Competing narratives in framing disability in the UK media: a comparative analysis of journalistic representations of facial disfigurement versus practices of self-representations online

By using discourse analysis, this paper compares and contrasts the journalistic coverage of the story of a beauty blogger with facial disfigurement with her blog. On the one hand, we will show the extent to which a self-representational account may align with the journalistic coverage, reinforcing rather than contesting mainstream representations of disability. On the other, we will demonstrate how a person with a disfigurement can use blogging to reclaim her own identity and challenge the medical objectification of her body perpetuated by mainstream media. This research found that rather than being mutually exclusive, journalism and blogging can play a complementary role in shaping the society’s understanding of the complexities and contradictions surrounding disfigurement

Neutralizing antibodies to Omicron after the fourth SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccine dose in immunocompromised patients highlight the need of additional boosters

IntroductionImmunocompromised patients have been shown to have an impaired immune response to COVID-19 vaccines.MethodsHere we compared the B-cell, T-cell and neutralizing antibody response to WT and Omicron BA.2 SARS-CoV-2 virus after the fourth dose of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines in patients with hematological malignancies (HM, n=71), solid tumors (ST, n=39) and immune-rheumatological (IR, n=25) diseases. The humoral and T-cell responses to SARS-CoV-2 vaccination were analyzed by quantifying the anti-RBD antibodies, their neutralization activity and the IFN-γ released after spike specific stimulation.ResultsWe show that the T-cell response is similarly boosted by the fourth dose across the different subgroups, while the antibody response is improved only in patients not receiving B-cell targeted therapies, independent on the pathology. However, 9% of patients with anti-RBD antibodies did not have neutralizing antibodies to either virus variants, while an additional 5.7% did not have neutralizing antibodies to Omicron BA.2, making these patients particularly vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2 infection. The increment of neutralizing antibodies was very similar towards Omicron BA.2 and WT virus after the third or fourth dose of vaccine, suggesting that there is no preferential skewing towards either virus variant with the booster dose. The only limited step is the amount of antibodies that are elicited after vaccination, thus increasing the probability of developing neutralizing antibodies to both variants of virus.DiscussionThese data support the recommendation of additional booster doses in frail patients to enhance the development of a B-cell response directed against Omicron and/or to enhance the T-cell response in patients treated with anti-CD20

Syntax as meaning: the stylistic construction of the past in American feature writing

This paper explores the stylistic construction of the past in feature writing using as a case study the American Pulitzer Prize for journalism. Drawing on stylistic rhetorical criticism, it will show how references to the past are framed within fixed syntactical and word arrangement schemes that produce meaning and sustain arguments through expressive and aesthetic effects. The stylistic devices identified include comparative parallelism, series, emphatic repetition and syntactic symbolism. This paper contends that references to the past in feature writing should be seen as literary artefacts constructed by following the rules of rhetorical stylistics. The understanding of the uses of history that we can obtain from reading references to the past in journalism cannot be separated from formal and structural aspects pertaining to sentence patterns. Embedding rhetorical schemes in the text pushes the force of language beyond its representational role by bringing forward its expressive and evocative characteristics and the role that these play in making the story unique and memorable. The use of history in journalism goes beyond representing a given historical fact; the form through which the fact is presented matters because it makes each historical record discursively unique, thus contributing to the news value of the story

The campus magazine as an aesthetic experience in a transnational university in China.

This paper explores students’ involvement in an extra-curricular journalistic activity set up in a transnational university in China, by drawing on the connection between art, emotions and experience postulated by the philosopher John Dewey. The article will show how undergraduate students verbalized their experience of writing news features and other items for a campus magazine, their motivations for taking part in the magazine, their expectations, the obstacles they had to overcome, and the ways in which they felt rewarded by this experience. This study argues that looking into students’ reflections on a magazine production can help broaden our understanding of student media practice as an aesthetic dynamic and structured endeavor characterized by the following traits: novelty, instinct, emotion, struggle, and transformation

Reading dermatology in the Victorian newspaper. The performance of medical vocabulary in The Times correspondence column

This contribution concerns the role of the Victorian newspaper correspondence column in advancing knowledge of dermatology in relation to corporal punishment. It explores The Times' coverage of an inquest into the death by flogging of a British soldier. I argue that on the one hand, The Times participated in the debate about flogging in the army by bringing forward skin anatomy as an argument against corporal punishment. On the other hand, the paper might have used the publication of letters with medical content as a marketing strategy to maintain its authority and credibility against accusations of sensationalism

On the skin of a soldier: The story of flogging

After Farrier-Major Critton struck the 150th lash on the back of Private Frederick John White, at the end of a common disciplinary session at Hounslow Barracks, West London, in 1846, the soldier, whistling, walked himself to the infirmary to have his wounds dressed. His skin healed promptly, but 4 weeks later, he was found dead in his dormitory. The army medical officers, after performing an autopsy, reached the conclusion that the soldier had died from inflammation of internal organs but excluded any connection with flogging. This version of facts did not convince the coroner for Middlesex, who decided to open an inquest. After 3 more weeks of inquiry and 2 more postmortem examinations, the famous dermatologist Erasmus Wilson contradicted the army officers by affirming that the soldier had indeed died from the effects of flogging as the analysis of the cutaneous lesions and underneath would demonstrate. This contribution will detail how the inquest into the death of Private John White sparked a medical debate on the effects of military flogging to the skin. The discussion raised by the publication of the details of the autopsies demonstrated that different and opposing points of view coexisted in the Victorian period concerning the relation between external lacerations and internal organs in cases of flogging

Analysing the news coverage of "pet regret" in the UK through the framework of Nonviolent Communication

Drawing on the tenets of Nonviolent Communication (NVC), this paper presents a discourse analysis of UK news coverage regarding the phenomenon commonly referred to as “pet regret”. This is an informal expression coined by mainstream media to indicate feelings of remorse experienced by individuals who acquired a companion animal during the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequently found themselves questioning their decision, leading some to consider relinquish or leaving without care their pet. This paper will discuss examples from newspapers that used a moralistic framework to depict pet owners by resorting to forms of value judgments woven into rhetorical and syntactic structures. The tone of these judgments reinforces a type of representation grounded on binary thinking, potentially encouraging classifications of people based on reductive notions of right and wrong

The Victorian press coverage of the 1842 report on child labour. The metamorphosis of images

This article aims to explore the Victorian press iconographic coverage of the first illustrated parliamentary report ever produced in the United Kingdom. Published in 1842, The First Report on the Condition and Treatment of the Children Employed in the Mines and Collieries of the United Kingdom showed children and women working half-naked underground. The report on child labour has attracted the attention of social and medical historians, political economists and scholars of gender studies. Scant consideration has been given to the study of the afterlife of its images, which were widely disseminated through media outlets. This article concerns the transformative processes the original images underwent in order to be published in newspapers and periodicals of the time. It will show how the report’s engravings were retouched, cut and laid out in a selection of publications in order to enhance their marketability. I suggest that the copies of the illustrations that appeared in the Victorian press reinforced the ideological premise of the report. However, the metamorphosis of the images challenged the idea that the reality of the miners was a unique and unequivocally observable fact, and subtly disputed the role of the state as a provider of authoritative and accurate visual evidence in the form of parliamentary reports