This thesis investigates the portrayal of the Mariupol Theatre Airstrike withinthe Russo-Ukrainian War through a discourse analysis of news articles fromdiverse media outlets in Russia, Ukraine, France, Germany, the UK, and theUS. The study employs a qualitative comparative case study approach withinthe academic domain of targeting civilians in war. By applying the lenses oftraditionalist and revisionist perspectives within the theoretical framework ofJust War Theory, the research aims to understand how moral judgements aremanifested in the discourses presented by the media outlets reporting on theMariupol Theatre Airstrike. Notably, the findings reveal a dichotomy in media reporting: Russian mediaadopts a blend of traditionalist and revisionist positions, while Westernmedia also exhibits a blend of both positions, leaning more towards therevisionist perspective. By focusing on the specific case of the MariupolTheatre Airstrike, the study aims to provide a comprehensive analysis thatcontributes to the broader understanding of the complexities of media and theprovide a nuanced understanding on how moral judgments are being exhibited in the Russo-Ukrainian War.

When violence against civilians is high in armed conflicts, it is predicted that the UNSC will pay close attention to those conflicts. However, it does not always happen to an equal degree. Based on recently collected data of UNSC agenda-setting behaviour by Susan H. Allen and Amy T. Yuen, this paper asks: why do some conflicts receive more UNSC attention than others, despite similar levels of violence against civilians? The thesis looks into the role of ROs in the UNSC agenda-setting. To account for the variation, the thesis argues that ROs are able to influence the UNSC agenda-setting in a way that leads some conflicts to have more recurrences of items on the agenda and others less. By applying a structured focused comparison on the conflict in Darfur between 2003 – 2007, and the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar between 2016-2022, I find a correlation between representation of ROs and recurrences of agenda-items. However, correlation is not causation, and I conclude that ROs had little influence in the UNSC decision-making and that it was the interests of the P5 and the institutional role of the UN Secretary-General that lead to the variation in the number of recurrences of items on the agenda.

Since the extensive terrorist attacks against the USA on September 11, 2001, the war on terrorism has become an increasingly prevalent phenomenon. Despite the controversy surrounding warfare against terrorist organizations on foreign state territories, world-leading politicians have repeatedly attempted to legitimize and justify extensive military counteroperations by invoking the right to self-defense under the UN Charter. As the UN Charter is designed to regulate warfare between states, it may be considered outdated in relation to the contemporary issue of international terrorism. Following Hamas' terrorist attacks against Israel on October 7, 2023, we have witnessed significant devastation and a high number of civilian casualties in the Gaza Strip as a result of the counteroperation led by Israel with support from the USA. The purpose of this work is to investigate whether states have the right to self-defense against non-state actors outside their territory and how this right has changed since the September 11 attacks on the USA. The study also aims to clarify the extent to which armed self-defense against terrorist organizations can and has been justified by examining rhetorical strategies. This is to investigate and thoroughly discuss the consequences suffered by the civilian population as a result of an expanded right to self-defense. A critical discourse analysis, based on van Dijk's understanding of power dimensions, is the tool used in the study to examine the speeches of Presidents Bush, Biden, and Prime Minister Netanyahu. The results of this study show that used rhetorical strategies contribute to and enable the dehumanization of the civilian population living in territories where terrorist organizations operate, decrease ethical responsiveness towards the civilian population and enable physical attacks on a vulnerable population. Responsibility for the civilian population is shifted onto attacking terrorist organizations, indicating the need for clearer moral obligations for nation-states utilizing the right to self-defense to combat international terrorism.

This thesis examines the reactions to the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023 on the political left. The focus is on understanding how the German left’s responses differ from those of the global left and the extent to which these differences are influenced by the concept of "German guilt." The study employs content analysis of social media statements, guided by theoretical insights from Karl Jaspers' notion of metaphysical guilt and Moishe Postone's critique of violence against civilians. The findings reveal a distinct divergence in responses: while the German left uniformly condemned the violence, the global left displayed a wider range of reactions, including significant support framed as “resistance”. This thesis suggests that beneath the apparent national or ethnic differences, there lies a more fundamental divide grounded in Postone’s critique of the left’s approach to violence against civilians as a legitimate means to achieve progressive goals.

The use of wireless sensor networks for a myriad of applications is increasing. They can be used in healthcare for emergency management. In Florida, hurricanes are the main source of natural disasters. There has been a high incidence of hurricanes over the past decade. When a hurricane warning is issued it is important that people who live in potentially dangerous areas, such as along the coast, evacuate for their safety. Nursing homes and other care facilities for elderly or disabled people experience difficulty with the evacuation as their residents require additional assistance. The characteristics and challenges of a hurricane evacuation are investigated. A patient-centric hurricane evacuation management system is proposed to allow healthcare providers the ability to continuously monitor and track patients. During a hurricane there are usually scarce energy resources and a loss of basic communication services such as cellular service and Internet access. We propose the architecture of the system that allows it to operate in the absence of these services. The hardware and software architectures are also presented along with the main phases of operation. The system was then validated and the performance evaluated via simulation using the OPNET Modeler. / by Arny Isonja Ambrose. / Vita. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2011. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2011. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

The function of a journalist is not only to inform but also to investigate. Since the public has a right to information, jurists need to protect journalists that report from dangerous war-torn regions in order to keep the world informed. As the primary reliable source and often eyewitness to humanitarian atrocities a journalist has a duty to report such atrocities. There has for several decades now been uncertainty regarding the fact whether journalists should be granted special protection or not. On the one hand it is argued that journalists should be protected in terms of humanitarian law due to their humanitarian function, the service that they render in facilitating the free flow of information to the world and the role that journalists play in society. On the other hand, some argue that the protection of journalists is not the responsibility of the international community but rather their individual national governments or local news organisations. / Jurisprudence / LL.M.

The overall aim of this study is to explore how people who have experienced events in the past re-contextualize these same events in the present. We analyse the discourse of the public trial in 1985 against the members of the first three Argentine military juntas in the most recent dictatorship in Argentina (1976-1983). The study focuses on the discursive construction of civil responsibility. We examine the discourses of the witnesses that were called to testify at the trial by the defence attorneys of the accused Jorge Rafael Videla and Roberto Eduardo Viola, former de facto presidents of Argentina. The analysed testimonies concerned a specific event during the dictatorship, namely the meetings between the military junta and civil actors that were held in 1979 and 1980 with the declared purpose to create political dialogue between the military and selected parts of the civil society. Prior to the trial, these political dialogue meetings had not been considered to be particularly important in the history of the dictatorship, but the testimonies at the trial draw attention to the responsibility of civil actors in the crimes committed during the military dictatorship. In this study we investigate this theme in a novel way, focusing on the discursive tools used by civilians at the trial to explain their involvement in the dictatorship. We adopt the perspective of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). To establish relationships between social and linguistic aspects, we include the concepts of intertextuality, discursive strategies, appraisal and legitimation. The main research questions are: 1) How do people represent linguistically a historical event when they find themselves in a new historical context? 1a) What discursive representation of the latest Argentinean dictatorship are made by the participants (witnesses, judge, defence and prosecutor) in the trial against the military junta leaders in 1985?; 1b) What intertextual influences are present in the interactants’ discourses during the interrogations, and in what way do these discourses contribute to legitimise the historical past?; 1c) What language resources do the civilian witnesses use to represent the Armed Forces and the armed rebel groups)? and 2) In what way do the witnesses reconstruct their role in the political dialogue meetings, or more specifically, what linguistic resources do the witnesses use to represent themselves in relation to the responsibility of civilians in the military dictatorship? The results show that the witnesses, in general, interpreted the recent past of Argentina using discourses that on the one hand condemned the violence caused by the armed rebel groups and on the other hand justified the interference of the Armed Forces. These discourses were used in the construction of a positive identity of both the witnesses as individuals and the institutions to which they belonged. Furthermore, their discourses legitimized their own actions, when these supported the Armed Forces in their “war on subversion”. The overwhelming majority of the witnesses tried to evade the questions meant to clarify their responsibility on the events of the dictatorship. Most of the witnesses, during the interrogation tried to find discursive strategies and linguistic resources that could hide their support to the Armed Forces during the regime and they did not reveal clearly their position regarding the military illegal actions during the dictatorship. / Este trabajo tiene como objetivo general estudiar cómo sujetos que han vivido eventos en el pasado recontextualizan estos mismos eventos en el presente. Más específicamente queremos estudiar la construcción discursiva de la responsabilidad civil en la más reciente dictadura argentina, en el contexto del juicio a los excomandantes, realizado en 1985. Analizamos los discursos de los partidos políticos, los sindicatos y el sector empresarial (representado por la Cámara de Comercio Argentina). Estos actores fueron citados a declarar como testigos en el juicio a pedido de las defensas de los acusados Jorge Rafael Videla y Roberto Eduardo Viola. El tema principal en los interrogatorios fueron las reuniones de apertura del diálogo político, convocadas por el expresidente de facto Videla, a fines de 1979. Estas reuniones se proponían iniciar el proceso de redemocratización del país y revisar los hechos de la dictadura. En este trabajo, queremos contribuir a la comprensión de cómo se construyen eventos del pasado en el marco de una práctica discursiva particular; asimismo, queremos hacer un aporte en lo que se relaciona con la construcción discursiva de periodos traumáticos sobre los que no hay consenso. El enfoque adoptado se sustenta en el Análisis Crítico del Discurso (ACD) (Fairclough 1992b, 1997; van Dijk 1993, 1999; Wodak 1997) y en la Lingüística Sistémico-Funcional (LSF) (Halliday 1994), de donde surge la Teoría de la Evaluación (Martin 2001; White 2001; Martin y White 2005). Incluimos, además, la noción de representación de actores sociales (van Leeuwen 1996). Asimismo, con el objetivo de ampliar los alcances del análisis, incluimos la noción de intertextualidad (Kristeva [1966] 1986; Bakhtin 1981 y Fairclough 1992a, 1992b) y estrategias discursivas (Reisigl y Wodak 2001). Las preguntas que guían la investigación son: 1) ¿Cómo hacen actores que han participado en un acontecimiento histórico en el pasado la representación discursiva de esos mismos eventos en otro momento histórico?; 1a) ¿Cómo construyen discursivamente los actores involucrados en el juicio a los excomandantes la representación de la más reciente dictadura argentina?; 1b) ¿Qué influencias intertextuales predominan en los discursos de los interactuantes durante los interrogatorios y de qué modo legitiman esos discursos la última dictadura en Argentina?; 1c) ¿Mediante qué recursos lingüísticos realizan los testigos civiles la representación de los actores sociales protagonistas de esa historia (a saber, las Fuerzas Armadas y los grupos armados)?; 2)¿De qué modo llevan a cabo los testigos la reconstrucción discursiva del papel que desempeñaron en las reuniones de apertura del diálogo político o, más específicamente, mediante qué recursos lingüísticos se representan a sí mismos los testigos en relación con la responsabilidad civil en la dictadura, en el contexto del juicio? Los resultados muestran que el rol institucional de los participantes en el juicio enmarcó el modo de recontextualización de los sucesos del pasado y la representación de los actores sociales involucrados en ellos. De un modo general, los testigos hicieron la interpretación del pasado reciente de la Argentina utilizando discursos que condenaban la violencia practicada por los grupos armados, por un lado, y justificaban la interferencia de las Fuerzas Armadas, por otro. El uso de estos discursos contribuyó a la construcción de una identidad positiva de los interactuantes tanto a nivel individual como institucional, dependiendo de quién narraba los eventos. La evocación de discursos paralelos al juicio legitimaba al gobierno de facto y, al mismo tiempo, las acciones de los testigos, toda vez que estas estuviesen relacionadas con el apoyo dado a las Fuerzas Armadas en lo actuado durante la “guerra antisubversiva”. Una gran mayoría de los testigos intentó evadir las preguntas que querían elucidar cuestiones en torno a la responsabilidad que pudieran haber tenido bajo la dictadura. Concluimos que la mayor parte de los testigos se posicionó de manera poco clara en cuanto a su relación o postura acerca de la actuación militar ya que durante todo el interrogatorio intentaron encontrar recursos y estrategias discursivas que encubriesen el apoyo que habían dado a las Fuerzas Armadas durante la dictadura.

It is the purpose of this study to reveal that the morale of the southern civilians was an important factor in determining the fall of the Confederacy. At the close of the Civil War, the South was exhausted and weak, with only limited supplies to continue their defense. The Confederacy might have been rallied by the determination of its people, but they lacked such determination, for the hardships and grief they endured had turned their cause into a meaningless struggle. Therefore, the South fell because its strength depended upon the will of its population. This study is based on accounts by contemporaries in diaries, memoirs, newspapers, and journals, and it reflects their reaction to the collapse of homefront morale.

The function of a journalist is not only to inform but also to investigate. Since the public has a right to information, jurists need to protect journalists that report from dangerous war-torn regions in order to keep the world informed. As the primary reliable source and often eyewitness to humanitarian atrocities a journalist has a duty to report such atrocities. There has for several decades now been uncertainty regarding the fact whether journalists should be granted special protection or not. On the one hand it is argued that journalists should be protected in terms of humanitarian law due to their humanitarian function, the service that they render in facilitating the free flow of information to the world and the role that journalists play in society. On the other hand, some argue that the protection of journalists is not the responsibility of the international community but rather their individual national governments or local news organisations. / Jurisprudence / LL.M.

The question of how armed group ideology influences its behaviour has been tentatively explored in the past decade. However, which role distinct ideological commitments play in civilian targeting has not been satisfactorily discussed thus far. This thesis turns to research on genocide and mass violence and incorporates the concepts of ‘exclusionary ideologies’ and ‘threat perceptions’ to fill this research gap. It addresses the following question: to what extent do exclusionary ideologies of armed groups influence their use of violence against civilians during civil conflicts? When revolutionary armed groups pursue their goals, threat perceptions determine which groups are considered legitimate targets for attack. Therefore, it is hypothesized that exclusionary groups will employ more violence against civilians than inclusionary groups because the former have a more expanded understanding of legitimate targeting than the latter. Through a structured focused comparison, discourse analysis and process tracing applied to the cases of Boko Haram and Al-Shabaab, moderate support for this hypothesis is found. It is shown that both armed groups to varying extents invoke threat perceptions regarding certain out-groups to legitimize and rationalise their patterns of violence. Nonetheless, a descent into indiscriminate violence by Boko Haram and data shortage of Al-Shabaab attacks warrant caution.