The Introduction is a chapter-length outline of the of the book which does more than simply summarise. Though not exhaustive, it includes both explanation and discussion of the historical context of Brexit and Brexitspeak, combined with a description of the linguistic tools of analysis. The starting point is that without language politics could not happen, so it is essential to understand how language works in general and how it is strategically deployed by politicians. In this chapter populism is discussed as an unwritten ideology best characterised by its demagogic appeal to an idea of ‘the people’ within a nationalist notion of ‘the British people’, at the same time promoting a friend-foe antithesis, stirring up emotion and avoiding reasoned argument. Demagoguery is a little used term in political science but highly relevant to the present state of democracy. Indeed, demagoguery exploits and undermines democracy. It is both an effect and a cause of post-truth politics, where truthfulness and facts are overridden. The final section takes a closer look at the fundamentals of language and language use that are at issue in examining the discourse of Brexit.

Sociology is a science concerning itself with the interpretive understanding of social action and thereby with a causal explanation of its course and consequences. Empirically, a key goal is to find relations between variables. This is often done using naturally occurring data, survey data, or in-depth interviews. With such data, the challenge is to establish whether a relation between variables is causal or merely a correlation. One approach is to address the causality issue by applying proper statistical or econometric techniques, which is possible under certain conditions for some research questions. Alternatively, one can generate new data with experimental control in a laboratory or the field. It is precisely through this control via randomization and the manipulation of the causal factors of interest that the experimental method ensures – with a high degree of confidence – tests of causal explanations. In this chapter, the canonical approach to causality in randomized experiments (the Neyman–Rubin causal model) is first introduced. This model formalizes the idea of causality using the "potential outcomes" or "counterfactual" approach. The chapter then discusses the limits of the counterfactual approach and the key role of theory in establishing causal explanations in experimental sociology.

In the introduction, the field of experimental sociology is outlined and the core concepts of manipulation and control, as well as two crucial conditions of control, are introduced. The random allocation of participants to the treatment and the control group ensures that exogenous factors are distributed equally across these groups, which allows to evaluate the effect of the manipulated condition. Incentivization helps operationalizing behavioral assumptions into the experimental condition. The chapter then briefly elaborates on the topics of the following chapters.

Laboratory experiments are the type of study that most people have in mind when talking about experiments. In this chapter, we first discuss the strengths of laboratory experiments, which offer the highest degree of experimental control as compared to other types of experiments. Single factors can be manipulated according to the requirements of theories under highly controlled conditions. As such, laboratory experiments are well-placed to test theories. We then introduce a sociological laboratory experiment as a leading example, which we use as a reference for a discussion of several principles of laboratory research. Furthermore, we discuss a second goal of laboratory experiments, which is the establishment of empirical regularities in situations where theory does not provide sufficient guidance for deriving behavioral expectations. The chapter concludes with a short discussion of caveats for the analysis of sociological data generated in laboratory experiments.

Should there be a right not to be manipulated? What kind of right? On Kantian grounds, manipulation, lies, and paternalistic coercion are moral wrongs, and for similar reasons; they deprive people of agency, insult their dignity, and fail to respect personal autonomy. On welfarist grounds, manipulation, lies, and paternalistic coercion share a different characteristic; they displace the choices of those whose lives are directly at stake, and who are likely to have epistemic advantages, with the choices of outsiders, who are likely to lack critical information. Kantians and welfarists should be prepared to endorse a (moral) right not to be manipulated, though on very different grounds. The moral prohibition on manipulation, like the moral prohibition on lies, should run against officials and regulators, not only against private institutions. At the same time, the creation of a legal right not to be manipulated raises hard questions, in part because of definitional challenges; there is a serious risk of vagueness and a serious risk of overbreadth. (Lies, as such, are not against the law, and the same is true of unkindness, inconsiderateness, and even cruelty.) With welfarist considerations in mind, it is probably best to start by prohibiting particular practices, while emphasizing that they are forms of manipulation and may not count as fraud. The basic goal should be to build on the claim that in certain cases, manipulation is a form of theft; the law should forbid theft, whether it occurs through force, lies, or manipulation. Some manipulators are thieves.

It should not surprise us if voters are as much persuaded by the charisma of a politician’s personal performance as by their policies. Neither should it surprise us that actors have sometimes successfully made the move from showbiz to the business of government. President Reagan and Governor Schwarzenegger are well-known examples. Sometimes the substance exceeds the show, as it does in the case of the actor Volodymyr Zelensky who went on to become the celebrated wartime president of Ukraine. With other performers, a spectacular show might make up for lesser substance. Donald Trump has been a major beneficiary of voters’ susceptibility to persuasive political performance. What Donald Trump lacks in political education he has made up for through practical experience in the entertainment industry, and especially through his role as host of the popular programme The Apprentice. This chapter examines the arts of political performance including, but not exclusively, in relation to the ways in which the speech, gesture, and costume of Donald Trump, exploit the Making Sense.

The 1987 Constitution of Zimbabwe provided for an executive presidency elected directly by the people every six years, starting from 1990. In the 1996 presidential race, the full-blown severe impact of ESAP was destroying peoples’ lives across Zimbabwe. Electoral manipulation was utilised excessively and perpetrated blatantly, even when manipulating in this manner was not essential to winning. The 1996 election was marked by voter apathy, with only 32 per cent of the electorate participating. The main opposition parties remained moribund under an un-inspiring leadership of questionable figures like Abel Muzorewa, Ndabaningi Sithole and Edgar Tekere, and they did not consciously broaden their appeal to a wider social base. They stood little chance of dislodging the Zanu PF party from power. Civil society mobilised citizens around civic rights, human rights, and economic and women’s issues. The more prominent ones amongst them included the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), Zimbabwe Human Rights Organisation (Zimrights), the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP), the Women’s Action Group (WAG) and the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA). It was eloquent testimony to their growing strength and national credibility that some of them were able to organise a series of general strikes around both economic and political grievances.

Chapter 3 explores survivors’ constructions of identity during and post enslavement. It is argued that the denial of personhood in slavery causes a destruction of identity, but that the giving of narrative plays a vital role in the reconstruction of identity. The chapter surveys the ways in which slavery strips individuals of their cultural, political and/or social identity leading to the formation of multiple identities in survival. Divorced from their past while at the same time defined by it, it reveals the way survivors identify as the child, the parent, the sibling, the survivor, the hero, the victim, and as activist. The chapter moves on to show that the giving of narrative is one means through which survivors can explore and re-sculpt their inner landscape and their external presence, reduce their feelings of shame, isolation and spectralisation, while at the same time acknowledging these multiple identities for themselves and to the audience.

According to the argument from gratuitous evil, if God were to exist, then gratuitous evil wouldn’t; but gratuitous evil does exist, so God doesn’t. We can evaluate different views of divine providence with respect to the resources they are able to bring to bear when encountering this argument. By these lights, theological determinism is often seen as especially problematic: the determinist is seen as having an impoverished set of resources to draw from in her attempts to respond to the argument from gratuitous evil. In particular, there is an important resource – an appeal to free will – that many have claimed is unavailable to the determinist. I argue that the determinist does not in fact suffer from this particular resource deficit. I do so by examining some recent work on determinist responses to the problem of evil, analyzing some of the ways in which they fall short, and proposing a new response that is informed by those shortcomings. This new response is built on an appeal to the reactive attitudes.

Emerging neurotechnology offers increasingly individualised brain information, enabling researchers to identify mental states and content. When accurate and valid, these brain-reading technologies also provide data that could be useful in criminal legal procedures, such as memory detection with EEG and the prediction of recidivism with fMRI. Yet, unlike in medicine, individuals involved in criminal cases will often be reluctant to undergo brain-reading procedures. This raises the question of whether coercive brain-reading could be permissible in criminal law. Coercive Brain-Reading in Criminal Justice examines this question in view of European human rights: the prohibition of ill treatment, the right to privacy, freedom of thought, freedom of expression, and the privilege against self-incrimination. The book argues that, at present, the established framework of human rights does not exclude coercive brain-reading. It does, however, delimit the permissible use of forensic brain-reading without valid consent. This cautionary, cutting-edge book lays a crucial foundation for understanding the future of criminal legal proceedings in a world of ever-advancing neurotechnology.

Chapter 22 offers an overview of the field focusing on both established and emerging modalities, from traditional transfer modes such as dubbing, subtitling and voice-over, to modes that provide accessibility for people with sensory impairment, such as subtitling for the deaf and hard-of-hearing, audio description, live-subtitling and sign language. Non-professional translation practices such as fansubbing, fandubbing and film remaking are also discussed. For each mode, the chapter illustrates the associated medium-specific constraints and creative possibilities, highlighting the power of audiovisuals to contribute to meaning in ways that lend themselves to manipulation during the translation process.

Chapter 10 dissects Kevin Spacey’s YouTube video posted on Christmas eve in 2018 to defend himself against sexual assault accusations. It shows how dangerous the second-person pronoun can be when it is used to numb ‘cognitive vigilance’ all the more so as the actor fakes to embody his House of Cards character (Netflix 2013–2018) and charmingly threaten the audience into trusting him by virtue of their past history. Spacey asserts he knows what his audience wants: they want him back. In the YouTube clip, the second-person pronoun loses its ethical bond-creating force, turning instead the viewer into a hostage to the character/actor’s perception. This chapter offers a fine-grained analysis of the video, highlighting where Spacey breaks the fictional contract by offering a show outside the show that is authorised by no ‘collective sender’, authoring himself so to speak and forcing the audience to adopt a ‘third consciousness’ as both fans and citizens. The doubly deictic ‘I’ he uses, ambiguously superimposing references to himself as a fictional character (Frank Underwood in the political series) and as a citizen (in the real world) indeed problematises response from the viewers.

This chapter discusses legal-ethical challenges posed by the emergence of emotional artificial intelligence (AI) and its manipulative capabilities. The focus lies on the European legal framework and on the use of emotional AI for commercial business-to-consumer purposes, although some observations are also valid for the public sector, or in the context of political micro-targeting or fake news. On the basis of a literature review, the chapter addresses privacy and data protection concerns, challenges to individual autonomy and human dignity as overarching values. It also presents a number of responses, specifically those suggesting the introduction of new (constitutional) rights to mitigate the potential negative effects of such developments and it provides the foundation for a future research agenda in that direction.