Reconstructing apology: David Cameron's Bloody Sunday apology in the press

While there is an acknowledgement in apology research that political apologies are highly mediated, the process of mediation itself has lacked scrutiny. This article suggests that the idea of reconstruction helps to understand how apologies are mediated and evaluated. David Cameron's apology for Bloody Sunday is examined to see how he constructs four aspects of apology: social actors, consequences, categorization, and reasons. The reconstruction of those aspects by British, Unionist, and Nationalist press along with reconstructions made by soldiers in an online forum are considered. Data analysis was informed by thematic analysis and discourse analysis which helped to explore key aspects of reconstruction and how elements of Cameron's apology are altered in subsequent mediated forms of the apology. These mediated reconstructions of the apology allowed their authors to evaluate the apology in different ways. Thus, in this article, it is suggested that the evaluation of the apology by different groups is preceded by a reconstruction of it in accordance with rhetorical goals. This illuminates the process of mediation and helps to understand divergent responses to political apologies.

THE MAKING OF THE IMMIGRANT IDENTITY IN THE PRESS: Constructing the Immigrant Imagined Community

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master in Arts

Reporting verbs and bias in the press. 'Los verbos informativos y la parcialidad en la prensa'.

Se describe la forma en que la prensa demuestra sutilmente las preferencias de los periodistas. Dependiendo de la fuente de las palabras, los periodistas emplean verbos diferentes, guiando así a los lectores para que adopten posiciones en pro o en contra de esa fuente. El artículo emplea un corpus de la prensa británica para mostrar el perfil de las fuentes favorecidas por el uso de los verbos.

Europeanization in parliament and in the press

Europeanization challenges national democratic systems. As part and parcel of the broader internationalization of politics, Europeanization is associated with a shift from policymaking within majoritarian, elected representative bodies towards technocratic decisions among non-majoritarian and non-elected bodies (Kohler-Koch and Rittberger 2008, Lavenex 2013). It is thus said to weaken the influence of citizens and parliaments on the making of policies and to undermine democratic collective identity (Lavenex 2013, Schimmelfennig 2010). The weakening of national parliaments has been referred to as “de-parliamentarisation” (Goetz and Meyer-Sahling 2008) and has nurtured a broader debate regarding the democratic deficit in the EU. While not being a member of the EU, Switzerland has not remained unaffected by these changes. As discussed in the contribution by Fischer and Sciarini, state executive actors take the lead in Switzerland's European policy. They are responsible for the conduct of international negotiations, they own the treaty making power, and it is up to them to decide whether they wish to launch a negotiation with the EU. In addition, the strong take-it or leave-it character of Europeanized acts limits the room for manoeuver of the parliamentary body also in the ratification phase. Among the public, the rejection of the treaty on the European constitution has definitely closed the era of “permissive consensus” (Hooghe and Marks 2009). However, the process of European unification remains far remote from the European public. In Switzerland, the strongly administrative character of international legislation hinders public discussion (Vögeli 2007). In such a context, the media may serve as cue for the public: By delivering information about the extent and nature of Europeanized policymaking, the media enable citizens to form their own opinions and to hold their representatives accountable. In this sense media coverage may not only be considered an indicator of the information delivered to the public, but it may also enhance the democratic legitimacy of Europeanized policymaking (for a similar argument, see Tresch and Jochum 2005). While the previous contributions to this debate have examined the Europeanization of Swiss (primary and secondary) legislation, we take a closer look at two additional domestic arenas that are both supposed to be under pressure due to Europeanization: The parliament and the media. To that end, we rely on data gathered in a research project that two of us carried out in the context of the NCCR Democracy.1 While this project was primarily interested in the mediatization of decision-making processes in Switzerland, it also investigated the conditional role played by internationalization/Europeanization. For our present purposes, we shall exploit the two data-sets that were developed as part of a study of the political agenda-setting power of the media (Sciarini and Tresch 2012, 2013, Tresch et al. 2013): A data-set on issue attention in parliamentary interventions (initiatives, motions, postulates,2 interpellations and questions) and a data-set on issue attention in articles from the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ). The data covers the years 1995 to 2003 and the coding of issues followed the classification system developed in the “Policy Agendas Project” (Baumgartner and Jones 1993).

Juvenile delinquency, El Paso, Tex. Hearing before the Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Deliquency of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, Eighty-third Congress, second session, pursuant to S. Res. 89, investigation of juvenile delinquency in the United States. September 17, 1954.

Robert C. Hendrickson, chairman of subcommittee.

Juvenile delinquency, Chicago, Ill. Hearing before the Subcommittee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, Eighty-fourth Congress, first session, Pursuant to S. Res. 62, investigation of juvenile delinquency in the United States.

Mode of access: Internet.

Juvenile delinquency, Pittsburgh, Pa. Hearing before the Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, Eighty-fourth Congress, first session, pursuant to S. Res. 62, investigation of juvenile delinquency in the United States. December 7, 1955.

Mode of access: Internet.

Juvenile delinquency (Boston, Mass.) : hearings before the Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, Eighty-third Congress, second session, pursuant S. Res. 89, invesitagion of juvenile delinquency in the United States, January 28, 29, and 30, 1954.

Robert C. Hendrickson, chairman of subcommittee.

Juvenile delinquency, Denver, Colo. Hearing before the Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, Eighty-third Congress, first session, pursuant to S. Res. 89, investigation of juvenile delinquency in the United States. December 14, 1953.

Robert C. Hendrickson, chairman of subcommittee.

A citizen appraisal of community services for the prevention and control of delinquency in the City of Madison, Wisconsin,

Bibliography: p. 183-185.

Instructions for conducting a school, through the agency of the scholars themselves: comprising the analysis of an experiment in education, made at the Male Asylum, Madras, 1879-1796. Extracted from Elements of tuition, part 2, the English school, or The history, analysis, and application of the new system of education, now in the press.

Mode of access: Internet.

The consumer before the infoxication in the press discourse

In the media current context, the user is exposed every day to an informative saturation without precedents. The variety of the media by means of that it receives information, together with the revolution to all the levels that has supposed the Internet integration, it does that the consumer is bombarded literally by multitude of messages. But this bombardment does not imply an informative quality, but it can suppose an imbalance between the number of information and the quality of the same ones, avoiding so the user know the reality with veracity and depth. This article analyzes exhaustively the phenomenon of this overexposure named infoxication, the true dangers that it encloses, the possible solutions and how it affects the user and the Journalism in the production of written and audiovisual products through different mass media.