Vatican Mediation and the Venezuelan Crisis

Part II will discuss the dispute between Argentina and Chile in the 1970s concerning property rights in the Beagle Channel, as well as the restoration of diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba in 2015. Part III will outline the events leading to the crisis in Venezuela, where President Nicolás Maduro has brought the government to the brink of authoritarian rule. This section will assess the Vatican’s offer to mediate in Venezuela in light of the country’s current climate and previous instances of Vatican mediation. Part IV will examine the Vatican as a mediator, analyzing the attributes that may either benefit or hinder its role in the Venezuelan conflict

Arbitration for the “Afflicted” — The Viability of Arbitrating Defamation and Libel Claims Considering IPSO’s Pilot Program

Filing suit for defamation or libel is signing up for an expensive and time-consuming endeavor. If it proceeds to trial, this type of litigation comes with high costs for both sides: potentially millions of dollars in legal fees, and years of court battles. Average judgments against defendant publishers are high, often because uncapped punitive damages are available. Plaintiffs may wait years to receive a judgment, only to spend a significant portion on attorneys’ fees. Given the inefficiency of the courts in handling defamation and libel claims, how might an alternative forum provide for a quicker process, with lower costs for both sides? How would such a forum affect the interests of the parties? Would the characteristics of arbitration alleviate some of the tensions between litigation and the law that allows people to protect their reputation? This Comment addresses the implications of resolving defamation and libel claims against the press through arbitration, and argues that it is critical for the press to consider utilizing arbitration for these claims, as more publishers face financial pressures and litigation poses a more serious threat than ever before. If the role of the press is to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable,” a viable forum for resolving disputes is critical to its continued existence and success

Politics of Fear and Attention-Based Politics Promote Donald Trump and Other Right-Wing Autocrats

Any society runs on fundamental assumptions about rights, liberty, justice, and routine social processes that are implicitly and explicitly communicated. While these have often been problematic for minority group members, they are now less certain for many Americans and citizens in numerous democratic countries since Donald Trump refused to accept losing the 2020 presidential election and then incited an insurrection against the Congress of the United States on January 6, 2021, just weeks before his term ended. This shift is mainly due to policy changes, such as abolishing the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Fairness Doctrine in 1987 that facilitated right-wing news organizations like Fox News (Honig, 2019), along with the rise of digital media that altered the communications ecology and promoted disinformation for profit (Benkler; Faris and Roberts, 2018; Benkler et al, 2017; Bennett and Livingston, 2018). These changes were the foundation for President Trump’s weaponizing of fear, especially his rhetoric about murderous illegal immigrants and the pursuit of a multi-billion border wall to keep Americans safe and keep his supporters fearful. Propaganda and false claims about immigrant criminality contribute to Republican supporters’ anger, but most anger is based on deep-seated fears and misinformation

A Survey of Sex Education Classroom Instructional Practices in Selected Public Junior High Schools Throughout the United States

It was the purpose of this study to determine what was being done in selected public junior high schools throughout the United States that had planned classroom instruction programs in sex education

Politics of Fear and Attention-Based Politics Promote Donald Trump and Other Right-Wing Autocrats

La sociedad suele basarse en preconceptos acerca de los derechos individuales, la libertad, la justicia y los procesos que hacen a la vida rutinaria. Los estadounidenses aceptan sin crítica alguna, ciertas ideas base aun cuando estas sean discriminatorias o invasivas para ciertos colectivos minoritarios. Todo ello es ciertamente desastroso para la democracia legitimando a largo plazo las políticas iniciadas por Donald Trump y su administración. Por medio de la manipulación política del temor, Trump supo imponer una retórica discriminatoria basada en la peligrosidad de los inmigrantes ilegales como así también en la necesidad de construir un muro en la frontera con México con el fin superior de proteger a los estadounidenses. Por medio de noticias falsas, y una propaganda espuria, sus políticas recibieron el apoyo del partido Republicano recordando que el resentimiento se nutre de fuerzas profundas como el temor y la desinformación.  Any society runs on fundamental assumptions about rights, liberty, justice, and routine social processes that are implicitly and explicitly communicated. While these have often been problematic for minority group members, they are now less certain for many Americans and citizens in numerous democratic countries since Donald Trump refused to accept losing the 2020 presidential election and then incited an insurrection against the Congress of the United States on January 6, 2021, just weeks before his term ended. This shift is mainly due to policy changes, such as abolishing the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Fairness Doctrine in 1987 that facilitated right-wing news organizations like Fox News (Honig, 2019), along with the rise of digital media that altered the communications ecology and promoted disinformation for profit (Benkler; Faris and Roberts, 2018; Benkler et al, 2017; Bennett and Livingston, 2018). These changes were the foundation for President Trump’s weaponizing of fear, especially his rhetoric about murderous illegal immigrants and the pursuit of a multi-billion border wall to keep Americans safe and keep his supporters fearful. Propaganda and false claims about immigrant criminality contribute to Republican supporters’ anger, but most anger is based on deep-seated fears and misinformation

Politics of Fear and Attention-Based Politics Promote Donald Trump and Other Right-Wing Autocrats

Any society runs on fundamental assumptions about rights, liberty, justice, and routine social processes that are implicitly and explicitly communicated. While these have often been problematic for minority group members, they are now less certain for many Americans and citizens in numerous democratic countries since Donald Trump refused to accept losing the 2020 presidential election and then incited an insurrection against the Congress of the United States on January 6, 2021, just weeks before his term ended. This shift is mainly due to policy changes, such as abolishing the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Fairness Doctrine in 1987 that facilitated right-wing news organizations like Fox News (Honig, 2019), along with the rise of digital media that altered the communications ecology and promoted disinformation for profit (Benkler; Faris and Roberts, 2018; Benkler et al, 2017; Bennett and Livingston, 2018). These changes were the foundation for President Trump’s weaponizing of fear, especially his rhetoric about murderous illegal immigrants and the pursuit of a multi-billion border wall to keep Americans safe and keep his supporters fearful. Propaganda and false claims about immigrant criminality contribute to Republican supporters’ anger, but most anger is based on deep-seated fears and misinformation

Capability in the digital: institutional media management and its dis/contents

This paper explores how social media spaces are occupied, utilized and negotiated by the British Military in relation to the Ministry of Defence’s concerns and conceptualizations of risk. It draws on data from the DUN Project to investigate the content and form of social media about defence through the lens of ‘capability’, a term that captures and describes the meaning behind multiple representations of the military institution. But ‘capability’ is also a term that we hijack and extend here, not only in relation to the dominant presence of ‘capability’ as a representational trope and the extent to which it is revealing of a particular management of social media spaces, but also in relation to what our research reveals for the wider digital media landscape and ‘capable’ digital methods. What emerges from our analysis is the existence of powerful, successful and critically long-standing media and reputation management strategies occurring within the techno-economic online structures where the exercising of ‘control’ over the individual – as opposed to the technology – is highly effective. These findings raise critical questions regarding the extent to which ‘control’ and management of social media – both within and beyond the defence sector – may be determined as much by cultural, social, institutional and political influence and infrastructure as the technological economies. At a key moment in social media analysis, then, when attention is turning to the affordances, criticisms and possibilities of data, our research is a pertinent reminder that we should not forget the active management of content that is being similarly, if not equally, effective

Configuring the PrEP user: Framing Pre-exposure Prophylaxis in UK newsprint 2012 – 2016

Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) has been hailed as a revolutionary intervention for HIV prevention. PrEP’s controversial status in the UK has generated significant media coverage. It is important to understand what role the media plays in framing PrEP policy issues. We undertook a qualitative analysis of UK newsprint articles between 2012 and 2016 to examine how PrEP was framed as a public health intervention up until a controversial policy decision not to provide PrEP in England. We identified how scientific evidence was deployed to shape two narratives: ir/responsible citizens focused on imagined PrEP users and their capacity to use PrEP effectively; and the public health imperative, which described the need for PrEP. Our analysis demonstrates the particular ways in which scientific evidence contributed to the certainty of PrEP as an effective intervention within UK newsprint. Scientific evidence also played a key role in framing PrEP as an intervention specifically for cis-gendered gay and bisexual men, playing into wider debates about who is a deserving patient and the appropriate use of public resources. Practitioners in the UK and elsewhere should be aware of these constructions of the PrEP user to ensure equitable access to PrEP beyond gay and bisexual men