When the East set off to join the West in a common Europe, its economic and political oddities became increasingly visible in the rapprochement. So what does the West make of the East? How does ex-communist Europe come across through the lens of the Western media? This book presents research conducted on all material concerning Bulgaria on the BBC website over a period of five years: starting with the early years of EU accession in 2007, up to the hysteria regarding a wave of Bulgarian immigrants to the UK in 2012. Three types of methodologies are applied: namely, content analysis, critical discourse analysis, and corpora techniques. Several coding categories are employed for the content analysis, including what type of stories are published about Bulgaria in comparison with countries of a similar size and standing; which stories were not covered by the BBC; and what areas are of specific interest in the coverage of former communist countries. A new taxonomy is established for thematic threads and continuous coverage, which sets off significant value-laden aspects of news reporting. Critical discourse analysis reveals that Bulgarians are construed via a different set of referential terms – while English people living abroad are called “ex-patriots”, Bulgarians are “immigrants”. In its plentiful criticism of Bulgaria, “Euro Speak” is reproduced where nominalisations such as “we cannot delay their integration” reveal a mental frame of rejection, not integration. The BBC uses EU jargon between inverted commas – the effects of Bulgaria’s integration into the Schengen zone are “grave” – instead of a factual, taxonomic adjective naming the actual consequences. Thus, the language used reveals hidden attitudes. Corpora techniques include establishing words whose frequency in the articles about Bulgaria is higher than in a balanced corpus of English. Such nouns in the five-year corpus include CORRUPTION, POOR and POOREST. Maybe the BBC reporters believed they were covering events as they happened but the results evoke a grim picture, prompting unfavourable attitudes to Bulgarians. That is why the images spawned by news coverage need to be monitored and moderated – for which this book offers an array of methodologies.

When the East set off to join the West in a common Europe, its economic and political oddities became increasingly visible in the rapprochement. So what does the West make of the East? How does ex-communist Europe come across through the lens of the Western media? This book presents research conducted on all material concerning Bulgaria on the BBC website over a period of five years: starting with the early years of EU accession in 2007, up to the hysteria regarding a wave of Bulgarian immigrants to the UK in 2012. Three types of methodologies are applied: namely, content analysis, critical discourse analysis, and corpora techniques. Several coding categories are employed for the content analysis, including what type of stories are published about Bulgaria in comparison with countries of a similar size and standing; which stories were not covered by the BBC; and what areas are of specific interest in the coverage of former communist countries. A new taxonomy is established for thematic threads and continuous coverage, which sets off significant value-laden aspects of news reporting. Critical discourse analysis reveals that Bulgarians are construed via a different set of referential terms â " while English people living abroad are called â oeex-patriotsâ , Bulgarians are â oeimmigrantsâ . In its plentiful criticism of Bulgaria, â oeEuro Speakâ is reproduced where nominalisations such as â oewe cannot delay their integrationâ reveal a mental frame of rejection, not integration. The BBC uses EU jargon between inverted commas â " the effects of Bulgariaâ (TM)s integration into the Schengen zone are â oegraveâ â " instead of a factual, taxonomic adjective naming the actual consequences. Thus, the language used reveals hidden attitudes. Corpora techniques include establishing words whose frequency in the articles about Bulgaria is higher than in a balanced corpus of English. Such nouns in the five-year corpus include CORRUPTION, POOR and POOREST. Maybe the BBC reporters believed they were covering events as they happened but the results evoke a grim picture, prompting unfavourable attitudes to Bulgarians. That is why the images spawned by news coverage need to be monitored and moderated â " for which this book offers an array of methodologies.

This is the first-ever book about product and country images. It discusses the nature and role and influence of product-country images in international marketing strategy and consumer behavior. Thousands of companies use country identifiers as part of their international marketing strategy, and hundreds of researchers have studied the ways in which these identifiers influence behavior. As markets become more international, the more prominently the origin of products will figure in sellers' and buyers' decisions. The time is ripe for practitioners and academicians to delve into the insights offered in this seminal volume so as to better prepare for meeting the competitive challenges of the global marketplace. Product-Country Images is a wide-ranging and state-of-the-art book offering specific information and case studies to further understanding of the various aspects of this complex topic.

"The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come." -Global Trends 2040 (2021) Global Trends 2040-A More Contested World (2021), released by the US National Intelligence Council, is the latest report in its series of reports starting in 1997 about megatrends and the world's future. This report, strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, paints a bleak picture of the future and describes a contested, fragmented and turbulent world. It specifically discusses the four main trends that will shape tomorrow's world: - Demographics-by 2040, 1.4 billion people will be added mostly in Africa and South Asia. - Economics-increased government debt and concentrated economic power will escalate problems for the poor and middleclass. - Climate-a hotter world will increase water, food, and health insecurity. - Technology-the emergence of new technologies could both solve and cause problems for human life. Students of trends, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades, will find this report, with colored graphs, essential reading.

What are the imagined communities that compel men to kill or to die for an idea of a nation? This notion of nationhood had its origins in the founding of the Americas, but was then adopted and transformed by populist movements in nineteenth-century Europe. It became the rallying cry for anti-Imperialism as well as the abiding explanation for colonialism. In this scintillating, groundbreaking work of intellectual history Anderson explores how ideas are formed and reformulated at every level, from high politics to popular culture, and the way that they can make people do extraordinary things. In the twenty-first century, these debates on the nature of the nation state are even more urgent. As new nations rise, vying for influence, and old empires decline, we must understand who we are as a community in the face of history, and change.

This book offers a theoretically driven, empirically grounded survey of the role visual communication plays in political culture, enabling a better understanding of the significance and impact visuals can have as tools of political communication. The advent of new media technologies have created new ways of producing, disseminating and consuming visual communication, the book hence explores the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of visual political communication in the digital age, and how visual communication is employed in a number of key settings. The book is intended as a specialist reading and teaching resource for courses on media, politics, citizenship, activism, social movements, public policy, and communication.

In this provocative book Terhi Rantanen challenges conventional ways of thinking about globalization and shows how it cannot be understood without studying the role of the media. Rantanen begins with an accessible overview of globalization and the pivotal role of the media.