Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Clashes between developmental and environmental objectives in the mining sector can be framed through discursive practices referring to economic and political transition processes in countries accessing European Union. Foreign direct investment and domestic change resulting from the EU accession has been causing massive restructuring in the mining sector both in Romania and Turkey. A closer look to two gold mining conflicts taking place in the Carpathian Mountains, Romania and Kaz Mountains, Turkey, show that national discourses dealing with transnational influences and sustainability issues often converge in these two cases. Protest event analysis is used to point out dominant discursive framings based on a new and comprehensive data-set created from press clippings of the events. We find the framing of conflicts dealing with environmental and developmental goals and the assessment of the role played by foreign capital to be similar in both settings. At the same time, the different political trajectories - Romania‘s EU accession and Turkey‘s prolonged EU membership candidacy - have enforced the usage of transnational framing of the events in the Romanian and of nationalist framing of the events in the Turkish case.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: News media in the United States have recently publicized the existence of a secret government program to monitor telephone communications in the country as well as the cooperation of major telephone companies in supplying the government with call records. As in wars past, the War on Terrorism would thus seem to be serving as occasion for novel collaborations between government and industry, with the former relying on the latter for the development of a surveillance apparatus able to gather and analyze personal data. At the center of the controversial program is data mining—techniques for identifying patterns in large stores of data that corporations have used to generate profiles of consumers and credit card thieves. Set within its surveillance program, data mining would ostensibly allow the government to identify persons who threaten the country’s security. The government’s use of data mining raises questions concerning its encroachment upon civil liberties. However, as past law and society research has demonstrated, surveillance technologies seldom function in a unidimensional manner that simplistically bolsters those in positions of authority. Drawing upon both law and society research and science and technology studies (STS), and using data mining as a case study, this paper explores different lines of inquiry that could be pursued to more fully understand the role and repercussions of technology in the United States’ War on Terrorism.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Within hours of the October 2006 shootings of 10 girls in a one-room Amish schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, PA, this tiny town in rural Lancaster County was inundated with journalists from local, national, and international media. The subsequent debates about the role of the press in this case focused not only on media responsibility, but also on which kinds of media have the authority to report a culturally and geographically specific tragedy. Nearly all of that debate took place in print media, many of which claimed “local” or “insider” status in covering this story, and all of which positioned themselves as ethically superior to television journalists. Considering journalism as a discourse, this paper analyzes coverage in 20 American newspapers: 10 newspapers within 100 miles of the crime site, compared with the top-10 circulation U.S. newspapers. It finds that, while much commentary about the content of the coverage (as well as the purpose of journalism) appeared in the comparison group of nonlocal newspapers, the local papers contained the most, and harshest, criticism of the behavior of journalists—especially big-city reporters and television news teams, who were marginalized as inept and uninformed as well as insensitive. In sum, press criticism of press coverage of the Amish school shooting created a basis for a challenge to the reportorial authority of mainstream journalism, while also illuminating the role of the press in articulating ideas about rural versus urban identity, and local versus national identity.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The devolution of public authority to the private sector has been observed at the global, national and local levels. Within the mining sector, in a context of often weak state regulation, voluntary initiatives respecting corporate social responsibility have become a potentially important vehicle for the dissemination of norms of acceptable corporate behaviour. Based on research conducted over the past two years, this paper will assess the role that global undertakings, such as the Global Mining Initiative, have played in fostering learning and dialogue within mining multinationals on the issue of social responsibility. This research draws on constructivist theory,and considers the potential for normative discourses to operate on non-state actors, much as social learning has been observed to influence state policies in areas such as human rights. In the absence of coercion (understood as legal obligation) constructivist theory can offer insights into why powerful multinationals are adopting policies on corporate responsibility, even when they are not obligated to do so.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper examines how the EU impacts State-civil society relations through detailed micro-analysis, those Europeanisation mechanisms which have empowered civil society and altered the course of the Romanian government's decision-making processes.