Why Men Rebel was first published in 1970 on the heels of a decade of political violence and protest not only in remote corners of Africa and Southeast Asia, but also at home in the United States. Forty years later, the world is riveted on uprisings in the Middle East, and the United States has been overtaken by a focus on international terrorism and a fascination with citizen movements at home and abroad. Do the arguments of 1970 apply today? Why Men Rebel lends new insight into contemporary challenges of transnational recruitment and organization, multimedia mobilization, and terrorism.

Why Men Rebel

Thanks to the ready availability of political news today, informed citizens can protect and promote their own interests and the public interest more effectively. Or can they? Murray Edelman argues against this conventional interpretation of politics, one that takes for granted that we live in a world of facts and that people react rationally to the facts they know. In doing so, he explores in detail the ways in which the conspicuous aspects of the political scene are interpretations that systematically buttress established inequalities and interpretations already dominant political ideologies.

Constructing the Political Spectacle

In recent decades, we in the western world have almost prided ourselves on our move towards a 'classless' society. Yet a divide of the haves and have-nots is replacing it, especially in health. This is the main thrust of Richard Wilkinson's book.

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The Impact of Inequality: How to Make Sick Societies Healthier

The people who claim membership in a profession and delineate its attributes do so at least in part to justify inequality of status, as well as to limit and control access to that status. The key role of the professional can be fulfilled only by people with particular training, skills and judgment, and it is crucial that the distinction between practitioner and layperson be clearly recognized by all parties. This paper suggests that online news workers fundamentally challenge the already-disputed concept of journalists as professionals. It identifies and explores key aspects of that challenge across the cognitive, normative and evaluative dimensions of the sociological construct of professionalism, with the goal of laying the groundwork for empirical investigation into the issues raised.

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Who are these guys?: The online challenge to the notion of journalistic professionalism

Inter-group competitive victimhood (CV) describes the efforts of members of groups involved in violent conflicts to establish that their group has suffered more than their adversarial group. Such efforts contribute to conflicts' escalation and impede their peaceful resolution. CV stems from groups' general tendency to compete with each other, along with the deep sense of victimization resulting from conflicts. The authors point to biases that contribute to groups' engagement in CV, describe five dimensions of victimhood over which groups may compete, and contend that such competition serves various functions that contribute to the maintenance of conflicts. Drawing on the Needs-Based Model, they suggest that CV may reflect groups' motivations to restore power or moral acceptance. They then review evidence of the negative consequences of CV for inter-group forgiveness and suggest potential strategies to reduce CV. Finally, the authors discuss potential moderators and directions for future research.

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When Suffering Begets Suffering: The Psychology of Competitive Victimhood Between Adversarial Groups in Violent Conflicts

Debates in Peace Journalism

Reporting Conflict: New Directions in Peace Journalism

A Global Standard for Reporting Conflict constructs an argument from first principles to identify what constitutes good journalism. It explores and synthesises key concepts from political and communication theory to delineate the role of journalism in public spheres. And it shows how these concepts relate to ideas from peace research, in the form of Peace Journalism. Thinkers whose contributions are examined along the way include Michel Foucault, Johan Galtung, John Paul Lederach, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manuel Castells and Jurgen Habermas. The book argues for a critical realist approach, considering critiques of ‘correspondence’ theories of representation to propose an innovative conceptualisation of journalistic epistemology in which ‘social truths’ can be identified as the basis for the journalistic remit of factual reporting. If the world cannot be accessed as it is, then it can be assembled as agreed – so long as consensus on important meanings is kept under constant review. These propositions are tested by extensive fieldwork in four countries: Australia, the Philippines, South Africa and Mexico.

A Global Standard for Reporting Conflict

Expanding peace journalism: comparative and critical approaches draws together cutting-edge contributions from 17 international writers to this rapidly emerging field of research. Media coverage of conflicts is propagandistic and commonly portrays two elite actors contesting a single goal of 'victory'. This major new text explores and interrogates peace journalism as a significant challenge to this hegemonic discourse, which has been advocated and elaborated over the recent years in journalism, media development and academic spheres.

Expanding peace journalism: comparative and critical approaches

This article presents and discusses the results of an experiment, which gathered audience responses to television news coded as war journalism and peace journalism respectively, in two countries, A...

Jake Lynch

Papers

Debates in Peace Journalism

Reporting Conflict: New Directions in Peace Journalism

A Global Standard for Reporting Conflict

Expanding peace journalism: comparative and critical approaches

Responses to peace journalism