Visualising the EU: the Central and East European Enlargement Experience

Starting with an analysis of the recent launch of EUTube, this article poses a number of different questions about the EU’s visibility, particularly from a Central and East European perspective. Arguing against the more commonly held belief that the EU’s visibility is on the decline, the article showcases a number of alternative examples of visibility whereby other actors, coming from the publicity world, critically engage with problems surrounding the EU such as discrimination, the work-visa regime, the EU Constitution and the CAP reforms. Focusing on the Polish Plumber campaign in France and Poland as well as the Bucegi and Ursus beer campaigns in post-enlargement Romania, the article argues that such campaigns could and should play an important role in expanding the visual horizon of the EU and opening the door to other ‘legitimate’ authors of ‘text’ and ‘images’ pertaining to the EU

Lifeworld Inc. : and what to do about it

Can we detect changes in the way that the world turns up as they turn up? This paper makes such an attempt. The first part of the paper argues that a wide-ranging change is occurring in the ontological preconditions of Euro-American cultures, based in reworking what and how an event is produced. Driven by the security – entertainment complex, the aim is to mass produce phenomenological encounter: Lifeworld Inc as I call it. Swimming in a sea of data, such an aim requires the construction of just enough authenticity over and over again. In the second part of the paper, I go on to argue that this new world requires a different kind of social science, one that is experimental in its orientation—just as Lifeworld Inc is—but with a mission to provoke awareness in untoward ways in order to produce new means of association. Only thus, or so I argue, can social science add to the world we are now beginning to live in

World polity: anatomy of and arguments for regional and global integration

This article is inspired by taking sort of a medical view on the international political world2. A medical view here means that first we need to understand the anatomy of the organism that we observe, i.e. the world. Secondly, we need to make some diagnoses and prognoses about possible threats to the functioning of this organism as well as how to restore health. In Political Science terms this means identifying threats to security, peace, survival and wellbeing of states, nations, and individuals, as well as the whole, and to identify possible political solutions to these threats. The first part of this article will present the history of global integration and why it is necessary to prevent war and to facilitate peace at the example of Europe. Europe is here regarded a greenhouse for global integration. This part describes the attempts at integration before the major wars in Europe in the last centuries, the reasons for these wars as the failures or lack of integration, and the way it was overcome. The second part of this article will present an ideal type global political anatomy. This will be illustrated with graphics, which are thought to make the global political system better understood by visualising key aspects of it. The third part of this paper will discuss the nature of reality, which is important to understand conflicts in today’s world, as ‘virtual’, material, social and cultural. It will present a challenge to Alexander Wendt’s recent idea of reality as a hologram and discuss how civilizational conflicts, as described by Samuel Huntington, can possibly be resolved by creating a global demos (polity) by establishing a global parliament. As the basis for the latter argument, finally, this paper will present and analyse the results from the survey on global citizenship. Global demos here refer to the idea of a global polity, or identification of the global population with the global, or to say it alternatively: as global citizens. It is argued that, if we would have a global demos, this would facilitate global integration, which is necessary for peace. For example, further global integration towards a world state with a world parliament, is thought to be only possible and sensible if there is a reasonable global demos to build this entity on.For this reason, this article presents results from a survey run at the University of Hull in 2016 intended to measure global citizenship

Finding and Resolving Security Misusability with Misusability Cases

Although widely used for both security and usability concerns, scenarios used in security design may not necessarily inform the design of usability, and vice- versa. One way of using scenarios to bridge security and usability involves explicitly describing how design deci- sions can lead to users inadvertently exploiting vulnera- bilities to carry out their production tasks. This paper describes how misusability cases, scenarios that describe how design decisions may lead to usability problems sub- sequently leading to system misuse, address this problem. We describe the related work upon which misusability cases are based before presenting the approach, and illus- trating its application using a case study example. Finally, we describe some findings from this approach that further inform the design of usable and secure systems

Stigmatising poverty? The ‘Broken Society’ and reflections on anti-welfarism in the UK today

In the context of deep economic and financial crisis, and amidst rising inequalities, blame for several of the main social problems affecting the contemporary UK is being apportioned to some of the most disadvantaged sections of society. This blaming is driven by a strong anti-welfarism that regards social welfare provision as among the key factors contributing to a social and moral crisis in the UK today. The media also plays a key role in producing and reproducing anti-poor and anti-welfare ways of thinking, sensationalising some of the more negative aspects of life in disadvantaged communities. This representation of people experiencing poverty serves to set them as a group apart from ‘normal’ and ‘mainstream’ society. Anti-poor narratives, together with media misrepresentations of poverty increasingly referred to as ‘poverty porn’, work to harden attitudes to social welfare in general and to people in poverty specifically

Practical reasoning in political discourse: The UK government's response to the economic crisis in the 2008 Pre-Budget Report

This article focuses on practical reasoning in political discourse and argues for a better integration of argumentation theory with critical discourse analysis (CDA). Political discourse and its specific genres (for example, deliberation) primarily involve forms of practical reasoning, typically oriented towards finding solutions to problems and deciding on future courses of action. Practical reasoning is a form of inference from cognitive and motivational premises: from what we believe (about the situation or about means—end relations) and what we want or desire (our goals and values), leading to a normative judgement (and often a decision) concerning action. We offer an analysis of the main argument in the UK government’s 2008 Pre-Budget Report (HM Treasury, 2008) and suggest how a critical evaluation of the argument from the perspective of a normative theory of argumentation (particularly the informal logic developed by Douglas Walton) can provide the basis for an evaluation in terms of characteristic CDA concerns. We are advancing this analysis as a contribution to CDA, aimed at increasing the rigour and systematicity of its analyses of political discourse, and as a contribution to the normative concerns of critical social science

Creating an Understanding of Data Literacy for a Data-driven Society

Society has become increasingly reliant on data, making it necessary to ensure that all citizens are equipped with the skills needed to be data literate. We argue that the foundations for a data literate society begin by acquiring key data literacy competences in school. However, as yet there is no clear definition of what these should be. This paper explores the different perspectives currently offered on both data and statistical literacy and then critically examines to what extent these address the data literacy needs of citizens in today’s society. We survey existing approaches to teaching data literacy in schools, to identify how data literacy is interpreted in practice. Based on these analyses, we propose a definition of data literacy that is focused on employing an inquiry-based approach to using data to understand real world phenomena. The contribution of this paper is the creation of a common foundation for teaching and learning data literacy skills

Urban Data in the primary classroom: bringing data literacy to the UK curriculum

As data becomes established as part of everyday life, the ability for the average citizen to have some level of data literacy is increasingly important. This paper describes an approach to teaching data skills in schools using real life, complex, urban data sets collected as part of a smart city project. The approach is founded on the premise that young learners have the ability to work with complex data sets if they are supported in the right way and if the tasks are grounded in a real life context. Narrative principles are used to frame the task, to assist interpretation and tell stories from data and to structure queries of datasets. An inquiry-based methodology organises the activities. This paper describes the initial trial in a UK primary school in which twelve students aged 9-10 years learnt about home energy consumption and the generation of solar energy from home solar PV, by interpreting existing visualisations of smart meter data and data obtained from aerial survey. Additional trials are scheduled with older learners which will evaluate learners on more challenging data handling tasks. The trials are informing the development of the Urban Data School, a web-based platform designed to support teaching data skills in schools in order to improve data literacy among school leavers