Popular Media (popular + media)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Mr Drage, Mr Everyman, and the creation of a mass market for domestic furniture in interwar Britain1

ECONOMIC HISTORY REVIEW, Issue 4 2009
PETER SCOTT
This article examines strategies used by durable goods retailers to create a mass market in interwar Britain, via a case study of domestic furniture. Interwar demand for new furniture witnessed particularly rapid growth,mainly owing to the extension of the market to lower-income groups. A number of innovative national retailers developed liberal hire purchase (HP) facilities in order to bring furniture within the economic reach of these groups, while sophisticated national advertising campaigns were used both to legitimize the buying of furniture on HP and to project the idea that furnishing by this means was key to achieving the type of aspirational lifestyles being promulgated in the popular media. [source]


Political Consequences of the New Inequality

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 3 2001
Craig N. Murphy
This article proposes agendas for teaching and research about shifting global patterns of equality and inequality, a very different agenda than was appropriate when the last undergraduate professor was president of ISA, almost forty years ago. Today, unlike in that Cold War world, formal democracy is flourishing, state power is diminishing, gender inequality has diminished, and income inequality has risen. Consequences of these new patterns that demand our attention as teachers and scholars include: (1) more frequent protracted social conflicts, (2) a newly politicized sphere of international public health, (3) the new global gender politics, (4) the new global politics of the super-rich, and (5) the new politics and ethics of the world's privileged, a group that includes most ISA members and most of our students. Our responsibilities as teachers have grown, in part, because popular media present a decreasingly coherent picture of each of these patterns; and that incoherence, itself, may help sustain global inequalities. [source]


Role of the Clinical Breast Examination in Breast Cancer Screening

JOURNAL OF AMERICAN GERIATRICS SOCIETY, Issue 7 2001
Does This Patient Have Breast Cancer?
QUESTION: The authors, in an article for the JAMA section on the rational clinical examination, consider the evidence on whether and how to use clinical breast examination as a cancer screening technique. BACKGROUND: Breast cancer is a common disease, particularly in older women. The authors note that by age 70 the annual incidence of breast cancer is one in 200 women. Breast cancer survival is strongly influenced by the stage of the disease at the time of diagnosis. As a result, it is important to consider how best to screen for this disease. In recent years there has been considerable attention in the clinical literature and in the popular media paid to the screening strategies of breast self-examination and of screening mammography, but somewhat less to the potential role of the breast examination by the healthcare provider. In actual clinical practice, the same woman may be the recipient of any, none, or all of these screening modalities. The best way to combine these screening strategies, particularly in the case of the older woman, remains a subject of some uncertainty and controversy. DATA SOURCES: Data were obtained from a MEDLINE search of the English-language literature for 1966 through 1997 and additional articles as identified by the authors. STUDY SELECTION CRITERIA: In their evaluation of the effectiveness of clinical breast examination, the authors included both controlled trials and case-controlled studies in which clinical breast examination was used as a component of the screening. Study of breast examination technique considered both clinical studies and studies using silicone breast models. DATA EXTRACTION: The combined data from the trials included information on approximately 200,000 women who received a breast cancer screening intervention (mammography and/or clinical breast examination). However, none of the studies made the direct comparison of a group receiving clinical breast examination as a sole intervention with a control group that did not receive any screening. Data on the utility of clinical breast examination were partially derived from studies where that screening modality was used in combination with mammography. MAIN RESULTS: A number of trials of cancer screening have demonstrated a reduction in mortality from the use of mammography and clinical breast examination as combined screening strategies compared with no screening, with the inference that the reduction in mortality comes from the earlier detection of breast cancer. The percentage of the detected cancers that are detected in the trials by clinical breast examination despite having been missed on mammography varies across the trials from a low of 3% of the detected cancers to a high of 45%. It is speculative whether the marginal contribution of clinical breast examination to the mortality reduction in these screening trials corresponds to the percentage of cancers detected by clinical breast examination alone. In most of the clinical trials, the technique of breast examination reportedly was not well described. It is unclear therefore how much the technique of breast examination used varied within and among the clinical trials. Data from studies using examinations of breast models made of silicone demonstrated that test performance accuracy correlated with a lengthier breast examination, better breast examination technique, and perhaps with examiner experience. The report includes data from six comparator studies and from two demonstration projects. Of the six comparator studies, four compared a screened population with an unscreened population and two compared different intensities of screening strategies. None of the eight clinical trials was directed to a geriatric population and in fact older women were excluded by upper age entry criteria from the six comparator studies. (The upper age limit for study entry in the six comparator studies varied from 49 to 64.) CONCLUSION: The authors drew on the pooled results of these eight studies to conclude that clinical breast examination has a sensitivity of 54% (95% confidence interval, 48.3,59.8) and a specificity of 94% (95% confidence interval, 90.2,96.9). The authors conclude that screening clinical breast examination should be done for women age older than 40. [source]


Brains and brands: developing mutually informative research in neuroscience and marketing

JOURNAL OF CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR, Issue 4-5 2008
Tyler K. Perrachione
Advances in neuroimaging technology have led to an explosion in the number of studies investigating the living human brain, and thereby our understanding of its structure and function. With the proliferation of dazzling images from brain scans in both scientific and popular media, researchers from other fields in the social and behavioral sciences have naturally become interested in the application of neuroimaging to their own research. Commercial enterprises have long been interested in the prospects of literally "getting inside the heads" of customers and partners, with a variety of goals in mind. Here we consider the ways in which scholars of consumer behavior may draw upon neuroscientific advances to inform their own research. We describe the motivation of neuroscientific inquiry from the point of view of neuroscientists, including an introduction to the technologies and methodologies available; correspondingly, we consider major questions in consumer behavior that are likely to be of interest to neuroscientists and why. Recent key discoveries in neuroscience are presented which will likely have a direct impact on the development of a neuromarketing subdiscipline and for neuroimaging as a marketing research technique. We discuss where and how neuroscience methodologies may reasonably be added to the research inventory of marketers. In sum, we aim to show not only that a neuromarketing subdiscipline may fruitfully contribute to our understanding of the biological bases of human behavior, but also that developing this as a productive research field will rest largely in framing marketing research questions in the brain-centric mindset of neuroscientists. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Using entertainment media to inform student affairs teaching and practice related to leadership

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR STUDENT SERVICES, Issue 108 2004
Timothy R. McMahon
This chapter provides a simple and effective model for using film, television and other popular media in student leadership development activities. [source]


Sexual Behavior in China: Trends and Comparisons

POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW, Issue 4 2007
William L. Parish
Dramatic political, economic, and social changes in China over the past several decades have been accompanied by much discussion in popular media and among academics of a fundamental transformation in Chinese sexual behavior. Several studies have examined current Chinese sexual behavior but have been limited to particular provinces or cities and have been based on non-random samples. The potential threat of a generalized HIV epidemic in China highlights the dearth of population-based information on current patterns of sexual behavior that could help design better intervention strategies and prevent misguided ones. This article uses data from the first national probability survey of adult sexual behavior in China completed during 1999,2000, along with a historical and literature review, to address three key questions: 1) Has there been a revolution in sexual behavior in China? 2) Is China unique compared to other countries in these transformations? 3) What are the implications of these findings for China's risk of a generalized HIV epidemic? [source]


Appropriating Identity or Cultivating Capital?

ANTHROPOLOGY OF WORK REVIEW, Issue 1 2005
Global English in Offshoring Service Industries
Abstract In the popular media, much has been made of the adoption of American identities by Indian nationals working in call centers in urban India. In the transactions between call center workers in India and their American customers, language is often the only conveyor of cultural identity. The implications of this linguistic globalization are drawn out by examining the historical trajectory of the politics of global English in India. I argue that the indigenization of English that has occurred in India represents a shift in the political and cultural contestation over language from the global to the local, so that today the politics of language in India primarily involve contestation between elites and subalterns within India rather than between Indians and a global power. I conclude that the appropriation of American identities by Indian call center workers is mainly for the purpose of cultivating linguistic capital within the Indian context, and does not entail a loss of authenticity or reveal cultural insecurity. More likely, the American customers and media commentators who worry about being duped by Indians faking American accents are the ones who are culturally insecure. [source]


Public perceptions of biotechnology

BIOTECHNOLOGY JOURNAL, Issue 9 2007
Alan McHughen Dr.
Abstract The very term ,Biotechnology' elicits a range of emotions, from wonder and awe to downright fear and hostility. This is especially true among non-scientists, particularly in respect of agricultural and food biotechnology. These emotions indicate just how poorly understood agricultural biotechnology is and the need for accurate, dispassionate information in the public sphere to allow a rational public debate on the actual, as opposed to the perceived, risks and benefits of agricultural biotechnology. This review considers first the current state of public knowledge on agricultural biotechnology, and then explores some of the popular misperceptions and logical inconsistencies in both Europe and North America. I then consider the problem of widespread scientific illiteracy, and the role of the popular media in instilling and perpetuating misperceptions. The impact of inappropriate efforts to provide ,balance' in a news story, and of belief systems and faith also impinges on public scientific illiteracy. Getting away from the abstract, we explore a more concrete example of the contrasting approach to agricultural biotechnology adoption between Europe and North America, in considering divergent approaches to enabling coexistence in farming practices. I then question who benefits from agricultural biotechnology. Is it only the big companies, or is it society at large , and the environment-also deriving some benefit? Finally, a crucial aspect in such a technologically complex issue, ordinary and intelligent non-scientifically trained consumers cannot be expected to learn the intricacies of the technology to enable a personal choice to support or reject biotechnology products. The only reasonable and pragmatic alternative is to place trust in someone to provide honest advice. But who, working in the public interest, is best suited to provide informed and accessible, but objective, advice to wary consumers? [source]


Expectations and experience of labial reduction: a qualitative study

BJOG : AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF OBSTETRICS & GYNAECOLOGY, Issue 12 2007
R Bramwell
Objective, To understand women's reasons for undergoing labial reduction surgery, their expectations and experiences. Design, A retrospective qualitative study. Setting, British National Health Service Hospital. Sample, Six women who had experienced surgery for labial reduction. Method, Qualitative study using semi-structured interviews. Results, Results relating to ,Normality and defect', ,Sex lives' and ,The process of accessing surgery' are presented in this study. The women had seen their presurgery genital appearance as ,defective' and sought a ,normal' genital appearance. They thought that their presurgery genital appearance impacted on their sex lives, but their expectations of the effects of surgery on their sex lives were not all fulfilled. Information about labial surgery came from both the popular media and the health services. An emphasis on, for example, physical discomfort rather than appearance may have been used to legitimise a request for surgery. The process of accessing surgery had exposed them to potentially conflicting messages about their genital appearance. Conclusions, Women presenting for labial reduction may have unrealistic expectations of surgery, but their perceptions and expectations are long-standing and seem to be based on strong cultural norms. The gynaecologist is also meeting those women who have already negotiated the referral process. As demand for this surgery appears to be increasing, further research is needed. These findings may add to the case for the potential value of specialist staff to provide psychosocial interventions within gynaecology services. [source]