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Many Americans are gloomy about the economy, despite some data saying it is improving.

The Economist even took this discussion to TikTok. When its US editor John Prideaux examined inflation, wage and employment numbers, he concluded that the US has “an objectively pretty good economy”.

Is Prideaux wrong or the American electorate? And if the US economy is bouncing back, why is President Joe Biden not seeing an economic bounce in the polls?

Political commentator Robert Reich recently explained: “The economy is getting better overall – but overall has become a less useful gauge of wellbeing.” Reich suggested that the usual way the economy is measured can obscure more diverging or individualised economic trends, such as wealth inequality. That is, the macroeconomic indicators are right, but that only tells us part of the story.

Pundits frequently turn to the same narrow measures to define the very large, complex concept of the economy. Widely quoted measurements such as GDP are often treated as synonymous with the economy itself. Importantly though, when polling firms asks Americans about the issues important to their vote, it is the economy and not GDP that is given as an option.

Voters think of the economy in very different ways. Researchers observe that the public often perceives the economy through the lens of their personal experience.

As part of my research, I carried out 17 in-depth interviews and reviewed social media comments, asking what Americans mean when they say “the economy”. Answers included topics as varied as religion, marriage and nature.

This might seem incorrect, but economics researchers already know that these are all elements of the economy. Religion can shape economic behaviour. Marriage partners combine savings to make larger purchases. Finally, nature provides physical resources necessary for production and consumption.

Just one interviewee mentioned GDP, but only to say that GDP is not the economy. He recommended looking at “measures of wellbeing”.

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Biden v Trump: winning suburbia is key to clinching the presidency in 2024

This is consistent with research seeking to better represent these other aspects of the economy important to people. It is from these more inclusive studies that we might understand American voters’ pessimism.

The Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Commission on Reimagining Our Economy released a report in November 2023, recommending additional measures to evaluate the economy around “wellbeing”: security, opportunity, mobility and democracy.

The report includes an interview with Kailin, a café worker and single mother in Kentucky. She worries about losing Supplementary Nutritional Assistance Program benefits or health insurance if she is given a pay rise. She explains that going a penny over the cut off point immediately disqualifies her from assistance, even when that is not enough to cover household expenses.

UK research organisations have experimented with citizens’ assemblies to bridge the gap between expert and everyday perceptions of the economy. During these discussions, participants use personal stories to explain the economy. As one citizen put it: “The huge thing that’s hanging in my head is corporate profits […], then the shareholders are getting nice dividends on the back of those profits, meanwhile, John’s father is freezing.”

The assemblies have produced an economic charter, focusing on fairness, innovation for social good, sustainability and transparency.

In the New York Times, Chrystal Audet, who lives in her car, tells interviewers, “It’s the irony of working and making a nice income and still not being able to afford housing.” The cost of renting a home is the worst on record, triggering record levels of housing insecurity. Chrystal is one of the 40-60% of homeless Americans who is employed but still can’t afford housing.

Graffiti on a street, taken during research fieldwork.
Jessica Eastland-Underwood, Author provided (no reuse)

Dissatisfaction with the economy may also be linked to political dissatisfaction. US economist Paul Krugman recently noted that pessimism about the economy is stronger among Republicans than Democrats. Similarly, Black Americans viewed the economy more negatively during Trump’s administration.

A Washington Post-Ipsos poll interviewed Black Americans to investigate this trend. One interviewee, Francine, explained: “If I’m in a room with white women, I know that 50 percent of them voted for Trump… I look at them and think, ‘How do you see me? What is my humanity to you?’” Francine details how racism inhibits Black Americans’ economic opportunities, a well documented feature of the US economy.

These four examples – Kailin, John, Chrystal and Francine – show what might be described as subjective understandings of the economy. They are, after all, based on varied personal experience. However, these views are grounded in how they experience the economy.

Undoubtedly some voters feel that Biden deserves more credit for his economic achievements. However, voters are not feeling a positive glow, and for that reason may not trust what the experts, or government, are saying. This comes at a time when public trust in government is at an all-time low.

There is no universal agreement about how the economy is defined, let alone what determines a good or bad economy. However, this mismatch between data and public opinion could be an opportunity. Everyday experiences can help experts better understand where the economy isn’t delivering. Läs mer…

The food retailer Iceland has pledged it will give its customers a voice during the UK’s upcoming election. If that sounds like a good idea, then it could be that our democracy is in trouble.

The UK will probably have a general election in the second half of 2024 when more than 45 million registered voters will have their say. There will also be countless opinion polls on voting intentions and the parties and their policies.

Some voters are also getting to air their views through a different platform. Iceland recently announced that it was launching a “customer election manifesto”.

The idea is that a group of seven customers will meet monthly and give their views on political issues in the run-up to the election. These will then be combined with surveys of 6,000 regular customers, which the retailer will publish as a “manifesto” during the summer and share with political parties.

On the face of it, Iceland’s customer manifesto sounds like quite a good idea. Surveys in the UK and elsewhere regularly reveal that people do not trust politicians to take decisions that will improve their lives.

With Iceland’s support, customers are much more likely to get their views in front of politicians and possibly even acted on. As Iceland’s executive chairman Richard Walker said at the time of the announcement: “Customers have told me they have had enough of being told what they should care about and wanted their chance to be the voice of the high street. The Iceland Manifesto is their chance to do just that.”

The amplifying potential of Iceland is particularly strong given Walker himself is very active politically. He has been a vocal campaigner on social and environmental issues, and in 2022 he put himself forward to stand as a Conservative MP. More recently he has switched allegiances and now publicly backs Labour.

Such a politically engaged leader is more likely than most to bring customers’ opinions in front of politicians.

But the Iceland manifesto also raises some troubling questions about what the business is trying to achieve. While the involvement of companies in politics always raises hackles, Walker has long claimed that “Iceland is apolitical”.

Quite how he squares that claim with the company becoming a political platform for its customers needs some scrutiny. One explanation could be that Iceland sees itself as an impartial translator of its customers’ political preferences to politicians. After all, these are not the retailer’s opinions; they are simply those of its customers.

However, the idea that any company is going to be neutral in all this and have no role in deciding what issues are raised with its customers and prioritised in the manifesto is difficult to sustain.

It seems very unlikely that positions that are contrary to the interests of the company are going to be prioritised in the discussions with customers or in the final manifesto. Iceland is telling us this is the customer’s voice, but it is the company that will decide exactly what that voice should say and how it should say it.

Underlying problems

There are two major problems behind this. The first is the lack of any kind of external transparency in the process. Political participation, such as through lobbying, is typically regarded as more democratic when it is transparent.

However, Iceland has made no commitment to make any of the transcripts of its discussions with customers or politicians public, nor the surveys it will use to gauge opinions. We will just have to take the company’s word for the opinions it finds and the way they are communicated to politicians.

A second major problem concerns the methodology. Political polling and focus group approaches have well-established methodologies to ensure their accuracy and validity. Even so, official polling organisations often get things wrong.

Walker has been political in the past when he took a stance on infant formula pricing and promotion rules.

In the case of the Iceland manifesto, however, there is little indication of any attempt to use robust research approaches. Relying on a core group of just seven panel members is already something of a red flag, especially when no information has been provided on their representativeness of the broader population of Iceland customers.

And, if the initial reports of the first panel meeting are anything to go by, statements such as “100% claimed” and “83% said” are essentially meaningless from a statistical point of view given that they actually mean “seven out of seven claimed” and “six out of seven said”.

Quoting percentages from a sample of seven is simply bad practice and does not bode well for sound scientific research of political opinions.

So should we welcome the Iceland manifesto? Given these problems, the manifesto seems to be a case of great idea, poor execution. Finding new and better ways of listening to citizens is important for revitalising our democracy. In principle, there is no reason why a retailer shouldn’t play a role in this.

But retailers are private entities primarily with commercial goals, and their role in soliciting and reporting political opinions needs to be carefully designed to ensure it is legitimate. Why should you believe me? Because 100% of people who wrote this article agree.

An Iceland spokesman told The Conversation:

Iceland is committed to using its platform to champion the issues which our customers really care about. With monthly polls of up to 6,000 nationally representative customers and a series of regional focus groups, we’re committed to publishing the results in full and where our panellists share an anecdote, we’ll ensure they are happy their comments have been reported accurately. The final document will be shared with every political party without favour and in enough time for them to listen before compiling their own manifestos. Läs mer…

The EU recently passed a law that criminalises actions “comparable to ecocide”. It’s a revolutionary legal development – the first law of its kind to be adopted by a political entity with substantial global influence. Nevertheless, some limitations in the definition of the crime may undermine the legal grounds for successful prosecution.

Ecocide literally means the killing of our home. It involves excessive harm that brings severe environmental degradation and collapse and is tightly linked to runaway climate change. The largest fossil fuel companies knowingly emitting vast amounts of carbon dioxide could count as ecocide, as could deforestation of critical ecosystems such as the Amazon.

In 2021 an independent panel of experts commissioned by the campaign group Stop Ecocide International defined ecocide as “unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts”.

The EU’s new ecocide law follows this definition closely. Member states have two years to adopt it into their national legislation. If they fail to do so, they could be referred to the Court of Justice of the European Union and could face financial sanctions.

Legal pitfalls

There are two types of acts that can establish liability for environmental criminals. The first are “unlawful” acts. This may seem rather straightforward as prosecutors can simply point to a breach in national legislation.

The problem is that what is illegal can vary from country to country. For example, high-emissions businesses operating in EU countries with net zero goals (for example Finland by 2035 or Germany by 2045) could move to Poland, the only EU member not committed to a net zero goal.

Protesters at Europe’s largest coal power station in Bełchatów, Poland.
Greenpeace Poland / flickr, CC BY-NC-SA

Or consider Bulgaria, which has become a hub for imported waste from other European countries due to laxer environmental enforcement. These discrepancies could lead to environmental criminals simply moving to more favourable jurisdictions to avoid prosecution.

Reckless disregard

The second type of acts that can establish liability are “wanton” acts. In the expert panel’s definition, these refer to acts committed “with reckless disregard for damage which would be clearly excessive in relation to the social and economic benefits anticipated”. This enables defendants to potentially escape prosecution only by demonstrating how their actions that harm the environment also provide substantive benefits. Energy companies producing electricity from coal and gas, for example, can claim that the social benefit of providing electricity, and thus keeping the lights on and houses warm, justifies their emissions.

The word “reckless” sets the bar for prosecution too high, as it will need to be proven that perpetrators have provoked excessive harm (also compared to the ensuing benefits). Another way for environmental criminals to escape prosecution is to argue that the scale of the damage is not “clearly” excessive compared to social and economic benefits.

Take the plastic, fertiliser or chemical industries as an example. Their fossil fuel-based practices generate emissions, pollute the air and degrade the environment. They also, however, create jobs and help produce more food, among other things. It will be interesting to see how courts will define what constitutes clearly excessive damage in such cases.

Most fertiliser is made using natural gas, a fossil fuel.
Charles Bowman / shutterstock

Furthermore, prosecutors will have to prove that environmental criminals knew that there was a substantial likelihood of the damage occurring. However, this can be incredibly difficult to prove. Polluters, after all, do everything they can to improve their public image and rarely admit to knowingly causing pollution, even in private.

Claims of ecocide could be used to support environmental litigation cases against big polluters or emitters. But such cases will be hard fought by these powerful companies and will therefore take time, in contrast to very pressing timeframe left to address climate change.

All this means the EU’s definition of ecocide seems to provide a vehicle for corporations to escape prosecution instead of functioning as a sharp tool in the hands of prosecutors.

These legal challenges notwithstanding, the new law has significant merits. It creates the legal grounds for the prosecution of carbon criminals, bridging a critical gap in legislation. It also stipulates substantial fines for companies found in breach of the legislation. And by exposing CEOs and board members to a threat of up to ten years in jail, even when operating under a government permit, it creates a strong deterrent.

We also expect the ecocide law to make the continuation of business as usual seem morally weaker, while strengthening the case for the transition to low-carbon energy. In this context, the criminalisation of ecocide can be seen as a powerful tool alongside established measures in EU climate policy, such as incentives for renewable energy production and energy efficiency. Läs mer…

Three hundred years ago, on June 5 1724, an Anglican clergyman by the name of Henry Sacheverell died in Highgate, north London. He was 50 years old.

The Perils of False Brethren by Henry Sacheverell, printed in 1709.
British Library/Google Books

Sacheverell’s death passed in relative obscurity. His home in The Grove in Highgate Village arguably remains better known as the site for several subsequent residents of great renown, from Samuel Taylor Coleridge (who lived there from 1823 until his death in 1834) to Kate Moss (from 2011 until 2022).

In his lifetime, however, Sacheverell gained significant notoriety for a seditious sermon he preached in 1709. It sparked violent riots, one of the 18th century’s largest free speech debates and a landmark parliamentary trial. It is the only one in English history to have both directed the course of English politics and initiated a roaring trade in celebrity merchandise.

My research looks at the cultural lives of clergymen in early modern England. Historian Greg Jenner has dubbed Sacheverell the earliest example of a celebrity.

Henry Sacheverell was born in Marlborough, Wiltshire in 1674. At the age of 15, he matriculated on a scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford. After graduation, he served briefly as a vicar before returning to his alma mater to take up a fellowship.

As an Oxford don, Sacheverell was disliked by his colleagues for his arrogance and drunkenness. He developed a fiery and charismatic oratorical style.

A staunch Tory, in 1702, he published several campaigns against Whigs and Dissenters from the Anglican Church. The Tory Party at the time was unwavering in its support for the monarchy and the Church of England. The Whig Party, by contrast, was opposed to absolute rule. They fought against what they believed was the corruption of the English church and supported the Dissenters – Protestants who refused to conform to the Church of England.

On November 5 1709, at St Paul’s Cathedral, Sacheverell delivered his most provocative sermon to date.

A ceramic Sacheverell.
Metropolitan Museum of Art/Wikimedia, CC BY

By Anglican convention, November 5 sermons at the time commemorated the anniversary of the gunpowder plot on that day in 1605. As opportunities for thanksgiving, they would focus on God’s deliverance of the nation from Roman Catholicism and, traditionally, would also make reference to the providential landing of William of Orange in England on November 5 1688.

Sacheverell did no such thing. He described the gunpowder plot in sensationalist terms as “[a] Conspiracy … as only could be Hatch’d in the Cabinet-Council of Hell”.

He drew analogies between November 5 1605 and January 30 1649, the day on which Charles I was executed. To his mind, these two dates were “Indelible Monuments of the … Blood-thirstiness of both the Popish, and Fanatick Enemies of Our Church, and Government”.

He further attacked both the government and the Dissenters as “Factious, and Schismatical Imposters”. He accused those in power of engineering the ruin of the Anglican Church by “bring[ing] the Church into the Conventicle”, which constituted a “confused diversity of contradictious Opinion”.

The Whigs were outraged by Sacheverell’s invective against their policy of religious toleration. By a parliamentary majority, they promptly impeached him for misdemeanours against the state.

The Sacheverell riots.
The Trustees of the British Museum, CC BY-NC-SA

However, in doing so, they contributed unwittingly to the Tory cause. Sacheverell was made to play the role of sacrificial lamb on the altar of his faith and freedom of speech. Parliament found him guilty of sedition but handed him only a token penalty.

As the trial was taking place, riots took place in London (including at the Bank of England) and across the country. Over the course of several months in 1710, supporters of the Tories attacked the homes and meeting houses of Dissenters.

Though Sacheverell was found guilty, the trial robbed the government of credibility. The Tories won a landslide victory in the general election of 1710.

The celebrity cleric and his merchandise

Sacheverell was banned from preaching for three years. The sermon was ordered to be burnt – a performative gesture which, in reality, had no effect on its circulation.

The Perils of False Brethren reputedly sold 100,000 copies and was translated into French. Copies were made available to at least a quarter of a million people, the equivalent of the entire English electorate at the time.

The popular press further swarmed with pamphlets and broadsides catering for an eager public fascinated with Sacheverell: the preacher, the man, and the criminal.

Single-sheet verses costing one penny, such as The Impeachment (1710), depicted Sacheverell as a “Nightingale” who was to be “cag’d for some Expressions past” and “adjudg’d, some Time to come, / To practice Silence”.

Sacheverell playing cards from 1710.
The Trustees of the British Museum, CC BY-NC-SA

Another broadside, The Age of Mad-Folks, provided more general commentary on the consequences of what became known as “the Sacheverell Affair”. It mentioned people rioting and swearing to pull to the ground churches that “wanted a Steeple”; that is, the meeting houses of Dissenters, which, unlike traditional churches, did not generally have steeples.

Tory supporters, meanwhile, sang of their party’s victory. A 1710 broadsheet, entitled A New Ballad, To the Tune of the Black-Smith, closed with a gibe at both Houses of Parliament:

But, Nobles, take care, you rue not the Hour, / When the Commons were thus put in mind of their Power / Impeaching’s a thing that has made you look sour.

Another attributed the Tories’ success directly to Sacheverell: “Sacheverell we thank for the most happy Lott / Of having this Administration.”

Printers instantly seized upon the marketing opportunities this public appetite presented.

Tongue-in-cheek couplets at the bottom of engraved broadsides, solicited readers to buy copies of the sermon. As one, held in the British Museum, says:

What tho: this EMBLEM, may have little in’t, / Yet since you bought the Sermon, buy the Print.

Craftspeople produced souvenirs including portraits of the bewigged clergyman as diminutive ceramic figurines and painted in blue on tin-glazed earthenware dishes.

An historical emblematical fan satirising the outcome of Henry Sacheverell’s impeachment trial.
The Trustees of the British Museum, CC BY-NC-ND

Allegorical scenes of “Doctor Sacheverell” being visited by angels while antagonists suffered retribution from God were emblazoned across delicate fans and stamped on to lead medals. Broadside ballads, satirical prints and sets of playing cards would further commemorate Sacheverell’s career for decades. Läs mer…

This article was first published in our email newsletter Something Good, which brings you a summary every fortnight of the best things to watch, visit and read, as recommended and analysed by academic experts. Click here to receive the newsletter direct to your inbox.

The trailer for Love Lies Bleeding features the dark synth pulse of Smalltown Boy by Bronski Beat. From the very first notes, I had a sense of what to expect from the film. The song is a queer anthem about the need to flee small town intolerance in order to really live. Its wailing apex expresses the feeling of giving in to impulses and feelings, and pursuing pleasure. It often scores scenes of hedonistic revelry; think dimly lit clubs, all sweat and writhing bodies. It is dark, gay and sexy – and so is Love Lies Bleeding.

The film is a violent neo-noir thriller by British filmmaker Rose Glass. Set in 1989, it tells the story of reclusive gym manager Lou (Kristen Stewart), who falls for Jackie (Katy O’Brian), a bodybuilder passing through her small New Mexico town on her way to Las Vegas. Love, drugs and murder follow. Our reviewer, dubbed it a “visual and aural spectacle” that creates “a visceral cinematic experience, which is at once absorbing and repulsive”.

It’s a stylish (would you expect less from indie production company A24?) lesbian body horror that, once these star-crossed lovers find each other, moves at the speed of a truck that’s had its brake cut and a brick placed on the accelerator.

Read more:
Love Lies Bleeding: this vengeful queer romance is a visceral cinematic experience

Men who need saving

If you can’t get enough of gore, then we recommend you watch Amazon’s new series Fall Out. Adapted from the wildly popular game series of the same name, the show is set in a future US where nuclear war has left the surface world seemingly uninhabitable.

The show follows Lucy (Ella Purnell), who has grown up in an underground nuclear vault. Her life is turned upside down when her father is kidnapped by surviving surface dwellers, and she has to venture into the world above to retrieve him.

The world of the vaults is frozen at the time that the bombs dropped. It’s like a corny, futuristic 1950s comedy – all kitchy and sugary, like a live-action The Jetsons. People really say things like “okie dokie” and they love something called “jello surprise”. This world has made Lucy wide-eyed, naive and wholly unprepared for the world above, which resembles a gritty 50s western with added radiation – dusty, lawless and full of danger and monsters.

It’s a funny, quirky, violent show. Like the other recent popular game-to-TV adaptation The Last of Us, its asks us to question who we consider the bad guys.

Our reviewer, an expert in gaming and a fan of the Fallout series, loved it. They felt it managed to incorporate some of the best elements of the game while also expanding on the lore of the world. I loved the show and all the surprise reveals and twists left me excited for the second series.

Read more:
Fallout: an expertly crafted TV adaptation that manages to incorporate some of the best elements of gameplay

In the frozen 50s culture of the vaults, I imagine James Bond would be all the rage – sexism and all. Thankfully in the real world, Bond has moved on and changed. In the new book in the ever-expanding 007 universe, A Spy Like Me, there are more kick-ass women than ever.

The series was taken over by Kim Sherwood in 2021 and this is the second in her Double O trilogy. At the beginning of the series Bond has been kidnapped and a new cohort of 00 agents are tasked with retrieving him. In A Spy Like Me, there’s a network of international smugglers wreaking havoc on global security who might be connected to be the paramilitary organisation Rattenfänger, who are suspected of Bond’s capture.

The book has everything you would expect of a Bond thriller. High action, international travel, top-class tech. It’s full of artful allusions to Fleming’s books and our reviewer also found it to be a beautifully crafted literary novel that centres brilliant female characters, including a smart and thoughtful Moneypenny who really takes charge.

Read more:
A Spy Like Me: Kim Sherwood’s evocative and thrilling addition to the James Bond canon

Ambitious women

Another much-loved (or detested, depending on your reading) character recently rescued from the peripheries is Lady Macbeth, in Val McDemid’s latest book. Queen Macbeth mixes Shakespeare’s ambitious scheming wife with Scotland’s real Queen Grouch. McDermid’s Queen survives the angry armies seeking revenge on Macbeth for his murders – and becomes a queen on the run.

Our reviewer, an expert in hated women like witches, found it to be a short and sharp tale that “does everything it can to upset the narrative we think we know to tell us a magical new story”.

Read more:
Queen Macbeth by Val McDermid: an invigorating romp that cleaves to the real history of Macbeth’s wife

Our final recommendation is another story about an ambitious woman who pushes her husband. Challengers follows Tashi Duncan (Zendaya), once a promising tennis player turned coach, who has transformed her husband into a world-famous grand slam champion. Wanting to help him get over a losing streak, she makes him play a challenger event, which ends up becoming about more than tennis as he’s up against her former boyfriend, Patrick.

Our reviewer, an expert in in the psychology of competition, found this tense film a compelling portrayal of ambition and the intensity of competition in sport and love. When the trailer first dropped, there was a lot of buzz about its eroticism, but Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers is a much more complex portrait of the pressures of sport and relationships than expected.

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Challengers: new Zendaya tennis film reviewed by an expert in the psychology of competition Läs mer…

Just five years ago, the UK took the bold step of setting up a Media Freedom Coalition of 50 countries committed to protecting press freedom against its enemies in authoritarian states around the world.

But at home, journalists have been squeezed between new waves of restrictive legislation and a general decline in public trust in institutions, including traditional media. Barrister Geoffrey Robertson KC has written scathingly that UK law is “antipathetic to serious journalism” and must be reformed if the fourth estate is to effectively scrutinise the rich and powerful.

UK press freedom may soon face a crucial test over the possible extradition of Julian Assange. The WikiLeaks founder could face espionage charges in the US, dependent on ongoing legal battles and President Joe Biden’s recent suggestion that he may yet decide to drop the case.

All of this has been made worse by open hostility towards journalists on social media, and the financial difficulties facing the industry as a whole. On World Press Freedom Day, here are four key threats to press freedom in the UK.

1. Violence against journalists

Journalists continue to face violence around the world, and the UK is no exception. Five years ago, 29-year-old freelancer Lyra McKee was shot dead while witnessing a riot in Londonderry in 2019. Three men are due to face trial for her murder in a Belfast court. But the murder of investigative journalist Martin O’Hagan in Northern Ireland in 2001 remains unsolved.

The scale of violence against UK journalists was laid bare in a 2020 survey of over 300 members of the National Union of Journalists. More than half (51%) of respondents reported experiencing online abuse in the past year, while 22% had suffered physical assaults for their work. An overwhelming 78% agreed with the statement that “abuse and harassment has become normalised and seen as part of the job”.

Read more:
Increasing numbers of physical attacks on European journalists as they report on COVID and other stories

2. Overly restrictive laws

Prominent media lawyer Gill Phillips says editors and journalists in the UK now face “a forest of legal traps and limitations”. This arises from laws on national security, libel, public order, privacy and data protection.

Government drafts of the 2023 National Security Act met howls of protest from newspapers. Opponents feared that investigative journalism and whistleblowers could be criminalised for legitimately handling information that could be deemed likely to “materially assist” a foreign power.

The government gave assurances on exemptions for journalists before the law came into effect, but not all are convinced. The lack of a public interest defence in national security legislation is criticised in a recent book by international lawyers Amal Clooney and Lord David Neuberger, who say it is an essential safeguard for states to comply with international law.

The instinct to prioritise government secrecy and discretionary powers over press freedom has a long history in UK law. For years the Investigatory Powers Act enabled MI5 and other agencies to access journalists’ communications without independent oversight, until the European Court of Human Rights and UK Investigative Powers Tribunal ruled it unlawful in 2020.

And in 2022 the arrests of four journalists at a Just Stop Oil protest on suspicion of conspiracy to commit a public nuisance were found to have been ordered by senior police officers.

3. Legal obstacles

Another particularly acute threat to public interest journalism in the UK is the stream of abusive legal actions, or Slapps (Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation).

Pre-publication letters and emails from law firms threatening to sue publishers or journalists for defamation often deter publication or water down the contents of reports, for fear of costly and drawn-out lawsuits brought by the super-rich.

Read more:
Slapps: the rise of lawsuits targeting investigative journalists

In a notorious case in 2021 the government enabled the sanctioned head of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, to sue Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins.

The news media have broadly welcomed the Anti-Slapp provisions related to corruption and financial crimes that were included in the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act. As of yet there are no concrete plans for a standalone anti-Slapp law – broader and tougher legislation is needed to stop vexatious claims before they reach court.

4. Declining industry

These issues are playing out against the backdrop of a media industry being hollowed out. The latest Digital News Report by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism found that hundreds of jobs were lost in national and local newspapers in 2022. Print circulation among national titles fell by up to 23% in a year, as news consumption on social media increases.

With fewer people willing to pay for skill-intensive journalism, publishers are demanding that artificial intelligence companies pay for copyrights on the materials they use to train their chatbots. AI newswriting tools already on the market are likely to hasten the slimming-down of newsrooms.

Read more:
Should the media tell you when they use AI to report the news? What consumers should know

Print media circulation has declined in recent years.
Lenscap Photography/Shutterstock

It’s not all bad news. The UK is still an exciting laboratory for digital newcomers in investigative and specialist journalism. The range of winners at the 2024 UK Press Awards shows newspapers’ enduring vigour and commitment to telling untold truths about scandals, from the dumping of human waste in our rivers to the errant behaviour of politicians.

And despite some of the recent legislation, the government has recognised the need to address the worsening environment for journalists by setting up a National Committee for the Safety of Journalists in 2020. The committee is proving to be a helpful forum for tackling some of the most serious challenges to press freedom in the UK. Läs mer…

Historically, the chair of the board of directors filled a procedural and ceremonial role. This was a low bar focusing on the chair’s role in meetings.

But in recent years their role in companies has evolved to become much more complex and demanding. Some reasons for this may be the global increasing governance burden on companies, more focus on strategy issues, and greater awareness of risk.

Today the chair is seen as vital for effective corporate governance. They are required to lead the board in fulfilling its governance duties and responsibilities. In fact, the chair was considered by a Global Board Culture Survey to be the “single biggest differentiator” between the most and least effective boards.

An effective board demonstrates sound business judgment, has an independent perspective, is able to challenge management when appropriate, asks the right questions and has the courage to do the right thing.

It is crucial for chairs to fulfil their roles effectively. A failure to do so may result in an ineffective board and a poorly performing company.

Countries have, to varying degrees, laws and corporate governance codes in place to guide the regulation of the job. But not all do this adequately. South Africa is a case in point. Its laws on the issue are not adequate or clear.

In my research as a professor of company law, I found that there are several shortcomings in the regulation of the office. I outline some of them below, and suggest ways they can be addressed.

Shortcomings

Inconsistency. The South African Companies Act doesn’t address the appointment process of the chair. So there is inconsistency among companies.

South Africa’s corporate governance code, the King IV Report, recommends that the chair should be an independent non-executive director. Independence means that the director does not have an interest, position, association or relationship which is likely to influence unduly or cause bias in making decisions.

But appointing an independent non-executive director as the chair isn’t mandatory for companies that aren’t listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. That means that the chair of unlisted companies does not need to be a director. This goes against the King IV Report’s recommendation.

Qualifications: No professional qualifications are required for the role even though it’s demanding and requires a complex set of skills.

Chairs must know the general procedures and principles of board and shareholders’ meetings. They must also understand general company law and corporate governance principles. Some skills that chairs should have are the ability to think strategically, communicate clearly, be a good listener and have emotional intelligence. Examples of professional qualifications that would help chairs are qualifications in corporate governance, company law, business administration and accounting.

Term limits: There are no limits on how long a chair can serve. Some hold the position for a long time.

For instance, the chair of the South African airline Comair Limited (which is now liquidated) served for 46 years until shareholder activists publicly raised concerns about his independence at an annual general meeting. Following pressure from shareholders, the chair resigned, and Comair Limited was forced to replace him with an independent chair.

Independence: An independent chair is important to foster a culture of openness, which gives the board scope to consider diverse views. An independent chair is one who can exercise objective, unfettered judgment. A chair who dominates the board can stifle dissenting opinions.

That is one of the reasons the King IV Report advises against the same person holding the positions of both chief executive officer and chair. In listed companies these roles must be separated to enable companies to guard against concentrating too much power in the hands of one person.

King IV also recommends a three-year cooling-off period before a retired CEO can assume the role of chair. This ensures that the former CEO can act independently as the board chair.

But not all companies follow this recommendation. For instance, the CEO of the investment holding company Long4Life Ltd, Brian Joffe, retired and moved to the office of the chair immediately, bypassing the recommended cooling-off period.

Unclear responsibilities. There is very little guidance on the functions and powers of the chair. South African courts have not provided much guidance either.

This makes it difficult for chairs to understand their responsibilities. If they fail to fulfil their role correctly it can lead to wrong decisions. This can affect the company’s operations.

Unclear liabilities: South African law lacks clarity on whether the chair (who is a director) bears a heavier fiduciary duty than ordinary directors. Directors are fiduciaries to their company. This means they must act in good faith, with honesty and loyalty, and in the company’s best interests. They must not put themselves in a position where their personal interests conflict with their duties to the company. It is also unclear whether the chair holds a higher duty of care, skill and diligence than other directors. The lack of clarity can lead to problems for the chair.

The way forward

The Companies Act and the King IV Report must provide updated guidance tailored to the modern role of company chairs.

Firstly, a standard appointment process will avoid ambiguity about the appointment of the chair. It will ensure that there is consistency and transparency in the process, and clarify that the chair should be a director of the company.

Secondly, it would be advisable for companies to require chairs to meet certain minimum qualifications before being eligible.

Thirdly, limits must be placed on how long chairs may stay in the job. Based on my research, I am of the view that capping the chair’s term at nine years is ideal.

Fourthly, in my view the chair would probably be held to a higher standard than ordinary directors. But since South Africa’s courts have not ruled on this it’s not clear. This uncertainty leaves chairs unsure about their duties. They face the risk of personal liability if they breach their duties. Läs mer…

Following an emergency meeting of the National Cabinet this week, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced a raft of measures to tackle the problem of gender-based violence.

Among these is a program to help women leave their abusive partners, an “age assurance” trial to prevent children accessing pornography and other age-inappropriate material, and a “counter-influencer” program to tackle extreme misogynistic online content.

The latter is a relatively new measure when it comes to curbing Australia’s gender-based violence problem. According to Albanese, it will:

specifically include a counter-influencing campaign in online spaces where violent and misogynistic content thrives, to directly challenge the material in the spaces it’s being viewed.

Research shows technology-facilitated abuse is both prevalent and pernicious. But what do we know about the specific impacts of being exposed to misogynistic content online? And is an online solution the best way to address the problem?

Attitudes and behaviours

According to the latest Personal Safety Survey:

1 in 4 Australian women have experienced violence by an intimate partner or family member since the age of 15, compared with 1 in 8 men
1 in 5 women have experienced sexual violence since the age of 15, compared with 1 in 16 men
1 in 5 women have experienced stalking since the age of 15, compared with 1 in 15 men.

These statistics, alongside the tragic deaths of too many women by their intimate partners or ex-partners, demonstrate that addressing men’s violence against women (as well as other at-risk groups) must be a national priority – and everyone’s responsibility.

The causes of gender-based violence are complex and multifaceted and experts recognise there is no one cause. A key driver is problematic attitudes, beliefs and norms. According to Our Watch, these include attitudes that condone violence against women, support for rigid gender roles, tolerance of disrespect and aggression towards women, and limitations placed on women’s economic freedom and decision-making.

In addition to attitudes, risk factors for gender-based violence may include adverse childhood experiences, previous exposure to family violence, alcohol or drug abuse, mental health issues, poverty and unemployment.

Exposure to online content

There’s long been debate about the impacts of watching pornography, especially violent pornography. Recent Australian research found the average age of first exposure to porn is 13.2 years for boys and 14.1 years for girls.

In the United Kingdom, researchers found 1 in 8 titles on mainstream porn sites “describe acts that would fall under the most widely used policy definition of sexual violence”. But they also acknowledge the impacts of porn on sexist attitudes and behaviours remains unclear.

Some experts warn against blaming porn and suggest we should cast a wider net when examining problematic societal attitudes towards sex, gender and bodies. Discussions have turned to other parts of the internet, and in particular to the “manosphere”.

One recent study focused on Australian schools found a resurgence in boys’ sexist behaviours towards women teachers and girl peers. The authors argue “manfluencers”, especially Andrew Tate, are the key drivers of this.

The Centre for Countering Digital Hate identified more than 100 TikTok accounts that were frequently promoting Tate’s content in 2022. These accounts had some 5.7 million followers and 250 million views. Some of the content included statements along the lines of “women should take some degree of responsibility for rape” and “virgins are the only acceptable thing to marry”.

After this week’s meeting, Minister for Social Services Amanda Rishworth said platforms have a role to play in countering the spread of harmful content:

They have a fundamental responsibility to step up and do more. The content that digital platforms service through algorithms and systems, particularly to young Australians, has an impact in reinforcing harmful and outdated gender norms.

Anthony Albanese was joined by Minister for Social Services, Amanda Rishworth, Minister for Communications, Michelle Rowland and Commonwealth Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Commissioner, Micaela Cronin, in a press conference.
AP/Dean Lewins

But one major concern is platforms themselves are recommending this content to users. Algorithmic recommendation systems, such as YouTube’s “up next” feature and TikTok’s “for you” page, are integral to increasing engagement and maximising advertising revenue. Influencers such as Tate can generate millions of dollars in revenue from platforms. This may result in commercial interests being prioritised over responsibility and user safety.

We all have a role to play

Details about the government’s proposed counter-influencer program are yet to be revealed. Albanese said the campaign

[…] is intended to counter the corrosive influence of online content targeted at young adults that condones violence against women. It will raise awareness about a proliferation of misogynistic influencers and content, and encourage conversations within families about the damaging impact of the material.

There’s no quick fix to addressing the problem of gender-based violence, but respectful relationships education should be the priority. Our focus should be on implementing best-practice measures to prevent both online and offline violence from occurring in the first place.

Research shows school-based and university-based respectful relationship training can create lasting attitude and behavioural changes. Such training includes teaching people, especially men, to deal with romantic rejection.

One example is Victoria’s Respectful Relationships education program. This is a form of primary prevention that aims to embed cultures of respect and gender equality across schools.

Social media isn’t the cause of men’s violence against women. The manosphere and its extreme misogyny “didn’t manifest spontaneously”. It’s not new but a product of our society. It just happens there’s more visibility to these voices, which are now being amplified by technology.

It’s also not helpful to discuss the growth of Tate and his ilk without also considering the loneliness crisis, which young people – and particularly young men – face disproportionately.

To achieve change, we need to counter problematic attitudes and address gender inequality in everyday life.

We need better resources for parents and caregivers, and more research on the perpetrators and supporters of violence against women. Important discussions can start once we understand why young men with problematic attitudes became that way.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732 or visit the eSafety Commissioner’s website for helpful online safety resources. If in immediate danger, call 000. Läs mer…

With the passing of Paul Auster, who died of lung cancer on April 30 at the age of 77, the aesthetics of postmodernism retreated another significant step back into the past tense of history.

Auster became closely associated with postmodern style because of his highly self-conscious and self-reflexive fiction. In 2017, he wrote that he “wanted to turn everything inside out”.

Born into a Jewish family in New Jersey, Auster studied literature at Columbia University in New York, but then spent several years working as a translator in Paris. He was influenced not only by fellow Paris exile Samuel Beckett, but French exponents of the nouveau roman, or “new novel”, such as Alain Robbe-Grillet. Indeed, Auster’s own fiction, with its labyrinthine twists and turns, eventually became more popular in France than in the United States.

His first work, The Invention of Solitude, was published in the US in 1982. It was a memoir about his father, and the ironies involved in getting to know more about the circumstances of his father’s difficult life only after his death.

Auster’s career took off in the late 1980s, after the small Sun and Moon Press in Los Angeles persuaded Faber to reprint his New York Trilogy in 1987. This is still probably Auster’s best-known work. Cast in the form of a noirish detective story, like a pastiche of Raymond Chandler, it features a protagonist in New York trying to solve mysteries by deciphering the city’s maps.

But it also explicitly addresses larger questions of coherence. The detective here says “the world is in fragments” and “it’s my job to put it back together again”.

In New York Trilogy, chance and contingency are incorporated into an intertextual maze where all meaning is open to contradiction.

The detective, Quinn, imitates the minimalist characters in Beckett’s play Endgame by sleeping in a metal garbage bin, which provides shelter from the harsh New York elements. He also reorients time by training his body to wake and sleep in 15-minute segments, an alternating process that fits with his understanding of time and space as “relative terms”. If it is night in New York, he observes, “then surely the sun was shining somewhere else”.

Quinn’s conclusion – that “at any given moment, it was always both” – might be understood as a summation of Auster’s intellectual project.

Though his novels are generally narrated in the first person and often include oblique allusions to the author’s life, Auster explicitly denied they were autobiographical. He was interested in representing a multiplicity of selves, the chameleonic nature of human identity. He probes the possibilities of transposing any individual persona into a variety of alter egos.

Standing apart

Auster was well connected with writers based outside as well as inside the US. He was friendly with Australian exile Peter Carey, another longtime resident of New York, and in 2013 published a collection of letters exchanged with J.M. Coetzee, now a resident of Adelaide.

Auster noted in this collection that Coetzee had lived long enough in the US “to understand American life as well as I do, but at the same time you stand apart from this place … in ways that are not possible for me”.

Yet Auster, with his French affiliations and a wife of Norwegian ancestry (the novelist Siri Hustvedt), also succeeded in regarding American culture from an oblique angle.

Another friend of Auster’s, Salman Rushdie, suggested he had “a European sensibility brought to bear on entirely American subject matter”. This sense of creative estrangement haunts Auster’s fictions.

Paul Auster and Salman Rushdie, May 2009.
David Shankbone, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

In one of his letters to Coetzee, Auster noted Coetzee’s intellectual advantage of having been born in a “bilingual” country (South Africa), one that spoke both Afrikaans and English. Coetzee concurred, replying that he felt “a skeptical distance between myself and what I would loosely call the Anglo weltanschauung”.

The same is true of Auster, who lived on a cognitive border between the US and a state of displacement or exile. His sense of aloofness, of standing always at a cerebral distance, did not always endear him to American readers. The Atlantic Monthly, for example, complained of his “pseudo-intellectual writing”.

In fact, Auster’s work often addresses, albeit circuitously, various personal tragedies. The murder of his grandfather by his grandmother, for instance, was broached in The Invention of Solitude.

Auster later returned to this painful scene in what he called a “political pamphlet”, Bloodbath Nation (2023), where he provided the text to a book of photographs by his son-in-law, Spencer Ostrander. The book blamed the US’s notoriously lax gun laws for giving jilted partners the opportunity to turn their murderous fantasies into lethal reality.

In another grim sequence of events, Auster’s son Daniel was charged in 2022 with the manslaughter of his infant daughter and subsequently died from a drug overdose.

Such dark incidents surreptitiously changed the tone of Auster’s fiction.

His earlier narratives tended to play more lightly with the exuberance of magical realism, as in Mr. Vertigo (1994), where a boy of 14 upsets the laws of gravity by levitating himself. The novel is an example of Auster’s preoccupation with imaginative exploration and seeing things differently. New York Trilogy cites Marco Polo and Christopher Columbus, declaring boldly that “Americans have never lost their desire to discover new worlds”.

Auster’s later work inclined towards a more sombre, fatalistic mood. His narrators attempt to reconstitute their lives after various forms of wreckage and loss. His final novel, Baumgartner (2023), is centred around a septuagenarian writer who is attempting, meticulously but pessimistically, to reconstruct his life after the death of his wife in a swimming accident.

Paul Auster, wife Siri Hustvedt, Colum McCann and Gay Talese at an event to support Salman Rushdie.
Sarah Yenesel/AAP

Randomness, chaos and nihilism

Perhaps the American writer to whom Auster was most indebted is Edgar Allan Poe.

Quinn, the detective in New York Trilogy, writes mystery novels under the pseudonym of William Wilson, the name of the main character in a Poe short story. There are many references in the New York Trilogy to other Poe works, such as The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, in which the eponymous hero sets out for the Antarctic.

Like Auster, Poe enjoyed literary fame in France (where he was championed by the poet Charles Baudelaire) before being recognised as a serious writer in his native America. Auster also resembles Poe in the way he takes issue with the premises of the Transcendentalism that dominated American literature in the mid-19th century and is still influential today.

Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, both contemporaries (and enemies) of Poe, are cited plentifully throughout Auster’s work. But Auster’s “city of glass” (the title of the first story in his New York Trilogy) rotates Emerson’s “transparent eyeball” on its axis.

In The Poet (1844), Emerson writes: “As the eyes of Lyncaeus were said to see through the earth, so the poet turns the world to glass, and shows us all things in their right series and procession.”

Auster’s city of glass comprises not this kind of luminous transparency, but rather opacity, chance and contingency.

In an interview, Auster described the “seminal experience” of his life. He was 14 years old and at summer camp when he stood next to a boy who was killed by a lightning strike. The incident forever disrupted the sense of serendipitous “order” he grew up with in “postwar suburban New Jersey”.

He described himself as writing with a “very deep nihilism” informed by “the fact of our own mortality”, though this was countered to some extent by the “extraordinary happiness of feeling yourself alive”.

It is perhaps this sense of randomness and chaos, the perception that the world reverberates simply to what he called (in the title of a 1990 novel) “the music of chance”, that brought about Auster’s profound sense of alienation from the US reading public. He disliked the sentimental nostalgia for harmonious “closure” that he associated with mainstream America.

Though his writing is always lucid and affecting, it also incorporates a sense of the author “punning his world”, as he put it in his essay on the schizophrenic French writer Louis Wolfson. According to Auster, Wolfson looks out on his world “through a different lens” and translates it “into a different language”, so he “is able to see it with new eyes.”

Poe also experimented with the capacity of language to shift between alternative positions, reversing cause and effect. His sceptical materialism, at odds with the religious and philosophical idealism of Transcendentalists like Emerson and Thoreau, is one of the reasons why, even today, Poe is often regarded in the US as a renegade and marginal figure.

Auster’s oeuvre was broad and plentiful. It included a fine biography of the American writer Stephen Crane, several volumes of poetry, and the script for Smoke, a film about a Brooklyn cigarette-shop owner, which Auster also co-directed. He lived firmly within a literary and artistic milieu, both domestically and intellectually, and came to be closely associated with his home territory of Brooklyn.

But Auster also turned these artistic influences to productive ends. His work makes a virtue of indebtedness, drawing on the ideas and conceits of early writers, positioning itself carefully in relation to celebrated precursors. In this way, Auster made a genuine contribution to postmodern literature.

His overarching concern was always to question the philosophical as well as the nationalistic basis of self-styled individualism and originality. Challenging settled complacencies, his ludic, mordant and often very funny works of fiction exemplify the limitations as well as the capacities of the human imagination in an unredeemed world. Läs mer…

Hadeda ibises (Bostrychia hagedash) are one of the most familiar species of birds across sub-Saharan Africa. They are large, long-legged birds with long, thin beaks for probing invertebrates out of soil, and though they appear dull brown at a glance, they actually have beautiful iridescent feathers on their wings. But they are best known for their loud, laughing calls, which often ring out early in the morning, winning them the title of “African alarm clocks”.

They can be found across much of sub-Saharan Africa, with a range extending from the Cape all the way to Kenya, Ethiopia and Sudan. In South Africa, they were historically confined to north-eastern regions of the country. But in the past century they have experienced a significant range expansion, now inhabiting many a golf course and garden from Johannesburg to Cape Town.

The hadeda ibis, a common feature in South African gardens and farmlands, shows off its red beak and iridescent wing feathers.
Carla du Toit

Various ibises and shorebirds (like sandpipers) are able to use the “sixth sense” of remote-touch. This allows them to detect vibrations in soil and water, and use this information to locate invisible buried prey items. When they hunt for soft-bodied prey (such as earthworms), these vibrations result from the movement of prey in the soil. The birds can sense these vibrations using a special sensory organ in their beaks, called a bill-tip organ, which evolved during the time of the dinosaurs.

Recently published research from my PhD at the FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology shows that hadedas have this sixth sense too – something that had been assumed based on the anatomy of their beaks but never tested. In addition, my co-authors and I discovered an added twist to their sixth sense – their ability to use it is closely tied to the amount of water in the soil. This has likely played a role in hadedas’ range expansion, and has global implications for key groups of wading birds.

Sensing a different perspective: Carla du Toit (author) and one of the hadeda ibises that took part in the experiments.
Carla du Toit

Testing hadedas’ ‘sixth sense’

Based on the birds’ beak anatomy, my coauthors and I knew it was likely that hadedas used remote-touch while foraging. To confirm this, we used a series of sensory assays – a type of experiment testing how different sensory cues (such as sound or smell) affect how quickly an animal can detect a stimulus.

We tested hadedas housed in free-flight aviaries at a bird sanctuary. We presented them with trays filled with soil, in which we buried several worms. We knew the birds couldn’t see the buried worms, but we also needed to make sure they weren’t using hearing or scent to find them. We masked any sounds the worms made by playing white noise from a speaker next to the trays. To ensure the hadedas couldn’t smell the worms, we mixed crushed worms into the soil.

Neither of these affected how quickly hadedas found their prey. So we concluded that they weren’t using hearing or scent to locate the worms in our experiments.

A hadeda ibis taking part in a foraging experiment: searching for buried worms in a tray filled with soil.
Carla du Toit

To test whether hadedas were able to use remote-touch, we gave them either live worms (which moved around and produced vibrations) or dead worms (which did not produce vibrations). The birds were able to find the moving worms significantly faster than the dead ones, indicating that they are able to sense vibrations, and use them to find prey in the absence of all other sensory information.

Why soil water matters for remote-touch

The mechanical waves (vibrations) that the birds sense are transmitted better in liquids than in gases, so we predicted that hadedas would be more successful at detecting vibrations (and finding prey) in wetter substrates. Once we had established that hadedas could use remote-touch, we tested how adding different amounts of water to the soil affected how quickly they located their prey, as this could be a factor that affects where they are able to forage.

When they were using remote-touch, the birds located the worms significantly faster in wetter soils, supporting our prediction. If they were given dead worms (no vibrations), adding water to the soil had no effect on their prey capture rate, so it wasn’t simply because the wetter soils were easier to dig around in. If the soil was too dry, hadedas lost their ability to sense living worms faster than dead ones. This indicates that they could not use remote-touch in dry soils, and were instead having to rely on random probing to find prey.

In the wild, this would mean taking twice as long to find the same amount of prey, or ending the day with less than half the amount of prey as they would have if they could use remote-touch.

The new study shows hadeda ibises rely on water for more than just drinking to survive.
Carla du Toit

Effects of remote-touch and soil water on hadedas

Our findings shed new light on the range expansion of hadedas in South Africa. Previous studies have shown that their range expansion matches with increased areas of artificial irrigation – particularly around farms and large suburban areas. Our research suggests that one of the driving factors is that hadedas need soil with enough water to be able to sense their prey. This could in part explain why they aren’t found in more arid areas of the country.

Their dependence on moist soil could have significant effects on their population in periods of prolonged drought. Dry soil would mean that birds like hadedas would struggle to find prey. The predicted trends in sub-Saharan Africa indicate that droughts and heatwaves will become more frequent and last longer as a result of climate change. Thus, even common garden birds like hadedas may be threatened in decades to come.

The bigger picture: a global warning?

Although hadedas need water in soils to use remote-touch, they actually tend to forage in drier soils than most other remote-touch foraging bird species. Their bill-tip organ anatomy indicates hadedas have more sensitive bill-tip organs than ibises that forage in wetter substrates.

Coupled with our new findings, this likely means that other remote-touch probing birds would be even more vulnerable to decreases in substrate saturation. Several species, such as the spoon-billed sandpiper, are already critically endangered.

Our results therefore suggest that it’s important to consider birds’ sensory requirements from their habitats, particularly regarding levels of water in the substrates waders forage in.

Other remote-touch foraging birds likely rely on soil water to find prey, such as the critically endangered spoon-billed sandpiper (Calidris pygmaea).
Daniel Field

So, while the hadedas’ raucous calls may be annoying at times, it’s a sombre thought that Africans could lose the sound of our natural alarm clocks. We hope that our study will highlight this overlooked aspect of wading birds’ ecology, and that we don’t oversleep this particular alarm call from nature. Läs mer…