Núria Almiron

Lobbying Against Compassion: Speciesist Discourse in the Vivisection Industrial Complex

The entire span of animal research from captivity to death causes immense suffering for hundreds of millions of nonhuman animals every year. Their suffering also disturbs the public, which is increasingly aware—due to animal advocacy, scientists’ testaments, and growing direct evidence—that animals’ use in biomedical research is more a matter of tradition than any proven superiority of vivisection over other modes of experimentation. Yet in response, the vivisection industrial complex lobbies against animal welfare regulation and animal rights activism. This article discusses how the political economy of the vivisection industry supports the speciesist business of animal testing by mimicking the language of animal welfare to increasingly obstruct the public’s compassion.

ICTs and financial crime: an innocent fraud?

The democratizing dimension of the new information and communication technologies (ICTs) is a widely accepted proposition. Although this is repeatedly emphasized and expounded by economic, political and social theories that deal with the analysis of the Information Society, its actual significance has been systematically neglected. ICTs are exclusively approached either from the perspective of the globalization of knowledge or from the perspective of economic productivity. However, the democratizing role of ICTs includes an aspect that is examined far less yet is more relevant: their ability to provide greater transparency in the political, economical and social management of societies. This article describes the relationship between the use of ICTs and financial crime; it examines the fraud that, in the authors opinion, is being created by means of ICTs, and emphasizes that greater attention must be paid to ICTs as a tool to fight the lack of transparency and white-collar crime.

Critical animal and media studies: Expanding the understanding of oppression in communication research

Critical and communication studies have traditionally neglected the oppression conducted by humans towards other animals. However, our (mis)treatment of other animals is the result of public consent supported by a morally speciesist-anthropocentric system of values. Speciesism or anthroparchy, as much as any other mainstream ideologies, feeds the media and at the same time is perpetuated by them. The goal of this article is to remedy this neglect by introducing the subdiscipline of Critical Animal and Media Studies. Critical Animal and Media Studies takes inspiration both from critical animal studies – which is so far the most consolidated critical field of research in the social sciences addressing our exploitation of other animals – and from the normative-moral stance rooted in the cornerstones of traditional critical media studies. The authors argue that the Critical Animal and Media Studies approach is an unavoidable step forward for critical media and communication studies to engage with the expanded circle of concerns of contemporary ethical thinking.

Framing farming: communication strategies for animal rights

the fact that the author constantly highlights the ambivalences of different strategies, the conclusion demonstrates that Nicholls favors a pragmatic approach that harmonizes frames and recognizes the discursive limitations of the national status quo. To underline his standpoint, Nicholls engages in a final skirmish with normative theory – theories of global justice and post-nationalism – and even transnationalism. In discarding them as utopian, the author unnecessarily deviates from the largely nuanced approach in the book and digs new cleavages between normative theory and empirical scholarship. In my view, adding a theory of politics to his analysis – informed by the radical democracy of Laclau and Mouffe or Rancière would have strengthened further the argument of the book. Struggles for rights indeed introduce new inequalities within society, but these constant agonisms can also be considered a productive force of social transformation. In this light, post-national theoretic perspectives and the radical activism practiced by dissident DREAMers deserve more support than Nicholls offers in his conclusion. Despite this, DREAMers is a must-read for everyone interested in the immigrant rights movement in the US and undocumented mobilization in general, no matter if with an academic or activist background. Indeed, it is one of the few books that have to be read entirely – it is full of interesting empirical results and partly controversial interpretations. As numerous migrants will continue to be illegalized, Nicholls’ book ‘The DREAMers’ can only be a starting point of a largely neglected debate on rights and recognition for undocumented migrants and ‘non-citizens’ in general.

Crisis and interest: the political economy of think tanks during the great recession

This article analyzes the inputs and constituencies (funding, founders, trustees, and experts) of the most influential group of think tanks in Spain during the great recession (2008-2015) in order to assess how far these think tanks were connected to other interest groups providing support for neoliberal policies. The aim of the article is to advance knowledge on think tank theory and it addresses three research goals: (a) assessing how far Spanish think tanks are affected by political clientelism and financialization, (b) identifying those actors who direct Spanish think tanks and collaborate with them, and (c) assessing the think tanks’ connections with international lobbying networks. Our results show that the think tanks studied are consistently related to three types of actor—political, economic, and academic—while also maintaining strong ties with the media. In this regard, their main traits are a pluralism biased toward right and center-left stances, state and party clientelism, the financial and political instrumentalization of party tanks, and the superior ability of conservative tanks to build network coalitions.

Influence and Advocacy: Revisiting Hot Topics under Pressure

Interest groups are said to have the potential to make a difference in policy processes and the shaping of public opinion. The traditional disciplinary division of research topics has assigned research on interest groups, also called advocacy groups and mainly referring to lobbies and think tanks, to the field of political science. Yet, as these actors are largely involved in the use of communication strategies and tools, a multidisciplinary approach that includes the perspective of communications in its widest sense (public relations, public affairs, marketing, political economy of communication) has the potential to be more effective in the study of such groups. A plethora of books already cover interest group activity in the United States, while a large number of publications have appeared on lobbying in the European Union. Most of these, however, are handbooks or how-to guides; there is still a paucity of critical research, even in academic journals, on the issues targeted by interest groups and interest actors themselves—think tanks, lobbies, or direct corporate advocacy actors. This is understandable, as much of the literature has been produced by former professionals from the field of advocacy. However, this lack of critical research that could contribute to understanding the main actors and issues in the European lobby scenario is detrimental to democracy. This special issue aims to fill this gap by drawing together some of the most prominent research on current advocacy that targets hot issues from a multidisciplinary and critical approach. The selected topics include climate change, animal ethics, the arms industry, finance, and human rights. Richard Maxwell and Toby Miller examine, from a political economy and North American point of view, various communication strategies for advocating acceptance of climate science in the face of psychological and ideological impediments. Case studies on Lego, Shell, Greenpeace, Edelman, and a recent Papal encyclical are addressed to unveil the propaganda machine behind the false controversy over climate science.

La economía política de la investigación informacional

Este trabajo presenta un analisis de los actores que impulsan actualmente las principales actividades de investigacion relacionadas con la llamada sociedad de la informacion y la comunicacion digital (denominada aqui investigacion informacional). Tal analisis pone de manifiesto un estrecho vinculo de esta investigacion con unos determinados sectores economicos y empresariales, que son los que construyen hoy el discurso dominante en este ambito. El trabajo defiende que la actual investigacion informacional mantiene las mismas limitaciones de la investigacion administrada estadounidense del siglo pasado, fruto de un enfoque igualmente descontextualizado e igualmente basado esencialmente en los efectos