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

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.

2021 ◽  
pp. 106-122
Author(s):  
Rikke Andersen Kraglund

This article studies the effects of the ambiguous accusations around Karl Ove Knausgaard’s novel in six parts, My struggle (2009-11). The novel’s portrait of a number of named individuals and family members brought the relationship between artistic freedom and defamation, responsibility, guilt and shame up for discussion, and initiated negotiations of collective norms and values in connection with autobiographical novels. An analysis of the rhetorical strategies behind the family’s accusations at the time of the publication, initially illuminates the ethical dilemmas the family helped to raise in the public debate. Next, the accusations in the novels themselves are studied and the article shows a need to consider how differently the accusations appear in and outside the novels, because the autobiographical novel establishes an ambiguous statement that is not found in the media coverage


2011 ◽  
Vol 18 (1, 2 & 3) ◽  
pp. 2009
Author(s):  
Andrew Heard

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.


2005 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 365-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rens Vliegenthart ◽  
Dirk Oegema ◽  
Bert Klandermans

Though social movement organizations (SMOs) depend heavily upon the media for their communication to the public, little is known about the relationships between media coverage and public support for SMOs. This research uses computer-assisted content analysis to assess the relationship between media coverage and membership figures for Dutch environmental organizations over the period 1991-2003. Our analysis provides evidence for direct influence of visibility of the organization and its main issue on membership support, while membership support does not influence visibility of an SMO and its issue. Furthermore, an SMO's media visibility is negatively affected by the visibility of other SMOs within the same sector. These results point to the necessity for SMOs to compete for attention in the public sphere and to the importance of using various strategies to compete for the limited space available in the media.


2015 ◽  
Vol 65 (s2) ◽  
pp. 35-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kuei-Yuan Wang ◽  
Chien-Kuo Chen ◽  
Hsiao-Chi Wei

The purposes of this paper were to explore the relationship between media coverage and stock returns in Taiwan stock markets. The empirical results were as follows: (1) stock returns showed causality with either media coverage amounts or the degrees of good/bad media coverage; (2) when impacted by the past stock returns, the stock return might finish its response to the impulse around three days and showed a negative effect, whereas when impacted by the past media coverage amounts, the media coverage amount might also finish its response to the impulse within three day and showed a negative effect; (3) when impacted by the degrees of the past good media coverage, the good media coverage degree might finish its response in three days and showed a negative effect, in which a positive effect might be presented on the first two days, while the effect might turn negative on the third day. Given that, when impacted by the past stock returns, the stock return might finish its response to the impulse within three days and showed a negative effect and, when impacted by the degrees of the past good media coverage, the stock return might also finish its response in three days and showed a negative effect. That is, media coverage could be used as an indicator to predict stock returns in the Taiwan stock markets when making investment decisions.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Candida Yates

This article deploys a new psycho-political approach to examine the relationship between female political leadership and the emotionalisation of political culture by focusing on the case study of the media coverage of the former UK Prime Minister Theresa May. The article argues that the emotional turn in political culture is a gendered phenomenon because it reinforces deeper fears and fantasies about irrational femininity and the inherent instability of female political leadership and women in the public sphere.


2017 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 195-210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stine Bergersen

In a press conference on July 24, 2014, the director of the Norwegian Police Security Service (PST) and the Minister of Justice unexpectedly broke the news that Norway was facing an unspecific, but credible threat that terrorists from an “extreme Islamic group” would shortly attack the country. A national terror alert was issued for the first time, followed immediately by exceptional security measures, such as the arming of the usually unarmed police. In the anticipation of an attack, the public was for the first time involved in the counterterrorism efforts by being asked to be vigilant and to report any suspicious behavior. However, there was no attack on Norway, and the alert was called off a few days later without any explicit explanation. As part of the larger context of how risks and threats have been communicated in the past decades, this article describes the materialization of the event and discusses how the announcement and the content of the communications by the authorities were framed in the media coverage of it. Concretely, based on the concept of framing theory, the media coverage surrounding the announcement is considered, and the announcement is discussed via three identified frames emerging from the empirical data. These are discussed against the backdrop of the recent history of Norwegian counterterrorism practices, focusing on the effects and impacts of making such an announcement.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (4(13)) ◽  
pp. 31-50
Author(s):  
Shiyu Zhang ◽  

Over the past decade, bilateral relations between China and Russia have attracted the attention of the whole world. As neighbors and rapidly developing countries, China and Russia are becoming increasingly important in the international arena. The strategic partnership and interaction between China and Russia occupy a significant place in the politics of both countries. Cooperation is developing dynamically in various fields, primarily in politics. After 2012, a change of government took place in China and Russia, which brought new changes to international relations. Studying the involvement of the media in this process can clarify their impact on international relations, in particular, their role in the relationship between China and Russia.


1985 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Hudson

The past decade has seen the growth of a considerable literature on the link between government popularity, as reflected by the proportion of the public indicating their intention to vote for the government in opinion polls, and the state of the economy, as represented by certain key variables. The work began in the early 1970s with articles by Goodhart and Bhansali, Mueller, and Kramer. It continued through the decade; some of the more recent contributions can be found in a set of readings edited by Hibbs and Fassbender. However, despite the amount and quality of this work, problems remain. Principal amongst these, as Chrystal and Alt have pointed out, is the inability to estimate a relationship which exhibits any degree of stability either over time or between researchers. Nearly all the studies have been successful in finding a significant relationship for specific time periods, but when these are extended, or when the function is used to forecast outside the original estimation period, the relationship appears to break down.


2021 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 11-15
Author(s):  
Peter G. Neumann

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).


2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (1, 2 & 3) ◽  
pp. 2006
Author(s):  
Benjamin L. Berger

The relationship between law and religion in contemporary civil society has been a topic of increasing social interest and importance in Canada in the past many years. We have seen the practices and commitments of religious groups and individuals become highly salient on many issues of public policy, including the nature of the institution of marriage, the content of public education, and the uses of public space, to name just a few. As the vehicle for this discussion, I want to ask a straightforward question: When we listen to our public discourse, what is the story that we hear about the relationship between law and religion? How does this topic tend to be spoken about in law and politics – what is our idiom around this issue – and does this story serve us well? Though straightforward, this question has gone all but unanswered in our political and academic discussions. We take for granted our approach to speaking about – and, therefore, our way of thinking about – the relationship between law and religion. In my view, this is most unfortunate because this taken-for-grantedness is the source of our failure to properly understand the critically important relationship between law and religion.


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