This article analyzes discursive legitimation strategies in the public diplomacy of the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs over the course of three wars between Israel and Hamas by combining critical discourse analysis (CDA) with a quantitative analysis of legitimation strategies. CDA fulfills a critical role in scrutinizing the power that a foreign ministry may have by influencing the attitudes of foreign governments, populations and media outlets. This power is theoretically assessed by tracking legitimation strategies and lexical choices (e.g. war on terror, human shields) diachronically and discussing legitimation strategies in light of their ability to yield resonance. The study’s empirical contribution is an analysis of how legitimation strategies develop in order to reinforce and obtain resonance with a target audience. It contributes theoretically by arguing that construing a local, particular war as global and universal enables the legitimation strategies of political leaders to obtain resonance with audiences.

In abstaining from law‐enforced virus containment measures, the Swedish response to the severe respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 pandemic crisis stood out as radically different compared to other European nations. The present study aims to provide an understanding of the deviant Swedish crisis strategy and to do so from a cultural perspective by illustrating how the crisis and national self‐identification were interpreted and contested in the public sphere. Drawing on a content analysis of claims made by politicians, scientific experts, public intellectuals, journalists, and editors, I illustrate how crisis response was associated with collective, national identity and how this identity was said to enable an exceptional crisis response. This association, I argue, gave rise to the stigmatization of dissident voices that were accused of undermining social order. Responding to a call by crisis researchers, the present study serves as an attempt to bring social and cultural factors back into the center of crisis research.

The present paper focuses on the symbolic meanings of metaphors and their potential social effects. Specifically, it examines the case of the Jewish Ultra-Orthodox “Ḥardakim” poster campaign distributed throughout Ultra-Orthodox communities in Israel in 2013. Following social group theory, the paper interprets the symbolic meanings of the main metaphors in the campaign in order to reconstruct the lifeworld of this religious group. On that basis, it offers a discussion of how metaphors were strategically utilized in order to draw social boundaries, uphold social norms and sanction group members who deviate from those. The paper’s empirical contribution is a case study of how symbolic meanings of metaphors as a part of propagandistic discourse targets and exploits social identities in order to mobilize collective emotions thereby provoking certain actions. It contributes theoretically by arguing that deeming norm-deviant group members internal threats is an efficient propaganda tool for maintaining intragroup behavioral codes.

Sociologists often neglect aesthetic and moral factors in explaining the rise and fall of artists’ reputations. Their focus has often been on more ostentatiously “sociological” variables such as politics, networks, organizations, and power. In this study we make central a pollution dynamic and explore the overlooked phenomenon of “literary degradation.” We identify two pathways—the downward aesthetic and downward moral classification. We exemplify both these pathways on the case of the Danish writer known as Sven Hassel, once an acclaimed new writer compared to Hemingway in the 1950s. Yet by the 1970s his books were generally seen as militaristic pulp flirting with Nazi sympathies. We show the forces of degradation are divergently activated according to context.