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Newspaper Reports (newspaper + report)
Selected AbstractsAre News Reports of Suicide Contagious?JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION, Issue 2 2006A Stringent Test in Six U.S. Cities Past evidence of suicidal contagion from news reports in the United States is based largely on national data prior to 1980 using proxies for suicide stories rather than local news sources. Our research examined more proximal effects of suicide news reporting for 4 months in 1993 in 6 U.S. cities controlling for a wide range of alternative sources of media and interpersonal influence. In addition, predictions for the effect based on suicide contagion theories were examined for 3 age groups (15,25, 25,44, and older than 44). Local television news was associated with increased incidence of deaths by suicide among persons younger than 25 years. Newspaper reports were associated with suicide deaths for both young persons and persons older than 44 years. An unexpected protective effect of television news reports was observed in the 25,44 age range; nevertheless, news reporting was associated with an aggregate increase in suicide deaths. The results support theories of media contagion but also suggest that media depiction can inhibit suicide among some audience members. [source] "I asked my parents why a wall was so important": Teaching about the GDR and Post-Reunification GermanyDIE UNTERRICHTSPRAXIS/TEACHING GERMAN, Issue 2 2008Bernhard Streitwieser Fifteen years after the ,peaceful revolutions' brought about the collapse of communism and the reunification of East and West Germany, a heated debate rages over the legacy of communism and the continuing impact of 1989. This paper describes a new course that explores the contentious issues in this debate through the innovative use of the course management system Blackboard. The paper describes how using Internet technology (video and audio links to archival and documentary footage, historic recordings, web linked academic articles, newspaper reports, internet sites, on-line quizzes and virtual discussions) has brought today's undergraduates into the current debate and engaged them technologically in ways that deviate from more traditional teaching models. Such a course is not as prevalent as one would expect, least of all in undergraduate curricula in Germany and the United States. [source] Analysis of historical landslide time series in the Emilia-Romagna region, northern ItalyEARTH SURFACE PROCESSES AND LANDFORMS, Issue 10 2010Mauro Rossi Abstract A catalogue of historical landslides, 1951,2002, for three provinces in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy is presented and its statistical properties studied. The catalogue consists of 2255 reported landslides and is based on historical archives and chronicles. We use two measures for the intensity of landsliding over time: (i) the number of reported landslides in a day (DL) and (ii) the number of reported landslides in an event (Sevent), where an event is one or more consecutive days with landsliding. From 1951,2002 in our study area there were 1057 days with 1 , DL ,?45 landslides per day, and 596 events with 1 , Sevent , 129 landslides per event. In the first set of analyses, we find that the probability density of landslide intensities in the time series are power-law distributed over at least two-orders of magnitude, with exponent of about ,2·0. Although our data is a proxy for landsliding built from newspaper reports, it is the first tentative evidence that the frequency-size of triggered landslide events over time (not just the landslides in a given triggered event), like earthquakes, scale as a power-law or other heavy-tailed distributions. If confirmed, this could have important implications for risk assessment and erosion modelling in a given area. In our second set of analyses, we find that for short antecedent rainfall periods, the minimum amount of rainfall necessary to trigger landslides varies considerably with the intensity of the landsliding (DL and Sevent); whereas for long antecedent periods the magnitude is largely independent of the cumulative amount of rainfall, and the largest values of landslide intensity are always preceded by abundant rainfall. Further, the analysis of the rainfall trend suggests that the trigger of landslides in the study area is related to seasonal rainfall. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] ,Zum Ruhme Englands': The ,Vorgeschichte' of the Nazi Film TitanicGERMAN LIFE AND LETTERS, Issue 2 2007Gerwin Strobl ABSTRACT This article examines the background to the Nazi film ,Titanic'. Commissioned by the Propaganda Ministry in 1940, at the height of war with Britain, the film was able to draw on extensive German engagement with the fate of the ,R.M.S. Titanic', stretching back to the original newspaper reports of April 1912. The sinking of the ,Titanic' had made a deeper impression in Germany than in other European countries, perhaps because a substantial number of the victims were in fact German or had ties with Germany. The extent of the emotional engagement showed not only in the tone of the newspaper reporting but in the sheer range of tributes that appeared in Germany: newspapers apart, there were films, paintings, poems, novels, lectures or even children's toys. The enduring interest in the ,Titanic' throughout the 1920s and 30s may explain the propagandists' decision to exploit the topic for Nazi purposes. Widespread German unease about the apparent preference given to first-class passengers during the rescue operation and rumours of financial improprieties surrounding the owners of the ,Titanic' made the topic especially attractive to the Nazis. Ultimately, however, the favourable German perceptions of ,heroic British seamanship' undermined the Nazi film and led Goebbels to restrict its release. [source] Denying equality: an analysis of arguments against lowering the age of consent for sex between menJOURNAL OF COMMUNITY & APPLIED SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 3 2002Sonja J. Ellis Abstract This paper takes a human rights approach to lesbian and gay oppression and critically explores the arguments used to oppose equality in debates about the age of consent for sex between men. A thematic analysis of Hansard and newspaper reports produced in Britain during the 1990s showed that opponents of a proposal to equalize the age of consent countered with three key arguments: (1) principles of right and wrong take precedence over equality; (2) principles of democracy take precedence over equality; (3) principles of care and protection take precedence over equality. Two additional arguments (concerning the health risks of anal intercourse and escalating demands for gay rights) are also outlined. Our findings are discussed with reference to debates on other lesbian and gay rights issues and we consider the ways in which these arguments might best be resisted. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Media Surveillance of Elder Sexual Abuse CasesJOURNAL OF FORENSIC NURSING, Issue 3 2006Leonard I. Morgenbesser Print media is a source of data for sensitive and invisible crimes such as elder sexual abuse. For this study, newspaper reports were searched over 2 years for articles about elder sexual abuse. After 112 cases of elder sexual abuse were identified, the information was used to develop a database for descriptive analysis. [source] Metaphors we discriminate by: Naturalized themes in Austrian newspaper articles about asylum seekersJOURNAL OF SOCIOLINGUISTICS, Issue 3 2001Elisabeth El Refaie With specific reference to the use of metaphor in Austrian newspaper reports on the arrival of Kurdish asylum seekers in Italy in January 1998, this study suggests ways in which cognitive metaphor theory can be given a stronger socio-political dimension. The dominant metaphors portray the asylum seekers as water, as criminals, or as an invading army. The repeated use of these themes in relatively fixed lexical and syntactic forms and across all the newspapers seems to indicate that they have become accepted as the ,natural' way of describing the situation. It will be argued that the ,naturalization' of particular metaphors can contribute to a blurring of the boundaries between the literal and the non-literal. [source] Nursing and the issue of ,party' in the Church of England: the case of the Lichfield Diocesan Nursing AssociationNURSING INQUIRY, Issue 2 2009Stuart WildmanArticle first published online: 12 MAY 200 In recent years, there has been increased interest in the role of religion in the reform of nursing during the mid-nineteenth century. However, less is known about how ,party' disputes between evangelicals and followers of the ,Oxford Movement' may have affected nursing. This study examines a proposal to create a nursing association for the Diocese of Lichfield in 1864, which leads to a public dispute concerning the ,ecclesiastical' nature of the organisation. Leading evangelicals in Derby campaigned against the idea of nurses belonging to a ,sisterhood'. This resulted in two rival organisations being created in 1865. This paper reports upon the nature and origins of the dispute within the diocese, unsuccessful attempts to draw Florence Nightingale into the dispute and the relative success of the two institutions. The results of this research indicate that the importance of context and of place must be recognised when studying the history of nursing. This research is based mainly, upon newspaper reports, correspondence and miscellaneous sources, including biographies as there are few surviving records from the two organisations under scrutiny. [source] Front and Back Covers, Volume 22, Number 4.ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY, Issue 4 2006August 200 Front and back cover caption, volume 22 issue 4 Front cover Destruction and fertility meet in this photograph of a swidden ('slash and burn') field cultivated by the Rmeet in highland Laos, illustrating Guido Sprenger's article in this issue. After the secondary forest has been burned from the plots, fresh rice stalks grow between charred stumps during the weeding season in June. A field hut, built each year on the newly cleared plot, can be seen in the background. The author's main informant, one of Takheung's village elders, waits for the author to catch up on the slippery paths. Although denigrated as unsustainable by governments and development agencies worldwide, and hotly debated by agricultural experts and policy-makers, swidden agriculture persists in mountainous areas where wet rice cultivation is difficult. Swiddening involves much more than mere subsistence, and anthropologists have been concerned for many decades with questions of its sustainability, as it forms a central focus for a way of life that integrates all aspects of community life, from economy to cosmology and the reproduction of social relations, including families and marriage ties, ritual and exchange, relations between humans and spirits and also identity. Guido Sprenger seeks to remind those with the power to make decisions over swidden agriculture of the importance of being well informed, as their decisions may radically influence an entire way of life. Back cover Islamic Charities Islamic charities are found all over the world and are mostly uncontroversial. Our back cover shows an appeal, with detachable banker's order form, for the orphan programme of the Beit Al-Khair ('house of charity') Society, a domestic charity in the United Arab Emirates launched in 1989. Almost every Islamic charity operates an orphan programme. Islamic charities have been subjected to close scrutiny, especially by the US Treasury, since 9/11, and are the subject of two books recently published by the university presses of Yale (by Matthew Levitt) and Cambridge (by J. Millard Burr and Robert O. Collins), which belong to the genre of counter-terrorism studies. Such studies emulate the methods of police investigators and financial regulators, making ample use of intelligence websites and newspaper reports and seeking to identify associative networks of culpable individuals and entities. The drawback of these studies is that they do scant justice to the positive aspects of Islamic charities and often attribute guilt by association, since charities blacklisted by the US Treasury have only limited rights of defence and appeal, though very few have been successfully prosecuted. Scrupulous social research, by contrast, tries to understand the words and deeds of charities and charity workers in the widest context. The social research published so far on Islamic charities has focused on their political aspects, including Western-Islamic relations, divisions among Muslims, and connections with opposition movements. In this issue of ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY Jonathan Benthall, who has been studying Islamic charities for 13 years, turns his attention to analysing the special opportunities that international Islamic charities can take advantage of in majority Muslim countries. His article outlines the work of the British-based Islamic Relief in the north of Mali, one of the world's poorest countries, with the implicit suggestion that more in-depth residential ethnographic fieldwork in such settings could yield valuable insights. [source] What a difference a year makes: How immediate and anniversary media reports influence judgements about earthquakesASIAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 3 2002Jodie Cowan Research suggests that the content of newspaper and television reports about natural disasters, such as earthquakes, affects people's fatalistic judgements about these disasters. The present paper contains two studies, Study 1 and Study 2. Study 1 examined features in newspaper reports written at two time points following two major earthquakes: immediately after the earthquakes and a year following the earthquakes. These reports showed several features about the earthquakes: in reports immediately after the earthquakes, the reports were concerned about earthquake agency and general damage; and in reports written a year following the earthquakes, the reports portrayed specific damage and lessons. Study 2 examined the influence of these features on students' (n = 160) estimates of the extent of damage, attributions for damage and judgements of the preventability of the damage. With excerpts presenting specific damage and lessons, participants gave lower estimates of damage, judged damage to be more preventable and attributed the damage more to building design than with earthquake agency and general damage descriptions of the same earthquakes. These findings have clear implications for the way the media and civic education programs present information on earthquakes and other disasters. [source] | ||||||||||||||||