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Public discourse is rich in meaning, reflecting consensus, dissent, and change. Yet, very little public discourse on the humanitarian sector has been authored by aid workers themselves. We conducted a thematic analysis of the ‘Secret Aid Worker’ (SAW) series, published in The Guardian newspaper between 2015 and 2018, the only corpus of data on humanitarian life experiences publicly accessible through mainstream media. Our research questions were twofold: how did authors frame their work and appraise humanitarian structures?; and how did they reflect and amplify humanitarian issues of the time? The main themes included: personal challenges of humanitarian life; characterisation of stakeholders; and systemic issues within the humanitarian sector. The SAW narratives reveal a powerful discourse of discontent. They planted seeds of change regarding shifting power, coloniality and racism, sexual abuse, and duty of care. We argue that such public discourse has symbolic power, calling for greater accountability, equity, and justice in remaking the future of the humanitarian sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores discourses that have informed debates concerning care leavers in Romania over the last 50 years to understand why rights‐based reforms introduced in the mid‐2000s have been difficult to implement. The discussion is based on the analysis of a maximum variation sample of 40 documents published between 1951 and 2018. Across two historical periods during and after communism, framed by three political events which changed significantly the context of public childcare and leaving care, this paper explores how dominant discourses on 'public childcare', 'care leavers' and 'children's rights' have evolved, what mechanisms established them and with what consequences. The analysis revealed the stealthy presence of a 'dinosaur discourse' of deficit and 'undeserving', unsuccessfully challenged by the rights discourse, which alongside a neglectful attitude to social protection, informs the practice and ultimately the experience of public childcare and leaving care. However, the growing and increasingly clear voice of care‐leaver activists counterbalances this through a new narrative of strengths, value and capability aiming towards concrete change from below. The paper proposes a number of 'absent discourses' that could offer a powerful context for this new voice and avenues for meaningful action, with implications for research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diagnosis of autism in the UK is generally made within a multidisciplinary team setting and is primarily based on observation and clinical interview. We examined how clinicians diagnose autism in practice by observing post‐assessment meetings in specialist autism teams. Eighteen meetings across four teams based in the south of England and covering 88 cases were audio‐recorded, transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis. We drew out two themes, related to the way in which clinicians expressed their specialist disciplinary knowledge to come to diagnostic consensus: Feeling Autism in the Encounter; and Evaluating Testimonies of Non‐present Actors. We show how clinicians produce objective accounts through their situated practices and perform diagnosis as an act of interpretation, affect and evaluation to meet the institutional demands of the diagnostic setting. Our study contributes to our understanding of how diagnosis is accomplished in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies the interactional functions of racism discourse in mobilizing support for right‐wing populism. The analysis focuses on the controversy surrounding UKIP's "Breaking Point" poster campaign, which launched days before the historic British EU referendum. We focus on the development of "tripolar relations" between the UKIP party leadership, mainstream political elites, and ordinary citizens. Using thematic discourse analysis, we show how the poster was depicted as racist and the UKIP leader Nigel Farage was accused of scaremongering and stoking racism by means of propaganda. This criticism becomes the grounds for mobilization as Farage defended the campaign against the charge of racism and his supporters rose to his side. We conclude by showing how arguments about the nature of racism are identity performances that can reproduce or challenge existing social relations. This article thus identifies the rhetorical "collaboration" that exists between critics and defenders of racism and the inadvertent political outcome of this interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two nurses diagnosed with opioid addiction launched legal action after being found guilty of unprofessional conduct due to addiction‐related behaviors. When covered by the media, their cases sparked both public and legal controversies. We are curious about the broader discursive framings that led to these strong reactions, and analyze the underlying structures of knowledge and power that shape the issue of opioid addiction in the profession of nursing through a critical discourse analysis of popular media, legal blogs and hearing tribunals. We argue that addiction in nursing is framed as personal choice, as a failure in the moral character of the nurses, as decontextualized from addiction as disease arguments, and as an individualized issue devoid of contextual factors leading to addiction. Our investigation offers a critical case study of a nursing regulatory body that upheld popular assumptions of addiction as an autonomous, rational choice replete with individual‐based consequences – a framing that is inconsistent with evidence‐based practice in health‐care. We put forth this critical interrogation to open up possibilities for counterdiscourses that may promote more nuanced and effective responses to the issue of addiction in nursing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates everyday moral reasoning in relation to donations and prosocial behaviour in a humanitarian context. The discursive analysis focuses on the principles of deservingness which members of the public use to decide who to help and under what conditions. The study discusses three repertoires of deservingness - 'seeing a difference', 'waiting in queues', and 'something for nothing' - to illustrate participants' dilemmatic reasoning and to examine how the position of 'being deserving' is negotiated in humanitarian crises. Discursive analyses of these dilemmatic repertoires of deservingness identify the cultural and ideological resources behind these constructions and show how humanitarianism intersects and clashes with other ideologies and value systems. The data suggest that a neoliberal ideology, which endorses self-gratification, materialistic and individualistic ethics, and cultural assimilation of helper and receiver play important roles in decisions about humanitarian helping. The study argues for the need for psychological research to engage more actively with the dilemmas involved in the moral reasoning related to humanitarianism and to contextualize decisions about giving and helping within the sociocultural and ideological landscape in which the helper operates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quality of care is a prominent discourse in modern health‐care and has previously been conceptualised in terms of ethics. In addition, the role of knowledge has been suggested as being particularly influential with regard to the nurse–patient–carer relationship. However, to date, no analyses have examined how knowledge (as an ethical concept) impinges on quality of care. Qualitative semi‐structured interviews were conducted with 26 patients with palliative and supportive care needs receiving district nursing care and thirteen of their lay carers. Poststructural discourse analysis techniques were utilised to take an ethical perspective on the current way in which quality of care is assessed and produced in health‐care. It is argued that if quality of care is to be achieved, patients and carers need to be able to redistribute and redevelop the knowledge of their services in a collaborative way that goes beyond the current ways of working. Theoretical works and extant research are then used to produce tentative suggestions about how this may be achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]