“This is a test”: The evolution of the emergency broadcast system

This paper presents a historiographical analysis of documents related to the development of the Emergency Broadcast System. The study concludes EBS replaced the earlier CONELRAD (Control of Electromagnetic Radiation) system when CONELRAD's primary purpose, to deny navigational aid to enemy aircraft, became obsolete in 1961. EBS continued CONELRAD's secondary purpose of warning the public of an impending attack. Both programs have been used only for severe weather alerts. EBS may today be as obsolete as CONELRAD.     

‘Terrible Panizzi’: Patriotism and Realism of the ‘Prince of Librarians’

Abstract

This article deals with the figure of Antonio Panizzi, considered as an Italian patriot and English librarian. It highlights the constant attention he devoted to the Italian political events throughout his life: from his arrival in London (1823) as a political exile, to his informal ambassador in United Kingdom, a role that allowed him to lobby the political class and the press on behalf of the cause of Italian patriots forced in the prisons of Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. The article describes the multifaceted library activity carried out by Panizzi at the British Library, of which he became Principal Librarian in 1856. Panizzi is considered to be the first Promethean Librarian of the 19th century, a great reformer with new ideas on library services, innovative methodologies, and working practices in librarianship. Panizzi rigorously carried out the activity of librarian at the British Library without ever forgetting the need for a free, unified, and democratic Italian state.     

Public service broadcasting,children’s television,and market failure: The case of the United Kingdom

Domestically produced children’s television is frequently highlighted as both an area of market failure, and also as an area where children’s changing consumption habits necessitate new and different ways of thinking about funding children’s content across a range of platforms. In the light of a recent U.K. proposal to set up a Public Service Content Fund to support “genres” under threat, including children’s programming, this article considers how you fund diverse high-quality children’s content in a more challenging media environment where children’s content is arguably still a market failure “genre.” The first part of the article provides context by outlining the market failure characteristics of children’s content as a framework for analyzing the validity of market failure arguments across a range of platforms. It then investigates the causes of perceived market failure in the U.K. children’s television production market. The final part examines the implications of recent U.K. policy responses to provision for children that seek to address market failure through (1) the possible introduction of a contestable fund for public service content; (2) more stringent obligations on the British Broadcasting Corporation; and (3) the re-imposition of quotas on commercially funded public service broadcastings (ITV, Channel 4, Five). Drawing on regulatory and stakeholder responses, it concludes that attempts to overcome market failure in U.K. children’s television appear unsuited for funding the longer-term curation, distribution, and discovery of new types of content on platforms other than broadcasting.     

The ‘Industrialists of Philosophy': Karl Marx,Friedrich Engels,and the ‘Discourse Network of 1840’

This paper is the first to examine Karl Marx's and Friedrich Engels's early materialism in light of the industrialization of European and German print. This examination suggests that, whereas the Hegelian system was a relic of a pre-industrialized print culture, in which written language was held up as a portal to metaphysical abstractions, the industrialization of print opened the way for Marx and Engels to consider the prevailing socio-economic realities as manifestations of the capitalist system. In broader terms, the paper calls for a widening of conventional analysis of political ideas by considering them in light of the media setting in which they were originally cast.     

The powerful image and the imagination of power: the ‘new visual turn’ of the CPC’s propaganda strategy since its 18th National Congress in 2012

This paper adopts the academic tool of discourse analysis to examine the ‘new visual turn’ of the Communist Party of China’s propaganda work since the 18th CPC National Congress when Xi Jinping was inaugurated as the leader of Chinese Communists. A thorough review of the new visual means the Party uses for photojournalism, TV news, animated cartoons and online promotional videos points to three developments markedly different from traditional discursive strategies: a full embrace of Confucian ethics, articulation of the Internet-based popular culture and subcultures, and an effort to fortify Xi’s personal authority as a political idol. The paper concludes that the ‘new visual turn’ of CPC propaganda after the 18th Party Congress suggests that the Communist discourse has evolved to a new stage where sophisticated manipulation of sleek technological tools substantiates a rigorous, dynamic CPC discursive system more at ease with itself and more powerful than ever in shaping the mainstream political culture in China.     

Building the ‘front door’ within a web ecology: Informational governance and institutional shaping of national government webportals

Government webportals are central to governments' web strategy. They are designed to be nodal hubs, or gateways, for encountering government, and as such position government in the online world. Yet the designs of government webportals, particularly their location within wider web ecologies are scarcely studied. In additional to these web ecologies, this paper conceptualises webportals as being located within wider information and institutional ecologies. Methodologically, it comparatively examines the hyperlink structures of the national government webportals of the top ten e-government countries: Australia; Canada; Finland; France; Japan; Netherlands; New Zealand; Singapore; UK; and USA. Different ways governments approach this task are analyzed using webcrawls of the webportals and their neighboring webpages. Variations are considered in relation to the constitutional structures of the countries (i.e. unitary vs federated; centralized vs decentralized).This research highlights information referral versus information repository webportal designs, the latter of which appears to arise more in unitary and city states, than federal states. The hyperlink networks also demonstrate the important structural role of commercial social media websites in half of the countries, revealing a new interactive webportal design. Despite being constructed as whole-of-government entryways, national government webportals typically fail to connect to regional and local tiers of government. The paper provides the basis for assessing the effectiveness of different portal designs and investigating how portal designs arise out of varied government institutional settings.     

Adequacy of coverage by still picture and film services: A study by the radio‐television news directors association

More than ever before, broadcasting stations are concerned with public service programming. Extremely relevant to this problem is the question of adequacy of news coverage. The Radio‐Television News Directors Association has initiated a series of studies into one of the major interest areas of the television news director, that of still pictures and news film. The first of these studies, dealing with the supply in various content categories of still pictures and motion picture films of news events, is reported below.     

A new approach to the metric of journals’ scientific prestige: The SJR indicator

A size-independent indicator of journals’ scientific prestige, the SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) indicator, is proposed that ranks scholarly journals based on citation weighting schemes and eigenvector centrality. It is designed for use with complex and heterogeneous citation networks such as Scopus. Its computation method is described, and the results of its implementation on the Scopus 2007 dataset is compared with those of an ad hoc Journal Impact Factor, JIF(3y), both generally and within specific scientific areas. Both the SJR indicator and the JIF distributions were found to fit well to a logarithmic law. While the two metrics were strongly correlated, there were also major changes in rank. In addition, two general characteristics were observed. On the one hand, journals’ scientific influence or prestige as computed by the SJR indicator tended to be concentrated in fewer journals than the quantity of citation measured by JIF(3y). And on the other, the distance between the top-ranked journals and the rest tended to be greater in the SJR ranking than in that of the JIF(3y), while the separation between the middle and lower ranked journals tended to be smaller.     

Characterization,weathering, and protection of sandstones: The case of ‘Agro d'Ardesia’

Abstract

The conservation of roofing and cladding materials has both environmental and cultural heritage bearing. Our research aimed at comparing the performances of some polymeric products used for the protection of a typical Italian sandstone, the ‘Agro d'Ardesia’, used mostly as cladding, paving, roofing, and building material. These products belong to three different classes: polysiloxanes, acrylics, and fluoropolymers. In addition, an acrylic–silicone mixture was chosen for testing. After the application onto the Agro sandstone by capillary absorption, both efficacy and durability were assessed. Particularly, two types of weathering tests were performed to check the stability over time of the protective products: the exposure to ultraviolet radiation in a climatic chamber and the ageing by exposure to acid rain, expressly designed to represent realistically natural and anthropogenic changes. Detailed information on treatment performances was obtained. The polysiloxane was shown to be the most effective protective material for the Agro sandstone.     

‘No hugging please,we are Muslims’: Akademi Fantasia,Malay television audiences and the negotiation of global popular cultural forms

This paper analyses the audience reception of the Malaysian reality television programme Akademi Fantasia (AF), which first aired in 2003 and completed its ninth season in 2011. AF has been an influential pioneer in the national television industry, inaugurating the trend of local reality shows and weathering intense competition from similar shows to remain at the top of the ratings chart over the last decade. Based on the Mexican talent search show, La Academia, Malaysia's AF is a unique hybrid blend of an Idol-style talent contest and Big Brother observational spectacle. The article draws on primary audience research to investigate the ways in which Malay audiences interpret the potentially incommensurable cultural meanings generated within the context of a localised version of a global television format. Chua's concept of ‘identification and distancing’ is employed as a framework to analyse the complex ways in which perceived Malay ‘cultural norms’ assume primacy as interpretative lenses for audience evaluations of the show and measures of its local difference from similar global cultural products. The research also reveals how these cultural norms are themselves being negotiated by the audience as part of the everyday experience of inhabiting coexisting local and global popular cultural spaces. The analysis focuses on audience understandings and pleasure in the programme in relation to fashion and taste; the behaviour of the official judges; voyeurism and conflict in ‘backstage’ coverage; and emotional intimacy onstage in the public performance component of the programme.     

Understanding the context of records creation and use: ‘Hard’ versus ‘soft’ approaches to records management

Current records management methodologies and practices suffer from an inadequate understanding of the ‘human activity systems’ where records managers operate as ‘mediators’ between a number of complex and interacting factors. Although the records management and archival literature recognizes that managing the active life of the records is fundamental to their survival as meaningful evidence of activities, the context where the records are made, captured, used, and selectively retained is not explored in depth. In particular, the various standards, models, and functional requirement lists, which occupy a vast portion of that literature, especially in relation to electronic records, do not seem to be capable of framing records-related ‘problems’ in ways that account for their dynamic and multiform nature. This paper introduces the idea that alternative, ‘softer’ approaches to the analysis of organizational functions, structures, agents, and artifacts may usefully complement the ‘hard’, engineering-like approaches typically drawn on by information and records specialists. Three interrelated theoretical and methodological frameworks—namely, Soft Systems Methodology, Adaptive Structuration Theory, and Genre Theory—are discussed, with the purpose of highlighting their contributions to our understanding of the records context.     

Parents’ Use of the V-Chip and Perceptions of Television Ratings: The Role of Family Characteristics and the Home Media Environment

Nearly 20 years after the Telecommunications Act of 1996, it is unclear how its mandates influence current parents’ mediation behavior. Parents of 2- to 17-year-old children (N = 1,431) were surveyed about their awareness and perceptions of the TV ratings system and use of the V-chip. Most (81%) parents knew about the ratings system and found it to be only “somewhat useful.” Only 16% of those parents had ever used the V-chip. Ratings awareness and perceptions and V-chip use varied with family characteristics. Policymakers should revisit how to provide better tools for mediating children’s viewing in this new information age.     

The conservation of artworks and hot air heating systems in churches: are they compatible? the case of rocca pietore,italian alps

Abstract

Most artworks require a stable microclimate and a field study has been undertaken to understand the environmental risks in a mountain church that is heated once a week. The church was selected on the basis of the artworks present and the existing heating system: a hot-air system which is popular due to its low cost and rapid response. The heating system is switched on only during the liturgical services and generates rapid temperature and humidity changes which, in the long run, are very damaging. The temperature stratification leaves people with their feet in cold air, whereas the air in the upper levels is too hot and dry. Moisture condenses on the cold walls. Deliquescent salts in masonry and frescoes undergo dangerous crystallization cycles. Wooden artifacts contract and expand in line with humidity cycles. Deposition of candle and incense smoke is increased, darkening the artworks. The paper discusses these problems, some common errors, and possible methods to mitigate the risk factors.     

Interpreting and shaping geopolitics in Chinese media: the discourse of the ‘New style of great power relations’

Chinese leaders have attempted to alleviate international anxiety about its rise to global prominence describing its development as a ‘peaceful rise’ or ‘peaceful development’. Most recently, Chinese leaders have begun deploying a new term, the ‘New Style of Great Power Relations’ (新型大国关系). The purpose of this study is to examine the treatment of the ‘New Style of Great Power Relations’ as a political slogan within the Chinese media as a means to shape a geopolitical worldview among Chinese citizens and international actors. Researchers identified 541 articles from 25 different Chinese media sources selected to represent varying levels of government influence and editorial perspectives. This study found the concept primarily intended to engage the United States by stressing cooperative aspects of U.S.–China relations, but also challenges specific U.S. actions. Those U.S. policies challenged within the Chinese media are portrayed as inconsistent with the ‘new style’ concept’s principles. This forms a ‘rhetorical trap’, as it were for the United States, in that the framing of the discourse implicates U.S. intentions and policies as disingenuous unless the United States changes its policy stances. The essay examines the implications of the discourse for understanding Chinese political communication.     

Re-imaging and re-imagining the past after ‘memoricide’: intimate archives as inscribed memories of the missing

This paper discusses a number of stories about loss, grief and genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the attempts by the survivors to construct intimate archives about their shattered lives. In addition to the loss of human lives, the deliberate destruction of documents, photographs, books and official records has been deeply felt by the genocide survivors and other victims of ‘memoricide’ in Bosnia as a very personal loss, an aggravated trauma and a metaphor for annihilation of their personal, family and communal existence. Subsequently, for them, the recreation of personal records and communal archives ultimately becomes an attempt to reclaim their own past and, in the process, to reaffirm their identities and recreate and sustain a sense of continuity in a post-genocide context. Using a series of ethnographic vignettes from Bosnia and the Bosnian refugee diaspora, the paper highlights the importance of the survivors’ emotional (and embodied) attachment to various forms of records and archival material. It also demonstrates the potential for research in memory and archival studies to actively engage in the creation of historical narratives about violations of human rights, thus contributing to truth-finding, social healing and reconciliation processes in post-conflict and post-genocide communities.