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This chapter analyses a range of media outputs produced to raise awareness of the campaign of forced sterilisation conducted in Peru during the period 1993–1998. Focusing in detail on the Quipu Project the authors investigate the ways in which different media configure differently witness subjects, audiences and listeners. The chapter also analyses the effectiveness of these media outputs within the contexts of human rights discourses.

The chapter is framed by narrative theories of documentary video production, new media technology and intermediality. The authors also draw on theories of witnessing that have emerged in critical studies of witness testimony in video and new media. It uses secondary data, that is, the testimonies of women already collected, selected and, in most cases, edited by documentary makers and campaigners.

The case studies compare the ways in which conventional video documentary and techniques of digital storytelling transform the content of women’s testimony.

Funding limitations have meant that progress on the site was, at the time of writing, temporarily suspended. We therefore analysed the pilot, or prototype, of the Quipu Project, which should be viewed as a work in progress. However, a more developed site for the Quipu Project went live after the chapter was completed.

This chapter represents the first attempt to analyse the effectiveness of an experimental project such as the Quipu Project. The authors were given access by the curators of the project to the site at various stages of its construction. The chapter provides insights into the potential of digital technology to create opportunities for media outputs to internationalise interventions into campaigns for justice and reparation.

The essay studies the introduction and use of audio-visual media in contemporary Swedish courtroom praxis and how this affects social interaction and the constitution of judicial space. The background to the study is the increasing use of video technology in law courts during the last decennium, and in particular the reformed trial code regulating court proceedings introduced in Sweden in 2008. The reform is called A Modern Trial (En modernare rättegång, Proposition 2004/05:131). An important innovation is that testimonies in lower level court proceedings now are video recorded and, in case of an appeal trial, then are screened in the appellate court. The study of social interaction and the constitution of judicial space in the essay is based in part on an ethnographic study of the Stockholm appellate court (Svea hovrätt) conducted in the fall 2010; in part on a study of the preparatory works to the legal reform; and in part on research on how media technology affects social interaction and the constitution of space and place.

For many, the claim that a new approach to bureaucracy—new political governance (NPG)—is underway reads as if it was written by Stephen King: Frightening fiction. While the thought of promiscuously partisan senior public servants publicly defending and promoting the government’s reputation to the demise of impartiality is disturbing, the evidentiary record has led most to dismiss the idea as empirically false. This article questions, and empirically investigates, whether dismissing the idea of promiscuous partisanship has been premature.

A case study of the loyalty displayed by Canada’s most senior public servant during a highly publicized parliamentary committee is analysed with a novel theoretical and empirical approach in three steps. First, the Clerk of the Privy Council (Clerk)’s committee testimony is analysed against analytical constructs of impartial and promiscuous partisan loyalty that focuses on the testimony’s direction and substance. Second, the objectivity and truthfulness of the testimony is analysed by comparing what was publicly claimed to have occurred against evidence submitted to the committee that provids an independent record of events. Third, the perception the Clerk’s testimony had on some committee members, political journalists and members of the public is analysed through print media and committee Hansard.

While the Clerk’s testimony displays an awareness of upholding impartiality, it also comprises promiscuous partisanship. Throughout his testimony, the Clerk redirects from the line of questioning to defend and promote the sitting government’s reputation. Moreover, to defend and promote the government’s reputation the Clerk’s testimony moved away from objectivity and engaged in truth-obfuscating tactics. Finally, the nature of the Clerk’s testimony was perceived by some committee members and the public—including former senior public servants—as having abandoned impartiality to have become a public “cheerleader” of the government.

Employing an in-depth case study limits the extent to which the findings concerning the presence of promiscuously partisan loyalty can be generalized beyond the present case to the larger cadre of senior public servants.

Empirically, while most research has dismissed claims of promiscuous partisanship as empirically unfounded, this article provides what is possibly the strongest empirical case to date of a public incident of promiscuous partisanship at the apex of the bureaucracy. As such, scholars can no longer dismiss NPG as an interesting idea without much empirical leverage. Theoretically, this article adds further caution to Aucoin’s original narrative of NPG by suggesting that promiscuous partisanship might not only involve senior public servants defending and promoting the government, but that doing so may push them to engage in truth-obfuscating tactics, and therein, weaken the public’s confidence in political institutions. The novel theoretical and empirical approach to studying senior public servants’ parliamentary testimony can be used by scholars in other settings to expand the empirical study of bureaucratic loyalty.

This paper aims to examine whether being shown a testimony alleging that the perpetrator of a crime was influenced by an accomplice has an impact on the severity of the sentence given to this accomplice.

A total of 119 participants read the summary of a case of armed robbery. Two experimental conditions were adopted: the presence of a testimony suggesting the accomplice’s influence on the perpetrator in committing the crime (versus no testimony). The participants were then asked what sentence they would give the accomplice and what sentence they would have given the perpetrator of the crime, who had in fact already been sentenced. The participants rated items relating to the explanation for the crime (perception that the perpetrator had been manipulated by the presumed accomplice) and to the presumed accomplice’s intent to commit the crime.

The participants showed themselves to be harsher towards the presumed accomplice when they were shown the testimony about his influence, which reduced the disparity with the sentence they would have given to the perpetrator of the crime. Analyses of mediation show that the participants shown the testimony (as opposed to those who were not) were more likely to say that the presumed accomplice manipulated the perpetrator of the crime, leading them to be more likely to attribute to the accomplice the intent to commit the crime and to be harsher towards him.

The results of this research are discussed with a focus on naïve interpretations of influence in the very specific context of legal adjudication.

This paper aims to investigate factors which may influence or bias judges’ decisions to exclude or admit the testimony of accounting expert witnesses, under the US judicial guidelines commonly known as the Daubert/Kuhmo standards. Accounting experts are increasingly providing expert testimony as a part of financial litigation support services.

Judges’ decisions, in which opposing council evoked a Daubert/Kuhmo challenge to the testimony provided by 130 professional accountants serving as expert witnesses, were analyzed. The period of study was 2010 through 2014. Based on prior research, three variables believed to potentially influence or bias judges to systematically exclude expert testimony were examined: gender, complexity and familiarity.

The results of binary logistic regression show that none of the variables has a significant relationship to the accounting expert witnesses’ probability of surviving a challenge to Daubert/Kuhmo standards. Findings suggest that judges are objective in evaluating the testimony provided by accounting experts under Daubert/Kuhmo guidelines and that they may be immune to biases based solely on gender, complexity and familiarity.

These results will be of interest to judges, lawyers and forensic accountants acting as expert witnesses.

In this paper, I apply the discourse of transitional justice to the case study of survivor docents at the Japanese American National Museum, a site that has come to represent and serve as a form of reparation for the traumatic memory of Japanese American internment during World War II. As a longer term supplement to trials or Truth and Reconciliation Commissions or an alternative in cases where no such structures exist, I illustrate how the museum tour becomes an empowering platform for survivors of the American Internment camps to work through and instrumentalize traumatic memories within the dialogic museum sphere, even as this alternative space forms its own new silences. Thus, by applying the very theories and criticisms through which scholars of memory politics evaluate official platforms of transitional justice, I aim to complicate and evaluate this alternative form of testimony, and in so doing explore areas of growth in the fields of both transitional justice and museum practice. Bridging the gap between testimony, oral history, and museum interpretation, survivor docents represent a sustained dialogic approach to history that perpetuates, preserves, and activates – rather than resolves – discourse around contentious memories.

In this chapter, I examine stories that foster care youth tell to legislatures, courts, policymakers, and the public to influence policy decisions. The stories told by these children are analogized to victim truth testimony, analyzed as a therapeutic, procedural, and developmental process, and examined as a catalyst for systemic accountability and change. Youth stories take different forms and appear in different media: testimony in legislatures, courts, research surveys or studies; opinion editorials and interviews in newspapers or blog posts; digital stories on YouTube; and artistic expression. Lawyers often serve as conduits for youth storytelling, translating their clients’ stories to the public. Organized advocacy by youth also informs and animates policy development. One recent example fosters youth organizing to promote “normalcy” in child welfare practices in Florida, and in related federal legislation.

The use of expert testimony in arbitration is explored. Why has it become so important in arbitration? The author has examined when and how to use an expert's testimony. He also discusses how to counteract an expert's testimony.