Editorial Judgment Research Articles

The Translingual Turn and French Literary Prize-winners: Mohamed Mbougar Sarr’s La plus secrète mémoire des hommes (2021)

This article explores the complex relationship between the translingual turn and French literary prize-winners by focusing on a recent Goncourt laureate, Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, and his plurivocal poetics of translingualism in La plus secrète mémoire des hommes (2021). Through an examination of the text and its contexts, intertexts and paratexts, it demonstrates how the author draws on past, present and future representations of translingual lives and works to denounce the French literary system and undermine its monolingual perspectives and editorial judgements, such as plagiarism. It shows how the interconnected network of references to other Black and/or African literary prize-winners functions as a support for the author’s translingual poetics, with various voices emerging through biographèmes, letters, messages and journal entries in the text. In conclusion, it confirms the connections between the translingual turn and French literary prize-winners, tracing how translingualism was introduced in the early twentieth century, firmly established around the turn of the millennium, then reinforced and renewed by Mbougar Sarr’s writing and experiences in 2021 and beyond.

Reflecting Party Agendas, Challenging Claims: An Analysis of Editorial Judgements and Fact-checking Journalism during the 2019 UK General Election Campaign

ABSTRACT To counter mis/disinformation, fact-checking organisations are used as sources by journalists to challenge false or misleading statements, especially during election campaigns. But how different fact-checkers editorially construct their analysis and question dubious claims remains under-researched. Drawing on a case study of reporting during the UK’s 2019 General Election campaign, we interviewed senior editors and journalists, and conducted a systematic content analysis of 238 fact-checking stories produced by BBC’s Reality and Channel 4’s Full Fact, along with a fact-checking organisation, Full Fact, in order to critically assess their editorial judgements about the selection of news and use of sources. Our study revealed that fact-checking services at the BBC and Channel 4 were not closely integrated into their routine news production, and that the independent fact-checker, Full Fact, questioned claims differently to broadcasters. We also found that the broadcast agenda of fact-checkers centred on party political agendas and drew on a narrow range of institutional sources to question claims. Overall, we argue that if broadcasters relied more heavily on their fact-checking in routine coverage—beyond election campaigns—they would more effectively counter mis/disinformation, especially if a wider range of expert sources were drawn upon to scrutinize claims.

Editorial

Editorial

Negotiating Sociomateriality and Commensurability: Human and Algorithmic Editorial Judgment at Social Media Platforms

ABSTRACT Platforms are fulfilling functions previously considered within the jurisdictions of media outlets, such as news distribution, advertising, or editorial judgment. This article proposes strengthening the vocabulary of scholarship on news organizations and platforms by taking material agency seriously. It animates sociomateriality as a suitable conceptual framework to dissect human and nonhuman agency in editorial judgment and presents future research with ontological paths for considering their relationship. When platforms are accused of bias or partisanship, this pinpoints the importance of perceptions of who is in charge of editorial judgment. This article suggests that by utilizing a sociomateriality framework to disentangle the interplay of the human and the algorithmic, editorial judgment surfaces as a seminal similarity between media and platforms. The ancillary concept of commensurability serves as an analytical heuristic to render such comparisons possible. This is illustrated by two exemplifications of the sociomateriality framework: The cases of Facebook Trending Topics, and of Twitter Moments.

Race, Ethnicity, and the Scarr-Rowe Hypothesis: A Cautionary Example of Fringe Science Entering the Mainstream

In 2020, Pesta et al. published an article entitled “Racial and Ethnic Group Differences in the Heritability of Intelligence: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis” in the journal Intelligence. The authors framed their analysis as an examination of the Scarr-Rowe hypothesis, which holds that the heritability of intelligence varies as a function of socioeconomic status. Pesta et al. concluded that the heritability of intelligence does not differ across racial and ethnic groups in the United States. They claimed their results challenge the Scarr-Rowe hypothesis and support the hereditarian position that mean differences in IQ among racial and ethnic groups are attributable to genetic differences rather than environmental disparities. In this commentary, we outline severe theoretical, methodological, and rhetorical flaws in every step of Pesta et al.’s meta-analysis. The most reliable finding from Pesta et al. is consistent with the Scarr-Rowe hypothesis and directly contradicts a hereditarian understanding of group differences in intelligence. Finally, we suggest that Pesta et al. serves as an example of how racially motivated and poorly executed work can find its way into a mainstream scientific journal, underscoring the importance of robust peer review and rigorous editorial judgment in the open-science era.

Modernism Edited: Marianne Moore and the Dial Magazine

<i>Modernism Edited: Marianne Moore and the</i> Dial <i>Magazine</i>

Six ways alt-left media legitimatize their criticism of mainstream media: An analysis of The Canary and Evolve Politics (2015–19)

In recent years, new alternative left-wing media sites in the United Kingdom – labelled alt-left media – have become popular sources of news. They often focus their attention on the ‘MSM’, an acronym used to pejoratively represent ‘mainstream media’. But there has been limited academic attention about how these new alternative media report mainstream media and critique professional journalism. Drawing on a highly focused dataset of 158 stories from a sample of 1284 articles, this study examined two alt-left media sites in the United Kingdom, The Canary and Evolve Politics, from 2015 to 2019, and identified six specific ways they legitimized their criticism of mainstream media. This involved the constant surveillance of mainstream media reporting, questioning editorial judgements with close textual analysis and drawing on authoritative sources to substantiate claims. It is argued that more research is needed to understand how alternative media are delegitimizing the value of professional journalism.

A Study to Explore the Safety and Professional Challenges Faced by the Field Journalists in Pakistan

Field journalists in Pakistan who have covered violent conflicts especially in the wake of Karachi, Baluchistan, and former FATA conflicts have repeatedly staked their physical, emotional, and financial security while fulfilling their journalistic responsibilities. The study at hand is majorly aimed at exploring the reactions of the field journalists in Pakistan concerning the professional and safety challenges faced by them. A purposive sample of 15 field journalists from mainstream newspapers and television channels of Pakistan was selected for conducting the qualitative in-depth interviews. The study concluded that the most frequently faced challenges by the field journalists in Pakistan included the tendency to self-censor one’s content and editorial judgment; working under loosely defined safety protocols; and absence of seeking psychological help in terms of handling Post Trauma Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Barry Ian Hoffbrand: national leader in postgraduate medical education

Barry Ian Hoffbrand was a national leader in postgraduate medical education. From 1980 to 1994 he was editor of the Postgraduate Medical Journal . In this position he created a viable and successful clinical educational journal to rival the best. In the view of his successors, it was “a reflection of his industry, dedication to quality and accuracy, and his wise editorial judgment that the journal came to occupy its successful position in the medical publishing world.” Barry’s experience in postgraduate education was developed locally in his position as consultant physician to the Whittington Hospital, in north London. This hospital had a long tradition of providing excellent training in postgraduate medicine. Eventually an academic centre for postgraduate medicine was established there, and Barry was its director from 1975 to 1981. In this capacity he helped countless junior doctors succeed in passing challenging postgraduate medical examinations. After his appointment as consultant to the Whittington in 1970, Barry rapidly built up a reputation as a brilliant diagnostician and wise medical opinion. Over his nearly 30 year tenure in this post, he came to be regarded as the physician other doctors would consult about their own medical problems. Especially in the days before imaging made diagnosis of conditions such as endocarditis much easier, he was able to work out what was wrong with patients when other …

Developing mathematical reasoning to reduce the wide-spread of hoax distributions

Social media platforms has influenced the way we run our life, we have been frequently buffeted by its changes as nowadays the big portion of population obviously rely on it to stay tune of the very latest updates. As the consequence, we give the misleading contents to fill the air, the hoaxes. Content can be relayed among users with no significant third party filtering, fact checking, or editorial judgement, and an individual user with no track record or reputation can in some cases reach as many readers as national or international media. This study assesses possible positive correlation between developing mathematical reasoning and reducing the spreading of hoaxes through study literature. We start the study with defining and descripting the characteristic of both mathematical reasoning and hoaxes. Furthermore, we examine a series of implication that shows a path that goes from mathematical reasoning towards reducing the hoaxes, at the end of the study we propose a brief method and content to be applied to Indonesian high school student by using logic in Mathematics topic.

A New Approach to Textual Criticism: An Introduction to the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method by Tommy Wasserman and Peter J. Gurry

Reviewed by: A New Approach to Textual Criticism: An Introduction to the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method by Tommy Wasserman and Peter J. Gurry Peter Malik tommy wasserman and peter j. gurry, A New Approach to Textual Criticism: An Introduction to the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method (SBLRBS 80; Atlanta: SBL Press, 2017). Pp. xvi + 146. Paper $19.95. There seems to be no shortage of introductions to textual criticism, with few of them having long-term value and utility. This book by Tommy Wasserman and Peter J. Gurry certainly belongs to the latter. The authors aim to introduce the theoretical foundations and practical workings of the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method (CBGM), a new computerized method developed by Gerd Mink at the Institut für neutestamentliche Textforschung (INTF) in Münster. Most importantly, the INTF has utilized the method as a central working tool in preparing the text of the Editio Critica Maior (ECM). Given the complexity of the method and the fact that it has been used almost exclusively by the ECM editors, there has been a good deal of misunderstanding and reservation on the part of "outsiders." Although there have been numerous specialized studies published on the subject (including G.'s recent monograph, A Critical Examination of the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method in New Testament Textual Criticism [NTTSD 55; Leiden: Brill, 2017]), for a long time a plain introduction has been a desideratum. The New Approach is just such a text. In the space of six concise, clearly structured chapters, followed by an annotated bibliography and a glossary, W. and G. elucidate the CBGM in such a way that even a nonspecialist may be able to understand its basics. Each chapter retains a consistent structure, starting with a few sentences of a summary, followed by the main contents and conclusion, as well as a short list of key terms. In the introductory chapter, the authors outline the basic aspects of text-critical inquiry, especially as they relate to the changing landscape of the current state of discipline. Naturally, the CBGM lies at the very heart of this change, and the authors outline the most notable effects of its application to the study of the NT text. The rejection of text types and the renewed appreciation for the mainstream Byzantine text are, perhaps, the most striking ones. The next chapter provides a general overview of the method. Here G. and W. sketch out the method's historical development, as well as the key problems and concepts. Since the CBGM is a stemmatic method based on the analysis of two types of textual coherence, the concepts of "coherence" and "stemma" are foundational and hence are also the subject of the following three chapters. In chap. 3, W. and G. consider "pregenealogical coherence," which is basically the percentage of agreement between witnesses at all the variation units where they are compared. The example they use to illustrate its use is the famous variation at Mark 1:1, to which W. is known to have dedicated no small scholarly attention (T. Wasserman, "The 'Son of God' Was in the Beginning [Mark 1:1])," JTS 62 [2011] 20–50; idem, "Historical and Philological Correlations and the CBGM as Applied to Mark 1:1," TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism 20 [2015] 1–11). Perhaps the most important end to which this evidence can be directed is to adjudge where the agreement between witnesses is more likely to be coincidental and where genetic. At the same time, the main limitation of pregenealogical coherence is that it does not tell us anything about the direction of change within a given variation unit (i.e., a "local stemma")—the editors must make up their own minds. This information is, at each point, fed into a database. The sum total of pregenealogical evidence and editorial judgment derived from all the local stemmata constitutes the second type of coherence, namely, "genealogical coherence." [End Page 564] The ins and outs of genealogical coherence are discussed in chap. 4 and illustrated by helpful examples from the Catholic Epistles and Acts. Next, chap. 5 concerns the "global stemma." The authors define it as "the simplest hypothesis about how the text of our...

News Sites and Fake News in the Egyptian Political Transformation 2013–2014: Aljazeera.net case study

.

Agenda Framing of Social Issues in Pakistani Press: A Study of Daily Dawn and Daily Jang

Media shape public opinion. As a powerful tool of communication, it prioritizes issues and gives them coverage according through editorial judgment. Agendasetting theory explains how media influences the topics in public agenda. In 1968, McCombs and Donald Shaw studied presidential elections of the United States and established a strong relationship between election issue and media coverage. This study has used their theory of agenda setting to explain how two daily newspapers of Pakistan, Dawn and Jang has covered unemployment and energy crisis on their front and back pages during a time period of one year. Content analysis method is applied to investigate the treatment of news in both papers. Findings explain that Jang gave more coverage to these social issues as compared to Dawn. This study recommends more attention to social issues.

Caveat Emptor: Predatory Publishers, Rogue Journals, and the Potential Corruption of Addiction Science

The name predatory publisher has been applied by academic librarian Jeffrey Beall to describe an open-access, scholarly publishing business model in which publication fees are charged to authors without providing the editorial judgment, peer-review process, and publishing services associated with more established journals. In the addiction field, as many as 20 journal titles now operate according to this model, and most of their editors are either nonexistent or impossible to contact. Although predatory publishing should not be equated with open access, this article argues that predatory publishers are diluting scientific quality in the addiction field by taking advantage of the open-access movement. Beyond the damage done to the reputations of naive authors and figurehead editorial board members, there is a cascade of effects resulting from the shabby publication process itself. If the addiction field is to be protected from predatory publishers, all sectors need to be involved. Declarations of "buyer beware" and "the emperor has no clothes" are just the first steps in a process of preventing further damage to the integrity of addiction science. As described in this article, concerted action will be required by authors, editors, and professional societies.

Engineering Consent

As the reach and influence of audience analytics tools continue to grow in newsrooms, a burgeoning body of scholarship conceptualizes them as a form of managerial surveillance that seeks to standardize journalistic work and render it more reliably profitable. While workers in many contexts have been found to resist the rationalization of their labor process, existing research suggests that journalists have become increasingly amenable to—and even powerfully fixated on—the analytics dashboards that quantitatively monitor their performance and rank them against their peers. Drawing on six months of ethnographic observation and interviews at a leading newsroom analytics startup, this article examines the discursive strategies and design elements employed by analytics companies to engineer journalists’ consent to analytics-driven labor discipline. These include performing deference to editorial judgment, professing allegiance to journalism’s institutional norms, and providing a habit-forming user experience. Such tactics enable the newsroom analytics dashboard to extract increased productivity from journalist-users—and to do so in a way that obfuscates, rather than highlights, managerial influence in the newsroom. The article concludes by discussing the implications of these findings for future research on the rationalization of journalistic work in the digital age.

The craft of journal practice

This article reflects on journal practices in a study of The British Journal of Social Work conducted as a multiple method historical case study, focussing on the first 40 years of the journal. What constitutes a journal’s identity is slippery. Broadly speaking, there are those practices that are located primarily within the immediate creation of volume upon volume, and there are practices through which the journal interacts with those worlds that touch on its boundaries. Editorial appointments, editors’ visions, the work of reviewers, and the infrastructure of technology are all located fairly close to the journal’s day-to-day practice. In this article, the focus is on these comparatively internal practices. This includes becoming a British Journal of Social Work editor; doing the job; reviewers and reviewing; editorial judgement; and technology. We gained a strong sense of continuity in terms, for example, of how those to whom we spoke understood the journal’s identity, and managing editorial succession. There were tensions – perhaps essential – manifested in the deployment of rhetorical arguments and pleas. But while calculated to persuade, the ebb and flow of rhetorical issues are no less about substance and realities.

Forward to Economics of Health Law (Economic Approaches to Law Series)

The editors selected the articles for inclusion in this two-volume collection through a combination of crowd-sourcing and editorial judgment. The crowd-sourcing component involved emails to roughly 20 scholars working in health economics, health law or bioethics, asking for suggestions. The authors consolidated all of the suggestions they received, added some of their own and then held several marathon meetings to identify the articles best suited for inclusion in this collection. We hope readers will find them as interesting and provocative as we did. Volume I Part I: Access to Health Care, Mortality and Other Clinical Outcomes Individuals living without health insurance may face not only increased health risks but also elevated health care costs when inevitable medical treatment is required. Access to health care - the subject of Part I of Volume I - can have a profound impact on both the health and financial security of individuals. Yet, before the enactment of the Affordable Care Act, better known as ObamaCare, some 40 million Americans were without coverage. The exact impact of the lack of health insurance on mortality and health status as well as the health care marketplace is frequently disputed. Part I contains research discussing possible health advantages to insurance coverage and medical care access as well as the financial difficulties experienced by the uninsured.

My News Feed is Filtered?

Personalization algorithms, widely used by digital media sources, filter and prioritize news in ways that may not be apparent to users. Savvy media consumers should be aware of how this technology is used to tailor news to their tastes. This two-part study examines the extent to which US college students are aware of news personalization, and the actions and criteria that affect news selection and prioritization. Interviews with one set of students (N = 37) focus on the news sources they use most often to begin a news search. A subsequent survey given to a second set of students (N = 147) focuses on Google and Facebook, two influential gatekeepers. Results show that students are largely unaware of whether and how news sources track user data and apply editorial judgments to deliver personalized results. These studies identify aspects of news personalization that warrant greater attention in college curricula.

From quantitative precision to qualitative judgements: Professional perspectives about the impartiality of television news during the 2015 UK General Election

Drawing on interviews with key stakeholders – regulators, editors, party spin-doctors and politicians – supported by a systematic content analysis of television news during the 2015 UK General Election, this study makes an intervention into debates about how impartiality is understood and interpreted. Contrary to recent scholarly interpretations about ‘due impartiality’ being applied with some degree of quantitative precision – a stop-watch approach to balance – according to key stakeholders we interviewed the regulation of UK election news should be viewed as a qualitative judgement about the editorial merit of particular issues, parties or leaders throughout the campaign. Overall, we argue that the United Kingdom has moved from a political system shaping impartiality in recent years towards more of a news value–driven system reliant on editorial judgements. This raises, in our view, serious questions about the accountability of editorial decisions and how impartiality is safeguarded. News values, after all, are not politically neutral and – as our content analysis demonstrates – can lead to parties with a minor status gaining more coverage than some major parties. In order to remain relevant to regulatory and industry debates in journalism, we conclude by suggesting scholars should pay closer attention to how key stakeholders interpret and apply media policy.

The Ellesmere Chaucer: Essays in Interpretation ed. by Martin M. Stevens and Daniel Woodward

REVIEWS transition in her life from wife to mother, did social practice sanction the rep­ resentation of women as possessing power over men, acknowledging their real power in matters of sexuality and reproduction, power that is institutionally contained and controlled within the patriarchal family structure. (pp. 183-84) Smith shows a solid and strong command of the literary and visual material in its social contexts as well as the relevant scholarship. Written with little hype and self-congratulation, the book is filled with useful facts and information and perceptive observations. For the most part, the prose is precise and clear. Occasionally, particularly in the review of the rhetorical tradition, there are passages that are overly jargon-ridden and infelicitous, but as soon as the author picks up mo­ mentum that obstacle vanishes. The solid and interesting endnotes fur­ nish a substantial scholarly supplement to an already learned text. The conclusion, a short chapter on the topos in the fifteenth century and be­ yond, presents a view of the future of the medieval topos in the Renaissance rather than a summing up of what has already been cov­ ered. For the medievalist-reader such a chapter holds less interest than the bulk of this otherwise masterful study. GALE SIGAL Wake Forest University MARTIN M. STEVENS and DANIEL WOODWARD, eds. The Ellesmere Chaucer: Essays in Interpretation. San Marino, Ca.: Huntington Library Press, 1995. Pp. xvi, 363. $75.00. This lavishly produced volume is, in format, elegance of layout, and in range and depth of contents, a worthy companion to the New Ellesmere Chaucer Facsimile (Tokyo and San Marino: Huntington Library and Yushudo Publishing, 1995) it is designed to accompany. Like the fac­ simile itself, it is an exemplar of the publisher's art. It is appropriate therefore that it should begin with a detailed account, by Daniel Woodward, ofthe making ofthe facsimile. This introduction should be required reading for anyone who still believes that the making ofa fac­ simile, of any kind, is a purely objective and "scientific" activity, re­ moved from any editorial judgment. No doubt the makers ofthe 1911 315 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER Manchester Press facsimile thought they were achieving an exactly faithful facsimile: in the hindsight of eighty years, their decisions tell us more about their own editorial values (as Ralph Hanna's excellent in­ troduction to the 1989 Brewer reprint shows) than they do about the manuscript itself. Similarly, one can expect that a scholar ofthe next century might ex­ amine the facsimile, and this volume, for insight into the editorial val­ ues of the last decade of this century. On page 8, Woodward declares that a principal aim ofthe facsimile was to achieve "some ofthe overall effect of the manuscript" (his emphasis). As the later pages make clear, the emphasis is on physical effect: on the presentation in the facsimile ofthe manuscript as physical artifact. Thus, the facsimile is printed on sheets of paper in the same quiring as the original, with some copies having pages trimmed to the edges of each sheet. So, too, Woodward asserts that the facsimile is much better presented in printed hard copy than on a computer screen. The Ellesmere manuscript is a codex, and best understood as a physical artifact. This emphasis on the manuscript as object is in harmony with the movement in medieval textual studies in the last decades toward the study ofmanuscripts as objects ofcultural history in their own right: as the product ofthe workshops that prepare the parchment and bind the finished folios, ofthe teams ofscribes, illustrators, and supervisors who write and ornament the pages; and as the possession ofthose who com­ mission, sell, keep, and reuse the finished manuscript. (Outside me­ dieval studies, Jerome McGann's work on "bibliographic codes" has re­ minded textual critics ofthe importance ofthe physical instantiation of the text.) Fundamental advances have been made in this work by many ofthe contributors to this volume, and the essays by Parkes on the plan­ ning and construction of Ellesmere, by Doyle on its scribe, by Scott on itsillumination, and by David on its owners, are both timely summaries ofyears ofwork and contributions ofnew knowledge. One regrets here that the editors were...