Suchergebnisse

Media audiences representing a significant portion of the public in any given country may hold opinions on media-generated definitions of social problems which differ from those of media professionals. The proliferation of online reader comments not only makes such opinions available but also alters the process of agenda formation and problem definition in the public space. Based on a dataset of 33,877 news items and 258,121 comments from a sample of regional Russian newspapers we investigate readers' perceptions of social problems. We find that the volume of attention paid to issues or topics by the media and the importance of those issues for audiences, as judged by the number of their comments, diverge. Further, while the prevalence of general negative sentiment in comments accompanies such topics as disasters and accidents that are not perceived as social problems, a high level of sentiment polarization in comments does suggest issue problematization. It is also positively related to topic importance for the audience. Thus, instead of finding fixed social problem definitions in the reader comments, we observe the process of problem formation, where different points of view clash. These perceptions are not necessarily those expressed in media texts since the latter are predominantly "hard" news covering separate events, rather than trends or issues. As our research suggests, problematization emerges from readers' background knowledge, external experience, or values.

Für die vorliegende Untersuchung wurden ca. 5.500 nach Gesichtspunkten der Repräsentativität ausgewählte Haushalte postalisch befragt, in denen die Zeitschrift "Junge Welt" abonniert war. Die sozialdemographische Struktur der Leserschaft der "Jungen Welt" sollte ermittelt werden. Der Rücklauf lag bei 33 Prozent. Die Hauptergebnisse sind: "1. Die Hauptleser sind in der Jugend der DDR konzentriert. 2. Die 'Junge Welt' ist die Tageszeitung der lernenden Jugend der DDR. 3. Jedes (abonnierte) Exemplar der 'Jungen Welt' wird von mindestens einer Person regelmäßig, von mindestens 2 Personen wenigstens gelegentlich mitgelesen. 4. Auch bei den Hauptlesern finden Auswahl- (Selektions-)Prozesse statt, sie bedingen z.T. erhebliche Unterschiede im Leseverhalten." Zum Schluß werden der Zeitschrift einige kurze Vorschläge unterbreitet und in einem Anhang der Ablauf der Untersuchung dargestellt. (prn)

The Disability Bioethics Reader is the first introduction to the field of bioethics presented through the lens of critical disability studies and the philosophy of disability. Introductory and advanced textbooks in bioethics focus almost entirely on issues that disproportionately affect disabled people and that centrally deal with becoming or being disabled. However, such textbooks typically omit critical philosophical reflection on disability. Directly addressing this omission, this volume includes 36 chapters, most appearing here for the first time, that cover key areas pertaining to disability bioethics, such as: state-of-the-field analyses of modern medicine, bioethics, and disability theory health, disease, and the philosophy of medicine issues at the edge- and end-of-life, including physician-aid-in-dying, brain death, and minimally conscious states enhancement and biomedical technology invisible disabilities, chronic pain, and chronic illness implicit bias and epistemic injustice in health care disability, quality of life, and well-being race, disability, and healthcare justice connections between disability theory and aging, trans, and fat studies prenatal testing, abortion, and reproductive justice. The Disability Bioethics Reader, unlike traditional bioethics textbooks, also engages with decades of empirical and theoretical scholarship in disability studies--scholarship that spans the social sciences and humanities--and gives serious consideration to the history of disability activism.

The emergence of online reader comments over the past years has made opinions of readers more visible to journalists and users of news websites. This article discusses whether online reader comments provide a representative picture of the opinion of news site users and how this affects the perceived public opinion. Findings of an online survey among the users of eight Swiss newspapers indicate that comments are not representative since people who write comments tend to differ from those reading the comments with respect to gender, age, and political orientation. Of special interest is the finding that those writing comments tend to be politically further right than those reading comments and that "rightists" are writing more frequently. However, readers of the comments are not aware of this bias, leading to a systematically distorted perception of public opinion. Different types of regulation are discussed with respect to their acceptance as well as their potential impact on comments.

Text des Gesetzentwurfs der südafrikanischen Regierung zur Kontrolle des Aufenthalts der schwarzen Bevölkerung innerhalb der für sie vorgegebenen Wohngebiete