“Critical Parents Against Plaster”:The MMR vaccination drama as satirical parody

In this study, I propose to regard written news satire as a vital vehicle in combatting scientific disinformation. But in order to do so, we must examine the construction of spoof news. How does written news satire convey its social criticism by way of language, discourse and style? And what happens to the content? My case is a spoof article of the 1998 MMR vaccination scandal as rendered in the Danish news satirical website Rokokoposten (2015). The analysis is based on Jakobson’s communication model (1960), Raskin’s semantic model of humour (1985) together with Ermida’s (2012) and Simpson’s (2003) analyses of the discourse of satire. To this will be included a novel approach which regards satire as a kind of intralingual translation. Thus, this paper sheds light on the issue of the news satirist as a knowledge broker

“Ignorance is strength”: Representing COVID-19 Facebook experts in Danish textual news satire

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how Danish textual news satire constructs its social critique of the many Facebook users whose comments during COVID-19 imitate expert statements in disregard of authoritative health science statements. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, UNESCO has proclaimed a disinfodemic of emotive narrative constructs and pseudo-science on the internet and especially in social media. As with the ruling Party’s paradoxical slogan “ignorance is strength” in George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, we sense a similar trend of the public disinfodemic, but studies of this paradox in satirical publications are scarce. Thus, the goal here is to scrutinize this enigma exemplified in an article in the Danish spoof news online media of RokokoPosten in which such experts are parodied in a kind of “doublethink” style which begs critical reflection on social media credibility. Hence, such textual news satire may potentially provide a vaccine against post-truth delusions of health science as it provides immunity against the disinfodemic by its own causative agents

Kludeskrivning – en konsekvens af internationaliseringen?

I en artikel med overskriften ‘Globaliseringen øger snyd på universiteterne’ i dag- bladet Information (Richter 2007) kan man læse, at internettet og internationalise- ringen har skruet op for plagiering blandt de studerende. Fx udtaler studiechef Per Andersen på SDU, at ‘Den akademiske skik og brug i Danmark er helt anderledes end i Spanien. Når vi har snakket med de internationale studerende i forbindelse med snyd, så siger de ofte, at de bare har gjort det, de plejer, og skrevet direkte af efter underviserens noter’. [...

The global abundance of tree palms

Aim Palms are an iconic, diverse and often abundant component of tropical ecosystems that provide many ecosystem services. Being monocots, tree palms are evolutionarily, morphologically and physiologically distinct from other trees, and these differences have important consequences for ecosystem services (e.g., carbon sequestration and storage) and in terms of responses to climate change. We quantified global patterns of tree palm relative abundance to help improve understanding of tropical forests and reduce uncertainty about these ecosystems under climate change. Location Tropical and subtropical moist forests. Time period Current. Major taxa studied Palms (Arecaceae). Methods We assembled a pantropical dataset of 2,548 forest plots (covering 1,191 ha) and quantified tree palm (i.e., ≥10 cm diameter at breast height) abundance relative to co‐occurring non‐palm trees. We compared the relative abundance of tree palms across biogeographical realms and tested for associations with palaeoclimate stability, current climate, edaphic conditions and metrics of forest structure. Results On average, the relative abundance of tree palms was more than five times larger between Neotropical locations and other biogeographical realms. Tree palms were absent in most locations outside the Neotropics but present in >80% of Neotropical locations. The relative abundance of tree palms was more strongly associated with local conditions (e.g., higher mean annual precipitation, lower soil fertility, shallower water table and lower plot mean wood density) than metrics of long‐term climate stability. Life‐form diversity also influenced the patterns; palm assemblages outside the Neotropics comprise many non‐tree (e.g., climbing) palms. Finally, we show that tree palms can influence estimates of above‐ground biomass, but the magnitude and direction of the effect require additional work. Conclusions Tree palms are not only quintessentially tropical, but they are also overwhelmingly Neotropical. Future work to understand the contributions of tree palms to biomass estimates and carbon cycling will be particularly crucial in Neotropical forests