Search Results

This chapter discusses the reintegration of the need for Humanities Research Council back onto the public agenda and into the policy stream of the UK government. The issue of the Research Council for the humanities came into public and governmental attention when it was fastened to the dilemmas of financing higher education, which itself was tied to the uncertainty of the UK economy. In May 1996, the Secretary of State for Education and Employment together with Secretaries of State for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland appointed Chairman Ron Dearing to create a body that would inquire into the higher education system of the UK. In 1997, the committee produced a report, Higher Education in a Learning Society, or the Dearing Report. The report charted a course for higher education in the UK for the next twenty years. This so-called intellectual capital called for a higher quality of teaching and the need for researchers and research facilities. It offered 93 specific recommendations, among which was a recommendation advocating the immediate establishment of a new Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). In 1998, the government recognized the need for the establishment of a research council for humanities and announced the provision of £8M in 1998–1999 for arts and humanities research, albeit after lengthy considerations.

The chapter argues that the agenda setting focus of previous research is misplaced. Agenda setting theories are limited by the notion that government prioritizes problems before deciding which policies to consider. The chapter demonstrates that objective measures of the public and government agenda are a poor guide to when and where policy change will occur in any branch of government. To explain why, the chapter details how often each political actor and circumstance reportedly influences policy change and analyze the most commonly influential actors across all issue areas. The most frequently mentioned actors are presidents, members of Congress, and prominent interest groups. The most frequently credited circumstances involve negotiations in the administrative and legislative branches and interest group advocacy. The results are inconsistent with the focus of previous research, which expects public opinion, focusing events, and election results to direct policymakers to particular problems.

A rich body of work examines the public agenda in democratic countries. These studies rely on aggregate responses to survey questions that ask respondents to report their issue priorities—commonly using topline data of the most important problem survey series (MIP). This research design, however, is not sensitive to differences in issue priorities between individuals and groups and, therefore, fails to account for the possible variation within the general public. To overcome this neglect in existing literature, we examine individual-level responses to the most important problem question in two countries—the United States and Israel—focusing specifically on economic and foreign policy priorities. We reveal that beyond aggregate trends in the public agenda, socio-demographic factors in both countries explain some of the variation in issue dynamics.

This chapter argues that the public, as members of communities or as employees of multidisciplinary public health organizations, should drive the public health agenda. Public health practitioners, policy-makers, and researchers should be trained to form partnerships with communities in the formulation of public health priorities, programmes, and values. To meet the expectations of its ‘global’ qualifier, public health must reflect the opinions and contributions of the global community that it serves.

This chapter explores the effect of the interplay of personal characteristics and news coverage on issue salience during the 2009 to 2015 period and during the election campaign in 2013. We selected four topics that played a considerable role during this period: the labor market, pensions and healthcare, immigration, and the financial crisis. The evidence from pooled cross-sectional data and panel data supports the notion that news coverage affects citizens’ issue salience. For obtrusive issues, news coverage does not play as large a role as for rather remote topics like the financial crisis and immigration. The results also lend credence to the idea that political predilections and other individual differences are related to issue salience and constrain the impact of news coverage on voters’ issue salience. However, the evidence for the interplay of individual differences and media coverage proved mild at best.

This chapter explores a multitude of publications on British television history that have both hailed and deconstructed the policies and influences of the BBC. Since 1922, the organisation has attempted to serve audiences with an intention to inform and acculturate them on every subject deemed acceptable. Within its development, a public service agenda was an essential part of programming practices, influenced greatly by Sir John Reith, who, despite his extreme dislike for both politicians and television, later served as the Director-General of the organisation during its first sixteen years of service. Prior to his departure in 1938, the first public demonstration of the Baird Television System took place and audiences had a choice of musical variety programmes, and a host of dramatic teleplays and informational talks, each demonstrating the ability of television to hopefully do what BBC radio had done for nearly fifteen years: entertain and inform a variety of publics on current, global and national events.

Chapter three opens by focussing upon debates on ethics and values with a particular focus on debates on the public service ethos and whether this is being undermined by public service modernisation agendas. This sets the context for the discussion of Law Centres’ own distinctive ethos and professional values, drawing upon original research into the views and experiences of staff and volunteers in Law Centres in England. Law Centres were highly committed to the values associated with access to justice for all, regardless of the ability to pay and/ or other social disadvantages. In addition, they were strongly committed to working with disadvantaged communities to promote human rights and social justice agendas more widely, with an emphasis upon working holistically, collaboratively and in preventative ways to achieve these aims. These goals were potentially challenging to achieve at the best of times, let alone in the current context. On the contrary, government policies were being geared towards the promotion of competition and the increasing use of market mechanisms more generally.

This chapter looks at how consumption of news online gives rise to audience fragmentation and polarization. It considers the conditions under which audience fragmentation and polarization may occur or operate. It also reviews the research literature to find evidence for the fragmentation and polarization of online news audiences in contemporary democracies. More specifically, it examines whether people base their news exposure—and thus their knowledge and opinion—on factors such as political beliefs. The chapter also discusses types of audience fragmentation and polarization, the causes of fragmentation and polarization, and exposure fragmentation and polarization on the Internet and compares those with those in the traditional or offline media. Finally, it analyzes fragmentation of public affairs knowledge and of the public agenda.

This chapter argues that evaluations of work by third sector organizations can play an important role in the context of social welfare today. Evaluations serve as rhetorical tools in policy debates as well as tools for illustrating how and when social value creation takes place. The continued development of evaluation models that focus on evidencing added social value is important for individual organizations aiming to evaluate their distinct contribution to social welfare. It is also important to general policy debates around the purposes and principles of core social service policies such as the Social Value Act and the Open Public Service Agenda. The application of firm evaluation models that build on a clear yet contextually dependent definition of social value, can play a critical role in establishing ‘social value’ as an essential ingredient in commissioning procedures, on par with cost per unit and efficiency.

What conditions favor good results in child and adolescent development? What can shift the odds away from dismal outcomes such as youth violence? How can our children grow up healthy and vigorous, inquiring and problem solving, decent and constructive? We approach such questions in two ways, using… 1. a basic generic comprehensive developmental sequence that provides antidotes to shattered and distorted lives—lives that are conducive to youth violence and other pathologies, or 2. a specific set of targeted interventions that can help to prevent youth violence and enhance personal ability to deal with conflict in nonviolent ways…. Both of these approaches need to be considered in a multifaceted way, taking into account the pivotal institutions that powerfully shape child and adolescent development: family, community, media, health, and education systems. This chapter focuses mainly on possibilities for averting youth violence by fostering healthy, constructive, prosocial development throughout childhood and adolescence, but we also have some remarks about interventions targeted specifically to preventing youth violence. A poor start in life can leave an enduring legacy of impairment, and the high costs may show up in various systems—health, education, and juvenile justice.We call these impairments by many names: disease, disability, delinquency, ignorance, incompetence, hatred, and violence. By whatever name, such outcomes entail severe economic and social penalties for the entire society as well as suffering for the damaged persons. During their earliest years of growth and development, children require dependable attachment to parents or other adult caregivers; they need protection, guidance, stimulation, nurturance, and tutelage in skills to cope with adversity. Infants, in particular, need caregivers who promote attachment and thereby instill the fundamentals of trust and decent human relationships throughout the child’s life. Young adolescents, too, have a special need to connect with people who can guide their momentous transition to adulthood with sensitivity and understanding.