Steven L Herman, chief national correspondent for the nonpartisan, government-funded Voice of America (VOA), weaves together memoir and history to pull back the curtain on the inner workings of the White House press corps, giving readers a rare glimpse into the historic and current relationship between the president and the press.

Herman traces the trajectory of his career as a journalist--from learning to be skeptical of government officials' statements when he worked as a novice reporter covering nuclear testing in Nevada in the 1970s to understanding the power of on-the-ground social media coverage after the Fukushima disaster in 2011 and facing the challenges of covering the Trump administration. He reflects on the experience of reporting on a president who once called journalists "enemies of the people"--and indeed, former president Trump singled out VOA, accusing the organization of being not a voice of America but rather a voice supporting Moscow's and Beijing's interests. Under questionable circumstances, top VOA executives lost their security clearances, and a dossier was prepared on Herman in an effort to remove him as White House bureau chief. With journalistic independence under threat, Herman feared not only for his career but also for "the soul of Voice of America."

Throughout Behind the White House Curtain, Herman convincingly argues that public access to accurate, unbiased information is essential to a healthy and peaceful democracy, and that journalists can and should play a key role in pressing government officials to be truthful and transparent. At a time when misinformation is rampant and the need for unbiased coverage of current events is more urgent than ever, Herman reminds readers that freedom of the press is a foundational American right.

Can humanity work together to mitigate the effects of climate change? Climate Games argues we can. This book brings together a decade and a half of experimentation, conducted by researchers around the world, which shows that people can and will work together to prevent disasters like climate change. These experiments, called economic games, put money on the line to create laboratory disasters. Participants must work together by spending a bit of money now to prevent themselves from losing even more money in the future. Will people sacrifice their own money to prevent disaster? Can people make wise decisions? And can people decide wisely on behalf of others? The answer is a resounding yes.

Yet real climate change is a complex social dilemma involving the world's nearly eight billion inhabitants. In the real world, the worst effects of climate change are likely to be felt by developing countries, while most of the decisions will be made by rich, industrialized countries. And while the world as a whole would be better off if all nations reduced their greenhouse gas emissions, any given nation could decide it would be even better off if it continued emitting and let other nations take care of the problem. These disaster experiments test how real people respond to climate change's unique constellation of challenges and deliver a positive message: People will prevent disaster.

Populism as Governmental Practice illustrates how populism functions as a phenomenon of power and draws attention to the brighter and darker consequences of populist rule for ordinary people across the world via bottom-up analyses of populist experiences of government in remarkably different national contexts including Turkey, Venezuela, Greece, India, Philippines, Egypt, and the United States.

By proposing an understanding of politics that is broader than the one embraced in current populism research, it focuses on a realm stretching beyond the electoral high politics of ideas/ideologies, discourses, public performances/styles, and mobilization efforts. The book theorizes populism as a responsive political/governmental practice in congruence with the material and symbolic expectations of populist audiences and analyses it as a rich praxis of governing people and things that is blurring the boundaries between public and the private as well as formal and the informal while embracing swiftness in temporal terms.

Through an interpretive perspective focusing on the bounded rationalities and moral economies embedded in the populist rule and popular obeyance to it, this book would appeal to researchers and students of politics and its sub-disciplines as well as to the non-expert audience curious about the micro dynamics of populist rule.

Multi-Stakeholder Contribution in Asian Environmental Communication focuses on how diverse actors can come together to promote sustainable environmental practices.

Bringing together 25 environmental communication scholars and practitioners across 15 innovative chapters, this book explores the dynamic roles of stakeholders - ranging from governmental bodies and non-profit organisations to local communities and industry players - involved in advancing environmental communication across the Asian continent. Drawing on a rich tapestry of case studies and interdisciplinary perspectives, the book sheds light on the interplay of religious, cultural, political, and economic factors that shape environmental communication strategies and public perception in Malaysia, Indonesia, Bangladesh, China, Thailand, Iran, Japan, and Pakistan. It probes into contemporary issues such as Islamic environmental communication, gender roles, social media, political communication, the role of games and gaming companies, as well as the portrayal of ecological messages in film. Overall, this book aims to bridge the gap between theory and practice and will make a significant contribution to the growing literature on multi-stakeholder contribution in environmental communication, particularly in the Asian context.

This volume will be of great interest to practitioners, policymakers, and researchers working in the field of environmental communication.

This book presents the first major initiative to introduce workshop-based Digital Storytelling to digitally dynamic and engaged youth, both in China and internationally.

Conceived nearly three decades ago, the participatory and creative practice of Digital Storytelling has been embraced by public institutions, advocates, and researchers as a media democratisation intervention that empowers non-professionals to actively contribute to the media. Drawing on data from ten workshops conducted with Chinese young migrants in Australia and China, this work investigates the extent to which Chinese youth's participation in Digital Storytelling constitutes media citizenship in both home and destination societies. The findings show that their digital self-expressions construct "alternative stories" that resist dominant discourses of place, mobility, education, and language. This book provides nuanced insights into the experiences of young educational migrants through bottom-up autobiographical narratives. As the first major study of its kind after decades of China's reform era, it sheds light on Chinese society from a unique perspective on the interrelationships between state-mandated subjectivity, personal aspirations, and digitally mediated narrativity.

The title will be of value to professionals in the field of Digital Storytelling and will also appeal to students and scholars interested in Chinese youth culture, educational mobility, media citizenship, digital literacy, and Chinese migration.

Yang examines the political process of the Occupy Movement spanning from January 2013, when the "Occupy Central with Love and Peace" (OCLP) campaign was initiated, to December 2014, when the Occupy Movement finally ended. This book adopts an actor-centered approach in the study of democratization and places civil society as the focus of the analysis.

The OCLP campaign was an attempt to transfer leadership of democratization from political parties to civil society, while the incorporation of Deliberation Days further let ordinary participants decide on the electoral proposals. The democratic ideals of civil society activists and the mobilization of radical democrats led the campaign to enter a radical position. The Chinese government interpreted democratization in Hong Kong from a regime security perspective and took a hardliner position. After the Occupy Movement finally occurred, the leadership of civil society and the conception of civil disobedience contained the radical protesters. However, after the movement, civil society organizations were blamed for its failure, and contention in Hong Kong became more transgressive and decentralized.

This book is a valuable resource for scholars of Hong Kong's Politics and a relevant case study for those studying the dynamics of social movements and the civil society strategy in democratic transition.

On January 6, 2021, more than two thousand rioters stormed the doors of the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., hoping to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power from former president Donald Trump to his successor, Joseph Biden. The deaths, property damage, and vicious rampage that ensued were witnessed on live television as an unprecedented attack on the democratic process and those who strive to protect it.

As an installment of UGA Press's History in the Headlines series, this book offers a rich discussion between highly respected scholars on the historical backdrop and context for contemporary issues from the headlines. In addition to the historical context, this conversation demonstrates how historians speak to one another about contentious topics and how they contribute in meaningful ways to the public's understanding of momentous events. This volume focuses on the historical context of the January 6 attack and employs a free-flowing conversation style that allows the historians a more unconventional format. The participants discuss if-and if so, how-historians should engage in public debates and what that engagement means to their roles as academic authorities in the public.

Models and modeling have played an increasingly important role in philosophy, going back to the nineteenth century. While philosophical interest in models has been remarkably lively over the last two decades, there are still many underexplored questions. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Scientific Modeling is an outstanding reference source and guide to this fast-growing area and is the first volume of its kind. Comprised of 40 specially commissioned chapters by an international team of contributors, the Handbook is organized into five clear parts:

• Historical and General Perspectives
• Philosophical Accounts of Modeling
• Methodological Aspects: Model Construction, Evaluation, and Calibration
• Related Topics
• Modeling in the Wild.

Within these parts, the Handbook covers a diverse range of topics, including historical perspectives on modeling, the relationship between models, theories, representation, idealization, and understanding, and related topics like big data, simulation, and statistical and computational modeling. Different kinds of models are discussed, for example, network models, financial models, and climate and synthetic models.

The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Scientific Modeling is essential reading for students and scholars of philosophy of science, formal epistemology, and philosophy of social sciences. It is also a valuable resource for those in related fields such as computer science and information technology.

An introduction to Putin's formidable intelligence and security organization

Since its founding in 1995, the FSB, Russia's Federal Security Service, has regained the majority of the domestic security functions of the Soviet-era KGB. Under Vladimir Putin, who served as FSB director just before becoming president, the agency has grown to be one of the most powerful and favored organizations in Russia. The FSB not only conducts internal security but also has primacy in intelligence operations in former Soviet states. Their activities include anti-dissident operations at home and abroad, counterintelligence, counterterrorism, criminal investigations of crimes against the state, and guarding Russia's borders.

In The Russian FSB, Kevin P. Riehle provides a brief history of the FSB's origins, placed within the context of Russian history, the government's power structure, and Russia's wider culture. He describes how the FSB's mindset and priorities show continuities from the tsarist regimes and the Soviet era. The book's chapters analyze origins, organizational structure, missions, leaders, international partners, and cultural representations such as the FSB in film and television.

Based on both English and Russian sources, this book is a well-researched introduction to understanding the FSB and its central role in Putin's Russia.

Concise Histories of Intelligence Series
Christopher Moran, Mark Phythian, and Mark Stout, Series Editors

Decisiveness and Fear of Disorder examines how democratic representatives make decisions in crisis situations. By analyzing parliamentary asylum debates from Germany's Asylum Compromise in 1992-1993 and the 2015-2016 refugee crisis, Julius Rogenhofer identifies representatives' ability to project decisiveness as a crucial determinant for whether the rights and demands of irregular migrants were adequately considered in democratic decision-making. Both crisis situations showcase an emotive dimension to the parliamentary meaning-making process. As politicians confront fears of social and political disorder, they focus on appearing decisive in the eyes of the public and fellow representatives, even at the expense of human rights considerations and inclusive deliberation processes.

Rogenhofer shows how his theoretical approach allows us to reinterpret a range of crisis situations beyond the irregular migration context, including democracies' initial responses to Covid-19, the European Sovereign Debt Crisis, and United States climate politics. These additional case studies help position concerns with decisiveness amid the challenges that populism and technocracy increasingly pose to representative democracies.

This volume examines the global media coverage of the armed conflict in Ukraine, focusing on the marginalization of dissident perspectives in the West and the information quality and diversity on social media.

Along with presenting original, empirical studies on how mainstream media in countries as diverse as Israel, the Czech Republic, Ghana, and the Netherlands have covered the conflict between NATO and Russia since 2022, this book sheds light on the role of the state and the media in policing the boundaries of permissible thought on the conflict in the West, as well as in Russia and Ukraine. It also delves into the war's representation on prominent social media platforms.

Written by a diverse group of international researchers, this multifaceted volume offers new perspectives and insights on the reporting of the ongoing conflict. It will interest scholars of international communication and media, foreign policy and international politics, war and conflict, content analysis, and journalism.

Fueled by new data from the Varieties of Democracy project, Democratic Quality in Southern Europe takes a close look at the democratic trajectories of France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain over the past fifty years.

Despite similar beginnings, France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain have experienced significant variations in the way their democracies have evolved. Covering ground from the protest movements of the late '60s and early '70s to the challenges that resulted from the financial crisis of the Great Recession, editor Tiago Fernandes expertly draws together a collection of essays that look beyond the impact of socioeconomic development in these five countries, exploring innovative and nuanced explanations for their diverging paths.

Democratic Quality in Southern Europe combines new data with classical methodologies to create fresh, convincing hypotheses on the development, quality, and depth of democracy in this critical region.

Contributors: Tiago Fernandes, Rui Branco, Joao Cancela, Edna Costa, Pedro Diniz de Sousa, Pedro T. Magalhaes, Edalina Rodrigues Sanches, Jose Santana-Pereira, Tiago Tiburcio

A groundbreaking comparative analysis of three understudied cases of intelligence democratization revealing new insights into main barriers to reform when states transition from authoritarianism

Reforming the intelligence services is essential when a state transitions from authoritarianism to democracy. But which areas should be reformed, how do we know when there has been real transformation, and how and where do authoritarian legacies persist?

Intelligence in Democratic Transitions is a comparative examination of the democratic transitions of Portugal, Greece, and Spain starting in the 1970s. Although these three countries began their transitions around the same time, they present significantly different results. Sofia Tzamarelou discovers that main barriers to reform are legacies of the past and legacy personnel. She does this through the lens of five Security Sector Reform (SSR) indicators: Lustration, Control and Oversight, Recruitment, Targeting and Civil Society. Tzamarelou uses primary sources throughout the study, including governmental documents and legal statutes-such as draft laws, bills and presidential decrees-paired with "outside" primary source reporting, such as analysis reporting by the CIA. She complements this rich primary source material with secondary sources from authors in each country and internationally who specialize in intelligence or who provide historical context.

Tzamarelou's unique comparative analysis of intelligence democratization using a common framework-SSR-applied to each country contributes to readers' understanding of why and how some reforms fail and others succeed and how the SSR framework can be used in the intelligence arena.

Over the last two decades, it has become clear that Russia insists on its great power status, even at considerable cost. Chasing Greatness provides an interpretive explanation of the tacit rules that shape Russia's great power identity today. Anatoly Reshetnikov argues that this never-ending chase for greatness is a result of how Russia and its predecessors-including the USSR, Russian Empire, Muscovy, and Kievan Rus'-historically interacted with its neighbors to the east, the south, and particularly the west. By analyzing an extensive amount of original source material, including primary sources that have not been previously translated into English, he is able to reconstruct a millennial history of the Russian concepts that express political greatness. He also traces numerous encounters between Russia and the West, as well as Russia's troubled integration into the European society of states in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to show how these concepts have affected Russia's interaction with international society.

Despite its substantive historical depth, Chasing Greatness is not a book of history. Rather, it is a synthesizing social science work inspired by the continental tradition of the critical history of modernity. As such, the book is more about the present than about the past. Its main aim is to expose and explain the rich conceptual baggage behind Russia's unceasing great power rhetoric (domestic and international) and how this rhetoric drives the current international crises involving Russia.