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In this article, I consider a selection of photographs of a man of color from a luxury book of male nudes, Images (1982), aimed at white gay men and published in South Africa by Alternative Books (AB) in the late apartheid period. Given the exclusive association of assimilable homosexuality with whiteness in the national gay press and other homoerotic commodities available in South Africa at the same historical juncture, I propose that these photographs, which interrupted longstanding, racist homoerotic iconographies, elicited experiences of ambivalence (and thus critical reflection) amongst their historical audiences. To this end, I analyze the editorial and commercial content of the newspapers Link/Skakel and Exit for the period that AB was active (1981–1991), anticipating an overlap of readership between these papers and the publisher's titles. More precisely, I discuss the prevalence of the figure of the "good homosexual" and representations of classical (that is, white) male beauty in these papers to plot how apartheid logic was broadly reproduced (and same-sex desire disciplined according to such dictates) in mainstream South African gay movements, institutions, and print cultures during this time, but, notably, not in Images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is commonly assumed that content preservation is required for success in testimonial exchanges. Many content internalists, however, cannot endorse this assumption. They must claim instead that testimonial exchanges can often succeed when the content grasped by the hearer is not the content of the speaker's testimony, p, but some merely similar content, p*. Goldberg (2007. Anti-Individualism: Mind and Language, Knowledge and Justification. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) argues that this internalist approach is epistemically problematic: it cannot maintain certain features thought to be characteristic of testimonial exchanges. I argue that, contrary to appearances, the internalist's account is just as epistemically respectable as the traditional 'same content' approach favoured by externalists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The classic programme of conceptual engineering (Cappelen, Herman. 2018. Fixing Language: An Essay on Conceptual Engineering. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Eklund, Matti. 2021. "Conceptual Engineering." In The Routledge Handbook of Social and Political Philosophy of Language, edited by Justin Khoo, and Rachel Sterken, 15–30. London: Routledge) envisages a two-stage ameliorating process. First, we assess 'F' and determine what the term should express. Second, we bring it about that 'F' expresses what it should express. The second stage gives rise to a practical challenge: the implementation challenge. Engineering advocates need to explain by what means they can implement specific conceptual changes in the natural language shared by a community – a feat Herman Cappelen (2018. Fixing Language: An Essay on Conceptual Engineering. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020; "Conceptual Engineering: The Master Argument." In Conceptual Engineering and Conceptual Ethics, edited by Alexis Burgess, Herman Cappelen, and David Plunkett, 132–151. Oxford: Oxford University Press) argues to be beyond our understanding and control both on an externalist and on an internalist meta-semantics. I devise a new answer to the implementation challenge. Enlisting the influential theory of social norms by Cristina Bicchieri, I argue that engineering social norms in Bicchieri's technical sense amounts to an effective, specific, and feasible means to implement specific conceptual change, at least on internalist premises. I also argue that Bicchieri's social norms are an essential addition to the more familiar conventions and moral norms when it comes to conceptual engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can we make rational decisions that involve transformative experiences, that is, experiences that can radically change our core preferences? L. A. Paul ([2014]. Transformative Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press.) has argued that many decisions involving transformative experiences cannot be rational. However, Paul acknowledges that some traumatic events can be transformative experiences, but are nevertheless not an obstacle to rational decision-making. For instance, being attacked by hungry sharks would be a transformative experience, and yet, deciding not to swim with hungry sharks is rational. Paul has tried to explain why decisions involving 'sharky' outcomes are an exception to the rule. However, her putative explanation has been criticized by Campbell and Mosquera ([2020]. 'Transformative Experience and the Shark Problem.' Philosophical Studies 177: 3549–3565.). In this paper, I offer a different solution to this problem. Roughly, I argue that transformative experiences give rise a problem for rational decision-making only if the decision can lead to satisfying some of our (new) core preferences, but can also frustrate other (new) core preferences. I also argue that agents can partially project what traumatic transformative experiences are like. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses an interview given by Princess Nazlı Fazıl (1856–1913) on 3 June 1899 to the British journal The Gentlewoman. Examining this rare instance of the representation of an elite Ottoman woman in the British media, this article demonstrates how Princess Nazlı used the foreign press to advance her own interests both abroad and at home. To her elite British readership, she presented herself as an ardent Anglophile and supporter of colonial interests in Egypt. To her Ottoman readership, in particular the Ottoman Sultan Abdülhamid II with whom Princess Nazlı maintained a strained but dependent relationship, she flaunted these powerful connections to assure herself protection from Ottoman authorities. This case study contributes to the reconsideration of how elite Ottoman women operated within the political sphere, using the press to manage their social image within and beyond Ottoman society to advance their own political agendas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The Estate Origins of Democracy in Russia" by Tomila V. Lankina explores the Russian estate system and its impact on Russian society from the 19th century to the present day. The book highlights the persistence of inequality and regional differences in the development of democracy in Russia, influenced by the historical legacy of the estate system. Lankina also examines the emergence of the bourgeoisie and middle class in Russia, their survival during the Soviet era, and their role in shaping Russian society. The book challenges traditional approaches to social stratification and offers a fresh perspective on Russian history and development. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the female beauty ideal of the small foot in the Swedish press during the second half of the nineteenth century, as an object for the male gaze in fiction, as an actual fashion ideal, and as a prescribed beauty practice for women. It consists of three parts, analysing different subgenres within the press. First, I show how a male notion of the beauty and erotic attractiveness of the small foot was constructed in short stories and serial novels published in the daily and weekly press. Next, I show how this ideal was visually represented for its realization in every-day life in figures in fashion journals. Both genres presented an ideal unattainable for most women. Third, I discuss articles in dailies and weeklies giving advice on how to take care of feet, warning against ambitions to make the foot look small. Taken together, representations of female feet in the Swedish press involved a construction of the foot that also constructed women as perpetually failing in relation to the existing beauty ideal, making it part of a discursive misogynist practice, according to which women was supposed to invest in their appearance, and were derided and ridiculed when they did. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers and practitioners have unanimously acknowledged the impact of legacy media coverage of past pandemics as well as COVID-19 and its importance for health-related risk communication. Therefore, this study provides scholars and health communication practitioners with a deeper understanding of the patterns, main themes, and limitations of media reporting and peer-reviewed research in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in different national media environments. Because the objective is to evaluate patterns, this paper focuses on early quantitative and automated content analyses for theoretical contribution, geographic diversity, methodological rigor, and inclusion of risk and crisis communication theory. It also assesses whether authors deduced implications, for both theory and practice of health-related risk and crisis communication. We conducted a content analysis of 66 studies in peer-reviewed journals from the beginning of the pandemic until April 2022. The findings demonstrate that early quantitative analyses of the news coverage of COVID-19 are often not theory-driven, apply heterogeneous forms of framing analysis, and lack references to risk and crisis communication theory. Consequently, only few implications for health communication practice during pandemics were drawn. However, there is evidence of improvement in geographic scope compared to previous research. The discussion addresses the importance of developing a consistent approach to framing analyses of risk and crisis media coverage and the importance of well-designed cross-cultural research in a global pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergency industry has always been an important and challenging profession. Paramedics and firefighters are exposed on a daily basis to potentially traumatic situations with some of what they experience leading to transformations, changing them deeply and fundamentally. These transformative experiences (Paul [2016]. Transformative Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press) where they are required to navigate life and death as part of their profession provide a clear need for transformative learning (Mezirow [1991]. Transformative Dimensions of Adult Learning. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass; Mezirow [2012]. "Learning to Think Like an Adult: Core Concepts of Transformation Theory." In The Handbook of Transformative Learning: Theory, Research, and Practice, edited by Edward W. Taylor, and Patricia Cranton, 73–95. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass) in order to improve their professional and private lives. The study uses a qualitative approach where 57 paramedics and firefighters reflected on their experiences working in the field and on the impact these experiences had on them and their private lives. In empirically charting, the transformative experiences and learning processes, the data support the theories of Paul (2016) and Mezirow (1991; 2012) and show there is a need to provide support for existing workers and better preparation before they enter a career. It raises the question whether saving lives is currently a sustainable profession and how it can become a more sustainable profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The Gut: A Black Atlantic Alimentary Tract" by Elizabeth Pérez explores the role of the alimentary tract as a site of knowledge in Black Atlantic spiritual traditions. Pérez argues that the gut is a space where black diasporic culture is negotiated through changing religious practices. The book examines the digestive system as a means of communication, knowledge production, and transmission in religious traditions such as Santeria, Candomblé, and Vodun. It also delves into the significance of cooking, eating, and codes of disgust in these traditions, highlighting the resilience and continuity of Black Atlantic cultures. [Extracted from the article]

"Sensing in Social Interaction: The Taste for Cheese in Gourmet Shops" by Lorenza Mondada is a book that explores the sensory experiences and interactions that occur in cheese shops. The author takes an ethnomethodological approach, focusing on how sensory moments are embedded in actual activities and how they are socially constructed. The book presents extensive video data from gourmet cheese shops in 11 countries, analyzing the sequential aspects of seeing, touching, smelling, and tasting cheese. The author emphasizes the importance of multisensory experiences and the intersubjective understandings that shape these interactions. Overall, the book offers valuable insights into the social and cultural dimensions of sensory experiences in cheese shops. [Extracted from the article]

The operation of the China Railway Express (CRE) provides a quasi-natural experiment to test the impact of the new International Transport Corridor on regional green development. Based on the panel data for 265 prefecture-level cities in China and the China Patent Full-Text Database from 2003 to 2018, this study uses the SBM-DEA model to measure urban green economic efficiency (GEE). Then, we adopt the spatial Difference-in-Difference model to examine the effect of operating the CRE on the regional GEE. Moreover, the impact mechanism of the CRE on GEE is investigated from innovation and energy conservation perspectives. Finally, we consider the impact of the heterogeneity of factor endowments in different cities on green development. We found that operating CRE can improve regional GEE as a new overland trade channel between Europe and Asia. The impact mechanism test shows that promoting regional innovation and reducing urban energy intensity are two effective ways for CRE to improve regional GEE. In addition, in resource-intensive areas and areas with inadequate infrastructure, the marginal effect of CRE on promoting green development is more obvious. The conclusions can provide policy inspiration for countries along the CRE to achieve green economic development by operating CRE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThis article argues that the coverage in ¡Hola! magazine of King Juan Carlos I has helped him navigate public scandal over the course of the past decade by actively minimizing the societal perception of shame regarding his actions. I combine Ari Adut’s theory on the sociological manifestations of scandal with Sara Ahmed’s work on shame and apology to show how ¡Hola! both crafts a narrative of Juan Carlos I’s exile to the UAE as a simple beachside retirement and subtly pressures its readers to view him as innocent of any corruption charges he may face. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

University College London Special Collections holds the Small Press Collections consisting of the Little Magazines, Alternative Presses, and Poetry Store of poetry pamphlets, artist’s books, and other text bearing print objects. This essay outlines the history and growth of the collections, founded by Geoffrey Soar in 1964, and starts by exploring the networks essential to the development of a large collection of international, independently published literary and visual art material. I draw on fifteen years’ experience as Collection Manager to examine the challenges of acquiring, cataloguing, and managing non-mainstream, self-published, ephemeral material in an institutional context and facilitating access for researchers. It considers selected comparable collections in the UK and the US and the difficulties in aligning institutional holdings and practices. The notions of materiality and obsolescence in the context of library collections are considered in relation to mimeographed and other format little magazines and small press publications. It concludes with examples of object-based learning scenarios that reactivate the material in a teaching and research context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The book "Spatial Politics in Istanbul: Turning Points in Contemporary Turkey" by Courtney Dorroll and Philip Dorroll explores the debates surrounding urban aesthetics, historical legacies, and political identities in Istanbul and Turkey. The authors focus on four key moments in the Justice and Development Party's (AKP) tenure between 2010 and 2020 to trace the shift from a relatively pluralistic, inclusive political ideology to a monumental, neo-imperial Sunni-Turkish hegemony. The book examines the impact of events such as Istanbul's selection as European Capital of Culture in 2010, the Gezi demonstrations of 2013, the attempted coup of 2016, and the reconversion of Hagia Sophia to a mosque in 2020. The authors argue that these events reflect the AKP's transformation and its embrace of "Erdoğan-ian Neo-Ottomanism." The book raises important questions about the definition of Istanbul's identity and the exclusionary nature of defining the city solely by its Ottoman past. [Extracted from the article]

Media articles about women in STEM often emphasize gender in ways that may reinforce stereotypes. In an archival study examining 172 articles from four major US and UK newspapers on women, Nobel laureates from 1903 to 2020, we find that over time, reporters are more likely to describe the scientist as a woman and less likely to mention her husband’s job. A follow-up experiment (N = 452) revealed no significant effects of an article that emphasizes the gender of a woman scientist on gender biases. These findings suggest that articles about women in STEM may emphasize gender rather than scientific accomplishments, but the ways in which they do so have changed over time and this emphasis may not affect readers’ gender bias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the framing strategies and language features of U.S. news coverage surrounding sexual violence and gender issues across the ideological media spectrum at two pivotal phases of the #MeToo movement: (1) during its initial rise as a hashtag-driven social movement in 2017 and (2) during the Kavanaugh nomination and confirmation in 2018. Using structural topic modeling, community detection, and feature extraction, we reveal a heightened employment of political framing during the Kavanaugh accusations. Topical prevalence and language use in news treatment also showed clear partisan differences, consistent with theories of moral foundation and issue ownership. Implications for research on news coverage of gender rights and framing of social movements are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mawani has penned a breathtaking book that challenges the terra-centric understanding of modern (Western) law through an anti-colonial narrative of a ship, its passengers, and the ambitiously defiant journey they took together across the timespace of the erstwhile British Empire. Five years after its publication, this book review seeks to revisit this narrative and distinguish Mawani's work as pathbreaking for the theorisation of law at a planetary scale in ways that also account for the 'non-human' and 'more-than-human' relations. Unlike many newer strands of scholarship seeking to theorise more-than-human dimensions of law- be it in ecological or technological contexts- Mawani's novel 'oceans as method' approach refuses to erase the centrality of racialised violence to the legal empire, including in law's foundational concepts like time, jurisdiction, object and subject. The last section offers some reflections on how engagements with the contexts of caste could have rendered the work richer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Barbara Brandon-Croft is the first African American woman to have a nationally syndicated mainstream newspaper comic strip. Her comic Where I'm Coming From was first published in the Detroit Free Press in 1989. Two years later it was nationally distributed when it was picked up by Universal Press Syndicate. This interview is a compilation of edited excerpts from two recorded interview sessions conducted with Barbara Brandon-Croft during the summer of 2022, and follow-up sessions that occurred in the fall of 2023. The conversation focuses on how Barbara's experiences during her formative and adult years inspire the world depicted in Where I'm Coming From. We discuss her experiences while growing up in the predominantly Black neighbourhood of New Cassel, Long Island; her father Brumsic Brandon, Jr.'s influences on her career path; her undergraduate years at Syracuse University; and the inspirations behind the content in some of her strips. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Development of live shopping has introduced a new form of celebrity endorsement. This study examines the impact of negative news related to streamers on viewers' purchasing behaviour during live streaming, considering different types of negative news. Drawing on research related to celebrity endorsement and information dissemination, this study presents the results from one natural experiment and four lab experiments. The findings suggest that negative news about streamers, as well as their responses to such news, positively influence viewers' purchasing behaviour during live streaming, which is mediated by their visit to the live streaming. Furthermore, the study reveals that negative news related to streamers' personal behaviour has a more positive impact than negative news related to the product they are selling. The positive effect of response to negative news is weakened when the response seems to protect the wrongdoers. This study contributes to the development of endorsement theory, retests the model of the endorser effect, and expands the literature about celebrity scandals. Additionally, the findings provide practical suggestions for retailers and streamers who are dealing with negative news. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the conflict between press censorship and free speech in post-partition Delhi, focusing on the Urdu press. It demonstrates how conflicts over free speech became a focal point for the intersection of two fundamental tensions underlying postcolonial state formation—between civil liberties and the authoritarian legacy of colonial rule, and between a secular democracy and a religion-based partition. The article explores the Urdu refugee dailies that relocated from Lahore to Delhi amid the partition upheaval and emerged as significant media voicing refugees' interests, often at the expense of Muslim residents. Their provocative writings simultaneously challenged the boundaries of free speech and advanced an exclusionary notion of citizenship based on blood-based descent (jus sanguinis). This narrow conception of citizenship, underlying the partition migrations themselves, challenged the secularist vision of India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. In response, the Delhi administration took actions against the refugee papers, making them central to contemporary struggles over press censorship. By taking the state to court, refugee editors promoted citizens' right to free speech, but simultaneously advanced a circumscribed notion of ethno-religious citizenship. Navigating this dual role, the article unveils the exclusions and contradictions that marked citizenship formation in the early postcolonial period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recognizing the need for more evidence-based interventions and the potential of well-crafted messages in communicating the opioid epidemic, this study investigates the effectiveness of two messaging strategies (i.e., victim vividness and external attribution) that have the potential to mitigate stigmatization and influence a wide range of public policies concerning the opioid epidemic. Building upon the attribution theory of interpersonal behavior, an experiment with a 2 (victim vividness: high vs. low) × 2 (external attribution: present vs. absent) between-subjects factorial design was conducted among a national sample of U.S. adults (N = 995). The findings show that the messages with greater victim vividness reduced support for victim-oriented punitive policies, whereas the messages that mentioned external attribution increased support for perpetrator-oriented punitive policies. In addition, the two messaging strategies also worked indirectly through various emotions to influence policy support. Discussions on this study's contributions to both theory and practice are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the media coverage of the first wave of the COVID-19 crisis. The analysis of 213 items from leading TV channels and newspapers revealed four main themes characterising the: coverage of the establishment's preparations, coverage of morbidity, criticism of the establishment, and information provision. By and large, the media acted as a 'mobilized press', encouraging the public to follow guidelines, but criticism of certain sectors of the public and individuals was almost absent. The article demonstrates that the phenomenon of 'rallying around the flag' is common in both security and health crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout journalism studies scholarship, the market orientation of lifestyle journalism has been associated with its diminished place within the journalistic field. Specifically, because lifestyle journalists are often thought to entertain and not inform, they hold less social capital within the journalism industry. This study aims to explore how lifestyle journalists perceive their own market orientation and their role relative to the audience. Through the lens of market theory for news production, this study reports on semi-structured interviews with US-based lifestyle journalists (n = 30) and argues that lifestyle journalists perceive that they do feel effects of market influence, but no more than those experienced in hard news specialties. However, lifestyle journalists did perceive expectations in their newsroom that their work ought to be market-driven, and bring in revenue, in order to support the reporting of hard news. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children faced many challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the school closure policies that were implemented to combat it. When justifying closures, governments had to decide how to frame children's vulnerability, as their decisions protected children from some harms while forcing them to endure others. Children are typically framed as vulnerable to justify implementing protective policies but given that these protective policies came with severe consequences for children, it was not an inherently appropriate framing in this case. This study compares the press releases about school closures produced by the Victorian and New South Wales state governments to examine how they framed children's vulnerability and how this positioned their obligation to protect children. It concludes that even though school closures were protective policies, neither government framed children as particularly vulnerable. This is likely explained by the fact that many of the consequences of school closures were harmful to children, so emphasising their vulnerability may have made it harder to retain public support for these policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractIn weightlifting exercise, inertial forces result in the force exerted by the athlete being variable throughout the exercise. Many new machines and training methods are intended to maintain a more constant force value. This work aims at developing and evaluating a novel type of bodybuilding machine based on a constant-force mechanism. First, the mechanical design of the proposed constant-force bodybuilding machine (CFBM) is described and its characteristic force curves are obtained by experiments. Then, the performance of an athlete in a lifting exercise carried out in a CFBM is compared to the traditional free weight (FW) exercise in a bench press session. The results demonstrate significantly smaller variations in the force curves for the CFBM than for FW, as well as the disappearance of the braking phase shown by the FW at the end of the concentric phase. Major force differences are identified for a load of 40% of the one repetition maximum (1RM), where the maximum variation in the force curve for the FW is two times higher than for FW. Differences in velocity and power curves are also reported and analized. For the 80% of 1RM the peak and mean powers are found to be 27% and 34% higher, respectively, for CFBM than for FW. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analysing legal cases involving libel, rioting, sedition, and breaches of the press acts in colonial and postcolonial India, this article emphasises the continued relevance of eighteenth-century common law precedents to the conceptualisation of ‘freedom of expression’. Lawyer Thomas Erskine’s advocacy of liberty of speech in a series of seditious libel trials and Lord Mansfield’s notable commentary in the Shipley (Dean of St. Asaph) case provided a resilient framework for adjudicating the issue until the 1950s. Changes in the Indian political climate, however, prompted varying reassessments of these findings. Prior to 1910, judges and defendants in the trials of Reverend James Long, Kahanji Dharamsingh, and B. G. Tilak mined Erskine’s speeches as a resource that could help them clarify authorial intent, gauge the ‘tendency’ of texts, and specify the constitutional role of the jury. After this period, debates over freedom of expression increasingly centred upon Mansfield’s ruling — popularised by scholar A. V. Dicey — that solely associated liberty of speech with the absence of licenses for publication. Thereafter, critics of the Indian press acts weaponized Mansfield’s ruling to challenge the colonial state’s burgeoning autocracy. By the 1950s, a third shift had occurred as justices and parliamentarians offered contrary interpretations of Dicey’s own analysis in debating the Indian government’s continued reliance on censorship laws. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThis paper examines the Black press and its role in fulfilling the promises of a society that claimed all men were created equal. It explores how the Black press helped realize journalistic principles and democratic ideals by countering hegemony and being characterized by care ethics. After briefly addressing the transformation of the Black press in the digital age as well as its concomitant challenges for advocacy, the project concludes with contemporary examples and discuss the current state of this Black media care ethic. Ultimately, the Black press serves all citizens, and it is in everyone’s best interest for Black media to flourish and thrive. Furthermore, and considering our current context, we should question who is able to profit from the Black digital press, and how its specific relationship to funding, larger society, and the digital environment might influence its ability to fully critique the social order and advocate for otherwise underserved citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For Anscombe a solitary activity is intentional if the agent has self-knowledge of what she is doing. Analogously one might think that to partake in shared intentional activities is for the agents involved to have plural or collective self-knowledge of what they are doing together. I call this 'the Plural Practical Knowledge Thesis' (PPK). While some authors have advanced related theses about the nature of the knowledge involved in shared practical activities (see Laurence, B. [2011]. "An Anscombian Approach to Collective Action." In Essays on Anscombe's Intention, edited by Anton Ford, Jennifer Hornsby, and Frederick Stoutland. Cambridge: Harvard UP; Schmid, H.-B. [2016]. "On Knowing What We Are Doing Together." In The Epistemic Life of Groups: Essays in the Epistemology of Collectives, edited by Michael S. Brady, and Miranda Fricker. Oxford: Oxford UP; Rödl, S. [2015]. "Joint Action and Recursive Consciousness of Consciousness." Phenomenology and Cognitive Sciences 14: 769–779. doi:; Rödl, S. [2018a]. "Joint Action and Pure Self-Consciousness." Journal of Social Philosophy 49 (1): 124–136; Rödl, S. [2018b]. Self-Consciousness and Objectivity. Cambridge: Harvard UP) this alternative remains relatively underexplored in the current literature. The paper offers an account of plural practical knowledge based on the idea that shared activities of the relevant sort share a normative structure given by practical, means-end structures and proposes a paradigmatic methodology that generalizes this account to understand what different cases of collective intentional action have in common. It then discusses the differences between the proposed approach and those due to Schmid 2016. "On Knowing What We Are Doing Together." In The Epistemic Life of Groups: Essays in the Epistemology of Collectives, edited by Michael S. Brady, and Miranda Fricker. Oxford: Oxford UP and Laurence 2011. "An Anscombian Approach to Collective Action." In Essays on Anscombe's Intention, edited by Anton Ford, Jennifer Hornsby, and Frederick Stoutland. Cambridge: Harvard UPand the reasons why it should be preferred. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Controlling the Capital: Political Dominance in the Urbanizing World" by Tom Goodfellow and David Jackman explores the rise of authoritarianism globally and its impact on capital cities. The book focuses on Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia case studies, examining how authoritarian regimes establish and sustain dominance in capital cities. It discusses the relationship between cities and political dominance, contributing to debates on authoritarianism, urbanization, political contestation, resistance, development, and the prospects for democracy. The book provides historical and contemporary analysis, covering various political matters and highlighting the challenges faced by urban populations. However, it lacks a serious projection of the future of cities and their potential for democracy, and future research should address this issue. [Extracted from the article]

We have investigated the magnitude of circadian variation in Isokinetic and Isometric strength of the knee extensors and flexors, as well as back squat and bench press performance using the MuscleLab force velocity transducer. Ten resistance-trained males (mean±SD: age 21.5 ± 1.1 years; body mass 78.3 ± 5.2 kg; height 1.71 ± 0.07 m) underwent a) three to four familiarization sessions on each dynamometer and b) four sessions at different times of day (03:00, 09:00, 15:00 and 21:00 h). Each session was administered in a counterbalanced order and included a period when Perceived onset of mood states (POMS), then rectal and muscle temperature (Trec, Tm) was measured at rest, after which a 5-min standardized 150 W warm-up was performed on a cycle ergometer. Once completed, Isokinetic (60 and 240°·s−1 for extension and flexion) and Isometric dynamometry with peak torque (PT), time-to-peak-torque (tPT) and peak force (PF) and % activation was measured. Lastly, Trec and Tm were measured before the bench press (at 30, 50 and 70 kg) and back squat (at 40, 60 and 80 kg) exercises. A linear encoder was attached to an Olympic bar used for the exercises and average force (AF), peak velocity (PV) and time-to-peak-velocity (tPV) were measured (MuscleLab software; MuscleLab Technology, Langesund, Norway) during the concentric phase of the movements. Five-min recovery was allowed between each set with three repetitions being completed. General linear models with repeated measures and cosinor analysis were used to analyse the data. Values for Trec and Tm at rest were higher in the evening compared to morning values (Acrophase Φ: 16:35 and 17:03 h, Amplitude A: 0.30 and 0.23°C, Mesor M: 36.64 and 37.43°C, p < 0.05). Vigor, happy and fatigue mood states responses showed Φ 16:11 and 16:03 h and 02:05 h respectively. Circadian rhythms were apparent for all variables irrespective of equipment used where AF, PF and PT values peaked between 16:18 and 18:34 h; PV, tPV and tPT peaked between 05:54 and 08:03 h (p < 0.05). In summary, circadian rhythms in force output (force, torque, power, and velocity) were shown for isokinetic, isometric dynamometers and complex multi-joint movements (using a linear encoder); where tPV and tPT occur in the morning compared to the evening. Circadian rhythms in strength can be detected using a portable, low-cost instrument that shows similar cosinor characteristics as established dynamometers. Hence, muscle-strength can be measured in a manner that is more directly transferable to the world of athletic and sports performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Review article of Words at War: The Contested Language of the English Civil War, edited by Andrew Hadfield and Paul Hammond, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2024, xi + 342 pp., £90 (hardback), ISBN 9780197267622. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Shakespeare Beyond the Green World: Drama and Ecopolitics in Jacobean Britain" by Todd Andrew Borlik is a study that explores Shakespeare's engagement with the environmental politics of early Stuart Britain. The book argues that Shakespeare's plays warn against environmental mismanagement and 'eco-hubris' through cautionary tales. It examines the exploitation of the environment under James VI and I, and how Shakespeare's plays reflect the environmental challenges of his time. The study covers ten of Shakespeare's Jacobean plays and analyzes their connections to Stuart environmental politics. Overall, the book offers a compelling environmental history of the early seventeenth century. [Extracted from the article]

How and why does legacy news media move from protecting to undermining democracy? Several studies argue that journalism can facilitate and shape democratic backsliding. However, evidence is scarce and, to some extent, limited to the content analysis of news outputs and editorials. The causal mechanisms of an anti-democratic role for the press and how it is operationalised into specific processes of news production remain largely misunderstood. Using 36 semi-structured qualitative interviews and three case studies, this paper analyses journalistic practices and role perceptions in Brazil within a period of constant decline in the quality of democracy (2016-2021). The results show that labour precarity is a crucial driver in journalistic practices capable of damaging democracy, which challenges previous assumptions that media capture is mostly influenced by the political economy of news organisations. This research also indicates that journalists are not homogeneously dominated by the interests of elites and can engage with them on their own terms to advance personal agendas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pictorial journalism in the latter nineteenth century faced a temporal conundrum: whereas words could travel by telegraph and hence at the speed of electricity, the accompanying illustrations had to travel as material objects and were chronically belated. This article analyzes the strategies with which two prominent Victorian weekly papers—Illustrated London News and Punch—sought to deal with the slowness of illustration and reconcile the speed differentials between textual and visual news with their printing deadlines and production cycles. The most striking of these strategies was to deploy an 'oracular pencil' to work up an illustration before an event had taken place. These pre-produced illustrations relied on specific visual codes that shaped the illustrations' 'truth.' The article shows that, contrary to the self-positioning of pictorial journalists as reporting truthfully and speedily on the world 'out there,' the pictorial press had its own temporal and epistemological laws. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines one of the areas of activity for restriction of information – the system of military censorship in the Soviet military press: what remained unchanged and what was transformed in its work on protecting information, which was a military secret between 1944 and 1945. The study focuses on the regulatory framework of military censorship, the objects of the ban, the censor's personnel, technology of censorship control. Until December 1943 in the Red Army, there was a 'Regulation on the organization of military censorship' of 1935, which did not meet wartime requirements. The new 'Regulation' corrected the situation. The change and addition of the composition of the information constituting military secrets were directly affected by the course of combat operations during the Red Army's campaign in Europe. The subject of censorship prevented the disclosure of military secrets, political errors, and information undesirable to publish in the military press. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the significance of advertisements in historical Jewish press as a window into everyday life and major themes of Jewish history, including nationalism, social and economic situations, and cultural choices. It discusses three readings of advertisements which contribute to understanding various aspects of Jewish history, encompassing consumer identity, occultism, and the economic, cultural, and religious history of Jews in different contexts.

Jewish ritual objects are rather niche products and yet, the advertisements, as well as other factors, indicate an industrial scale production during the German Second Empire (1871–1918) and the Weimar Republic (1918–1933). As I will argue, these advertisements provide us with intriguing insights into the Jewish community, and how German Jewry was perceived by the non-Jewish population. Especially when companies used methods of ethnic marketing, I surveyed how they addressed the different strata of the Jewish community. In addition, some company advertisements bear traces of an understanding of Judaism on equal footing with Christian denominations. Yet, I also find hints of industrial overproduction which, as I argue, might have been stimulated by stereotypes of Jews. Perhaps in response to the overproduction, some retailers advertised Jewish ritual objects as "decorative" rather than religious items, and therefore veiled their link to Judaism. While this might have been a protective measure against anti-Semitic slurs, it ties in well with the observation that producers and retailers might have expected higher sales. Overall, analysing advertisements for Jewish ritual objects helps us to develop a more nuanced understanding of the positioning of Jewish consumers within the market in Germany before the Shoah. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Press advertisements are a key source for the history of Jewish occultism in Eastern Europe. From the late nineteenth century, modern occult currents engaged many Jews in Eastern Europe, who consulted with mediums, attended occult performances and lectures, and consumed occult literature, whether in Hebrew, Yiddish, Polish, or Russian. For these Jews, the hidden realities represented by occultism conveyed practical knowledge, entertainment, assurance, and the possibility of belief in a higher reality. Their occult activities left a paper trail in the form of advertisements placed in Jewish newspapers across Eastern Europe. This article considers occult-related advertisements published in the Jewish press in early-twentieth-century Poland, arguably the centre of Jewish occultism in Eastern Europe. By tracing occult advertisements across four decades of the Hebrew, Yiddish, and Polish press in Poland, a picture emerges of the dynamic occult marketplace that reached Jews across Eastern Europe, the economics of this marketplace, and the social changes that spurred its development. Jewish press advertisements thus not only shed light on the physiognomy of Jewish occultism in Poland in the early-twentieth century, but also tell us a great deal about Jewish experiences of modernity in these years as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of the Jewish press can be studied both as a mirror and as a motor. The former looks back on the relationship between history and culture. It lends itself to the purpose of curation and retrieval and implies an agreed Jewish historiography. The latter method is forward looking. It suggests a more holistic approach, reaching beyond the identification of individual titles, and encourages a mapping of the overall Jewish press landscape in terms of cultural and economic capital, marginal initiatives, cross referencing, and the identification of trends. This article embarks on the latter approach. Presupposing that public discourses do not just reflect or represent social entities and alliances, but also construct or constitute them, I focus on the visionary character of Jewish periodicals and on their transformative function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article situates the Anglophone newspapers published in nineteenth-century Valparaíso, Chile, within global information networks, highlighting Valparaíso's role as an influential hub in the development of the informal empire. These publications, reflecting the characteristics of the nineteenth-century foreign-language press in their production, content, and readership, underscore the extensive influence of British cultural and economic influence, which extended well beyond the bounds of formal empire. Central to this study is the Anglophone Chile Newspaper Project, which not only preserves these publications through digitization but also facilitates their global dissemination. In its theoretical framing too, this essay contributes to the larger goal of overcoming disciplinary silos, working to forge a complex understanding of the intersectional identities that shape national, transnational, and global perspectives. Our theoretical framework accords with our material efforts to reconnect this siloed and endangered archive with the global ‘big data’ projects that are capitalizing on the accelerating pace of newspaper digitization, thus providing a platform for understanding the transnational narratives and transoceanic exchanges, championing a reinvigorated discourse on identity, transculturation, and the interplay between local and global dynamics. By situating the English-language press within the broader context of foreign-language print media, the project underscores the newspapers' contribution to the dynamic identity transformations within British colonies and, in turn, the enduring impact of print culture on contemporary globalized identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critiques the Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021 ("the Rules") as they relate to online journalism. The Government's stated objective for making the Rules is to "level the playing field" of online journalism with print journalism. I examine whether and how the Government satisfies this objective. I make two broad claims. First, the Rules fail to "level the playing field". The objectives, philosophical approach, and substance of the new regulatory scheme are significantly different from those that govern print journalism, and to the disadvantage of online journalism. Second, rather than "levelling the playing field", the Rules give the Government overwhelming control of online journalism. The Government exercises ultimate control over the regulatory structures and gives itself unprecedented censorship powers over online journalism. If my claims are correct, the Rules will have catastrophic consequences for online journalism and Indian democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pragmatists are interested primarily not in representing a purportedly unchanging Reality but in articulating prophetic future possibilities on the basis of the values most venerated by a culture/society in the present. This makes pragmatism sound a little like 'Conceptual Engineering'. Conceptual engineers too are interested in transforming our ways of talking, which implies some notion of how such improvements are to be evaluated. Nevertheless, this paper argues that accounts of conceptual engineering that regard it as key to the project of elucidating an externalist semantics find it difficult to accommodate on their own terms the problem-phenomena taken to be of shared interest: regions of discourse where the demand for change are at their most pressing culturally. This difficulty takes the form of what I call the Conceptual Engineering Dilemma (CED), an inability to accommodate simultaneously the ethical and ameliorative dimensions of contestation. I argue that acknowledging the formalist commitments that undergird CED should make pragmatism more appealing to the practically-orientated analytic philosopher and conclude with a brief survey of some of the tools that it makes available for the pressing work of changing minds for the better. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzes public sentiment on news sites and Twitter concerning the development of the Trans-Sumatra Toll Road (JTTS). Applying a lexicon-based approach to calculate sentiment scores, this study found a predominance of positive sentiments in news articles and tweets regarding the JTTS development. Employing multinomial logit estimation to examine the determining factors, this study however found no specific relationship between JTTS segment completion and public sentiment on news sites or Twitter. Nonetheless, the association changed and became noticeable on Twitter after controlling the effects of socioeconomic characteristics on sentiment scores. The development status of the JTTS segment influenced public sentiment considerably. This study highlights the potential of social media to facilitate public engagement and inform government decision making. Furthermore, it offers a comprehensive analysis of public sentiment regarding toll road infrastructure development by incorporating multiple stakeholders, including government agencies, business actors, community organizations (via news articles), and local communities (via Twitter data), and highlights various interests, concerns, and conflicts surrounding toll road projects. The investigation of socioeconomic and demographic factors in relation to public sentiment further contributes to our understanding of the underlying influences and dynamics that shape opinions on toll-road infrastructure through sentiment analysis and quantitative methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The Economics of the Middle East: A Comparative Approach" by James E. Rauch is a book that examines the political and economic structure of twenty-one Arab countries, Iran, and Turkey. It focuses on various aspects such as human development, income inequality, gender gaps, environmental challenges, government spending, and political economy. The book provides policy recommendations to promote socioeconomic development in the region. It is a valuable resource for researchers interested in understanding the social, political, and economic dynamics of the Middle East and North Africa. [Extracted from the article]

The sports media landscape has shifted to favor outlets with inside access to sports organizations, teams, and athletes. This study interviews 21 NFL in-house reporters working at 19 official team websites to determine how they view their roles as sports journalists, including ethical standards and shifts in media boundaries. Qualitative interviews uncovered that cultivating a positive team image and protecting the interests of stakeholders supersede the production of objective news stories, even from those who started their careers as external sports reporters. Internal reporters are often conflicted with their roles in the sports media ecosystem. Additionally, interviews reveal their efforts to maintain a balancing act between the established ideals of journalism with the positive spin that accompanies public relations. The present study illuminates how such positions both mirror and diverge from the expectations typically placed within sports journalism, while offering fruitful avenues for subsequent scholarly investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is concerned with the evaluation of cultural contextualization of two widely used EFL textbooks in Iran, Prospect (2014) and Interchange (2012). Looking at these textbooks, it tries to investigate key issues such as culture, ideology, and otherness, which are imperative for creating learners' third space (Kramsch, C. J. (1998). Language and Culture, 67–70, Oxford: Oxford University Press). Therefore, it investigates which types of cultures based on Cortazzi and Jin's (1999. Cultural Mirrors: Materials and Methods in the EFL Classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) classification of culture (source, target, and international target) are demonstrated in the textbooks' discourses at both linguistic and visual levels. The study is based on a qualitative method of research and utilizes a social semiotic multimodal approach, developed by Souryana Yassine (2012. "Culture Ideology and Otherness in EFL Textbooks in Algeria: A Multimodal Approach" Ph.D. diss., Mouloudi Mammeri University of Tizi-Ouzou, Algeria) according to the maxims of social semiotics. The results indicate how the two textbooks represent culture dissimilarly. While the Interchange series approve the mainstream American target, neglecting source culture completely, the Iranian ELT textbooks contain more source cultural content. Moreover, the representation of Self and Other reflects the societies' diverse underlying ideological positions in explicit and implicit ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Newspapers that address mental disorders affect health care positively or negatively and can affect the public's perspective with the way they explain mental disorders. To examine the representation of news about mental disorders published in Turkish newspapers. Using the document analysis method, 230 news about mental disorders published in the six most read newspapers in 2022 were examined. It has been concluded that the descriptive characteristics of individuals with mental disorders are often stated, schizophrenia and psychotic disorders are mentioned most, mental disorders are associated with delinquency and violent behaviour, these people are mostly represented by being detained as a result of the events, and negative concepts are frequently used in newspaper reports. Five sub-themes were determined under the main theme of "Negative Concepts": "Exaggerated Discourses", "Stigmatizing Discourses", "Discourses Targeting Mental Health", "Discourses That May Cause Negative Emotions", "Discourses Containing Misdescription". Newspaper items about mental disorders are represented as stigmatizing and misleading by using negative concepts. The sensitivity of media workers, the development of mental health policies and cooperation with mental health workers contribute to the recovery process of individuals with mental disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]