We are currently facing various health challenges worldwide, including outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles and diphtheria, rising cases of drug-resistant pathogens, ever increasing rates of obesity and physical inactivity as well as the impact of pollution and climate change on our health. The most recent and prominent case of concern is the coronavirus…
News
Surge in number of politics students since referendum
In the divisive era of Brexit, Trump, and the climate crisis, it is university politics departments who are reaping the benefits, with applications to politics courses up 28% since the 2016 Brexit referendum. Professor Lee Marsden, Head the Politics, Philosophy, Language and Communication department at UEA, says that, “since 2016, there has been considerable growth…
Features, Interview
Anshuman Mondal: ‘The politics of free speech is never settled’
Anshuman Mondal is a Professor of Modern Literature at UEA and an expert on free speech. We met in his room, which has an unfortunate location within the Arts building. Although full of academics with such creativity and brilliance, the building may give an outsider the impression of a prison from ‘1984’. I sat down…
Sex Survey 2019
Facebook doesn’t want you to get laid
Facebook is constantly updating what it deems as acceptable on its site, and the newest weird choice is taking down posts that could ‘facilitate, encourage or coordinate sexual encounters between adults’. It’s a very strange new rule, there is nothing illegal about two consenting adults wanting to have a ‘sexual encounter’, nor is it illegal…
Global
In brief
Keeping up with the Kremlin Vladimir Putin has featured in a new reality series, highlighting his devotion to the public. Broadcast on state television, the program documents the Russian President during his weekly activities. The first one-hour episode, aired during Sunday prime time, showed him scouring for berries, traversing lakes and rivers, and meeting with…
Comment
Fake news: it’s nothing new
The problem of “fake news” today may be regarded as an alarming result of the advent of social media. Click-bait articles with dramatic headlines maximise the number of shares an article receives on social media sites such as Facebook. However, these fake stories with a very slippery basis, have in fact been a problem for…
Comment
Trump’s relationship with the press is dangerous
“Journalism is printing what somebody else does not want printing, everything else is public relations”, a sentiment that the apparent “steaming pile of garbage” Buzzfeed discovered very publically last week. After publishing a 35 page, unverified document containing compromising alleged information about Donald Trump’s personal life, they were told that “they are going to face…
Comment
Lessons cannot stop fake news
While fake news is an issue, I think “digital critical literacy” classes for students are unnecessary and patronising. Courses already teach us to discern reliable information from dubious websites for referencing material in essays, and this is easy enough to transfer to reading online news articles outside of our studies. Most fake news doesn’t hide…
News
Academics say ‘fake news’ lessons needed
UK researchers have called for universities to teach how news spreads online to help students distinguish ‘fake news’, such as those stories proliferated last year in the US Presidential election and EU referendum. In December a man opened fire on a Texas pizza shop falsely reported to be hosting a child sex-ring run by Hillary…
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