Search

The omnipresence of the digital ecosystem makes it increasingly important in our societies, which implies that the analysis and study of the digital battlefield in political elections is also becoming more necessary to protect our democracies. Previous literature showed the existence of information operations around the world, designed to manipulate the political perception of citizens, and therefore, the electoral results. This paper examines the Twitter conversation around #14F 2021 Catalonia regional elections, which had special significance due to the pandemic situation and the highly polarized scenario around Catalonia and Spain, using tools and techniques from Big Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence. The results obtained show that the conversation existed inside robust echo chambers within each political party community, which became even more powerful if parties are unified into political affinity blocks. Also, focusing on the analysis related to the social bot presence, a significant quantity of results showed a higher presence of social bots in VOX party community compared to the rest of communities. This study corroborates other existing studies regarding the Catalan and Spanish scenario on the presence of echo chambers and on the existence of social bots with their tendency to basically amplify content; it also uncovers the lack of existence of cross-conversation between the independentist and unionist political block claimed in other studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on my ongoing ethnographic research with people living with HIV in different European countries, the paper focuses on RD, a Catalan man I have interviewed three times since 2014. In RD's life narrative, 'crisis' is a recurring theme including both the most blatant forms, like the severe housing crisis in Spain that followed the global financial crisis, and the most ordinary ones like domestic violence. Analysing the impact of crises in RD's perception and experience of the present, interwoven with the past(s) and the future(s), the paper discusses two main benefits of longitudinal ethnographic research. First, it allows to capture how crisis is not just a moment or a phase in RD's life, but acts as context generating a recurring experience of an 'uncanny present' shaped by logics of return and repetition of the past, and anticipation of the future. Second, it supports RD's self‐awareness around his ability to navigate the unknown when experiencing the 'uncanny present'; this highlights the ethical care dimension entailed by such methodology. The paper presents two main benefits of longitudinal ethnographic research. First, it allows to capture how crisis, for some people, is not just a moment or phase but acts as context generating a recurring experience of an 'uncanny present'. Second, it supports participants' self‐awareness around their ability to navigate the unknown, this demonstrating the ethical care dimension of the research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on territorial preferences in self‐determination disputes has traditionally focused on economic and identity‐related factors. However, the impact of social costs—encompassing overall societal comfort and conviviality—on specific preferences for territorial strategies remains understudied. This paper presents a novel perspective by investigating how social costs affect such policy preferences in Catalonia, a region in Spain where secession has become a politically salient and defining feature of the political debate in recent decades. Through embedded experiments conducted within regionally representative online surveys over two time periods, we examine the relationship between social costs and preferences for territorial strategies. Our theoretical framework and empirical findings underscore the importance of considering social costs as a determinant of policy preferences, warranting further cross‐national exploration—beyond territorial debates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate the evolving impact of linguistic voting and its relationship with values and preferences in Catalonia. Our central argument posits that both bottom‐up and top‐down dynamics serve as complementary and interactive explanations for ethnolinguistic voting. On the one hand, it could be expected that, over time, the influence of language on party choice would diminish as Catalan became more widespread among the population. On the other, we expect polarisation to push in the opposite direction, increasing the significance of language in party voting through national identity, strategically activated by political elites. We empirically demonstrate that language has remained a strong predictor of the nationalist vote using data on regional elections in Catalonia from the Center for Sociological Research (Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas, CIS). We show that a key mechanism accounting for this relates to parties' strategies to shape the linkage between language and identity, thereby polarising the political competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de Treball Social is the property of Col·legi Oficial de TreballSocial de Catalunya and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The Spanish far-right Vox party ran for the first time as a candidate for the Catalan parliamentary elections in February 2021. This paper analyses the party's political discourse on Twitter during the Catalan parliamentary election campaign in order to assess whether the degree of dialectical confrontation of their messages can exceed the limits of democratic debate. The results reveal how this far-right party's inflammatory messages, which seek to insult its political opponents, ultimately foster an undemocratic environment that turns Vox's political rivals into its enemy, driving social polarisation and a discourse of hatred towards individuals defending other ideologies or parties. Ultimately, it is intended to add that political-ideological nuance for future research that surpasses traditional hate speech —such as those based on criteria such as race or sex— and the suitability of Twitter for the proliferation of the latter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are secessionisms from and within the EU comparable? What motivates them and to what extent do they pose similar challenges to EU territorial governance? This article addresses these questions by comparing the framing of the British Leave campaign and the Catalan independence movement. Drawing on the FraTerr database and method, the analysis suggests that secessionism from the EU and secessionism within the EU are different political phenomena despite sharing an emphasis on sovereignty and the common goal of breaking-up from an existing polity. Secessionism from the EU is primarily a call for the recovery of lost sovereignty and of classical functions of the state such as border control. Secessionism within the EU invokes sovereignty as the right to external self-determination and adds narratives around a better future and greater democratic quality and social justice. These two types of secessionism pose different challenges to EU territorial governance because the first entails a full rejection of the European project while the latter calls for a review of European multi-level governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Language & Law / Revista de Llengua i Dret is the property of Revista de Llengua i Dret and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Journal of Language & Law / Revista de Llengua i Dret is the property of Revista de Llengua i Dret and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Journal of Language & Law / Revista de Llengua i Dret is the property of Revista de Llengua i Dret and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Journal of Language & Law / Revista de Llengua i Dret is the property of Revista de Llengua i Dret and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Journal of Language & Law / Revista de Llengua i Dret is the property of Revista de Llengua i Dret and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Since 2010 the Catalan secessionist movement has been reported on extensively in the global media. Beginning with the 2010 demonstrations against the decision of the Spanish Constitutional Court to reject a new Catalan statute of autonomy, and covering subsequent events such as the unofficial self-determination referendum in 2017, the trial and imprisonment of Catalan political leaders, and the violent protests against the verdicts; the events in the region have all featured heavily on the front pages of the international press. This study analyzes how US and UK newspapers have covered the Catalan independence movement during the period from 2010 to 2019. To do so, this study focuses on two US newspapers (The New York Times and The Washington Post) and two from the UK newspapers (The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian) and observes how the positions of the Spanish and Catalan governments are represented through the analysis of the frames used to construct the newspapers' coverage, as well as the overall tone and the sources used by the journalists. To detect the dominant framework, a framing analysis is undertaken from a communicative and deductive perspective, applying Semetko and Valkenburg's classification. In-depth interviews are also conducted with the newspapers' Spanish-based foreign correspondents which allows the analysis to include the correspondents' views on the difficulties faced by them during their time spent while covering the conflict. The study's primary conclusion is that the international press downplays the significant role played by social movements and civil society in the secession movement, with a strong preference shown by journalists to rely on representatives of official sources as the most valid spokespersons for the movement. Secondly, the study finds that media attention follows closely the flash-points of the conflict with more coverage appearing at the moments of greater political tension between the Spanish and Catalan governments. This suggests that civil society mobilizations attract less interest from the media that instead prefers to focus on developments in the political sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the phenomenon of the "populism of the privileged", whereby relatively privileged groups articulate populism to legitimize and enhance their positions of domination. Despite the growing literature on populism, few studies have attended to this counterintuitive construction of "the people" as an underdog struggling against a power bloc from a position of relative privilege. By examining the Catalan independence movement during the 2010s, this study draws on discourse theory to conceptualize the "populism of the privileged" and explore how various dimensions of sociological privilege are used to legitimize and reinforce dominant positions within Catalonia and Spain by means of populist politics. Finally, the article engages with the implications of the "populism of the privileged" in terms of inter-group relations, political integration, and the democratic principle of equality. By offering a nuanced analysis of this underexplored phenomenon, this article contributes to the growing literature on populism and provides insights into the complex relationship between populism, privilege, and power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When men died in medieval Catalonia, their widows went to the notaries. This article traces the ways in which Jewish and Christian women negotiated legal culture in response to their husbands' deaths in Catalan cities between 1250 and 1350. Death required deeply practical responses as well as emotional ones: the administration of the estate of the deceased was often a pressing concern. Both Jewish and Christian women relied on a variety of legal institutions to safeguard their own and (in some cases) their children's financial futures as they entered widowhood. Through a combination of Latin notarial documentation and Hebrew responsa literature, this article compares Jewish and Christian women's legal responses to the deaths of their husbands. Jews navigated Christian legal institutions and sometimes adapted Christian customs. Yet they also maintained distinct practices, and Jewish widows and their families maneuvered between Christian notaries and Jewish rabbinic authorities as they shaped their individual legal responses to the life-changing deaths of their husbands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Protected areas experienced changes in visitor flows after the easing of worldwide mobility restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The changing context added complexity to the functioning of these areas, so the entities involved in visitor management had to adopt protocols to contain the virus, as well as mechanisms to deal with the consequences of fluctuations in mobility flows in these areas. This study aims to analyze visitor management practices in protected areas of the Tarragona Province in Spain, in the context of the pandemic and as experienced by managers. We utilized a two-phase participatory methodology, initially employing a semi-structured questionnaire and subsequently conducting a focus group. Our findings revealed that concerns hindering visitor management before the pandemic not only remained relevant but worsened during this period. Managers faced organizational concerns, including poor communication among stakeholders or staff limitations. Visitor-related concerns also arose, such as changes in leisure and behavioral patterns that resulted in crowds and damage in sensitive areas. These concerns led to mostly reactive responses, with a strong reliance on strategies such as enforcement and regulation of visitor use and mobility. The findings provide useful information on the management approaches put into practice, as well as on opportunities to improve strategies for the sustainable management of visitors in protected areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]