Mediatisation and regional campaigning in a party-centred system: How and why parliamentary candidates seek visibility

Election campaigns are central to political life as well as to the study of political communication and provides much empirical knowledge about the processes of mediatisation and mediation of politics. Most often studies focus on the campaigns featuring the national top politicians. However, most elections campaigns in Western democracies are run by party branches and candidates who rarely make the top headlines in the nationwide media, yet they are also dependent on media attention and agenda-setting to be visible and reach their voters. Relying on several data sets from studies of the Norwegian 2009 parliamentary election campaign, this study asks, first, how regional, mainly “non-celebrity politicians,” obtain visibility. We seek to unravel how the media logic works on the regional and local level. Second, we ask why it is important for candidates in a party-centred proportional (PR) system to be visible. Our findings suggest that we should recognise the mediatised and multileveled character of election campaigns in order to understand how media logics work below the nationwide setting. Javnost - The Public, Vol. 21 - 2014, No. 2 http://javnost-thepublic.org/article/2014/2/5/. Made available here with permission from the publisher

Size, ownership and innovation in newspapers

This chapter analyses the relationship between the size and ownership of newspapers and their approaches to the challenges from the tablet market, e.g. the iPad. Which newspapers were inclined to innovate by launching iPad apps? The hypotheses tested are that: (1) the size of newspapers and (2) having corporate owners, i.e. being owned by a media group, have positive effects on the strategies of the individual newspapers. The empirical analysis supports the hypotheses. Only newspapers owned by corporate owners, i.e. media groups, had plans for iPad apps. Newspapers owned by media groups were also more positive towards new media developments. These differences are explained by reference to two types of resources provided by media groups: analytical capabilities and capabilities to enhance joint product developmen

An Indigenous Public Sphere? The Media and the 2009 Sámediggi Election Campaign

This article discusses media coverage of the Norwegian Sámediggi election campaign in 2009, focusing on the research question: Did Sami voters, scattered over a vast geographical area and split into multiple language groups, have a public space in the media, where Sami politics could be discussed ahead of the Sámediggi elections in 2009? Our findings show there was indeed a public space for Sami politics, but unequal communication opportunities for Sami voters, depending on language and geography. In the north the media provided a bilingual public space, as both Sami and Norwegian newspapers covered the election. Voters in the south were offered less news and debate about the Sámediggi election and coverage was most likely to be in Norwegian. One explanation for these differences is that the number of Sami voters is small, and further south the voters are fewer and more scattered. The differences were also explained in terms of relevance of issues. The degree of conflict and controversy over Sami politics is higher in Finnmark than in other parts of Sápmi and Norway.Keywords: Media, Sami, Parliament, Sámediggi, election, NorwayCitation: Arctic Review on Law and Politics, vol. 4, 1/2013 pp. 62–89. ISSN 1891-625

Distinct MicroRNA Subcellular Size and Expression Patterns in Human Cancer Cells

Introduction. Small noncoding RNAs have important regulatory functions in different cell pathways. It is believed that most of them mainly play role in gene post-transcriptional regulation in the cytoplasm. Recent evidence suggests miRNA and siRNA activity in the nucleus. Here, we show distinct genome-wide sub-cellular localization distribution profiles of small noncoding RNAs in human breast cancer cells. Methods. We separated breast cancer cell nuclei from cytoplasm, and identified small RNA sequences using a high-throughput sequencing platform. To determine the relationship between miRNA sub-cellular distribution and cancer progression, we used microarray analysis to examine the miRNA expression levels in nucleus and cytoplasm of three human cell lines, one normal breast cell line and two breast cancer cell lines. Logistic regression and SVM were used for further analysis. Results. The sub-cellular distribution of small noncoding RNAs shows that numerous miRNAs and their isoforms (isomiR) not only locate to the cytoplasm but also appeare in the nucleus. Subsequent microarray analyses indicated that the miRNA nuclear-cytoplasmic-ratio is a significant characteristic of different cancer cell lines. Conclusions. Our results indicate that the sub-cellular distribution is important for miRNA function, and that the characterization of the small RNAs sub-cellular localizome may contribute to cancer research and diagnosis

Genomic regions with distinct genomic distance conservation in vertebrate genomes

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>A number of vertebrate highly conserved elements (HCEs) have been detected and their genomic interval distances have been reported to be more conserved than protein coding genes among mammalian genomes. A characteristic of the human – non-mammalian comparisons is a bimodal distribution of relative distance difference of conserved consecutive HCE pairs; and it is difficult to attribute such profile to a random assortment. We therefore undertook an analysis of the human genomic regions confined by consecutive HCE pairs common to eight genomes (human, mouse, rat, chicken, frog, zebrafish, tetradon and fugu).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Among HCE pairs, we found that some consistently preserve highly conserved interval distance among genomes while others have relatively low distance conservation. Using a partition method, we detected two groups of inter-HCE regions (IHRs) with distinct distance conservation pattern in vertebrate genomes: IHR1s that are bordered by HCE pairs with relative small distance variation, and IHR2s with larger distance difference values. Compared to random background, annotated repeat sequences are significantly less frequent in IHR1s than IHR2s, which reflects a correlation between repeat sequences and the length expansion of IHRs. Both groups of IHRs are unexpectedly enriched in human indel (i.e. insertion and deletion) polymorphism-variations than random background. The correlation between the percentage of conserved sequence and human IHR length was stronger for IHR1 than IHR2. Both groups of IHRs are significantly enriched for CpG islands.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The data suggest that subsets of HCE pairs may undergo different evolutionary paths in light of their genomic distance conservation, and that sets of genomic regions pertain to HCEs, as well as the region in which HCEs reside, should be treated as integrated domains.</p

Social media, surveillance and news work: On the apps promising journalists a “crystal ball”

Social media platforms are becoming an indispensable resource for journalists. Their use involves both direct interaction with the platforms themselves and, increasingly, the use of specialist third-party apps to find, filter, and follow content and contributors. This article explores some of the ways social media platforms, and their technological ecosystems, are infusing news work. A range of platforms and apps—including Geofeedia, Spike, and Twitter—were critically examined, and their use by trainee journalists (N=81) analysed. The results reveal how journalists can—and do—surveil social network users and their content via sophisticated, professional apps that are also utilised by the police and security forces. While journalists recognise the value of such apps in news work, they also have concerns, including about privacy and popularism. And although the participants in this study thought the apps they used could help with verification, there were warning signs that an over-reliance on the technology could develop, dulling journalists’ critical faculties

In vivo analysis of Caenorhabditis elegans noncoding RNA promoter motifs

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs) play important roles in a variety of cellular processes. Characterizing the transcriptional activity of ncRNA promoters is therefore a critical step toward understanding the complex cellular roles of ncRNAs.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Here we present an <it>in vivo </it>transcriptional analysis of three <it>C. elegans </it>ncRNA upstream motifs (UM1-3). Transcriptional activity of all three motifs has been demonstrated, and mutational analysis revealed differential contributions of different parts of each motif. We showed that upstream motif 1 (UM1) can drive the expression of green fluorescent protein (GFP), and utilized this for detailed analysis of temporal and spatial expression patterns of 5 SL2 RNAs. Upstream motifs 2 and 3 do not drive GFP expression, and termination at consecutive T runs suggests transcription by RNA polymerase III. The UM2 sequence resembles the tRNA promoter, and is actually embedded within its own short-lived, primary transcript. This is a structure which is also found at a few plant and yeast loci, and may indicate an evolutionarily very old dicistronic transcription pattern in which a tRNA serves as a promoter for an adjacent snoRNA.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The study has demonstrated that the three upstream motifs UM1-3 have promoter activity. The UM1 sequence can drive expression of GFP, which allows for the use of UM1::GFP fusion constructs to study temporal-spatial expression patterns of UM1 ncRNA loci. The UM1 loci appear to act in concert with other upstream sequences, whereas the transcriptional activities of the UM2 and UM3 are confined to the motifs themselves.</p

NONCODE: an integrated knowledge database of non-coding RNAs

NONCODE is an integrated knowledge database dedicated to non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs), that is to say, RNAs that function without being translated into proteins. All ncRNAs in NONCODE were filtered automatically from literature and GenBank, and were later manually curated. The distinctive features of NONCODE are as follows: (i) the ncRNAs in NONCODE include almost all the types of ncRNAs, except transfer RNAs and ribosomal RNAs. (ii) All ncRNA sequences and their related information (e.g. function, cellular role, cellular location, chromosomal information, etc.) in NONCODE have been confirmed manually by consulting relevant literature: more than 80% of the entries are based on experimental data. (iii) Based on the cellular process and function, which a given ncRNA is involved in, we introduced a novel classification system, labeled process function class, to integrate existing classification systems. (iv) In addition, some 1100 ncRNAs have been grouped into nine other classes according to whether they are specific to gender or tissue or associated with tumors and diseases, etc. (v) NONCODE provides a user-friendly interface, a visualization platform and a convenient search option, allowing efficient recovery of sequence, regulatory elements in the flanking sequences, secondary structure, related publications and other information. The first release of NONCODE (v1.0) contains 5339 non-redundant sequences from 861 organisms, including eukaryotes, eubacteria, archaebacteria, virus and viroids. Access is free for all users through a web interface at http://noncode.bioinfo.org.cn