The EU tells a good story about itself, but its Asian partners may not be hearing it

How do countries in Asia view the European Union? Drawing on a new study, Ben O'Loughlin, Natalia Chaban and Alister Miskimmon show that Asian elites see the EU as an important partner, but do not buy into the EU's own narrative that Europe is a peaceful continent whose ability to overcome war offers a model for others

The cultural value project cultural relations in ‘societies in transition’

The Cultural Value Project (CVP) is a joint research project commissioned by the British Council and the Goethe-Institut (January 2017-June 2018). It aims to build a better understanding of the value of cultural relations (CR) in societies facing difficult challenges–in particular, in Egypt and Ukraine. The project seeks to identify the difference cultural relations activities make to important international challenges, including supporting stability and prosperity in societies going through substantial change. It aims to contribute to current political, policy and academic debates about the role of culture in conflict, diplomacy and development. The British Council and Goethe-Institut wish to collaborate on this research in order to gain a better understanding of how different forms of cultural relations work in different contexts, and explore wider possibilities for partnerships in the field of cultural relations. This initiative occurs at a time when challenging transnational issues of conflict, security, migration, poverty and environmental degradation, beyond the control of any nation-state, make cooperation in international relations more difficult but more important than ever

Why People Dual Screen Political Debates and Why It Matters for Democratic Engagement

Dual screening during televised election debates is a new domain in which political elites and journalists seek to influence audience attitudes and behavior. But to what extent do non-elite dual screeners seek to influence others, particularly their social media followers, social media users in general, and even politicians and journalists? And how does this behavior affect short- and longer-term engagement with election campaigns? Using unique, event-based, panel survey data from the main 2015 UK general election debate (Wave 1 = 2,351; Wave 2 = 1,168) we reveal the conditions under which people experience agency, empowerment, and engagement now that social media have reconfigured broadcast political television

Do tabloids poison the well of social media? Explaining democratically dysfunctional news sharing

This paper was accepted for publication in the journal New Media and Society and the definitive published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444818769689The use of social media for sharing political information and the status of news as an essential raw material for good citizenship are both generating increasing public concern. We add to the debates about misinformation, disinformation, and “fake news” using a new theoretical framework and a unique research design integrating survey data and analysis of observed news sharing behaviors on social media. Using a media-as-resources perspective, we theorize that there are elective affinities between tabloid news and misinformation and disinformation behaviors on social media. Integrating four data sets we constructed during the 2017 UK election campaign—individual-level data on news sharing (N = 1,525,748 tweets), website data (N = 17,989 web domains), news article data (N = 641 articles), and data from a custom survey of Twitter users (N = 1313 respondents)—we find that sharing tabloid news on social media is a significant predictor of democratically dysfunctional misinformation and disinformation behaviors. We explain the consequences of this finding for the civic culture of social media and the direction of future scholarship on fake news

Erratum to: 36th International Symposium on Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1186/s13054-016-1208-6.]

Nurses' perceptions of aids and obstacles to the provision of optimal end of life care in ICU

Contains fulltext : 172380.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access

In the 2010 election, the online space was seen as a battleground to be fought over. In future elections it could be used as a method for better understanding the public

While journalists speculated about whether the 2010 UK General Election was the country’s ”first Internet election”, semantic polling (using algorithms to read social media data) was under-examined. Nick Anstead and Ben O’Loughlin explore the role of semantic polling in the 2010 election and argue that it will become even more important in the future

Assessing News Source Credibility: Digital Natives vs Traditional News Natives

This study examines how individuals evaluate the credibility of news sources, whether ‘Digital Natives’ are better at this evaluation than ‘Traditional News Natives’, and a person’s perception of their credibility evaluation. For the survey, traditional news natives are those born before 1996 and digital natives are those born after 1996. Data from the pilot survey prepares us for national data collection. Our research raises three important questions about how individuals evaluate the credibility of a news article. First, how do individuals evaluate the credibility of news sources in the first place? Second, are younger voters, those that are “Digital Natives”, better at evaluating the credibility of news sources than “Traditional News Natives”? Third, how does an individual’s perception of their credibility evaluation stack-up against their actual accuracy