by Katya Beisel

November may not have been as busy for us as October was, but it was just as exciting.

Aside from our regular weekly blog posts, we organized our first virtual press conference on Nov. 10. Our first attempt at livestreaming panel discussions of CARP’s research initiatives and insights was a success, and we plan to organize more such broadcasts in the future so that we can continue to collaborate and engage with our fellow scholars,  interested media and industry practitioners.

Most recently on our blog, Sergei Samoilenko examined the role of late-night comedy hosts as modern jesters in an international political climate defined by institutional identity crises and low public trust, as well as the consequences of increasing public reliance on these modern jesters as news sources in Like a Jester, Like a Joker: Comedians as The Fourth Estate in a Low-Trust Society.

Jennifer Keohane extended her earlier analysis of gun violence hypocrisy charges in Gun Control Debate Fails to Rage On, where she examines re-framing of mass shootings from a gun control or legislative issue to a mental health phenomenon.

Earlier this month in The Ungodly Ideas of Spinoza, Martijn Icks delivered another historical case study of character assassination, this time focusing on accusations of atheistic, agnostic, or unchristian beliefs as a historically powerful and prevalent character assassination tactic in Western society.

Finally, Eric Shiraev started us off this month with The Character Assassination Checklist, which provides a framework to categorize, file and aid in the study of new and old character attacks and assassination attempts.