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Flashbulb memories (FBMs) refer to vivid and long-lasting autobiographical memories for the circumstances in which people learned of a shocking and consequential public event. A cross-national study across eleven countries aimed to investigate FBM formation following the first COVID-19 case news in each country and test the effect of pandemic-related variables on FBM. Participants had detailed memories of the date and others present when they heard the news, and had partially detailed memories of the place, activity, and news source. China had the highest FBM specificity. All countries considered the COVID-19 emergency as highly significant at both the individual and global level. The Classification and Regression Tree Analysis revealed that FBM specificity might be influenced by participants' age, subjective severity (assessment of COVID-19 impact in each country and relative to others), residing in an area with stringent COVID-19 protection measures, and expecting the pandemic effects. Hierarchical regression models demonstrated that age and subjective severity negatively predicted FBM specificity, whereas sex, pandemic impact expectedness, and rehearsal showed positive associations in the total sample. Subjective severity negatively affected FBM specificity in Turkey, whereas pandemic impact expectedness positively influenced FBM specificity in China and negatively in Denmark. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Black Handsworth: Race in 1980s Britain" by Kieran Connell is a valuable contribution to the study of Britain's post-war black population. The book explores the Handsworth district of Birmingham during the 1980s, focusing on the political organizations, visual productions, Rastafarianism, and everyday life of the Afro-Caribbean community. Connell's use of diverse sources, including archives, photography, film, music, and oral history, provides a comprehensive understanding of black life in Handsworth. While the book lacks some contextual information and contains minor factual inaccuracies, it is still highly recommended for researchers and students interested in black British history and post-war British history. [Extracted from the article]

Childhood obesity has become a major focus of public health and subject to increased news coverage. News can shape public understanding of childhood obesity by selective reporting (framing) which can affect policy support and weight stigma. As news is consumed on social media, comments on articles present a novel method to explore public understanding. This study examined how childhood obesity is framed by news articles on Facebook and how individuals commenting understand and react to these articles. This study used a qualitative research design. Facebook pages of 11 national UK news outlets were searched for news articles on childhood obesity published between May 2015 and May 2020. Of those, 30 articles were randomly selected. Framing analysis was used to determine whether childhood obesity was portrayed as a behavioral, societal or medical issue. Responding comments (N = 1,104) were grouped according to the dominant frame of the corresponding article and analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Of the 30 articles, 28 mentioned societal, 26 behavioral and 18 medical aspects of childhood obesity, highlighting that most articles included more than one frame. Three themes were generated from responding comments: Culprits and Remedies, Appraising Childhood Obesity and Making Sense of the News Article. Findings showed that comments related to Appraising Childhood Obesity differed between differently framed articles, while the other themes did not. This study highlights the need for improved communication on childhood obesity to address weight stigma and improve understanding of news articles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Journalism is presented as fundamental to democratic accountability in that news media are both able and expected to hold power to account. Such normative expectations, which justify the protections given journalists and news media, are most frequently studied with regards to state power as the natural object of press scrutiny. This article reports on a successful effort to conduct a replicable analysis of a paradigmatic case of corporate power, the UK chicken meat production industry, that asked whether and how newspapers hold corporate power to account. The analytic framework that we developed to support our two-stage framing analysis decomposed accountability into problematization, causal interpretation and attributions of responsibility, thus allowing us to systematically describe how newspapers shape the public debates in a large heterogeneous dataset. We examined a census of relevant articles from seven UK outlets published between 1985 and 2016 (N = 766). While we were pleased to find that our method, if labor intensive, was fully workable, we were concerned to find that media practice was not compatible with holding corporate power to account. These findings raise serious concerns at the levels of this case, for media practice and for media scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks at transgender media representations from the aspect of press regulation which is so far under-researched. Placing the analysis within the fragmented post-Leveson UK press landscape, it examines the two UK press watchdogs' provisions relating to transgender reporting. The study evaluates IPSO's and IMPRESS' editorial standards through the lens of queer legal theory, offering a fresh perspective on the key role of these bodies in establishing (trans)gender 'outsiders' and 'insiders' in the ongoing trans rights debate of which the press forms a key part. It is argued that, although both regulators have taken steps to tackle trans-discriminatory reporting, IMPRESS' approach seems to strike a more constructive balance between freedom of expression and trans people's rights than IPSO. The paper concludes by making recommendations for both press regulators to address the complexities of trans issues and tackle the discursive harm of transgender media 'othering' more effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under-investment in public service journalism has led to growing interest in the possibility of philanthropic support for the sector. Though long associated with non-profit journalism in North America, there is little tradition of philanthropy in UK journalism. This paper explains how recognition of public interest journalism as charitable can be achieved through more constructive interpretations of the existing law. Despite its initially conservative response, the Charity Commission has recently taken important steps towards recognising defined forms of journalism as charitable under the existing law. This paper reviews the democratic imperatives fulfilled by public interest journalism which justify such developments; and seeks to demonstrate how this framework for defining public interest journalism aligns with the public benefit requirement in charity law, opening up the possibility of new forms of charitably funded 'public benefit journalism'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It was significant that Britain, as the world's dominant sea power, led the way, as committing 'to such a stringent neutrality policy gave force to the concept of neutrality domestically as well as internationally'.[6] The chapter then charts how the neutrality policy fared in conflicts after 1870. Given the recent controversy concerning Britain and breaches of international law, Gabriela Frei's book on the attitudes of successive British governments to this issue in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is a timely study. Notes 1 Frei, I Great Britain, International Law, and the Evolution of Maritime Strategic Thought, 1856-1914 i , 12. 2 Frei, I Great Britain, International Law, and the Evolution of Maritime Strategic Thought, 1856-1914 i , 2. 3 Frei, I Great Britain, International Law, and the Evolution of Maritime Strategic Thought, 1856-1914 i , 24. 4 Frei, I Great Britain, International Law, and the Evolution of Maritime Strategic Thought, 1856-1914 i , 17. 5 Frei, I Great Britain, International Law, and the Evolution of Maritime Strategic Thought, 1856-1914 i , 17-18. 6 Frei, I Great Britain, International Law, and the Evolution of Maritime Strategic Thought, 1856-1914 i , 42. 7 Frei, I Great Britain, International Law, and the Evolution of Maritime Strategic Thought, 1856-1914 i , 84. 8 Frei, I Great Britain, International Law, and the Evolution of Maritime Strategic Thought, 1856-1914 i , 82. 9 Frei, I Great Britain, International Law, and the Evolution of Maritime Strategic Thought, 1856-1914 i , 2. 10 Frei, I Great Britain, International Law, and the Evolution of Maritime Strategic Thought, 1856-1914 i , 109. [Extracted from the article]

Academic freedom is a necessary principle. Current attempts to (re)conceptualise, (re)frame, and reduce the principles of free speech from universal concepts to specific and narrow conceptions are however underpinned by political expediency and accompanied by erosions to press freedom and protest rights. The current enacting and policing of academic freedom is purposely acontextual, colour-blind, and ignorant of differential costs of dissent and (non)compliance. This paper focuses instead on the interlinked conditions of precarity, neoliberalisation, internationalisation, digitisation, and state-encouraged intervention that lead to increased surveillance, (self-)censorship, and cultures of silencing, to show that women and people of colour are caught in the crosshairs of the 'culture wars' in unique ways. Drawing primarily on the United Kingdom Higher Education (UKHE) sector alongside other international examples, this paper contends that the conditions, structures, and policies around research and teaching amplify state-encouraged backlash against the teaching and research on specific topics. It shows that the renewed fervour for academic freedom continues to disguise bad faith ideologies whilst amplifying politicised interests keen to reinforce the status quo. Historically excluded and minoritised academics face new risks and greater pressures building on already deep-rooted institutional cultures of targeted silencing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[12] The chapter's most exciting aspect is Potter's cogent account of how the BBC's international news broadcasting intersected with the news industry, particularly news agencies like the UK-based Reuters. The first has to do with claims of BBC independence in relation to the negotiations leading to the 1937 establishment of overseas foreign-language broadcasting (i.e., Arabic-language broadcasting to the Middle East and Spanish and Portuguese broadcasting for South America). Notes 1 Potter, I Wireless Internationalism i , 3-6. 2 Potter, I Wireless Internationalism i , 5. 3 See Briggs, I The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom i , vols. [Extracted from the article]

British listeners were, as a result, less insulated from American approaches to broadcasting than histories that depict an unchallenged BBC broadcasting monopoly would have us believe. As Baade points out, it would be fascinating to trace the interconnections between overseas and domestic programming in the shift towards more popular types of radio: certainly, BBC staff with wartime experience of international broadcasting went on to play significant roles in directing the post-war Light Programme. In I Wireless Internationalism i , I sought to reveal the connections and borrowings between British and European international broadcasting, and to show how the BBC responded to and adapted elements of fascist propaganda broadcasting techniques. [Extracted from the article]

Potter shows deftly how interwar listeners in the UK were more globally-minded than we have given them credit for, tuning in with amusement to broadcasts from Paris and Moscow. Roundtable: Wireless Internationalism and Distant Listening: Britain, Propaganda, and the Invention of Global Radio, 1920-1939: Simon Potter, 2020 Oxford University Press, Oxford, £66, 256p., ISBN: 9780198800231 In I Wireless Internationalism and Distant Listening, i Simon Potter takes a British perspective to complicate our understanding of the geography of radio in the interwar period. [Extracted from the article]

With animals as the primary and intermediary vectors of COVID-19, we sought to understand the ways in which animals were represented in UK news media during the emergence of the global pandemic and how these portrayals impact the lives of humans and animals. Using the Lexis-Nexis online media archive, we searched for news media reports featuring animals during the emergence of COVID-19 in the UK from the period January–October 2020. We analyzed a total of 452 news articles from three UK newspapers: Daily Mail, The Sun (both tabloids), and The Guardian (a broadsheet). Newspaper articles were thematically coded and qualitatively analyzed for emergent themes. Using a trans-species lens, whereby we view the shared commonalities between species as a challenge to anthropocentric hierarchies of human dominance, we explore three main themes: "It's their fault," "It's not their fault," and "It's our fault." Each theme illustrates how animals are represented by news media in the attribution of blame and victimhood of those impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. Our results show that animals are utilized by today's polarized media as tools to promote the political and social ideals of the press and their respective readership. The tabloids used animals for the promotion of bigotry, xenophobia, and racism. In comparison, The Guardian held a pro-environmental stance by framing the zoonotic disease as a platform to challenge the human–animal dichotomy and advocate for environmental, human, and animal equality. Domestic companion animals received the greatest positive media coverage across the newspapers, particularly in relation to the value of the human–animal bond for human health during the lockdown. In comparison, across the broadsheet and tabloid press, animals in research received limited coverage. Research animals were neither recognized for their contribution to human health nor as vulnerable others impacted by COVID-19. The specific impacts of these themes upon animals are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Paralympic Games is the largest sporting competition for athletes with an impairment. This competition has, however, had limited news coverage in the past particularly compared to the Olympic Games. This study analyzes newspaper coverage of the 2016 Paralympic Games by two newspapers in 11 countries (China, Iran, Japan, Malaysia, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom). The coverage period spanned 7-19 September 2016. Text and pictures were coded according to page number, content, gender, sport, and nationality of person. Media content analysis was used to extract coverage of themes. Results are presented using descriptive statistics and frequency counts. Of the 623 articles and 541 photographs analysed, a small percentage (7.3%) were on the front pages of newspapers. Most articles and photographs (78.7%) were about athletes or teams. There was more coverage of male athletes (53.2%) and local athletes (71.6%). The Paralympic Games has historically received less newspaper coverage than the Olympic Games. This study examined newspaper coverage of the 2016 Paralympic Games from 11 countries. For the 2016 Rio Paralympic Games, newspaper coverage in most countries was good, lasting nearly the whole duration, and this also included a number of front page reports. The type of coverage and number of reports differ between countries. Generally, the highest medal winning countries gave more media attention to the Games. The news reports focused primarily on their local athletes and teams. Moreover, males had more news coverage than females overall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1976 David Murphy wrote his critique of the role of the UK regional press in local politics—The Silent Watchdog: The Press in Local Politics. Through the next two decades, local 'papers of record' attempted to report on the activities and decisions of their local councils regularly and diligently but the decline of the regional press in the twenty-first century has rendered Murphy's critique obsolete. This article will look at what was expected of local journalism in the 1970s. It will show what was delivered until the twenty-first century and then look at how local press coverage of local government has declined, raising the scenario of a 'local democratic deficit'1 whereby local politics in some communities receives little direct coverage, creating a danger of a disconnect between local government and local communities caused by the abandonment of its former role by the regional press. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the application of the journalism exception in UK data protection law. A number of uncertainties arise out of the case law of the CJEU and UK courts, as well as from the changes made to the journalism exception in the new data protection regime under the GDPR and DPA 2018. Three areas within the journalism exception will be discussed: the meaning of 'journalistic purposes', the substantive exemption from liability, and the procedural power to obtain a stay of proceedings. This article will identify the uncertainties affecting each of these three areas, and proposes possible ways by which these uncertainties may be resolved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Appearing in the news media is crucial for interest groups. When making a media presence, groups carefully frame their messages to push political processes in their preferred direction and to maintain organisational support. This article provides a cross-country comparison of the frames used by interest groups appearing in the news media. The article addresses the extent to which groups portray their demands as intended to further the interests of group members or other societal groups or to appeal to benefits to the economy or to the public at large. The analysis uses a dataset registering interest group appearances in the news media in Denmark and the UK. It includes 1,958 group appearances in two major UK newspapers and 3,284 appearances in two comparable Danish newspapers. Differences in frame use are demonstrated across the two countries; between different policy areas as well as between different types of interest groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This interview and response explores the functionalities of the digital platforms Digital Theatre+ (DT+), Drama Online and Cambridge University Press as represented by the interviewees, with a focus on Robert Delamere's DT+. Delamere discusses the history of DT+, and his vision for it to become a site where students can create 'remixes' of DT+ materials. My response focuses on the disparity between the platform aims and the reality of their use. I identify two reasons for this: wider structural problems in global implementations, and platform producers potentially misunderstanding the diverse modes of engagement with and use of their platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on archival material from the Black Cultural Archives, the British Library, and the Institute of Race Relations, this article sheds fresh light on a largely overlooked 1991 visit to Britain by controversial Black American preacher Al Sharpton following the racist murder of Black teenager Rolan Adams. The extraordinary response to Sharpton's arrival by the British mainstream press revealed racist patterns of news reporting and a chauvinistic rejection of 'outside agitators', while the minister's intervention drew a mixed response from local activists. However, the furore sparked by Sharpton's visit also helped to raise public awareness of Adams' murder and galvanise local Black communities, providing an important insight into anti-racist organising and British media coverage of high-profile racist incidents prior to the death of Stephen Lawrence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the often-overlooked legacies of the First World War is how the conflict established the media's role in remembrance. In the years that have followed, media's circulation of iconic images of national and local commemoration have enabled individuals to engage with public remembrance. This article takes a historical approach to First World War remembrance in Britain, looking at how the practices and meaning of remembrance became established, although they were never fixed but instead constantly shifting, reinvented and contested. They are also gendered, in remembrance, as in war, women, are often seen as to be playing supportive roles; yet within media texts, women have always found spaces to exert influence over who is remembered and how, as memories jostle for prominence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The risk of suicide is high in the transgender population. Imitative suicide occurs when excess suicidal behavior is observed following news media coverage of suicide. The purpose of this study is to evaluate how often UK newspapers adhere to suicide reporting guidelines designed to minimize imitative suicide when they report the suicides of transgender individuals. Methods: A newspaper archive was searched for articles about the suicides of transgender people published between 2007 and 2017. Two reviewers applied a checklist of responsible reporting practices to assess adherence to guidelines. Results: There were 79 articles meeting inclusion criteria. The mean number of guideline breaches was 3.9 (of a maximum 10), with the most commonly breached guidelines an inappropriate headline (70.9%) and failure to provide sources of support (60.8%). Every article breached at least one guideline. There was not a significant difference between the different newspapers in mean number of guideline breaches (p = 0.24). Conclusion: There is generally poor adherence to responsible reporting guidelines in UK newspapers when reporting the suicides of transgender people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reflects on the cultural representations of the last British veterans of the Great War, who passed away several years before the centenary commemorations. Focussing on Harry Patch (1898–2009) — celebrated as the last veteran to have fought on the Western Front — the article examines the ways in which Patch has served as a signal figure. The authors pay particular attention to the rhetorical motifs and narrative tropes of the popular press, evaluating how representations of Patch positioned him as a proxy not only for the generation who fought and died but as a focal point for working through contemporary perspectives on the meaning of the Great War. In so doing, they draw attention to the highly affective nature of this engagement, arguing that the loss of these veterans has not granted a form of closure but instead moved the territory of historical struggle to a new battlefield. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines press portrayals of and public reactions to a ‘mercy killing’ in 1930s England. May Brownhill, sixty-two, killed her ‘invalid’ adult son by giving him an overdose of aspirin and poisoning him with coal gas. Through the conventions of melodrama, May was portrayed in the press as a respectable, devoted and self-sacrificial mother deserving of sympathy. The case also resonated with contemporary debates about euthanasia. It is an historical example of popular leniency, whereby although guilty of a crime, an individual is not seen as deserving of punishment. The case contributes to our understanding of how popular leniency was shaped by gender, class and age, and by contemporary views on ‘mercy killing’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With his latest major contribution to the understanding of the link between maritime power and British strategy in the First World War, Nicholas Lambert consolidates a number of things. Lambert has reconstructed the global wheat crisis that gripped the entire world and in particular Great Britain's war effort in late 1914 and early 1915. The War Lords and the Gallipoli Disaster: How Globalized Trade led Britain to its Worst Defeat of the First World War: by Nicholas A. Lambert, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2021, 280 pp., £32.99 (hardback), ISBN 978-0-19-754520-1. [Extracted from the article]

Carter argues that the "history of everyday life" was formed, and eventually deconstructed, in relation to different motivations and forces from those that produced the academic social history of the 1960s. Laura Carter's I Histories of Everyday Life i tracks the development and decline of a popular form of social history in Britain in the twentieth century. Carter argues that the history of everyday life was seen as "a suitable social history for "ordinary" pupils ... because it related to everyday experience" (60). [Extracted from the article]

During a few short months following the outbreak of war in 1914, Britain’s press was rife with reports of what was heralded as a new ‘social problem’. The alleged impending birth of thousands of ‘war babies’ to unmarried young women and girls, said to have been fathered by men recently departed for the Western Front, was widely discussed but ultimately proved to be largely fallacious. This article examines the extraordinary ‘war babies’ episode through the lens of the moral panic, focusing on the impact of exceptional wartime circumstances upon the shifting and conflicting sets of gendered, moral values and attitudes of the period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the concept of motherhood and peace in the British women’s movement during the Great War. It does so by focusing on the Women’s International League (WIL)—the British section of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). Drawing on the WIL papers, the article shows how a section of the movement continued to lobby for female representation during the war alongside its calls for peace. WIL referred to the social and cultural experiences of motherhood, which allowed it to challenge the discourse on gender and to build bridges between women of former enemy nations. This case study examines how maternalist rhetoric influenced feminism and sheds light on how British women attempted to enter the political sphere by linking women’s maternal experience to their demands for citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article, focusing on journalists working for Turkish-language newspapers in the United Kingdom, examines the way that journalists working in ethnic media perceive their professional roles and performance. Ethnic media have different forms and functions to mainstream media and present different challenges and pressures for journalists, reflecting their communities’ consumption habits and social, economic and political circumstances. This study, based on interviews conducted with journalists and editors working for Turkish-language newspapers, suggests three conceptual dimensions that can be operationalized as a model to help understand ethnic media journalists’ professional roles and performance: perception of audience, relation to power and professional ideals. These dimensions, which may overlap in practice, aim to provide the basis for studying ideas and attitudes towards journalism and the context of production within ethnic media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, a number of high-profile privacy cases involving children have come before the English courts. This article draws on developments from ‘PJS v News group, Weller v Associated Newspapers’ and ‘Murray vExpress Newspaper’. In these cases, the courts considered concepts of welfare and well-being when balancing a child’s article 8 right to privacy with the article 10 right to freedom of expression for the media to reporton matters involving or affecting children. The article argues that by contrast, press regulation and its enforcement sometimes lag behind legal developments. The article draws on comparative research of fifty-seven press codes from press regulators around the world to identify patterns and gaps in ethical press standards regarding the representation of children. The article recommends ways to enhance the relevance and robustness of press regulation to better protect and promote the rights and interests of children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recent (2016) Office for National Statistics report stated that dementia is now “the leading cause of death” in England and Wales. Ever fixated with the syndrome (an unfailingly newsworthy topic), the British press was quick to respond to the bulletin, consistently headlining that dementia was the nation’s “biggest killer,” while (re)formulating other aspects of the report in distorting and emotive metaphorical terms. In this paper we examine how the media, through use of a recurring set of linguistic and visual semiotic tropes, portrayed dementia as an agentive entity, a “killer,” which remorselessly attacks its “victims.” Such a broadly loaded and sensationalist representation, we argue, not only construed dementia as a direful and pernicious disease, but also, crucially, obscured the personal and social contexts in which the syndrome is understood and experienced (not least by people with dementia themselves). This intensely lurid type of representation not only fails to address the ageist misinformation and common misunderstandings that all too commonly surround dementia, but is also likely to exacerbate the stress and depression frequently experienced by people with dementia and their families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The liberty of the press became one of the main topics of public debate in the 1720s and 1730s in response to Walpole’s restrictive press policy. This debate was carried on mainly in newspapers such as theCraftsmanand theLondon Journal. Country and Court writers did not limit their discussions to legal questions, but conducted a lively debate about what press freedom actually was, and what role the press should have in political life. Among other things, they discussed to what extent it was appropriate for the press to take on an anti-governmental role. This debate is important, not least because it is a foil for one of the ‘classical’ eighteenth-century texts on the problem of press freedom, David Hume’s essay ‘Of the Liberty of the Press’. The debate reveals to what extent, and in what respects, Hume was breaking new ground in this essay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The year 2012 marked the thirtieth anniversary of the Falklands War, amidst a revival of public discussion of the conflict due to the Argentine demand that the issue of sovereignty be reconsidered. This article will explore how the figure of the ‘enemy’ was constructed by the British newspaper discourse around the anniversary of the war by offering an analysis of language and press imagery in a selection of tabloid and quality British national newspapers from 2012. The article argues that the British press made little effort to show Argentina's position. The Falklands War of 1982 continued to be justified and validated as a just war by the British press in 2012, supporting official positions and presenting a negative image of the Argentinian enemy ‘other’. This brought about a reinvention and reinforcement of British national identities in connection with the war, 30 years after its conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Utilising critical discourse analysis with corpus-assisted methods of analysis, this study examines the representation of China by English-language newspapers in China versus media in the UK. The study focuses on the linguistic realisation of attitudinal meanings in news reports about the One Belt, One Road (OBOR) Initiative. A sample of news reports by China Daily and Financial Times, dated between March 2015 and March 2016, was collected. Assisted by the corpora and corpus software AntConc and ConcGram, the study first investigated themes from the headlines and key paragraphs in the corpora of China Daily and Financial Times and then compared the classification scheme of the lexis using the concordance lines of key concepts in the Belt and Road Initiative in the two corpora. It was found that China Daily, like other Chinese mainstream media, has attempted to emphasise the initiative's positive attributes and construct positive images of China as a peace-loving nation, an international cooperator, and an emerging global economic and responsible power. Images of China as represented in Financial Times are mixed and conflicting: on Utilising critical discourse analysis with corpus-assisted methods of analysis, this study examines the representation of China by English-language newspapers in China versus media in the UK. The study focuses on the linguistic realisation of attitudinal meanings in news reports about the One Belt, One Road (OBOR) Initiative. A sample of news reports by China Daily and Financial Times, dated between March 2015 and March 2016, was collected. Assisted by the corpora and corpus software AntConc and ConcGram, the study first investigated themes from the headlines and key paragraphs in the corpora of China Daily and Financial Times and then compared the classification scheme of the lexis using the concordance lines of key concepts in the Belt and Road Initiative in the two corpora. It was found that China Daily, like other Chinese mainstream media, has attempted to emphasise the initiative's positive attributes and construct positive images of China as a peace-loving nation, an international cooperator, and an emerging global economic and responsible power. Images of China as represented in Financial Times are mixed and conflicting: on the one hand, China is portrayed as having a significant impact on the global economy; on the other hand, images of China as an authoritarian state, a militant and obstructive force, and a geopolitical threat prevail. The paper concludes with a recommendation that China continues to develop a locally grounded and globally minded media practice, in parallel with its renewed efforts to underline the power of Chinese culture in national development and international politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aidsmap is a frequently updated, comprehensive source of information on HIV and AIDS and is for people living with AIDS, their families, health care professionals, patients, and members of the public wishing to know more about this field. Strengths of the site include the broad range of information it contains, the constantly updated newsfeeds, online tools to assist people living with HIV and AIDS, and the catalogue of resources in 21 languages in addition to English. Much of the information is categorized by complexity and language to one of four levels, enabling quick identification of target audiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers whether there was a national press before and during the Second World War. After considering the terms used by historians to describe the UK national press, and how it is defined, it looks at aspects of the industry that made it appear national and those which did not. The question of just how national the press was between 1939 and 1945 is then addressed, followed by some concluding comments. It argues that the wartime press was characterised by a high degree of uniformity in terms of organisation, co-operation and content, throwing into relief the more diffuse nature of the industry before and after. The idea of the national press downplays the extent to which newspapers varied considerably in readership, geographical reach, political and social significance. It obscures the important role of the provincial press, abstracting mass circulation London daily morning papers, from their place within an evolving network of mass communications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses how D-Day and its aftermath were reported in the British press. It focusses on the logistical operation that shaped the news flow from the front line back to the Ministry of Information headquarters at Senate House, London, and out again to British newspaper readers, and explores the extent and range of news reporting that this made possible. It argues that the ways in which the news operation surrounding the D-Day invasion was organised and pursued can best be described as a mutually sustaining collaboration between the military on the one hand and the British media, including the press, on the other. Far from being an independent 'Fourth Estate', when it came to D-Day and the Normandy invasion the British newspaper press was--and absolutely considered itself to be --another weapon of war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The popular press is often seen as the 'voice of the people'. However, an intensive examination of the Daily Mirror, Daily Mail and Daily Express during the Second World War demonstrates some problems with this claim. In fact, the wartime popular press was uninterested in popular political movements, notably the Common Wealth Party, which had a string of by-election successes in the second half of the war. They only took notice of the organisation after it was electorally successful, and even then, its focus was less on its popular support than on the political elites within the party. This paper discusses the Common Wealth Party's relationship with the press and the implications this has for our understanding of the way non-mainstream political parties were represented in the wartime popular press. It adds to current scholarship by presenting the first detailed discussion of the Common Wealth Party's coverage in the British press, and widens the debate on the role of the press during the war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on extant literature placing consumption as a dominant feature of British life by the interwar period, this article explores how commercial advertising drew on that position on the British home front of the Second World War to explain the part it played within the wider war effort. It reveals how advertising messages stressed free consumption as an indicator of democracy and as a symbol of British national identity. The advertisements analysed highlight how this, to date, overlooked channel of propaganda fell in line with the prevailing narrative of the war, supporting, reinforcing and perpetuating the common vision of that conflict. Whilst it is not suggested that these often fanciful representations were accepted unquestioningly at the time, it is argued that the widespread circulation of such an unequivocal version of events became the definitive, non-negotiable understanding of what Britain's war was about and how ordinary people could play their part within it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the portrayal of evacuation in the Daily Express during the Second World War, in particular it will analyse how the Daily Express's coverage of evacuation represented the family. It addresses the ways in which family are presented in the evacuation stories and the extent to which this developed and changed over time by conducting the first in-depth quantitative analysis of the Express content in wartime. There is a central enigma at the heart of the Express's evacuation coverage, and it requires greater investigation. How did a popular newspaper, which defined itself as a 'family friendly newspaper', discuss a scheme which intrinsically broke up 'normal' family life? While the Evacuation Scheme broke up individual families, thereby changing a central aspect of British society, it ultimately sought to create a new type of 'family' in its place, with new foster families taking on the role of 'temporary parents', providing familial continuity and stability for children in the countryside. Ultimately, the Daily Express wanted to be useful to its readers and help them adapt to their new wartime lives, however, its image of 'new families' in the newspaper was based upon a traditional, more conservative, image of family life in wartime. Men and women occupied traditional roles within the family unit, with the images and ideas regarding family used to reassure the Express's readership, demonstrating that particular social values were constant despite wartime difficulties. This article demonstrates why it is so important to study newspaper content in detail, showing that the popular press is central to our understanding of wartime life and the contrasting opinions, experiences and ideas which characterised British society in 1939. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 1 January 2014 the transitional controls on free movement adopted by the UK when Bulgaria and Romania joined the EU in 2007, ended. This paper demonstrates how the discourses of politicians relating to their removal, amplified via news media contributed to the extension of state bordering practices further into everyday life. Based on ethnographic research into everyday bordering during 2013–15 the paper uses an intersectional framework to explore how this homogenizing, bordering discourse was experienced and contested from differently situated perspectives of Roma and non-Roma social actors from established communities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article addresses the neglect in academic studies of film culture of the publicist’s role, particularly in British film production and distribution. Taking the last decade of the British studio system (the 1950s) and the leading British studio (Rank) as its timeframe and focus, the article explores the role of the publicist in the film industry and film culture. After reviewing contemporary debates about publicity strategies and the importance of star creation, the article identifies leading practitioners and then discusses their relationship to the newspaper press before offering a job description for the film publicist and the significance of women in the profession. The second section considers the interactions between publicists, contract artists and studio managers, noting the importance of personal appearances by stars and their frequent frustrations with the way they were treated and used by the Rank Organisation. The third section deals with Rank’s mid-decade shift towards markets in continental Europe as British exhibition revenues declined, and the impact this had on promotional practices, particularly with the growing importance of overseas film festivals. The fourth section focuses on the production of pictorial publicity, considering in some detail the roles played by the studio photographer, Cornel Lucas, and the Italian poster artists who were used to give a contemporary and continental gloss to Rank’s products. The final section briefly describes and accounts for the decline of Rank as a film production company and the consequence of this for its promotional activities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores the ‘ontological rift’ between the digital and the material archive of political broadside ballads. It outlines the ways in which the ballad’s original diversity has been eroded and homogenised by multiple processes of remediation, including digitisation over time, and investigates the limitations of digitisation projects in delivering the multifarious and widely scattered broadside ballad archive online. Finally, it considers how far digitisation projects have unintentionally ‘concretised’ not only older interpretive practices in relation to the ballad as genre, but also outdated narratives regarding the ballad’s place in the news networks and political culture of seventeenth-century England. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Those suffering with food allergies and intolerances need to consider risk every day, and professional organisations are increasingly enrolled in this risk management venture (e.g. offering support, developing legislation, and enforcing laws). Following the release of new food allergen rules in the UK, theDaily Telegraph, a national broadsheet newspaper, published a letter and an article in March 2015 endorsed by 100 chefs criticising the legislation. The chefs felt that innovation and creativity were being harmed by the requirement to state the presence of 14 allergens in the dishes they cooked. Following the release, many food allergen-concerned consumers utilised social media to share their views. In this article we use qualitative research data, comments posted online and collected between 9 and 16 March 2015, to explore how claimants positioned themselves and others in the ensuing online debate, and how the debate itself was framed. The data included traditional news articles, online forum comments, individual Twitter posts, and Twitter discussions. We identified frames across the debate discourse that emphasised medical concerns around managing risks associated with food allergy/intolerance, the assignment of responsibility, fairness of access, the political nature of the debate, and the financial implications involved. We draw on Positioning Theory to illustrate how user-positions can be defined, redefined, and challenged in the light of new or varying information. Our findings have implications for understanding communication around managing food risks from both a consumer and business perspective, and understanding the progression of debates through both traditional and new media platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the role of feminist periodicals in mobilizing consensus for and against welfare reform measures such as the endowment of motherhood and birth control in the 1920s. It argues that the tendency to characterize the differences between ‘old’ (equalitarian) and ‘new’ (welfare) feminists as a conflict between equality and difference has been reductive and misleading. Both camps aimed to liberate women from the domestic sphere by ensuring opportunities and access in the sphere of work/professions, but for welfare feminists, equality was not enough because it accepted a world structured for men. The concept of self-determination is central to how new feminists like Eleanor Rathbone attempted to redefine the home and maternal labour as they championed controversial policies aimed at ensuring a degree of economic and reproductive autonomy for women. An analysis of the debates that played out in and between theWoman’s LeaderandTime and Tidein the 1920s underscores the role of the feminist press in the processes of political and strategic communication, at a time when self-declared feminists were trying to achieve a range of goals in a context of hostile reaction. The article encourages a reassessment of the ambitious goals of welfare feminism in the interwar period and suggests that these struggles (often obscured by ‘equality’ feminism) have never completely gone away. They resurface in various forms—from ‘wages for housework’ campaigns to assessing the conditions and economics of motherhood for working women—all of which underscore the impact of the welfare state on relations in the family and the home. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The wives of politicians are a longstanding feature of electoral campaign coverage in the UK, and yet until now there has been no systematic study examining their role and mediated representation in political reporting. By drawing upon a sample of 630 newspaper items from five daily newspapers, this article will demonstrate that between 1918 and 2010 the representation of political wives has changed in three main ways. Firstly, their role in the campaign process changed from focusing more on their political function as active campaigners, to becoming more focused on their private lives. Secondly, the coverage has narrowed from focusing on a broad range of politicians’ wives, to being centred almost entirely on the spouses of political party leaders. The final change is that the press reportage of politicians’ spouses has become increasingly negative and critical of their presence on the campaign trail. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents findings from a qualitative study in Britain on international Muslim students’ perceptions of media portrayals of Islam. Eighteen international students were interviewed; they came from a range of countries so that a diversity of opinion could be gathered. The paper reveals that participants perceived the representation of Islam in the British media to be negative, being associated with conservatism, economic backwardness and terrorism. Participants criticised the media’s tendency towards the homogenisation of Muslims and of Muslim communities and countries. They also called on media organisations to balance the negative portrait of Islam with positive news stories and to be more responsible in their reporting of terrorism. Interestingly, it could be observed that their direct consumption of UK media was limited, pointing to the possibility that their views were either “discursively” driven or were the product of “passive media consumption”. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the theory of instrumental actualization in mediated conflicts, the mass media tend to exaggerate events consistent with the editorial line. This theory was tested using press coverage in Germany, Switzerland, France, and the United Kingdom on the Japanese seaquake, the tsunami it caused, and the nuclear disaster of Fukushima. Within a period of seven weeks after the seaquake, the coverage in the four countries in 27 national newspapers and magazines on the three events was analyzed. As hypothesized from theory, German and Swiss media concentrated on Fukushima and stressed its relevance to domestic nuclear plants, whereas French and British media placed a greater emphasis on the tsunami and rarely related the nuclear catastrophe in Japan to domestic nuclear programs. In addition, there were remarkable correlations between the views of journalists and the bias of statements on nuclear energy presented in their news sections. Findings are discussed and related to the theory of public opinion and political decisions in liberal democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article asks questions about the ways in which female politicians are depicted in press coverage. Previous research has explored the ways in which female politicians are constructed as “other” from the male politician norm, where “men were taken to stand for the whole human population.” Other work has shown that coverage emphasises their appearance or femininity. However, there has been less research on the visibility of women in politics in our media: women not only need to be involved in politics, they need to be seen to be doing political work. Through a content analysis of British press coverage using samples from the last twenty years, we examine the relative visibility of women MPs compared to men, the extent to which their voice is heard, and the context of the coverage. We argue this may well contribute to deterring women from taking part in parliamentary politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article demonstrates the reconceptualisation of female criminality in interwar British popular culture. It argues that in fiction and the popular press, the period signalled the rise of the strategic female career criminal who challenged traditional gendered patterns of law-breaking, appropriated wider notions of fashionable modernity and transgressed social and geographic boundaries as poorer women embraced new opportunities for masquerade and used crime for upward social mobility. The article shows that the modern female criminal reflected broader shifts and changes in opportunities and roles for women, suggesting that she functions as a prism through which to explore wider debates and anxieties around femininity, 1918–1939. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article analyses a television broadcast in England in 1957 in response to the Wolfenden Report (Wolfenden, 1957) into homosexuality and prostitution. Here I argue that those participants in the broadcast who are sympathetic with liberal reforms of the legislation on homosexuality utilize discourses related to normality and the public/private domains to discursively construct the Wolfenden homonormative male. In addition, I also show how, particularly through the trope of homonormativity, both the heterosexual and homosexual audiences are interpellated by the discourses exploited within the broadcast as publics whose subjectivities are reconfigured toward Wolfenden homonormativity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]