1,721,018 research outputs found
Il discorso mass mediale sul lavoro sessuale. Analisi comparativa su due corpora di testi giornalistici
Full text linkThis study examines the representation of sex workers in the national press of Italy and Belgium. The term "sex work" has been part of Italian public discourse for only two decades (Garofalo Geymonat, Selmi, 2022), despite its origin in the 1970s by activist Carol Leigh. In Italy, the abolitionist model established by the Merlin Law (1958) defines prostitution as oppression rather than labor (Weitzer, 2009), making its legal recognition as work impossible. Additionally, various offenses related to sex work further limit its practice.
The definition of sex work has evolved over time. The World Health Organization (WHO) describes sex workers as individuals receiving money or goods for consensual sexual services (Berg, 2014). Consent is crucial in differentiating sex work from trafficking and sexual slavery (Doezema, 2002). The growing diversification of the industry has led to a broad definition, with Harcourt and Donovan (2005) identifying 25 types of sex work, including both direct (involving physical contact) and indirect forms. The rise of digital platforms like OnlyFans and webcamming has further expanded the scope of sex work within the gig economy (Van Doorn, Velthius, 2017).
This study compares Italy and Belgium, the latter being the first EU country to fully decriminalize sex work in 2022. The analysis is rooted in post-structuralist theories by Foucault (1972) and Butler (1999), which view discourse as shaping both subjectivity and power structures. Media play a key role in shaping public perception, with language contributing to social dominance, often unconsciously (Fairclough, 2001). Thus, analyzing media discourse is essential to understanding the societal positioning of sex workers.
The study employs Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) on two corpora of 20 articles each from Italian and Belgian newspapers. The research is structured into two sections: a theoretical framework covering sociology of sexuality, feminist movements, and media representation (Bell, 1991), and an empirical study analyzing media narratives. The analysis identifies three dominant themes: "Interviews with Sex Workers," "Crime and Sex Work," and "Risks for Youth."
Findings reveal three key representations: "visible sex workers," "grievable and ungrievable victims," and "youth at risk through digital platforms." By contrasting Italy’s abolitionist stance with Belgium’s decriminalization, this study highlights how legal and cultural contexts shape media portrayals of sex work, contributing to broader debates on labor rights, media discourse, and digital-age transformations
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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