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March 13, 2026

‘Opera needs to attract good writers and tell better stories’: four experts on how opera can survive, thrive and reach new audiences

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jen Harvie, Professor of Contemporary Theatre and Performance, Queen Mary University of London

Earlier this month, former English National Opera artistic director John Berry said opera in the UK needed to “attract good writers and tell better stories” that could tap into the zeitgeist, making the art form more contemporary and accessible. But is this kind of approach enough to capture the attention of new and younger audiences? In the same week, actor Timothée Chalamet caused a furore when he dismissed ballet and opera as art forms that younger people “did not care about”.

Often regarded as an “elite” art form, opera undoubtedly has an image problem in that it is seen as the preserve of rich older white people, which risks alienating those who feel it excludes and is not for them. At the same time – like much of the arts – opera is under attack from funding cuts and needs to attract new and more diverse audiences if it is to survive long term. So what is the position of opera in the UK and what does it need to do to secure its future? We asked four experts in the field.

Embrace a greater range of influences

Jen Harvie, Professor of Contemporary Theatre and Performance, Queen Mary University of London

John Berry’s comment raises crucial questions: more generally, what should the arts do? And for opera: what should a traditionally “elitist” art form do? My answer: publicly subsidised arts have an ethical duty to reach as wide an audience as possible.

This doesn’t mean the arts should dumb down – a horrible, patronising phrase. It means traditionally elite arts like opera must adapt to broaden their appeal. I am not alone in my view. Research commissioned by Arts Council England on opera in 2024 says the same thing: that opera’s audiences are usually white, older and richer than England’s general population.

To expand audiences, opera must embrace a greater range of influences, from musicals to concept albums and music videos. It should commission new English-language librettos and mixed spoken/sung operettas. It should commission stories that resonate with audiences across all ages, classes and ethnicities. At the same time, opera’s funders must support both formal innovation and arts education, to facilitate access to opera.

Opera is full of extraordinary performance, music, song, storytelling, stagecraft, costume and design. It faces an ethical responsibility – and an opportunity – to share these riches with more of us.

Popular Spanish singer-songwriter Rosalia’s latest album embraces all kinds of musical forms.

Transform the operatic ecosystem

Edward Venn, Professor of Music at the University of Leeds

Beneath its attention-grabbing provocations, Berry’s call for the evolution of opera contains a deceptively simple question: how are we going to
encourage writers? Clearly, opera benefits from showcasing authentic creative
voices that speak to a wide audience.

But the answer does not lie in enticing the latest Netflix sensation to pen a libretto. Rather, evolution requires the whole operatic ecosystem to transform so that those performing, directing and creating operatic stories better reflect our society.

This article is part of our State of the Arts series. These articles tackle the challenges of the arts and heritage industry – and celebrate the wins, too.

The opera industry is working hard within the considerable constraints of arts and education funding cuts and a wider cost-of-living crisis to effect such a transformation. But there is still a long way to go before the demographics of performers replicate those of wider society, and longer still for the creative teams backstage.

The industry tends towards creative reworkings of canonic repertoire rather than financially more risky new commissions. This means opportunities for composers and writers to produce new work that speaks to contemporary issues become vanishingly rare.

Sustainable evolution comes from nurturing a diverse, rich talent pool; such diversity can in turn result in a wealth of authentic, compelling operatic stories. But this requires creative risk-taking at a time when opera companies can ill afford to do so.

Itch by Alasdair Middleton and Jonathan Dove.

Develop new writers, composers and audiences

Jennifer Daniel, Senior Lecturer in Musical Theatre at Edge Hill University

To “own the zeitgeist in the performing arts”, as Berry suggests, opera does need to develop its form, its artists – and crucially, its audiences. Is that really about drawing big names into the writing process? Opera librettists are distinctive – they create musically, often in established partnerships with composers (such as Alasdair Middleton with Jonathan Dove).

They take on dramaturgical responsibility for musical storytelling, often finding ways to write less. Writing an opera can take years, is seldom profitable, and skills most often developed for the love of it rather than acclaim or financial reward. Opera writers really want to write opera. And companies such as Opera North have made the case that the publicly funded opera company has the public responsibility to develop those distinct artists in developing the form.

Just as important, audiences also have to be developed in readiness to receive. In the best cases, companies’ outreach and education work extends our understanding and enhances our reception of opera, including the challenging and the new.

Such initiatives are applied across an incredibly broad social and age spectrum by companies such as Opera North, ENO, Royal Opera and the rest. The balance of cost and popularity means that relatively few full-scale new operas are produced. Small, agile productions can be hugely innovative and accessible if we can tear ourselves away from the grandeur of the mainstage auditorium.

But concurrent and equally important to the development of new work is the development of a wide audience. There must be a commitment to ensuring that each generation anew is culturally primed and able to access an art form – from the 1700s right up to the present moment – that is live, spectacular, unmediated and essentially human. If “opera if wants to own the zeitgeist” in an age of AI, technology and unprecedented mediation, this is, perhaps, where we should place our attention.

Invest in well-conceived outreach programmes

Kiera Vaclavik, Professor of Children’s Literature & Childhood Culture and Director of the Centre for Childhood Cultures at Queen Mary University of London

When I was a teenager my class got on a coach to London to take part in a workshop with Glyndebourne Opera, where I sang and found out about Dvořák and his gripping mermaid story, Rusalka (1901). In the evening, we went to see that story performed. I was not much of a singer and there was no way I would have seen an opera otherwise. Nor would I have been able to make much sense of it without the workshop. The entire trip cost £5 and I’ve never forgotten it.

Opera companies don’t need TV writers as much as they need well-funded and well-conceived outreach programmes. They need to be operating within a culture where, from birth, children have opportunities to experience the sheer wonder of sound that a voice can produce. Fortunately, companies like HurlyBurly in shows like You Are The Sun are already offering this with great skill and care. We need children to be regularly singing, shouting and using their voices.

Young audiences can’t tell what they like or don’t like unless they get to experience it for themselves. Invest in outreach. And as the massive success of an artist like Rosalía suggests, don’t underestimate their eclecticism and openness.

Edward Venn has received funding from the AHRC.

Jennifer Daniel has received funding from the AHRC, Opera North Futures, and the Fund for Women Graduates.

Kiera Vaclavik has received funding from the AHRC Follow-on Impact Fund.

Jen Harvie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. ‘Opera needs to attract good writers and tell better stories’: four experts on how opera can survive, thrive and reach new audiences – https://theconversation.com/opera-needs-to-attract-good-writers-and-tell-better-stories-four-experts-on-how-opera-can-survive-thrive-and-reach-new-audiences-277934

March 13, 2026

Sophie Oluwole, la pionnière nigériane qui a redéfini la philosophie

Source: The Conversation – in French – By Christophe Premat, Professor, Canadian and Cultural Studies, Stockholm University

Sophie Oluwole (1935-2018) était une universitaire nigériane et la première femme à obtenir un doctorat en philosophie dans son pays. Elle a non seulement inscrit la riche tradition philosophique yoruba du Nigeria dans le monde intellectuel, mais elle a également contribué à redéfinir la philosophie africaine, un domaine dominé alors par les hommes.

En tant que chercheur en études culturelles spécialisée dans la francophonie et l’Afrique de l’Ouest, j’ai récemment coécrit, en français, un livre intitulé [Sensibilités intellectuelles africaines: Du siscours occidental aux voix africaines (1988-2022)](https://www.editions-hermann.fr/livre/sensibilites-intellectuelles-africaines-buata-b-malela) L’un des chapitres est consacré à Oluwole et aux femmes intellectuelles africaines.

Elle a fait bien plus que briser les barrières entre les sexes. En mettant la pensée yoruba du Nigeria en dialogue avec les célèbres philosophes occidentaux tels que Socrate, elle a remis en question l’idée que la philosophie africaine n’était que du folklore. Pour elle, il s’agissait d’une tradition intellectuelle rigoureuse.

Qui a le droit de penser ?

Pendant des siècles, la philosophie occidentale s’est présentée comme l’étalon universel de la raison. À partir du philosophe allemand Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), des courants influents de la philosophie occidentale ont décrit l’Afrique comme « en dehors de l’histoire ».

On disait qu’il n’y avait pas de philosophie sur le continent parce qu’il n’avait pas de tradition écrite comparable à celle de la Grèce antique. Beaucoup pensaient que la pensée rationnelle devait passer par l’écrit.

C’est contre cette hypothèse qu’Oluwole a construit son travail. Elle n’a pas simplement réclamé que des penseurs africains figurent dans les bibliographies à consulter. Elle a remis en question les critères utilisés pour définir la philosophie. Elle a, ainsi, ébranlé une hiérarchie intellectuelle établie de longue date.

Une philosophe entre deux mondes

Née en 1935 dans l’actuel État d’Ondo, Sophie Bosede Olayemi Oluwole a atteint l’âge adulte pendant les dernières décennies de la domination britannique et les débats intenses qui ont abouti à l’indépendance en 1960.

Comme beaucoup de filles de sa génération, elle a d’abord suivi une formation d’enseignante. Mais sa curiosité intellectuelle l’a poussée à aller plus loin. Elle s’est inscrite pour étudier la philosophie à l’université d’Ibadan, alors la première université du pays. C’était un choix inhabituel pour une Nigériane dans les années 1960. Elle y a obtenu son doctorat en 1984.

Poursuivre des études doctorales exigeait de la persévérance dans une culture universitaire largement dominée par les hommes. Son parcours reflète à la fois les nouvelles opportunités éducatives offertes après l’indépendance et les obstacles structurels auxquels les femmes étaient encore confrontées dans l’enseignement supérieur.

Sa carrière intellectuelle s’est déroulée des années 1970 au début des années 2000, alors que les universités nigérianes étaient en proie à des questionnements identitaires après l’indépendance. Après 1960, plusieurs établissements ont cherché à africaniser leurs programmes et leur direction. Pourtant, les départements de philosophie sont souvent restés ancrés dans les traditions européennes.

Oluwole elle-même était Yoruba, l’un des plus grands groupes ethniques et linguistiques d’Afrique de l’Ouest. Les Yoruba étaient principalement concentrés dans le sud-ouest du Nigeria, mais également présents au Bénin et au Togo.

La pensée yoruba s’articule autour d’une cosmologie qui relie les mondes visible et invisible, les ancêtres et les descendants, le destin individuel et la responsabilité communautaire. La connaissance n’est pas séparée de l’éthique ou de la spiritualité ; la sagesse est comprise comme un guide pratique pour bien vivre au sein d’un réseau de relations.

Elle s’est concentrée sur le corpus de l’Ifá, un vaste ensemble de littérature orale lié à l’éthique, à la cosmologie et à la réflexion sur le destin humain. Au centre de celui-ci se trouve Òrúnmìlà, une figure associée à la sagesse et à la connaissance.

Pour Oluwole, Òrúnmìlà n’était pas seulement une figure religieuse. Il agissait comme un philosophe – un enseignant de la pensée critique et du raisonnement moral dont les idées ont été préservées grâce à une tradition orale rigoureuse.

Elle a établi des comparaisons entre lui et le philosophe grec Socrate. Socrate n’a laissé aucun écrit de son cru. Ses idées ont été transmises par le dialogue et la mémoire. Pourquoi, alors, la parole prononcée devrait-elle empêcher un penseur africain d’être reconnu comme philosophe ?

Le problème, insistait-elle, n’était pas l’absence de philosophie en Afrique. C’était la définition étroite de la philosophie héritée de l’Europe, qui privilégiait les textes écrits et rejetait les traditions orales comme pré-philosophiques. En remettant en question cette définition, Oluwole ne se contentait pas de défendre la pensée yoruba, elle élargissait la philosophie elle-même.

La politique de l’oral

Au cœur du travail d’Oluwole se trouvait une question simple mais perturbatrice : la philosophie doit-elle être écrite pour exister ? Dans son livre Philosophy and Oral Tradition (1997), elle affirme que les textes oraux africains – notamment les mythes, les proverbes et les versets Ifá – contiennent un raisonnement structuré et une réflexion critique, et répondent donc aux critères de la pensée philosophique. Les textes sont préservés, cités et institutionnalisés.

Elle a mis en évidence la logique coloniale qui sous-tend cette hiérarchie. Au cours des années 1800 et au début des années 1900, les érudits européens ont souvent dépeint l’Afrique comme un continent de mythes plutôt que de raison.

L’absence de textes écrits classiques était interprétée comme une absence intellectuelle. Mais le fait de raconter des histoires n’empêche pas le raisonnement intellectuel. L’écriture ne produit pas automatiquement une pensée critique. En analysant les versets Ifá, Oluwole a montré qu’ils contiennent un raisonnement éthique, une réflexion sur la causalité (cause et effet) et un débat sur la responsabilité humaine.

Son travail a engagé un dialogue avec des débats plus larges dans le domaine de la philosophie africaine. Des penseurs tels que Paulin Hountondji du Bénin ont critiqué l’idée selon laquelle la philosophie africaine n’était qu’une vision collective du monde. Ils ont défendu les traditions critiques et argumentatives. Oluwole a démontré que ce raisonnement critique pouvait également s’inscrire dans des formes orales.

Une femme pionnière

Le travail d’Oluwole ne peut être dissocié de sa condition de femme. La philosophie reste l’une des disciplines les plus dominées par les hommes dans le monde.

Oluwole a toutefois dû affronter un double obstacle : être une femme dans un champ philosophique longtemps dominé par les hommes, et être une philosophe africaine confrontée à des normes intellectuelles largement façonnées par l’eurocentrisme.

Elle est devenue une personnalité de plus en plus publique, faisant de nombreuses apparitions à la télévision et donnant des conférences, suscitant toujours le débat.

Pourquoi elle est importante aujourd’hui

Les questions soulevées par Sophie Oluwole restent d’actualité.

Alors que les appels à la décolonisation du savoir se multiplient, les universités du monde entier repensent leur enseignement. Pourtant, le changement se concentre souvent sur l’ajout d’auteurs au programme. La question plus profonde concerne les critères utilisés pour définir le savoir.

Les travaux d’Oluwole invitent à une réflexion plus structurelle. Si la philosophie est définie de manière trop restrictive, l’inclusion restera limitée. La définition même de la philosophie doit être examinée.

Son argumentation dépasse le cadre de l’Afrique. De nombreux systèmes de connaissances indigènes continuent d’être marginalisés parce qu’ils sont transmis oralement ou intégrés dans des rituels et des récits. Ils sont considérés comme un patrimoine culturel plutôt que comme une production intellectuelle.

En défendant la profondeur philosophique de la pensée yoruba, Oluwole a remis en question cette hiérarchie. Elle a montré que la philosophie n’est pas la propriété d’une seule civilisation. Il s’agit d’une pratique humaine façonnée par différents médias et différentes histoires.

Christophe Premat a écrit avec Buata Malela l’ouvrage Sensibilités intellectuelles africaines paru en 2025 aux éditions Hermann.

– ref. Sophie Oluwole, la pionnière nigériane qui a redéfini la philosophie – https://theconversation.com/sophie-oluwole-la-pionniere-nigeriane-qui-a-redefini-la-philosophie-278158

March 13, 2026

Pourquoi les nominations aux Oscars rendent parfois les spectateurs plus critiques

Source: The Conversation – France (in French) – By Michelangelo Rossi, Professeur associé en marketing, HEC Paris Business School

Après les Césars à Paris et les BAFTA à Londres, les Oscars se tiennent à Los Angeles ce 15 mars. La saison des récompenses bat son plein, mais quel impact ont tous ces prix sur les futurs spectateurs ? La reconnaissance matérialisée par une récompense peut parfois avoir l’effet inverse de celui escompté. Et cela ne vaut pas que pour le cinéma…

Chaque année en janvier, l’industrie du divertissement et des millions de téléspectateurs à travers le monde tournent leur attention vers la cérémonie des Oscars qui se tient depuis 1929 à Los Angeles (Californie). Une nomination dans la catégorie « meilleur film » ou « meilleur réalisateur » est censée être la consécration ultime de la qualité. Elle apporte prestige, publicité et recettes plus élevées au box-office.

Mais dans une étude récente, nous montrons que ces distinctions ont un inconvénient caché. Lorsqu’un film est nominé aux Oscars, les attentes des spectateurs augmentent considérablement, si bien que même les films exceptionnels peuvent avoir du mal à les satisfaire. La reconnaissance même qui vise à célébrer l’excellence peut finir par provoquer davantage de déception du public.

Nous appelons cela le paradoxe des Oscars : la reconnaissance, en augmentant le niveau des attentes, peut réduire la satisfaction. Si nos preuves proviennent du cinéma, le même mécanisme pourrait se produire dans d’autres contextes où les récompenses, les certifications ou les classements sont des gages de qualité.

Une barre placée plus haut

Les récompenses et les labels de qualité sont devenus un outil marketing universel. Les restaurants mettent en avant leurs étoiles Michelin. Les appareils électroniques affichent le label « Choix de la rédaction ». Les détaillants en ligne utilisent les badges « Choix d’Amazon » ou « Les mieux notés ». En principe, ces signaux sont censés aider les consommateurs à prendre de meilleures décisions : ils filtrent les informations, réduisent l’incertitude et récompensent l’excellence.

Pourtant, les recherches en psychologie nous montrent que les attentes influencent la satisfaction. Lorsque les consommateurs abordent un produit en pensant qu’il sera exceptionnel, leur cadre de référence change. Même de petites imperfections peuvent dès lors déclencher une déception.

Les Oscars offrent un cadre naturel pour étudier ce phénomène. Contrairement à de nombreux marchés où la qualité peut évoluer au fil du temps, la qualité intrinsèque d’un film est fixe dès sa sortie. Le prix des billets a également tendance à rester relativement stable après une nomination. Ce qui change radicalement, c’est la façon dont les gens perçoivent le film une fois qu’il bénéficie du prestige d’un prix.

L’effet de déception

Pour examiner ce phénomène, nous avons analysé plus de 25 millions de notes individuelles attribuées à des films sur la plateforme MovieLens, couvrant plus de deux décennies de données, de 1995 à 2019. Nous avons comparé la façon dont les utilisateurs ont noté les mêmes films avant et après l’annonce des nominations aux Oscars.

Afin de nous assurer que les résultats n’étaient pas influencés par les différences entre les personnes ayant vu le film, nous avons également utilisé des techniques d’apprentissage automatique, en formant un système de recommandation qui nous a permis de mettre en relation des utilisateurs ayant des goûts similaires et ayant vu les mêmes films à des moments différents. Pour le dire autrement, quand un film est retenu, voire quand il obtient un prix, il attire un public qui n’aurait pas été voir le film autrement. Cela pourrait influencer les résultats. La méthodologie que nous avons développée pour cet article vise à annihiler cet effet dans nos résultats.

La tendance qui apparaît alors est on ne peut plus claire : après les nominations, les notes ont baissé. En moyenne, les utilisateurs qui ont noté un film après sa nomination aux Oscars lui ont attribué des notes plus faibles que les utilisateurs comparables qui avaient noté le même film précédemment. La baisse est modeste en termes absolus, mais significative dans le contexte. Elle représente environ 7 % de l’écart de notation avant la nomination entre les films nommés et non nommés.

Des cinéphiles moins influençables ?

Cet effet est plus marqué chez les utilisateurs moins expérimentés, c’est-à-dire ceux qui ont publié moins de notes et qui s’appuient davantage sur des signaux externes tels que les récompenses pour choisir ce qu’ils regardent. En revanche, les cinéphiles expérimentés sont moins influencés par les nominations et moins enclins à la déception.

Pour confirmer que cette tendance reflète une véritable déception plutôt que d’autres facteurs (tels que des salles de cinéma bondées ou des signaux sociaux), nous avons analysé le texte des critiques en ligne sur IMDb, la plus grande plateforme mondiale de notation de films. Après les nominations, des expressions telles que « attendais mieux », « décevant » et « ne tient pas ses promesses » sont devenues nettement plus fréquents dans les critiques des utilisateurs.

Cela confirme ce que la science économique comportementale prédit : lorsque les attentes augmentent plus rapidement que l’amélioration de l’expérience, la satisfaction diminue.

Trop-plein de buzz

Dans le contexte des Oscars, le film n’a pas changé. Seul le point de référence du public a changé. Un film qui ravissait autrefois les spectateurs comme un joyau caché peut soudainement sembler « moins bon que ce que j’espérais » une fois qu’il a été nommé.

Nous avons également constaté que cet effet de déception est amplifié pour les films ayant reçu plusieurs nominations, qui sont ceux qui génèrent le plus de buzz et d’engouement. Plus le signal est fort, plus les attentes sont élevées et plus le potentiel de déception est grand.

Le Monde, 2015.

Bien que notre étude se concentre sur les films, des forces similaires peuvent être à l’œuvre dans d’autres secteurs. Les entreprises utilisent les récompenses, les certifications et les recommandations de tiers pour communiquer leur fiabilité et leur qualité, qu’il s’agisse de classements des « meilleurs lieux de travail » ou de labels « bio », « durable » ou « cinq étoiles ». Ces signaux influencent la façon dont les consommateurs et les parties prenantes perçoivent une marque.

À double tranchant

Nos conclusions suggèrent que la reconnaissance peut être une arme à double tranchant. Elle renforce la notoriété et la crédibilité, mais elle remodèle également les attentes d’une manière qui rend plus difficile la satisfaction des clients.

Trois leçons pratiques se dégagent :

Il importe d’anticiper l’écart entre les attentes avant et après. Lorsqu’un produit ou une marque reçoit une reconnaissance importante, les attentes des clients peuvent augmenter du jour au lendemain. Les managers doivent surveiller de près la satisfaction dans les semaines et les mois qui suivent l’obtention d’une récompense. Ils ne devraient pas se contenter des chiffres des ventes ou de l’engagement. Dans ce contexte, une baisse soudaine des notes peut être le signe d’une déception, et non d’une détérioration de la qualité.
La reconnaissance doit être soigneusement cadrée. Les équipes de marketing ont souvent tendance à trop mettre l’accent sur les récompenses dans leurs communications (avec des mentions comme « le meilleur », « inégalé », « de classe mondiale »). Un tel cadrage risque de promettre la perfection. La reconnaissance d’un prix devrait plutôt être présentée comme un signe de fiabilité et de travail plutôt que comme la garantie d’une expérience sans faille.
Les nouveaux utilisateurs et les utilisateurs occasionnels doivent faire l’objet de soins particuliers. IL faut les soutenir. D’après nos données, la déception était plus prononcée chez les spectateurs inexpérimentés. Il en va de même pour les nouveaux clients ou les nouveaux utilisateurs d’un produit. Une intégration personnalisée, la définition d’attentes ou la formation des clients peuvent aider à aligner les perceptions sur la réalité.

Une leçon d’humilité… pour tous

En fin de compte, le paradoxe des Oscars révèle une vérité plus générale sur la reconnaissance dans le monde des affaires : le succès modifie la base de référence. Chaque prix ou certification redéfinit ce que les clients considèrent comme « excellent ».

Alors que l’industrie du divertissement se prépare pour une nouvelle saison de récompenses, les studios de cinéma espèrent à nouveau que les nominations se traduiront par des audiences plus élevées et des profits plus importants. Mais les applaudissements pourraient rapidement s’estomper si le public repart en pensant : « C’était bien, mais pas si bien que ça. »

Pour tous les managers, la leçon à retenir est la suivante : attirer l’attention est plutôt facile. Et surtout ce n’est que le début. Une fois les projecteurs braqués sur vous, un important travail commence : maintenir la satisfaction.

Michelangelo Rossi est membre de CESifo Research Network Affiliate.

Felix Schleef a reçu des financements de Hi! Paris.

– ref. Pourquoi les nominations aux Oscars rendent parfois les spectateurs plus critiques – https://theconversation.com/pourquoi-les-nominations-aux-oscars-rendent-parfois-les-spectateurs-plus-critiques-277002

March 13, 2026

Why we keep swimming in polluted waters – researchers

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Kate Moles, Reader in Sociology, Cardiff University

More than 7.5 million people immerse themselves in lakes, rivers, seas and lidos every year in the UK.

But getting in the water means getting in pollution too for most outdoor swimmers. Raw sewage was discharged into UK waters for 4.7 million hours during 2024. But sewage is only part of the water pollution problem. Rain washing into rivers and streams contains fertilisers, pesticides and animal waste from farmlands, forever chemicals from car tyres, plus drugs from our own bodies. Industry deregulation and privatisation have produced a water crisis.

Dirty Business, a new Channel 4 docudrama highlighting this crisis, is a welcome call for action, though not a surprising one for anyone who swims outdoors regularly.

Through our research, and in our own swimming, we have explored how outdoor swimming is not simply a recreational hazard to be avoided. Within outdoor swimming communities, negotiating risk, responsibility and vulnerability has always been central to this activity.

As one swimmer shared with us: “I have followed [the environmental charity] Surfers Against Sewage for many years. My first glimpse of a condom was as a child, swimming near a sewage outlet.” Through these experiences, swimmers learn to read the water around them, developing skills and knowledge that help them to keep swimming through it all.

Feminist philosopher and social theorist Donna Haraway writes about “staying with the trouble”: sitting with difficulty rather than looking away from it. For the swimmers we spoke to and swam with, this is exactly what getting in the water means. The swimmer’s body becomes a site where ecological crisis is felt directly.

One swimmer described how his understanding shifted: “My awareness of pollution massively increased as I started to swim. You realise [Lake] Windermere is polluted, Grasmere is polluted. Your eyes open to it. Your nose opens to it.”

Writing about surfing in the UK, cultural theorist Clifton Evers and health and wellbeing professor Cassandra Phoenix describe the sport as “polluted leisure”. Swimmers encounter this contradiction directly. They feel pollution in the water against their skin, in the smells of their swim spots and in the residues left on their bodies, kit and memories.

To swim with the trouble of polluted waters is not to accept their degradation. Our research has consistently shown that outdoor swimmers refuse to look away. To continue swimming alongside pollution, swimmers draw on situated, embodied knowledge of their swim spots. They monitor sewage outflow maps, keep their heads above water or decide to stay on shore if the water smells wrong.

Through navigating pollution, outdoor swimmers are reminded that the health and wellbeing of our bodies is bound to the quality of our waters and is folded into wider relations of cause and consequence. Swimmers, like everyone in modern society, are implicated in the agricultural systems, consumer habits and infrastructural demands that contribute to polluted waters.

When we swim alongside microbial life, fish, algae, our waste and agricultural runoff, we experience what Haraway calls “response-ability”: not just the capacity to respond, but the obligation to do so. Indeed, as feminist cultural studies researcher Rebecca Olive has argued, taking care of our waters must move beyond aspiration: it must be about action.

Swimming with the trouble

Across the UK, outdoor swimmers are enacting that response ability: through collective action and protest, legal challenges and awareness-raising swims. Some get involved with citizen science and water testing or build progressive alliances that build communities of change, expertise and action.

As a result, bathing water designations are increasing. These are locations protected in law for swimming, and the only sites where investment in water quality has historically been approved and monitored. There are currently around 600 designated sites in the UK. Thirteen new sites were proposed in February 2026.

We often see the processes that bring about these changes led by outdoor swimming communities and others with a deep love for the water. For one swimmer we spoke to, London’s first potential bathing water designation was a “legacy”, an opportunity to care for a river that has given her joy, solace and rejuvenation.

Dirty Business is a demand for systemic change in the water industry, change that swimmers are fighting for. As writer and outdoor swimmer Ella Foote has explained, this crisis must not force us to sit on the shore. To accept that is to accept that shared waters are a sacrifice zone that has been degraded by private interests, abandoned by regulators and made inaccessible to the public.

To swim with the trouble of pollution is to immerse yourself in the relationship between human and ecological health – to feel it on your skin, to carry it home with you and to refuse to look away.

Swimming, sailing, even just building a sandcastle – the ocean benefits our physical and mental wellbeing. Curious about how a strong coastal connection helps drive marine conservation, scientists are diving in to investigate the power of blue health.

This article is part of a series, Vitamin Sea, exploring how the ocean can be enhanced by our interaction with it.

Safia Bailey receives funding from ESRC for her PhD research.

Kate Moles does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Why we keep swimming in polluted waters – researchers – https://theconversation.com/why-we-keep-swimming-in-polluted-waters-researchers-277120

March 13, 2026

Desperate to flee abuse in Cambodian scam compounds, these young Indonesians are now facing suspicion back home

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Charlotte Setijadi, Lecturer in Asian Studies, The University of Melbourne

In the first two weeks of March, two young Indonesian women died alone in a hospital in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

The first, who Indonesian officials have identified as 22-year-old Susi Yanti Br. Sinaga died following a critical illness, despite having no prior health conditions.

Her family said Susi left Indonesia in December 2025 with her boyfriend and a promise of a job in Malaysia. She ended up being trafficked into a scam compound in Cambodia. Within three months, she was dead.

The other woman, a 20-year-old shopkeeper from Pekanbaru, Riau province, arrived in Cambodia under similar circumstances and died only a few days after Susi. According to multiple NGO sources who assisted her in her final days, her death was linked to the physical and sexual abuse she suffered in the compound.

These women are among the thousands of young people who have found themselves stranded in Cambodia in recent months after leaving scam compounds that had opened their doors in anticipation of rumoured police raids.

Many who have made their way to the Cambodian capital are Indonesian. They began lining up outside the Indonesian embassy in Phnom Penh in mid-January, seeking help to return home.

By March 9, the embassy said it had received more than 5,400 requests for assistance from Indonesian citizens in less than three months. Over 1,800 have so far been repatriated with the embassy’s assistance. Most of the others are now hosted in a dedicated facility, where they wait for their turn to leave.

These numbers represent a sharp increase from 2025. They highlight the scale of trafficking of young Indonesians into “scam factories” across Southeast Asia, mostly in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and the Philippines.

Clearly, what is happening to these Indonesians is a complex structural problem, shaped by regional labour precarity and weak regulation.

Yet, Indonesia is largely overlooked in existing media coverage of the issue. Relatively little is known about how Indonesians are entrenched in the industry as victims, operators and stakeholders.

Why young Indonesians are in the industry

In March last year, the Indonesian government reported that, with the assistance of the Thai government, it had rescued and repatriated 569 of its citizens from online scam compounds in Myanmar.

This drew national attention to the issue, raising urgent questions about why and how so many young people are being lured into this work.

Spurred by limited employment opportunities, low wages and political discontent, Indonesian youths have been leaving the country in droves.

Some of these young people enter the scam economy willingly. Others go voluntarily but find themselves trapped once inside. Many more are deceived from the outset, lured into becoming so-called “cyber slaves”.

Among rescued trafficking victims, familiar stories emerge. Most are recruited through friend referrals or fake job offers on social media. Once at their destination, however, they are abducted and trafficked into scam compounds. Their passports are confiscated. They are told they owe large fees for flights, visas, accommodation or training, and must work to repay this debt.

Some of these victims eventually rise through the ranks to become scam operators, supervisors or even recruiters who lure other Indonesians, often friends or family, into the industry.

As NGOs have highlighted, however, progression in the industry often involves coercion and debt bondage. Many are compelled to recruit others as a condition for repaying imposed debts, avoiding punishment or securing improvements in their living conditions.

These dynamics blur the boundary between victim and perpetrator.

This contributes to the criminalisation of trafficked individuals. They should instead be recognised and protected as victims of modern slavery.

Escaped from slavery, greeted as suspects

In Indonesia, public discourse tends to frame those who end up in scam compounds either as criminals or gullible youths who fell for false promises.

Following the mass repatriation of Indonesian nationals from Myanmar scam centres last year, returnees were detained and questioned before being released.

They were processed primarily through law enforcement procedures rather than victim support mechanisms.

Indonesian police have also noted some citizens returning from Myanmar’s scam centres refused to be repatriated because of the money they were earning as scammers.

Those who have recently emerged from scam compounds in Cambodia are even more likely to be perceived as willing perpetrators. Cambodia’s growing reputation as a regional hub for cybercrime has fostered a widespread assumption that Indonesians who travel there already know what kind of work awaits them.

Recent news coverage highlighting the large number of Indonesians working in Cambodia’s online industries has further entrenched this narrative, casting them as complicit actors deliberately scamming fellow citizens.

In the wake of the reports of the recent Cambodian raids, some government officials have called for returnees to face criminal prosecution under Indonesian law.

On social media, some popular commentators have argued Indonesian scam workers should not be repatriated. Some have even called for them to be stripped of their citizenship.

Who benefits from blaming trafficked workers?

Framing returnees as potential criminals is politically convenient but counterproductive. It discourages victims from seeking help from authorities.

It also makes it more difficult for civil society organisations, already strapped for funding, to mobilise support for these young Indonesians.

This ultimately benefits traffickers and industry operators.

This narrative also obscures how Indonesians are now involved at all levels of the scam industry, from recruiters and transnational operational staff to elites with financial stakes in the businesses.

The persistent focus on criminalising trafficked workers diverts attention from the deeper structures of deception and exploitation underpinning the industry.

With youth unemployment still high in Indonesia, this issue is not going away. Until trafficked workers are treated as victims rather than criminals, and the structures that feed this industry are addressed, the cost will continue to be borne by vulnerable young people like Susi and the young woman from Pekanbaru who died alone in Phnom Penh.

Charlotte Setijadi has previously received research funding from Singapore’s Ministry of Education and the Singapore Social Science Research Council. She is currently one of the co-convenors of the University of Melbourne’s Indonesia Forum.

In 2024, Ivan Franceschini co-founded EOS Collective, a non-profit organisation dedicated to investigating the dynamics of the online scam industry and the criminal networks behind it, and supporting survivors of forced criminality in these operations.

– ref. Desperate to flee abuse in Cambodian scam compounds, these young Indonesians are now facing suspicion back home – https://theconversation.com/desperate-to-flee-abuse-in-cambodian-scam-compounds-these-young-indonesians-are-now-facing-suspicion-back-home-274853

March 13, 2026

A deadly strike, or Call of Duty clip? How the US government is trying to memeify the war on Iran

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Daniel Baldino, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, University of Notre Dame Australia

Millions of people recently watched a video posted by the White House showing US strikes against Iranian targets. The clip didn’t just resemble Call of Duty: it mixed real strike footage with footage from the game itself, complete with “killstreak” animations designed to reward performance and simulate achievement.

Governments are increasingly communicating war using the visual language of video games and internet memes. In doing so, they don’t just trivialise violence – they make it harder to grieve the victims of the violence, by anaesthetising our responses to the suffering.

It’s a tactic that shapes how we interpret violence, and which quietly determines whose deaths register as deaths at all.

War as memes and viral content

United States Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has publicly celebrated the strikes and wider military campaign, dubbed Operation Epic Fury – collapsing the distance between military spokesperson and combat enthusiast.

The White House video is not an isolated case. Across social media, videos with military footage are circulating as gaming clips or memes: drone strikes with cross-hair graphics, explosions set to pulse-pounding music. One Department of Homeland Security video of ICE raids was set to the Pokémon theme song.

But the same features that make the content go viral also flatten the reality behind the footage. Important context often disappears. Who was targeted? Were civilians harmed? Was the strike legal? These questions are rarely addressed in a 20-second clip.

War’s visual language is never innocent. It carries instructions about how to feel. A huge problem arises when governments deliberately adopt the visual language of gaming to present real military operations. What this language doesn’t carry is consequence.

Meme culture compounds this. Irony and humour are structurally anti-grief. They create distance as their primary function. When violence circulates as a joke or a highlight reel, the emotional reality of it becomes difficult to access.

War is still seen, but it is no longer felt in the same way.

From CNN to Call of Duty

The so-called “CNN effect”, associated with television coverage of conflicts from Vietnam to Somalia, was premised on proximity. Footage of suffering brought distant wars into living rooms and generated moral pressure on governments.

While imperfect and selective, the underlying logic was that “seeing” produced “feeling”, and feeling produced accountability. The camera lingered. The correspondent named the dead. Viewers were given time to register what they were witnessing.

That model was already fracturing before social media. The 1991 Gulf War introduced a new aesthetic: precision strikes filmed from above, in which targets were rendered as abstract geometries on green-tinged screens.

The human body disappeared from the frame, replaced by the seductive promise of technological accuracy: the “smart” bomb or the “surgical” strike. American critic Susan Sontag noted how this outcome trained audiences to see military technology rather than military consequences.

The ungrievable

The philosopher Judith Butler has written about “grievability” as the condition that makes some lives recognisable as worth mourning. Not all deaths are grieved equally. Some bodies are rendered, by culture and politics, outside the frame of moral concern.

The visual grammar being used by the White House frames people as game avatars. And game avatars, by definition, are not grievable. They are targets – kills to be celebrated.

On February 28, more than 160 girls, most under 12, were killed by a US air strike at the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab. They did not appear in the White House’s content at all.

When pressed, President Trump suggested Iran may have struck the school itself using a Tomahawk missile and then said: “I just don’t know enough about it. Whatever the report shows, I’m willing to live with that”.

Hegseth, meanwhile, has already dissolved the Pentagon’s civilian protection mission and fired the military’s lawyers responsible for keeping operations within international law, describing them as “roadblocks”.

Democratic scrutiny of war depends not just on information but on moral response: the capacity to feel that what is happening matters.

What can be done?

Memes will continue to circulate. Governments will continue to compete for attention in crowded digital spaces.

But the starting point is recognising what is actually at stake. The problem is not simply that viral clips lack context (although they do). It is that the visual grammar they deploy actively forecloses the emotional responses that serious public debate requires.

Wes J. Bryant, a former US special operations targeting specialist (who worked on civilian harm prevention) puts it plainly:

We’re departing from the rules and norms that we’ve tried to establish as a global community since at least World War II. There’s zero accountability.

Audiences, too, can learn to pause. Not just to ask what happened, but what the format in front of them is preventing them from feeling, and about whom. That question, taken seriously, is the beginning of accountability.

War is not experienced as a highlight reel. It is experienced as loss, uncertainty, grief and irreversible destruction. Restoring that understanding is not a media literacy problem. It is a moral one.

Daniel Baldino does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. A deadly strike, or Call of Duty clip? How the US government is trying to memeify the war on Iran – https://theconversation.com/a-deadly-strike-or-call-of-duty-clip-how-the-us-government-is-trying-to-memeify-the-war-on-iran-277974

March 13, 2026

Secrets, sexism and hypocrisy: Bonfire of the Murdochs reveals the family’s real succession drama

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Matthew Ricketson, Professor of Communication, Deakin University

Does the world need another biography of Rupert Murdoch? It depends what it has to say and who has written it.

Bonfire of the Murdochs, by journalist Gabriel Sherman, looks promising. He made his name with an exhaustively researched biography of long-running Fox News head and serial sexual harasser, Roger Ailes. The Loudest Voice in the Room (2014) has 98 pages of endnotes and a team of three fact-checkers. It was made into a series starring Russell Crowe as Ailes. Sherman was also the screenwriter of Donald Trump biopic, The Apprentice, which Trump fought hard to prevent being screened.

Promising credentials, yes, but what does Sherman add to the eight Murdoch biographies already published?

Review: Bonfire of the Murdochs by Gabriel Sherman (Simon & Schuster).

The first was Simon Regan’s business-oriented biography published in 1976. It has been forgotten, but not so George Munster’s A Paper Prince (1985), which laid out Murdoch’s deal-making modus operandi, nor William Shawcross’ 1992 semi-authorised work, which charted Murdoch’s creation of the first global media empire.

Michael Wolff’s The Man Who Owns the News (2008) painted the most vivid portrait of the Australian born media mogul. Flushed with the success of buying The Wall Street Journal, Murdoch agreed to more than 50 hours of interviews with Wolff and opened the doors of his notoriously secretive media empire to the Vanity Fair media columnist.

Wolff did report the Wall Street Journal takeover in detail, but he also retailed a breathtaking amount of industry and family gossip.

One example among many. He writes that Prudence, Murdoch’s daughter from his first marriage, gave him exasperated grooming advice after Murdoch botched a DIY makeover as he tried keeping up with Wendi Deng, his third wife who was the same age as his children.

“Dad, I understand about dyeing the hair and the age thing. Just go somewhere proper. What you need is very light highlights.” But he insists on doing it over
the sink because he doesn’t want anybody to know. Well, hello! Look in the mirror.
Look at the pictures in the paper. It’s such a hatchet job.

Murdoch’s response? He told her she needed a face lift.

Murdoch’s response to Wolff’s biography was that it needed more than a face lift – it should not have been published with the errors it had. He did not sue for defamation, however. Wolff has since become an even more controversial figure: he is embroiled in suit and counter-suit with Donald and Melania Trump over Wolff’s claims about Trump’s relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The long-running struggle for succession in the Murdoch family famously inspired the brilliantly coruscating fictional television series Succession (2018–2023). Sherman’s is the first biography to deal with its resolution, which happened only last September, when Rupert Murdoch and his eldest son, Lachlan, succeeded in changing the terms of an apparently irrevocable family trust.

The trust had been created when Rupert and his second wife, Anna, separated in 1998. (She died on February 17 this year.) It was her attempt to put a brake on Murdoch’s continual pitting of his children, especially his sons, against each other in the quest to succeed him as head of News Corporation.

It didn’t work. Rupert’s plan for Lachlan to lead the company, continuing its hard right position led by Fox News, eventually succeeded. To a greater or lesser degree, the other children from his first two marriages – Prudence, Elisabeth and James – loathed what Fox News had become and, reportedly led by James, were prepared to use their votes in the family trust to oust Lachlan after Rupert died.

In the end, though, they agreed to sell their shares in the family trust for US$1.1 billion each. Grace and Chloe, the two children from Murdoch’s third marriage, are part of a newly drawn family trust with their own shares in News.

The machinations behind this episode were reported last year in two extraordinary pieces of journalism, by Jonathan Mahler and Jim Rutenberg of The New York Times, who were leaked 3,000 pages of court documents about the case, and by McKay Coppins in The Atlantic magazine. He secured a long, revealing interview with James Murdoch, who was labelled in Rupert and Lachlan’s legal materials the “troublesome beneficiary”.

For those without subscriptions to these publications, my colleague, Andrew Dodd, and I discussed the case in The Conversation here and here.

An outstanding journalist

Sherman, another outstanding journalist, has been reporting on the Murdochs since 2008. Ailes threatened him with legal action and engineered a smear campaign over The Loudest Voice in the Room, as Sherman calmly detailed in “A Note on Sources” at the end of the book. It was Sherman who in 2016 broke the news about Fox News presenter Gretchen Carlson’s sexual harassment suit against Ailes that led to his ousting from the network.

In 2018, he revealed Murdoch came close to death after a fall on Lachlan’s maxi-yacht while sailing in the Caribbean.

Sherman also had the inside scoop on the end of Murdoch’s fourth marriage in 2022. The then 91-year-old mogul not only broke up by text with his wife, supermodel and actor Jerry Hall, but included in the divorce terms a demand she not give story ideas to the scriptwriters of Succession!

Hall later realised the marriage had ended, in Murdoch’s eyes, some time before, when he met Ann Lesley Smith, a 65-year-old former dental hygienist turned conservative radio host and follower of QAnon-style conspiracy theories. At a dinner at Murdoch’s ranch in Carmel, Smith gushed that Murdoch and Fox News were the saviours of democracy, and offered to clean his teeth for him.

Murdoch proposed to Smith in early 2023, but he soon called off the wedding after another dinner, where she told then Fox News host Tucker Carlson he was a messenger from God. Hall felt humiliated by Murdoch’s treatment of her but told friends she took satisfaction in making an effigy of him, tying dental floss around its neck and burning it on the barbecue.

All these disclosures, and gossip, are included in Bonfire of the Murdochs. Indeed, Sherman’s reporting, for New York and Vanity Fair magazines, forms a good deal of the book. If you have already read his lengthy articles, there is not much new here. But if you haven’t, or if you are confused by the countless deals and complex financial/political transactions of Murdoch’s seven-decades-plus career in media, this biography is well worth reading.

‘Destroyed everything he loved’

At 241 pages, it has the virtue, as well as the shortcoming, of being the shortest of the Murdoch biographies. Sherman has a gift for succinctly summarising key themes.

The first is that more than most, Murdoch’s media empire is secretive. Remember, his plan to change the family trust was supposed to be heard behind closed doors. We only know about it because The New York Times was leaked the court records, which revealed Murdoch’s testimony. As Sherman puts it: “Rupert crafted narratives in the shadows, but the courtroom would require him to do it in the open.”

Initially, it did not go well for Murdoch. Under cross-examination, his determination to get his way no matter what and his sexism towards his daughters was revealed.

The second theme is the extent to which Murdoch will ignore the stated mission of his media outlets – report what is happening accurately – if it aligns with his commercial goals. During the global pandemic, while Fox News hosts fulminated about lockdowns and advocated dubious treatments like hydroxychloroquine, Murdoch followed the science and, Sherman reports, was one of the first in the world to be vaccinated, in December 2020.

“He was scared for himself and was very careful,” a person who spoke to Murdoch at the time recalled for Sherman. Questioned about the disconnect between his network’s coverage and his own behaviour, Murdoch would deflect responsibility for the presenters’ commentary, even though this seeming passivity contrasted sharply with his history of editorial interference.

As Sherman comments: “The hypocrisy revealed something essential about Rupert’s worldview: he had always been able to separate his personal beliefs from his business interests.” He adds that Murdoch thought then president, Donald Trump, grievously mishandled the pandemic but refused to use his position as head of Fox to pressure the president to treat it seriously.

Nor did Murdoch take any responsibility when a friend told him the channel was killing its elderly audience. According to one of Sherman’s sources, he replied: “They’re dying from old age and other illnesses, but COVID was being blamed.”

The biographer quotes other sources who say the quid pro quo was that Murdoch had successfully lobbied Trump in his first term to take action against Facebook and Google, who were winning advertising revenue from News (along with other legacy media companies) and to open up land for fracking, which was to boost the value of Murdoch’s fossil fuel investments.

The third theme is that Murdoch built the world’s first global media empire but has always run his companies as a family business, with him as the first and ultimate decision-maker. Nimbleness is the advantage of this approach. As with any autocratically run organisation, though, there are disadvantages. Among them is that no one has a perfect strike rate for success.

Along the way, talented executives such as Barry Diller, former chief executive at Twentieth Century Fox or Chase Carey, former top executive at 21st Century Fox, knew – or found out – that their path to the top was blocked not only by the company’s head, but by Murdoch’s desire to advance or protect family members. Murdoch once told shareholders complaining about nepotism: “If you don’t like it, sell your shares.”

From the 1950s, when Murdoch was the “boy publisher” of the afternoon newspaper he inherited from his father, the Adelaide News, he behaved, Sherman writes, as though “promises were like inconvenient facts: fungible when they got in the way of profit.” The newspaper’s editor, Rohan Rivett, was the first among several, alongside numerous politicians, who learnt this to their cost.

The fourth theme is that Murdoch has always wanted his children involved in his business, but only on his terms. “Growing up,” Sherman writes, “the children’s relationship to their father was expressed through the business, making them equate paternal love with corporate advancement.”

Where earlier writers have drawn parallels with Shakespeare’s King Lear, Sherman thinks King Midas is a more appropriate comparison.

Like the mythical monarch whose touch turned everything to gold, Rupert built a $17 billion fortune but destroyed everything he loved in the process. His media outlets stoked hatred and division on an industrial scale, and amassing that wealth
required him to damage virtually anything he touched: the environment, women’s
rights, the Republican Party, truth, decency – even his own family.

The weakest part

These are potent themes that resonate with those of us living in the country of Murdoch’s origin, which brings us to the book’s shortcoming. Australia features early on, but this is the weakest part of the book. Murdoch’s early years are well covered in Munster and Shawcross’s biographies and more recently have been given detailed attention in Walter Marsh’s Young Rupert (2023).

There are basic errors: The Daily Mirror in Sydney, which Murdoch bought in 1960, is misnamed The Mirror, while the Herald and Weekly Times Ltd., which he bought in 1987, becomes the Herald Times Group. Nor does it help that on the book’s final page, Sherman writes “Rupert was with his fourth wife while his children were scattered across the globe” – when Murdoch had discarded Jerry Hall in 2022 and was now married a fifth time, to Elena Zhukova.

book cover: Bonfire of the Murdochs - Rupert Murdoch (large) with four of his adult children pictured smaller

Fourth, fifth? It’s easy to lose count. More seriously, in buying the HWT, Murdoch became the dominant newspaper owner in Australia, but his control did not account for 75% of the market, as Sherman writes. It is more like 60% to 65%, depending on whether you use circulation or number of newspapers as a measure.

Murdoch’s early years in Australia are briskly dealt with in chapter one, before he moves on in his relentless quest to acquire more media properties in the United Kingdom and the US. This is true as far as it goes, but once Murdoch does head north, his biographer loses almost all interest in how Australia is faring – even, or especially actually, after Murdoch acquires the HWT.

The same is true to a lesser extent with Sherman’s treatment of the UK. The phone hacking scandal is covered, of course, but not much else is once Murdoch arrives in New York in the mid-seventies.

What is lost, then, in Sherman’s compression, is context for events. Such as: where did the phone hacking culture come from? What lengths did News go to in denying the practice went beyond two “rogue reporters” or in obstructing official inquiries? Why have they since paid so much money settling with phone hacking victims, rather than going to court?

Missing, too, is any sense of the connections between Murdoch’s media outlets in the three main countries in which News operates. Has the hostile coverage of trans people been imported from Fox News to Sky News Australia? What affect has his media outlets’ campaigning against action on climate change had across these three countries?

These, and others, are relevant questions to ask about a global media empire. Rupert Murdoch may have handed over the company to Lachlan in 2023, but he led it for 70 years, he created its culture and he still wields influence. In case it passed you by, it was Rupert Murdoch – not Lachlan, according to the reports – who in February had a private dinner at the White House with US president Donald Trump.

Matthew Ricketson is the co-author, with Andrew Dodd, of Getting Murdoched: How Murdoch’s Media Wields Power and Punishment, to be published by Hardie Grant in mid-2026.

– ref. Secrets, sexism and hypocrisy: Bonfire of the Murdochs reveals the family’s real succession drama – https://theconversation.com/secrets-sexism-and-hypocrisy-bonfire-of-the-murdochs-reveals-the-familys-real-succession-drama-275938

March 13, 2026

Oil, petrol, gasoline: a chemical engineer explains how crude turns into fuel

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Zachary Aman, Professor of Chemical Engineering, The University of Western Australia

As the US–Israel war on Iran escalates, so too does the global oil crisis.

The effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20% of the world’s oil and natural gas flows, and the targeting of oil production facilities in the Middle East have lifted the oil price by 34%.

The price of Brent crude – the global benchmark – now sits at more than US$100 a barrel.

This means the cost of the many products derived from crude oil, such as petrol or gasoline, has also surged.

But how does crude oil become the fuel you pump into your car?

Like simmering a pasta sauce

Most consumers are transfixed when the oil price exceeds US$100 per barrel. But the economic reality is both more complex and longer-term.

That’s because the content of the barrel itself is not directly usable.

Rather, it must be broken (or “fractionated”) into the chemicals used to produce more than 6,000 everyday products.

These household items include the textiles and clothing dyes on our literal backs, electronics in our hands, flooring beneath our feet, and pharmaceuticals regulating our bodies.

Some of these products can be replaced with non-petroleum alternatives. But doing so can increase consumer prices by an order of magnitude.

The process of transforming a barrel of oil into these products is managed in the discipline of chemical engineering, through which high-temperature vessels (called “columns”) allow fluids to be split (or “fractionated”) into less- and more-dense products.

The experience is similar to simmering a pasta sauce, where the chef uses a precise temperature to boil off water (the less dense product) and concentrate the chemistry that makes tomatoes enjoyable.

Splitting in sequences

Unlike the hundreds of chemicals in the humble tomato, the tens of thousands of individual chemicals in a barrel of oil mean that between five and ten of these fractionation columns must be placed in sequence, each producing a more precise product than the last.

Most consumers would be familiar with the products of the first few columns, in which natural gas is the least dense (or “lightest”) product that typically powers the above-mentioned chef’s stove.

The next-densest product is gasoline, which accounts for around half of the volume of a traditional barrel of oil.

With additional heat and cost, the heavier products can be split into kerosene (“jet fuel”) and, with yet more heat, the diesel fuel that constitutes around one quarter of an average barrel.

Separating out the remaining products requires extremely high temperatures. This results in chemicals used to manufacture modern roads, rubbers, synthetic fabrics, plastics and cosmetics, among many others.

A graph with different temperatures aligned with different productsd. — Crude oil is split into different products using extremely high temperatures.
US Energy Information Administration

Not all oil is the same

The final complication emerges from the geological processes that themselves “manufacture” crude oil.

Over millions of years, high pressures and temperatures degrade and liquefy (or “cook”) volumes of dead plants and animals, often deep under the ground.

As the plants, animals and geology of each biome are unique, so too is the crude oil formed under ground. This reality means that one barrel of oil cannot simply be traded for another and used in the refinery columns described above. The collection of columns requires months to reach stable operation, and they are heavily dependent on the type and properties of the oil at the inlet.

Crucially, the time lag between producing one barrel of oil and finding its chemistry in the hands of an eager shopper is typically between one and three months, depending on the complexity of the consumer product.

Gasoline prices may feel an impact within a few weeks, while consumer plastics (such as food storage containers) may require multiple quarters to demonstrate an impact.

Alongside countries heavily dependent on crude oil imports, those with limited crude oil reserves or refining capacity are further exposed, as they must also import the crude oil “products” described above.

Nearly one third of the oil exported through the Straight of Hormuz is destined for China, while together China and other Asian buyers make up three quarters of these export destinations.

The conflict itself involves Western and Middle Eastern forces. But it is ironically those Pacific nations that carry the greatest near- and mid-term inflationary risk as this crucial shipping lane is put in jeopardy.

Zach Aman has consulted with multiple oil and gas companies, including Woodside, Chevron, Shell, and INPEX. He has received funding from oil and gas companies as well as the Australian Research Council. He is an Affiliate Faculty at the Colorado School of Mines.

– ref. Oil, petrol, gasoline: a chemical engineer explains how crude turns into fuel – https://theconversation.com/oil-petrol-gasoline-a-chemical-engineer-explains-how-crude-turns-into-fuel-278198

March 13, 2026

Friday essay: ‘epic fury’ – the men of MAGA might be the most emotional US leaders ever

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Natalie Kon-yu, Associate Professor, Creative Writing and Literary Studies, Victoria University

In 2016 and again in 2024, Donald Trump ran against two supremely qualified presidential candidates, who both lost. Both had decades of service to government and high-ranking jobs within Democratic administrations. Both were women.

Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris’ losses have prompted a thousand think pieces on whether or not the United States is ready to elect a female president. The old adage, dating back to the Cold War, is that women are too emotional to be trusted with the nuclear button.

But the men in the current White House might be the most emotional leadership group the US has ever had. And while their outbursts often seem spontaneous and even silly, we should take them seriously.

War and fury

Trump chronicler Michael Wolff shared his belief this week that “nothing” Trump says is ever “related to meaning” but it’s “all related to what he is feeling” – which, he says, informs Trump’s behaviour around the Iran war. The Daily Beast, which reported Wolff’s comments, approached the White House for comment.

Communications director Steven Cheung responded by calling Wolff “a lying sack of s–t” who has “been proven to be a fraud”. (Wolff has been criticised for his casual approach to fact-checking, including in his Trump biography.) Cheung continued:

He routinely fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination, only possible because he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain.

This in itself is unusually emotional (and colloquial) language for an official White House communication, but is not surprising in the era of Trump 2.0.

From “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!” to the president’s many legal suits against those who have wronged him and his apparent need for his name to be on buildings – including the former Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts – big feelings are on full display in the era of Donald Trump.

Those big feelings are also reflected in the Trump administration’s policies. What is ICE but an agency dedicated to the irrational fear of foreigners? Greed, envy, anger, lust, fear: they are all on constant display in Trump’s White House. They come from his chief of staff Stephen Miller, former DOGE head Elon Musk, Hegseth and Vice President JD Vance.

Even the name for the current war on Iran, Operation Epic Fury, is emotional. Compare it to the names of the initial wars on Afghanistan (Operation Enduring Freedom) and Iraq (Operation Iraqi Freedom).

This comes after Trump renamed the Department of Defense to the Department of War last year, to make it sound more aggressive. “Maximum lethality, not tepid legality,” Hegseth said of the change, which is reflected in his language about Iran this week:

Death and destruction from the sky all day long […] This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight. We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.

Fear, anger and MAGA

Sociology professor Thomas Henricks explains how fear, a negative emotion “that feels bad to possess”, is often converted to anger, “an emotion that restores agency, direction, and self-esteem”.

Sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild has long focused her research on feelings. She was studying MAGA supporters before they had a name. For her latest book, she looked at how shame and pride motivated this cohort in Kentucky. Many of those she spoke to “saw Trump as a bully — but a bully who stood up for them, against what they perceived as urban liberal elites”.

Giving loyalty to a dynamic leader, writes Henricks, can seem “the surest route to regaining” personal power that feels like it is “slipping away”.

English professor Lauren Berlant believes Trump supporters are attracted to the president’s performance of freedom, through saying whatever he feels. When expression is policed in the name of civil rights and feminism, she observes, it rejects “what feels like people’s spontaneous, ingrained responses”.

But the “Trump Emotion Machine” delivers “feeling ok” and “acting free”. It means “being ok with one’s internal noise, and saying it, and demanding that it matter”.

Gender and emotion

For centuries, political philosophy has noted that much social power is “affective”, relating to moods, feelings and attitudes. Whatever you think of Trump, his policy and style make him exactly the kind of case study political affect theorists have been waiting for.

He is the most conspicuous proponent yet of what we call aesthetarchy – or rule by feelings.

Many feminists and other writers have critiqued the gendered inequity of displays of emotion. Explaining the politics of sex roles, feminist philosopher Marilyn Frye says we all internalise and monitor ourselves to adapt to outside expectations – or “the needs and tastes and tyrannies of others”.

For example, “women’s cramped postures and attenuated strides and men’s restraint of emotional self-expression (except for anger)”.

The crying man was once mocked as womanly and the athletic or politically powerful woman was seen as manly. Both transgressions maintain positive valuations of the masculine and negative valuations of the feminine. Sex roles were once a stronger form of control than they are now.

Yet in MAGA, we have something different happening.

Tantrums and explosions: MAGA men

Hegseth has been criticised, even ridiculed by some media outlets, for his emotional outbursts in media briefings. A Pentagon briefing on US strikes on Iran last June, during which he lashed out at reporters, was labelled a “tantrum” by The Daily Beast.

Miller, too, has been criticised for on-air “temper tantrums”. Insiders revealed his daily conference calls “routinely descend into him loudly berating staff and launching into full-on meltdowns”.

Vance, who made headlines for leading a verbal attack on Ukranian president Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House last year, wrote in his memoir about his struggles to control his anger: “Even at my best, I’m a delayed explosion.”

It is hard to imagine Democrat women getting away with such behaviour. Just this week, Fox News titled an article: “Hillary Clinton storms out of Epstein deposition after House lawmaker leaks photo from inside.” It described a “stunning moment” when Clinton was made aware of the fact that Colorado congresswoman Lauren Boebert violated House rules by taking and sending a photo of her during her deposition.

Caricatures of femininity: MAGA women

What about the women of MAGA? How does emotion drive their involvement?

In 1983, Andrea Dworkin published Right-Wing Women, a confronting study of Republican women’s active participation in conservative politics in the US. She proposed that right-wing activist women submit to men and the patriarchy in exchange for structure to their lives: shelter, safety, rules and love from men.

As these rewards are conditional on their ongoing obedience to men, right-wing activist women become not just complicit, but enthusiastic perpetrators of violence and discrimination against other women.

What motivates the trade? Fear of vulnerability to men and male violence, which they believe naturally finds a target in “an independent woman”.

The “hates” Dworkin documents are just as relevant now, more than 40 years later: anti-abortion, antisemitism, homophobia, anti-feminism, disregard for female poverty, and more. The tirades of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt against diversity, equity and inclusion are prime examples of a woman attacking feminine solidarity to strengthen her quest for power.

MAGA women can be emotional – but we only see them unleashing emotions that serve the needs of the most powerful men.

Instead of embodying soft emotions such as empathy, care and kindness (like New Zealand’s former prime minister Jacinda Adern), the women of MAGA strive to be as tough as the men in their administration.

Look at Kristi Noem, who was secretary of homeland security – until she was ousted last week. A new book reports Trump saw Noem’s pre-election admission of shooting her own dog as a reason to appoint her to implement his mass-deportation agenda.

And she did play this hard-nosed role. She responded to the murders of mother Renee Nicole Good and intensive care nurse Alex Pretti by ICE agents by saying the victims were involved in “domestic terrorism”.

MAGA women often nod to conventional femininity with their hyper-feminine looks. Both Noem and Leavitt have been described as having what commentators dub “Mar-a-Lago Face”. This “caricature of femininity”, often achieved through surgery, Botox or fillers, not only signals wealth, but is a form of submission.

“The unspoken message Mar-a-Lago face gives to men in power,” HuffPost reporter Brittany Wong suggests, “is that the woman is willing to tear into their flesh and change their entire individual appearance to gain approval.” (Admittedly, a few men, such as Matt Gaetz, have also been accused of having Mar-a-Lago face: a masculine, rather than feminine, caricature.)

Yet, as we have seen, power for MAGA women is always conditional. Noem’s “toughness” was not enough to save her. Many possible reasons have been cited for Noem’s firing, including the US$220 million advertising campaign for ICE featuring her on horseback, and alleged misuse of public funds.

But she is not the first administration official to be accused of such things – or incompetence. Remember when Hegseth accidentally sent a top-secret group chat detailing an upcoming US strike to a journalist? He still has his job.

Macho sensitivity

Men’s anger, lust or avarice has often been rationalised as acceptable or inevitable on a gendered basis. Women’s emotional outbursts were long labelled hysterical.

But on Truth Social, X and other MAGA forums, emotional outbursts no longer need rational underpinning to be positively valued. They can be seen as perfectly masculine. As Berlant says, unleashed emotion by MAGA types on social media is seen as anti-political-correctness: “being ok with one’s internal noise, and saying it, and demanding that it matter”.

Trump’s actions, such as his threat to sue comedian Trevor Noah for a joke at the Grammys, are seen as another example of strongly anti-woke, pro-white leadership, rather than thin-skinned emotional hysteria. So is Trump calling Robert De Niro “another sick and demented person with, I believe, an extremely Low IQ” last month, in response to the actor calling him an “idiot”.

Behind the machismo there is a strange vulnerabilty, a heightened sensitivity to the slightest criticism or perceived threat to the white, male order.

Last month, Daily Show host Jon Stewart pointed out the hypocrisy, after MAGA complaints about Bad Bunny performing in Spanish at the Super Bowl. “When did the right become such fucking pussies?” he said. “Remember 2017? Remember what you hated about liberals? Perpetually offended, safe spaces, censoring free speech, culture of victimhood. Remind you of anyone?”

In some ways, perhaps this public outpouring of emotion from the predominantly white men in Trump’s government should not be surprising. A former high-school acquaintance of Miller told Vanity Fair that, even as a student, he was “all about this victimhood idea, that he was this lonely soldier crusading”.

The rise of the alt-right, which contributed to Trump’s arrival in office, coalesced through movements such as GamerGate: the online social harassment campaign against female video-game journalists by predominantly white men on 4chan, who felt both victimised and infuriated by calls for more inclusive casts in video games.

Stewing in the same digital sewers were the incels: single men who consider themselves hard-done by women who have not deigned to have sex with them. The number of lives this cohort has claimed through violent attacks is comparable to those killed by Islamic State terrorists in the same period. They are particularly known for their appetite for violence.

These acts are, in part, fuelled by the irreconcilable shame and humiliation they feel at the wounding of their masculinity, along with a desire for retribution against women and any men who provoke their jealousy.

Trump’s administration, and indeed his own emotionally volatile behaviour, validates these hurt feelings through his slashing of funding support for diversity and inclusion initiatives, and violent roundups of people deemed “un-American” — even some US citizens. In this way, the current administration is a GamerGate fantasy brought to life.

Power through feeling

Political philosophy tells us social power often manifests primarily through aesthetics, or how things feel, rather than logic. The rise of totalitarianism in Europe during the 1920s and ‘30s motivated many journalists and commentators to pay close attention to this problem. Much of the work was published after 1945, some of it posthumously, by well-known writers such as Hannah Arendt, George Orwell, Primo Levi and Simone Weil.

Emotions – particularly anger and fear – are classic tools used by authoritarian leaders. But anger can work the other way, too. Political science professor Bryn Rosenfeld argues it can power action against repressive regimes, fuelling resistance and encouraging risk.

Either way, Trump’s electoral success and political power – helped by his supporters’ deep emotional identification with him – show that the philosophers are onto something important.

Emily Booth receives funding from the Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator.

Michael Burke, Natalie Kon-yu, and Tom Clark do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Friday essay: ‘epic fury’ – the men of MAGA might be the most emotional US leaders ever – https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-epic-fury-the-men-of-maga-might-be-the-most-emotional-us-leaders-ever-277227

March 12, 2026

When GPS lies at sea: How electronic warfare is threatening ships and their crews

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Anna Raymaker, Ph.D. Candidate in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology

Cyberattacks like GPS spoofing threaten oil supertankers and cargo ships at sea. Ping Shu/Moment via Getty Images

The war in Iran has dominated headlines with reports of airstrikes and escalating military activity. But beyond the immediate devastation, the conflict has also illuminated a quieter and rapidly growing danger: the vulnerability of ships, and the people who operate them, to disruption of their navigation systems.

Modern shipping depends heavily on GPS satellite navigation. When those signals are disrupted or manipulated, ships can suddenly appear to their navigators and to other ships to be somewhere they are not. In some cases, vessels have been shown jumping across maps, drifting miles inland or appearing to circle in impossible patterns. The risk is even higher in war zones, where ships could be misdirected into harm’s way.

As a cybersecurity researcher studying critical infrastructure and maritime systems, I investigate how digital threats affect ships and the people who operate them.

To understand the threat from GPS disruptions, it helps to first understand how GPS works. GPS systems determine location using signals from satellites orbiting Earth. A receiver calculates its position by measuring how long those signals take to arrive. Because those signals are extremely weak by the time they reach Earth, they are relatively easy to disrupt.

GPS jamming and spoofing

In GPS jamming, an attacker blocks the real satellite signals by overwhelming them with electromagnetic noise so receivers cannot detect them. When this happens, navigation systems lose their position. On a phone, it might look like the map freezing or jumping erratically.

GPS spoofing is more sophisticated. Instead of blocking signals, an attacker transmits fake satellite signals designed to mimic the real ones. The receiver accepts these signals and gives a false location. Imagine driving north while your navigation system suddenly insists you are traveling south. The receiver is not malfunctioning; it has simply been tricked.

a map showing numerous red dots and three red circles — Circular loops in the Black Sea show spoofed ship positions recorded in January 2025. The red points represent false GPS locations broadcast during spoofing events, making vessels appear to move in perfect circles on tracking maps even though they were actually hundreds of miles away. These disruptions are widely believed to be linked to electronic interference in the region during the war in Ukraine. Image created with data from Spire Global.
Anne Raymaker

For mariners at sea, spoofing can have serious consequences. In the open ocean, there are few landmarks to verify a ship’s position if GPS behaves strangely. Nearshore, the margin for error disappears: Water depths change quickly and hazards are everywhere, especially in narrow routes like the Strait of Hormuz near Iran, where reports indicate that GPS spoofing has been happening since the outbreak of the war. Because ships are large and slow to maneuver, even small navigation errors can lead to groundings or collisions.

Red Sea grounding

One example came in May 2025. While transiting the Red Sea, the container ship MSC Antonia began showing positions far from its true location. To navigators onboard, this looked like they had jumped hundreds of miles south on the map and started moving in a new direction. This caused the crew to become disoriented, and the ship eventually ran aground. The grounding caused millions of dollars in damage and required a salvage operation that lasted over five weeks.

two copies of a map side-by-side showing a body of water — MSC Antonia route comparison showing the vessel’s true route and grounding point, left, versus the spoofed route, right. The red and black lines on the right show the spoofed locations where the ship appeared to suddenly jump to on GPS. These lines confused the navigators and caused them to run aground. Images created with data from VT Explorer.
Anne Raymaker

Incidents like the MSC Antonia are not isolated. Vessel-tracking data has revealed clusters of ships suddenly appearing in impossible locations, sometimes far inland or moving in perfect circles. These anomalies are increasingly linked to GPS spoofing in regions experiencing geopolitical conflict.

But GPS interference is only one type of cyber threat facing ships. Industry reports have documented ransomware attacks on shipping companies, supply chain compromises and increasing concern about the security of onboard control systems, including engines, propulsion and navigation equipment. As ships become more connected through satellite internet systems and remote monitoring tools, the number of potential entry points for cyberattacks is growing.

Military vessels often address these risks through stricter network segregation and regular training exercises such as “mission control” drills, which simulate operating with compromised communications or navigation systems. Some cybersecurity experts argue that similar practices could help commercial shipping improve its resilience, although smaller crews and limited resources make adopting military-style procedures more difficult.

Mariners’ experiences

Much of the public discussion around maritime cybersecurity focuses on technical vulnerabilities in ship systems. But an equally important piece of the puzzle is the people who must interpret and respond to these technologies when something goes wrong.

In recent research, my colleagues and I interviewed professional mariners about their experiences with cyber incidents and their preparedness to respond to them. The interviews included navigation officers, engineers and other crew members responsible for ship systems. What emerged was a consistent picture: Cyber threats are increasingly occurring at sea, but crews are not well prepared to deal with them.

Many mariners told us that their cybersecurity training focused almost entirely on email phishing and USB drives. That kind of training may make sense in an office, but it does little to prepare crews for cyber incidents on a ship, where navigation and control systems can be the primary targets. As a result, many mariners lack clear guidance on how cyberattacks might affect the equipment they rely on every day.

a man inside the bridge of a large ship at sea looks through binoculars with another ship in the background — Commercial shipping crews are generally poorly trained to deal with cyber threats.
MenzhiliyAnantoly/iStock via Getty Images

This becomes a problem when ship systems begin behaving strangely. Mariners described GPS showing incorrect positions or temporarily losing signal. It can be difficult to tell whether these incidents are equipment failures or signs of cyber interference.

Even when mariners suspect something may be wrong, many ships lack clear procedures for responding to cyber incidents. Participants frequently described situations where they would have to improvise if navigation or other digital systems behaved unexpectedly. Unlike equipment failures, which have established checklists and procedures, cyber incidents often fall into a gray area where responsibility and response plans are unclear.

Another challenge is the gradual disappearance of traditional navigation practices. For centuries, mariners relied on paper charts and celestial navigation to determine their position. Today, most commercial vessels rely almost entirely on electronic systems.

Many mariners noted that paper charts are not available onboard, and celestial navigation is rarely practiced. If GPS or electronic navigation systems fail, crews have limited ways to independently verify their position. One mariner bluntly described the risk to us: “If you don’t have charts and you’re being spoofed, you’re a little screwed.”

A crew member explains the instruments on the bridge of an oil tanker.

Increasing connectivity, increasing risk

At the same time, ships are becoming more connected. Modern vessels increasingly rely on satellite internet systems like Starlink and remote monitoring tools to manage operations and communicate with shore.

While these technologies improve efficiency, they also expand the vulnerability of ship systems. Connectivity that allows crews to send emails or access the internet can also provide pathways for cyber threats to reach onboard systems.

As GPS spoofing becomes more common in regions experiencing geopolitical conflict, the challenges mariners described in our research are becoming harder to ignore. The oceans may seem vast and empty, but the digital signals that guide modern ships travel through crowded and contested space.

When those signals are manipulated, the consequences do not stay confined to military systems. They reach the commercial vessels that carry most of the world’s goods and the crews responsible for navigating them safely.

Anna Raymaker receives funding from the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy for her research.

– ref. When GPS lies at sea: How electronic warfare is threatening ships and their crews – https://theconversation.com/when-gps-lies-at-sea-how-electronic-warfare-is-threatening-ships-and-their-crews-278181