Moral panics and newspaper reporting in Britain: between sceptical and realistic discourses of climate change

This thesis provides the first attempt to empirically apply the moral panic framework to study British newspaper reporting on climate change by drawing upon a unique dataset of 958 news articles over three decades (1988-2016). It is original in the sense that it illuminates the "missing link" between media reporting on climate change and think tanks' denial strategies. By adopting mixed approaches, this work explores both news articles and think tanks' documents and shows how moral panics can help explore rival discourses, and the strategies adopted by powerful actors to "defend" their interests by inflaming confusion. The main implications can be identified in the use of moral panics as a valuable tool for exploring conflicts in which powerful interests are involved, and in better understanding how the "denial machine" works. I argue that in the British context, the politicisation of newspapers' narratives around climate change causes a fracture between two groups characterised by specific dominant traits, which in turn correspond to moral panic attributes. However, even in the context of "conflicted moral panics", one direction prevails, which in this case is the more conservative narrative. This can only be understood by simultaneously observing the processes of construction of each single narrative and their comparison. Therefore, simultaneously considering the two narratives, the overall "confusing image" resulting from both conflicted panics ("centre-left vs centre-right"), and the multidimensionality within the same politicised narrative, might favour a "status quo instance", which reflects the economic, political and social status quo. The interconnections between conservative think tanks and the oil industry, and in turn their influence on dictating the sceptical "story line", suggest that the media "voluntarily" reflect elite power conflicts. These results inform on those elements that inflame hostility and resistance to climate change acceptance. Policy-making that aims to promote "intervention-oriented" approaches should take into account these results, especially in relation to the dialectics between the forces at play

Le Nuove forme di «vicinato intenzionale»: il cohousing in Italia e in Inghilterra

The thesis aims to offer a better understanding of the reasons why Cohousing communities arise, how they work, the internal composition, the architectural schemes, the relationships with the "outside". Cohousing may be defined as "intentional communities" that satisfy the need of friendly relationships among neighbours. We argue that the physical layout is not per se able to create the sense of community, other requirements are needed (e.g. intentionality, availability of time to build relationship, individual characteristics, formal activities, size of the group and the site, internal governance, social and cultural homogeneity, length of the residence etc.) Cohousing groups are usually open toward the "outside" making their facilities available to external individuals and organizing many "open activities". Hence, even if safety is not the primary goal of cohousers, it is still guaranteed by a "neighbourhood watch system". The risk that the Cohousing may become a self segregated community is more likely to be associated to the costs of access and the development scheme rather than to a shared ideology. In particular, the resident-led model is characterized by high costs of access because cohousers are responsible for each aspect. At the same time, partnership models may be more affordable, but residents may not have the same freedom. Finally, the market system that follows top-down logics can affect the sense of community because people do not know each other.</br

Exclusão digital: como é estar do lado errado da divisão digital

O desenvolvimento da sociedade da informação reforçou a existência de obstáculos que dificultam o acesso e o uso apropriado das tecnologias por certos grupos, levando a novas formas de exclusão no mercado de trabalho, nas instituições governamentais, no lazer, e nas atividades educativas. Contudo, reduzir o hiato entre aqueles que estão conectados e aqueles que não estão tendo acesso físico mais barato e mais rápido à internet não resulta automaticamente numa eliminação da distância colocada pelas desigualdades digitais. É um erro assumir um posicionamento tecnologicamente determinista, que vê o acesso à tecnologia como solução para os problemas sociais, incluindo problemas de desigualdade social, democracia, liberdade, interação social e um senso de comunidade. Na verdade, muitas dimensões e padrões existentes podem gerar e reforçar desigualdades, aumentando ainda mais as distâncias entre cidadãos/usuários. O termo “hiato digital”, muitas vezes usado como expressão binária, pode não ser adequado porque sugere um hiato unidimensional, baseado principalmente no fator econômico – possuir tecnologia –, ao passo em que há hiatos em perspectivas múltiplas, que vão além do simples acesso ou da obtenção dos recursos. Essas dimensões criam desigualdades digitais que, se não forem retratadas, produzem e reforçam as desigualdades sociais. Os conceitos de estratificação social e digital estão intimamente interligados.The development of the information society has highlighted the existence of obstacles preventing certain social groups from accessing and properly using technologies, leading to new forms of exclusion from the job market, governmental institutions, leisure and academic activities. However, reducing the gap between those who connect and those do not by offering cheaper and faster physical access does not automatically translate into closing the gap in terms of digital inequalities. The technological determinist position, which sees access to technology as being able to solve social problems, including problems of social inequality, democracy, freedom, social relationships and sense of community, is misleading. In fact, several dimensions and patterns can generate and reinforce inequalities, further increasing the distances between citizens/users. The term “digital divide”, often used in binary term, is confusing, because it suggests a one-dimensional gap, mainly based on the economic factor (possession of technologies), while there are gaps in multiple dimensions that go beyond the simple access to or possession of resources. These dimensions create digital inequalities that, if not mirrored, produce and reinforce social inequalities. The concepts of social and digital stratification are intimately intertwined

Use of science in British newspapers’ narratives of climate change

This paper investigates the use of science in British newspapers’ narratives of climate change between 1988 and 2016. It is based on the analysis of eight newspapers and their Sunday and online versions (Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, The Daily Express, The Sun, The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Indepen-dent). We used the keywords “climate / climatic change”, “warm / warming” and “greenhouse / greenhouse effect” to retrieve the articles from the Nexis / Lexis database. To identify the articles with a specific focus on climate change, we included only those containing the keywords in the headline (9789 items). Framing theory helps interpret the process of construction of the “threat” through science by showing a tendency towards scientific consensus for the centre / left-leaning newspapers, and an instrumental use of consensus for the centre-right. These findings are useful for both scientists and policymakers interested in understand-ing how climate narratives can promote delay in action on climate change

Organizational and Institutional Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic

This issue of American Behavioral Scientist deals with the various ways in which different kinds of organizations cope with the manifold challenges brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. Together, these articles map the challenges and opportunities encountered by a variety of organizations in a major public health crisis. The first section of the issue takes up the theme of adaptive crisis response in relation to two different kinds of organizations. This section begins with a comprehensive overview of U.S. nonprofit organizations’ responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. The second article expands on the theme of communication practices in organizations using digital communication platforms which facilitate constructive forms of disagreement or “creative conflict.” Both of these articles indicate the potential positive outcomes of entrepreneurial organizational response. In the next section, we turn to organizational responses hampered by digital inequalities. The first article addresses digital inequalities and eLearning during the pandemic in the country of Pakistan. The next article also uses a digital inequalities framework to probe infrastructural inadequacies faced by the criminal justice system in terms of hindrances to external communication for incarcerated populations during the pandemic. This pair of articles underscores the importance of infrastructure as a necessary element of successful crisis response. The third section of the issue continues with case studies of carceral institutions with the first article offering insight into strategies used by incarcerated people to generate a sense of normality despite pandemic disruptions. Finally, the issue closes with an article revealing the delicate balancing act which rural U.S. law enforcement carried out when competing imperatives made it extremely difficult to manage public health and public safety simultaneously

Report on Stakeholder Engagement Methodologies

Stakeholder engagement in research projects can take a number of forms according to the scope of the project and the purpose of the interaction. L4.2. has focused on comparing different approaches to stakeholder engagement in collaborative projects. This report presents a synthesis of the experiences and lessons learnt through the stakeholder engagement activities of LiveM researchers within MACSUR, within an Italian (Oristano) case study, and within the SOLID (Sustainable, Organic and Low Input Dairying) project. An overview of these examples, and some of the lessons drawn from them, can also be found in the MACSUR paper on stakeholder engagement methods being developed by researchers from all three MACSUR themes (Koenig et al. under production). The first part of this report describes the stakeholder engagement strategy within the SOLID project. Stakeholder engagement methods are analysed through observations of activities and using semi-structured interviews with researchers and stakeholders. Two aspects of the SOLID approach are described – the stakeholder panel and the Future Dairying workshop. Transcripts of the workshop and the contribution of the stakeholder panel to the SOLID annual meeting in Helsinki are included (Appendices 1 and 2), as a contribution to the analysis of workshop outcomes being undertaken within the SOLID project. As part of a wider suite of stakeholder engagement activities, the SOLID stakeholder panel provided an example of how ongoing oversight of scientific outputs and direction by stakeholders can be effective in identifying weaknesses in approach and communication, and in suggesting relevant and effective directions for research activities. The stakeholder workshop demonstrated a useful structure for the exploration of stakeholder concerns, their view of ideal states and their solutions for reaching them. Low participation levels demonstrated the need to understand the motivations that drive stakeholders to engage in such projects, and highlighted the value of developing long-term relationships between stakeholders and researchers that allow scientific research to become an accepted part of practical problem-solving. The second part of the report describes stakeholder engagement activities carried out in the context of one of the MACSUR regional pilot studies (Oristanese case study in Sardinia, Italy). The Oristanese case study demonstrates the potentialities and constraints of participatory methodologies in relation to the different categories of stakeholder involved. It highlights the importance of creating new spaces for dialogue between farmers, researchers and policy makers in order to promote the generation of “hybrid knowledge” (Nguyen et al. 2013) for the emergence of more sustainable and longer-lasting strategies to adapt to CC. This would require the promotion of open knowledge generation platforms where multiple stakeholders are encouraged to participate and make their views heard. These approaches are designed in order to overcome the misalignment between scientists' suggestions and policy implementation. In the third part of the report, the outcomes of a "learning event" held in Sassari (MACSUR mid-term meeting) with decision makers from different EU countries, are discussed. Finally, some reflections are presented on the importance of involving local stakeholders and decision makers in research projects, of sharing views and knowledge between scientists and stakeholders, and on the pros and cons of different methodologies at the different scales of stakeholder engagement, drawing on all three examples of practice. The research approach analysed includes two important components, which are represented by “transdisciplinarity” (to be included in the macro area of “scientific knowledge”) and “local knowledge”, as fundamental elements to fill the Science and Policy Gap

Cascading Crises: Society in the Age of COVID-19

The tsunami of change triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic has transformed society in a series of cascading crises. Unlike disasters that are more temporarily and spatially bounded, the pandemic has continued to expand across time and space for over a year, leaving an unusually broad range of second-order and third-order harms in its wake. Globally, the unusual conditions of the pandemic—unlike other crises—have impacted almost every facet of our lives. The pandemic has deepened existing inequalities and created new vulnerabilities related to social isolation, incarceration, involuntary exclusion from the labor market, diminished economic opportunity, life-and-death risk in the workplace, and a host of emergent digital, emotional, and economic divides. In tandem, many less advantaged individuals and groups have suffered disproportionate hardship related to the pandemic in the form of fear and anxiety, exposure to misinformation, and the effects of the politicization of the crisis. Many of these phenomena will have a long tail that we are only beginning to understand. Nonetheless, the research also offers evidence of resilience on several fronts including nimble organizational response, emergent communication practices, spontaneous solidarity, and the power of hope. While we do not know what the post COVID-19 world will look like, the scholarship here tells us that the virus has not exhausted society’s adaptive potential

The Effects of cohousing on the social housing system: the case of the Threshold Centre

This work aims to assess whether cohousing communities might generate positive effects in terms of social housing. Cohousing projects are “supportive” communities where many types of informal support networks arise, referring to the concept of sharing spaces, facilities, but also properties, the decision-making process, and experiences. The costs of the sites and construction are often higher than a “normal condominium” (especially if they are resident-led communities), and sometimes, they might be responsible for the failure of the groups: inhabitants of those communities born spontaneously, without any kind of public aid, are mainly from a medium–high socio-economic status. However, in the UK, where cohousing follows mainly a grassroots model, some communities are able to keep the costs down, in particular by the creation of mixed tenure systems, collaboration with Housing Associations and self-building processes. The Threshold Centre in England allocates 50 % of the residential units for social housing. The collaboration with a Housing Association produced a “good housing” model, which allowed both a reduction in construction time and a guarantee of the creation of a heterogeneous group (but with a compact identity), as well as the inclusion of socio-economically vulnerable people

Conceptualizing the techno-environmental habitus

This paper conceptualizes the techno-environmental habitus to explore differentiation among media users and their climate change awareness by adopting a dynamic concept that takes into consideration both pre-existing conditions and interactions with the technological field of action. The paper investigates the characteristics of multi-layered dispositions towards climate change in the U.K. through an online survey of a representative sample of the U.K. population (N=1,013). Results show that, despite the predominance of advocacy positions, four different techno-environmental habitus point to a fragmented landscape, but also a &amp;ldquo;chameleon&amp;rdquo;, transformative capacity of habitus, given that some common traits are shared by the groups. Beyond the four different patterns related to techno-environmental attitudes, one of the most interesting findings relates to the fatalistic techno-environmental habitus, which presents some traits in common with the scepticism and advocacy approaches but tends to be discouraged with regard to taking action. The identification of the nuances of techno-environmental habitus is relevant for climate change policy implementation because they may facilitate or hinder both individual and collective action