Search results

There is no doubt that the political speech of the Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad is of exceptional importance in understanding the developments of the war in Syria, and clarifies the position of all parties involved in the war, whether local, regional or international. Accordingly, and based on the dismantling of political discourse, the identification of its core, as well as its variables and major themes of this discourse, this study aims to understand the levels of complexity, paths and the fate of the war in Syria that certainly does not come free of charge, the hardest of which is the human cost whether for the victims or the displaced persons.

After a careful study of all the resilient factors in the literature review to categorize the primary data based on Assad’s discourses in the media, through a “qualitative research study” of his “interviews and discourses,” it is found that the Assad’s rhetoric is highly relevant to his tenacious presidency. The research reveals the themes that dominated Assad’s interview responses and speeches and his strategy of framing the revolution as a foreign insurgency against his government. In fact, Assad delegitimizes any semblance of the uprisings as a “pro-democracy movement” or “revolution,” denying the presence of a rebellion against his government.

By the analysis the study found out that Bashar Al-Assad continued to focus on certain reasons and issues that led to the crisis and the continuation of the war, such as the Muslim Brotherhood’s involvement, considering the Syrian opposition abroad as agents of Western countries, Syria is subject to a regional and international conspiracy, terrorism is a major scourge that must be fought and that the army is essential in resolving the battles taking place there. Likewise, emphasizing the internal dialogue with all stakeholders and involved parties is the way to solve the crisis.The Syrian President’s speeches do not focus much on the accusations against his regime from the opposition or the international parties involved in the conflict.

Assad’s resiliency has made him a distinct leader in the region. This paper analyzes the factors contributing to Assad’s resiliency. The literature review consists of the existing theories on authoritarian persistence and Assad’s power base in particular. The literature review discusses the factors that helped Assad adopts his resiliency strategies to the conflict environment. The research focuses on how Assad used the media as a platform for displaying his own manipulative narrative of the conflict. It concludes that Assad’s use of the media as his propaganda tool legitimized his rule, making it highly relevant to his persistence.

Data economy is pervasively present in our everyday lives. Still, ordinary laypersons' chances to genuine communication with other stakeholders are scarce. This paper aims to raise awareness about communication patterns in the context of data economy and initiate a dialogue about laypersons' position in data economy ecosystems.

This conceptual paper covers theory-based critical reflection with ethical- and empirical-based remarks. It provides novel perspectives both for research and stakeholder collaboration.

The authors suggest invitational rhetoric and Habermasian discourse as instruments towards understanding partnership between all stakeholders of the data economy to enable laypersons to transfer from subjectivity to the agency.

The authors provide (1) theory-based critical reflection concerning communication patterns in the data economy; (2) both ethical and empirical-based remarks about laypersons' position in data economy and (3) ideas for interdisciplinary research and stakeholder collaboration practices by using invitational rhetoric and rational discourse. By that, this paper suggests taking a closer look at communication practices and ethics alike in the data economy. Moreover, it encourages clear, rational and justified arguments between stakeholders in a respectful and equal environment in the data economy ecosystems.

This study provides insights into the external powers that can influence business leaders' communication on sustainability. It shows how the socio-political context manifested in national and transnational policies, regulations and other socio-political events can influence the CEO talk about sustainability.

This study adopts an interpretative and qualitative method of analysis using the lenses of the theoretical concepts of framing and legitimacy, analysing CEOs’ letters from 10 multinational industrial companies based in Sweden, over the period of 2008–2019.

The results show that various discourses of sustainability, emerging from policies and regulatory initiatives, socio-political events and civil society activism, are reflected in the ways CEOs frame sustainability over time. This article reveals that CEOs not only lead the discourse of profitable sustainability, but they also slowly adapt their sustainability talk to other discourses led by the policymakers, regulators and civil society. This pattern of a slow adaptation is especially visible in a period characterised by increased discourses of climate urgency and regulations related to social and environmental sustainability.

The theoretical frame is built by integrating the concepts of legitimacy and framing. Appreciating dynamic notions of legitimacy and framing, the study suggests a novel view of reporting as a film series, presenting many frames of sustainability over time. It helps the study to conceptualise CEO framing of sustainability as adaptive framing. This study suggests using a dynamic notion of adaptive framing in future longitudinal studies of corporate- and accounting communication.

The results show that policymakers, regulators and civil society, through their initiatives, influence the CEOs' framing of sustainability. It is thus important for regulators to substantiate sustainability-related discourses and develop conceptual tools and language of social and environmental sustainability that can lead CEO framing more effectively.

The study engages with Goffman's notion of dynamic framing. Dynamic framing suggests a novel view of reporting as a film series, presenting many frames of sustainability over time and conceptualises CEO framing of sustainability as adaptive framing.

The climate crisis presents a global threat. Research shows the necessity of joint communication efforts across different arenas—media, politics, business, academia and protest—to address this threat. However, communication about social change in response to the climate crisis comes with challenges. These challenges manifest, among others, in public accusations of inconsistency in terms of hypocrisy and incapability against self-declared change agents in different arenas. This increasingly turns public climate communication into a “blame game”.

Strategic communication scholarship has started to engage in this debate, thereby acknowledging climate communication as an arena-spanning, necessarily contested issue. Still, a systematic overview of specific inconsistency accusations in different public arenas is lacking. This conceptual article provides an overview based on a macro-focused public arena approach and decoupling scholarship.

Drawing on a systematic literature review of climate-related strategic communication scholarship and key debates from climate communication research in neighboring domains, the authors develop a framework mapping how inconsistency accusations of hypocrisy and incapacity, that is, policy–practice and means–ends decoupling, manifest in different climate communication arenas.

This framework creates awareness for the shared challenge of decoupling accusations across different climate communication arenas, underscoring the necessity of an arena-spanning strategic communication agenda. This agenda requires a communicative shift from downplaying to embracing decoupling accusations, from mutual blaming to approval of accountable ways of working through accusations and from confrontation to cooperation of agents across arenas.

This paper has two purposes. First, it aims to explore how Australian universities used calculative rhetoric and practices through accounting numbers to persuade employees and legitimize their financial recovery plans to alleviate the financial hardship caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Second, it aims to analyze how the accounting-based solutions were legitimized through a well-blended pathos, logos and ethos rhetoric.

Building on a rhetorical theory of diffusion, we employed a qualitative research design within all 37 Australian public universities involving Internet-based documentary analysis.

This study finds that in an urgent crisis like the fiscal crisis caused by COVID-19, universities again found rescue in accounting tools, in particular budgets, as a rhetorical device to justify their operational and strategic choices such as job-cuts, programs closures and staff pay-cuts. However, in this crisis, the same old accounting-based solutions were even more quickly to be accepted by being delivered in management’s colorful blending of pathos–logos–ethos rhetoric.

While this study is constrained to Australian public universities’ financial responses, its findings have implications for university decision-makers and higher education policymakers across the globe when it comes to university management using calculative devices in persuading employees to work their way through financial hardship caused by an extreme health crisis-like COVID-19 pandemic.

This study adds more evidence that the use of budgets as a calculative tool continues to play a key role in organizations in the construction, mobilization and preservation of certain strategic and operational choices during volatilities. Especially, the same way of creating calculative-based solutions can be communicated via the colorful blending of different rhetoric to make it acceptable.

Critiques of elites define populism, which conceives of power relations as a unified, conspiring elite exploiting the good people. Yet, populism itself is inherently elitist, calling for a strong leader to take power and channel the will of the people. Elite theory, surprisingly overlooked in scholarship on populism, can clarify this apparent paradox and elucidate the dimensions of populism and its risk of authoritarianism in new ways. In contrast to populist ideological conceptions of power relations in society, elite theory points to the possibility that several elites with diverging voices and interests exist. Furthermore, elite theorists argue that such elite pluralism is a necessary component of a well-functioning democracy. Much scholarship on populism, often aiming to understand its causes and focussing on Western Europe and North America, points to the similarities of populist movements. The focus on similarities strengthens the understanding of populism as a uniform phenomenon and populist elite critiques as homogeneous. However, broader comparative studies show that different populist movements target a range of various elite groups. Indeed, the empirical reality of populist elite critiques targeting diverse elite groups is more in line with elite theory than populist ideological conceptions of power relations in society. A key to grasping the democratic challenges posed by the power relations between elites and masses in both populist critiques and populist solutions is an understanding of the institutional conditions for elite integration versus elite pluralism. This central discussion in both classical and modern elite theory is applied to analyse populism in this contribution.

The intra-organisational relationships of through-life support services providers are complex, especially given the multifaceted nature of the provision required. For example, capabilities within the UK highways maintenance arena must support engineering design, routine maintenance and the on-going management of the network. While collaboration in construction projects has formed a major research focus in recent years, there is a paucity of work examining collaboration in-flight.

Through a micro-practices approach, two contracts delivering highway infrastructure maintenance and renewal services are examined to explore the intra-organisational relationships that determine the quality of service delivered.

Despite the rhetoric of collaboration and integrated working that pervades the contemporary project discourse, there was a clear focus on addressing immediate technical and commercial concerns, rather than on creating the conditions for integrated working to flourish. On the occasions where the collaborative environment was prioritised, a more integrated service was delivered.

In contrast to other accounts of the ways collaborative working shapes performance, this research reveals an acute need for a sustained collaborative effort; as soon as “collaborative working” was normalised, the level of integration and seamlessness of service was diminished. This questions normative notions of what defines collaborative working in projects and suggests a need for re-framing it as an on-going accomplishment of actors involved. Such a perspective resonates with notions of “organizational becoming”, particularly in that attempts to foster collaboration are themselves constitutive of the unfolding and shifting nature of intra-organisational relationships that emerge in complex contractual arrangements.

Children’s voices are seldom heard directly. Most often, children, particularly young children, are represented by adults acting on their behalf who may or may not best represent the child’s views or best interests. This can be beneficial or problematic, if the child’s needs are not appreciated or recognised. This chapter looks at the changing attitudes to listening to young people, and the growing recognition of the value of children’s needs, as well as the growing voices of the children themselves, who make their needs increasingly clear. The results of our Models of Child Health Appraised (MOCHA) interviews with children and young people via the DIPEx International organisation give us clear direction as to the importance children using primary care services place on being taken seriously, being listened to and being able to make their own decisions. Other researchers asked input from primary care professionals on children’s autonomy and how the current and future primary care systems can best address the needs of young people, as well as the placing of these issues in a wider cultural context, and how this influences and is influenced by children’s choices. Finally, we look at how the MOCHA country agents have reported the assessment of the importance and function of listening to young people in our research.