Author: TheConversation

By Chih-Ling Liu, Lecturer in Marketing, Lancaster University; and Robert Kozinets, Jayne and Hans Hufschmid Chair in Strategic Public Relations and Business Communication, USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism In China, if you are female, educated, and unmarried by the age of 27, people might use the particular term “Sheng-nu” to describe your social status. It translates simply as “leftover women”. The label was deliberately invented to curb the rising number of single women in a traditional society which sometimes views not marrying as a moral transgression. Some even consider it a threat to national security. Indeed, portrayals...

By Joshua F.J. Inwood, Associate Professor of Geography Senior Research Associate in the Rock Ethics Institute, Penn State More than 50 years after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the United States remains divided by issues of race and racism, economic inequality as well as unequal access to justice. These issues are stopping the country from developing into the kind of society that Martin Luther King, Jr. fought for during his years as a civil rights activist. As a result King’s words and work are still relevant. I study the civil rights movement and the field of peace...

By Kwasi Konadu, Professor in Africana & Latin American Studies, Colgate University; and Clifford C. Campbell, Visiting Lecturer, Dartmouth College The 13th Amendment is having a moment of reckoning. Considered one of the crowning achievements of American democracy, the Civil War-era constitutional amendment set “free” an estimated 4 million enslaved people and seemed to demonstrate American claims to equality and freedom. But the amendment did not apply to those convicted of a crime. And one group of people are disproportionately, though not solely, criminalized – descendants of formerly enslaved people. “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude,” the amendment reads, “except...

By Alisa Freedman, Professor of Japanese Literature, Cultural Studies and Gender, University of Oregon See a container of Cup Noodles at a convenience store and you might think of dorm rooms and cheap calories. But there was a time when eating from the product’s iconic packaging exuded cosmopolitanism, when the on-the-go meal symbolized possibility, a Japanese industrial food with an American flair. Cup Noodles – first marketed in Japan 50 years ago, on September 18, 1971, with an English name, the “s” left off because of a translation mistake – are portable instant ramen eaten with a fork straight...

By Sung-Yoon Lee, Professor in Korean Studies, Tufts University By the grim metric of fatalities in the first 10 years of a dictator’s rule, Kim Jong Un has yet to match the records set by his grandfather, Kim Il Sung, or father, Kim Jong Il – the two tyrants who reigned by terror in North Korea before him. For now, the number of people Kim Jong Un has personally ordered killed – such as his uncle in 2013 and half-brother in 2017 – is likely to number in the hundreds. But his decade in power, which began after his...

By K. Hazel Kwon, Associate Professor of Journalism and Digital Audiences, Arizona State University Disinformation, the practice of blending real and fake information with the goal of duping a government or influencing public opinion, has its origins in the Soviet Union. But disinformation is no longer the exclusive domain of government intelligence agencies. Today’s disinformation scene has evolved into a marketplace in which services are contracted, laborers are paid and shameless opinions and fake readers are bought and sold. This industry is emerging around the world. Some of the private-sector players are driven by political motives, some by profit...