Is the liberal media dead?: A critical analysis of Modi's Government and the performance of Indian Media

This paper presents a study of Indian media. Utilizing the Propaganda Model formulated by Herman and Chomsky in the book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of Mass Media (1988), the paper aims to critically assess the news patterns and media performance of the mainstream Indian media. The contribution of the paper will be the application of the propaganda model in the context of Indian media. For this study, we have analyzed the media coverage of two events – India's ban on Chinese apps and the Pulwama attack. We focus on how Indian Media has helped the Government to establish the propaganda of nationalism during both events, which is explained by Herman and Chomsky in the five filters of news production. We investigate how the anti-China sentiment and the Pulwama attack have been used by the Government to divert attention from their failure of governance, and mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic. The corporate media is playing its part in the machinations of the ruling BJP party. We conclude that the plurality of voices amongst journalists is in decline. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of India Review is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Developments in American politics 9

This textbook provides students of US Politics with an informed scholarly analysis of recent developments in the American political environment, using historical background to contextualize contemporary issues. As the ninth edition, this book reviews a time of political controversy in the United States, touching on topics such as gender, economic policy, gun control, immigration, the media, healthcare, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the widespread social protests against police brutality. The book looks both backwards to Trump's presidency and forward to Biden's. Ultimately, the editors and contributors evaluate the significance of these events on the future of American politics, providing a perspective that is at once broad and meticulous. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022. All rights reserved.

A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Microstructure of Covid-19 Health-Protocol Advertisements in Tourist Facilities

To alleviate the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on tourism, tourist facilities in Bali are informing visitors of the relevant health protocols, using posters to describe the appropriate behaviours. Using critical discourse analysis, this study examines the microstructure of the texts in these posters to identify their semantic, syntactic, lexical, and rhetorical elements. The study findings show that the semantic aspects consist of background, intention, and detail. The syntactic elements involve coherence and the use of the pronouns 'you' and 'we', and of the imperative, and the declarative. The lexical aspects include abbreviations and vocabulary, related to the health protocol. The textual messages are delivered in official language, supported by pictures and photographs.

Republic of Congo: Opposition Alliance

"There are other (parties) which will be coming along", said B Jean-Jacques Serge Yhombi-Opango b , the RDD's vice president and son of the party's founder, who died from Covid-19 in 2020. Three opposition parties in the Republic of Congo have joined forces ahead of the next elections, for which veteran hardline leader B Denis Sassou Nguesso b is a potential candidate. The Alliance for Democratic Change in 2026, unveiled on April 13th, brings together three parties that have grassroots support but no legislative seats. [Extracted from the article] Copyright of Africa Research Bulletin: Political, Social & Cultural Series is the property of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Decoding Rahul Gandhi's public deliberation with experts

This is summary of comments on Rahul Gandhi's much publicised discussions with experts on prescriptions to deal with COVID-19 pandemic and its impact. The article questions the purpose of theses deliberations and comments on the political impact of this public spectacle on brand Rahul Gandhi. There is no doubt that perception and symbolism sometimes matter more than reality in politics but then it should be consciously cultivated to portray the right image. The political space is dominated by super human leaders like Prime Minister Modi who claim mastery on everything. Rahul Gandhi needs to understand his key capabilities ensure that the right message effectively reaches his target audience through the offline and online media.

Shaping political orientations: testing the effect of unemployment on ideological beliefs and voting behaviour

Using data from the European Social Survey we test whether a period of unemployment in Ireland shapes individuals' core political ideological beliefs towards the left of the political spectrum and whether the experience of unemployment prompts people to vote for left-leaning parties. Results indicate that unemployment is linked with more leftward core political ideological beliefs and is associated with a tendency to vote for left-leaning parties. A central implication of our findings is that the sizeable increase in the extent of unemployment, as a consequence of the restrictions due to the COVID pandemic, may well have fundamental political ramifications influencing the political ideology and values of an unprecedented number of people. Right and centre-right parties in order to remain popular in recent times have tended to shift their policies leftward. The potential implications of the high unemployment during the recent pandemic may reinforce this trend. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Irish Political Studies is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Parties, Patronage and COVID-19 Vaccination Distribution in Indonesia

During the COVID-19 pandemic, as Indonesia mobilized to deliver vaccines to the population, an unexpected phenomenon occurred: political parties became directly involved in the vaccine delivery effort. In this article, we draw on online reports and interviews to demonstrate that these campaigns acted as an extension of the patronage politics that dominate the country's political arena. The involvement of political parties had little effect on the national vaccination effort, as parties delivered a relatively small number of vaccines and often targeted areas that already had high coverage. Instead, parties and politicians used these events to strengthen links with constituents and supporters. We identify three main pathways that allowed political parties to access the vaccines: lobbying by members of the national legislature's health commission;through local governments;and by direct executive government access to the national Ministry of Health. This "hijacking" of a national policy for clientelistic purposes provides insight into the presence of intra-party coordination of patronage goods but also demonstrates the personalization and fragmentation of patronage distribution highlighted in the existing literature. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for the quality of public healthcare and other services in Indonesia.

The Long Game: The Opposition Wins in Honduras

Opposition parties in competitive authoritarian regimes rarely win elections by a landslide, especially where poverty, repressive security forces, and clientelism abound. Yet in November 2021, Honduras's opposition defeated the incumbent National Party against the odds. This essay argues that the opposition succeeded by "playing the long game": 1) building a mass-party organization, 2) continually participating in elections, and 3) forging unity through power-sharing. Paradoxically, the Honduran opposition's lack of international support incentivized these choices and became a blessing in disguise. Whether Xiomara Castro will rebuild democracy remains uncertain, but her coalition's route to power yields lessons for oppositions elsewhere.

October 2022 to January 2023

In the June to September report, I noted that Boris Johnson had announced his resignation as leader of the Conservative Party on 7 July and had been replaced as Prime Minister by Liz Truss on 6 September. Little did anyone imagine that she, in turn, would be replaced by Rishi Sunak on 25 October after only 50 days in office and a disastrous mini budget presented by her Chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, which Sunak's replacement as Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, then repudiated almost in its entirety.

Changing Higher Education in the United Kingdom: Examining Three Trends through a Neoliberal Lens

Perry discusses how neoliberalism has had a dramatic impact on higher education in the UK. She traces the history of neoliberalism in broad strokes from the pre-Thatcher years to the post-Thatcher years and identifies three key trends in higher education: widening participation and the politics of aspiration, the emergence of the student entrepreneur-consumer, and the marketization of higher education. With specific reference to the third trend, she discusses the use of Internet-based education by higher education institutions and its potential impact on students. The coronavirus pandemic has posed major challenges for student recruitment and increased the precariousness of students in the instructional process.

Vaccination in Mexico as a Political Strategy

Worldwide vaccination has reduced hospitalization and lethality of COVID-19. However, access to vaccines has not been homogeneous across regions and individual countries have shaped their own strategy for the distribution and application of vaccines. In Mexico, vaccination started in November 2020. This chapter reviews Mexico's vaccination strategy and its coverage in comparison with other countries and the impact of vaccination on mortality rates. We also analyze if vaccination may have been used as a political strategy given its application patterns before two major events, i.e., midterm elections and a public consultation. Finally, we evaluate socioeconomic variables across states to predict the vaccination coverage state-wise. We found that as of January 2022, almost 60% of Mexicans has been vaccinated. Thus, mortality associated to COVID-19 has reduced compared with the three previous contagion waves. Finally, the socioeconomic variable that better explain differences across states in terms of vaccination coverage was the percentage of rural population, that is, vaccination was lower where rural population was highest. This result goes against the Mexican federal strategy of protecting the most vulnerable regions first, where rural population was the largest. © TheEditor(s) (ifapplicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021, 2022.

When wearing a mask is (not) the norm: Political partisanship and persuasion in the context of COVID-19

This study examined the effects of source partisanship and credentials on persuasion. Democrats and Republicans (N = 206) read a policy statement advocating for a national mask mandate, ostensibly written by either a doctor or layperson, associated either with the Democratic or Republican party. Participants' perceptions of the source and receptivity to the message aligned with their political party's normative position on the issue: Democrats rated the source as more competent and trustworthy, engaged in less counterarguing, and supported the policy more than Republicans. Although the doctor was trusted more than the layperson and Republicans (but not Democrats) attributed more trust and competence to an ingroup than an outgroup source, source characteristics had no effect on message receptivity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Designing for safe, fun and informative online cross-partisan interactions

The past decade in the US has been one of the most politically polarizing in recent memory. Increasingly, ordinary Democrats and Republicans fundamentally dislike and distrust each other, even when they agree on policy issues. Most Americans report believing that the opposing party is a "serious threat to the United States and its people". This extreme partisan hostility has wide-ranging consequences, even affecting how partisans respond to COVID-19 mitigation measures. In this context, this dissertation aims to reduce hostile interactions and attitudes towards ordinary Democrats and Republicans. I argue that we can reduce hostility by leveraging nonpolitical online spaces that cut through the partisan faultlines in uniquely engaging ways. I develop approaches to transform the currently hostile, uninspiring nature of online political interactions into not only a safe experience but also a fun and informative one. I take a mixed-methods approach to studying outpartisan hostility, combining computational social science with design methods. The dissertation progresses from a large-scale exploratory analysis of online political discussions to developing potential designs to reduce online partisan hostility and, finally, to designing and evaluating a fun party game that reduces outparty hostility. In the first study, through large-scale computational analysis of billions of Reddit comments, I find that nearly half of all political discussions on Reddit take place in nonpolitical communities and that cross-partisan political conversations in these communities are less toxic than those in explicitly political communities. These findings suggest that shared nonpolitical interests can temper online partisan hostility. In the second study, through in-depth qualitative interviews and design probes, I explore approaches to surface these nonpolitical interests and identities during online political interactions on Reddit. I demonstrate that participants are comfortable knowing and revealing shared memberships in nonpolitical communities with outpartisan discussion partners which they expect to be humanizing, potentially reducing the hostility in those interactions. Through the interviews, I find that apart from serious deliberative discussions, participants also engage in light-hearted and casual political interactions where the motivation to simply entertain themselves and have fun. In the final study, drawing on insights from the prior study and extant political science research, I develop an online party game that combines the relaxed, playful nonpartisan norms of casual games with corrective information about Democrats' and Republicans' political views that are often misperceived. Through an experiment, I find that playing the game significantly reduces hostile attitudes toward outparty supporters among Democrats. Overall, this dissertation demonstrates the potential of using nonpolitical context to facilitate quality online cross-partisan interactions that account for and mitigate the heightened levels of partisan animosity we observe today. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

The "IslamoCovid" response: British Muslim mobilization(s) at the intersection of COVID-19 and Islamophobia

One of the negative developments of the COVID-19 pandemic is the manner by which ethnic, racial, and religious minorities have been negatively impacted by COVID-19. In Great Britain, British Muslims have been adversely affected by this label as they have been disproportionately affected by the virus and stigmatized as super-spreaders by mainstream political parties and right-wing organizations. In response, British Muslims are actively mobilizing in civil society to challenge the super-spreader narrative while emphasizing the centrality of their Islamic faith in protecting their community - and the British public - from COVID-19. In this paper, we elaborate on three frameworks that explicate the British Muslim community's response to COVID-19 and its accompanying Islamophobic frames: The emphasis on the individual's responsibility to God, family, and self;the commitment of the British Muslim community to the society and the State;and the reframing of COVID-19 best health practices as Islamic in orientation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

"Flattening the curve”: Communication, risk and COVID-19 pandemic in Turkey

This study examines Turkish online news media coverage of the COVID-19 outbreak in the country. It explores media framing narratives, particularly how they reflected and promoted elite polarization or consensus in the COVID-19 debate. The findings shed light on Turkish political power dynamics during the first stage in the national response to the pandemic. The study highlights the calculations of political partisans who are keen on building a fragile consensus in an increasingly polarized society. © 2023 NOND of AEJMC.

A partisan pandemic: How COVID-19 was primed for polarization

Americans who affiliate with both major political parties rapidly formed diverging attitudes about the COVID-19 pandemic. Matters of scientific concern have elicited partisan reactions in the past, but partisan divergence of opinion on those issues occurred over decades rather than months. We review evidence on factors that led to polarization of previous scientific issues in an effort to explain why reactions diverged so quickly this time around. We then use publicly available survey data to reveal that partisan reactions to the pandemic were closely associated with trust in public health institutions, that the association between partisanship and trust increased over time, and that the conflation of trust and partisanship appears to largely explain polarized reactions to COVID-19. We also investigate the hypothesis that conservative media use might explain polarization but find that the hypothesis is not supported by our data. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

THE NARRATIVES OF HATE USED BY ROMANIAN PARTIES LABELLED AS FAR-RIGHT. A COMPARATIVE NARRATIVE ANALYSIS

This article presents a qualitative comparative analysis of the primary hate narratives employed by three political parties: the Iron Guard Party propaganda, the Greater Romania Party (PRM), and the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR). The study focuses on the following variables: 'foreigners,' 'freemasons,' 'Jews,' 'protection of Faith and Nation,' and 'rotten political elites.' The analysis is based on official propaganda materials of each party, including patriotic songs, leaflets, newspapers, programmatic documents, and speeches of the leader for the Iron Guard. In the case of the PRM, the analysis includes the party's official program, ideology, poems, and pamphlets by the leader (Corneliu Vadim Tudor), speeches, interviews, press articles, and extracts from party journals Romania Mare (Greater Romania) and Tricolorul. The AUR's official website, political program and ideology, Facebook posts, pages, press interviews, articles, and speeches of its leaders constitute the object of analysis. The narratives extracted were analyzed using the ATLAS.ti software, revealing striking resemblances among the hate narratives employed by the parties.