Political communication

"In the 1920s, Germany quarrled about its colors and symbols with high emotion. The flag controversy was a mass sport. GERMAN: In den 1920ern stritt Deutschland emotional um Farben und Symbole. Der Flaggenstreit war Breitensport.
----
• Schlagwörter: Ästhetik, Boykott, Bundesadler, Corporate Identity, Demokratie, Expressionismus, Fahne, Flagge, Flaggenkunde, Flaggenstreit, Flaggenverordnung, Gedenktag, Großdeutschland, Handelsflagge, Inszenierung, Kampagne, Kapp-Putsch, Kriegsschuld, Kulturhoheit, Kulturpolitik, Kulturstaatsminister, Logo, Misstrauensvotum, Nationalismus, Obrigkeitsstaat, Österreich, Propaganda, Präsidentschaftswahl 1925, Primitivkunst, Reichsadler, Reichsarchivar, Reichseinheitsflagge, Reichsfarben, Reichsflagge, Reichskanzler, Reichskunstwart, Reichstag, Republikschutzgesetz, Revolution, Schwarz-Rot-Gold, Schwarz-Weiß-Rot, Staatsbegräbnis, Symbolik, Symbolpolitik, Trikolore, Verfassung, Verfassungstag, Vexillologie, Wahlkampf, Weimarer Republik
• Organisationen: NSDAP, Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold, Reichsblock Schwarz-Weiß-Rot, Roter Frontkämpferbund, SA Sturmabteilung, SPD, Stahlhelm, Volksblock Schwarz-Rot-Gold
• Personen: Eduard David, Paul von Hindenburg, Paul Löbe, Hans Luther, Wilhelm Marx, Arnold Rabbow, Walther Rathenau, Edwin Redslob, Philipp Scheidemann, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Veit Valentin, Otto Wels, Christian Welzbacher
• Publikationen:  Simplicissimus
"

Demosthenes, I’ll show, has a realistic, non-ideological sense of the elemental flaws of democracy: The ambition and cunning of the few (politicians, etc.)(F1); the want of courage and smarts in the many (ordinary citizens)(F2); the general imprudence and equal fallibility of all (F3); the basic lack of human self-sufficiency (F4). Given the last two, he would find the idea of basing politics on the sufficiency of either moral virtue or expertise dangerous—blue-eyed anyway. Because the first two could be said to be inherent traits in all majorities and elites, any straightforwardly authoritarian or paternalistic scheme is ruled out in fact. Instead, the defects are to be counteracted by making sure all citizens have the best information available and by strengthening their basic capacity for critical thinking and ethical choice. Demosthenes is that rarest of creatures: An intellectual who actually believes popular rule is better than other forms of government.

"Political memes have recently risen as a popular form of online expression, blending humor, fact, and opinion. Accordingly, this survey-experiment applied the third-person effect framework, finding participants assumed memes had greater effects on others than on themselves. As behaviors theorized to stem from bias, likelihood of correcting and support for censorship were gauged. Manipulating which party’s candidate was attacked in example memes, the experiment examined the moderating roles of network heterogeneity and partisanship. Results indicate potential new instances of censorship support, since memes are often viewed in “non-political” social spaces and seen inadvertently, rather than by an information-seeking audience using traditional political media. Moreover, perception of social network dissimilarity appears to drive down corrective action intention, generating self-censorship.

Keywords: third-person effect, memes, public sphere, social media, censorship.
"

Most  of  the  studies  over  freedom  of  expression  and  thought  in  Turkey's  new  media  sphere  focus  on  surveillance  technologies  and    related  legal  constraints  in  the  country’s  new  media  sphere.  Taking hegemony  as  a  dynamic  process  just  as  Raymond  Williams  (1977,  110)  did,  hegemony  is  perceived  as  a  structure  within  which  resistance  can  still  be  available  despite  all  the  constraining  policies  of  governments  and  companies  in  our  lives.  Anonymous,  semi-anonymous and  non-anonymous  or  real  identity  based  resistance  actions  are  considered  as  three  different  forms  of  resistance  based  on identifiability preferences.  This  thesis  analyses  the  conjectural  anonymous  uses  of  internet  by  activists  by  analysing  their  profiles. Anonymity and semi-anonymity  are  conceptualized  based  on  the users’  experiences  while  necessity  of  being  anonymous  are  studied  categorically.  This study  conceptualizes  forms  of  identifiability/ anonymity  as  anonymity,  semi-anonymity  and  identifiability, it  also  focuses  on  different  motives  that  resulted  in  the  necessity  of  anonymity  for digital  activism.  Thesis  ends  with  a  proposal  about  possible  political  uses  of  anonymity  and  semi-anonymity  in  the  future  for  a  radical  democracy  model.

Liberalism is a term employed in a dizzying variety of ways across the humanities and social sciences. This essay seeks to reframe how the liberal tradition is understood. I start by delineating different types of response – prescriptive, comprehensive, explanatory – that are frequently conflated in answering the question “what is liberalism?” I then discuss assorted methodological strategies employed in the existing literature: after rejecting “stipulative” and “canonical” approaches, I outline a contextualist alternative. On this (comprehensive) account, liberalism is best characterised as the sum of the arguments that have been classified as liberal, and recognised as such by other self-proclaimed liberals, over time. In the remainder of the article I present an historical analysis of shifts in the meaning of liberalism in Anglo-American political thought between 1850 and 1950, focusing in particular on how John Locke came to be seen as a liberal. I also explore the emergence of the category of "liberal democracy". I argue that the scope of the liberal tradition was massively expanded during the middle decades of the twentieth century, such that it came to be seen by many as the constitutive ideology of the West. This capacious (and deeply confusing) understanding of liberalism was produced by a conjunction of the ideological wars fought against “totalitarianism” and assorted developments in the social sciences. Today we both inherit and inhabit it.