Political communication

Although television has been traditionally the main channel of mass communication between candidates and electors, social media has emerged as a new channel, becoming a relevant platform where a dynamic flux of information is shared by electors and candidates.The role of social media can be considered from a classical perspective, in other words, as a tool or asset to be managed. Or, it can also be viewed as a new dimension of development that encourages political participation. Considering the Barack Obama's 2007-2008 presidential campaign established an opening point in the use of new technologies of information and Internet in electoral campaigning throughout the world, the main objective of our work is to evaluate the role of social media in the last Chilean presidential campaign.

Diplomatic ambiguity is one of the most interesting kinds of language-use in politics in general, and in diplomacy in particular. Normally, it is taken as a device that buys a temporary agreement at the price of a later verbal and interpretive conflict or misunderstanding. Prior to this study, no comprehensive or theory-guided analysis of this both political and linguistic phenomenon had been attempted. The study focuses on a number of ambiguously phrased peace-agreements, exploring three fundamental parameters in terms of which the concept of diplomatic ambiguity can be framed: language, power, and law. It proposes an argument of relevance to the most prominent schools of thought in International Relations, and closes a visible gap in the existing literature dealing with conflict, diplomacy, international politics, and discourse-related aspects of such politics. Due to its interdisciplinary character and sensitivity to the requirements of practice, it also offers an informative and practicable guide to the practitioners of international relations, diplomacy, politics, and law.

The article first describes characteristics of major infrastructure projects. Second, it documents a much neglected topic in economics: that ex ante estimates of costs and benefits are often very different from actual ex post costs and benefits. For large infrastructure projects the consequences are cost overruns, benefit shortfalls, and the systematic underestimation of risks. Third, implications for cost–benefit analysis are described, including that such analysis is not to be trusted for major infrastructure projects. Fourth, the article uncovers the causes of this state of affairs in terms of perverse incentives that encourage promoters to underestimate costs and overestimate benefits in the business cases for their projects. But the projects that are made to look best on paper are the projects that amass the highest cost overruns and benefit shortfalls in reality. The article depicts this situation as ‘survival of the unfittest’. Fifth, the article sets out to explain how the problem may be solved, with a view to arriving at more efficient and more democratic projects, and avoiding the scandals that often accompany major infrastructure investments. Finally, the article identifies current trends in major infrastructure development. It is argued that a rapid increase in stimulus spending, combined with more investments in emerging economies, combined with more spending on information technology is catapulting infrastructure investment from the frying pan into the fire.

"This thesis presents the notion of virtual com-munication as communication in which one or more parties deviates so strongly from the per-ceived interlocutor that the communication be-comes untrue to reality in some respects. Vir-tual communication is also implicit, where be-haviors and actions communicate intentions and values. It is the premise of this investigation that such phenomena are reinforced through mod-ern information technology.
Literature in related disciplines is re-viewed. Based on this review, a number of sug-gestions as to how to proceed with studies of virtual communication are presented. The thesis also reports an experiment investigating the impact of anthropomorphic computer interfaces. Finally, observations of the World Wide Web are presented, and some general conclusions are drawn.
Keywords. Virtual communication, virtual reality, computer-mediated com¬munication, information technology, human-computer inter¬action, cog-nitive psy¬chology, anthro¬po¬mor¬phic interfaces, agents, com¬puter net¬works, computer-supported cooperative work."

This article presents a model for a “People’s Lobby,” a digital process of deliberation and activism that allows citizens to have their voices heard on important political issues. The model described in this proposal attempts to achieve deliberation for its own sake, but also for the sake of an activist intervention geared toward immediate response—a process commonly called lobbying. In other words, this is a model that combines the fairness and inclusivity of deliberation with the prodding tension of organized activist lobbying. The People’s Lobby might not completely counteract the effects of more conventional corporate lobbying and other mass-organizational pressures, but if it increases the impact of citizens’ reflective and deliberative voices even marginally, it will be well worth the effort.

""This paper presents an overview of the cultural economy of Athens during the last three decades and a preliminary assessment of how it is being affected by the current sovereign debt crisis. Drawing upon the concept of embeddedness and using a combination of statistical and ethnographic data we examine the cultural economy in relation with social stratification and urban policy dynamics. We argue that the cultural economy of Athens acquired a consumption- and import-oriented character. Manufacturing activities shrunk as a result of competitive pressures from both post-Fordist advanced economies and
emerging ones. Consumption-oriented activities developed through the meeting of new middle classes’ cultural demand with micro-entrepreneurship and large-scale investments of economic elites in a context of deregulation in urban cultural policy and public investments in urban mega-projects. The restructuring
of the cultural economy was a part of a broader political–economic arrangement, established following the affiliation of Greece to the EC/EU, where public spending (based on public borrowing and EU Structural Funds) sustained both middle classes’ income and corporate profits. The 2010–2011
sovereign debt crisis threatens the whole political–economic arrangement of the last few decades whose symbolic aspect was the restructuring and growth of the cultural economy.""

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.

"In a mediated democracy, politicians strive hard to determine what is on the front page of the newspapers, or the leading item in the news. While the use of Social Networking Sites (SNS) or online social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, YouTube, etc grows tremendously in 21st century politics, everyone has a voice and can broadcast it to the world. In a democracy, political communication is seen as a crucial for the building of a society where the state and its people feel they are connected. Thus, this is a study on how social media (i.e., Facebook, blogs and YouTube) used in the domain of Malaysian politics during the 13th General Election campaigning period. The study found that Facebook was the most popular social media tool that actively engaged by political parties during the 13th General Election campaign period. Apart from that, issues pertaining to election were significantly highlighted by the political parties in the social media especially Facebook. However, other important issues such as economy, crime and education were not sufficiently highlighted during the election campaign periods that were also important to the people. This indicates that the political parties influence the public on what to think about using the social media.

Keywords: Political communication, 13th General Election, social media, Social Networking Sites (SNS), agenda setting
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O uso cada vez mais comum das tecnologias digitais e da internet impacta profundamente o modo como vivemos, pensamos e nos comunicamos. A cultura do copiar e colar (LESSIG, 2005) cria uma nova linguagem, o Remix, que já é uma realidade entre a juventude contemporânea, naturalmente ambientada ao universo digital. Porém, a legislação autoral não acompanhou as transformações sociais e culturais provocadas pela digitalização da cultura. Para adaptar o ordenamento jurídico, o Ministério da Cultura convocou a sociedade para participar da modernização da Lei de Direito Autoral. Neste sentido, este trabalho apresenta a linguagem do Remix, que se difunde com a Cultura Digital, e avalia sua incorporação à reforma da lei de direito autoral.

This chapter traces the language of presidential press conferences, keying particularly on three axes said to distinguish journalistic and presidential behavior: (1) the interrogatory-protective binary, (2) the clinical-promotional binary, and (3) the grounded-transcendent binary. While theory suggests that such differences exist, empirical studies have not yet confirmed them. The present study does so, showing that reporters and presidents use language quite different from one another and that those distinctions remain constant over time. The press conference presents unique generic opportunities (and challenges) for the president. That is also true for reporters but in much different ways. The chapter also traces how the press conference has tipped increasingly in the president’s favor over time, especially when matters of foreign policy have been discussed.