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The article "Climate change and the Syrian civil war revisited" by Selby et al., 2017 (henceforth S2017) challenges research exploring the links between anthropogenic climate change, water scarcity and drought, impacts on agricultural production and economic stability, and the initial 2011 unrest in Syria. More broadly, the authors contest any causal link between climate and conflict. This is an important, evolving area of study and we encourage improved, expanded, and updated analysis of these connections. In their criticism, the authors of S2017 single out three papers (Werrell, Femia, & Sternberg, 2015; Gleick, 2014; and Kelley, Mohtadi, Cane, Seager, & Kushnir, 2015; here after K2015). Here we comment directly on our own work in K2015, though the others are equally unscathed by S2017's criticisms. We do so by refuting S2017's claims regarding the role of climate change, summarizing the sizeable evidence of the long-term drying trend in the region, and bolstering the link between the drought, migration and subsequent unrest by providing further supporting evidence. Our response contends overall that S2017 fail to make their case. K2015 (as well as Gleick, 2014; Werrell et al., 2015) claim climate as one of many contributing factors to the unrest. Nothing in S2017 refutes this, and none of their supportable arguments even offer reason for doubting this view. While K2015 can and did make a quantitative estimate of the impact of anthropogenic effects on the drought, we cannot quantify the impact of climate or any other factor, separately, on the conflict.

Digital disruption is often characterized as the conflict between the exponential rate of change in technology, and the slower-paced, incremental rate of change in law, economy, policy, and society writ-large (Franklin, 2012). The rapid encroachment of over-the-top (OTT) content distribution raises policy issues concerning jurisdiction, access, pricing, consolidation of ownership, and source diversity (Holt, 2014), while undermining many of the traditional policy instruments. In this paper, we analyze Netflix's strategic expansion and meteoric growth in Canada, and focus on a landmark event in Canadian broadcasting policymaking: the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission's (CRTC) "Let's Talk TV" hearings of 2013-2014. Through an examination of public documents, we analyze the ways Netflix is considered an opportunity, ally, or a threat by consumers, broadcasters, independent producers, and governments. We show that in a reprioritization of values, many of the principles that motivated legacy broadcasting policy are being sidelined by a consumerist approach that gives freer rein to streamed services. However, Netflix's refusal to provide the Commission with information it was ordered to produce suggests the most serious disruption is to the notion that online video distribution can or should be regulated in the public interest.

This chapter uses two metaphors to explore the moral and practical dimensions of extreme poverty eradication. The first metaphor, 'Leaving no-one behind', currently dominates policy discussions and broadly sees the eradication of extreme poverty as the consequence of economic growth and prosperity. In contrast the chapter outlines an alternative approach, captured in the 'sharing the well' metaphor, which focuses much more on redistribution and rights. The chapter argues that although both approaches are laudable, their differences are important. Crucially, the 'Sharing the well' approach, although politically challenging, has roots in values shared by the people of Bangladesh. This arguments helps contextualize the different chapters of the book.

This study aims to understand e-government implementation in ATM Samsat services at Samsat Office of East Surabaya as well as the factors that obstruct the e-government based services implementation. The main idea of this study is the use of ATM Samsat smartcard service has not yet reached the target realization. E-Government project failure factors theory from Anthopoulos et.al.(2015) were used in this study with the instrument such as ICT and system development process. This study uses qualitative descriptive methods. The results indicates that the e-government implementation in ATM Samsat services were found in a form of phase simplification from motor vehicle tax payments by using smartcard. Furthermore, ICT and system development process were the factors that obstruct the e-government based services implementation. whereas ICT and system development process obstructs because ATM Samsat system were more complex than the manual system. Less socialization over the society also take effect because it was only done once which is when its launching.

Saskia Sell geht der Frage nach, wie Kommunikationsfreiheit im Kontext des medientechnologischen Wandels netzöffentlich ausgehandelt wird. Die Autorin analysiert zunächst politisch-philosophische Theorien sowie Theorien zur Ideen- und Sozialgeschichte der Kommunikationsfreiheit. Sie verknüpft umfassende Grundlagenforschung zum Prinzip Kommunikationsfreiheit mit einer empirischen Analyse der aktuellen Diskursentwicklung, insbesondere mit Blick auf die Dimension der Netzfreiheit. Der Inhalt Freiheitstheoretische Grundlagen des Prinzips Kommunikationsfreiheit Der historische Aushandlungsprozess von Kommunikationsfreiheit in Europa Zentrale Antagonisten und wiederkehrende Legitimationsmuster im Einschränkungsdiskurs Kommunikationsfreiheit und Kommunikationstechnologie Argumentationsmuster im diskursiven Aushandlungsprozess von Netzfreiheit Die Zielgruppen

One of the effects of violence in Mexico is the representation of infamous bodies in the press. This article explores infamous bodies4 production based on different events (accidents, violence or extravagant behaviors), which become social facts after being recorded in language. The aim of the document is to look at the representation of the infamous body through the journalistic dis- course, conceived as an indication of society's perspective towards "the other". The hypothesis of the paper is that the representation of infamous bodies in the press corresponds to an unsupportive sense of solidarity as part of an immuni- zation process (ESPOSITO 2011). The article uses the concept of immunizationapplied through a semiotic and rhetorical analysis that takes into account the di- mension of language and image, proposing a hermeneutics that puts into ques- tion the ethics of journalism in its relationship with power and violence. For this end, the front pages of the Metro newspaper, whose journalistic discourse is an eloquent example of the construction of infamous bodies and the immu- nization process, were analyzed.

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.