The Mediated Construction of Reality: Matching Berger & Luckmann with Elias to Understand How Facebook and Google Construct Our Social Reality

Nick Couldry, Andreas Hepp: The Mediated Construction of Reality: Society, Culture, Mediatization. Cambridge / Malden, MA: Polity Press 2017. 978074568130

Understanding Media Dynamics

Mass media and social media afford a communicative environment providing a horizon of orientation for citizens about conflicts relating to religion, and provide social actors with the tools to engage in such conflicts. Media may insert various dynamics into conflicts and may occasionally become actors themselves in contestations over religious issues. This chapter applies a typology that distinguishes among three different media dynamics: (1) media’s ability to amplify the communication and the ramifications of the reported events, (2) how the world is represented, framed, in the media, and the ways in which the media bestow the communication of events with a certain narrative and dramaturgy and work as arenas for the performative agency of various involved actors, and (3) the various ways in which media as social and communicative environments come to co-structure communication and actions. The terror attack on the French satire magazine Charlie Hebdo is used as an illustrative example

Birgit Hertzberg Kaare 1948–2016

Birgit Hertzberg Kaare døde 21. februar etter en tids kreftsykdom. Hun ble 67 år gammel. Birgit var professor emeritus i medievitenskap. Hun var utdannet folklo-rist, og arbeidet flere år som førsteamanu-ensis og professor (fra 1995) ved Institutt for kulturstudier (IKS), senere Institutt for kulturhistorie og orientalske språk (IKOS). Her hadde hun blant mange oppgaver også ansvar for Norsk Folkeminnesamling. I 2005 flyttet hun til Institutt for medier og kommunikasjon. Hun jobbet ved IMK til hun gikk av med pensjon i 2013. Til sammen jobbet hun 35 år ved Universitetet i Oslo

Resistance exercise training increases skeletal muscle mitochondrial respiration in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is associated with skeletal muscle mitochondrial dysfunction. Resistance exercise training (RT) is a training modality with a relatively small pulmonary demand that has been suggested to increase skeletal muscle oxidative enzyme activity in COPD. Whether a shift into a more oxidative profile following RT also translates into increased mitochondrial respiratory capacity in COPD is yet to be established. This study investigated the effects of 13 weeks of RT on m. vastus lateralis mitochondrial capacity in 11 per sons with moderate COPD [45% females, age: 69 ± 4 years (mean ± SD), predicted forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV1): 56 ± 7%] and 12 healthy controls (75% females, age: 66 ± 5 years, predicted FEV1: 110 ± 16%). RT was supervised and carried out two times per week. Leg exercises included leg press, knee extension, and knee flexion and were performed unilaterally with one leg conducting high-load training (10 repetitions maximum, 10RM) and the other leg conducting low-load training (30 repetitions maximum, 30RM). One-legged muscle mass, maximal muscle strength, and endurance performance were determined prior to and after the RT period, together with mitochondrial respiratory capacity using high-resolution respirometry and citrate synthase (CS) activity (a marker for mitochondrial volume density). Transcriptome analysis of genes associated with mitochondrial function was performed. Resistance exercise training led to similar improvements in one-legged muscle mass, muscle strength, and endurance performance in COPD and healthy individuals. In COPD, mitochondrial fatty acid oxidation capacity and oxidative phosphorylation increased following RT (+13 ± 22%, P = 0.033 and +9 ± 23%, P = 0.035, respectively). Marked increases were also seen in COPD for mitochondrial volume density (CS activity, +39 ± 35%, P = 0.001), which increased more than mitochondrial respiration, leading to lowered intrinsic mitochondrial function (respiration/CS activity) for complex-1- supported respiration ( 12 ± 43%, P = 0.033), oxidative phosphorylation ( 10 ± 42%, P = 0.037), and electron transfer system capacity ( 6 ± 52%, P = 0.027). No differences were observed between 10RM and 30RM RT, nor were there any adaptations in mitochondrial function following RT in healthy controls. RT led to differential expression of numerous genes related to mitochondrial function in both COPD and healthy controls, with no difference being observed between groups. Thirteen weeks of RT resulted in augmented skeletal muscle mitochondrial respiratory capacity in COPD, accompanied by alterations in the transcriptome and driven by an increase in mitochondrial quantity rather than improved mitochondrial quality.publishedVersio

Attitudes : tendencies and variations

This chapter presents an overview of religiosity and attitudes to religious diversity in media and other public spaces based on a cross-Scandinavian survey conducted in 2015. Although Scandinavians in general have a weak personal connection to religion, Christianity still holds a privileged position as an expression of cultural identity. Scandinavians express support for equal rights to practice religion, but also doubtfulness towards public expressions of religion. More than one-fourth of respondents discuss news about religion and religious extremism regularly. There is a widespread sentiment that Islam is a threat to the national culture, even though most respondents state that they oppose an open expression of hostile attitudes towards foreigners. Political orientation and gender are salient aspects that shape diverging opinions regarding tolerance or scepticism towards the public visibility of religious diversity. Furthermore, Danes and Norwegians are more critical of public expressions of Islam than Swedes.Engaging with Conflicts in Mediatized Religious Environments, CoMRe

Interpreting the Media Logic behind Editorial Decisions

This article enters into debates about media logic in political coverage by way of a case study of the 2015 U.K. General Election. We quantitatively and qualitatively examine two dominant themes of coverage—news about campaign rallies and horse-race reporting—as both are widely seen in political communication scholarship as symptomatic of a media logic. We draw on a content analysis of BBC, ITV, Sky News, Channel 4, and Channel 5 U.K. national television newscasts and semi-structured interviews with their heads of news and/or senior editors to help interpret how far a media logic was the editorial driving force behind coverage. At face value, our content analysis appears to support the media logic thesis, with all broadcasters—in particular commercial television newscasts—covering more process than policy issues. But our case study questions the antecedents of media logic and shines a light on a political logic that may have remained in the dark in large-scale content analysis studies. In following a political logic, we argue that this promoted the horse-race narrative, and naturalized the parties’ highly stage-managed rallies and walkabout

Interaction Dynamics in the Mediatization of Religion

In light of the preceding case studies, this chapter revisits the theories on the mediatization of religion and on mediatized conflicts that were outlined in the first part of the book. The focus is on the interplay between media representations of religious conflicts and the social interactions relating to the contentious issues. With a basis in general mediatization theory, it is argued that audience activity and other forms of civic participation must be seen to be an integral part of the mediatization processe