Libre culture: meditations on free culture

Libre Culture is the essential expression of the free culture/copyleft movement. This anthology, brought together here for the first time, represents the early groundwork of Libre Society thought. Referring to the development of creativity and ideas, capital works to hoard and privatize the knowledge and meaning of what is created. Expression becomes monopolized, secured within an artificial market-scarcity enclave and finally presented as a novelty on the culture industry in order to benefit cloistered profit motives. In the way that physical resources such as forests or public services are free, Libre Culture argues for the freeing up of human ideas and expression from copyright bulwarks in all forms

How different are branding strategies in the pharmaceutical industry versus fast mmoving consumer goods ?

The objective of this paper is to analyse the branding strategies used currently in the pharmaceutical industry and compare it to the best practices in Fast Moving Consumer goods. First the authors review the differences in the way branding is defined and organised in pharmaceuticals versus FMCG and identify why branding could be leveraged in the pharmaceutical industry to help it return to strong growth in the future. Second, the authors analyse in detail what branding strategies are currently used within pharmaceuticals and FMCG. The choice of brand names strategies, the level of brand globalisation, the use of brand extension and co-branding as well the situation of brand portfolio management are compared. Based on this benchmarking, the authors offer recommendations to guide future branding development successfully in the pharmaceutical industry

Visual preference for social stimuli in individuals with autism or neurodevelopmental disorders : an eye-tracking study

Background Recent research has identified differences in relative attention to competing social versus non-social video stimuli in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Whether attentional allocation is influenced by the potential threat of stimuli has yet to be investigated. This is manipulated in the current study by the extent to which the stimuli are moving towards or moving past the viewer. Furthermore, little is known about whether such differences exist across other neurodevelopmental disorders. This study aims to determine if adolescents with ASD demonstrate differences in attentional allocation to competing pairs of social and non-social video stimuli, where the actor or object either moves towards or moves past the viewer, in comparison to individuals without ASD, and to determine if individuals with three genetic syndromes associated with differing social phenotypes demonstrate differences in attentional allocation to the same stimuli. Methods In study 1, adolescents with ASD and control participants were presented with social and non-social video stimuli in two formats (moving towards or moving past the viewer) whilst their eye movements were recorded. This paradigm was then employed with groups of individuals with fragile X, Cornelia de Lange, and Rubinstein-Taybi syndromes who were matched with one another on chronological age, global adaptive behaviour, and verbal adaptive behaviour (study 2). Results Adolescents with ASD demonstrated reduced looking-time to social versus non-social videos only when stimuli were moving towards them. Individuals in the three genetic syndrome groups showed similar looking-time but differences in fixation latency for social stimuli moving towards them. Across both studies, we observed within- and between-group differences in attention to social stimuli that were moving towards versus moving past the viewer. Conclusions Taken together, these results provide strong evidence to suggest differential visual attention to competing social versus non-social video stimuli in populations with clinically relevant, genetically mediated differences in socio-behavioural phenotypes

“What is a referendum?” How we might open up pre-vote TV debates to genuine public scrutiny

The 2015 TV election debates proved their civic value – as they had in 2010, write Stephen Coleman (left), Nick Anstead, Jay G Blumler, Giles Moss and Matt Homer. But in these edited extracts from a University of Leeds report, Democracy on Demand?, Dr Anstead questions whether Twitter is – as some media organisations seemed to imply – representative of public opinion. The authors also urge the media to experiment with the format of any TV debates during the EU referendum campaign to make them more responsive to the public’s questions and reactions

Effects of turbulent pumping on stellar activity cycles

Stellar magnetic activity of solar like stars is thought to be due to an internal dynamo. While the Sun has been the subject of intense research for refining dynamo models, observations of magnetic cyclic activity in solar type stars have become more and more available, opening a new path to understand the underlying physics behind stellar cycles. For instance, it is key to understand how stellar rotation rate influences magnetic cycle period \Pcyc. Recent numerical simulations of advection-dominated Babcock Leighton models have demonstrated that it is difficult to explain this observed trend given a) the strong influence of the cycle period to the meridional circulation amplitude and b) the fact that 3D models indicate that meridional flows become weaker as the rotation rate increases. In this paper, we introduce the turbulent pumping mechanism as another advective process capable also of transporting the magnetic fields. We found that this model is now able to reproduce the observations under the assumption that this effect increases as $\Omega^2$. The turbulent pumping becomes indeed another major player able to circumvent the meridional circulation. However, for high rotation rates ($\Omega \simeq 5 \Omega_\odot$), its effects dominate those of the meridional circulation, entering a new class of regime dominated by the advection of turbulent pumping and thus leading to a cyclic activity qualitatively different from that of the sun.Comment: Published in Astronomische Nachrichten; 11 pages, 8 figure

Alternative Journalism as Monitorial Citizenship? A case study of a local news blog

Recent years have seen claims that some examples of online alternative journalism in the form of hyperlocal and local blogs are helping to address society’s “democratic deficit” by subjecting the actions of the powerful to increased public scrutiny, in a process that has been described as “monitorial citizenship”. To explore how this might work in practice, this study examines the origins, motivations and practices of one such site in the United Kingdom: the Leeds Citizen. The aim is to provide the sort of detailed consideration in depth that is almost by definition missing from wider surveys of the field. To this end, the case study is based on a series of interviews with the site’s creator, augmented by analysis of content, all discussed within the context of scholarly literature on how alternative, non-commercial forms of journalism operate in the digital age. The article concludes that this contemporary form of alternative journalism may indeed be described as an example of monitorial citizenship in action, but there is also a need for further research

Asking the readers: audience research into alternative journalism

Alternative forms of journalism are said to challenge the passive role of audience members as receivers and to foster active citizenship among alternative journalists and audiences. Yet the scholarly literature on alternative journalism contains more assertions about than evidence from the audience. Downing has described the audience for alternative media as “the virtually unknown”, prompting him to urge journalism scholars to undertake more audience research to help increase our understanding of this allegedly active and civic-minded public. This exploratory study of the people who regularly read a contemporary example of alternative journalism—an investigative local blog covering one UK city—is intended to contribute towards filling the gap identified by Downing. Audience views are explored by means of questionnaires and focus groups, providing some evidence that individuals are attracted to alternative journalism by their dissatisfaction with mainstream media; that they see alternative media as helping them make sense of the world; and that, to an extent, engaging with such media is both a prompt to, and a reflection of, readers’ democratic engagement as citizens. Recognising the limitations of this small study, the article concludes by reiterating Downing's call for further research

Gender and Medieval archaeology: storming the castle

Despite feminist critiques over three decades, Archaeological scholarship remains predominantly focused on exploring patriarchal narratives and is thereby complicit in reinforcing structural inequalities. Questions must be asked of how the construction of archaeological knowledge affects representation and impacts on our ‘archaeologies’. This paper explores the relative absence of gendered approaches within Archaeology through the lens of Later Medieval Archaeology in particular, and with a micro-focus on Castle-studies in Britain and Ireland. Is there a reason for the silence in relation to gender in the archaeology of the later middle ages

Media, Capabilities, and Justification

In this paper, I evaluate the ‘capability approach’ developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum as a normative perspective for critical media research. The concept of capabilities provides a valuable way of assessing media and captures important aspects of the relationship between media and equality. However, following Rainer Forst’s critique of outcome- oriented approaches to justice, I argue the capability approach needs to pay more attention to questions of power and process. In particular, when it comes to deciding which capabilities media should promote and what media structure and practices should promote them, the capability approach must accept the priority of deliberative and democratic processes of justification. Once we do this, we are urged to situate the concept of capabilities within a more process-oriented view of justice, focused not on capabilities as such, but on outlining the conditions required for justificatory equality. After discussing the capability approach, I will outline the process-oriented theory of justice Forst has developed around the idea of the ‘right to justification’. While Forst does not discuss media in depth, I argue his theory of justice can provide a valuable alternative normative standpoint for the critical media research