Whose discourse? Dialogic Pedagogy for a post-truth world

If, as evidence shows, well-founded classroom dialogue improves student engagement and learning, the logical next step is to take it to scale. However, this presumes consensus on definitions and purposes, whereas accounts of dialogue and dialogic teaching/pedagogy/education range from the narrowly technical to the capaciously ontological. This paper extends the agenda by noting the widening gulf between discourse and values within the classroom and outside it, and the particular challenge to both language and democracy of a currently corrosive alliance of digital technology and “post-truth” political rhetoric. Dialogic teaching is arguably an appropriate and promising response, and an essential ingredient of democratic education, but only if it is strengthened by critical engagement with four imperatives whose vulnerability in contemporary public discourse attests to their importance in the classroom, the more so given their problematic nature: language, voice, argument and truth.[1] [1] This paper is an edited version of the author’s keynote at the EARLI SIG 20/26 conference Argumentation and inquiry as venues for civic education, held in Jerusalem in October 2018

Race, Rhetoric, and Research Methods

Race, Rhetoric, and Research Methods explores multiple antiracist, decolonial forms of study that are relevant to 21st-century knowledge production about language, communication, technology, and culture. The book presents a rare collaboration among scholars representing different racial and ethnic backgrounds, genders, and ranks within the field of Rhetoric, Composition, and Writing Studies (RCWS). In each chapter, the authors examine the significance of their individual experiences with race and racism across contexts. Their research engages the politics of embodiment, institutional critique, multimodal rhetoric, materiality, and public digital literacies. The book merges impassioned storytelling with unflinching analysis, offering a multi-voiced argument that spotlights the field's troubled history with theorizing about race and epistemology. Although the authors directly address aspiring and current RCWS professionals, they model how a comprehensive consideration of race adds legitimacy and integrity to any subject of study. This co-authored work charts uncommon paths forward, demonstrating reflexive engagement with legacies that are personal and transnational, as well as with technologies that are both dehumanizing and liberating

Talking About Uncertainty

In the first article we review existing theories of uncertainty. We devote particular attention to the relation between metacognition, uncertainty and probabilistic expectations. We also analyse the role of natural language and communication for the emergence and resolution of states of uncertainty. We hypothesize that agents feel uncertainty in relation to their levels of expected surprise, which depends on probabilistic expectations-gaps elicited during communication processes. Under this framework above tolerance levels of expected surprise can be considered informative signals. These signals can be used to coordinate, at the group and social level, processes of revision of probabilistic expectations. When above tolerance levels of uncertainty are explicated by agents through natural language, in communication networks and public information arenas, uncertainty acquires a systemic role of coordinating device for the revision of probabilistic expectations. The second article of this research seeks to empirically demonstrate that we can crowd source and aggregate decentralized signals of uncertainty, i.e. expected surprise, coming from market agents and civil society by using the web and more specifically Twitter as an information source that contains the wisdom of the crowds concerning the degree of uncertainty of targeted communities/groups of agents at a given moment in time. We extract and aggregate these signals to construct a set of civil society uncertainty proxies by country. We model the dependence among our civil society uncertainty indexes and existing policy and market uncertainty proxies, highlighting contagion channels and differences in their reactiveness to real-world events that occurred in the year 2016, like the EU-referendum vote and the US presidential elections. In the third article, we propose a new instrument, called Worldwide Uncertainty Network, to analyse the uncertainty contagion dynamics across time and areas of the world. Such an instrument can be used to identify the systemic importance of countries in terms of their civil society uncertainty social percolation role. Our results show that civil society uncertainty signals coming from the web may be fruitfully used to improve our understanding of uncertainty contagion and amplification mechanisms among countries and between markets, civil society and political systems

Active audiences and social discussion on the digital public sphere. Review article

In little over a decade, essential concepts in research on communication have become zombie concepts (Beck; Willms, 2004) and are no longer effective for understanding the profound transformation that has taken place with the arrival of the internet. Public sphere, deliberation, audiences, public... the academic literature has oscillated between an initial optimism about the potential for strengthening democracy of communication technologies to a critical scepticism. This text reviews the academic literature with regard to the forms of social deliberation adopted in the context of the media and social networks and its impact on the public sphere

A comparison of public relations principles applied by political parties in campaign communication during a democratic election

Thesis (MTech (Public Relations Management))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2017In popular opinion political public relations practitioners have long been regarded as spin doctors. Their lane of actions is mostly viewed as propaganda and they are perceived as spin doctors who manipulate power-relations. The pervasive role of public relations in political campaigns cannot be denied as political actors rely on communication to reach their key stakeholders. While it can be used as an important tool that can mediate in these power relations, the facts remain in the case of this study that the political party campaign communication was rather reactive than strategic. The answer lays in the accurate application of the strategic nature and role of public relations. I believe that there is a strategic public relations role that is evident and has to be played in political party campaign communication. As a matter of fact, public relations strives to ensure an effective and efficient communication on behalf of its organisation. The purpose of this study was to explore the application of public relations principles in political parties’ campaign communication of the Democratic Alliance, in the context of three other political parties in a regional newspaper during the build-up to the 2014 South African general elections. Four distinct political parties were at the centre of this research, namely African National Congress, Democratic Alliance, Economic Freedom Fighters and Agang. Particular attention was given to the elite parties, African National Congress, and Democratic Alliance; the main environment of the study. It is true that political parties ‘communication with stakeholders reflects in essence public relations. Managing communication to promote the organisational agenda is to talk about issues important to both the public and the political party. This suggests that an effective political organisation will act on a two-way operation to build a common political position that influences public attitudes. Hence, a comparative case study was used as the strategy of inquiry. I conducted a content analysis of the political party campaign communication of the Democratic Alliance, covered in the Cape Times newspaper; as well as their election manifesto, to identify the public relations principles and strategies that were used. The daily newspapers were surveyed from January 8 to May 7, 2014. An overall of one hundred and forty-four related newspapers articles were analysed and formed the data for analysis. A close reading and counting of frequencies of varieties of themes in the newspaper revealed that the Democratic Alliance, as well as the African National congress, took a tactical and responsive approach, rather than a strategic and proactive approach, to their political party campaign communication. News coverage indicated that there was extensive counterpunching to other political parties ‘statuses, but very little promotion or management of the issues included in their election manifesto. Nkandla was the most controversial issue covered in the pre-election media coverage; while the proposed merger with AGANG; and the subsequent fall out was damaging to both political parties ‘reputation and relationship with voters. Therefore, more research on this topic needs to be undertaken, as public relations is crucial in translating public opinions to the organisation. In the political scope, this can serve as an attempt to adjust the socio-political environment to suit the political principles, as well as to help the political principles adjust to the environment by creating the right balance to mutual benefit an organisation and its publics that further ensures a real participatory democracy. Further studies should be done to investigate whether, the advocacy of the two-way symmetrical, as a way to central route to persuasion, along with the dialogical approach can impact on more effective decisions making, and ultimately create a more dynamic public sphere that seeks the resolution of socio-political conflicts. This new knowledge will lead to guidelines for public relations practitioners and can provide useful insights for political communication specialists

A Student Primer on Intersectionality: Not Just A Buzzword

This book: ● lays out the objectives of WS 166, Gender, Race, and Class, taught in the Women’s and Gender Studies Department, Pace University, New York City campus; ● provides a structure for any course addressing intersectionality, feminism, and oppression; ● describes the framework of intersectionality, which examines societal issues by analyzing the interlocking systems of oppression that shape people’s lives; ● argues for a transnational application of intersectionality that also centers U.S. Black feminists’ contributions to understanding oppression; ● includes journal articles, TED Talks, and class exercises that are generally accessible for most students or interested readers without previous exposure to these topics. We designed this book to illustrate that intersectionality is a powerful tool for learning about and addressing injustice and inequity. When we analyze the world using an intersectionality framework, we learn about people’s lives and experiences in ways that we may never have considered, or wanted to consider. And the mere act of examining multiple systems of oppression is not enough, either, as the point of understanding oppression is to end it in all forms. As you read, be thankful for the discomfort, anger, and compassion that may arise; learning about oppression is never easy, but it is a worthwhile and meaningful task

Off Beat: Police as Protestors and use of Twitter as a Tactical Online Public Space

This research examines the use of social media by British police officers to protest, often anonymously, and challenge political influences on policing, which they otherwise could not, through tactical use of social media. It studies British police officers acting as online protestors using Twitter to challenge these influences and decisions, and eventually run online campaigns, during the years of austerity and major police reform under a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government. More than 35,000 police officers marched on Parliament in 2012, during a period when Twitter and other social media platforms were emerging as tools in protest movements, from the Arab Spring to Occupy. This study, the first to examine these police officers and their action, proposes them as ‘constrained protestors’ operating in a tactical online public space. It identifies a typology of a niche form of protest, centred on their differing communication strategies and dynamics. It also develops a further typology of police Twitter use, which by including this overlooked group, places different emphasis on previously categorised aspects. Critical case studies, alongside contextual background, were conducted on hashtag campaigns such as #NoConfidenceInTheresaMay and #StopPoliceCutsMay10, and semi-structured interviews were carried out with 17 police protestors. A conceptual framework is derived from those used in previous analysis of protests, especially as applied to those using social media. There is a focus on collective versus connective action; communication dynamics, leadership and organisation; consideration of emotions; and protest spaces, along with elements of counterpublics and the public sphere. Police officers have only featured in protest movement studies as instruments of the state for law and order. Equally, studies on the use of social media by police focus on the organisation’s professional and corporate communications purposes. This research examines them as protestors, finding both commonalities and variances in the theoretical aspects, while also arguing for their relevance in studies on police use of social media. The thesis contributes to the body of knowledge and ongoing debates in the study of protest movements. It also contributes to the growing body of research on police use of social media

Bargaining away the tax base: the north-south politics of tax treaty diffusion

Developing countries have signed over a thousand tax treaties, at a cost of millions of pounds a year, based on a myth. The predominant legal rationale for so-called ‘double taxation’ treaties is outdated, while the evidence that they attract investment into developing countries is inconclusive. Although the financial gains from tax treaties are split between the treasuries of capital exporting countries and their multinational companies, most of the costs are incurred by the fiscs of capital importing countries. Rational actor models alone cannot explain the diffusion of tax treaties to the global South. The missing piece of the picture is ideas. As developing countries have formed their identities as fiscal states, a century-old narrative describing the deleterious effects of double taxation resulting from international fiscal anarchy has shaped different actors’ preferences. From the perspective of those focused on investment promotion, tax treaties are part of what a state does when it wants to compete for investment, regardless of the evidence about their actual effects. Meanwhile, officials developing the tax system have looked to the OECD as the source of sophisticated technical knowledge, and learned to regard tax treaties as the way to ensure ‘acceptable standards’ for taxing multinational companies. This thesis uses interviews with treaty negotiators, observations of international meetings, and archival research, including case studies from the UK, Zambia, Vietnam and Cambodia selected through a mixed methods strategy. It identifies three diffusion mechanisms: competition by developed countries for outward investment opportunities, ‘boundedly rational’ competition by developing countries for inward investment, and efforts by tax specialists to disseminate fiscal standards. It also highlights two scope conditions. First, competition for inward investment can be blocked if political actors are concerned about raising corporate tax revenue. Second, where the preferences of specialists and nonspecialists in a country do not align, control over veto points is a prerequisite to diffusion