Political Commentary Research Articles

How Audience Reaction to The 5th Estate Vlogs Aid in The Construction of Mutahi Ngunyi’s Identity as an Authoritative Political Analyst

This study investigated one of Kenya’s foremost political commentary vlogs – The 5th Estate as a rich site on how multimodal resources are marshaled by Mutahi Ngunyi, the vlog’s creator and political analyst, to construct the identity of an authoritative political analyst. Whereas there are several studies on identity construction on social media platforms, little research on identity construction focusing specifically on vlogging exist. More so, there is scanty investigation of identity construction strategies used by vloggers who specialise in political commentary. Using the Systemic Functional – Multimodal Discourse Analysis (SF-MDA) approach, the research investigated how audience reaction aid in the construction of individual’s identity. The research adopted a qualitative perspective and more specifically a descriptive-interpretive design. Data which included vlogs posted on The 5th Estate since its establishment on 19th February, 2019 to date constituted the population of study from which four most popular vlogs were sampled. Data for research was collected, transcribed and analysed using content analysis technique. Knowledge generated by this study is expected to fill the existing gaps in political communications and new media research concerning identity construction in social media. The study could also be useful to politicians, political influencers and government agents who may want to adopt vlogging to communicate to their audience efficiently and effectively. The study concluded that audience reaction plays an important role in shaping Identity of an individual by affirmation of the message, use of descriptive words that describe the author, or titles ascribed to the author.

Why cartoons make (some of) us smile

Abstract Pocket cartoons are a regular feature of most contemporary newspapers and magazines. As such, they represent a way of conveying complex social and political commentary in a simple visual form. How well we enjoy verbal (oral) jokes depends on the number of mindstates in the joke, and here we ask whether this is also true of visual cartoons. We use survey data from a sample of 3,380 participants attending a public exhibition of published print media cartoons by well-known cartoonists to determine the extent to which viewers’ ratings of cartoons are determined by the mentalizing content of cartoons, the participants’ gender and age, and the publication date of the cartoon. We show that the number of mindstates involved in the cartoon affects its appreciation, just as in verbal jokes. In addition, we show that preferred topics vary by age and gender. While both genders strongly prefer cartoons that explore the complexities of romantic relationships, men rate visual jokes more highly than women do, whereas women prefer jokes that involve political commentary or the dynamics of close relationships. These differences seem to reflect differences in the way the social worlds of the two genders are organized.

Do Financial Markets Respond to Populist Rhetoric?

AbstractWith the global rise in populism over the last decade, there has been an increase in political commentaries (PC) by leaders that criticize their central banks and argue for lower interest rates. We analyse the effects of PCs on exchange rates, bond yields, and the risk premium for six countries that are subject to political pressures. Utilizing a specification with time‐varying parameters, we show that PCs affect the level and the volatility of exchange rates, bond yields and the risk premium in Turkey. The response increases over time. In other countries, there is a significant impact on exchange rate volatility.

Wuhan: Diari di una città chiusa. Il maggiore caso di censura letteraria nella Cina post-riforme

Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantine City is a literary work composed by writer Fang Fang during the lockdown. The content combines an account of the city and its residents in the fight against the virus, with a political commentary about the many gaps in the official narrative. Overall, Fang’s diary is a clear and honest account of the diverse souls populating today’s China. The article explores the book’s origins, circulation, and the impact of censorship on the author’s life.

Review

Art can be particularly an effective means of building transnational understanding across cultural divides. Specifically, the act of making art to express conflict, sexuality and identity is significant as Arab women have frequently been marginalised and excluded from such a site of visibility and meaning. Contemporary Arab women artists not only contribute to global feminist theory but also deal with their aesthetic, visual and personal concerns. The Body in Twilight: Representation of the Human Body, Sexuality and Struggle in Contemporary Arab Art is a book by the Syrian professor of visual art and design Fassih Keiso. In this book, Keiso explores the representation of the human body in contemporary Arab art and its relationship to issues of sexuality and struggle. He argues that the representation of the body in Arab art reflects broader societal changes and struggles and that the use of the body as a site of resistance and political commentary is a common theme in contemporary Arab art. Despite the lack of images of artworks by the artists discussed in this book, the book provides a compelling contribution to comparative gender and feminist art and the broader international art on the centrality of sexuality in politics and society.

“I Am Very Sexy, Sexy, Sexy”

Abstract This article focuses on the story of one transfeminine (transgen, in local parlance) wedding singer, Shabu, identifying through interviews, observation, and song analysis the possibilities of self-expression for transgens as well as for cisgender women who attend these performances. How have they carved out agency for themselves amid Kashmir’s territorial conflict over its sovereignty? The article demonstrates how Kashmiri gendered futures are intimately tied to courageous and innovative performances in women’s spaces, even within pronounced systemic constraints. Shabu’s songs concern women’s agency, gender dynamics and roles, family relationships, and gender presentation both in and outside women’s familial household and community/kin networks. The songs both embody accepted tradition and open doors to innovation, protest, and political commentary. The digital life of these performances on YouTube has contributed to their dissemination and popularity. This article addresses questions arising from shifting contexts of transgens’ wedding-song performances and contributes to the body of analysis of digital folklore through decolonial feminist and queer folkloristic lenses.

Structural Elements of Political News Texts and Comments from Children Target Group

Modern online media offer online news magazines with commenting options for children from 8 to 12 years old. This paper features children's comments in their relation to the structure of a French-language political news text designed as Inverted pyramid. Children's comments to political news aimed at their age group are a new and unexplored scientific object. The research relied on the concept of cognitive constructivism of moral consciousness and involved such methods as content and intent analyses. Children proved to be active readers of political news: they expressed their opinions on the information presented in such structural elements as Lead, Body, Background, and Tail. The greatest response was triggered by Background, which narrates the facts that influenced the news event. Children usually reacted to information about victims of political events, political protesters, descriptions of life situations they can associate with, and events of global significance.

A Linguistic Stylistic Analysis of Political Commentaries on Ondo 2020 Gubernatorial Election on Online Newspapers

This study investigated linguistic stylistic analysis of political commentaries on Ondo 2020 gubernatorial election. The researcher selected 4 political commentaries from two online newspapers (Sun and Independent). The focus of this study was to analyze the collected data based on the objectives of the study that cover syntactic, phonological, foregrounded elements and deviant features found in the selected political commentaries. The analysis was anchored on Leech and Short’s Checklist of Linguistic and Stylistic Categories as its theoretical framework while the method was qualitative research analysis. Descriptive survey method was however employed to analyze the collected data. Hence, the findings showed that sentences in the analyzed comments are predominantly non-simple sentences with mixtures of declarative, imperative and interrogative sentences. Phonological devices such as alliteration, assonance, and consonance fully have rhythmic patterns. Also, foregrounded elements such as phonetic spelling, and dominant deployment of deviational and non-deviational foregrounding to captivate readers’ attentions are evidential. Lastly, deviant features such as morphological, grammatical and lexical deviations manifest in the analyzed comments. Thus, the manifestation of linguistic features inherent in the analyzed data is an attestation that the choice of words in the use of language is peculiar to an individual writer.

The Politics of Babbling in Mum and the Sothsegger

Abstract This article contends that the alliterative long-line poem Mum and the Sothsegger redefines and develops the meanings of the Middle English verb babelen (to babble). I argue that the Mum-poet shifted the meaning of the word from denoting idle prattle and nonsensical, infantile vocalizations into a simple and transparent form of communication that was ideal for telling truths. Those who babble are directly opposed to those who keep mum or communicate in a subtle and complex manner, obscuring and manipulating the truth through their confusing rhetoric and glosses. The Mum-poet pits simplicity against complexity in his political commentary, advocating for the most straightforward, utilitarian manner of speech in statecraft.

Users' Motivations for Facebook Unfriending During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Survey Study.

Social networking sites (SNSs) such as Facebook have been central to the global exchange of health-related information throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, but during this time, increased web-based interactions proved to be a source of stress and conflict for many SNS users. Prior research suggests that many users have engaged in significant boundary regulation during this period, using behaviors such as unfriending to refine and reorient their social networks in response to pandemic-related information. This study aimed to examine Facebook unfriending during and in relation to the first year of the pandemic to better understand how SNS users have managed and maintained their social networks around the COVID-19 pandemic. On the one hand, unfriending may be motivated by an attempt to protect the utility and accuracy of a user's informational environment. On the other hand, it may be motivated by a desire to tune out alternative viewpoints and opinions. Both motivations may have significant implications for public health discourse and outcomes. A sample of 824 active Facebook users (drawn from a representative survey of 1000 American adults) was analyzed using a series of logit regression models. Survey respondents were selected using a stratified quota sampling approach to ensure a representative sample of the US population. Balanced quotas were determined (by the region of the country) for sex, age, race, ethnicity, and political affiliation. In total, 31.7% (261/824) of active Facebook users unfriended at least one account over COVID-19 pandemic-related posts during the first year of the pandemic. The most common reasons for unfriending included "making political comments about COVID-19" (191/824, 23.2%) and "posting information that was inconsistent with public health guidelines" (162/824, 19.7%). As hypothesized, reliance on Facebook for COVID-19 pandemic-related news and information was associated with a greater likelihood of unfriending, particularly in response to information that was inconsistent with public health guidelines. Political factors (particularly partisan intensity) were also predictive of unfriending, especially in the case of COVID-19 pandemic-related disagreements. Both information utility concerns and political factors were associated with a greater likelihood of COVID-19 pandemic-related unfriending, although the magnitude of the effects associated with utility appears to be greater. Although utility-motivated unfriending may lead to more reliable health information experiences for some SNS users, the tendency of consumers to assess accuracy and credibility on the basis of partisan predilections obscures this finding and warrants further consideration.

Functions of quotation in online political comments

This study explores the use of quotations in two contexts where online public discourses respond to social-political confrontations in China and the United States. We investigate the relationship between the form of marking quotations in online social media discourse and the functions that the quoted text accomplishes in the online interactive context in English and Chinese languages. In particular, we relate this to the affordances of the online context, taking account of the typographic indicators of quotation, such as the use of quotation marks. In the data analyzed, quotations indicate stances toward the quoted materials, toward people and ideas, or toward other participants in the comment sections. We describe four functions that draw attention to the communicative practice of quotation marking while showing how these are accomplished in their social, cultural, linguistic and technological contexts. We demonstrate how the literal and nonliteral meanings enlivened by quotations are exploited to display agreement or disagreement in online political comments.

What is the Free Church of Scotland?

The 2023 Leadership contest for the Scottish National Party unexpectedly thrust a small Presbyterian denomination – the Free Church of Scotland – into the centre of political commentary. The social views of one of the candidates, Kate Forbes, a member of the church, formed the focal point of the early days in the campaign. A good deal of this commentary was deeply hostile towards the Free Church, suggesting that its members were morally unsuited, indeed unfit, to hold the highest office in Scotland. No other candidate (and indeed no other prominent Scottish or British politician) has received such scrutiny or criticism on the grounds of their religion or belief. One voice wholly absent in the debate was the Free Church and its people. In this article, then, a senior Free Church minister, and former Moderator of its General Assembly, explores the ‘DNA’ of the Free Church, its historical contribution to Scotland, and where it stands today.

Fog-Clearing and the “Irish Dimension” in Oscar Wilde’s Three Society Plays

Despite growing scholarly interest in how Oscar Wilde’s Irish heritage shaped the form and content of his creative works, critics exploring this area have paid less attention to his three society plays than to his fiction and his final play The Importance of Being Earnest. In seeking to rectify that imbalance, this essay first addresses the analytical implications of Wilde’s suggestion in 1893 that his own performed and planned society plays, along with certain works by his countryman George Bernard Shaw, constituted an “Hibernian” or “Celtic School”, whose key goals were to celebrate Henrik Ibsen, to deprecate theatrical censorship, and to extirpate the English “intellectual fogs” of Puritanism and Philistinism. Examining Wilde’s depictions of Puritanism, London society, and English national character in the three plays, the essay argues that their Irish facets turn out to be relatively modest in scale, consisting not of the allegorically encoded political commentaries previous critics claimed to discover in Wilde’s fiction and The Importance of Being Earnest, but instead strategies of plot, characterization, and dialogue designed to alert England to the urgent need “to clear” away its “intellectual fogs”.

Unleashing the Beast: Exploring Incivility and Intolerance in Facebook Comments Under Populist and Non-populist Politicians’ Social Media Posts About Migration

Abstract Social networking sites allow politicians to reach followers directly and offer citizens platforms to express their opinions. However, online discussions often lack civility, leading to increased polarization. Although existing research has brought important insights into populist effects on political trust, attitudes, or electoral behavior, we know less about how populism’s use of divisive rhetoric and identity-based appeals contribute to the confrontational responses of social media users. To address this gap, we investigate the relationship between the use of populist communication in migration-related social media posts by populist and non-populist political actors and the use of uncivil and intolerant rhetoric by social media users. Focusing on the case of the Czech Republic between 2013 and 2020, we conducted a quantitative content analysis of Facebook posts about the contentious issue of migration created by political parties and comments under those posts published by social media users. Our results indicate that while different elements of populist communication bring mixed results to the responses in online discussions, the social media posts created by populist political parties are positively associated with increased online incivility and intolerance. These findings have significant implications for understanding the potential influence of populist messages on social media and its consequences for democratic societies, highlighting their relevance in addressing and mitigating crises beyond the migration crisis, such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and other emergencies.

Exploring Political and Cultural reflections in Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther

This research paper examines Goethe's novel The Sorrows of Young Werther as a combination of literature and politics. By analyzing the social and political context in which the novel was written and published, the paper explores the ways in which Goethe's work reflects the political tensions and cultural changes of its time. The qualitative approach is utilized and content analysis is provided. The paper also considers the role of literature as a tool for political commentary and criticism, particularly in the context of the emerging Romantic movement in Germany. This research also highlights the significance of The Sorrows of Young Werther as both a literary masterpiece and a political statement and sheds light on the complex relationship between literature and politics in the early 19th century.

A Stylistic Analysis of Online Political Commentaries of Edo 2020 Gubernatorial Election

A Stylistic Analysis of Online Political Commentaries of Edo 2020 Gubernatorial Election

National Liberation Struggle as a Manifestation of National Identity Preservation in Novel “Summer Without Dawn” by Hakop Khachikyan and Jean-Yves Soucy

Key words: American-English writers, historical memory, preservation of the Armenian nation, Armenian history, Armenian people, indestructible spirit The novel “Summer Without Dawn” by Hakop Khachikyan and Jean-Yves Soucy is a unique voluminous work with historiographical facts and political comments, which impartially covers the passage of time, Armenian social and political relations, the struggle for the existence of the Armenian people in the the 20th century, Armenian-Turkish relations at the end of the 19th-early 20th century, the First World War, the anti-Armenian policy of the Ottoman Empire and the allied states, the effort of the Turkish government to falsify Armenian history, the desire to dominate Armenia. From the chronological point of view, the novel covers a long period of action, from the massacres committed by Abdul-Hamid to the epic denouement, which unfolds in the gradual presentation of various episodes. H. Khachikyan and J.-Y. Soucy strive to preserve a single perception of the material, besides; he manages to give a logical sequence of actions. The writers pay much attention to the historical data and elements of political interpretation. The writers were the first in English-language American literature to put the national-liberation struggle at the basis of preserving national identity. When writing the novel, H. Khachikyan and J.-Y. Soucy turned to historical memory, which preserves the national consciousness and self-consciousness of the people, considering it as a living present, the spiritual potential of the people and continuity that stabilizes the ethnicity. Turning to the Armenia’s National Memory, the author pointed out Armenian history’s most important historic events, attempts and fights in resisting life's difficulties, heroic episodes, national spirit and dignity. In the novel, we studied the problems that the American-Armenian English-speaking writer faced with: unceasing efforts to preserve the national identity and the right to life for the Armenians of the whole world, the national liberation struggle, and heroic efforts of the native people. In naturalistic images H. Khachikyan and J.-Y. Soucy skillfully represented the deportation and massacre of Armenians to foreign readers. In order to complete the pro-Armenian policy planned by the Turkish government, he, in addition to depicting the physical destruction, masterfully described the spiritual destruction of the Armenians.

Interdisciplinary Approach to Identify and Characterize COVID-19 Misinformation on Twitter: Mixed Methods Study.

Studying COVID-19 misinformation on Twitter presents methodological challenges. A computational approach can analyze large data sets, but it is limited when interpreting context. A qualitative approach allows for a deeper analysis of content, but it is labor-intensive and feasible only for smaller data sets. We aimed to identify and characterize tweets containing COVID-19 misinformation. Tweets geolocated to the Philippines (January 1 to March 21, 2020) containing the words coronavirus, covid, and ncov were mined using the GetOldTweets3 Python library. This primary corpus (N=12,631) was subjected to biterm topic modeling. Key informant interviews were conducted to elicit examples of COVID-19 misinformation and determine keywords. Using NVivo (QSR International) and a combination of word frequency and text search using key informant interview keywords, subcorpus A (n=5881) was constituted and manually coded to identify misinformation. Constant comparative, iterative, and consensual analyses were used to further characterize these tweets. Tweets containing key informant interview keywords were extracted from the primary corpus and processed to constitute subcorpus B (n=4634), of which 506 tweets were manually labeled as misinformation. This training set was subjected to natural language processing to identify tweets with misinformation in the primary corpus. These tweets were further manually coded to confirm labeling. Biterm topic modeling of the primary corpus revealed the following topics: uncertainty, lawmaker's response, safety measures, testing, loved ones, health standards, panic buying, tragedies other than COVID-19, economy, COVID-19 statistics, precautions, health measures, international issues, adherence to guidelines, and frontliners. These were categorized into 4 major topics: nature of COVID-19, contexts and consequences, people and agents of COVID-19, and COVID-19 prevention and management. Manual coding of subcorpus A identified 398 tweets with misinformation in the following formats: misleading content (n=179), satire and/or parody (n=77), false connection (n=53), conspiracy (n=47), and false context (n=42). The discursive strategies identified were humor (n=109), fear mongering (n=67), anger and disgust (n=59), political commentary (n=59), performing credibility (n=45), overpositivity (n=32), and marketing (n=27). Natural language processing identified 165 tweets with misinformation. However, a manual review showed that 69.7% (115/165) of tweets did not contain misinformation. An interdisciplinary approach was used to identify tweets with COVID-19 misinformation. Natural language processing mislabeled tweets, likely due to tweets written in Filipino or a combination of the Filipino and English languages. Identifying the formats and discursive strategies of tweets with misinformation required iterative, manual, and emergent coding by human coders with experiential and cultural knowledge of Twitter. An interdisciplinary team composed of experts in health, health informatics, social science, and computer science combined computational and qualitative methods to gain a better understanding of COVID-19 misinformation on Twitter.

The Politics of Changing the Dutch Agri-Food System

Tensions between farmers, government and society have recently been running high in the Netherlands. Dutch farmers are furious with the national government because of the ever-stricter nitrogen policy that is supposed to save nature in the Netherlands, in line with European directives. The current plan states that nitrogen emissions need to be reduced by 50% in 2030. The disagreement over how to tackle the nitrogen issue in the Netherlands is a deeply rooted conflict that goes back decades. In this political commentary, we analyse the conflict and argue that the solutions proposed in the public and political debate tend to ignore the systemic nature of the problem. We suggest that it is important to work towards innovation in the rules and arrangements that govern agricultural value chains to create a more conducive and enabling environment for the regional initiatives that have emerged in response to the current crisis, several of which challenge the currently dominant food system.

The Blizzard of Oz: Nick Cave’s Wearisome Ubiquity

ABSTRACT Nick Cave is a hugely successful rock musician who has progressed from post-punk outsider in the 1980s to widely lauded singer-songwriter in the twenty-first century, while simultaneously enjoying critical recognition in fields such as literature and film. This article uses Cave’s 2022 book of interviews Faith, Hope and Carnage, as well as his ongoing blog The Red Hand Files, as a stepping-off point to consider his career trajectory in the context of longstanding accusations of misogyny, his extensive public commentaries on grief (stemming from the 2015 death of his son), and Cave’s latter-day excursions into conservative political commentary.