Substantiating a political public sphere in the Scottish press : a comparative analysis

This article uses content analysis to characterize the performance of the media in a national public sphere, by setting apart those qualities that typify internal press coverage of a political event. The article looks at the coverage of the 1999 devolved Scottish election from the day before the election until the day after. It uses a word count to measure the election material in Scottish newspapers the Herald, the Press and Journal and the Scotsman, and United Kingdom newspapers the Guardian, the Independent and The Times, and categorizes that material according to discourse type, day and page selection. The article finds a number of qualities that typify the Scottish sample in particular, and might be broadly indicative of a political public sphere in action. Firstly, and not unexpectedly, it finds that the Scottish newspapers carry significantly more election coverage. Just as tellingly, though, the article finds that the Scottish papers offer a greater proportion of advice and background information, in the form of opinion columns and feature articles. It also finds that the Scottish papers place a greater concentration of both informative and evaluative material in the period before the vote, consistent with their making a contribution to informed political action. Lastly, the article finds that the Scottish sample situates coverage nearer the front of the paper and places a greater proportion on recto pages. The article therefore argues that the Scottish papers display features that distinguish them from the UK papers, and are broadly consistent with their forming part of a deliberative public sphere, and suggests that these qualities might be explored as a means of judging future media performance

Political Communication

The term "strategic communication" traditionally has been understood as referring to external corporate communication, such as public relations, marketing communication, and advertising, with insufficient consideration beyond its role as a tool of persuasive influence. In recent years, however, the field of strategic communication has evolved to be more holistic in its approach and its role within sociocultural contexts. Articles, textbooks, and handbooks have attempted to define the scope, purpose, and nature of the concept, but as the first major comprehensive work of its kind, The International Encyclopedia of Strategic Communication captures the full scope of contemporary theory and practice in strategic communication.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Paedophiles in the community: inter-agency conflict, news leaks and the local press

This article explores the leaking of confidential information about secret Home Office plans to house convicted paedophiles within a local community (albeit inside a prison). It argues that a politics of paedophilia has emerged in which inter-agency consensus on the issue of ‘what to do’ with high-profile sex offenders has broken down. Accordingly, the article situates newspaper ‘outing’ of paedophiles in the community in relation to vigilante journalism and leaked information from official agencies. The article then presents research findings from a case study of news events set in train following a whistle-blowing reaction by Prison Officers’ Association officials to Home Office plans. Drawing from a corpus of 10 interviews with journalists and key protagonists in the story, the article discusses both the dynamics of whistle blowing about paedophiles and also what happens after the whistle has blown

The professionals speak: Practitioners’ perspectives on professional election campaigning

Faced with some fundamental changes in the socio-cultural, political and media environment, political parties in post-industrialized democracies have started to initiate substantial transformations of both their organizational structures and communicative practices. Those innovations, described as professionalization, become most obvious during election campaigns. In recent times, the number of empirical studies measuring the degree of political parties’ campaign professionalism has grown. They have relied on a broad spectrum of indicators derived from theory which have not been tested for their validity. For the first time, we put these indicators to a ‘reality check’ by asking top-ranked party secretaries and campaign managers in 12 European countries to offer their perceptions of professional election campaigning. Furthermore, we investigate whether any differences in understanding professionalism among party campaign practitioners can be explained by macro (country) and meso (party) factors. By and large, our results confirm the validity of most indicators applied in empirical studies on campaign professionalism so far. There are some party- and country-related differences in assessing campaign professionalism too, but the influence of most factors on practitioners’ evaluations is weak. Therefore, we conclude that largely there is a far-reaching European Union-wide common understanding of professional election campaigning

Science competitions using technology: a study of the behavior of the participating schools in the CNC in Portugal

Neste trabalho investiga-se a dinâmica de escolas do 3º ciclo do Ensino Básico em Portugal, na preparação e participação em uma competição desenvolvida em ambiente computacional sobre conteúdos curriculares de Matemática, Português, Físico-Química e Geologia. Foi realizada uma análise fatorial exploratória de dados empíricos relativos às 143 escolas participantes nas competições realizadas em 2015, analisando-se as suas caraterísticas de atuação. Foram identificados quatro fatores latentes descrevendo o comportamento das escolas: Treino quantitativo, Treino qualitativo, Prestação e Utilizadores, constatando-se que: (i) a participação na competição de Matemática é predominante; (ii) escolas participantes em duas ou três competições apresentam diferentes dinâmicas de preparação; (iii) escolas que participam apenas em Matemática e Físico-Química parecem adotar estratégias pedagógicas mais articuladas e eficientes. Reconhece-se que, embora as escolas participantes desenvolvam trabalhos de preparação, existe uma tendência para as escolas apresentarem estratégias distintas de atuação consoante a combinação de grupos disciplinares presentes nas competições oficiais.In this work we investigate the dynamics of 143 schools of the 3rd cycle of Basic Education in Portugal, regarding the preparation and participation in online science competitions on curricular contents of Mathematics, Portuguese, Physics and Chemistry and Geology. An exploratory factorial analysis of empirical data concerning the competitions in 2015 was carried out, to analyze the characteristics inherent to schools’ performance. Four latent factors describing the schools’ behavior were identified: Quantitative Training, Qualitative Training, Proficiency and Users, which allowed us to verify that: (i) participation in mathematics competition is predominant; (ii) schools participating in two or three competitions present different preparation dynamics; (iii) schools involved only in Mathematics and Physics and Chemistry competitions seem to adopt a more articulated and efficient pedagogical strategy. Although all schools develop a preparatory work before competitions, the strategies used seem to be related to the combination of distinct disciplinary groups participating in the competitions.Trabalho subsidiado por fundos portugueses através do Centro de Investigação e Desenvolvimento em Matemática e Aplicações (CIDMA) da Universidade de Aveiro, e da Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT), dentro do projeto UID/MAT/04106/2013.publishe

O processo de formação do atleta de futsal e futebol: análise etnográfica

Apesar de o senso comum estabelecer que todo brasileiro "já nasce sabendo jogar bola", é longo o caminho entre o reconhecimento de se "ter talento" para o futebol até a "lapidação" desta espécie de "aptidão aparentemente inata". Assim, cada vez mais cedo, as crianças praticam Futsal em escolinhas esportivas com a esperança de que sejam encaminhadas/convidadas a jogarem o Futebol em clubes profissionais. Como a quantidade desses jovens que se lançam no mercado esportivo é crescente, faz-se necessário observar e entender como se dá o comportamento social estabelecido nas escolinhas de futsal/futebol. O objetivo do presente estudo foi investigar o planejamento/ações que pais e clubes realizam para que os garotos adquiram a capacidade de jogar futsal/futebol. Para tanto, por meio de trabalho etnográfico, durante um ano foram observadas e registradas em entrevistas e diário de campo as práticas e as falas dos jovens atletas, pais, professores e dirigentes de um clube tradicional de Curitiba. Partindo da premissa de que a mítica do talento inato dá lugar à aprendizagem sistematizada como forma de se obter o triunfo, pretendemos expor aqui como são traçados os caminhos e os descaminhos no mundo do futsal e futebol de base. O trabalho revela que a formação de um jogador consiste num processo de ensino-aprendizagem-prática determinado pelos pais e que encontram eco em clubes especializados. Evidencia-se que para alguns pais e professores o "jogar bola" é apenas mais uma possibilidade de profissão, tão desejada, entre outras.People say "each Brazilian citizen is born knowing how to play soccer". However there is a long way between the detection of a talented soccer player until the development of this kind of inborn aptitude. That is the reason of children start the practice of soccer earlier and earlier in schools and soccer-specific schools with the hope of being invited or selected to play soccer in any professional club. Since there is a great amount of children and adolescents starting on this trade it is reasonable to observe and understand how the social behavior inside these soccer-specific schools occurs. The aim of the present study was to observe the relationships between parents, teachers (coaches), children and adolescents related to the planning of soccer learning process and social insertion of the children, as well as to observe the parents and coaches social behavior within the sports environment. All practices and even speeches of young players, parents and coaches were registered on a field diary along one year in a traditional soccer club of Curitiba. Considering that the inborn talent may not be more important than the systematic soccer training process to be successful, we intend to show how the directions to reach the glory in soccer are planned (or not) since early ages

Communications Policy: Theories and Issues

Gisela Gil-Egui is a contributing author (with Stewart, C. M., and Tian, Y), Framing the information society: Comparing policy approaches by the US and the EU . Book description: Culture, politics, economics and technology all impact upon policy decisions. To investigate the factors that influence communications policy, however, one has to go beyond conventional views of media and communication studies and combine these with policy studies.Communications Policy: Theories and Issues utilizes new research to highlight key debates and developments, and addresses a broad spectrum of contemporary concerns regarding the structure and the organization of communications systems in the past, present and future. Combining theoretical analysis with empirical research findings, this comprehensive text explores the contemporary theories and issues in communications policy that affect all democratic societies as they seek to address the challenges of emerging information and communications technologies.https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/communications-books/1009/thumbnail.jp