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On the Proposed Measures to Regulate Third Country Interest Representation Activities in the European Union
No full textThe 2022–2023 Qatargate scandal – which entailed the widespread undermining of Union democracy by members of the European Parliament acting on behalf of third countries – has rocked the European Union to its core. The proposal by the Commission aimed at establishing transparency and accountability surrounding such activities cannot therefore come at a more appropriate time. But does the proposal live up to its objectives? Here, this piece casts doubt on whether that is the case, with this piece exploring Qatargate as an example, as well as the content, constitutionality, and criticism of the proposal. This Article also makes comparisons to Union-based representation activities and the Commission’s approach to antidumping, and shines light on the Commission’s treatment of third-country actors and representatives thereof
Toward a Qualitative Study of the American Voter
No full textThe contemporary field of American political behavior lacks a methodological tradition of in-depth interviews and ethnographic fieldwork. In this article, we illustrate the causes and consequences of this gap and argue for a renewal of methodological pluralism. First, we situate the current dearth of qualitative approaches within two key methodological debates during the behavioral turn in political science, showing that scholars initially embraced open-ended interviews and fieldwork but that these methods were ultimately sidelined. Although qualitative approaches persisted in historical and institutional research on American politics, their marginalization within the field of American political behavior has come at significant conceptual cost. Second, to redress this loss, we draw on existing discussions of the comparative advantages of qualitative methods to propose a framework for reintegrating interviews and ethnography into the study of American political behavior. We identify four “modes of inquiry” that should inform qualitative and mixed-methods research design in the subfield: innovating theoretically through the discovery of surprising findings, innovating theoretically through research design and case selection, identifying how contexts shape meaning-making, and tracking dynamic processes of change
Victims or Heroes? — Disability Representations in a Hungarian Online News Media Portal
No full textWhile studies consistently show that the popular media often provide medicalized images of disabled people as “other” or inferior, dynamic societal changes, such as the diffusion of human rights laws, increasing public awareness, and the mediatization of disability activism, also influence media representations. The present research aims to identify relevant discursive practices in Hungarian online news media, a non-Western European country with about 50 years of a state party system under communism, and offer insight into how progressive policy changes and mediatized activism shape media features on disability. To establish the dataset, the most visited and independent online news media portal in Hungary (24.hu) was searched for articles discussing disability between 2019 and 2022. The 481 relevant articles extracted were analyzed using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) with the help of MAXQDA 2020. The findings reveal a multiplicity of disability representations: medicalized and victimized images on the one hand, and reports of resilience and “heroism” on the other. Three distinct discursive practices are identified: (1) traditional/ableist representations, (2) alternative representations with ableist framing, and (3) agency and the co-creation of disability representations. Results suggest that even 30 years after the political changes, disabled people’s collective agency is marginal in Hungary, and that socio-legal changes and mediatized disability activism are yet to influence news media features
Habitability for a connected, unequal and changing world
No full textAs global climate change intensifies, the question of what makes a place habitable or uninhabitable is critical, particularly in the context of a potential future climate outside the realm of lived experience, and the possible concurrent redistribution of populations partly associated with such climatic shifts. The concept of habitability holds the potential for advancing the understanding of the societal consequences of climate change, as well as for integrating systemic understandings and rights-based approaches. However, most ways of analyzing habitability have shortcomings in terms of in-depth integration of socio-cultural aspects and human agency in shaping habitability, in failing to address spatial inequalities and power dynamics, and in an underemphasis of the connectedness of places. Here we elaborate habitability as an emergent property of the relations between people and a given place that results from people's interactions with the material and immaterial properties of a place. From this, we identify four axes that are necessary to go beyond environmental changes, and to encompass socio-cultural, economic, and political dynamics: First the processes that influence habitability require a systemic approach, viewing habitability as an outcome of ecological, economic, and political processes. Second, the role of socio-cultural dimensions of habitability requires special consideration, given their own operational logics and functioning of social systems. Third, habitability is not the same for everyone, thus a comprehensive understanding of habitability requires an intersectionally differentiated view on social inequalities. Forth, the influence of external factors necessitates a spatially relational perspective on places in the context of their connections to distant places across scales. We identify key principles that should guide an equitable and responsible research agenda on habitability. Analysis should be based on disciplinary and methodological pluralism and the inclusion of local perspectives. Habitability action should integrate local perspectives with measures that go beyond purely subjective assessments. And habitability should consider the role of powerful actors, while staying engaged with ethical questions of who defines and enacts the future of any given place
Relative engagement with sources of climate misinformation is growing across social media platforms
No full textWe explore the discourse on climate change across multiple social media platforms, examining the evolution of user engagement with climate-related content and whether this content links to reliable or unreliable news media sources. Through a detailed examination of over 20 million posts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube over five years (2018–2022), we identify trends in engagement, distinguishing between unreliable and reliable content to assess the impact of misinformation. Further, we investigate the relationships among various discussion topics and their association with information quality, employing a network-based method to quantify the semantic distances between these categories. Our findings reveal diverse trends in engagement that align with global events, suggesting that social media discussions promptly reflect the resonance of real life events concerning climate change such as COP26, the Climate Action Week and climate strikes associated with the Fridays for Future movement. Notably, despite the lower volume of content linking to unreliable sources, we observe significantly greater relative engagement with these sources compared to content from reliable sources on all platforms except Twitter. This highlights a persistent challenge in the online discourse surrounding climate misinformation