Expert judgement in the processes of commercial property market forecasting

In this paper, we investigate the role of judgement in the formation of forecasts in commercial property markets. The investigation is based on interview surveys with the majority of UK forecast producers, who are using a range of inputs and data sets to form models to predict an array of variables for a range of locations. The findings suggest that forecasts need to be acceptable to their users (and purchasers) and consequently forecasters generally have incentives to avoid presenting contentious or conspicuous forecasts. Where extreme forecasts are generated by a model, forecasters often engage in ‘self‐censorship’ or are ‘censored’ following in‐house consultation. It is concluded that the forecasting process is significantly more complex than merely carrying out econometric modelling, forecasts are mediated and contested within organisations and that impacts can vary considerably across different organizational contexts.

Expert judgement in the processes of commercial property market forecasting

In this paper we investigate the role of judgement in the formation of forecasts in commercial real estate markets. Based on interview surveys with the majority of forecast producers, we find that real estate forecasters are using a range of inputs and data sets to form models to predict an array of variables for a range of locations. The findings suggest that forecasts need to be acceptable to their users (and purchasers) and consequently forecasters generally have incentives to avoid presenting contentious or conspicuous forecasts. Where extreme forecasts are generated by a model, forecasters often engage in ‘self-censorship’ or are ‘censored’ following in-house consultation. It is concluded that the forecasting process is more complex than merely carrying out econometric modelling and that the impact of the influences within this process vary considerably across different organizational contexts.

Unusual censor readings: G.D.R. science fiction and the Ministry of Culture

Covers the censorship by the Hauptverwaltung Verlage und Buchhandel in the Ministry of Culture of science fiction works in East Germany. These ranged from propaganda pieces supporting the scientific-technological revolution and the progress of socialism, to veiled criticisms of the system. The chapter argues that publishers became dependent on the high sales generated by popular culture, creating a relatively safe space for this genre.

Adapting Jules Verne for the baby-boom generation: Hachette and the Bibliothèque Verte, c.1956-1966

How do changing notions of children’s reading practices alter or even create classic texts? This article looks at how the nineteenth-century author Jules Verne (1828-1905) was modernised by Hachette for their Bibliothèque Verte children’s collection in the 1950s and 60s. Using the methodology of adaptation studies, the article reads the abridged texts in the context of the concerns that emerged in postwar France about what children were reading. It examines how these concerns shaped editorial policy, and the transformations that Verne’s texts underwent before they were considered suitable for the children of the baby-boom generation. It asks whether these adapted versions damaged Verne’s reputation, as many literary scholars have suggested, or if the process of dividing his readership into children and adults actually helped to reinforce the new idea of his texts as complex and multilayered. In so doing, this article provides new insights into the impact of postwar reforms on children’s publishing and explores the complex interplay between abridgment, censorship, children’s literature and the adult canon.

An introduction to television studies. 3rd edition.

This is a comprehensive textbook for students of Television Studies, now updated for its third edition. The book provides students with a framework for understanding the key concepts and main approaches to Television Studies, including audience research, television history and broadcasting policy, and the analytical study of individual programmes. The book includes a glossary of key terms used in the television industry and in the academic study of television, there are suggestions for further reading at the end of each chapter, and chapters include suggested activities for use in class or as assignments. The case studies in the book include analysis of advertisements, approaches to news reporting, television scheduling, and challenges to television in new contexts of viewing on computers and mobile devices. The topics of individual chapters are: studying television, television histories, television cultures, television texts and narratives, television genres and formats, television production, television quality and value, television realities and representation, television censorship and regulation, television audiences, and the likely future for television.

Boots Book-lovers' Library and the novel: The impact of a circulating library market on twentieth-century fiction

In a Report for the Society of Bookmen in 1928, British publishers estimated that between a quarter to two thirds of all the books they published went to four circulating libraries: Boots, Smith’s, Mudie’s, and The Times bookclub. This essay examines the literary impact of one of the largest of these, Boots Book-lovers’ Library (1899-66), which by 1935 had around 400 libraries attached to their high-street pharmacies catering for the tastes of over one million subscribers a year. Compared to the wealth of studies examining the influence of the library market in the Victorian period, the significance of the subscription libraries as key distributors of fiction in the twentieth century is not well known. But private libraries expanded rapidly in the early twentieth century to cater for what Sidney Dark termed a ‘new reading public’, and records in publishers’ archives indicate that authors routinely adapted their unpublished manuscripts in order to meet the perceived demands of this library reader. This article examines the impact of the Boots Book-lovers’ Library market on authors’ practices of writing and revision, and on literary marketing and censorship. It focuses in particular on the author James Hanley (1897-1985), using unpublished correspondence in the Chatto & Windus archive at the University of Reading to demonstrate how the publisher’s sense of the tastes and expectations of the Boots library reader influenced the editorial process.

Poetry, parables and codes: translating the letters of Indian soldiers

This chapter examines the role of translation in the work of the Indian Mail Censorship Department in France in the First World War, considering the position of the translator as an intermediary figure, and the implications for the military tasks of censorship and intelligence analysis of operating in this way from a foreign language.

Hjælp til selvcensur

Self-help and self-censorship: A self-help cultural perspective on organizational silence This paper seeks to explain silence in the workplace through an analytical perspective derived from Judith Butlers work on censorship, and in this way suggest an alternative to explanations in the existing literature on employee silence, which are often tied to the actions and motivations of the individual subject. It is thus argued that self-help books can be seen as indicative of a pervasive culture of self-improvement, which among other things promotes the absence of criticism in the workplace. The empirical point of departure for this argument is the two bestselling self-help books The secret by Rhonda Byrne and The 7 habits of highly effective people by Stephen Covey. Theoretically, the paper applies Butlers notion of ”implicit censorship” where censorship is understood as productive in the sense of being constitutive of language. Hence, in the analysis it is shown how discursive regimes in self-help literature tend to be constructed in such a way, that explicit criticism cannot emerge as a meaningful activity, and is thus implicitly censored.

Reading between Librarians’ lines

It is a well known fact that librarians, as professionals go, are not among the world's most demonstrative people. I can say that with impunity because I am one. It's one thing for a man to slight his own profession; quite another when someone else presumes to do it. But given that librarians are a placid sort, just mention the phrase "intellectual freedom," or utter the word "censorship," and the usually calm demeanor of the librarian becomes as agitated as the water between Charybdis and Scylla! This article addresses three aspects of the issue of intellectual freedom and attempts to define the difference between the phrases "free speech" and "free expression." First to be explored will be the nature of intellectual freedom as defined by the American Library Association's Intellectual Freedom Manual; second, the underlying philosophy implicit in that expression; and third, an alternative to both the manual, and its philosophical presuppositions.

Libraries in the Cyberage--Part I

First Amendment issues heat up with the advent of the digital age and its ability to bring pornography to every library, free of charge.

Fahrenheit 451, de Ray Bradbury e de François Truffaut : da alienação pós-moderna à oralidade homérica

Este trabalho analisa o Fahrenheit 451 de Ray Bradbury e o de François Truffaut, em sua proposição de utilizar a oralidade (discurso oral) como forma de manutenção do literário e resistência à imposição e à censura ideológica. Efetua também uma análise comparatista das Utopias Negativas do século XX (obras Distópicas). Ao longo deste projeto, é feita uma análise do surgimento da escrita (alfabético-fonética), e sua estreita relação com o discurso oral. Tenta-se reproduzir a trajetória traçada pelo discurso oral, passando pelo desenvolvimento da tecnologia escrita, assim como a produção cultural tanto no meio oral quanto no escrito, junto com suas conseqüências e influências sobre pensamento humano. Da oralidade dos poemas homéricos à oralidade advinda com o desenvolvimento de aparelhos eletrônicos como o telefone, que, em plena modernidade, voltam a valorizar o discurso oral. Neste projeto a oralidade é vista como algo cíclico.

O modelo do Conselho Nacional de Autorregulamentação Publicitária e o direito brasileiro

O presente trabalho procura examinar o funcionamento do Conselho Nacional de Autorregulamentação Publicitária (“CONAR”), visando descobrir como este modelo regulatório se conforma com o Direito brasileiro. Neste sentido, explica-se, inicialmente, a origem do Conselho, como ele se estrutura e como se dão os julgamentos das denúncias que lhe são apresentadas. Em seguida, faz-se uma análise da relação entre a legislação publicitária vigente e as normas do Código Brasileiro de Autorregulamentação Publicitária, donde se conclui que ambas não são excludentes. Parte-se, então, para um estudo da jurisprudência dos tribunais brasileiros acerca da atuação do Conselho, afim de se verificar em que medida é aceita a autorregulação da publicidade pelo Poder Judiciário. Por fim, pretende-se analisar como se dá, na prática, a atuação do CONAR diante de questões polêmicas, como a inflação legislativa no meio publicitário e a censura da publicidade.