17 results on '"Moss, Giles"'
Search Results
2. How accountable are digital platforms?
- Author
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Ford, Heather and Moss, Giles
- Subjects
bepress|Social and Behavioral Sciences|Communication|Communication Technology and New Media ,bepress|Social and Behavioral Sciences ,bepress|Social and Behavioral Sciences|Communication ,SocArXiv|Arts and Humanities ,SocArXiv|Social and Behavioral Sciences ,SocArXiv|Social and Behavioral Sciences|Communication ,bepress|Arts and Humanities ,SocArXiv|Social and Behavioral Sciences|Communication|Communication Technology and New Media - Abstract
This chapter focuses on the accountability of platforms – a key question for researchers of digital politics. We set out a research agenda for answering the question of how platform power is held accountable that is both empirical and normative. Empirically, we emphasize the need to trace how accountability actually operates in practice. What accountability mechanisms exist, how are they used by publics, how do platforms respond, and with what effects? At the same time, we outline a normative agenda to investigate what genuine accountability requires and how existing accountability practices compare to this standard. Informed by deliberative approaches to democracy, and drawing in particular on Rainer Forst’s work on justification, we argue that the accountability of platforms is a question of their power being justified adequately to affected publics and that this depends on the quality of the discursive processes through which decisions about platforms are justified. Focusing on the quality of discursive processes allows us to distinguish critically between cases where publics merely accept platform power, unreflectively and in contexts of limited information and choice, to cases where power is justified through good reasons tested through inclusive public discourse.
- Published
- 2019
3. Living With(in) Copyright Law: What is it, how does it work, how could it change? Project Report
- Author
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Edwards, Lee, Moss, Giles, and Karvelyte, Kristina
- Subjects
ComputingMilieux_LEGALASPECTSOFCOMPUTING - Abstract
This study is underpinned by the principle that copyright policy is a matter of public interest, and as such, should be a subject of public discussion and debate, so that the eventual implementation of copyright is one that attracts a general level of agreement among all affected parties. It builds on an earlier research project1 that examined the ways in which copyright was understood and evaluated by industry, activist groups and users (see Edwards et al, 2013, Edwards et al, 2015b, Klein et al, 2015). This earlier work argued that users should be viewed as ‘sources of legitimate justifications rather than dysfunctional consumers to be educated or prosecuted’ and identified the need for a more deliberative and democratic process of copyright policymaking (Edwards et al, 2013: 10). However, little research has delved further into public opinions about copyright, explored how they might be formed, and considered what might happen when members of the public are given a broader range of information about copyright from which to form their opinions. The purpose of this research project was to investigate how people would engage with a deliberative process, where they were given the time and space and a range of information to reflect on the complex issue of copyright. The event ‘Living With(in) Copyright Law’ was a deliberative exercise that brought 88 members of the Leeds public together over one weekend to discuss the nature of copyright law, its implementation, and ways it might change. Participants were provided with information about copyright from advocates and experts in the field and then asked to discuss key questions related to copyright duration, copyright exceptions, and copyright enforcement and penalties. We found that the participants engaged enthusiastically with the event and that the deliberative process increased their knowledge of the subject, generated reflective critique and provided them with a broader basis for their understanding. We adopted an unusual methodological approach to the study in order to be able to find out as much as possible about people’s engagement during the event. No specialist knowledge of copyright was required of participants, although some had more detailed knowledge than others. We assumed that their understanding of copyright would be a product of the current information and media environment, as well as their own personal and work lives, and the materials provided for the event drew on news stories and examples of how copyright is used in day-to-day life and popular culture, in order to reflect the different ways in which copyright is discussed.
- Published
- 2017
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
4. The mediated city : the news in a post-industrial context.
- Author
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Coleman, Stephen, Birchall, Chris, Blumler, Jay G., Firmstone, Julie, Moss, Giles, Parry, Katy, Stamper, Judith, and Thumim, Nancy
- Subjects
Journalism -- England -- Leeds ,Journalism ,LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Journalism - Abstract
Summary: A radically alternative exploration of news circulation that asks: do we even know what news is?
- Published
- 2016
5. Known or knowing publics? Social media data mining and the question of public agency
- Author
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Kennedy, Helen, primary and Moss, Giles, additional
- Published
- 2015
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
6. Studying Real-Time Audience Responses to Political Messages: A New Research Agenda.
- Author
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COLEMAN, STEPHEN, MOSS, GILES, and MARTINEZ-PEREZ, ALVARO
- Subjects
NEWS audiences ,POLITICAL agenda ,LIKES & dislikes ,POLITICAL communication ,CRITICAL analysis - Abstract
Real-time response methods, which were developed by media and communication researchers as early as the 1940s, have significant potential for understanding media audiences today. However, this potential is not realized fully by current methods such as "the worm," which are limited to collecting positive and negative responses and fail to examine why audience members respond as they do. This article advocates a new research agenda for understanding how audiences respond to political messages through real-time response methods. Instead of measuring preferences, we suggest that realtime response methods should focus on people's sense of whether their democratic capabilities are advanced--an approach that would provide a more critical as well as a more nuanced understanding of how audiences respond to political communication. We describe an innovative Web-based app our team has designed to capture audience responses to political messages, and we outline some key questions we hope to address in future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2018
7. Convincing claims? Democracy and representation in post-9/11 Britain
- Author
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Moss Giles and O'Loughlin Ben
- Subjects
Government ,Sociology and Political Science ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Alienation ,Poison control ,Domestic policy ,CONTEST ,Democracy ,Representation (politics) ,Politics ,Law ,Sociology ,media_common ,Law and economics - Abstract
This article is about political representation and representative claim making, taking as its backdrop the ongoing public controversy and disaffection concerning the British government's policy and conduct in the 'war on terror'. We investigate ethnographic-style data that chart the responses of citizens to foreign and domestic policy in the war on terror and in particular their responses to the representation and justification of policy decisions by political leaders. Our focus is not on political representatives and their intentions, but on the representations of objects and identities in political discourse and how citizens respond to these representations. We suggest that despite the existence of matters of potentially shared concern, such as 'Iraq' and 'terrorism', the representations offered by the British government have often been too certain, fixed and direct, making it difficult for citizens to comprehend or connect to their representations as meaningful and negotiable. Following Bruno Latour, we describe this mode of representation as 'fundamentalist', and contrast it with a 'constructivist' mode of more contingent representations where politicians take into account and can be taken into account. Our analysis suggests citizens respond to fundamentalist claims in several ways. For some, the response has been antagonism, alienation and a lack of belief in the ability of democratic politics to arrive at responsible decisions on shared problems and concerns. For others, however, inadequate representative claims generate a demand for the construction of more nuanced, complex representations, even acting as a spur for some to contest the claims through political engagement. © 2008 Political Studies Association.
- Published
- 2008
8. How different are branding strategies in the pharmaceutical industry versus fast mmoving consumer goods ?
- Author
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Schuiling, Isabelle, Moss, Giles, Louvain School of Management - Marketing, UCL - ESPO/IAG - Département d'administration et de gestion, and UCL - School of Management
- Abstract
The objective of this paper is to analyse the branding strategies used currently in the pharmaceutical industry and compare it to the best practices in Fast Moving Consumer goods. First the authors review the differences in the way branding is defined and organised in pharmaceuticals versus FMCG and identify why branding could be leveraged in the pharmaceutical industry to help it return to strong growth in the future. Second, the authors analyse in detail what branding strategies are currently used within pharmaceuticals and FMCG. The choice of brand names strategies, the level of brand globalisation, the use of brand extension and co-branding as well the situation of brand portfolio management are compared. Based on this benchmarking, the authors offer recommendations to guide future branding development successfully in the pharmaceutical industry.
- Published
- 2003
9. Researching Local News in a Big City: A Multimethod Approach.
- Author
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COLEMAN, STEPHEN, THUMIM, NANCY, and MOSS, GILES
- Subjects
CITIES & towns ,MEDIATION ,URBAN communication ,MASS media ,PRESS - Abstract
Reflecting on recent research in the United Kingdom, we consider how to investigate the mediation of news in a contemporary city. We put forward the notion of a "media ecology" to capture the relationships between varied news media and practices--from mainstream news media and community media to the everyday circulation of news through local grapevines--and to explore how individuals and groups relate to the city and to one another. We outline the methodological challenges and decisions we faced in mapping such a complex thing as a media ecology and then in seeking to describe how it operates and to explain the difference it makes to the lives of city dwellers. We advocate the use of multiple methods because none could have provided an adequate explanation of the media ecology or the mediation of news in the city on its own. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2016
10. A digital coffeehouse? : exploring the longitudinal Twitter discussion surrounding the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union
- Author
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Wellings, Thomas Samuel, Moss, Giles, and Birchall, Christopher
- Abstract
This thesis seeks to longitudinally assess the quality of public debate within the Twitter discussion of Brexit, undertaken through a mixed-method approach that combines quantitative and qualitative measures, as well as human coded and computational elements. To undertake this research, a corpus of N=450,000 tweets have been retrospectively gathered across four years, from February 2016 until February 2020, allowing my research to draw conclusions based upon trends across time. The theoretical framework is predominantly informed by Habermas's public sphere theory, which establishes the basis for my empirical research. Specifically, I argue that quality public debate should be free from polarisation and distortions in power relations, being an accessible space that promotes rational discussion that aids in the formation of informed public opinion. Within the literature review, I demonstrate that the EU referendum suffered from a deliberative deficit, which may have negatively impacted discussion on the platform and challenged the legitimacy of the 2016 referendum result. Through the empirical findings, I then highlight several issues that constrain Twitter's ability to facilitate healthy public debate within the context of the UK-EU discussion, with several measures pointing to a long-term decrease in the quality of the conversation. However, a number of the empirical findings are highly nuanced, which may reflect the complex nature of political discussion on the platform Twitter. In presenting the empirical findings, this thesis challenges previously held assumptions about the UK-EU discussion on Twitter, as well as contributes to new understandings regarding the quality of contentious political debate on the platform.
- Published
- 2022
11. Everyday civic practices in online assemblages : social media, civic virtue, and collective participation in China
- Author
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Wang, Ke, Thornham, Helen, and Moss, Giles
- Subjects
302.23 - Published
- 2021
12. Social media, protests and the dynamics of civil society in Bulgaria
- Author
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Konstantinova, Nely Dimitrova, Firmstone, Julie, and Moss, Giles
- Subjects
306.2 - Abstract
This study focuses on the emerging practices of social mobilisation via social media in Bulgaria. Most studies on this topics have so far ignored the countries of the post-socialist block, which, similarly to elsewhere around the globe, saw a wave of protests between 2011-2014, spurred by disillusionment with the reality of the “Transition”. Social movement studies in general have hardly been applied to the dissident movements or their legacy in Eastern Europe, but instead activism in the region has been mainly studied from a “civil society” perspective, which has suffered from a too narrow definition and problematic normative theoretical assumptions that often “de-politicise” its aims. This thesis addresses some of these gaps and conceptual problems in order to try to broaden our understanding of the role social media (can) play for contentious politics, and by extension democracy, in new democracies like Bulgaria. I take the view that in considering social media and its relations with contentious politics we are interested in social change (Fenton 2016). However, assuming that the latter is necessarily envisioned in radical democratic or progressive terms ignores cases where that is not the case, as well as the anti-democratic tendencies that can arise from the political use of social media. Drawing on radical democratic theory (Mouffe 1992 2009) and the notion of “uncivil society” Kopecky and Mudde (2003), my conceptualisation of civil society thus envisages theoretically, and assess empirically, a wider range and forms of civic association and mobilisation. By focusing on the social media practices in context of groups of civic actors from different ideological backgrounds, organisational structures and with different political agendas, I conceptualise social media as a contested public “space” where different manifestations of the (often polarised) Bulgarian civil society appear in a hegemonic struggle - one that is at the same time between actual citizen groups, and between idea(s) or discourse(s) about the meaning of “democratic citizenship”. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with activists and content and discourse analysis of social media communication pertaining to different protest mobilisations, I explore the complexities, the contested legitimacy and unclear political representation relating to different civil society actors and the role played by social media in their struggle for trust, visibility, recognition, and legitimacy. I also consider the wider democratic implications by interrogating sweeping claims about the democratic potential of social media and their affinity to participatory grassroots and/or populist politics.
- Published
- 2019
13. The politics of the libre commons.
- Author
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Berry, David M. and Moss, Giles
- Subjects
OPEN source software ,COMPUTER software ,DEMOCRACY ,FREE material ,COMMERCIAL products - Abstract
The project of 'free culture' is committed to the creation of a cultural space, rather like the 'public domain', seeking to complement/replace that of proprietary cultural commodities and privatized meaning. This has been given a new impetus with the birth of the Creative Commons. This organization has sought to introduce cultural producers across the world to the possibilities of sharing, co-operation and commons-based peer-production by creating a set of interwoven licenses for creators to append to their artwork, music and text. In this paper, we chart the connections between this movement and the early Free Software and Open Source movements and question whether underlying assumptions that are ignored or de-politicized are a threat to the very free culture that the project purports to save. We then move to suggest a new discursive project linked to notions of radical democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2006
14. Net neutrality policymaking : a comparative study of the UK and the USA
- Author
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Pothong, Kruakae, Lax, Stephen, and Moss, Giles
- Subjects
384.3 - Abstract
Net neutrality is a hotly debated and contested policy for broadband Internet access provision. In principle, net neutrality prescribes no discrimination by the type or size of data packet exchanged over the Internet. This principle has fostered innovation and economic growth. The non-discriminatory principle ingrained in Internet architecture has also made it the ultimate platform for convergence of technology, business and service. However, the content, businesses and services that the Internet supports, particularly rich content such as online audio-visual services, are pushing the existing Internet network infrastructure to its limits. The imbalance of growing demands for bandwidth and relatively static supply of network capacity has sparked a policy debate over network management principles for Internet access provision. The interdependent yet competing interests of network and content providers and all levels of convergence taking place on the Internet make net neutrality policymaking extremely challenging. To explain emerging net neutrality policies in the US and UK, this research examines the net neutrality policymaking process based on the understanding that the process is both structured and actor-driven. Treating policymaking as a communicative process, it identifies as the research data the formal communication and policy actors’ accounts of their informal communication during the policymaking process. An analytical framework that emphasises the interaction between structural factors and policy actors is then applied to both sets of data. This research argues in support of the position that net neutrality policies, like other polices, are communicative, structured and actor-driven. The challenges in developing net neutrality policy and policy measures result from the convergence of transmission infrastructure and content, and the interdependent yet competing values and interests underpinning the provision and consumption of these services.
- Published
- 2015
15. The discursive construction of online Chinese nationalism
- Author
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Ma, Yiben, Moss, Giles, Cavanagh, Allison, and Rawnsley, Gary
- Subjects
302.2 - Abstract
The year 2008 witnessed an explosion of online Chinese nationalism, triggered by a series of incidents relating to the Beijing Olympics. In this thesis, I mainly examine the significance and relevance of the internet to the studies of Chinese nationalism, and investigate the extent to which the internet can contribute to the shaping of Chinese nationalism in contemporary Chinese society. I treat online Chinese nationalism as discursive, because the production of online nationalist information, the construction of online nationalist identities and the discussion of online nationalist actions, are all discursive practices which are intrinsically related to the political use of language. Therefore, I argue that the study of online Chinese nationalism should entail critical linguistic analysis of the online texts that discuss Chinese nationalism. Rather than seeing nationalist texts as sheer expressions of nationalist concerns or claims, I am interested in how nationalist texts are made linguistically, and see linguistic features, structures and organisations of the texts as clues for unveiling the underlying nationalist ideologies and power relations. I mainly focus on the online popular discourse of Chinese nationalism, however, since research on nationalism can hardly avoid the power relations between the state and popular nationalist players, I also shed significant light on the official nationalist discourse. To carry out the research, I examine the official newspaper The People’s Daily and the non-official online media the Tianya Forum. By doing this, I intend to find out how the official and online popular nationalist players shaped and reshaped Chinese nationalism through media discourses during the time of the international torch relay of the Beijing Olympics. Moreover, by taking both the official and online popular nationalist discourses into consideration, it also allows me to examine the possible tension and co-optation between both nationalist players, and investigate to what extent online Chinese nationalism as an alternative nationalist discourse, challenges the domination of the state over the politics of Chinese nationalism. To analyse the discourses of Chinese nationalism, I employ Norman Fairclough’s approach to critical discourse analysis as the ultimate research method of the thesis.
- Published
- 2014
16. Public service broadcasting: markets and 'vulnerable values' in broadcast and print journalism
- Author
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Cushion, Stephen, Franklin, Robert, Coleman, Stephen, Moss, Giles, and Parry, Katy
- Published
- 2015
17. Audiences and publics: reflections on the growing importance of mediated participation
- Author
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Sonia Livingstone, Coleman, Stephen, Moss, Giles, and Parry, Katy
- Subjects
H Social Sciences (General) ,business.industry ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Corporate governance ,Media studies ,Public relations ,Publics ,Democracy ,Jargon ,Political science ,Political efficacy ,Public sphere ,business ,Relation (history of concept) ,media_common - Abstract
As part of the task of understanding how our world has become increasingly media saturated lies a conceptual uncertainty regarding ordinary people. Through much of the 20th century, they were called ‘audiences’ — in academia and in everyday discourse. In relation to specific media, they were — and still are — referred to as ‘readers’, ‘listeners’ or ‘viewers’. In the jargon of contemporary regimes of governance, they are called ‘consumers’ or ‘citizens’. As the media environment diversifies to encompass interactive and networked media, the language of ‘users’ has gained prominence. But although the notion of audience remains the most commonly accepted collective term for people’s relations (now pluralized) to the media in all their forms, this does not bring consensus. Most importantly, audiences are still commonly distinguished from the main collective term for ordinary people in a modern democratic society, that of ‘the public’.
- Published
- 2015
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