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The purpose of this study is to discuss the concept of information in relation to temporality within the context of climate change communication. Furthermore, the paper aims to highlight the empirical richness of information as a concept by analysing its use in context.

The discussion is based on 14 semi-structured interviews with initiators and collaborators of 6 open letters on climate change published in 2018–2019. By taking three specific notions the interviewees introduced—fast food information, information quality and information gap–as the analytical point of departure, the study aims for a contextual understanding of information grounded in temporal sensitivity.

The paper finds that information in the context of open letters is informed by different, and at times contradicting, temporalities and timescapes which align with various material, institutional and discursive practices. Based on this finding, the paper argues that notions of information are intrinsically linked to the act of communicating, and they should be viewed as co-constituting each other.

The paper contributes with an empirically informed discussion regarding the concept of information as it is used in a specific context. It illustrates how “information” is far from being understood in a singular fashion, but is made up of multifaceted and at times contradictory understandings. Ultimately, they correspond to why and how one communicates climate change information.

By exploring the social features of contemporary fact-checking this study aims to increase our understanding of fact-checking as a genre and shed light on some of the aspects that underpin the communication that fact-checkers engage in.

By analyzing one snapshot of early COVID-19 coverage by three well-known fact-checkers and another one six months later, this study explores fact-checking as a genre. The material was examined for recurrent characteristics and the findings were categorized into corresponding themes that emerged through an open coding process.

Three aspects were found to underpin a contemporary fact-checking genre. Firstly, the fact-checkers strive to facilitate accessibility. Secondly, the notion of building trust underlies the way fact-checkers promote themselves. Thirdly, fact-checking is underpinned by a pedagogical aspect. While the values and beliefs that are known to characterize traditional news media discourses are predominant in the construction of a fact-checking genre, fact-checkers also draw on conceptions typically found within academia to enact professional practices.

Contemporary fact-checking is still a fairly unexplored topic of research. This is particularly the case outside the field of journalism and media studies. This study complements earlier research from the perspective of information studies by exploring how fact-checking practices impact the communication and production of news in society.

The purpose of this paper is to bridge a gap in knowledge on the professional information practices of a group of people whose daily work of managing user-generated content online exposes them to users whom they perceive as acting aggressively or otherwise offensively online.

Journalists’ narratives of practices for managing and responding to user comments perceived as offensive are analysed qualitatively. For this purpose, ten interviews with journalists from nine different news organisations in Sweden, Denmark, Germany and Canada were conducted.

The study finds that the environment in which the journalists work plays a vital role in the evolution of the practices. Practices, indissolubly tied to the contexts or sites in which people’s activities take place, are conditioned by moral values, traditions and collective experiences which journalists enact through the practice they engage in when they are dealing with user posts online. The site, conceived as an information landscape, is that of the newsroom. Practices for managing users online evolve through actors participating in a process of learning and their ability to adopt the cultural norms and values of their environment.

This study sheds light on the mechanisms behind the evolution of practices for handling user-generated content online and it reports on the importance of properties such as norms, values and emotions for how things are done in the information landscape of news journalism.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and analyse interfaces between scholarly and science communication practices by using the production of open letters on climate change as a point of departure. Furthermore, the paper highlights an understudied form of science communication – open letters.

The material consists of nine open letters on climate change, written and signed by academics and published in 2018–2019, as well as 13 semi-structured interviews with the initiators and co-authors of the letters. The interviews were analysed by qualitative thematic analysis and grouped into thematic clusters.

The study finds that three practices used in scholarly communication – more specifically: peer review, professional community building and, to a certain extent, communication as “merit-making” – are central in the making of the open letters, illustrating an integration of scholarly communication practices in academic science communication activities.

The study suggests that the conflation of communication practices needs to be seen in relation to larger structural changes in the academic working environment, as well as in relation to the specific environment in which communication about climate change occurs.

This study contends that the proposed conflation between scholarly and science communication concerns not only texts and genres but also practices integral to contemporary science, thereby conflating the forms of communication at a practical level.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how contemporary fact-checking is discursively constructed in Swedish news media; this serves to gain insight into how this practice is understood in society.

A selection of texts on the topic of fact-checking published by two of Sweden’s largest morning newspapers is analyzed through the lens of Fairclough’s discourse theoretical framework.

Three key discourses of fact-checking were identified, each of which included multiple sub-discourses. First, a discourse that has been labeled as “the affirmative discourse,” representing fact-checking as something positive, was identified. This discourse embraces ideas about fact-checking as something that, for example, strengthens democracy. Second, a contrasting discourse that has been labeled “the adverse discourse” was identified. This discourse represents fact-checking as something precarious that, for example, poses a risk to democracy. Third, a discourse labeled “the agency discourse” was identified. This discourse conveys ideas on whose responsibility it is to conduct fact-checking.

A better understanding of the discursive construction of fact-checking provides insights into social practices pertaining to it and the expectations of its role in contemporary society. The results are relevant for journalists and professionals who engage in fact-checking and for others who have a particular interest in fact-checking, e.g. librarians and educators engaged in media and information literacy projects.

In this article the author would like to discuss information and the causal-temporal models as discussed in trauma theory and reports from trauma therapy. The article discusses two modes of temporality and the role of narrative explanations in informing the subject as to their past and present.

Conceptual analysis.

Information in trauma has different meanings, partly as a result of different senses of temporality that make up explanations of trauma in trauma theory. One important meaning is that of explanation itself as a cause or a therapeutic cure for trauma.

The research proposes that trauma and trauma theory need to be understood in terms of the role of explanation, with explanation being understood as persuasion. This follows the historical genealogy of trauma theory from its origins in hypnosis and psychoanalysis.

The article examines the possibility of unconscious information and its effects in forming psychological subjectivity.