Journalism and public discourse:Navigating complexity

Modern democratic societies have come to depend on some form of foundational assumptions about the involvement of the public in political decision-making. This inscribing of a public, defined as wider than the legislative and judicial bodies themselves, into journalism was key to both the legitimation of democratic processes and as a conduit to knowledge of the decision-making processes themselves. While journalism has long presented a public-facing discourse that defines its role as an intermediary between the public and the powerful, informing the former and challenging the latter, the nuances of this role have been varied. Journalism's claims have often rested on broad and noble-sounding commitments to service of the public. A fertile departure point for considering the public discourse of a specific form of journalism is the popular tabloid newspaper. Once analysis of the substance and patterning of media language began to be introduced, certain of the long-held claims for the public functions of journalism came under more sustained scrutiny

Core Blighty? How Journalists Define Themselves Through Metaphor

Journalism has long relied on certain core metaphors in order to express its claims to social and political usefulness. The deployment of metaphors to describe a practice that in contrast asserts its truth-telling and plain prose style is in itself interesting. Since metaphor acts as a powerful indicator of presuppositions it can be used to reify complex public discourses, reducing them to common-sense thinking. This paper will explore what metaphors have been used in association with journalism in the pages of the British Journalism Review since the closure of the News of the World. This publication was launched in 1989 in response to a previous crisis in public and professional confidence in journalism and has since then provided an intriguing insider dialogue on developments within the area. Do metaphorical articulations of the current role and image of journalism demonstrate an awareness among journalists of changes in its values or do they rather tend to reinforce more traditional attitudes to a practice under threat? Post-Leveson what can the patterning of such figurative language across articles by a wide range of prominent journalists in the UK tell us about the values and aspirations of journalists in a time when journalism is under intense scrutiny

Attitudes to languages other than English in the context of British nationalism.

This thesis is concerned with the negative attitudes of the\ud British towards foreign languages. Though such prejudice could perhaps be\ud illustrated by statistical evidence from secondary schools, examination\ud boards and social surveys, the emphasis of this work lies elsewhere.\ud What will be the prime concern here is an examination of the\ud broader cultural and even political implications for the British of their\ud well-documented inability to be willing to learn foreign languages. I hope\ud to be able to show that nationalism contains a specifically linguistic\ud factor which is able, along with many other factors, to contribute towards\ud the cohesion within British culture.\ud I will examine the exclusivity and the need for selfaggrandisement\ud within nationalism and argue that the British experience of\ud imperialism deepened the potential for such sentiments. It is possible that\ud the experience of being a British English speaker does bind British society\ud in a very special way. It is also possible that this linguistic experience\ud in part defines the British world view. This study will use the three\ud opening chapters to establish a basis on which the evidence of the\ud following five chapters may be judged\ud In order to examine the extent to which such assertions are true\ud a wide net will be cast to gather evidence to prove the hypothesis that the\ud experience of speaking English has defined British culture more\ud specifically than is often thought.\ud Chapters 4 and 5 will examine the effect of certain colonial\ud policy decisions concerning language, not on the societies of the Empire\ud but upon the British themselves. I hope that such examples will illustrate\ud the growing role of language, ironically a much neglected and often\ud invisible partner in the political processes, which formed the views which\ud the British had of themselves and their place in the world.\ud I do not believe that there has ever existed a monolithic body\ud of prejudice towards other languages among the British. Indeed, one of the\ud purposes of this work is to illustrate that the role of the English\ud language within British culture has been developed historically in such a\ud way that any such prejudice often has all the unassailable strength of what\ud appears to be common sense.\ud Until the twentieth century in Britain, it would have been\ud unreasonable to expect any but the ruling imperialist politicians or the\ud colonial administrators to have had anything other than the dimmest\ud appreciation of the existence of languages other than English. This\ud provides a second reason for searching as widely as possible for different\ud sources of evidence. If the development of prejudicial attitudes to foreign\ud languages and their transmission through a society have constituteda long\ud and complex process, then this process must be examined at contrasting\ud periods and levels of society.\ud The chapters on boys' comics and film in the 1930s will show the\ud extent to which attitudes had developed and spread beyond a narrow colonial\ud base. This period has been chosen because it represents the flowering of a\ud truly broad and popular perception of British nationalism as magnified\ud through the experience of imperialism. Immediately before the Second World\ud War, this sense of the strength and worth of the British nation was,\ud arguably, at its height. These chapters will indicate the centripetal role\ud which perceptions of the English language, as contrasted with other\ud languages, played in such a blossoming.\ud Finally, I will present a chapter surveying the position of\ud foreign languages in the British education system in the 1930s. This will\ud provide a counter-balance to attitudes in the popular media of the previous\ud two chapters.\ud In case this thesis might be criticised for merely finding\ud evidence for an already well-known phenomenon, I will attempt to view all\ud such evidence from a special perspective. I will be searching not only for\ud the ideas and attitudes underpinning any prejudice against foreign\ud languages but also the social forces which lie behind them

Advances in the synthesis of ring-fused benzimidazoles and imidazobenzimidazoles

This review article provides a perspective on the synthesis of alicyclic and heterocyclic ring-fused benzimidazoles, imidazo[4,5-f]benzimidazoles, and imidazo[5,4-f]benzimidazoles. These heterocycles have a plethora of biological activities with the iminoquinone and quinone derivatives displaying potent bioreductive antitumor activity. Synthesis is categorized according to the cyclization reaction and mechanisms are detailed. Nitrobenzene reduction, cyclization of aryl amidines, lactams and isothiocyanates are described. Protocols include condensation, cross-dehydrogenative coupling with transition metal catalysis, annulation onto benzimidazole, often using CuI-catalysis, and radical cyclization with homolytic aromatic substitution. Many oxidative transformations are under metal-free conditions, including using thermal, photochemical, and electrochemical methods. Syntheses of diazole analogues of mitomycin C derivatives are described. Traditional oxidations of o-(cycloamino)anilines using peroxides in acid via the t-amino effect remain popular

Participatory politics, environmental journalism and newspaper campaigns

This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Journalism Studies, 13(2), 210 - 225, 2012, copyright Taylor & Francis, available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/1461670X.2011.646398.This article explores the extent to which approaches to participatory politics might offer a more useful alternative to understanding the role of environmental journalism in a society where the old certainties have collapsed, only to be replaced by acute uncertainty. This uncertainty not only generates acute public anxiety about risks, it has also undermined confidence in the validity of long-standing premises about the ideal role of the media in society and journalistic professionalism. The consequence, this article argues, is that aspirations of objective reportage are outdated and ill-equipped to deal with many of the new risk stories environmental journalism covers. It is not a redrawing of boundaries that is needed but a wholesale relocation of our frameworks into approaches better suited to the socio-political conditions and uncertainties of late modernity. The exploration of participatory approaches is an attempt to suggest one way this might be done

European communication networks in the Early Modern Age

Recent contributions to knowledge about early journalism developed in different parts of Europe*Italy, France, England, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain . . . *have made it possible to trace a fairly precise map for the historical origin of this phenomenon. However, the scope of work carried out with a view to developing frameworks of interpretation to explain the reasons for this appearance is not as far-reaching. This paper reviews the recurring theoretical models found to date in the specific bibliography and proposes a new framework of interpretation, capable of encompassing the complexity and pan-European nature of early journalism in history