BLOG.GOV: winning digital hearts and minds?: professionalization, personalization and ideology in foreign policy communication

Discussions of blogging as a form of political communication have mainly centred on the context of election campaigns, national domestic issues, citizen political blogging and mainstream media blogs. The rise of government blogging as an alternative news source in the aftermath of the 2003 war in Iraq, however, is much less addressed by scholars. This thesis examines the case of the US State Department blog Dipnote in order to study the dynamics of blogging as foreign policy communication and public diplomacy. The focus of the analysis is on posts relating to the Middle East, towards which US foreign policy attention was primarily geared after 9/11. The broader research question of this thesis attempts to determine the relative importance of professionalization, personalization and ideology in influencing the content on the official foreign policy blog of the U.S. government, in order to advance the theoretical understanding of blogging in the context of foreign policy communication and public diplomacy. A content analysis of blog posts was conducted between the period of September 2007, when the blog was launched, and March 2010. In addition to this, several interviews were conducted with the management of the blog at the State Department. Furthermore, by comparing the blog content under the Bush and Obama administrations, this study was able to trace patterns of continuities and discontinuities over time. The analytical framework is adapted from Farrell and Webb’s (2002) professionalization framework, and as such it breaks down the blog’s elements into technical, resource, and thematic developments. First, it is argued that the utilization of the blog as a cultural space is a new interpretation for foreign policy communication not previously considered in studies of government blogging in political communication or public diplomacy research. Second, blogging enables a new form of official yet casual communication which serves to legitimize American activities and presence in the Middle East through personalization and de-ideologization of content that make the blog a source of soft power. Third, the blog is a “protected space” (adapted from Gumbrecht, 2004) where the government maintains editorial control, low immediacy, low interactivity and low engagement. Overall, the findings point to the classic contradictions that the government faces both offline and online in the digital era; between openness and control, as well as secrecy and transparency, especially in the foreign policy context. In conclusion, the analysis suggests that blogging is part of an evolution and does not amount to a revolution in political communication and public diplomacy. I thus argue that in their adoption of new technology, the government moves from a new technology experimental phase to a new technology consolidation phase

The evolving SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in Africa: Insights from rapidly expanding genomic surveillance

INTRODUCTION Investment in Africa over the past year with regard to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) sequencing has led to a massive increase in the number of sequences, which, to date, exceeds 100,000 sequences generated to track the pandemic on the continent. These sequences have profoundly affected how public health officials in Africa have navigated the COVID-19 pandemic. RATIONALE We demonstrate how the first 100,000 SARS-CoV-2 sequences from Africa have helped monitor the epidemic on the continent, how genomic surveillance expanded over the course of the pandemic, and how we adapted our sequencing methods to deal with an evolving virus. Finally, we also examine how viral lineages have spread across the continent in a phylogeographic framework to gain insights into the underlying temporal and spatial transmission dynamics for several variants of concern (VOCs). RESULTS Our results indicate that the number of countries in Africa that can sequence the virus within their own borders is growing and that this is coupled with a shorter turnaround time from the time of sampling to sequence submission. Ongoing evolution necessitated the continual updating of primer sets, and, as a result, eight primer sets were designed in tandem with viral evolution and used to ensure effective sequencing of the virus. The pandemic unfolded through multiple waves of infection that were each driven by distinct genetic lineages, with B.1-like ancestral strains associated with the first pandemic wave of infections in 2020. Successive waves on the continent were fueled by different VOCs, with Alpha and Beta cocirculating in distinct spatial patterns during the second wave and Delta and Omicron affecting the whole continent during the third and fourth waves, respectively. Phylogeographic reconstruction points toward distinct differences in viral importation and exportation patterns associated with the Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Omicron variants and subvariants, when considering both Africa versus the rest of the world and viral dissemination within the continent. Our epidemiological and phylogenetic inferences therefore underscore the heterogeneous nature of the pandemic on the continent and highlight key insights and challenges, for instance, recognizing the limitations of low testing proportions. We also highlight the early warning capacity that genomic surveillance in Africa has had for the rest of the world with the detection of new lineages and variants, the most recent being the characterization of various Omicron subvariants. CONCLUSION Sustained investment for diagnostics and genomic surveillance in Africa is needed as the virus continues to evolve. This is important not only to help combat SARS-CoV-2 on the continent but also because it can be used as a platform to help address the many emerging and reemerging infectious disease threats in Africa. In particular, capacity building for local sequencing within countries or within the continent should be prioritized because this is generally associated with shorter turnaround times, providing the most benefit to local public health authorities tasked with pandemic response and mitigation and allowing for the fastest reaction to localized outbreaks. These investments are crucial for pandemic preparedness and response and will serve the health of the continent well into the 21st century

Liquid Phase Hydrogenation of MIBK over M/CsPW (M = Ag, Ru, Pt, and Pd)

Four different metal nanoparticles (metal = Ag, Ru, Pt, or Rh) were impregnated on the acidic cesium salt of tungstophosphoric acid Cs2.5H0.5PW12O40 (CsPW) with a loading amount of 2 wt%. The prepared catalysts were characterized by using X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform-infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), N2 sorption measurements, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX). Results confirmed the formation of highly distributed metallic nanoparticle centres over the acidic CsPW. The catalytic activity of the prepared catalysts were evaluated in the liquid phase hydrogenation of methyl isobutyl ketone (MIBK) to 2-methylpentane (2-MP) at 453 K. Pd-CsPW showed the highest activity compared to other catalysts, where 10% conversion was obtained with 91% selectivity after 4 h’s reaction time