Representation

Investigating the performance of companies is one of the most important issues for the users of accounting information. The purpose of this study was to provide evidence about the effect of asymmetric appropriateness on investors' expectations. The results of the research on accepted companies In the Tehran Stock Exchange during the period from 2012 to 2016. To collect data, a library method was used and referring to financial statements, explanatory notes and monthly stock exchange of the Stock Exchange. Using Cochran sampling method, 120 firms were selected as the statistical sample. To analyze the data, multivariate regression analysis was used to confirm the rejection and research hypotheses (ivyz software). The results showed that asymmetric accountability leads to different expectations of investors about the company's outlook, and the negative relationship between asymmetric verification (conservatism) and investors' controversy is weaker with the release of good news and gets worse by the publication of bad news. The results are consistent with the documentation referred to in the theoretical framework of financial research and literature, such as the theory of vision and the concepts of behavioral and financial behavior, and the publication of good and bad news has a significant role.

La question du bonheur est difficilement dissociable de l’existence humaine. Aujourd’hui, dans les sociétés de consommation (de l’Occident), – avec une influence considérable sur le reste du monde du fait de ce que les sociologues appellent la « macdonalisation » du monde – elle se pose avec un accent d’intensité suivant l’ordre du progrès économique qui y prédomine. Le présent article est une analyse de deux romans français contemporains, Les Choses de Georges Perec et La Liste de mes envies de Grégoire Delacourt, du point de vue du thème du bonheur qui structure la narration. Pour se faire, la réflexion met à contribution le paradigme analytique de l’herméneutique. Cela nous conduit aux résultats que les romans étudiés sont une mimésis des sociétés de l’objet où le bonheur pour les individus, contrairement à ce que l’on pourrait croire, est loin d’être une réalité absolue. L’analyse se clore par la mise en évidence que le bonheur dépend aussi de bien d’autres choses.

This study investigates the representations of Hindu-Muslim relationship in Bollywood movies from 2008 to 2018. It is assumed that after 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks, which are known as 26/11, conflicts between Hindus and Muslims have escalated. Since Indian people are extreme fans of movies, especially Bollywood movies, in this regard, it is expected that media could play a significant role in increasing or alleviating the conflicts by influencing people’s attitudes and opinions. This research seeks to examine the extent and modality of the representation of Hindu-Muslim relationships in Bollywood after the 2008 Mumbai attacks. The study was conducted through a content analysis of 11 Bollywood movies, which were selected from 70 Muslim-characters-based movies. Favorable, unfavorable, neutral and unclear were the four factors through which the movies’ contents were analyzed. The overall analysis of these factors indicate that 66.17% of the scenes were favorable, 14.70% were unfavorable, 2.94% were neutral, and 16.17% presented unclear images of Hindu-Muslim relationship in Bollywood movies. The results also indicate that Bollywood is not only depicting a positive image of this relationship, but also tries to tighten the bonds of the two religions, and in a broader sense, ties the two neighboring countries, Pakistan and India.

In recent decades, the role-playing of the media has paved the way for the emergence of a new discourse named popular geopolitics that has the potential to link public opinion to geographical policies. Researchers in the context of popular geopolitics seek to evaluate methods of representing geographical phenomena and geopolitical events in media such as cinema. The current study, given the significance of The Concept of the Political as a kind of discourse in popular geopolitics and its impact on public opinion, seeks to choose the Middle East geopolitical region as the subject of the Hollywood cinema representation to examine the structures that try to guide public opinion and increase its power in the region with the help of The Political tools such as political romanticism and political theology. In this context, selected works of cinema made during the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama between 2000 and 2015 have been selected for this analysis.

Human life is tied with space through spatial emotions and the sense of place. Although existence of spatial emotions plays a vital role in the creation of space and in some ways reflects the presence, tale, culture, and feeling in the place and space and in this way assists man in there, in some situations this issue can lead to some challenges which are rooted in discriminative approaches that divide humanity into "us" against "others". In the critical human geography and critical geopolitics, scholars mentioned numerous factors which are influential in this dividing. One of the main factors which plays a significant role in this process is "geographical imagination" which obtains semi-logical reasons for a group of individuals and some states and powers to exclude other social, political, and ethical groups from "us". This subject can influence people and encourage them to ascribe wrong facts to individuals who are categorized as "others" and misattribute their spaces and places as dangerous locations. This spatial approach, consequently can result in labeling some spaces as "spaces of fear" and through this generates a wide range of social, economical, political and spatial problems and restrictions for individuals who are considered as "others or them".

Based on David Gauntlett’s Web 2.0 approach of media audiences, this article argues that while Islamophobic discourses may be hegemonic in the British media in general, and the online media in particular, counter-Islamophobic ones have real potentials to subvert the anti-Muslims hegemony in contemporary Britain. Online media users, both as producers and consumers of mass-mediated representations, are empowered to blur the boundaries between the real and the virtual spaces in the construction of different conceptions of their own identities as well as of those of the others. To this end, comparatively, the comments of the users of two YouTube videos are analyzed and critically appraised to identify how they prosumed the different representations of Muslim communities of/in Britain. It is suggested that YouTube users contribute, from their respective subject positions, to the construction of diverse conceptualizations of their own identities and those of others as well. Their prosumed representations both entrench and defy a hierarchy of Islamophobic and Islamophallic images of Islam and Muslims in contemporary multicultural Britain.

Pop Art is the representative of a cultural identity that has been represented as a kind of art in the mid-twentieth century. It is based on the ordinary manifes tations of people’s lives, and by concentrating on media and propaganda it has become pervasive in a short time as if it is a newly emerged culture that has appeared not from the inside of community but from outside and by those sociologis ts who look at this culture, it is considered as an outgrowth of the conditions created by modern centralism and individualism. But where is the position of reality in this emerging art? Focusing on the general audience and everyday subjects became the basis of the work of this art, which was able to be in line with trade and its goals. The purpose of this paper is to examine the characteris tics of Pop art, which can be considered as the firs t sparks of the return of representation in pos t-modern craft, which bases its work on pretense. In this s tudy, it has tried to use the text content analysis method to Pop art indexes while comparing to the other arts such as elite and folk culture. The results indicate that paying attention to the Pop culture, and reproduction of images by emphasizing on media, takes the art to hyper-reality. As another aspect, these are the media that direct the culture by determining the direction of Pop thoughts, lead the art, to create new forms of reality.

In this paper, the system of language and architecture has been studied in three levels of elemental, structural and semantic in cases of traditional and modern mosques in Iran through the method of analyzing the content of texts and in a conceptual model. Then, in a comparative method, the common patterns of these systems have been explained at all three levels. The common features at the elemental level included double-edged signs, the notion of sign value, as well as syntagmatic relations. Concepts such as the two-way functioning of the systems, textuality and spatial cohesion were identified at the structural level. The concepts of marking, explicit and implicit meanings, and metaphors were investigated at the semantic level of the architecture of the mosques. In the following, the variables were categorized in tables based on the concepts and the data were analyzed through inferential analysis. Then, the findings were coded based on the indices of each variable. On this basis, it became clear that the common patterns, the mental forms of the language sign system can be translated into the physical forms of the architecture system through representation. The respondent also reads or interprets based on a picture or a represented form when confronting the representation. The research findings indicate that readings are based on the collective language and interpretations are based on the individual’s personal language. In the meantime, the cultural, historical, and ethnic contexts, as well as the role of mass media are of high prominence.

This study aims to examine the representation of women with disabilities (sensory impairment) in the Indian cinema, focusing on the Hindi speaking Bollywood. Three popular movies shown in Bollywood have been selected in order to investigate the way in which women with disability are represented. The movies include Koshish (i.e. ‘Effort’, (1972), Lafangey Parindey (i.e. ‘Cheeky Birds’, (2010) and Kaabil ([i.e. ‘Capable’, (2017). The year 1970 has been selected as the beginning of the time frame because it is the closest time to the first Bollywood movie (Koshish, 1972), in which a disabled woman is depicted as a leading role. To analyze the movies, Critical Disability Theory (CDT) was selected as the study’s theoretical framework, and Qualitative Content Analysis (QCA) has been applied as the study’s research method. Results reveal that the representation of women with disability has undergone significant positive changes over time, which includes variations in social status, ability and achievements, issues and concerns, patterns of pleasure, presence and acceptance, social attitude, words and phrases used, as well as changes in policies related to women with disabilities.

Iranophobia is the hyperreality or representation of Iran’s reality in international relations. With the Baudrillard’s postmodern attitude, we can consider this phenomenon as one of the examples of displacement of the boundary of reality and representation, which was put on the agenda of the West, especially the United States, after the victory of the Islamic Revolution of Iran as a political project. Accordingly, Iranophobia was formed influenced by the cultural nature of the Islamic Revolution and its focus on the soft aspects of power and the reflection of the Islamic Revolution in the international relations and possible challenges to the interests of the West, especially in the Middle East region. Thus, in a short period time of after the Revolution, many of the concepts and developments of Iran’s foreign and domestic politics, including the policy of issuing the revolution, Iran’s support for liberation movements and causes, the Iraqi imposed war on Iran, the human rights issue, Iran’s attempt to achieve military-defensive capabilities, etc. were interpreted with a reverse approach to their reality. This article tried to explain the dimensions and forms of Iranophobia and its consequences in the international relations by analyzing the backgrounds and roots of Iranophobia.

The African continent has, to date, been mostly perceived as a “marginalized” geographical or geopolitical foundation and is represented in international relations (IR) so narrowly in the definitions provided by classical geopolitical knowledge or hegemonic knowledge of international relations. Nevertheless, efforts must be made by intellectual and practical elites worldwide for a more realistic representation of the opportunities and potentials of this continent by relying on conceptual-theoretical formulations. To address the main question of the relationship between Africa's geopolitical position and its conceptual and theoretical representation within the discipline of International Relations. The author suggests examining the pathology of conceptual-theoretical formulations in International Relations (IR) and Geopolitics.  this requires a new reading of critical geopolitics drawn on the works of Andrew Linklater, which can provide more basic explanatory ideas with the critique of epistemological foundationalism, state-centrism, narrative-based approach, and nature of the disciplines. This paper is a theoretical research that proposes a new conceptual framework. It adopts an explanatory-critical analytical method to explain the theoretical approach of global critical geopolitics. The results of the paper emphasize that the theories and texts of IR and Geopolitics must be reviewed and reformulated with innovative evaluations centered on the position and role of Africa in the international history of the world. It highlights the importance of considering the distinct lived experiences of the continent which can serve as a basis for developing a methodological, epistemological, and ontological research program for participation in global politics and non-western international relations.

Television series serve as tools for propaganda and influence, allowing political figures to manipulate public opinion and control how they are perceived. One notable example of this phenomenon can be seen in the representation of Boris Johnson in the TV series ‘This England’. The representation of Johnson in the midst of scandals like Party Gate and the mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic tainted his public image as a reliable leader and a dependable Prime Minister. The resulting backlash against him was so severe that he was called to testify in the official COVID-19 inquiry (2023) following his compelled resignation. The filming of the 'This England' during his time in office and its airing just 22 days after his departure, appeared as an effort to repair his damaged image. Utilizing qualitative content analysis and drawing on Stuart Hall's theory of representation, this paper explores the nuanced depiction of Johnson's leadership and contributes to our understanding of how television series can shape political narratives. The significance of this study resides in its contribution to our comprehension of the multifaceted ways in which television series can shape public perception of political leadership and contribute to broader societal and political discourse.