Welcome to the fourth special issue of the Pervasive Labour Union zine, Urgent Publishing Debris. In May 2019, the Making Public: Urgent Publishing Conference took place. Among others, it asked the following questions:-"How to realize sustainable, high-quality alternatives within this domain of post-digital publishing?"-"How can designers, developers, artists, writers and publishers intervene in the public debate and counter misinformation in a meaningful and relevant way?"-"What are new publishing strategies for our current media landscape?"-"How to design for urgency without succumbing to an accelerated hype cycle?"The presentations, debates and conversations have all been officially documented in blogposts on the Institute of Network Cultures website, videos and pictures. But what about the notes, the pictures, the recordings and the tweets of the conference's visitors? What do they have to tell us about how each person experienced the conference? This special issue aims to provide new readings of the event by creating remixes of the official archival sources with the 'unofficial' debris circulating around it.In order to facilitate the navigation between articles, making connections visible where they might have only been implicit, the editors have decided to define eleven overarching topics (Social/Community, Activism, Post-truth, New forms, Authorship/Makers, Speed, Positioning, Locality, Relationality, Authoritarianism, Parasite). Each of the topics was attributed a colour and the source material is highlighted accordingly.Furthermore, each remix has a dispersed editors' note, wherein each editor reflects in more detail on the program, how it connects to the conference's topic and how it might answer any of the aforementioned questions.
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So-called fake news and problematic information on social media assume an increasingly important roles in political debate. Focusing on the (early) run-up to and aftermath of the 2020 U.S. presidential elections, this study examines the extent of the problematic information in the most engaged-with content and most active users in ‘political Twitter’. We demarcated three time spans, the first surrounding Super Tuesday (March 2-22, 2020), the second providing a snapshot of the aftermath of the elections and the run-up to both the Senate run-off elections in Georgia (December 24, 2020 – January 4, 2021) and the (unforeseen) Capitol Hill riots on January 6, 2021. In the third time span (March 10-21, 2021), when election activities had ceased, we examine the effects of Twitter’s deplatforming (or so-called purge) of accounts after the Capitol riots in January, 2021. In order to shed light on the magnitude of problematic information, we mapped shared sources, labelled them and assessed the actors engaged in their dissemination. It was found that overall, mainstream sources are shared more often than problematic ones, but the percentage of problematic sources was much higher in December compared to both the March, 2020 and 2021 periods. Significantly, (hyper)partisan sources are close to half of all sources shared in the first two periods, implying a robust presence of them on social media. By March 2021, both the share of problematic and of (hyper)partisan sources had decreased significantly, suggesting an impact from Twitter’s deplatforming actions. Additionally, highly active, problematic users (fake profiles, bots, or locked/suspended accounts) were found on both sides of the political spectrum, albeit more abundantly from conservative users.
The objective of this study is to shed light on the added value of the services of five disciplines in M&A advisory in the SME domain: accountants, bankers, business brokers, fiscalists and lawyers. Theory is inconclusive in the added value of advisory services and research on the subject is hardly available. RBV predicts direct benefits in using advisory services in M&A, leading to less obstacles in and directly after M&A or lagged effects on more renewal of the firm. The theory of structural holes, agency theory and management entrenchment theory on the other hand predict neutral or negative effect of advisory services in M&A. The dataset includes 899 mergers and acquisitions (1) completed before 2003; (2) with an acquirer having bought 100% of target shares or assets; (3) of German, Belgian or Dutch origin; (4) of non-listed firms; (5) where acquirer and target firm are not member of the same family. Using (M)ANOVA’s and controlling for the effects of more than one advisor involved, the outcomes show consistently that the M&A advisory services do not reduce obstacles like financing, misinformation and culture and staff problems during or immediately after M&A. Looking at lagged effects of advisory services in the period of two years after M&A strategic more renewal by innovation occurs if bankers, fiscalists and lawyers are involved. Involvement of accountants and business brokers on the other hand decrease renewal.