The social construction of sleep and work in the British print news media

This article presents a sociological study of sleep issues in the British print news media, with particular focus on the relationship between sleep, work and the changing demands of ‘flexible capitalism’. Drawing on over 1000 newspaper articles from 1984 to 2005, we explore how and why sleep is framed or constructed in terms of continuity and change (in British working life and work cultures) and, equally, viewed as a neglected component of our social lives which is too easily sacrificed to the demands of the 24/7 society, long hours culture and the struggle to create a harmonious work-life balance. This is particularly the case for certain British work cultures in which sleep has conflicting and contrasting associations. Finally, we reflect on the broader class-based discourses and debates that arise from certain workers having their sleep patterns increasingly scrutinized and regulated, and the role of the media in any ensuing sleep/work ‘crisis’.

The individual and society in the GDR under Honecker : orthodoxy, dissidence and internal debate.

The thesis offers a comparative interdisciplinary approach to the examination of the intellectual debates about the relationship between individual and society in the GDR under Honecker. It shows that there was not only a continuum of debate between the academic disciplines, but also from the radical critics of the GDR leadership such as Robert Havemann, Rudolf Bahro and Stefan Heym through the social scientists, literary critics and legal theorists working in the academic institutions to theorists close to the GDR leadership. It also shows that the official line and policy of the ruling party itself on the question of the individual and society was not static over the period, but changed in response to internal and external pressures. Over the period 1971 - 1989 greater emphasis was placed by many intellectuals on the individual, his needs and interests. It was increasingly recognised that conflicts could exist between the individual and society in GDR socialism. Whereas the radical critics argued that these conflicts were due to features of GDR society, such as the hierarchical system of labour functions and bureaucracy, and extrapolated from this a general conflict between the political leadership and population, orthodox critics argued that conflicts existed between a specific individual and society and were largely due to external and historical factors. The internal critics also pointed to the social phenomena which were detrimental to the individual's development in the GDR, but they put forward less radical solutions. With the exception of a few radical young writers, all theorists studied in this thesis gave precedence to social interests over individual interests and so did not advocate a return to `individualistic' positions. The continuity of sometimes quite controversial discussions in the GDR academic journals and the flexibility of the official line and policy suggests that it is inappropriate to refer to GDR society under Honecker simply as totalitarian, although it did have some totalitarian features. What the thesis demonstrates is the existence of `Teiloffentlichkeiten' in which critical discussion is conducted even as the official, orthodox line is given out for public consumption in the high-circulation media.

"Crack down on the celebrity junkies": does media coverage of celebrity drug use pose a risk to young people?

This study analysed news media content to examine the role played by celebrity drug use in young people's perceptions of drug use. We know that young people have access to discourses of drug use through music and other media which may emphasise short term gains (of pleasure or sexual success) over longer term health and social problems. This study goes beyond a simple modelling approach by using Media Framing Analysis (MFA) to take an in-depth look at the messages themselves and how they are 'framed'. New stories about Amy Winehouse's drug use were used and we conducted focus groups with young people asking them questions about drugs, celebrity and the media. Frames identified include: 'troubled genius', 'losing patience' and 'glamorization or gritty realism'. Initially, the press championed Winehouse's musical talent but soon began to tire of her recklessness; the participants tended to be unimpressed with Winehouse's drug use, characterising her as a promising artist who had 'gone off the rails'. Young people were far more critical of Winehouse than might be expected, demonstrating that concerns about the influence of celebrity drug use and its impact on future health risk behaviour among young people may have been over-simplified and exaggerated. This study illustrates the need to understand young people and their frames of reference within popular culture when designing drug awareness information relevant to them. Furthermore, it indicates that critical media skills analysis may contribute to health risk education programmes related to drug use.

El género (para)traducido:pugna ideológica en la traducción y paratraducción de 'O curioso incidente do can á media noite'

Los discursos teóricos de la actualidad conciben la traducción como un acto ideológico de mediación intercultural. De este modo, rechazan la supuesta neutralidad y fidelidad al texto original o a la intención autorial de antaño, subvirtiendo al mismo tiempo la tradicional jerarquía entre original y traducción. Sin embargo, en el presente artículo sostengo que estos discursos teóricos por lo general desatienden otras relaciones de poder jerárquicas que afectan a la traducción situándola en una posición de inferioridad respecto a la paratraducción (Garrido Vilariño 2005), definida ésta como un acto de mediación por el cual se decide la presentación final del libro traducido en la sociedad meta. Para ilustrar las implicaciones de esta nueva jerarquía recurro al conflicto ideológico originado a partir de la traducción y paratraducción del género en dos reescrituras en gallego de la novela de Mark Haddon The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Current theoretical debates on Translation Studies define translation as an ideological act of intercultural mediation. In this way, notions such as neutrality or fidelity to the original text or to the author’s intent prove untenable, challenging the traditional hierarchy between the original text and its translation. However, it is my contention that these theoretical discourses tend to disregard other hierarchical power relationships that also affect translation, placing it in a position of inferiority against paratranslation (Garrido Vilariño 2005), the latter being an activity that determines crucially the final presentation of the translated book in the target society. I will illustrate the implications of this new hierarchy through an analysis of the ideological struggle that emerged from the translation and paratranslation of gender in two rewritings into Galician of the book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon.

Ultralong raman fiber lasers as virtually lossless optical media

By transforming the optical fiber span into an ultralong cavity laser, we experimentally demonstrate quasilossless transmission over long (up to 75 km) distances and virtually zero signal power variation over shorter (up to 20 km) spans, opening the way for the practical implementation of integrable nonlinear systems in optical fiber. As a by-product of our technique, the longest ever laser (to the best of our knowledge) has been implemented, with a cavity length of 75 km. A simple theory of the lossless fiber span, in excellent agreement with the observed results, is presented. © 2006 The American Physical Society.

The social media paradox:an intersection with freedom of expression and the criminal law

This article begins by setting out the human rights provisions that apply to social media expression. It then provides insight into the part social media plays within our society by analysing the social media landscape and how it facilitates a ‘purer’ form of expression. The social media paradox is explored through the lens of current societal issues and concerns regarding the use of social media and how these have manifested into litigation. It concludes by analysing the tension that the application of an array of criminal legislation and jurisprudence has created with freedom of expression, and whether this can successfully mitigated by the Director of Public Prosecution’s Interim Guidelines.

On the F word:a corpus-based analysis of the media representation of feminism in British and German press discourse, 1990-2009

Research in social psychology has shown that public attitudes towards feminism are mostly based on stereotypical views linking feminism with leftist politics and lesbian orientation. It is claimed that such attitudes are due to the negative and sexualised media construction of feminism. Studies concerned with the media representation of feminism seem to confirm this tendency. While most of this research provides significant insights into the representation of feminism, the findings are often based on a small sample of texts. Also, most of the research was conducted in an Anglo-American setting. This study attempts to address some of the shortcomings of previous work by examining the discourse of feminism in a large corpus of German and British newspaper data. It does so by employing the tools of Corpus Linguistics. By investigating the collocation profiles of the search term feminism, we provide evidence of salient discourse patterns surrounding feminism in two different cultural contexts. © The Author(s) 2012.

Strongly localized moving discrete dissipative breather-solitons in Kerr nonlinear media supported by intrinsic gain

We investigate the mobility of nonlinear localized modes in a generalized discrete Ginzburg-Landau-type model, describing a one-dimensional waveguide array in an active Kerr medium with intrinsic, saturable gain and damping. It is shown that exponentially localized, traveling discrete dissipative breather-solitons may exist as stable attractors supported only by intrinsic properties of the medium, i.e., in the absence of any external field or symmetry-breaking perturbations. Through an interplay by the gain and damping effects, the moving soliton may overcome the Peierls-Nabarro barrier, present in the corresponding conservative system, by self-induced time-periodic oscillations of its power (norm) and energy (Hamiltonian), yielding exponential decays to zero with different rates in the forward and backward directions. In certain parameter windows, bistability appears between fast modes with small oscillations and slower, large-oscillation modes. The velocities and the oscillation periods are typically related by lattice commensurability and exhibit period-doubling bifurcations to chaotically "walking" modes under parameter variations. If the model is augmented by intersite Kerr nonlinearity, thereby reducing the Peierls-Nabarro barrier of the conservative system, the existence regime for moving solitons increases considerably, and a richer scenario appears including Hopf bifurcations to incommensurately moving solutions and phase-locking intervals. Stable moving breathers also survive in the presence of weak disorder. © 2014 American Physical Society.