2 Gossip, rumour, and scandals In this part of the book, the analysis of the relationship between the interpersonal and the mediated dimension of the public scandal is deepened.1 The preceding chapter made it clear that these dimensions are more or less interwoven, a circumstance to which media researchers have not paid a great deal of attention because they have, as a rule, chosen to focus on the media themselves, employing a narrow definition of the ‘media’ concept. In order to acquire an idea of the inherent mechanisms of the scandal phenomenon, the focus in
increasingly encounter media content that blurs the line between reality and fiction. This includes everything from rumours and exaggerations on social media, through to partisan journalism, satire and completely invented stories that are designed to look like real news articles. Although this media content varies enormously, it is often grouped together under nebulous and all-encompassing terms such as ‘fake news’, ‘disinformation’ or ‘post-truth’ media. Scholars have started to pay serious attention to the production and impact of all these forms of
-Temesio, 2018 ; Milleliri et al., 2004 ; Park and Umlauf 2014 ). Their intrinsic quarantine logic and inability to provide care became rapidly obvious to the population. More than half of the patients admitted to ETUs died, and their bodies were buried anonymously (except in Liberia, where they have been mainly cremated), fostering rumours of body parts being harvested and of deliberate infection ( Calain and Poncin, 2015 ; Gomez-Temesio, 2018 ; Gomez-Temesio and Le Marcis, 2017 ). Residents reported that living near ELWA 2 and ELWA 3 at this time was traumatising
. Many chose to go to the hospital, which, whether through rumours or actual messages, had allegedly been designated by the rebels’ command as a place of safety for civilians. A city resident reported: The opposition sent a message to us that every civilian living in Bentiu, we need to stay within the hospital. The other place is the church. That’s why we were gathering there in the hospital. ‘Don’t expect that we are going to kill you,’ they said. ‘No, we will not kill you.’ Another man recalled: ‘I heard that they would kill people in the houses. That is what I
This book illuminates the personal experience of being at the centre of a media
scandal. The existential level of that experience is highlighted by means of the
application of ethnological and phenomenological perspectives to extensive
empirical material drawn from a Swedish context. The questions raised and
answered in this book include the following: How does the experience of being
the protagonist in a media scandal affect a person’s everyday life? What happens
to routines, trust, and self-confidence? How does it change the basic settings
of his or her lifeworld?
The analysis also contributes new perspectives on
the fusion between interpersonal communication that takes place face to face,
such as gossip and rumours, and traditional news media in the course of a
scandal. A scandal derives its momentum from the audiences, whose engagement in
the moral story determines its dissemination and duration. The nature of that
engagement also affects the protagonist in specific ways. Members of the public
participate through traditional oral communication, one vital aspect of which is
activity in digital, social forums.
The author argues that gossip and
rumour must be included in the idea of the media system if we are to be able to
understand the formation and power of a media scandal, a contention which
entails critiques of earlier research. Oral interpersonal communication does not
disappear when new communication possibilities arise. Indeed, it may be
invigorated by them. The term news legend is introduced, to capture the
entanglement between traditional news-media storytelling and oral narrative.
– and evangelistic campaigns confronting teenage ‘dabbling’ in the occult. 4 By then the episode was over: after that there was only occasional press coverage, such as could be matched anywhere. 5 Different kinds of press coverage can be identified: reports of apparent specific instances of black magic rituals or whatever, 6 reports of the circulation of local rumours about black magic, 7 articles focusing on the denial
the final part of the discussion which outlines some of the problems of the current mainstream discussion of Russia, which is drowning in a discourse of speculation and rumour, ‘Putinology’ and historical analogies. This creates a great deal of additional noise that blocks the signal. Moving on from Russia Russia has been prominent in a flood of editorials, media interviews and
This book addresses the practices, treatment and commemoration of victims’ remains in post- genocide and mass violence contexts. Whether reburied, concealed, stored, abandoned or publically displayed, human remains raise a vast number of questions regarding their legal, ethical and social uses.
Human Remains in Society will raise these issues by examining when, how and why bodies are hidden or exhibited. Using case studies from multiple continents, each chapter will interrogate their effect on human remains, either desired or unintended, on various political, cultural or religious practices. How, for instance, do issues of confiscation, concealment or the destruction of bodies and body parts in mass crime impact on transitional processes, commemoration or judicial procedures?
the sort of sentiment that drove a former First World War general, F. P. Crozier, to become a pacifist, convinced that defence had become useless and that German bombers could reduce England to chaos and starvation in a few weeks.42 Mass-Observation monitored public expectations of war in the last two years of peace. It found that despite the rumours of war, the recurrent international crises and the visible evidence of ARP, there was only low expectation that war would come soon, or ever, and widespread cynicism about government information. People had a fairly
This book presents a contemporary, eyewitness account of the life of Martin Luther translated into English. Johannes Cochlaeus (1479–1552) was present in the great hall at the Diet of Worms on April 18, 1521 when Luther made his famous declaration before Emperor Charles V: ‘Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen’. Afterward, Cochlaeus sought Luther out, met him at his inn, and privately debated with him. Luther wrote of Cochlaeus, ‘may God long preserve this most pious man, born to guard and teach the Gospel of His church, together with His word, Amen’. However, the confrontation left Cochlaeus convinced that Luther was an impious and malevolent man. Over the next twnety-five years, Cochlaeus barely escaped the Peasant's War with his life. He debated with Melanchthon and the reformers of Augsburg. It was Cochlaeus who conducted the authorities to the clandestine printing press in Cologne, where William Tyndale was preparing the first English translation of the New Testament (1525). For an eyewitness account of the Reformation—and the beginnings of the Catholic Counter-Reformation—no other historical document matches the first-hand experience of Cochlaeus. After Luther's death, it was rumoured that demons seized the reformer on his death-bed and dragged him off to Hell. In response to these rumours, Luther's friend and colleague Philip Melanchthon wrote and published a brief encomium of the reformer in 1548. Cochlaeus consequently completed and published his monumental life of Luther in 1549.