Domestic Political Issues Research Articles

“Politics Are Quite Beneath the Concern of the Average Billjim”: Politics and the First World War Anzacs, 1914–1918

The politics of Australia during First World War have been analysed in depth by many scholars, but little attention has been paid to the politics of the soldiers of the First Australian Imperial Force (AIF). Though often assumed to have been not interested in politics, this article demonstrates that they engaged in politics at multiple levels. They were concerned about decision making and power relationships within the AIF, in international circles and within the British empire. They were also active on a range of domestic political issues, particularly around volunteering and conscription, but also with other federal, state, and local issues. They engaged in the politics of shaping the “digger” legacy. Pre‐war ideologies, particularly on class issues and religion, were influential in shaping soldier political engagement and responses. Far from being political innocents, the Anzacs showed themselves to be interested and active in a range of political arenas.

Думи на водещия

Editor Words DOI 10.55206/EBMA3053 Prof. Dr Ivanka Mavrodieva, DSc Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” Email: mavrodieva@phls.uni-sofia.bg Issue 59 (April 2024) of the Rhetoric and Communication Journal includes eight publications, which announce the results of research, among which surveys of parliamentary rhetoric and communication, which has manifestations in media and on the Internet, in politics and in society. The section “Media and Internet Communication” brings together four articles that contribute to the derivation of concepts, the delineation of the boundaries of new fields of academic research and the renewal of the categorical and conceptual apparatus in several scientific fields, for example through the terms “media culture”, “media transformation”, “cultural software” and “infor¬mation aesthetics”, “cancel culture”, “digital oral histories”, “hybrid risks and threats”. Simeon Vassilev outlines various scientific approaches to the definition of the term “media culture”; he presents theories, concepts, approaches and ad¬vo¬cates the need for a coherent theory of media transformation and media culture; the author draws conclusions about the phenomenon of media culture as a social practice. Desislava Dobreva explores a topic that is characterized by topicality and social sensitivity and examines the notion of “cancel culture”; she studies the phenomenon theoretically and historically; the author analyses current events and identifies rhetorical aspects in this specific virtual communication. Nikolina Ivanova-Bell examines the development of digital oral histories, as well as the opportunities they offer in the field of university education and academic libraries; on the basis of analyses she establishes the potential for enriching research and teaching experience in an academic environment. Andrey Velchev examines hybrid warfare from an interdisciplinary perspective; he analyses the role of the media and the Internet; the author presents the activities of institutions in identifying and neutralising hybrid threats, and in formulating and implementing strategic tasks regarding hybrid warfare. In the section “Political Communication and Parliamentary Rhetoric” two articles are included; they are written on the basis of a theoretical observation and include results of research into concepts in the fields of political science, political communication and parliamentary rhetoric in contemporary Bulgaria. Atanas Zhdrebev’s publication is devoted to populism; he discusses Takis Papas’s concept of populism as democratic illiberalism; the author gives examples of contemporary political phenomena and processes from different countries. Sofia-Nikol Nikolova examines the argumentation and rhetorical figures used by MPs during debates on significant domestic political issues and votes of no confidence and presents the results of an analysis of parliamentarian rhetoric in the 49th National Assembly in Bulgaria. The issue has a section “Contemporary Studies” in which there are options for presenting not only books, but also their contributions at the theoretical, methodological and research levels. The review of Professor Danail Danov’s book “Foundations of Media Pedagogy. A guide to the world of digital culture and its tools” is metaphorically entitled “a guide to the digital modus vivendi” by Simeon Vassilev. Professor Angel Angelov introduces Radeya Gesheva’s book “Enigmas and Paradigms in Some Twentieth-Century Italian Women Writers”. Prof. Dr. Ivanka Mavrodieva is a lecturer in rhetoric, argumentation, PR and virtual communication at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”. She is the author of 15 books (including “Virtual rhetoric: from diaries to social networks”, “Political rhetoric in Bulgaria: from rallies to Web 2.0 (1989 - 2012)”, “Rhetoric and Public Re¬lations”, “Online Course on Rhetoric”) and 120 articles. Her research interests are in the fields of contemporary rhetoric, virtual communication, argumentation, PR and business communication. Rhetoric and Communications Journal, issue 59, April 2024 Read the Original in Bulgarian and English

Instrumentalizing Arabism: Morocco and the Inter-Arab System

ABSTRACT The changing contours of Morocco’s involvement in the inter-Arab system over nearly a century was largely instrumental. It was driven by both “realist” concerns and domestic political issues related to fundamental matters of regime legitimacy and societal cohesion, i.e. the very nature of Moroccan national identity. With the decline of Arabism’s political salience, and a monarch who preferred to keep a low profile in Arab affairs, Morocco’s relations with Arab Mashriq countries became increasingly devoid of traditional markers of Arab solidarity and brotherhood. Domestically, the emergence of the Amazigh factor led to Morocco’s collective identity becoming a renewed subject of contention.

ПЕРЕГОВОРИ ЩОДО УКЛАДЕННЯ УГОДИ ПРО АСОЦІАЦІЮ МІЖ ЄС І МЕРКОСУР (1999–2023

The article analyzes the negotiations on the conclusion of the association agreement between the EU and Mercosur. The stages of negotiations are defined, starting with the prerequisites for the start of this process (signing in 1995 of the Interregional Framework Cooperation Agreement between the EU and Mercosur), the official start of negotiations in 1999, the results of the main bilateral meetings of representatives of both sides, the resumption of the negotiation process in 2010, 2019, and 2023. The influence of the summits of the heads of state of the European Union and Latin America and the Caribbean, domestic and foreign political circumstances on this process is determined. In the course of the study, it was concluded that negotiations on the conclusion of an association agreement between the EU and Mercosur have become a key issue in the development of relations between the two regional integration associations and an important part of the EU’s foreign policy strategy in Latin America. The prospects for further development of the negotiation process were also analyzed in view of the recent failures to complete the signing of the agreement in 2023 and the current situation in both blocs at the beginning of 2024. Positive factors that influenced the attainment of certain milestones in the negotiation process were identified, such as the leadership role of the Iberian states – Spain and Portugal, which advocated negotiations due to their special linguistic, cultural, historical, and business ties with Latin America. Important stimuli included the summits of the countries of Latin America, the Caribbean, and the EU. Despite the lengthy negotiation process, the agreement was not signed due to resistance from the agrarian lobby in the countries of the European Union, the absence of a common EU strategy for Latin America, and domestic political issues in the Mercosur countries.

The Katyń Forest Massacre

This article explores the relationship between political expediency, perception management, and governmental goals. The subject matter forms the research question of “How a tool such as perception management can be used to politically expedite a government’s interests and goals?” It is understood that these ends can be achieved through the usage of perception management by constructing them from a given audience’s interests and values. The concept of perception management is introduced to the reader and illustrated by the example of the United States government’s knowledge of the Katyń Forest Massacre. This article is presented in two parts – the United States’ initial conclusion that the Nazi party was responsible for the massacre and its later reassignment of fault to the Soviet Union. The first instance which involved the reconstruction of truth, was used to politically advance the United States’ cooperation with the Soviet Union in fighting Hitler’s Germany. The second instance also involved the revelation of truth and was used to justify its fight against the North Korean communists. This article should effectively demonstrate how the practice of perception management has been used historically by the United States government to expediate its political goals. The instrumentalization of Katyń is important as it may inspire the reader to consider why certain events take hold of the media’s attention versus others, and how these events specifically may relate to domestic and international political issues.

The Persian Campaign of Peter I on the pages of the Vedomosti newspaper

The first printed newspaper Vedomosti, founded by Peter the Great, is an important source for studying the history of Russian-Ottoman and Russian-Iranian relations in the ϐirst quarter of the 18th century. A lot of attention in the Vedomosti was paid to the international situation of the Ottoman Empire and Russian-Turkish relations. In general, the newspaper characterizes the Ottoman state as an enemy of Russia and all Christian peoples. Under the constant attention of the Vedomosti were the most important changes in the government of Sultan Ahmed III (1703–1730), in the foreign policy priorities of Turkey, as well as domestic political issues the situation of its Christian subjects. The newspaper’s materials provide information about international relations on the eve and during the Persian campaign of Peter I of 1722– 1723, as well as about the representation of newly acquired possessions in the Eastern Caucasus. The Vedomosti newspaper was the ϐirst periodical that introduced the Russian society to the peoples of the Caucasus, the geography of the region and the military-political situation in the Western Caspian region.

Songwashing: Russian Popular Music, Distraction, and Putin’s Fourth Term

AbstractThis article investigates how the Russian state apparatus, in its diverse, loose, and undercoordinated points of affiliation, used contemporary popular music to its own advantage during Vladimir Putin’s fourth term and before the full‐scale war in Ukraine. I propose that the different state branches’ efforts at appropriating music in order to distract audiences can be grouped into a single, novel framework of “songwashing.” This entails the state utilization of the allure of music to cover up domestic political issues, such as problems with legitimation, civic discontent, and minority rights, while promoting a different, positive image abroad. Following two case studies—the 2019 summer festivals Shashlik Live and Meat & Beat in Moscow, and Tajik‐born singer Manizha’s participation in the 2021 Eurovision Song Contest—the article also assesses how songwashing mechanisms are exposed and resisted.

Foreign Policy Venues of the Republic of Belarus amid Confrontation with Western States: Role of the Union State and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization

The article is devoted to the transformation of the foreign policy venues of the Republic of Belarus in the context of confrontation with Western countries. The author assesses the impact of external threats (both traditional and the “new” ones) on the foreign policy of Belarus, reveals the causes and nature of the rapprochement between Belarus and Russia in foreign and domestic political issues, and also assesses the prospects for the Union State. Special attention is paid to the problems of implementing the road maps of the Union State. The article discusses the consequences of the sanctions policy aimed at Belarus and Russia, as well as the mechanisms of joint response. The author emphasizes the importance of the Asian track of the foreign policy of Belarus on the example of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization; based on an assessment of the opportunities and possible challenges from the accession of Belarus to the SCO, the author concludes that such a step is of strategic importance for the development of the country and its foreign policy.

“Гордый индус”: трансформация образа Риши Сунака в индийских медиа

This article deals with the issue of the transformation of the image of British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in the largest Indian media. In order to determine the dynamics of the development of key narratives associated with his name, the author used discursive-historical approach based on a corpus of 2855 headlines since January till December 2022 collected in ten English and three Hindi language media-sources. The articles were chronologically divided by month of the publication and then were split into two categories: a) before the election b) after the election. Moreover, the publications were assigned to seven thematic groups. The transformation of the narratives within these groups was analyzed with special emphasis on the context and frequency of word use. The analysis of intertextual connections made it possible to identify key international political issues related to the Prime Minister, which are of interest to the Indian public. The topic of Prime-Minister’s Indian origin, much spoken about in October, has changed significantly and was mostly illuminated during several active political struggles for the post of Prime Minister. If at the beginning of the year he was perceived as one in the list of politicians with Indian roots, then in October he was called the “pride of the nation” and “a gift to the Indians on Diwali”. Notably, amid the increased role in Britain’s political game this topic was followed by the topic of his religious affiliation – the phrase “hindu PM” has become widely used since July. The Hindi-language media, characteristically, paid more attention to this issue than the English-language media. Apparently, the appeal to the Indian origin could cause inflated expectations regarding the strengthening of relations between India and the UK, however, the expert community takes a reserved position on this issue and acts as a source of counter-discursive narratives. Finally, the analysis showed that issues of British domestic politics get a lot of attention from Indian public at large. In this particular case, they triggered vigorous political debates about minority rights issues.

Colonial Compensation and the Judicial Process: South Korea–Japan Disputes Revisited

Abstract Recent disputes between the Republic of Korea and Japan over colonial compensation have dealt a severe blow to their bilateral relations. In 2018, the Supreme Court of Korea ordered two Japanese corporations to pay damages to Korean laborers who had been forced to work at their factories under Japanese rule. The judgments, which ran directly counter to the earlier rulings of the Japanese Supreme Court for the same parties, reflected longstanding disagreement over the legality of Japan’s annexation of Korea in 1910 and differences of interpretation concerning the 1965 treaties that restored diplomatic relations. Examination of judicial decisions in South Korea over the years indicates that the forced-laborer compensation issue had consistently been viewed as an internal problem, until it became an issue in domestic and judicial politics. In early 2023, the South Korean government announced that it would no longer demand that Japanese companies compensate Korean plaintiffs, who would instead be paid from a government fund. The forced laborer litigation and its aftermath have revealed the limits of the judicial process in resolving historical problems surrounding South Korea–Japan relations in ways that may be relevant to efforts around the globe to redress past injustices through adjudication.

CONTENT ANALYSIS OF CARTOONS PUBLISHED IN THE DAILY JANG AND DAILY DAWN: A STUDY OF THE CARICATURED EXPRESSION OF NEWS

The study aims to determine the importance of cartoons in a newspaper. The study uses a content analysis through qualitative data with purposive sampling of the cartoons published in daily Dawn and daily Jang from November 1st, 2022, to November 30th, 2022. Through this data, the researcher determines the cartoons' level of intellect, how well they fit with the news stories, and how the cartoons in English and Urdu newspapers differ. The theories of gratification and Magic bullet support the study's findings. Daily Dawn has established itself as dynamic in its coverage of national and global events in its cartoons, while the daily Jang focuses on domestic political issues. This reflects the viewpoint and general interest of the readers of daily Dawn and Jang.

Issues in Australian Foreign Policy January to June 2022

Issues in Australian Foreign Policy January to June 2022

John Oliver as the Pandemic Fundraiser? Championing Causes and Political Participation Through Satirical Television

Thematic textual analysis was used to evaluate the calls for financial participation and donations that aired during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic across 55 episodes of Seasons 7 and 8 of John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight on HBO (February 2020–November 2021). The findings suggest that Oliver offers a new way for viewers to engage in low-cost political activism that capitalizes on their pre-existing civic skills and resources. With few barriers to participation, Oliver’s fundraising efforts and calls for donations among individuals, corporations, and even on behalf of the show itself allow for engagement across a range of domestic and international political issues, energizing not only his fan base but also simultaneously reasserting his credibility as a trusted information source who is adept at spotlighting issues central to political life and public culture. While calling for participation and protest is part of Oliver’s comic brand, he is also encouraging genuine financial engagement within the public sphere.

The United Nations Security Council and Human Rights: Who Ends Up in the Spotlight?

Abstract At the end of the Cold War, the United Nations Security Council broadened its view on what constitutes a “threat to international peace and security.” With the rise of the concept of human security and increased focus on human rights, the Council has been more willing to act in response to domestic political issues such as human rights abuses. Despite an increased commitment to human security, the Council's attention on these issues has been uneven. What determines whose rights capture the Council's attention? What role do efforts by NGOs to “name and shame” play in the setting of the Council's agenda? We find that human rights abuses lead to countries being placed on the Council's agenda, but human rights organization naming and shaming results in more action by the Council—in terms of both meetings held and resolutions passed.

“Biafrans Are Not Nazis:” The Biafran Humanitarian Disaster and Trudeau’s Analogies

During the Nigeria-Biafra War, the Nigerian government employed shooting and economic blockade as powerful instruments of uniting the country and defending its territorial integrity. Starvation as a potent weapon was of a magnitude that arguably made it the worst catastrophe since the Second World War. The tension was between sovereignty and human rights. Public opinion in Canada strongly favored humanitarian support for Biafra, but the Canadian government argued that humanitarian aid for Biafra might be offensive to the Nigerian government. This article examines the attitude of Pierre Trudeau to the Biafran humanitarian crisis. It argues that Trudeau’s analogical arguments did not represent the true situation of the war. Although Trudeau’s reliance on information from the Commonwealth secretariat affected his understanding of the crisis, his policies were largely influenced by domestic political issues, particularly the Quebec separatist movement. The paper concludes that Canada’s foreign policy reviews that coincided with the Nigeria–Biafra War informed Trudeau’s kneejerk response to the Biafran humanitarian crisis.

Ideological Manipulation in Twitter Communication: A Critical Stylistic Analysis of Donald Trump's Tweets

Donald Trump’s use of Twitter as a modality to defame opponents, antagonize media outlets and even glorify violence is an enduring legacy for political campaigns, presidential rhetoric and argumentative debates. This nontraditional use of social media as a political communication tool has invited Twitter’s fact-checking editorial decisions, alienated some of Trump’s supporters and attracted worldwide criticism. Using purposive sampling, the present paper employs the ten textual-conceptual functions of critical stylistics to analyze a dataset of Trump’s tweets on domestic and international political issues published between 2011 and 2020 and assembled from the monitor corpus Trump Twitter Archive. The critical stylistic analysis aims at uncovering Trump’s ideological outlook by identifying the extra layer of meaning in which the ideological evaluation is structured and exposing the way in which the resources of language are strategically deployed to influence and ideologically manipulate Trump’s followers’ experience of reality. Analysis reveals a network of lexical, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic choices underlying Trump’s seemingly simple rhetoric. It signposts his ideological evaluation and constructs a world for his followers to desire, believe or fear. The study extends the application of critical stylistics to microblogging channels, with implications both for the linguistic make-up of political communication in Web 2.0 contexts and for the explanatory power of critical stylistics..

The relations between France and the Middle East states during the presidency of Emmanuel Macron in the context of settlement of regional crises

This article analyzes the relations between France and the Middle East states through the prism of foreign policy course of Emmanuel Macron, who was elected as the president of France on May 14, 2017. The Middle East vector of foreign policy is traditional for the Republic, and therefore is one of the foreign policy priorities for the current leader. The author aim to determine the essence and key peculiarities of the Middle East course of E. Macron. For achieving the set goal it is necessary to outline the priority foreign policy vectors of the president and range of countries in the region that are subject to the measures of his chosen course; analyze in which states and to what extent the leader of the Republic continues the policy of his predecessors who were in power since the early XXI century; and changes in the relations between France and certain Middle East states. The conclusion is made on the presence of particular factors that hinder the conduct of smart policy in the region, which would meet the interests of all Middle Eastern actors. Disaccord of the French leader with his international partners regarding the Middle East regulation significantly complicates the implementation of smart foreign relative to the Arab world. E. Macron is currently paying scrupulous attention to the policy of European integration, which raises a number of unresolved issues regarding the Middle East. This alongside the domestic political issues undermines the authority of the current French leader.

Risking Immeasurable Harm: Immigration Restriction and US-Mexican Diplomatic Relations, 1924–1932

In Risking Immeasurable Harm, Benjamin Montoya examines the factors behind, and the response to, a campaign in the United States during the late 1920s and early 1930s to impose tough restrictions on Mexican immigration. Though measures enacted between 1917 and 1924 had significantly curtailed the flow of migrants to the United States from Europe and Asia, the national quotas introduced by this legislation did not apply to the countries of the Western Hemisphere. A concern over Mexican immigration in particular—fueled largely, as Montoya shows, by the view that Mexican migrants were racially inferior and unassimilable—prompted restrictionists to seek to remedy this omission. Calls by some legislators for an extension of the quota were opposed by the State Department, which argued that such a move would damage an improving relationship with Mexico's postrevolutionary government. In a bid to defuse congressional efforts to write new limits on Mexican immigration into law, consular officials resorted to “administrative restriction”—the much stricter application of existing rules and regulations—to bring about a substantial reduction in the legal cross-border movement of Mexican workers. With the successful application of this strategy, followed by a reversal in the flow of migrants with the massive repatriation of Mexicans during the early years of the Great Depression, the push for additional legal curbs on Mexican immigration dissipated, and a potential crisis in bilateral relations was averted.Montoya's study captures a moment at which immigration was at once becoming increasingly prominent as a domestic political issue and emerging as a phenomenon that could affect relationships between states. He provides a valuable account of the way in which the United States resisted acknowledging that immigration could be a legitimate foreign policy issue, insisting to other governments that bilateral or multilateral approaches to managing migration would impinge on US sovereignty to an unacceptable extent. Nonetheless, top officials such as Secretary of State Frank Kellogg were mindful of the potential consequences for US foreign relations of a less welcoming immigration regime for citizens of Mexico and other American nations. Indeed, Kellogg told a Senate committee in 1928 that the introduction of a quota would “adversely affect the present good relations” enjoyed by the United States across the Western Hemisphere and that it would be especially unfortunate to imperil an improved relationship with Mexico that was “a source of considerable satisfaction to [the US] government” (pp. 75–76).A central contention of Risking Immeasurable Harm is that it was largely “diplomatic pressure”—rather than economic considerations—that “prevented congressional efforts to curb Mexican immigration” (p. 1). There is little evidence, however, that Mexican diplomatic representations or activism by Mexican officials had a significant bearing on the course or outcome of the debate over immigration restriction. Though Foreign Minister Genaro Estrada is said to have warned US ambassador Dwight Morrow that the imposition of a quota would give rise to “considerable feeling” on the part of the Mexican people, Mexican leaders generally accepted the right of the US government to regulate immigration as it saw fit and were ambivalent about the phenomenon of migration to the United States in any case (p. 89). US officials recognized, however, that Mexican public opinion would deeply resent the insult of an immigration quota that was justified on the grounds of the supposed inferiority and undesirability of the Mexican people. (It is noteworthy that Montoya's citations of Mexican press comment on proposals for immigration restriction show that he encountered the relevant clippings in US diplomatic files, giving an indication of the way in which US officials monitored and assessed Mexican views on the issue.) Administrative restriction was therefore seen as a preferable way to assuage congressional concerns. Though the effect—a massive reduction in Mexican immigration—was the same, the rigid application of literacy, health, and passport requirements did not carry with it the same relationship-damaging sting of legislation founded on an assertion of racial superiority.Risking Immeasurable Harm draws on significant research in both US and Mexican archives to provide original analysis of an early and little-known episode in the history of immigration as an issue in the relationship between the two countries. (Perhaps unsurprisingly given the focus on a policy debate centered in Washington, there is a greater reliance on US sources than Mexican ones, and engagement with relevant secondary literature in Spanish is limited.) For historians of US foreign policy, this book also provides a fascinating early case study of an executive branch effort to avoid having constraints placed by Congress on its ability to conduct foreign relations.

Trump’s Russia Legacy and Biden’s Response

The major difference between Joe Biden’s approach to Russia and Donald Trump’s is that, under Biden, Russia has ceased to be a domestic political issue.

Foreign policy fatigue? Russian mass media agenda setting strategies and public opinion on the 2018 pension reforms

The scholarship on Russian media is beset with the assumption that the Russian public is unable to ‘vote with their remote’ in a homogenously pro-regime media environment and instead passively accepts messaging from the official mass media. This assumption is assessed here in a case study using quantitative content methods to examine the discrepancies between official mass media agenda-setting and public opinion during the period of salience of the news event of the 2018 pension reforms. The pension reform, as an obtrusive domestic political issue in contrast to the unobtrusive international news events which dominate Russian news coverage, stood out asone of the major events of the year in the view of the Russian public. This article finds that official mass media undertook agenda-setting measures to de-emphasize negative aspects of the pension reform news events, emphasize positive aspects, and distract public attention towards more sensationalist foreign policy news items. However, it also finds that public opinion priorities on news issues were incongruent with media agenda-setting, indicating that official mass media messages are not accepted uncritically by the Russian public.