peninsula have been reported in newspapers from the two countries. In a bid to demonstrate how social attitudes are expressed in the discourse structure of news reports, the study analyzed news reports from four newspapers in the countries published in the heat of the armed conflicts between 2002 and 2010. The analysis focused on the thematic representations, the representation of actors in the material processes and power hierarchy. Our findings show that newspapers from each of the countries presented perspectives that seemed to favour their positive images before the entire world, each claiming victim status for their key actors. In terms of the different ideologies and values that motivate the news reports, the Nigerian newspapers adopted event-oriented reporting style, thereby appealing to the value of social justice. The news visibly portrayed the abuse of human rights and injustice by Cameroon security forces. On the other hand, Cameroon newspapers, while presenting misfortunes of the country's security forces in the hands of the militant groups from Nigeria, portrayed Cameroon security forces as responsive and capable of handling the conflict. The foregrounding of the virtues of the country's security forces in the news reports in Cameroon newspapers demonstrates that they are motivated by the ideology of patriotism

The Small World of Investing: Board Connections and Mutual Fund Returns

This paper uses social networks to identify information transfer in security markets. We focus on connections between mutual fund managers and corporate board members via shared education networks. We find that portfolio managers place larger bets on firms they are connected to through their network, and perform significantly better on these holdings relative to their non-connected holdings. A replicating portfolio of connected stocks outperforms a replicating portfolio of non-connected stocks by up to 8.4% per year. Returns are concentrated around corporate news announcements, consistent with mutual fund managers gaining an informational advantage through the education networks. Our results suggest that social networks may be an important mechanism for information flow into asset prices.

The Design and Evaluation of an Interactive Social Engineering Training Programme

Social engineering is a major issue affecting organisational security. Educating employees on how to avoid social engineering attacks is important because social engineering tries to penetrate an organisation by using employees to grant authorized access to sensitive information. While there are a number of theoretical studies about social engineering, a few practical studies have moved towards educating and training employees on how to spot such attacks. In this research, we emphasise the importance of educating employees to make them more resilient to these kinds of attacks. We developed an educational video encapsulated within a Social Engineering Training Programme. This is essentially an interactive training video during which the learner interacts with three different scenarios; educational content, a knowledge-check, and a web page containing the latest news about current social engineering attacks. The training programme was evaluated in a Saudi trading company with 24 employees. The evaluation showed that the programme delivered a positive impact in terms of awareness, as tested by a post-training qui

Political Marketing: How Social Media influenced the 2008-2016 U.S. Presidential Elections and Best Practices Associated

Political marketing has become a growing facet of marketing that has infiltrated the campaigning of U.S. presidential elections. Within this cognate of marketing, social media has become a major component of predicting election outcomes starting with the 2008 U.S. presidential election. An analysis of the social media performance of candidates from the 2008 to 2016 U.S. presidential elections reveals how the power of social media can be harnessed to increase voter participation, connect voters to offline political activity, and engage voters with candidates on a more personal note. Social media political marketing should further emphasize the candidate’s brand and build followership through targeted messaging to desired segments. Social media continues to grow in use and bypass direct news sources; therefore, it must complement and create a dialogue with traditional media, as it will likely surpass it someday. To use social media effectively in political marketing, best practices are outlined in this paper with regards to content, engagement, security, platform selection, targeting, group membership environment creation, and display

Finding a Way Out of America's Demographic Dilemma

Notwithstanding the rosy short-term fiscal scenarios being advanced in Washington, the demographic transition presents the United States with a very serious fiscal crisis. In 30 years there will be twice the number of elderly, but only 15 percent more workers to help pay Social Security and Medicare benefits. A realistic reading of the government demographic projections suggests a two thirds increase in payroll tax rates over the next three to five decades. However, these forecasts ignore macroeconomic feedback effects. In particular, they ignore the possibility that the nation will have more capital per worker as the number of elderly wealth-holders rises relative to the number of young workers. More capital per worker would mean higher worker productivity, higher real wages, and the lower return to capital that worries Wall Street. It would also mean a bigger payroll tax base and a smaller rise in tax rates. On the other hand, a higher payroll tax will leave workers with less after-tax income out of which to save and, therefore, fewer retirement assets than would otherwise be the case. Thus capital deepening is not a foregone conclusion. This study develops a dynamic general equilibrium life-cycle simulation model to study these conflicting forces. The model is the first of its kind to admit realistic patterns of fertility and lifespan extension. It also features heterogeneity, within as well as across generations, and, thus, can be used to study both intra- and intergenerational equity. Unfortunately, our baseline demographic simulation, which assumes the continuation of current social security policy, shows deteriorating macroeconomic conditions that will exacerbate, rather than mitigate, our fiscal problems. Real wages per effective unit of labor fall 4 percent over the next 30 years and 10 percent over the century. For Wall Street, this bad news about real wages is good news about the real return on capital, which rises 100 basis points by 2030 and 300 basis points by 2100. The model's gradual capital shallowing reflects the concomitant major rise in tax rates. In 2030, payroll tax rates and average income-tax rates applied to wages are 77 and 9 percent higher, respectively, than in 2000. Together, these tax hikes raise