The Liverpool Care Pathway

For many practising doctors, especially in general practice or in general internal medicine, decisions at the end of life are often some of the most difficult. Not only is decision making difficult, but implementation may create a further set of problems. Most of us are orientated to doing something – usually something that is active, promoting life or health. Many end of life decisions demand something different: the acceptance that life is coming to an end and that the quality of the final phase of the patient’s illness is to offer a good death. The doctor must reorientate his or her thinking to a different, less distinct target. Reference to the the development of the Liverpool Care Pathway for the dying patient (LCP).peer-reviewe

Fear appeal construction in the Daily Mail Online:a critical discourse analysis of ‘Prime Minister Corbyn and the 1000 days that destroyed Britain’

The rhetorical fear appeal is a technique of political communication that seeks to elicit an emotional response in receivers with the intention of provoking them to political action desired by the rhetor. This paper examines a single example of fear appeal construction in the British press, the Mail Online’s ‘Prime Minister Corbyn and the 1000 days that Destroyed Britain’ (2015), through analysis of its use of two defining political myths, a conservative myth of declinism, and the utopia/anti-utopia binary myth. I firstly examine the origins and contemporary uses of fear appeals as techniques of political persuasion, before going on to examine how these are constructed. I then go on to analyse the Mail Online article’s use of these two powerful political myths, one, declinism, which I argue is utilised descriptively for the purposes of discourse construction, and the other, utopia/anti-utopia, which is utilised instructively. Finally, I propose a method of analysis combining recent approaches to the critical discourse analysis of myth with the cognitive-motivational-relational theory of emotion drawn from social psychology, in order to show how the Mail Online article is constructed as a discursive fear appeal

Appalachian Broadcast News Coverage of the Coronavirus: A Content Analysis of Media Framing in the Midst of a Health Crisis

Media framing of broadcast news is more than identifying an issue, but rather interpreting and explaining the issue for others to better understand. Previous framing scholarship in broadcast news, as well as COVID-19 specifically, has focused mostly on national or international news, so this research explores broadcast coverage from a local perspective in a rural location. During the health crisis of COVID-19, the specific use of media frames can impact how people made sense of the pandemic. Through a content analysis of 165 newscast scripts from five different local news stations in Appalachia, this study contributes to the understanding of media framing from a new perspective. Scripts were coded for five general media frames (conflict, human interest, economic consequences, morality, and attribution to responsibility), on top of four newly emerging media frames (ethnicization, politicization, fear/scaremongering and hope) in reporters’ packages. The presence of frames, a dominant frame, and the story focus were all assessed to explore similarities and differences in broadcast news coverage over the course of one year during COVID-19. Results yielded significant use of the human interest and attribution of responsibility frames, as well as an increased use of politicalization. Use of frames varied from station to station, suggesting that ownership and station location could impact journalists’ frame choice during a health crisis. Implications for theory and practice are discussed

Migrant Labor and Massacres: A Comparison of the 1923 Massacre of Koreans and Chinese during the Great Kanto Earthquake and the 1931 Anti-Chinese Riots and Massacre of Chinese in Colonial Korea

This article compares two historical massacres that resulted from ethnic antagonism during the Japanese colonial period: the massacre of Koreans and Chinese by the Japanese during the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923 and a series of anti-Chinese riots and the massacre of Chinese that erupted in colonial Korea in 1931. A similar trajectory led up to both massacres: most of the assailants and victims were lower-class male workers, and both incidents occurred during economic depressions when competition between indigenous workers and immigrants had intensified due to a massive influx of migrant labor. The fact that the majority of the assailants were from the lower class suggests that their own resentment, long condensed from years of experiencing discrimination in their home society, combined with nationalism and anti-foreignism to explode in the form of massacres. In addition, the reality that all assailants were male workers implies that their value system, their mode of life, and the consciousness of a patriarchal hierarchy, which dominated the everyday lives of the male workers of the lower class, were transformed into violence under exceptional circumstances. Lastly, the fact that the victims of the two massacres were migrant workers means that, from the outset, the trigger for the massacres can be understood from a transnational perspective on migrant labor and cannot be confined to the boundary of a single nation. Keywords: Japanese empire, colonial Korea, massacres, riots, Great Kanto Earthquake, scaremongering, ethnic prejudice, migrant labor, masculinity, East Asian migration histor

Regulating health communication in the post-truth era

As a global epidemic of the social media age, COVID-19 has also resulted in an “infodemic”, that means the uncontrolled spreading of false information about the health situation. Spreading of health information is a special intersection point of the freedom of speech, freedom of science and the fundamental right to life and health. The paper analyses the European and Hungarian legal framework of the health communication from multiple perspectives. The regulatory challenges and solutions are different concerning the professional health communication, the commercial communication and the health communication by laypersons. As with all forms of misinformation, private regulations of the platform operators have a significant regulatory role to play in relation to health disinformation. As a result of the analysis, the paper provides a detailed regulatory map that also covers private regulation solutions and explores the factors that need to be considered when designing a comprehensive future regulation

The 'Antibiotic Apocalypse' - scaremongering or scientific reporting?

Antimicrobial resistance is dominating scientific media. We are warned of an impending 'antibiotic apocalypse', where mankind faces its biggest threat, untreatable microbes. However, the world is not ending. Scientists are responding to the threat; new knowledge and chemotherapeutics are being created to safeguard our future. The future is bright, not gloomy

Making sense of British newspaper campaigns

In the first quarter of 2013 Ghana reported 7 cases of measles; Britain reported over 900 – the second highest in the EU. Ghana had a 100% vaccination rate; in Britain most reported cases were among 10- 16 year olds in areas where vaccination had fallen to 50%. Last month the British government said it would lobby the European Commission to relax the restrictions on GM food and crops. In 2012, 270 million ha of GM crops were grown in 28 countries; in the EU only 2 such crops have been licensed for commercial cultivation and the only country where they are grown in any sizable quantity is Spain. None are grown or sold in Britain

Primary primers: right now, the safest and easiest way to vote is by mail.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many Americans to change the way they vote, from in person to mail balloting. Priscilla Southwell writes that, despite significant scaremongering, there is little evidence that voting by mail increases fraud. Instead, she argues, it can increase voter safety during the pandemic and also makes it easier for voters from both parties to vote

The electoral success of the Danish People’s party: Something rotten in the state of Denmark?

Recently the Danes voted in a centre-right coalition led by the liberal party Venstre. Opinions polls had indicated a close race, with a slim majority for the centre-right government (52.3 %). And that was indeed how it turned out. Not too many surprises there. What did come as a surprise to the Danes and, not least, the Danish media was the success of the populist Danish People’s party (DPP) who increased their share of the vote to 21%, up from 12% in the previous general election four years ago. With more than one fifth of the vote, this makes them the largest party in the right-wing bloc and the second largest party overall in Parliament. Even the leader of the Danish People’s party Kristian Thulesen Dahl seemed a little stunned by this enormous success