From AAA to Junk: Credit rating agencies as news sources in the Irish print-media during the economic crisis, 2008–2013

From AAA to Junk: Credit rating agencies as news sources in the Irish print-media during the economic crisis, 2008–201

Liberty and the News

Liberty and the News was published a century ago, the young Walter Lippmann’s fifth book. The slim volume merits a fresh read in our post-truth moment. “In an exact, sense,” Lippmann writes, “the present crisis of western democracy is a crisis in journalism.” For Lippmann, liberty constitutes a method, not a series of prohibitions and permissions. The book’s aim is to identify and examine potential reforms to boost the reliability of news—a project as relevant today as it is unfinished. Liberty and the News is republished in this mediastudies.press edition with a new introduction by Sue Curry Jansen

Public Opinion : Stereotypes

In this text, Walter Lippmann, essayist and columnist, explores the question of the formation of stereotypes in the minds of individuals. He examines the role of perceptions, prejudices, and past experiences in the creation of these stereotypes as well as their importance in the formation of public opinion by American citizens in the aftermath of the First World War. Stereotypes presented here as mental shortcuts allowing citizens to understand the world around them and better understand its complexity. These simplified images, confronted with the reality of events, can also be updated and lead individuals to revise their judgment as well as their understanding of events.Dans ce texte, Walter Lippmann, essayiste et éditorialiste, explore la question de la formation des stéréotypes dans l’esprit des individus. Il examine le rôle des perceptions, des préjugés et des expériences passées dans la création de ces stéréotypes tout comme leur importance dans la constitution d’une opinion publique par les citoyens américains au lendemain de la Première Guerre mondiale. Les stéréotypes sont présentés comme des raccourcis mentaux permettant aux citoyens de comprendre le monde qui les entoure et de mieux appréhender sa complexité. Ces images simplifiées, confrontées à la réalité des événements, peuvent aussi s’actualiser et amener les individus à réviser leur jugement tout comme leur entendement des évènements

Strong interface-induced spin-orbit coupling in graphene on WS2

Interfacial interactions allow the electronic properties of graphene to be modified, as recently demonstrated by the appearance of satellite Dirac cones in the band structure of graphene on hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) substrates. Ongoing research strives to explore interfacial interactions in a broader class of materials in order to engineer targeted electronic properties. Here we show that at an interface with a tungsten disulfide (WS2) substrate, the strength of the spin-orbit interaction (SOI) in graphene is very strongly enhanced. The induced SOI leads to a pronounced low-temperature weak anti-localization (WAL) effect, from which we determine the spin-relaxation time. We find that spin-relaxation time in graphene is two-to-three orders of magnitude smaller on WS2 than on SiO2 or hBN, and that it is comparable to the intervalley scattering time. To interpret our findings we have performed first-principle electronic structure calculations, which both confirm that carriers in graphene-on-WS2 experience a strong SOI and allow us to extract a spin-dependent low-energy effective Hamiltonian. Our analysis further shows that the use of WS2 substrates opens a possible new route to access topological states of matter in graphene-based systems.Comment: Originally submitted version in compliance with editorial guidelines. Final version with expanded discussion of the relation between theory and experiments to be published in Nature Communication

A note on comonotonicity and positivity of the control components of decoupled quadratic FBSDE

In this small note we are concerned with the solution of Forward-Backward Stochastic Differential Equations (FBSDE) with drivers that grow quadratically in the control component (quadratic growth FBSDE or qgFBSDE). The main theorem is a comparison result that allows comparing componentwise the signs of the control processes of two different qgFBSDE. As a byproduct one obtains conditions that allow establishing the positivity of the control process.Comment: accepted for publicatio

Stretching the IR theoretical spectrum on Irish neutrality: a critical social constructivist framework

In a 2006 International Political Science Review article, entitled "Choosing to Go It Alone: Irish Neutrality in Theoretical and Comparative Perspective," Neal G. Jesse argues that Irish neutrality is best understood through a neoliberal rather than a neorealist international relations theory framework. This article posits an alternative "critical social constructivist" framework for understanding Irish neutrality. The first part of the article considers the differences between neoliberalism and social constructivism and argues why critical social constructivism's emphasis on beliefs, identity, and the agency of the public in foreign policy are key factors explaining Irish neutrality today. Using public opinion data, the second part of the article tests whether national identity, independence, ethnocentrism, attitudes to Northern Ireland, and efficacy are factors driving public support for Irish neutrality. The results show that public attitudes to Irish neutrality are structured along the dimensions of independence and identity, indicating empirical support for a critical social constructivist framework of understanding of Irish neutrality

It’s not all cat videos: moving beyond legacy media and tackling the challenges of mapping news values on digital native websites

The question “what is news?” has been a topic of scholarly examination for more than 60 years as researchers have sought to develop and revise the taxonomy of news values to inform journalism education and wider public debates on the subjectivity of journalists. However, these studies have focused on legacy print and broadcast media even when attempting to bring their findings into the digital era by examining online content. To date, there has been limited research, in the UK and internationally, on news values on digitally born news websites–platforms that only exist online such as Huffington Post, Buzzfeed News and LADbible, which are consumed by a third of the UK population at least once a week. A significant impediment is the complexity of mapping offline latent coding methods to fluid online content. Digital native websites are particularly problematic due to their varied appearance across platforms–desktop, tablet and mobile–and their multiple access points–via web browser, social media and App. Yet, content analysis has a rich history dating back to the clergy's examination of newspapers in the late 1600s and the method has proved to be an adaptable tool for measuring news output as each new media technology has emerged. This paper argues that it is imperative that researchers look beyond legacy media when studying digital news values due to the growing significance of digital native news websites in the marketplace. The secondary purpose of this methodological paper is to highlight the challenges of capturing and analysing news values on digital native news platforms and suggest how researchers can begin to tackle the complexities of liquid content analysis in this field