scholarly journals The Governor General’s Decision to Prorogue Parliament: A Chronology & Assessment

2011 ◽  
Vol 18 (1, 2 & 3) ◽  
pp. 2009
Author(s):  
Andrew Heard
Keyword(s):  
Prime Minister ◽  
Stable System ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
High Point ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Parliamentary System ◽  
Course Of Action ◽  
Canadian Politics ◽  
The Media

We are fortunate that real crises are few and far between in Canadian politics. We have a fundamentally stable system of government, and most political leaders both understand and play by the rules most of the time. As a result, it is something of a shock when a real crisis erupts and fundamental differences unfold over basic constitutional rules. Canada’s parliamentary system has been under increasing strain for several years, but matters came to a head in late 2008. While Governor General Michaëlle Jean’s controversial decision to grant Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s request to prorogue Parlia- ment was the high point of this crisis, there is so much more about this episode that needs to be understood. And it is crucial for us to really understand this affair because the ramifications of the 2008 crisis are profound and enduring. One reason the events erupted so quickly into a crisis is that they dealt with the unwritten rules of the constitution, which are seldom discussed in depth even at the best of times and, as a re- sult, are subject to misinterpretation and mis- representation in times of conflict. The tension was compounded by the unprecedented nature of much of what transpired. Without clear and easy parallels to similar crises in the past, the public and their advisors in the media were left confused as to what was or was not the proper course of action. Nevertheless, there were clear constitutional principles at play that would have been able to give better direction to the Gover- nor General and the Prime Minister if they had been heeded.

scholarly journals THE "LEGAL EPIDEMIOLOGY" OF THE TEEN SEXTING EPIDEMIC: HOW THE MEDIA INFLUENCED A LEGISLATIVE OUTBREAK

2012 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 1-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberlianne Podlas
Keyword(s):  
Media Coverage ◽  
Child Pornography ◽  
Legal Issue ◽  
Host Environment ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Course Of Action ◽  
Legal Implications ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Relationship

This article considers the media‟s impact on the “legal epidemiology” of the teen sexting epidemic.  Here, “teen sexting epidemic” refers to two things: (1) the belief that sext messaging by teens is rampant and spreading, hence, is an epidemic; and (2) the process by which a piece of information spreads like a virus, came to be understood as a pathogen infecting teens, resulted in a rash of child pornography prosecutions, and erupted into an outbreak of sexting legislation, hence, the epidemiology of the legal issue.  This article argues that the media was both a carrier of this virus, in that it communicated the information and conceptual frameworks that formed the public‟s knowledge base of sexting and its legal implications, and a host environment in which forces interacted and transformed.  To better understand the media‟s role, this article includes an empirical analysis of the past five years of media coverage of teen sexting, and identifying both its temporal and topical trends.  With this quantitative and qualitative base, the article then analyzes the relationship between coverage and the progression of the teen sexting epidemic from a social issue to a legal issue and, ultimately, to an outbreak of “curative” legislation.  In doing so, it focuses on the child pornography prosecutions of teen sexters, the media‟s criticism of that course of action, the reincarnated stories of sext-related suicides, and the nation‟s recent sext-related legislation.

Prime Ministers and the Public

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Weller
Keyword(s):  
Prime Minister ◽  
Significant Part ◽  
Media Management ◽  
Prime Ministers ◽  
The Public ◽  
Electoral Campaigns ◽  
Technological Capacity ◽  
The Media

Prime ministers are the key campaigners for their governments, not just in electoral campaigns, but every day and in every place. Media management has become a continuing and significant part of the prime ministers’ activities; it is a daily, indeed an hourly, pressure. Speeches have to be planned. The pressure has changed the tone and priorities of governing. It has dangers as well as benefits. Media demands have become more immediate, more continuous, and more intrusive. Prime ministers must respond. The same technical changes allow prime ministers to interact with their voters in a way that bypasses journalists and other intermediaries. They are writ large in campaigns. They are never out of mind or out of sight. Re-election is always a consideration for tactics and strategy. The public leader, the ‘rhetorical prime minister’, is shaped by the demands of the media and organized by the technological capacity.

Risks to the Public

2021 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 11-15
Author(s):  
Peter G. Neumann
Keyword(s):  
Computer Systems ◽  
Strong Sense ◽  
Risk Awareness ◽  
Short Term ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Media ◽  
Potential Risks ◽  
Security And Reliability

Mini-editorial (PGN) 2020 was a crazy year, with all kinds of risks on display. As usual, many of the lessons noted in past issues of SEN and RISKS have been largely ignored, and failures continue to mirror events from the past that have long been discussed here. Issues such as safety, security, and reliability always seem to need more foresight than they receive. Y2K con- tinues to hit somewhere each New Year's Day, when short- term remediations that demanded periodic upgrading have been forgotten. (I suppose old COBOL code will still ex- ist in year 2100, when there may be ambiguities relating to dates that could be 21xx or 20xx (although 19xx is unlikely), and the narrow windowing xes will fail even more dramati- cally.) Election integrity continues to be a real concern, where we are caught in the crosshairs between computer systems and networks that are not meaningfully trustworthy or au- ditable, and the nontechnological risks are still pervasive from unbalanced redistricting, creative dysinformation, poli- tics, Citzens United, and foreign interference. We need non- partisan scrutiny and defense against would-be subverters to overcome potential attacks and inadvertent mistakes. In pres- ence of potential risks in every part of the process, a strong sense of risk-awareness is required by voters, election officials, and the media (both proactively and remedially, as needed).

FOREWORD

Geophysics ◽  
1964 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles C. Bates
Keyword(s):  
Prime Minister ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Bad Faith ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
The Past ◽  
Current State ◽  
Nuclear Tests ◽  
Test Ban

A decade ago, it would have been the rare geophysicist indeed who would have predicted that his specialty was destined to become a major topic of discussion between such world political leaders as Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, Prime Minister Macmillan of Great Britain, and Chairman Khrushchev of the USSR. Yet this has come to pass during the past six years, for in 1958 there started the continuing round of international negotiations directed towards the creation of an effective underground test-ban treaty. During the conduct of these negotiations, it has been repeatedly necessary to assess the current state-of-the-art in seismology and its sister geophysical sciences, for the only detectable signals known to propagate for several hundreds to thousands of miles from underground nuclear tests are seismic in nature. With the United States policy being only to seek an underground-test-ban agreement incorporating strong safeguards against acts of bad faith, it is important that the political safe-guards be backed up by those of a geophysical nature.

Music Training and Nonmusical Abilities: Introduction

2011 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Glenn Schellenberg ◽  
Ellen Winner
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Music Perception ◽  
Music Training ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Academic Benefits ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Media ◽  
New Research

the objective of this special issue of Music Perception, which includes contributions from researchers based in Canada, Germany, New Zealand, and the US, is to present the best new research on associations between music training and nonmusical abilities. Scholarly interest in associations between music training and nonmusical cognitive functioning has sparked much research over the past 15–20 years. The study of how far associations between music training and cognitive abilities extend, and whether such associations are more likely for some domains of cognition than for others, has theoretical relevance for issues of transfer, modularity, and plasticity. Unlike most other areas of scientific inquiry, there is parallel interest on the part of the public, the media, and educators who want to know if nonmusical intellectual and academic benefits are a welcome by-product of sending children to music lessons. Indeed, some educators and arts advocates justify music training in schools precisely because of these presumed and desired nonmusical associations.

“Nothing but Words”? Chronicling and Storytelling in Robert Coover's The Public Burning

2009 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 171-186
Author(s):  
THEOPHILUS SAVVAS
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Atomic Bomb ◽  
Vice President ◽  
Narrative Methods ◽  
The Public ◽  
Richard Nixon ◽  
The Past ◽  
Third Person ◽  
The Media ◽  
American Society

Robert Coover's 1977 novel The Public Burning is a dramatic re-presentation of the last three days of the lives of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Dubbed the “atomic spies” by the media, the Rosenbergs were accused of passing on the “secret” of the atomic bomb to the Russians. The sensational trial provoked widespread attention for its seeming encapsulation of the fault lines in American society opened up by anticommunism and the emergent Cold War. Found guilty, they were the first American nationals to be executed for espionage. This paper analyses the different narrative methods that Coover employs to re-present the past. In particular I focus on Coover's juxtaposition of a third-person, seemingly omniscient, narrator with the first-person narratological voice of then Vice President Richard Nixon. I suggest that we can best understand this not simply as providing objective and subjective versions of the event, as some critics have claimed, but rather as a distinction between history as chronicle (or what I call a synchronic method of history), and history as storytelling (or diachrony). Through this The Public Burning becomes not just a satirical critique of the specific political culture of the time, I contend, but, more fundamentally, a general exploration of the difficulties of reconstituting past events into knowledge. It is here, perhaps, where the novel's continuing relevance for today lies.

“Tanked up Yobs” and “Self-Pity City”. Deconstructing the Myths of the Hillsborough Disaster

STADION ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-75
Author(s):  
Alan McDougall
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
British History ◽  
Public Realm ◽  
Grassroots Activism ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Overwhelming Evidence ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Media ◽  
Government Legislation

On 15 April 1989, Liverpool FC played Nottingham Forest in an FA Cup semi-final at the Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield in northern England. Catastrophic errors by the police and other organisations led to the deaths of 96 Liverpool supporters, crushed against the perimeter fences on the Leppings Lane terrace. Though the horrific facts of the disaster were quickly and widely known, they were lost beneath another narrative, promoted by the police, numerous politicians, and large sections of the media. This narrative blamed the disaster on “tanked up yobs”: drunk and aggressive Liverpool supporters, who turned up late and forced their way into the ground. Over the subsequent years and decades, as Hillsborough campaigners vainly sought justice for the disaster’s victims in a series of trials and inquests, the destructive allegation remained in the public realm. It was reinforced by establishment dismissal of Liverpool as a “self-pity city”, home to a community incapable of accepting official verdicts or of leaving the past in the past. This essay uncovers the history of the myths of the Hillsborough disaster. It first shows how these myths were established - how false narratives, with powerful backers, shifted responsibility for the disaster from the police to supporters, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. It then examines how these myths were embedded in public discourse - how Liverpool was demonised as an aggressively sentimental city where people refused to admit to “killing their own”. It finally analyses how these myths were overturned through research, media mobilisation, and grassroots activism, a process that culminated in the 2016 inquest verdict, which ruled that the 96 Hillsborough victims were unlawfully killed. In doing so, the essay shows how Hillsborough became a key event in modern British history, influencing everything from stadium design to government legislation.

Political pressure mounts on Japanese media

2015 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Prime Minister ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Press Freedom ◽  
Political Pressure ◽  
Content Type ◽  
International Media ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Media ◽  
Near Term ◽  
The Government

Significance The issue of media independence has become a fraught one under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's administration, with perceptions rising among journalists and the public that the government is subjecting the media to political pressure. Critics of the administration speak of censorship and threats to freedom of expression. Japan's ranking in the World Press Freedom Index has fallen from 22nd in 2011-12, before Abe took office, to 61st in 2015. Impacts The government seems likely to try to marginalise the criticisms of constitutional scholars, like it marginalises its other critics. International media as well as domestic journalists are likely to feel some pressure from the authorities. In the near term, the issue is unlikely to destabilise the government, or derail passage of security legislation.

scholarly journals The Control of Information in Traditional Media through the Social Ones

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 107
Author(s):  
Resul Sinani
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
National Level ◽  
Traditional Media ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Media ◽  
High Level

The usage of social media by Kosovar politicians is almost absolute. Politicians of all levels have their accounts on Facebook as well as other social networks. They use those for various reasons, starting from contacting the voters and supporters during the election campaigns as well as during the time they are in the office, up to presenting their stands and ideas that have do with different issues of public interest. For many of them, especially for low-level politicians the social media, mainly Facebook, have become the only place where they express themselves, since they find it almost impossible to become a part of the traditional media, especially of those on the national level, like newspapers, radio or television. Whereas for high-leveled politicians, concretely the heads of main institutions like the prime-minister, the head of parliament or the president, who refuse to be interviewed and be present in political shows where they could face questions from the journalists or the public, they are using Facebook statements in order to avoid direct questions from the journalists about the political subjects of the day. By making it impossible for them to take direct answers through their journalists the traditional media (newspapers, radio, TV) have to quote the posts that the politicians are making on Facebook. The kosovar journalists and the heads of media see this tendency of politicians, especially of the prime minister as the lack of transparency, avoidance of accountability, control of information and setting the agenda of the media. This paper attempts to argument the hypothesis that the high level politicians, the heads of main state institutions in Kosovo are controlling the information in traditional media through the usage of social media. In order to argument this hypothesis as a case study we have taken the Kosovar (ex)PM Hashim Thaçi whose almost every status and update has been quoted by the media. We have also interviewed journalists and editors of Kosovar media houses who have expressed their thoughts about the subject, while supporting the hypothesis of this paper.

scholarly journals Natives, Subjects, Consumers: Notes on Continuities and Transformations in Indian Masculine Cultures

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Sanjay Srivastava
Keyword(s):  
Prime Minister ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Economic Planning ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Media

<div><p>This article explores recent histories of masculine cultures in India. The discussion proceeds through outlining the most significant sites of the making of masculinity discourses during the colonial, the immediate post-colonial as well as the contemporary period. The immediate present is explored through an investigation of the the media persona of India's current Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. Through constructing a narrative of Indian modernity that draws upon diverse contexts -- such as colonial discourses about natives, anti-colonial nationalism, and post-colonial discourses of economic planning, 'liberalization' and consumerism -- the article illustrates the multiple locations of masculinity politics. Further, the exploration of relationships between economic, political and social contexts also seeks to blur the boundaries between them, thereby initiating a methodological dialogue regarding the study of masculinities.  The article also seeks to point out that while there are continuities between the (colonial) past and the (post-colonial) present, the manner in which the past is utilised for the purposes of the present relates to performances and contexts in the present. Finally, the article suggests there is no linear history of masculinity, rather that the uses of the past in the present allow us to understand the prolix and circular ways in which the present is constituted. </p></div>

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