Sten Hansson
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 316678 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Sten Hansson |
| PRENOMES | Sten |
| SOBRENOME | Hansson |
| ASSINATURA | HANSSON S |
| AFILIAÇÕES | University of Tartu |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1748-1969 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 31 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 133 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 31 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2015 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 8 |
Disaster preparedness capacity development
While capacity development in the field of disaster risk management should be evidence-based, institutional capacity building is rarely rooted in a thorough vulnerability analysis. This study highlights gaps in all-hazards disaster preparedness approaches and examines how disaster preparedness planning can systematically draw upon social vulnerability triage. We propose a novel system for identifying and prioritising vulnerable groups in various …
Reducing communication-related vulnerability to disasters
Social vulnerability to disasters is in part driven by communication-related factors, including barriers to accessing, understanding, and acting upon information about hazards. To save lives, disaster risk managers need to develop systemic capacity to reduce these barriers. In this article, we put forward a framework for institutional communication capacity building in the field of disaster risk management. Drawing on the most recent theorisation…
Using a table-top exercise to identify communication-related vulnerability to disasters
During emergencies, people may become more vulnerable due to difficulties with accessing and understanding crisis information and may react inadequately to hazards due to being exposed to false information. In this article, we explore how table-top exercises can be used as part of vulnerability assessment to systematically identify a range of barriers to disaster communication that may put people at risk. We conducted a table-top exercise with di…
Strengthening all-of-society approaches for disaster resilient societies through competency building
The increasing frequency of disasters, alongside the recent COVID-19 pandemic, climate emergency, and ongoing/new crises including conflicts and their disproportionate impacts on many communities, all point towards the cascading, multidimensional, and systemic nature of risks. In the wake of this ever-changing risk landscape, it is paramount to adopt multi-sectoral, multidisciplinary risk reduction, preparedness, and adaptation approaches, which …
Government Communication on Social Media
The aim of this review essay is to draw attention to the diversity of work done in the field of government social media communication research. It is a rapidly developing area of study that has been approached from multiple disciplinary perspectives and a variety of research traditions. We suggest that studies of government social media communication may be broadly classified based on two characteristics: (a) whether their focus is mainly on the …
Social vulnerability triage
Politicization of Government Social Media Communication
Social media communication of government agencies should ideally be truthful and impartial to sustain public trust in government and support democratic goals. However, the politicization of agencies may harm the benefits that impartial and engaged communication brings. In this study, we provide a linguistic framework for analyzing how agency politicization is reflected in the language of government social media communication by asking: How does t…
Strategies of Blaming on Social Media
This article introduces an original theoretical model for understanding how the linguistic framing of political protest messages influences how blame spreads in social media. Our model of blame retweetability posits that the way in which the basis and focus of blame are linguistically construed affects people’s perception of the strength of criticism in the message and its likelihood to be reposted. Two online experiments provide empirical suppor…
Dialogic analysis of government social media communication
During major crises, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, government officeholders issue commands to change people’s behaviour (e.g., ‘Stay at home!’) and express thanks to acknowledge the efforts of others and build solidarity. We use specialised datasets of replies to social media posts by government ministers in the United Kingdom during Covid-19 lockdowns to explore how people react to their messages that contain directive speech acts and thanking.…
Coercive impoliteness and blame avoidance in government communication
As government officeholders face criticism for misconduct or policy failures, they are tempted to communicate in self-defensive ways. In this paper, I draw attention to how strategic blame avoidance in government may involve coercive impoliteness, that is, the use of expressions that attack the face of (potential) critics with an aim of forcing them to withhold their (future) criticism. Taking a discourse-historical approach to political rhetoric…
Discourses of political blame games
Building Resilience Against Hostile Information Influence Activities
Modern societies are characterized by unprecedently broad and fast diffusion of various forms of false and harmful information. Military personnel’s motivation to defend their country may be harmed by their exposure to disinformation. Therefore, specific education and training programs should be devised for the military to systematically improve (social) media literacy and build resilience against information influence activities. In this article…
Discourses of blame in strategic narratives
Governments spread strategic narratives via media to influence foreign audiences and policy makers. A frequent but understudied feature of strategic narratives is the discursive construction of blame. In this article, we use the coverage of the adoption of 5G cellular technology in Russian state-funded news portals as an example to show how to interpret blame narratives about international security issues. We combine methods and insights from the…
Persuasive Appeals in Genetic Biobank Recruitment Campaigns
The social and ethical implications of large-scale biobank donor recruitment campaigns have remained understudied. We use two recent campaigns of the population-based genetic biobank in Estonia as an example to demonstrate how campaign spokespersons try to persuade potential donors by appealing to (1) gaining self-knowledge, (2) gaining control over one's health, (3) fear of illness, (4) contributing to healthcare, (5) contributing to science, an…
The engagement of informal volunteers in disaster management in Europe
Informal volunteering is increasingly important in disaster management, but authorities remain cautious about collaborating with informal volunteers. Relatively little is known about the extent to which informal volunteers are integrated into European disaster management systems. We try to remedy this gap by examining Germany, Italy, Belgium, Hungary, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Estonia, focusing on (1) the policies and institutional arrangement…
Corpus-assisted analysis of legitimation strategies in government social media communication
When governments introduce controversial policies that many citizens disapprove of, officeholders increasingly use discursive legitimation strategies in their public communication to ward off blame. In this paper, we contribute to the study of blame avoidance in government social media communication by exploring how corpus-assisted discourse analysis helps to identify three types of common legitimations: self-defensive appeals to (1) personal aut…
Legitimation in government social media communication
When governments introduce controversial policies or face a risk of policy failure, officeholders try to avoid blame and justify their decisions by using various legitimation strategies. This paper focuses on the ways in which legitimations are expressed in government social media communication, using the Twitter posts of the British government’s Brexit department as an example. We show how governments may seek legitimacy by appealing to (1) the …
Approaches to ‘vulnerability’ in eight European disaster management systems
While social vulnerability in the face of disasters has received increasing academic attention, relatively little is known about the extent to which that knowledge is reflected in practice by institutions involved in disaster management. This study charts the practitioners’ approaches to disaster vulnerability in eight European countries: Belgium; Estonia; Finland; Germany; Hungary; Italy; Norway; and Sweden. It draws on a comparative document an…
Discursive Strategies of Blaming
Modern politics is permeated by blame games-symbolic struggles over the blameworthiness or otherwise of various social actors. In this article, we develop a framework for identifying different strategies of blaming that protesters use on social media to criticize and delegitimize governments and political leaders. We draw on the systemic functional linguistic theory of Appraisal to distinguish between blame attributions based on negative judgment…
Handling false information in emergency management
During emergencies, exposure to false information can increase individual vulnerability. More research is needed on how emergency management institutions understand the effects of false information and what are the various approaches to handling it. Our document analysis and 95 expert interviews in eight European countries – Germany, Italy, Belgium, Sweden, Hungary, Norway, Finland, and Estonia – show that approaches vary considerably: some have …
Covid-19 information disorder
The outbreak of a novel coronavirus disease COVID-19 propelled the creation, transmission, and consumption of false information – unverified claims, misleading statements, false rumours, conspiracy theories, and so on – all around the world. When various official or unofficial sources issue erroneous, misleading or contradicting information during a crisis, people who are exposed to this may behave in ways that cause harm to the health and well-b…
Communication-related vulnerability to disasters
The concept of social vulnerability has been increasingly applied in disaster literature, but its communicative drivers have remained understudied. In this article, we put forward a heuristic framework for explaining how communication-related factors may adversely affect people's capacity to prepare for and respond to disasters. This will help researchers, policy makers, and practitioners in the field of disasters and crises to systematically ide…
Vulnerability and vulnerable groups from an intersectionality perspective
In general, the identification and protection of vulnerable groups in the case of hazards or when a crisis unfolds is an issue that any crisis and disaster risk management should address, since people have different levels of exposure to hazards and crises. In this article, we promote the application of the intersectionality perspective in the study of vulnerable groups, and we call for intersectionality as a guiding principle in risk and crisis …
How a lack of truthfulness can undermine democratic representation
This article draws attention to how the ethics of democratic representation operates as a discreet factor in a crisis of representation afflicting Western democracies by identifying the ways a disregard for truthfulness can harm democratic representation. We argue that such a disregard undermines democratic representation by (1) reducing freedom and equality, (2) weakening accountability, (3) undermining citizens’ trust in democratic institutions…
Discourse of fear in strategic narratives
Modern military training exercises often include an information warfare component. Combat manoeuvres and weapon tests may be combined with large-scale information operations, including attempts at mass deception and cultivation of fear via strategic uses of narratives in media. The ways in which fear is constructed in strategic narratives deserve more detailed discursive analysis. In this article, the authors use the largest recent Russian war ga…
The discursive micro-politics of blame avoidance
Discursive strategies of blame avoidance in government
Governments’ policies and actions often precipitate public blame firestorms and mediated scandals targeted at individual or collective policy makers. In the face of losing credibility and resources, officeholders are tempted to apply strategies of blame avoidance which permeate administrative structures, operations and language use. Linguistic aspects of blame avoidance are yet to be studied by discourse analysts in great detail. In this article,…
Analysing opposition–government blame games
Modern executive politics is characterised by blame games – offensive and defensive symbolic performances by various individual or collective social actors. In this article, I propose a discursive approach to analysing opposition–government blame games where top politicians try to persuade mass audiences to side with them in disputes over government's culpability by using carefully crafted written texts. Drawing insights and concepts from the tra…
Anticipative strategies of blame avoidance in government
Public communication practices of executive governments are often criticised by journalists, politicians, scholars, and other commentators. Therefore, government communication professionals routinely adopt various blame avoidance strategies, some of which are meant to ‘stop blame before it starts’ or to reduce their exposure to potential blame attacks. The linguistic aspects of such anticipative strategies are yet to be studied by discourse analy…
Calculated overcommunication
Discourse of fear in strategic narratives
Modern military training exercises often include an information warfare component. Combat manoeuvres and weapon tests may be combined with large-scale information operations, including attempts at mass deception and cultivation of fear via strategic uses of narratives in media. The ways in which fear is constructed in strategic narratives deserve more detailed discursive analysis. In this article, the authors use the largest recent Russian war ga…
Legitimation in government social media communication
When governments introduce controversial policies or face a risk of policy failure, officeholders try to avoid blame and justify their decisions by using various legitimation strategies. This paper focuses on the ways in which legitimations are expressed in government social media communication, using the Twitter posts of the British government’s Brexit department as an example. We show how governments may seek legitimacy by appealing to (1) the …
Defensive semiotic strategies in government
In this article, I argue that when officeholders try to avoid blame, they often engage in defensive performances which can be analysed in terms of how they exploit various multimodal semiotic resources to ward off (potential) criticism: the setting, appearance, and manner chosen for a particular interaction with an audience; and both verbal and non-verbal ways of arguing, legitimising, framing, and representing social actors and actions. I apply …
Covid-19 information disorder
The outbreak of a novel coronavirus disease COVID-19 propelled the creation, transmission, and consumption of false information – unverified claims, misleading statements, false rumours, conspiracy theories, and so on – all around the world. When various official or unofficial sources issue erroneous, misleading or contradicting information during a crisis, people who are exposed to this may behave in ways that cause harm to the health and well-b…
Approaches to ‘vulnerability’ in eight European disaster management systems
While social vulnerability in the face of disasters has received increasing academic attention, relatively little is known about the extent to which that knowledge is reflected in practice by institutions involved in disaster management. This study charts the practitioners’ approaches to disaster vulnerability in eight European countries: Belgium; Estonia; Finland; Germany; Hungary; Italy; Norway; and Sweden. It draws on a comparative document an…
How a lack of truthfulness can undermine democratic representation
This article draws attention to how the ethics of democratic representation operates as a discreet factor in a crisis of representation afflicting Western democracies by identifying the ways a disregard for truthfulness can harm democratic representation. We argue that such a disregard undermines democratic representation by (1) reducing freedom and equality, (2) weakening accountability, (3) undermining citizens’ trust in democratic institutions…
Coercive impoliteness and blame avoidance in government communication
As government officeholders face criticism for misconduct or policy failures, they are tempted to communicate in self-defensive ways. In this paper, I draw attention to how strategic blame avoidance in government may involve coercive impoliteness, that is, the use of expressions that attack the face of (potential) critics with an aim of forcing them to withhold their (future) criticism. Taking a discourse-historical approach to political rhetoric…
Politicization of Government Social Media Communication
Social media communication of government agencies should ideally be truthful and impartial to sustain public trust in government and support democratic goals. However, the politicization of agencies may harm the benefits that impartial and engaged communication brings. In this study, we provide a linguistic framework for analyzing how agency politicization is reflected in the language of government social media communication by asking: How does t…
Dialogic analysis of government social media communication
During major crises, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, government officeholders issue commands to change people’s behaviour (e.g., ‘Stay at home!’) and express thanks to acknowledge the efforts of others and build solidarity. We use specialised datasets of replies to social media posts by government ministers in the United Kingdom during Covid-19 lockdowns to explore how people react to their messages that contain directive speech acts and thanking.…
Discursive Strategies of Blaming
Modern politics is permeated by blame games-symbolic struggles over the blameworthiness or otherwise of various social actors. In this article, we develop a framework for identifying different strategies of blaming that protesters use on social media to criticize and delegitimize governments and political leaders. We draw on the systemic functional linguistic theory of Appraisal to distinguish between blame attributions based on negative judgment…
Discursive strategies of blame avoidance in government
Governments’ policies and actions often precipitate public blame firestorms and mediated scandals targeted at individual or collective policy makers. In the face of losing credibility and resources, officeholders are tempted to apply strategies of blame avoidance which permeate administrative structures, operations and language use. Linguistic aspects of blame avoidance are yet to be studied by discourse analysts in great detail. In this article,…
Calculated overcommunication
Analysing opposition–government blame games
Modern executive politics is characterised by blame games – offensive and defensive symbolic performances by various individual or collective social actors. In this article, I propose a discursive approach to analysing opposition–government blame games where top politicians try to persuade mass audiences to side with them in disputes over government's culpability by using carefully crafted written texts. Drawing insights and concepts from the tra…
Defensive semiotic strategies in government
In this article, I argue that when officeholders try to avoid blame, they often engage in defensive performances which can be analysed in terms of how they exploit various multimodal semiotic resources to ward off (potential) criticism: the setting, appearance, and manner chosen for a particular interaction with an audience; and both verbal and non-verbal ways of arguing, legitimising, framing, and representing social actors and actions. I apply …
Anticipative strategies of blame avoidance in government
Public communication practices of executive governments are often criticised by journalists, politicians, scholars, and other commentators. Therefore, government communication professionals routinely adopt various blame avoidance strategies, some of which are meant to ‘stop blame before it starts’ or to reduce their exposure to potential blame attacks. The linguistic aspects of such anticipative strategies are yet to be studied by discourse analy…
The discursive micro-politics of blame avoidance
Discourse of fear in strategic narratives
Modern military training exercises often include an information warfare component. Combat manoeuvres and weapon tests may be combined with large-scale information operations, including attempts at mass deception and cultivation of fear via strategic uses of narratives in media. The ways in which fear is constructed in strategic narratives deserve more detailed discursive analysis. In this article, the authors use the largest recent Russian war ga…
Communication-related vulnerability to disasters
The concept of social vulnerability has been increasingly applied in disaster literature, but its communicative drivers have remained understudied. In this article, we put forward a heuristic framework for explaining how communication-related factors may adversely affect people's capacity to prepare for and respond to disasters. This will help researchers, policy makers, and practitioners in the field of disasters and crises to systematically ide…
Vulnerability and vulnerable groups from an intersectionality perspective
In general, the identification and protection of vulnerable groups in the case of hazards or when a crisis unfolds is an issue that any crisis and disaster risk management should address, since people have different levels of exposure to hazards and crises. In this article, we promote the application of the intersectionality perspective in the study of vulnerable groups, and we call for intersectionality as a guiding principle in risk and crisis …
How a lack of truthfulness can undermine democratic representation
This article draws attention to how the ethics of democratic representation operates as a discreet factor in a crisis of representation afflicting Western democracies by identifying the ways a disregard for truthfulness can harm democratic representation. We argue that such a disregard undermines democratic representation by (1) reducing freedom and equality, (2) weakening accountability, (3) undermining citizens’ trust in democratic institutions…
Handling false information in emergency management
During emergencies, exposure to false information can increase individual vulnerability. More research is needed on how emergency management institutions understand the effects of false information and what are the various approaches to handling it. Our document analysis and 95 expert interviews in eight European countries – Germany, Italy, Belgium, Sweden, Hungary, Norway, Finland, and Estonia – show that approaches vary considerably: some have …
Covid-19 information disorder
The outbreak of a novel coronavirus disease COVID-19 propelled the creation, transmission, and consumption of false information – unverified claims, misleading statements, false rumours, conspiracy theories, and so on – all around the world. When various official or unofficial sources issue erroneous, misleading or contradicting information during a crisis, people who are exposed to this may behave in ways that cause harm to the health and well-b…
The engagement of informal volunteers in disaster management in Europe
Informal volunteering is increasingly important in disaster management, but authorities remain cautious about collaborating with informal volunteers. Relatively little is known about the extent to which informal volunteers are integrated into European disaster management systems. We try to remedy this gap by examining Germany, Italy, Belgium, Hungary, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Estonia, focusing on (1) the policies and institutional arrangement…
Corpus-assisted analysis of legitimation strategies in government social media communication
When governments introduce controversial policies that many citizens disapprove of, officeholders increasingly use discursive legitimation strategies in their public communication to ward off blame. In this paper, we contribute to the study of blame avoidance in government social media communication by exploring how corpus-assisted discourse analysis helps to identify three types of common legitimations: self-defensive appeals to (1) personal aut…
Legitimation in government social media communication
When governments introduce controversial policies or face a risk of policy failure, officeholders try to avoid blame and justify their decisions by using various legitimation strategies. This paper focuses on the ways in which legitimations are expressed in government social media communication, using the Twitter posts of the British government’s Brexit department as an example. We show how governments may seek legitimacy by appealing to (1) the …
Approaches to ‘vulnerability’ in eight European disaster management systems
While social vulnerability in the face of disasters has received increasing academic attention, relatively little is known about the extent to which that knowledge is reflected in practice by institutions involved in disaster management. This study charts the practitioners’ approaches to disaster vulnerability in eight European countries: Belgium; Estonia; Finland; Germany; Hungary; Italy; Norway; and Sweden. It draws on a comparative document an…
Discursive Strategies of Blaming
Modern politics is permeated by blame games-symbolic struggles over the blameworthiness or otherwise of various social actors. In this article, we develop a framework for identifying different strategies of blaming that protesters use on social media to criticize and delegitimize governments and political leaders. We draw on the systemic functional linguistic theory of Appraisal to distinguish between blame attributions based on negative judgment…
Discourses of blame in strategic narratives
Governments spread strategic narratives via media to influence foreign audiences and policy makers. A frequent but understudied feature of strategic narratives is the discursive construction of blame. In this article, we use the coverage of the adoption of 5G cellular technology in Russian state-funded news portals as an example to show how to interpret blame narratives about international security issues. We combine methods and insights from the…
Persuasive Appeals in Genetic Biobank Recruitment Campaigns
The social and ethical implications of large-scale biobank donor recruitment campaigns have remained understudied. We use two recent campaigns of the population-based genetic biobank in Estonia as an example to demonstrate how campaign spokespersons try to persuade potential donors by appealing to (1) gaining self-knowledge, (2) gaining control over one's health, (3) fear of illness, (4) contributing to healthcare, (5) contributing to science, an…
Strategies of Blaming on Social Media
This article introduces an original theoretical model for understanding how the linguistic framing of political protest messages influences how blame spreads in social media. Our model of blame retweetability posits that the way in which the basis and focus of blame are linguistically construed affects people’s perception of the strength of criticism in the message and its likelihood to be reposted. Two online experiments provide empirical suppor…
Dialogic analysis of government social media communication
During major crises, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, government officeholders issue commands to change people’s behaviour (e.g., ‘Stay at home!’) and express thanks to acknowledge the efforts of others and build solidarity. We use specialised datasets of replies to social media posts by government ministers in the United Kingdom during Covid-19 lockdowns to explore how people react to their messages that contain directive speech acts and thanking.…
Coercive impoliteness and blame avoidance in government communication
As government officeholders face criticism for misconduct or policy failures, they are tempted to communicate in self-defensive ways. In this paper, I draw attention to how strategic blame avoidance in government may involve coercive impoliteness, that is, the use of expressions that attack the face of (potential) critics with an aim of forcing them to withhold their (future) criticism. Taking a discourse-historical approach to political rhetoric…
Discourses of political blame games
Building Resilience Against Hostile Information Influence Activities
Modern societies are characterized by unprecedently broad and fast diffusion of various forms of false and harmful information. Military personnel’s motivation to defend their country may be harmed by their exposure to disinformation. Therefore, specific education and training programs should be devised for the military to systematically improve (social) media literacy and build resilience against information influence activities. In this article…
Using a table-top exercise to identify communication-related vulnerability to disasters
During emergencies, people may become more vulnerable due to difficulties with accessing and understanding crisis information and may react inadequately to hazards due to being exposed to false information. In this article, we explore how table-top exercises can be used as part of vulnerability assessment to systematically identify a range of barriers to disaster communication that may put people at risk. We conducted a table-top exercise with di…
Political science (26 obras) · Psychology (20 obras) · Sociology (18 obras) · Public relations (17 obras) · Social Psychology (17 obras) · Law (16 obras) · Blame (14 obras) · Law (13 obras) · Social Psychology (13 obras) · Linguistics (12 obras)