Author: Sophie Simons

Context Of History And Historical Propaganda

Viewing historical propaganda is helpful in determining historical context. Alexander Turnball Library’s collection holds many significant images which would be classified as historical propaganda and are worthy of exhibition. Tourism propaganda is a section that has not been widely exhibited in the context of New Zealand and its place in

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Religion And Science

Religion by nature is a subjective social construct that has existed since ancient times. Intangible elements of religion that are subjective to a believer can’t be studied by science as they can’t be seen. Emotions, socio-cultural religious beliefs, practices, attitudes and motivations can’t be observed through scientific method since they

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Broad Applications For Crowdsourcing In New Zealand

Crowdsourcing is becoming increasingly important and relevant to society today, especially given the current ongoing pandemic. In relation to specific organizations/companies that use crowdsourcing, the New Zealand museum, Te Papa Tongarewa, first comes to mind. Their project, The Current, crowdsources opinions from visitors on important issues affecting our society like

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Geospatial Technologies And Their Applications To Studying History

David Bodenhamer, a history professor at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), reveres GIS (Geographic Information System), reflecting that GIS in the modern context can be applied as “a type of software that provides a way of representing features on the Earth’s surface and a suite of operations that allow the

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Welfare And The Key Government

Former Prime Minister John Key’s government in New Zealand held a negative position towards the provision of welfare and aimed at making it harder to access for those in need. Key implemented several reforms to the welfare system at the time, enforcing tougher regulation by making it easier for benefits

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The Polynesian Panthers Protests

New Zealand has both a recent and historical issue regarding the prevalence of racism in the country, in particular prejudice against low socio-economic areas which can make up a large portion of racial minorities. The Polynesian Panthers was a protest group that advocated for the rights of Pacifica peoples from

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Deconstructing Gender And Sexuality: FAFSWAG Vogue

Conversations around gender and sexuality in New Zealand typically center on privileged Pākehā (non-Māori) voices and disregard the voices of marginalized communities. People of colour who also identify as members of the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community are underrepresented in media and the creative sector. FAFSWAG Vogue – created by the FAFSWAG collective,

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Fox News and Infotainment

America upholds the press as an important part of how its democracy functions, even to the point of amending its constitution to include freedom of the press. The aim of a free press is for news reporting to be unbiased and politically neutral in order to accurately depict news events

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Conflict Exaggeration In The News

In the article, “Why Are We Fascinated with Violence? An Investigation of Mass Media’s Role in Depicting Violence as Entertainment,” Kseniya I. Dmitrieva argues that humanity has an incessant need for conflict. By overrepresenting crime and violence, Dmitrieva writes that news organizations make a “strategic move” to increase their viewership

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Social Darwinism And The News

Social Darwinism focuses on the principle of “survival of the fittest.” Within the news ecosystem, this means that only news outlets which are heavily profitable will survive. Some news organisations receive public funding while others are privately run. This creates a competition environment for news organisations who are actively competing

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Platform Capitalism

Platform capitalism creates further social divide and inequality in our society, particularly within issues of information distribution, privacy and algorithmic bias. Platform capitalism is disproportional, negatively impacts the poorer subsets of our populations – especially people of minority backgrounds – and is manipulated by corporations and people in positions of power. As a

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WeChat And AliPay: Transforming Or Disrupting NZ Businesses?

On 4 July 2019, the North Asia Centre of Asia-Pacific Excellence held a revolutionary speaker event on the new payment and integration technology of WeChat and the Chinese payment system AliPay. Specifically, the speaker Ralph Shale addressed some key discussion points from Chinese e-commerce and mobile payments, why it matters,

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Cristiano Da Costa – Ambassador For Timor Lester To NZ

Cristiano da Costa, a representative from Timor Leste, was a very important voice on the perspective of international relations for smaller island countries. In a recent seminar, da Costa indicated that as a small country, Timor Leste has limited power and therefore has to create and maintain diplomatic relationships very

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Thinking Sustainably And Economically

Dr Barbara Nebel is a powerful woman in business doing amazing things for the good of the environment and is an expert in her field, which made her seminar “How do we determine if a cotton bag is better than a plastic one?” incredibly engaging and interesting. She discussed the

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Waikato Wars – Deep Parts Of NZ History

The Waikato Wars are a significant historical event in New Zealand’s history, occurring between 1863 and 1864 between the British settlers and Maori indigenous people. There are a few notable causes which are considered important in the wider picture, for example; the long-standing tension and conflicts between the Maori and

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The Importance Of Homer To The Greeks And His Influence On Modern Culture

Storytelling was a prevalent tradition throughout Ancient Greece. Originally the mythical stories were told orally and later performed by playwrights at the cities’ festivals, until the Ancient Greeks re-discovered the tool of the written word and Homer’s epics quickly became physical texts. The origins of lyric poetry can be originated

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Vicarious Trauma And Its Undeniable Link To Consumption Of Media

Vicarious trauma is increasingly being experienced by people because of social media. Social media makes content easily accessible, but also curates our feeds to engage our attention for long periods of time – this can be useful if someone enjoys harmless, fun content like cat videos, but can be detrimental

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Global Enterprise Experience And Social Entrepreneurship

Modern problems require modern solutions. Global Enterprise Experience provides a unique experience to university students to create a business proposal for a profitable company that solves a global solution. Teams of 8 work from all across the global facing challenges with communication, access and resources. Teaching entrepreneurship programmes like these

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Peaceful Protests And Strikes In New Zealand

Peaceful protest underlies the importance of democracy. Recently in New Zealand, there has been a trend for protests to call on the government to make fundamental changes to legislation. On 11 April, the Postgraduate Students Association led a peaceful protest to call for the government to reintroduce postgraduate student allowances.

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