Britain after Brexit: a transformed political landscape

The 23 June 2016 referendum on Britain’s EU membership exposed deep fractures within the British party system. Products of global political, cultural, and financial trends, these fractures have diminished the power of the U.K. government and of other Western democracies alike. Though the EU’s role in these changes was ambiguous, it became a scapegoat for them, and on the initiative of Conservative Party’s David Cameron, the June up-or-down vote on EU membership was held. But instead of resolving the parties’ problems, the referendum has left the U.K. party structure more skewed than ever. Though it is not yet clear that all of their leaders understand this, the Conservative and Labour parties are in deep crisis, and so is British democracy

Gulag: What we know now and why it matters

Anne Applebaum, the current Philippe Roman Chair in History and International Affairs at LSE IDEAS, discussed the Stalinist Gulag system and why it continues to matter almost 60 years after the death of Stalin

Putinism: the ideology

For too long, Vladimir Putin was dismissed as a thuggish or thoughtless authoritarian leader. But the institutional and ideological underpinnings of Putinism are in fact quite sophisticated and are becoming more so with time. Containing elements of managed democracy and of corporate capitalism - and reflecting the culture and values of the 1980s KGB - Putinism is now taught to Russian children and propagated in the media. It comes complete with a foreign policy and an interpretation of recent history, and it has an ostensible goal: Along with protecting the power and wealth of Putin and his inner circle it proposes to make Russia strong and feared again

Five minutes with Anne Applebaum: “Putin cannot let Ukraine become a democratic, pro-European state”

Tensions have continued to rise in Crimea ahead of a planned referendum on the region seceding from Ukraine and joining Russia. In an interview with EUROPP’s Managing Editor Stuart Brown, Anne Applebaum discusses the importance of Vladimir Putin’s domestic situation to his handling of the crisis, the role of the Russian media in shaping public opinion, and why a key priority for the EU should be to enforce its own anti-corruption standards with regard to Russian investors

Getting to Yes in Specialized Courts: The Unique Role of ADR in Business Court Cases

The assumed compatibility between ADR and specialized courts is largely unexamined. Without being able to statistically validate the motivations and preferences of individual disputants in a manner to draw generalized conclusions, this article examines the relationship between ADR and specialized business courts by looking at how the two are structurally intertwined through existing procedural rules and implementation practices. Part I of this article describes the foundational structures and concepts behind both ADR and specialized business courts, as well as the similarities and differences between them. Part II explores the existing formal structural relationship between ADR and specialized courts by examining the procedural rules facilitating ADR in both the general trial court and the specialized business courts in twenty-two jurisdictions. Part III observes the relationship between ADR and specialized courts through a judicial survey instrument investigating the use of ADR in specialized business cases and a discussion of the survey results. Part IV makes general observations about the existing collaboration between these two tools, in addition to reviewing trends and proffering suggestions

Measuring social response to different journalistic techniques on Facebook

Recent studies have shown that online users tend to select information that adheres to their system of beliefs, ignore information that does not, and join groups that share a common narrative. This information environment can elicit tribalism instead of informed debate, especially when issues are controversial. Algorithmic solutions, fact-checking initiatives, and many other approaches have shown limitations in dealing with this phenomenon, and heated debate and polarization still play a pivotal role in online social dynamics (e.g. traditional vs. anti-establishment polarization). To understand the effect of different communication strategies able to smooth polarization, in this paper, together with Corriere della Sera, a major Italian news outlet, we measure the social response of users to different types of news framing. We analyse users’ reactions to 113 ad-hoc articles published on the newspaper’s Facebook page and the corresponding news articles on the topic of migration, published from March to December 2018. We examine different journalistic techniques and content types by analyzing their impact on user comments in terms of toxicity, criticism of the newspaper, and stance concerning migration. We find that visual pieces and factual news reports elicit the highest level of trust in the media source, while opinion pieces and editorials are more likely to be criticized. We also notice that data-driven pieces elicit an extremely low level of trust in the news source. Furthermore, coherently with the echo chambers behaviour, we find social conformity strongly affecting the commenting behaviour of users on Facebook

LMDA New & Noteworthy, May 2020

Contents include: #LMDA2020 // Conference Countdown; Managing Life and Work in the Time of COVID-19: Thoughts from the LMDA Executive Committee; The Kennedy Center Dramaturgy Intensive: Learn from the best. Work with the best; Regional Events; Your Dramaturgy Ad Here; Pandemic Response: Resources for Artists in the U.S. and Canada (link).https://soundideas.pugetsound.edu/lmdanewsletter/1033/thumbnail.jp

The sound of revolution: BBC monitoring and the Hungarian uprising, 1956

Radio played a vitally important role during the 1956 Hungarian uprising: as an information service, diplomatic interlocutor and cultural mediator. Broadcasters and the authorities that stood behind them on both sides of the Iron Curtain mapped, interpreted and, at times, appeared to influence the course of events on the ground. The BBC Monitoring Service Transcription Collection offers an essential and unexplored perspective on the mediated experience of the Hungarian uprising, in the context of the wider political warfare battle of the cold war

The Local Role in Homeland Security

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/73848/1/j.1540-5893.2005.00236.x.pd