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Political Transparency in the Media: The Old Media’s Influence on Politicians’ Twitter Behaviour
Get PDF“Later today with my son to a football match: Heerenveen – Excelsior. It has been a long time since I was on a football stand. # Looking forward!” (Rouvoet, 02-04-2011, Twitter) This is a Tweet posted by André Rouvoet at the time that he was a politician. Significantly, he was a political figure who made his private activities transparent through a public medium. In this way, his Tweet denotes an important change in political communication, which has taken place over the past few decades. Ever since the fifties, the old media has been blurring the border between the private and public sphere, and has increased the transparency of politicians. (Pels, 2003, p. 42) Also the new media have the potential to continue this trend, as is demonstrated by Rouvoet’s Tweet. The distinction between old and new media will be maintained in the rest of this paper. The old media are defined as non-interactive print- and electronic media, such as newspapers and TV-programs. (Chun & Keenan, 2006, p. 284) To be more precise, this paper especially focuses on the popular and commercial part of the old media. The new media will be defined as online and interactive forms of mass communication, such as weblogs, Twitter and Facebook. (Ibid, p. 3) The fact that Rouvoet’s Tweet follows the trend that is visible in various older media, makes it interesting to investigate the extent to which other politicians copy these trends as well. This can reveal how influential this trend actually is, since politics is one of the parts of society in which the distinctions between the public and private sphere is most prominent. Therefore, this paper will be centred on the research question: To what extent does the way in which Dutch politicians use Twitter, reflect the dominant trend in the majority of the old media
Life-cycle assessment in eco-labelling: Between standardisation and local appropriation
Get PDFOver the last decades the demand for green and fair products by consumers has steadily increased and governments have undertaken greater efforts to devise green policies as well as to create incentives for industry to lessen the environmental impact of production processes (Finkbeiner, et al. 2006). Companies and large-scale multinational corporations, as well as national governments and local businesses are thus increasingly urged to account for the ecological footprint they leave behind and to actively improve their environmental performance. There exists a large variety of different scientific methods to analyse the environmental impact of a certain product, service or policy – for instance Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) or Risk Assessment. However, amongst the multiplicity of methods, life cycle assessment (LCA) has become one of the most prominent approaches, since it is considered to be the methodology that encompasses the widest range of possible environmental impacts. This chapter seeks to shed light on the tension between standardisation and local appropriation, in order to show that a certain degree of local responsiveness is necessary for the effectiveness of the method.
Political Trust. A Question of Transparency?
No full textIn 2009, the Global Language Monitor frequently encountered ‘transparency’ in worldwide print and electronic media and therefore ranked it ‘tenth top word’ of that year (TGLM, 2010). According to their observation, transparency is an “elusive goal for which many 21st c. governments are striving” (ibid.) and will hence accompany us in the years to come. But what motivates governments to strive for transparency? This chapter suggests that transparency is omnipresent because of its potential to function as an instrument for higher political goals, the most important of which is the establishment of political trust. On a similar note, scholars have stressed the importance of transparency in establishing trust in processes of risk governance (e.g. Lofstedt, 2005; Peters, Covello, & McCallum, 1997). My main argument is that politicians throughout Western democracies are increasingly confronted with cynical citizens and hence in search for more public confidence (cf. also Dalton, 2005; Pharr & Putnam, 2000). The underlying logic is straightforward. If someone is more open to the public, s/he is considered more trustworthy
International Education and Economic Growth
Get PDFEducation, Education, Education. With this slogan the British Prime Minister Tony Blair set out his priorities for office in 2007. Indeed, many governments have now formulated the need for greater education spending and try to facilitate international exchange. The idea is that education is an investment that pays off in the long run through higher economic growth on a path towards a “knowledge society”. Economists, for a long time, have tried to capture the effect of education on growth and introduced the idea into a series of models, which go back to the Solow model. While these models manage to capture a broad range of the features associated with education, such as positive externalities and opportunity costs included in Lucas (1988) or the necessary monetary investment in Mankiw et al. (1992), they have not yet attempted to embrace international education. However, international education has left the ivory tower and is becoming a mass phenomenon which can impact economic growth. Multiple interesting transformations are linked with this development. On the one hand it is engaging to ask whether the productivity of international education is large enough to justify the promotion of exchanges. Here, Economics faces the problem that its standard trade theory seems incompatible with models for international growth. The one casually assumes countries with different factor endowments trading different goods, while the other focuses on the “production” as a whole. More fundamentally, trade theory tends to be static and “non accumulative” and is therefore regarded as part of total factor productivity in growth models. Human Capital, however, is accumulating and should thus be treated differently
Non-choreographed Robot Dance
Get PDFThis research aims at investigating the difficulties of enabling the humanoid robot Nao to dance on music. The focus is on creating a dance that is not predefined by the researcher, but which emerges from the music played to the robot. Such an undertaking can not be fully tackled in a small-scale project. Nevertheless, rather than focusing on a subtask of the topic, this research tries to maintain a holistic view on the subject, and tries to provide a framework based on which work in this area can be continued in the future. The need for this research comes from the fact that current approaches to robot dance in general, and Nao dance in particular, focus on predefined dances built by the researcher. The main goal of this project is to move away from the current choreographed approaches to Nao dance, and investigate how to make the robot dance in a non-predefined fashion. Moreover, given the fact that previous research has focused mainly on the analysis of musical beat, a secondary goal of this project is to focus not only on the beat, but other elements of music as well, in order to create the dance
The influence of music practice during primary school on congitive performance. A cross-sectional study investigating the correlation of music practice and cognitive performance.
No full textIn the past decades much research has been performed to investigate the influence of music practice on cognitive performance. However, most of these studies have been performed in laboratory settings or in relative small experiments. The present cross-sectional survey investigates the correlation between musical practice during childhood and cognitive performance in a large sample. Primary schools (N=33) co-operated in this study and 860 students received the questionnaire (appendix 1). The parents of these students were asked to complete the questionnaire (appendix 2). Within two weeks 366 questionnaires were returned. The response rate is 44.6%. Cognitive performance was measured with the CITO-eindtoets-score (a national assessment for final year primary school students). Extra-curricular practice of music during the time of primary school led to a significant higher CITO-eindtoets-score for the students that had musical training during the time of primary school (p = .002). After adding socio-economic status to the model the effect of musical practice on CITO-eindtoets-score was still significant (p = .023). There was on interaction of musical practice and socioeconomic status
Preface
Get PDFIn het academisch jaar 2009-2010 is er in het kader van het MARBLE for excellence project gewerkt door een enthousiaste groep studenten aan het project Empirisch Onderzoek in de Rechtspraktijk. Het MARBLE, Maastricht University Research Based Learning Project, is een programma om excellente studenten te stimuleren onderzoeksmatig kennis te verwerven en deze op een andere manier dan gewoonlijk te presenteren
Het beslisgedrag van de rechter nader bekeken. Een empirisch onderzoek naar het beslisgedrag van de rechter op politierechterzittingen in Nederland
No full textVan rechters wordt verwacht dat zij onafhankelijk en onpartijdig zijn. Zij moeten de wet toepassen en zich niet laten leiden door afwegingen of belangen die niet in de wet verdisconteerd zijn. Dit wordt gewaarborgd door onder andere art. 6 EVRM en door de verschillende procesregelingen die het mogelijk maken rechters te wraken. Van die mogelijkheid wordt niet veel gebruik gemaakt. Dat geeft het comfortabele gevoel dat de Nederlandse rechter zich naar alle waarschijnlijkheid op correcte wijze van zijn taak kwijt. Maar er kan meer aan de hand zijn dan aan de oppervlakte blijkt. Onbewuste beïnvloeding van een rechter is immers ook goed mogelijk. Een rechter kan heel goed geneigd zijn om knappe vrouwen eerder gelijk te geven dan een nare man die hem constant in de rede valt, zonder dat hij dat zelf in de gaten heeft. Rechters zijn per slot van rekening ook maar mensen. Het is dus de vraag of dit valt terug te vinden in hun beslisgedrag. Het idee van dit onderzoek is om na te gaan of van een dergelijke onbewuste beïnvloeding sprake is. Een dergelijk onderzoek is niet eenvoudig uit te voeren, nu een simulatie – nog afgezien van de kosten – vermoedelijk geen resultaten zal geven aan de hand waarvan uitspraken kunnen worden gedaan over de werkelijkheid. Het voor het onderzoek vereiste laboratorium menen wij evenwel gevonden te hebben in de politierechterzittingen, die dagelijks overal in het land plaatsvinden. Doordat op dergelijke zittingen meteen mondeling uitspraak wordt gedaan, valt goed te onderzoeken of een fenomeen als hiervoor bedoeld zich voordoet of niet. Dat is het doel van dit onderzoek geworden
Preface
Get PDFAs the rector of Maastricht University and as the programme manager we are proud of the programme and the results of the students. Therefore with the steering committee of the MaRBLe programme we have taken the initiative to create the MaRBLe series
Wise men, clear guidance and the Common Statute for the Members of the European Parliament. An argumentative Analysis.
No full textTo set the context for the more technical argumentative analysis, the Common Statute for the Members of the European Parliament will be introduced with its historical background. In the following methodology section, the Toulmin model of argumentation will be explained briefly. The main part consists of an argumentative analysis of “The Recommendation of the Group of Eminent Persons”, the most important document in the context of the Common Statute. The arguments will be reconstructed and evaluated separately. The paper concludes with a resume and critical evaluation of the findings