Role Of Norms Research Articles

Comedy as journalism in Zimbabwe

Post-2000, Zimbabwe has witnessed a gradual shrinking of communicative space. In its efforts to control the narrative about the causes of the country’s multi-dimensional crisis, the ruling ZANU-PF government has used a gamut of legal and extra-judicial strategies to stifle press and other related freedoms. In this highly restrictive context, comedy has emerged as a viable source of information about events unfolding in the country as well as an alternative public sphere where counter-hegemonic discourses are ventilated by citizens who were previously excluded from the mainstream public sphere. Building on Mpofu’s (2017) and Mano’s (2007) studies on art and music as variants of journalism, our paper argues that comedy should be viewed as a variant of journalism in post-2000 Zimbabwe. We employ the normative roles of journalism, and Nancy Fraser’s (1990) concept of the alternative public sphere as our framework for examining how comedy, and more specifically Comic Pastor’s Monthly Comic Awards, has filled the void created by mainstream journalism by performing the journalistic function of communicating salient issues during the protracted Zimbabwean crisis. Our findings converge with, and broaden, Mpofu’s (2017) and Mano’s (2007) thesis that alternative sources of expression such as comedy should be viewed as journalism in crisis contexts. These findings also reinforce the need to expand traditional conceptions of journalism that narrowly limit the practice to traditional mass media.

Adaptation of WHO COVID-19 guidelines by Caribbean countries and territories.

The normative role of the World Health Organization (WHO) involves creating evidence-based, principled guidelines to guide its Member States in making well-informed public health decisions. While these guidelines often need to be adapted to ensure contextual relevance, foster better implementation and adherence, adapting existing guidelines is more efficient than creating new ones. Here we describe the adaptation of the WHO coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) living guideline on pharmacological interventions for the Caribbean using the grading of recommendations, assessment, development and evaluation (GRADE)-ADOLOPMENT method. The Caribbean Public Health Agency and the Pan American Health Organization led the effort, assembling a diverse panel of 16 experts from seven Caribbean countries and territories. The adaptation process, involving 15 steps, was guided by an experienced methodologist and included selecting relevant clinical questions and prioritizing them based on regional needs. The panel evaluated the latest WHO guidelines and integrated additional local data. They adjusted the direction and strength of several recommendations to better fit the Caribbean context, considering local values and preferences, resources, accessibility, feasibility and impact on health equity. Ultimately, we changed the direction of two recommendations and the strength of five, tailoring them to regional realities. This effort highlights the importance of adapting global guidelines to local settings, improving their applicability and effectiveness. The adaptation process also serves as a valuable opportunity for skill transfer and capacity-building in guideline development. Continued research is needed to assess the impact of these adaptations on health-care outcomes in the Caribbean.

Chinese Journalists’ Witnessing Practice in Health Disasters

ABSTRACT While “ears-and-eyes” and “mouthpieces” are two normative roles of Chinese journalists, the latter has long been more emphasized in the mobilization model of disaster reporting. Based on in-depth interviews with Chinese journalists who witnessed city lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, this study examines how they performed the two roles to determine the extent to which their witnessing experiences could be transformed into media discourses. It argues that journalists’ bearing witness on disaster sites presupposed not only eyewitnessing but also earwitnessing in the form of survivor interviewing, fact checking, and truth investigation. While the “mouthpiece” orientation of news media may have obscured the potential of journalistic witnessing for timely exposing public suffering, there existed journalist-media negotiations on performing the two roles. Highlighting the role asymmetry between “ears-and-eyes” and “mouthpieces”, this study examines the veracity gap in Chinese journalists’ witnessing practice that derives from the tension between journalistic autonomy and structural restraints, which may contribute to the further theorization of journalistic witnessing.

Reshaping the Spheres: Gatekeeping as an Ethical Normative Imperative

ABSTRACT This theoretical essay argues for reconstituting the normative role of gatekeeping of journalism in a functioning democracy. It contends that in this time of disinformation, misinformation and fake news, the journalist’s main normative role should involve gatekeeping all deviant information from the mainstream public sphere. It then articulates why the space inside the sphere of legitimate controversy grew in recent years, and journalists, through gatekeeping, must restore it to its normative ideal.

The expectation-evaluation gap: Audience news engagement and perceptions of media performance and credibility

This study explicates and examines a hypothesized discrepancy in public perceptions of the normative roles of journalists and evaluations of journalists’ actual performance. We argue that journalistic functions and public perceptions are mutually constituted, a point that has been largely ignored in existing journalism studies literature. We theoretically connect the expectation-evaluation gap with the public assessment of media credibility in a model that involves the moderation effect by depth of news engagement. Contextualized in Hong Kong during the COVID-19 period, the study conducted a random sample survey of 603 residents. Results of data analyses supported all our hypotheses: (1) a salient expectation-evaluation gap exists; (2) the wider the gap, the lower the media credibility ratings; (3) cognitive engagement in news consumption is an important condition in the process. Findings mark an epistemological break from the traditional one-way approach in journalism studies, and could potentially inform the journalist-audience literature, public policy and the media industry.

Extended Space as Disgrace: A Phenomenological Study of Rahat Khwaja’s Queerness in the Pakistani Movie Zindagi Tamasha

This phenomenological study reveals the societal backlash faced by Rahat Khwaja in the movie Zindagi Tamasha, highlighting broader implications for the acceptance of queer identities within Pakistan's socio-religious landscape. I, hereby, contend that Pakistan’s gender-based patriarchal society disregards and questions queerness, especially in religious personalities. Rationalising this study using Sara Ahmed’s queer phenomenological model of affect as contact with Gillian Rose’s visual methodologies, I examine the conundrums of gender performance in the patriarchal Pakistani society by significantly focusing on how Khwaja's dance performance challenges normative gender roles and problematises societal backlash on becoming a queer-oriented religious person. Nonetheless, his newly acquired queerness as rejection of the norms highlights the socio-religious dilemma of his existence. This study reflects on the problem of queer phenomenological belongingness and unbelongingness of Khwaja as a disoriented figure in the hetero-obsessed patriarchal society and the resultant challenges he faces due to the backlash on his dance performance while asserting his identity as a righteous masculine man. Although he refuses to apologise, this extended space becomes disgraceful for him, and recreates his marginalised position as a fat-belly dancer. By examining the societal reaction to Khwaja's performance, I underscore the complexities of queer identity politics in contemporary Pakistan, shedding light on both the challenges and resilience of individuals navigating cultural norms for adjustment. Keywords: Queer Phenomenology, Zindagi Tamasha, viral queer memes, disgrace, socio-religious shaming culture; Pakistani queer cinema, Rahat Khwaja

Two Central Meanings of Subjectivity and Their Application in the Political Context of Modern Ukraine

This paper examines the fundamental meanings of the concepts of “subject” and “subjectivity” in Western political philosophy, aiming to place them within the context of modern Ukraine. The discourses on Ukraine-as-a-subject are examined in relation to the two contradictory senses of subjectivity: (a) autonomous, selfpossessing, and (b) dependent, belonging subject. As the idea of an autonomous subject in Western political thought is closely related to colonial ideology and practice, this concept should be replaced with the notion of the historical, dependent subject, which is shaped by the political regime it belongs to. Consequently, the paper argues that the sense of a belonging subject (b) better reflects the actual practices of subjection, because it captures the factor of belonging to the community and presupposes the ethical, normative impact of the political collective on its subjects. Aristotle’s first systematic use of the word subject (to hupokeimenon) is based on the verb “to belong” (hupokeimai), from which the Latin civis (citizen) is also derived. Accordingly, the true ‘autonomy’ of the subject lies in the ability to choose one’s ‘belonging’ and to participate in a political community that reinterprets and changes one’s own intellectual tradition. In this case, the historicity of the subject does not mean a fateful and singular History, but rather a multiplicity of stories that give meaning and value to their subjects. The only way to partake in the act of subjectivation is through self-regulated education, which molds the social subject within the community. In the case of Ukraine, this primarily means that political power should be locally generated through civil institutions and groups that play a normative role in society. Only when education and political organization become a res publica can subjectivation be a liberating practice, as envisioned by the theorists of the Enlightenment.

A Study on the Role of Constructive Journalism During Covid-19 Pandemic

An expansive proliferation of misinformation and fake news followed with the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, a devastating event with lasting scars that changed the world forever. While social media may have originally helped in connecting people and sharing information, it may have also triggered a heightened accessibility in spreading misinformation and fake reports during the pandemic. The Covid-19 outbreak cannot be held as the sole reason for the mounting scepticism among people over the mainstream news reporting or the rising news avoidance observed in recent years. The role of news media organisations during pandemic situations towards disseminating scientific and verified information is indispensable. However, a shift from the normative role of mass media as a mere informant and mute spectator to one that reflexively gathers and presents socially useful news for its audience could have quelled the misinformation-induced hysteria to a certain extent during the peak of the pandemic—a constructive approach. This study critically analyses the various discourses surrounding constructive journalism and its role during the Covid-19 pandemic. It was found that most discourses vouched for the inclusion of constructive approaches in news sharing during crises and in future. However, regional, geopolitical and socioeconomic differences may allude to different understandings and contextual applications of constructive journalism that would require greater academic research.

Memory Writing and Cosmopolitan Identity in Timothy Mo’s Pure

ABSTRACT In his recent novel Pure (2012), Timothy Mo maps the complex interaction between memory and identity in the post-9/11 context. The novel interweaves the memory narratives of four protagonists and mainly describes the protagonist Snooky’s attempts to negotiate between the Islamic world and the West. This essay draws on memory studies to explore how memory shapes the protagonists’ cosmopolitan identity. The novel contests the binarism prevalent in both Western and fundamentalist Islamic discourses and proposes a cosmopolitan identity that extends beyond the established narrative. This paper argues that the novel explores the otherness inherent in seemingly homogeneous memory narratives and thus nuances the self-versus-other narrative. It suggests that the normative role of collective memory in identity formation may compromise cultural reconciliation. Pure criticizes the constraints of collective memory and reveals the challenges to cosmopolitan identity in a conflict-ridden world.

Two concepts of directed obligation

AbstractThis paper argues that there are two importantly distinct normative relations that can be referred to using phrases like ‘X is obligated to Y,’ ‘Y has a right against X,’ or ‘X wronged Y.’ When we say that I am obligated to you not to read your diary, one thing we might mean is that I am subject to a deontological constraint against reading your diary that gives me a non‐instrumental, agent‐relative reason not to do so, and which you are typically in a unique position to waive with consent. I call this first relation the constraint relation. A second thing we might mean is that you are in a position to fittingly hold me personally accountable for reading your diary by demanding that I not read your diary, resenting me if I do so without excuse, and deciding whether to forgive me for this afterwards. I call this second relation the accountability relation. Though these two kinds of directed obligation often coincide, I argue that they are extensionally dissociable and play different normative roles. We cannot provide an adequate theory of ‘obligation to’ until we recognize that this phrase denotes not one relation, but two.

Hallucinating a political future: Global press coverage of human and post-human abilities in ChatGPT applications

In November 2022, the tech company OpenAI launched a groundbreaking chatbot model, ChatGPT. This unprecedented chatbot, characterized by an ease of use for lay internet users, gained immediate popularity and attracted extensive media attention. This article examines global press coverage of ChatGPT in peak reporting dates over the first full year of its existence. Based on a qualitative holistic narrative analysis, our findings point to two narrated scapes of political fear in the coverage of ChatGPT: The fear of the machine and the fear of the human. These attest to the collective imagining of an intensified future, where post-humanist interaction with political information is associated with exploitation, propaganda, and polarization of existing political rifts. We draw on the case study to articulate journalists’ role in signaling instability in the current political media ecosystem, and their construction of a techno-moral framework for society. We discuss an important blind-spot in journalists’ fulfilment of their normative role in fostering technology-informed citizens globally.

The Normative Role of the Circular Plastics Alliance in the EU’s Transition towards a European Circular Economy for Plastics

The Normative Role of the Circular Plastics Alliance in the EU’s Transition towards a European Circular Economy for Plastics

Data governance for the ecological transition: An infrastructure perspective

Data governance for the ecological transition: An infrastructure perspective

Responsible leadership in the public sector: A sector-specific interpretation

Purpose: Responsible leadership has gained significant attention in contemporary management scholarship. Despite significant advances made in the burgeoning corpus of knowledge, a paucity of studies focusses on developing economies with a dearth of studies underscoring specifically the public sector.Design/methodology/approach: A qualitative research methodology was implemented and operationalised by means of a policy analysis. Ascribed to leadership activities within the public sector being linked to policy directives, a policy document analysis was deemed an appropriate approach. Content analysis was utilised as a data analytical method which consists of a systematic evaluation of the content of written or verbal communication for the purpose of identifying themes.Findings/results: Findings are captured in a conceptual framework, which infers that leadership in the context of the public sector is consistent with the tenets of responsible leadership. Themes that emerged from the analysis include leadership antecedents, leadership roles, motivational drivers, and responsibility towards internal and external stakeholders. Leadership antecedents include psychological characteristics, aptitude and conative orientation. Normative, relational and operational roles were evidently stimulated by normative and intrapsychic motivation.Practical implications: The contribution relates to how responsible leadership in terms of theoretical tenets and practical applicability might support policy makers and public sector leaders to improve the implementation of the National Development Plan (NDP) as a societal meta-framework for sustainable development in a multi-stakeholder context.Originality/value: A dearth of research focuses on responsible leadership in the context of a developmental state especially theorising within the public sector indicative of the originality of the research.

Empathy as a means to understand people

ABSTRACT Misunderstanding other people can be interpreted as the result of an insufficient performance of people’s skills to understand other persons and their experiences. But what does understand mean in these contexts? And what are the relevant skills that need to be engaged to successfully understand other people? I argue that understanding other people is a form of recognition of the epistemic validity of another person’s perspective. I claim that minimal understanding does not require an endorsement of another person’s perspective. This makes the avoidance of lack of understanding a feasible achievement in almost all cases, though it often requires effort in the interactive process of understanding. I specifically analyse the epistemic and normative roles of empathy in this process. In pursuing this aim, I also defend empathy against recent philosophical arguments that point at moral dangers of empathic processes.

Sentientism Still Under Threat: Reply to Dung

In 'Ethics Without Sentience: Facing Up to the Probable Insignificance of Phenomenal Consciousness' (Kammerer, 2022), I argued that phenomenal consciousness is probably normatively insignificant, and does not play a significant normative role. In 'Preserving the Normative Significance of Sentience' (Dung, 2024), Leonard Dung challenges my reasoning and defends sentientism about value and moral status against my arguments. Here I respond to Dung's criticism, pointing out three flaws in his reply. My conclusion is that the view that phenomenal consciousness is distinctively significant is still very much under threat.

Stepping on Toes? Role Dynamics between Journalists and Lobbyists Regarding Big Tech’s Accountability Agenda

The expanding political role of Big Tech(nology) corporations has triggered concerns about the role of the media in holding corporate power to account. This study provides a comprehensive understanding of role dynamics between journalists and lobbyists toward the agenda for Big Tech’s responsibilities. Based on semi-structured interviews with European journalists ( n = 15) and lobbyists representing large technology corporations ( n = 15), we use professional role perceptions as a heuristic for examining the relationship of both actor groups in tandem. Journalists, who report an overlap of audience-focused with passive watchdog role ideals geared toward legislative accountability, interact with lobbyists, who assert a more concrete and active role perception. Journalists cautiously appropriate their normative watchdog role in accordance with the ideals of detachment and balance to maintain their own media legitimacy and access to an oligopolistic information environment. Remaining strategically sovereign over information, lobbyists perceive a strong mandate to establish Big Tech as a relevant stakeholder in the agenda on their regulatory accountability, but in mid of a perceived techlash, the majority of corporations avoid public attention. Both actor groups’ limited and off-the-record interaction reflects a defensive corporate stance, keeping their negotiation of Big Tech’s accountability off-stage. The technological and regulatory complexity of the information environment might render these corporations unfit for soft regulation by news media. We discuss implications for their co-dependence in the context of fast technological advancement and disruption of (corporate) mediatization processes.

Interviewing Didier Raoult: The scientist who breaks the frame

This paper examines how normative roles of interaction in broadcast news interviews are disrupted during interviews with French expert immunologist and scientist Didier Raoult. The analysis is based on the organisation of the news interview as a particular form of institutional talk, and on the discursive features of expertise. There are three key aspects to the construction of Raoult as a central figure of the pandemic scene in France. The first is his prominent media presence online, the second is his regular appeal to historical events, in relation to France and to his family, and the third is his own status as director of a team of epidemiology experts at the IHU (Institut Hospitalier Universitaire) in Marseille. In the three interviews in the data set, these three aspects emerge as legitimate discursive grounding for his stance regarding the pandemic, and relevant treatment for the virus. The paper is organised as follows: the first part is a presentation of Didier Raoult and the mediated context from which the corpus of interviews is selected. In the second, the discussion focuses on the discourse of scientific expertise, and how Raoult constructs his expert status in the interviews. The final part will analyse how he puts this expert status to work as a discursive resource for disrupting the interactional norms that generally hold between journalists on the one hand, and interviewees on the other.

Mortality risk following end-of-life caregiving: A population-based analysis of hospice users and their families

Experiencing the death of a family member and providing end-of-life caregiving can be stressful on families – this is well-documented in both the caregiving and bereavement literatures. Adopting a linked-lived theoretical perspective, exposure to the death and dying of one family member could be conceptualized as a significant life stressor that produces short and long-term health consequences for surviving family members. This study uses familial-linked administrative records from the Utah Population Database to assess how variations in family hospice experiences affect mortality risk for surviving spouses and children. A cohort of hospice decedents living in Utah between 1998 and 2016 linked to their spouses and adult children (n = 37,271 pairs) provides an ideal study population because 1) hospice typically involves family members in the planning and delivery of end-of-life care, and 2) hospice admission represents a conscious awareness and acknowledgment that the decedent is entering an end-of-life experience. Thus, hospice duration (measured as the time between admission and death) is a precise measure of the family's exposure to an end-of-life stressor. Linking medical records, vital statistics, and other administrative microdata to describe decedent-kin pairs, event-history models assessed how hospice duration and characteristics of the family, including familial network size and coresidence with the decedent, were associated with long-term mortality risk of surviving daughters, sons, wives (widows), and husbands (widowers). Longer hospice duration increased mortality risk for daughters and husbands, but not sons or wives. Having other family members in the state was protective, and living in the same household as the decedent prior to death was a risk factor for sons. We conclude that relationship type and sex likely modify the how of end-of-life stressors (i.e., potential caregiving demands and bereavement experiences) affect health because of normative gender roles. Furthermore, exposure to dementia deaths may be particularly stressful, especially for women.

Morrison, Mambéty, and missing limbs: an Afrocentric reading of Sula, Hyenas, and Dürrenmatt’s The Visit

This essay analyzes common ground between Toni Morrison’s Sula, (1973) and the film Hyènes (Hyenas), directed in 1992 by the avant-garde Senegalese filmmaker Djibril Diop Mambéty. Both Morrison’s and Mambéty’s works enter into an extended dialogue with the 1956 tragicomedy Der Besuch der alten Dame (The Visit), written by the Swiss-born playwright Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990). By re-framing the sinister figure of Dürrenmatt’s Claire Zachanassian within the Africanist context of African American and Senegalese communities, Morrison and Mambéty challenge the limits of normative social roles for women—particularly mothers—while also probing the unsettling, permeable boundaries between the individual and that which lies outside the self. The essay concludes by drawing on Julia Kristeva’s theory of the abject in order to chart these boundaries, and to better understand the abiding, cross-cultural fascination of the wealthy, violent, and vengeful Visitor, who returns home bearing poisoned gifts.