Representation Of Actors Research Articles

Improved representation of investment decisions in the German energy supply sector: An optimization approach using the TIMES model

The German energy supply sector is becoming diverse and dispersed due to the variety of actors investing in energy generation technologies and spatially variable renewable resources, which bring about increased heterogeneity in the investment decisions of actors. Therefore, the effective utilization of renewable resources towards a cost-optimal achievement of the “Energy Transition” goals is becoming more complex. We argue that addressing these complexities requires a method, which, in addition to a fine technological and regional characterization, takes into account the heterogeneity of the investment decisions of actors while optimizing the total system. This paper describes methodological improvements via the well-known energy system optimization model generator called The Integrated MARKAL-EFOM System (i.e. TIMES), which enhances the representation of the actors' investment realities regarding wind and photovoltaic technologies applied to the case of the German supply sector. Firstly, the actors are disaggregated by their main economic features, including cost of capital, representing their different investment valuations and budget restrictions. Then, Germany is divided into four regions to reflect the spatially variable renewable resources and electricity demand affecting actors’ optimal decisions. Lastly, the grid development costs and losses are considered, especially for power transmission across the regions. The newly developed TIMES Actors Model (TAM) incorporating these improvements is then tested to separately study the impact of CO2 taxes as a policy instrument and a national renewable quota as a target for the sector. The results showed that CO2 taxes and renewable targets affect the system quite differently, specifically regarding the optimal role that actors are expected to play within regions to meet the objectives of energy transitions at least system costs as well as regarding the power transmission between the regions. By means of these findings, actors can be targeted more properly by actor- and region-specific policy instruments demonstrating which actor should invest where and into which technology, so that the energy transition can take place more quickly and at lower system costs. A comparison of the improved versus original versions of the model reveals the potential contribution of improving the representation of actors that have been so far overlooked in the energy system modelling practice.

What Drives the Right-Wing Populist Vote? Topics, Motivations and Representations in an Online Vox Pop with Voters for the Alternative für Deutschland

Abstract In a recent study (Miglbauer, Marlene and Veronika Koller (2019). “‘The British People have Spoken’: Voter Motivations and Identities in Vox Pops on the British EU Referendum.” Veronika Koller, Susanne Kopf and Marlene Miglbauer, eds. Discourses of Brexit. Abingdon: Routledge, 86–103.), we investigated vox pops (short for ‘vox populi,’ i.e. ‘voice of the people’) with self-declared Leave voters in the run-up to the 2016 British EU referendum. The study presented here complements this research with a comparative perspective, exploring the motivations expressed by voters for the German right-wing populist party AfD (Alternative für Deutschland). On the day of the 2017 general election, the German news website Zeit online (ZON) invited its readers to say why they voted AfD. Although the AfD voter profile and the ZON readership profile are noticeably different, the question elicited 468 replies numbering a total of around 59,000 words, which we compiled into a corpus. Working with corpus analysis software AntConc 3.4.1w, we first prised out topics and motivations by analysing this collection of online vox pops for word frequencies as well as collocates and concordances for selected lexical units, before manually grouping the different lexemes into ten topics. In a second step, we manually analysed the data for social actor representation (van Leeuwen, Theo (2008). Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.) and appraisal (Martin, James R. and Peter R. R. White (2005). Appraisal in English. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.). The results of the analysis show that next to previously documented motivations for right-wing populist votes – e.g. in-group bias and rejection of the Other as morally deficient (Heinisch, Reinhard (2008). “Austria: The Structure and Agency of Austrian Populism.” Daniele Albertazzi and Duncan McDonnell, eds. Twenty-First Century Populism: The Spectre of Western European Democracy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 67–83.) –, the group of AfD voters represented in the written vox pop have specific additional reasons, namely a focus on German chancellor Merkel as an ‘anti-hero’ and a belief of being victimised by the media. An additional, unexpected finding was that a number of posters to the dedicated comment forum explicitly distance themselves from perceived stereotypes of right-wing populist voters. Our findings therefore also problematise previously identified characteristics of right-wing populist discourse as anti-elitist and anti-intellectual (Wodak, Ruth (2015b). The Politics of Fear: What Right-Wing Populist Discourses Mean. Los Angeles: SAGE.) and call into question the support from workers, and associated fears of wage pressure and competition for welfare benefits, as one of the main factors in the success of right-wing populism (Oesch, Daniel (2008). “Explaining Workers’ Support for Right-Wing Populist Parties in Western Europe: Evidence from Austria, Belgium, France, Norway, and Switzerland.” International Political Science Review 29.3, 349–373.).

Representaciones sociales en las elites empresariales de la ciudad de Lima, Perú

El presente artículo expone las representaciones de los actores sociales que componen la nación entre un grupo de empresarios y ejecutivos pertenecientes a diversos gremios empresariales de Lima. En ese sentido, el trabajo recoge una serie de narrativas de los entrevistados en donde hacen un recorrido entre su trayectoria personal junto con el contexto que les tocó vivir. De esa forma, el objetivo del presente estudio es compartir las representaciones de las elites económicas más desde la narrativa y el testimonio que desde la estructura. Estas representaciones giran en torno a la representación sobre empresarios, el Estado y distintos grupos sociales. Así, la investigación nace de la necesidad de estudiar a los sectores más privilegiados desde la antropología porque ayuda a entender como en las sociedades latinoamericanas se ejerce el poder. Por ese motivo, exponemos primero el caso de estudio, la metodología empleada y los estudios realizados sobre elites económicas en el Perú.

Retrieving how diplomacy writes subjects, space and time: a methodological contribution

How does diplomacy describe international actors? Diplomatic practices observe, analyse, prioritise and constitute information that is ultimately committed to text. Drawing on post-structuralist approaches to identity, diplomacy and textuality, this paper argues for consideration of the unique role of diplomatic text in constituting the state and especially its representation and understanding of Self and Other. It consequently develops a methodology to empirically analyse how the text of diplomatic communication describes people, places, time, politics, and informs policy. The analytical method proposed adjusts and expands post-structuralist discourse analysis, adapting it to the intertextual study of large collections of diplomatic knowledge production documents. It firstly determines data selection in relation to diplomacy’s own theory. Secondly, it develops an approach to retrieve how any diplomatic text constitutes representations of subjects and their contexts. Thirdly, it follows the development of representations across diplomatic knowledge production, identifying when they come to influence other international actors. This approach is demonstrated in the analysis of America’s 1945–1948 diplomatic road to involvement in Vietnam, showing how diplomacy’s representation of actors were vital to US involvement, and identifying hitherto unconsidered events, descriptions and actors. These analytics contribute to and empirically substantiate understanding of how diplomacy constitutes Self and Other, informs policy and shapes world politics.

Debating credibility

AbstractThis article explores public debates about credibility in media discourse regarding a Somali refugee who was raped on Nauru. Given the pseudonym “Abyan”, she was living on Nauru as a result of Australian refugee policy and was brought to Australia for medical assistance. Her treatment by the Australian authorities became the subject of debate and was widely discussed in the Australian media. Analyzing a corpus of media articles reporting and commenting on this debate, this article explores how the media’s representations of the key actors shape their credibility. Reflecting existing research, this article finds that Abyan’s experience is used to support broader policy arguments. Further, the discourse presents Abyan as a key speaker, despite her limited ability to defend her credibility. The article concludes that credibility remains an important theme in discourse on refugees and that power asymmetries hidden within this discourse create obstacles for those wishing to challenge it.

IDSI Network Analysis Supplement

As part of iDSI’s MEL strategy, baseline and endline social network and network health surveys were implemented to measure changes in the iDSI global network in terms of who is in the network, how relationships have shifted over time, how the network structure has changed over time, and the contribution of iDSI activities to these changes. Why is it important to evaluate iDSI’s global network? iDSI was established as a global network to leverage the comparative advantages and diverse expertise of organisations and individuals around the world to collaboratively address and make progress on complex issues related to priority setting for health. This is exactly how networks should be used; or how complex global issues ought to be solved. However, too often global ‘networks’ are established without careful monitoring and evaluation (M&E) that could optimise their results. Not only should we track the outputs and outcomes of networks, we should identify ways to leverage the network, for example through optimising the composition of actors and their expertise, or by building networks that are better structured to achieve objectives such as knowledge exchange or innovation. While routine M&E can help track certain network-specific indicators (e.g. the geographical representation of network actors), social network analysis (SNA) provides a full mapping of the network and measures its structure and how it is changing over time. The insights SNA provides enables iDSI and its partners to more specifically intervene on the actual network structure and consider how to directly shape the network’s structure to optimise impact.

New biomedical practices and discourses: Focus on surrogacy

Abstract This study, set in a discourse-analytical and constructionist framework, explores the impact of biomedical advances on language and discourse. The main focus is on surrogacy and on the websites of ten organizations promoting it, with headquarters in various countries where this practice is legal. The discursive representation of the different forms of surrogacy and related Assisted Reproductive Technologies is discussed, focusing in particular on the communicative strategies enacted to deal with the most sensitive and controversial aspects. The analysis provides evidence of an approach that represents surrogacy, the actors and the moral issues involved in absolutely positive terms, and at the same time disregards the most problematic and controversial aspects, making recourse to some recurrent discursive frames. A further aspect investigated is the representation and denomination of the various actors involved, in a context where the spread of new reproductive technologies has introduced the possibility of significantly altering the natural mechanisms presiding over the inception of human life, and has thus triggered a process of lexical innovation and adaptation of the basic vocabulary associated with reproduction and kinship roles.

THE REPRESENTATION OF BASUKI TJAHAJA PURNAMA AND ANIES BASWEDAN IN THE GUARDIAN AND THE TIMES’ ARTICLES OF UNOFFICIAL QUICK COUNT RESULTS OF JAKARTA GOVERNOR ELECTION

The aim of this paper is to present a critical discourse approach to compare two articles about unofficial quick count results of Jakarta Governor Election in The Guardian and The Times. Firstly, I will begin with the background analysis of why this issue is investigated and then I will explain how The Guardian and The Times represent social actors, social actions and visual representation of the social actors in their articles. Finally, I will discuss the content evaluation of these articles and end it with a conclusion. It can be concluded that both The Guardian and The Times use similar representational strategy to represent the main social actors. In their articles, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama is more activated and more prioritised despite being overtly described as a minority.

Social Actor Representation of the Missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 in the Malaysian and Foreign News Reports: A Critical Discourse Analysis

The objective of this study is to examine the linguistic representation of social actors in the selected Malaysian and foreign news reports on the circulated event of the missing MAS flight MH370. Despite extensive studies of news discourse, less attention is paid on how news event are speculated and the extent the social actors are relegated. Hence, the study explores the role of newspaper editorials in promoting stereotypical depictions through the representation of self- and other- in their reporting of the MH370 tragedy. The study retrieved a total of fifty (50) news reports of the missing MAS flight MH370 incident from ten news press, twenty-five (25) published by five local (Malaysian) English newsagents: The Star, New Straits Times, Sun Daily, Malaysian Insider and Malaysiakini, and twenty-five (25) others from five foreign newsagents: Daily Mail (UK), The Guardian (UK), Washington Post, New York Times and USA Today. The corpora were collected from March 8, 2014, to November 5, 2014, and analysed using Van Dijk’s (1998) Ideological Square framework, as well as Reisigl and Wodak (2000) Discursive Strategies. The analysis of this study discovers evidence of the “intergroup bias” made by the selected news press in representing the MH370 social actors. The selected news press displays an overt preference for own group and obvious demotion of the other group. The study also reveals the occurrence of lexicalization of the ‘other’ in the foreign news reports indicating positive representation of their in-group and exhibiting apparent disapproval of the actions by the out-group. On the other hand, the analysis also reveals an impartial representation of the MH370 social actor by the local news press both for in-group and out-group.

Mapping policy actor networks and their interests in the FLEGT Voluntary Partnership Agreement in Lao PDR

Abstract This paper maps the policy actors and their networks in the European Union’s Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Action Plan and the Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) process in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR). It analyzes power relations in the FLEGT VPA process, as well as actors’ preferences in relation to a number of policy issues dealt with in the FLEGT VPA. To provide contextual understanding, the paper explores pathways of policy influence along which international actors influence domestic decision-making processes within the FLEGT VPA. We find that in the Lao FLEGT VPA policy process, power is held by the traditionally most powerful policy actors, the central governmental agencies, donor community and international development partners, while the private sector, civil society organizations and actors from subnational levels are substantially less powerful. Strong policy preferences were noted for all aspects of timber legality, except for the legality of non-timber forest products (NTFPs). Similarly, strong preferences were observed for considerations of transparency and accountability, while preferences were comparatively weaker for issues concerning i) forest communities' rights to forest and land, ii) livelihood impacts on small-scale operators and family businesses as well as those of forest communities, and iii) the involvement of civil society organizations in the VPA process. The most dominant pathways through which VPA influences domestic policy-making is the direct access to domestic policy-making, followed by the international rules pathway of influence. Based on our analysis, we argue that imbalance in distribution of power and in representation of actors in the VPA policy network may obstruct the intended outcomes and progress on important policy issues, despite the stated policy goals and resources provided by the donor community. This in turn fosters perpetual dominance of the traditionally powerful policy actors, which is likely to lead to further marginalization and disempowerment of the less powerful actors, such as forest communities and informal operators.

Positioning Strategies and Representation in Fictional Autobiography: The Sense of an Ending

Abstract Spatial positioning strategies and social actors representation have been introduced and discussed in visual and political texts. This paper offers an analysis of these strategies in a literary text, Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending. The main objectives of this study are (a) to disclose the way(s) the narrator-autobiographer positions himself and others in his life story as social actors, (b) to investigate whether these strategies can explain the involved social actors’ motivations in their interactions, and (c) to pinpoint the pros and cons of this perspective for literary analysis. The paper uses social actors representation and spatial positioning theories provided by Langacker, Hart, van Leeuwen, and Chilton along with Jahn’s notions of focalization. The analysis of Barnes’s fictional autobiography pinpoints the precision spatial positioning strategies confer on literary focalization. Simultaneously, both social actors representation and spatial positioning strategies fail to attend to the gaps the narrative has due to its symbolic overtones or ambiguous repetitions.

A representação de Atores Sociais no discurso da revista Caros Amigos

O objetivo deste trabalho é verificar como se estabelece a construção da imagem dos Atores Sociais mídia corporativa, revista Caros Amigos e leitor da mesma no discurso da própria revista. Nosso intuito mais amplo é analisar o discurso veiculado pela denominada mídia alternativa (ou independente), considerando especialmente a construção da opinião expressa. Este trabalho parte dos pressupostos teóricos da Linguística Sistêmico-Funcional de Halliday (1985) e Halliday; Matthiessen (2004), bem como do sistema sociossemântico desenvolvido por Van Leeuwen (2008 [1996]) a partir da LSF. Para alcançarmos nossos objetivos, analisamos em nossa tese de doutorado (XXXXXXXX, XXXX) a Representação dos Atores Sociais destacados em quinze editoriais e três artigos de opinião da revista Caros Amigos. Neste artigo, apresentaremos um panorama das Representações em todo o corpus, e também a análise específica de dois dos editoriais: “Caminhos” (mar. 2003) e “A linha de frente” (out. 2007). Observamos que uma das estratégias para expressar a opinião nesse discurso é a maneira como é materializada linguisticamente a Representação dos Atores Sociais, especialmente a mídia corporativa, o Ator Social mais frequente em nosso corpus. A mídia corporativa é representada principalmente por Categorizações, ou seja, referida como se se tratasse de uma única instituição homogênea. Além disso, ela é recorrentemente avaliada por meio de Representações que revelam uma crítica que aponta para a falta de ética jornalística.

Enlarging the Negotiation Table with Business Sector Actors: Who, How and with What Effect?

Abstract This article examines the inclusion of business sector actors in peace and political transition negotiations. Looking across twenty-two cases, this study examines who has been included as business sector representatives in these negotiations and through which inclusion modalities. The study finds that business sector actors were included primarily through consultation modalities in officially mandated meetings running parallel to negotiations, informal consultations, or as part of public consultations. Second most common is direct representation of business sector actors at the negotiation table. Less common is business sector inclusion in high-level track one-and-a-half workshops and inclusive commissions. The article then focuses on the impact of business actors on negotiations. Four cases of business inclusion are discussed in detail – Somalia, Kenya, Guatemala and El Salvador – comparing and contrasting supportive and obstructive examples.

When citizens talk: Stance and representation in online discourse on Biafra agitations

Biafra secessionist agitations in Nigeria continue to generate varied conversations online and offline. This study applies critical discourse analysis and the appraisal framework in examining social actor representations in the ongoing Biafra agitations in Nigeria. It analyses posts produced by interlocutors, as they express variegated stances towards the agitations and its actors, within two vibrant Nigerian digital communities, Nairaland and Nigeria Village Square. This study identifies binary social actor positioning, revealing both negative valence and positive self-representation strategies towards the agitations and principal social actors in the agitations. Expressed within the appraisal resources of attitude, engagement and graduation, these valuations result in the distribution of socially and emotionally constructed identities for the principal social actors in the agitations. Such distribution is socio-cognitive, as there is the likelihood that the representations might evolve into the creation of new ideological orientations or the reinforcement of existing ideological leanings, whose consequences are potentially double-edged for tranquillity in the Nigerian polity.

A methodological approach to analyze the territorial appropriation of high-speed rail from interactions between actions and representations of local actors

ABSTRACTBecause it is difficult to separate the specific transport impact from other factors influencing economic and spatial development, the focus in research is increasingly on understanding the process by which territorial changes occur in order to explain how economic and social agents and local authorities have appropriated new transportation systems. This appropriation plays a crucial part in territorial dynamics. The diversity of economic and spatial changes produced by high-speed rail indicates the existence of multiple modes of appropriation which vary according to the location of stations, the mobilization of local stakeholders confronted with the transport operators’ logic and the geographical and historical context of the infrastructure implementation. Appropriation is defined as a dialogical identity process that must be explained to better understand the gradual and mutual adjustments between the transportation system and the territory. After specifying the issues involve in an analysis of the appropriation of high-speed rail, the article adopts an analytical framework inspired by Brunel and Roux‘s research work on consumer habits in order to explain how appropriation has gradually taken shape over the various stages of a high-speed line project.

Representación de los actores socioculturales en las crónicas de indias de la «Conquista»

Este artículo examina la representación de los actores socioculturales en diez crónicas de Indias de la «Conquista», para mostrar la concepción y distinción entre colonizadores y colonizados en el mundo colonial. El análisis toma como base teórica y metodológica los estudios críticos del discurso (ecd), en particular el modelo de Van Leeuwen de representación de los actores sociales. Se utilizan las herramientas de análisis textual Nvivo y t-lab 7.5, que permiten realizar un examen léxico-semántico de las crónicas seleccionadas. Como resultados de la indagación, se halló que los europeos del mundo colonial se autorrepresentaban a través del uso de nombres propios, la honorificación y los títulos de oficio, mientras que los pueblos prehispánicos eran representados mediante la categorización y la asimilación. Esto implica que los primeros se describían a partir de rasgos personales, humanos y «civilizados», en cambio los segundos eran concebidos mediante abstracción, generalización y homogenización, factores que los deshumanizaban.

Disrupting Regulation, Regulating Disruption: The Politics of Uber in the United States

Platform companies disrupt not only the economic sectors they enter, but also the regulatory regimes that govern those sectors. We examine Uber in the United States as a case of regulating this disruption in different arenas: cities, state legislatures, and judicial venues. We find that the politics of Uber regulation does not conform to existing models of regulation. We describe instead a pattern of “disruptive regulation”, characterized by a challenger-incumbent cleavage, in two steps. First, an existing regulatory regime is not deregulated but successfully disregarded by a new entrant. Second, the politics of subsequently regulating the challenger leads to a dual regulatory regime. In the case of Uber, disruptive regulation takes the form of challenger capture, an elite-driven pattern, in which the challenger has largely prevailed. It is further characterized by the surrogate representation of dispersed actors—customers and drivers—who do not have autonomous power and who rely instead on shifting alignments with the challenger and incumbent. In its surrogate capacity in city and state regulation, Uber has frequently mobilized large numbers of customers and drivers to lobby for policy outcomes that allow it to continue to provide service on terms it finds acceptable. Because drivers have reaped less advantage from these alignments, labor issues have been taken up in judicial venues, again primarily by surrogates (usually plaintiffs’ attorneys) but to date have not been successful.

The ‘Third Hand’ in Egypt

This article seeks to complement current research on the international dimension of the recent transformations in the Arab world by focusing on the subjective domestic political debates on external actors in Egypt. Approaching political transformations in post-revolutionary Egypt (2010–2014) as dynamic and reciprocal processes of claim making and receiving, I explore how the representations of external actors served as an important source for the military to legitimize the continuous expansion of its political powers. By doing so, I hope to illuminate on a period that was celebrated as a departure towards democracy, yet regressed into the re-emergence of a military regime three years later. Drawing from empirical findings gained in a multi-sited long-term field study from 2010 to 2014, I show that the ‘third hand’ – a concept that is commonly used in the streets, the media and in political speeches to designate external interventions as attempts to undermine the stability of the country – had a major impact on the transformations. The article shows how the exploration of domestic public debates is key to a better understanding of the international dimension in political transformations.

From a Leader-centred to a Party-centred System? The Curious Case of Media (De-)personalisation in Yugoslavia and Croatia, 1945–2015

It is often argued that the politics of Central Eastern European countries revolve around political leaders. This can inhibit the development of fragile political institutions and the process of democratisation in general. This article examines patterns of media representation of political actors in the transition from a communist to a post-communist setting in the case of Yugoslavia and Croatia. The results show that, although there are significant similarities between the prominence of leaders in the communist and early post-communist eras, in the process of democratisation media attention has shifted significantly from leaders to parties as collectives.

Actors, decision-making, and institutions in quantitative system modelling

Increasing realism in quantitative system modelling with respect to the representation of actors, decision-making, and institutions is critical to better understand the transition towards a low-carbon sustainable society. Yet, studies using quantitative system models, which have become a key analytical tool to support sustainability and decarbonization policies, focus on outcomes, therefore overlooking the dynamics of the drivers of change. We explore opportunities that arise from a deeper engagement of quantitative systems modelling with social science. We argue that several opportunities for enriching the realism in model-based scenario analysis can arise through model refinements oriented towards a more detailed approach in terms of actor heterogeneity, as well as through integration across different analytical and disciplinary approaches. Several opportunities that do not require major changes in model structure are ready to be seized. Promising ones include combining different types of models and enriching model-based scenarios with evidence from applied economics and transition studies.