Guiding public protest: assessing the propaganda model of China’s hybrid newspaper industry

This dissertation presents an account and analysis of published mainland Chinese media coverage surrounding three major events of public protest during the Hu-Wen era (2003-2013). The research makes a qualitative analysis of printed material drawn from a range of news outlets, differentiated by their specific political and commercial affiliations. The goal of the research is to better understand the role of mainstream media in social conflict resolution, a hitherto under-studied area, and to identify gradations within the ostensibly monolithic mainland Chinese media on issues of political sensitivity. China’s modern media formation displays certain characteristics of Anglophone media at its hyper-commercialised, populist core. However, the Chinese state retains an explicit, though often ambiguous, remit to engage with news production. Because of this, Chinese newspapers are often assumed to be one-dimensional propaganda ‘tools’ and, accordingly, easily dismissed from analyses of public protest. This research finds that, in an area where political actors have rescinded their monopoly on communicative power, a result of both policy decisions and the rise of Internet-based media platforms, established purveyors of news have acquired greater latitude to report on hitherto sensitive episodes of conflict but do so under the burden of having to correctly guide public opinion. The thesis examines the discursive resources that are deployed in this task, as well as reporting patterns which are suggestive of a new propaganda approach to handling social conflict within public media. Beside the explicitly political nature of coverage of protest events, the study sheds lights on gradations within China’s complex, hybrid media landscape both in terms of institutional purpose and qualitative performance.

The politics of transformative harmony

This paper explores the idea of transformative harmony as a concern of the political. It proposes that the cultivation of harmony as a project of the Self is closely related to the political project of democracy as a quest for social harmony. This is in light of the view that social conflict can be seen as a collective manifestation of individual struggles to establish inner harmony. The paper, firstly, explores the idea that the quest for harmony is an intersubjective, as well as an intra-subjective, undertaking. This is in line with the Gandhian principle that societies ultimately reflect the level of enlightenment of the actors who form them. It also critiques the use of violence as a means of securing transformative harmony and social change. Finally, the paper discusses the way in which transformative harmony, in terms of its focus on the Self as the site for attaining the type of altered consciousness required to bring about social change, shares a philosophical basis with both ideas of ‘deep democracy’ and Habermasian discourse ethics. It is proposed that the project of transformative harmony represents, by default, a project to transform democratic praxis. Keywords: Harmony, politics, ethics, rights, duties, Gandhi, democracy, risk.

Competition-related factors directly influence preferences for facial cues of dominance in allies

Alliance formation is a critical dimension of social intelligence in political, social and biological systems. As some allies may provide greater ‘leverage’ than others during social conflict, the cognitive architecture that supports alliance formation in humans may be shaped by recent experience, for example in light of the outcomes of violent or non-violent forms intrasexual competition. Here we used experimental priming techniques to explore this issue. Consistent with our predictions, while men’s preference for dominant allies strengthened following losses (compared to victories) in violent intrasexual contests, women’s preferences for dominant allies weakened following losses (compared to victories) in violent intrasexual contests. Our findings suggest that while men may prefer dominant (i.e. masculine) allies following losses in violent confrontation in order to facilitate successful resource competition, women may ‘tend and befriend’ following this scenario and seek support from prosocial (i.e. feminine) allies and/or avoid the potential costs of dominant allies as long-term social partners. Moreover, they demonstrate facultative responses to signals related to dominance in allies, which may shape sex differences in sociality in light of recent experience and suggest that intrasexual selection has shaped social intelligence in humans.

Crisis de las instituciones sociales y sistema de valores de menores en conflicto con la Ley Penal del Distrito Nacional, República Dominicana

313 p.

Boris fausto : história e historiografia : o fazer-se de um historiador da república em interlocução com as ciências sociais

Tese (doutorado)—Universidade de Brasília, Instituto de Ciências Humanas, Departamento de História, Programa de Pós-Graduação em História, 2016.

Diálogos de La Habana (2012-2016) : ¿Ahora sí la paz?

Tras conocer cuatro años de debate (dentro y fuera de La Habana), los borradores de dos puntos de la agenda y presenciar el crecimiento de bandas criminales y/u organizaciones sucesoras del paramilitarismo, de la mano de la expansión de economías ilegales y una polarización creciente (y preocupante por sus características) en torno a la paz y el conflicto social/armado en el país, el presente trabajo pretende analizar a profundidad el carácter y alcance de los discursos emitidos por los negociadores en La Habana.

Relaciones de poder y luchas agrarias en regiones cafetaleras: interrogantes y cavilaciones

ResumenA partir de la notoria diversidad en las características socioeconómicas y en las historias políticas de los países o regiones en que el café fue el principal producto de exportación, se plantea una secuencia de preguntas para la investigación y el análisis sobre las estructuras de poder, la conflictividad social y los significados históricos de la caficultura para las sociedades latinoamericanasAbstractGiven the diversity of socioeconomic characteristics and political histories of countries or regions where coffee was the main export product, a number of questions are raised for research and analysis on power structures, social conflict, and the historical meaning of coffee production for Latin American societies.

Effects of coping strategies, social support and work-nonwork conflict on shift worker's health

Objectives This study examines the direct and mediated effects of shift workers' coping strategies and social support on structural work-nonwork conflict and subjective health. Methods The participants were 172 registered female nurses, aged 21 to 40 years. They all worked full-time, on rapidly rotating, 8-hour shifts in metropolitan general hospitals. All the respondents completed a self-administered questionnaire requesting demographic information and data on sources of social support, work-nonwork conflict, and coping strategies. Results A path model with good fit (chi(2)=28.88, df=23, P>.23, CFI=0.97) demonstrated complex effects of social support and coping on structural work-nonwork conflict and health. Conclusions Structural work-nonwork conflict mediated the effects of social support from supervisors and emotionally expressive coping on psychological symptoms. Control of shifts mediated the effect of social support from supervisors on structural work-nonwork conflict. Disengagement coping had direct and mediated effects on psychological and physical health. However, it also had mediated effects, with the effect on psychological health being mediated by support from co-workers and the effect on physical symptoms being mediated by family support. Go-worker support mediated the effect of social support from supervisors on psychological symptoms. Overall, these findings support previous research and clarify the process by which coping strategies and social support affect structural work-nonwork conflict and health in shift work.

Conflict resolution and evolution of social structures in insect societies

In colonies of social Hymenoptera (which include all ants, as well as some wasp and bee species), only queens reproduce whereas workers generally perform other tasks. The evolution of worker's reproductive altruism can be explained by kin selection, which states that workers can indirectly transmit copies of their genes by helping the reproduction of relatives. The relatedness between queens and workers may however be low, particularly when there are multiple queens per colony, which limits the transmission of copies of workers genes and increases potential conflicts between colony members. In this thesis, we investigated the link between social structure variations and conflicts, and explored the mechanisms involved in variation of colony queen number in ants. According to kin selection, workers should rear the brood they are most related to. In social Hymenoptera, males are haploid whereas females (workers and queens) are diploid. As a result, workers can be up to three times more related to females than males in some colonies, where they should consequently favour the production of females. In contrast, queens are equally related to daughters and sons in all types of colonies and therefore should favour a balanced sex ratio. In a meta-analysis across all studies of social Hymenoptera, we showed that colony sex ratio is generally largely influenced by workers. Hence, the evolution of social structures where queens and workers are equally related to males and females may contribute to decrease the conflict between the two castes over colony sex ratio. Another conflict between queens and workers can occur over male production. Many species contain workers that still have the ability to lay haploid eggs. In some social structures, workers are on average more related to sons of queens than to sons of other workers. As a result, workers should eliminate worker-laid eggs to favour queen-laid eggs. We showed that in the ant Formica selysi, workers eliminate more worker-laid than queen-laid eggs, independently of colony social structure. These results therefore suggest that worker policing can evolve independently from relatedness, potentially because of costs of worker reproduction at the colony-level. Colony queen number is a key parameter that influences relatedness between group members. Queen body size is generally linked to the success of independent colony foundation by single queens and may influence the number of queens in the new colony. In the ant F. selysi, single-queen colonies produce larger queens than multiple-queen colonies. We showed that this association results from genes or maternal effects transmitted to the eggs. However, we also found that queens produced in colonies of the two social forms did not differ in their general ability to found new colonies independently. Queen body size may also influence queen dispersal ability and constrain small queens to be re-adopted in their original nest after mating at proximity. We tested the acceptance of new queens in another ant species, Formica paralugubris, which has numerous queens per colony. Our results show that workers do not discriminate between nestmate and foreign queens, and more generally accept new queens at a limited rate. To conclude, this thesis shows that mechanisms influencing variation in colony queen number and the influence of these changes on conflict resolution are complex. Data gathered in this thesis therefore constitute a solid background for further research on the evolution and the maintenance of complex organisations in insect societies.

Conflicto, colaboración y consenso en la enseñanza de las ciencias sociales = Conflict, collaboration and consensus in the teaching of the Social sciences

This article suggests the study of the key concept of conflict as a means of implementing a critical and communicativecurriculum based on the study of relevant social themes. To this end we put forward the principal characteristics of thecritical/communicative curriculum. We offer a didactic proposal about conflict and explain the results of its application intwo Secondary Education classrooms