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This article examines the structural characteristics of media consumption as a routine break from habitual activity. While acknowledging the existence and importance of "taking a breather" in everyday life, one may ask if and when it is possible to characterize taking a break in today's media field. The "media break" refers to communications consumption that is not directed at finding out what is occurring in the outside world, correlating between parts of the social and/or political system or responding to the environment and/or passing on the social heritage to the next generation. During the media breather, individuals cut themselves off from their obligations to surveillance, adaptation, connection, continuity, and enlistment. They isolate themselves from systemic constraints and needs and delay any overt contribution to the system. The media break can occur at any hour of the day, or even several times a day. In light of the contribution of routine activity to the stability of the social fabric, this article suggests that media consumption of the "breather" type can provide a structural basis for social stability.

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Music plays an important socio-cultural role in constructing and/or reflecting geo-cultural and universal emotional states by giving voice to personal emotional sensibilities, such as self-searching, romantic longing, and desire, alongside collective spatial sentiments, patriotism, etc. Moreover, popular song lyrics reveal the socio-cultural values, norms, tastes, and emotional conventions of both their creators and their audience. Thus, this article focuses on decoding geo-cultural vs. universal emotional sensibilities via narrative analysis of the first place winners of the annual Israeli Hit Parades between 1963 and 2018, broadcast on the two major Israeli radio stations, Kol Yisrael and Galgalatz, every year on the eve of the Jewish New Year. This long-standing tradition offers a unique opportunity to examine ongoing changes in socio-emotional coping with fear and death, wars and terror while providing a contemporary conceptual and practical inquiry into the normalization of emotions within a culture and politics of fear.

This article evaluates time perception in public policy by developing and characterising the concept of 'policy time'. Research in time-related public policy literature portrays two main trends: (1) the pragmatic trend Á short-term policy based on a pre-determined schedule as opposed to response-oriented policy; and (2) the normative trend Á long-term policy inspired by 'the voice of the future' and/or by 'public interest values' and/or by 'avoiding uncertainty'. This article offers a different approach to policy time management: instead of dealing with long-term policy vs. short-term policy it suggests juxtaposing 'tactical policy time' and 'strategic policy time'. Tactical policy time is defined as 'taking a specific time-related plan or action aimed at achieving a defined policy result'. Strategic policy time is defined as 'taking a specific time-related plan or action with the aim of coping better with uncertainty in the future'. The concepts of tactical policy time and strategic policy time allow us to characterise 'policy time' as 'timerelated planning or action aiming to achieve a defined policy result and/or to cope better with an uncertain future. The application of these concepts is investigated in the context of centreÁperiphery relations.