Social media challenges mean that the next Italian government may have to fix the rules dictated by the “Par Condicio” law

This weekend’s Italian elections are in the spotlight because of their importance to the financial stability of the Eurozone. They also raise questions about media regulation because they will be the first under a controversial new impartiality regime – that also applies to smartphones. Jacopo Genovese considers whether fair elections might be achieved more easily through policies addressing the concentration of media ownership

Italian journalism: the real loser in the Italian elections (guest blog)

The Italian general elections held in February resulted in parliamentary deadlock, and debates of who were the winners and losers still continue. Partito Democratico (PD), the centre-left coalition led by Pierluigi Bersani, and the Popolo della Libertà (PDL) party of Silvio Berlosconi nearly tied with just over 29% each. However, commentators tend to agree that the real winner was Beppe Grillo with his Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S), which surpassed all predictions by obtaining 25.5% of all votes in just its first appearance in national elections. But according to Polis Intern Jacopo Genovese there is one clear loser that only a few pundits have mentioned: Italian journalism

Will App Impartiality Fix the Italian Election?

This weekend’s Italian elections are in the spotlight because of their importance to the financial stability of the Eurozone. They also raise questions about media regulation because they will be the first under a controversial new impartiality regime – that also applies to smartphones. LSE’s Jacopo Genovese considers whether fair elections might more easily be achieved through policies addressing the concentration of media ownershi

Front Page Leveson: Papers lead with freedom the day after the Report

The Report of the Leveson Inquiry contained severe criticism of press behaviour as well as proposals for a new self-regulatory mechanism. The next day, the country’s newspapers faced the prospect of reporting the criticism of their own industry and proposals key to their future business. The LSE Media Policy Project has examined how the national newspapers covered and reacted to the story. We have examined headlines, news stories and pictures in national newspapers. In this first preview we outline some of our findings on the front pages

Creation and characterization of He-related color centers in diamond

Diamond is a promising material for the development of emerging applications in quantum optics, quantum information and quantum sensing. The fabrication and characterization of novel luminescent defects with suitable opto-physical properties is therefore of primary importance for further advances in these research fields. In this work we report on the investigation in the formation of photoluminescent (PL) defects upon MeV He implantation in diamond. Such color centers, previously reported only in electroluminescence and cathodoluminescence regime, exhibited two sharp emission lines at 536.5 nm and 560.5 nm, without significant phonon sidebands. A strong correlation between the PL intensities of the above-mentioned emission lines and the He implantation fluence was found in the 10^15-10^17 cm^{-2} fluence range. The PL emission features were not detected in control samples, i.e. samples that were either unirradiated or irradiated with different ion species (H, C). Moreover, the PL emission lines disappeared in samples that were He-implanted above the graphitization threshold. Therefore, the PL features are attributed to optically active defects in the diamond matrix associated with He impurities. The intensity of the 536.5 nm and 560.5 nm emission lines was investigated as a function of the annealing temperature of the diamond substrate. The emission was observed upon annealing at temperatures higher than 500{\deg}C, at the expenses of the concurrently decreasing neutral-vacancy-related GR1 emission intensity. Therefore, our findings indicate that the luminescence originates from the formation of a stable lattice defect. Finally, the emission was investigated under different laser excitations wavelengths (i.e. 532 nm and 405 nm) with the purpose of gaining a preliminary insight about the position of the related levels in the energy gap of diamond

Forget How We Got Here? Newspaper Coverage of the Royal Charter Deal

When Leveson published his Report at the end of November our research showed that the press presented the story as one mainly about freedom of the press and the struggle by hacking victims for vindication and protection in the future. Slightly less prominent but also present was a narrative of the politico-media complex or ties between big media and politicians. Our latest study of newspaper coverage before and after the Royal Charter agreement for implementing Leveson’s recommendations showed that the struggle of the victims of press wrongdoings has all but disappeared from the story

Biocompatible technique for nanoscale magnetic field sensing with Nitrogen-Vacancy centers

The possibility of using Nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamonds to measure nanoscale magnetic fields with unprecedented sensitivity is one of the most significant achievements of quantum sensing. Here we present an innovative experimental set-up, showing an achieved sensitivity comparable to the state of the art ODMR protocols if the sensing volume is taken into account. The apparatus allows magnetic sensing in biological samples such as individual cells, as it is characterized by a small sensing volume and full bio-compatibility. The sensitivity at different optical powers is studied to extend this technique to the intercellular scale.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure