This article investigates the nature of cosmopolitanism in the production and reception of public diplomacy discourse surrounding London 2012. It focuses on three actors: the UK Government, the International Olympic Committee and the international news media. It finds that UK public diplomacy actors and their partners were focused more on the promotion of a competitive identity, albeit a cosmopolitan one, than engagement. It argues that the cosmopolitanism evident in the discourse was a form of branded cosmopolitanism, and, ultimately, this limited the success of UK public diplomacy in achieving its aims. This style of communication -that was evident across the discourse surrounding London 2012 -was exclusionary of key actors to UK public diplomacy objectives. Applying a form of critical discourse analysis, the ideology surrounding the Olympic ideal is revealed as significant to maintaining uncritical acceptance of exclusions and conspicuous contradictions.
Reporting Beyond the Pale: UK news discourse on drones in Pakistan This article on drone strikes in Pakistan offers a distinctive empirical case study for critical scholarship of counterterrorism. By asking how cosmopolitanism has developed through UK news discourse it also provides a constructivist contribution to the literature on drones. I argue UK news discourse is not cosmopolitan because it focuses on risk and places the Other beyond comprehension. US and UK Governments networked counterterrorism operations have complicated accountability and while a drive for certainty promoted more scrutiny of policy, news media outlets, academics and activists turned to statistical and visual genres of communication that inhibited understanding of the Other.
International sporting and mega-events such as London 2012 provide a pertinent case study through which to explore contemporary approaches to nationalism and cosmopolitanism. Using original focus group evidence from participants with expertise in the Olympics, this article provides an insight into how nationalist and cosmopolitan discourses emerge in dialogue between informed individuals set against an emotionally charged background. The evidence indicates that the transmission of emotions might be integral to the operation of nationalist but less so to cosmopolitan discourses, underscoring the conditional character of the latter discourses. Therefore, we suggest this takes previous work that associates nationalism with 'hot' emotions and cosmopolitanism with 'cool' emotions further. We found that most emotions appeared to be transmitted through challenges to, rather than in support of, a discourse. The opinions voiced in the focus groups are expected to be insightful for any investigation into the construction of nationalist and cosmopolitan discourses or, indeed, broader research into how emotions are actually transmittedall of which have obvious relevance for social scientists interested in nationalism, cosmopolitanism and the role of emotions.
Agenda-building surrounding US and UK government involvement in the tortureintelligence nexus is steeped in secrecy, obfuscation and deception. Torture, Intelligence
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