Protest Outcomes in the Soviet Union*

Prevailing research on political protest—which use data on events in pluralist societies—stresses the importance of target characteristics and the distribution of social support as explanatory variables affecting protest outcomes. This paper questions the applicability of these findings for explaining protest outcomes in hegemonies. An analysis of 303 protest events in the USSR yields the conclusion that measures of the internal strength of protest groups are the most important determinants of the effectiveness of Soviet dissident groups.     

Transformative Events and Generational Memory: A Case Study Over Time in Lithuania

Research on the distribution of collective memories in national populations has often been conducted in relatively stable societies, where most individuals have experienced a limited range of event types. We examine collective memories in Lithuania, a society that has seen substantial change, using three surveys conducted during the two decades since Lithuanian protests against Soviet rule began in the late 1980s. We identify two types of events that individuals may recall, drawing on Sewell's ( 2005 ) distinction between structure‐transforming events and other events that are significant but less momentous, and we find that the two types of events exhibit different patterns of change over time: in particular, transformative events may absorb other events through assimiliation and are likely to be the focus of commemoration. Recall of transformative events also shows a distinctive relation to birth cohort. Our results support the need to take into account the nature of events in order to understand which events are remembered as important and by whom.     

“富二代”媒体形象的呈现与思考

主流大众媒体对于"富二代"的报道呈现以下特征:报道体裁方面,注重新闻报道;报道基调上,负面新闻超过半数,且存在"标题党"现象;报道内容方面,炫富、绯闻、违法事件居多;报道主体特征方面,多为高学历低年龄的男性。作为大众媒体,其所构建的拟态环境对公众对于"富二代"群体形象负面认知的形成具有重要影响。媒体由于受到消费浪潮的影响,而乐于通过塑造"富二代"纨绔子弟的形象来迎合受众、吸引眼球,制造了大量有明显倾向性的报道,但也有许多新闻工作者对这种片面化的报道方式进行了反思。一方面,媒体报道应当实事求是,并平衡正负面报道,做到事实客观与整体客观并存,不做"标题党";另一方面,"富二代"也应当严以自律,增强社会责任感以提升自己的公众形象。     

Reporting Atrocities: A Comparison of the Zong and the Trial of Captain John Kimber

The trial of Captain John Kimber has received almost no scholarly attention despite a substantial newspaper record. Instead, scholars have focused on the slave ship Zong as the most evocative symbol of abolitionist discourse. This article examines the newspaper record of both events in order to understand their impact on the slave-trade debate in the late eighteenth century. The wealth of material on Kimber's trial makes it equally important to abolitionist discourse. Moreover, newspaper accounts of Kimber's arrest, trial, and the aftermath reveal the rich dialogue between proslavery and abolitionist writers as each sought to claim the idea of ‘humanity’.     

Impact of the Most Frequently Reported Traumatic Events on Community Mental Health Clients

This survey of 354 community mental health clients examined the relative impact of client self-reported events that they deemed “most traumatic” for predicting posttraumatic stress syndrome (PTSD) symptom severity. Results of the voluntary survey revealed the most traumatic lifetime events to be (in descending order of frequency): sudden death of a loved one, sexual abuse, physical abuse, suicide attempt, and having been in a serious/life-threatening accident. These factors were then tested for gender differences, and regression models were developed to test the predictive power of traumatic events relative to primary diagnosis, psychosocial well-being, other key psychiatric indicators, and drinking to cope with negative emotions. Results demonstrated that sexual abuse was reported to be among the strongest predictors of PTSD symptom severity. Separate regression models also revealed important gender differences. Implications for social work assessment of seriously mentally ill clients are suggested.     

‘Not quite history’:The Autobiographies H. Selby Msimang and R.V. Selope Thema and the writing of South African history

This paper examines the kind of contribution autobiographical writings may make to an historical reworking of the events in which the writers are involved. Autobiography, being the very conscious revaluation ‐ often re‐creation — and presentation of the self, is a most problematic genre. Its narrative perspective is subjective; its authentication almost entirely personal, rather than documentary. These limitations should flash red lights at the historian: not to stop, but to proceed cautiously. For, problematic as self‐presentation may be, it is an additional source, speaking in a particular voice. It leads us beyond the petitions, letters, commissions and court records, vital as they are, into those sensitive areas of psyche: emotion, pride, deception and creativity, where many historians fear to tread. Much South African historical writing oversimplifies the role of individual character in helping to shape movements and events. Rather than depicting the complex ways in which subjects and societies interact, many historical studies have read off the politics and motivation of the individual from the organisation to which he or she belonged. Msimang and Thema are significant individuals, at once representative and idiosyncratic; deeply involved in SANNC politics, but also furthering their own careers. Their autobiographical writings both reveal and attempt to conceal important moments in their pasts and in so doing, exemplify the ways in which autobiographical writing may speak to the historian.     

Can the World Expo change a city's image through foreign media reports?

Hosting global events like the World Expo is a new form of public relations for cities, but few studies have been conducted to explore the extent to which they can change the content of media reports and media attitudes toward city image. We conducted a content analysis of all Shanghai-related news reports from November 2009 to April 2011 on 30 English newspapers in 10 countries. We found a few interesting discoveries. First, the Shanghai Expo 2010 did affect newspapers’ agenda-building, with the Expo being the topic of most reports and the most important news before and during the Expo. Second, the Expo brought changes to the news frames of newspapers, but the changes were still constrained by media practices. Third, the Expo improved newspapers’ attitudes toward Shanghai's city image, particularly toward the city's potential. Finally and most importantly, global events such as the Expo do have a significant impact on the content and attitudes of newspaper reports, but a single event cannot produce long-lasting effects. Therefore improving city image requires “better actions than just better words.”     

Social representations of history,wars and politics in Latin America,Europe and Africa

Abstract

This study analyzes how people perceive world history on three continents: Latin America, Europe and Africa. A total of 1179 university students form Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Portugal, Spain, Guinea-Bissau, and Cape Verde were asked to evaluate world events and leaders in terms of their valence and importance. The results demonstrated that social representations of history show a Euro/North American-centric, long-term positive evaluation, recency, and socio-centric bias. Euro/North American-centric events and leaders were found to be rated as more important and were more positively perceived in general. Distant political events, like French or American Revolution, were considered to be more positive than XX century similar events, which supports the long-term positive evaluation bias hypothesis. The hypothesis on recency bias was partially substantiated. Confirming the existence of such bias, World War II was rated as more important than the previous XX century wars and revolutions. Socio-centric bias also received partial support. African participants rated Mandela as a more important leader than other participants did. Latin Americans rated Che Guevara less positively, which suggests that some leaders are generally idealized icons, not based on group belongingness. However, results did not bring support to the centrality of war hypothesis. Wars were indeed negatively evaluated and World War II was rated as an important and negative event. Nevertheless, war- and politics-related events were not perceived as more important than the Industrial Revolution, suggesting that people appraise the importance of long-term socioeconomic factors of history when responding to close-ended quantitative measures (vs. open-ended salience measures). Results are discussed in the framework of social representations of history.     

Sexuality attitudes: the impact of trauma

This study examines the relationship between traumatic events and attitudes toward sexuality. Our results show that suffering trauma is related to more accepting attitudes concerning sexuality. Generally, people who suffer negative events, many of which are traumatic, are more likely to see both pornography and having a homosexual friend or family member as acceptable. Traumatic events that are sex-related or related to other physical assault proved to be most significant in the prediction of sexuality attitudes for women only. The results are specified by gender: Trauma predicts attitudes toward pornography for women but not for men, and traumatic events are associated with attitudes concerning homosexuality for women. These results are discussed in light of the previous research, and suggestions for future research made.     

TWITTER AS A TECHNOLOGY FOR AUDIENCING AND FANDOM

Amongst the most prominent uses of Twitter is its role in the discussion of widely televised events: Twitter's own statistics for 2011, for example, list major entertainment spectacles (the MTV Music Awards and the BET Awards) and sports matches (the UEFA Champions League final and the FIFA Women's World Cup final) amongst the events generating the most tweets per second during the year. During such major media events, Twitter is used most predominantly as a technology of fandom: it serves as a backchannel to television and other streaming audiovisual media, enabling users offer their own running commentary on the universally shared media text of the event as it unfolds live. This article examines the use of Twitter as a technology for the expression of shared fandom in the context of a major, internationally televised annual media event: the Eurovision Song Contest. Our analysis draws on comprehensive data sets for the ‘official’ event hashtags, #eurovision, #esc, and #sbseurovision. Using innovative methods that combine qualitative and quantitative approaches to the analysis of Twitter data sets containing several hundreds of thousands, overall patterns of participation to discover how audiences express their fandom throughout the event are examined. Such analysis is able to provide a unique insight into the use of Twitter as a technology for fandom and for what in cultural studies research is called ‘audiencing’: the public performance of belonging to the distributed audience for a shared media event. The work points to Twitter as an important new medium facilitating the connection and communion of fans.     

Volunteer Participation and Withdrawal

Volunteer behavior is often difficult to manage or control since control systems of the sort that direct behavior in most for-profit organizations are usually not available. This study introduces a tool—the psychological contract—that can give voluntary-agency administrators a powerful way to help them understand and manage volunteers' contributions to their organizations. The study finds that elements of this approach, especially the level of support the volunteer believes he or she is receiving from the organization, are especially important tools that can both increase participation in various events and reduce withdrawal or turnover intentions.     

Ethnic and gender differences in parental expectations and life stress

This paper presents ethnic and gender differences in reported stressful life events (SLE) in a sample of 70 Southeast Asian (SEA) adolescents. The ranking of five SLEs with the highest percentage reportingSome orA Lot of stress showed differences in qualitative life events among Cambodian, Hmong, and Vietnamese adolescents. Cambodians rankedstrict discipline in social life by parents as most stressful. Hmong and Vietnamese adolescents reporteddoing house chores andacademic pressure to do well, respectively, as most stressful. In other stressor domains, academic performance (i.e.studying for a test, personal pressure to get good grades) and parental expectations (i.e.high expectations from parents to do well, fear of failure to meet family expectations) show similarity across ethnic groups. T-tests show that female adolescents reported higher stress on eight out of 10 life events females than males.Personal pressure to get good grades had the highest percentage mean for females. For males,worrying about where to live or getting a job after graduation were the two most endorsed stressful life events. Important implications for social work practice in schools and with parents in SEA families are discussed. Further research into parental involvement and family distress is also recommended.     

Changing households in Britain: do families still matter?

The decline in traditional nuclear family households, and the marked increase in the proportion of people living alone, or alone with dependent children have led some to claim that individualism has replaced the importance of family life. In this paper we use data from a large household panel study of Britain to suggest that this is not true. Regardless of people's own household circumstances, family issues and events are clearly top of the agenda of what people consider matter most in their lives. Moreover, in talking about events that mattered, people are almost as likely to talk about something that happened to other family members, as they are to talk about themselves. Surprisingly, people living alone or alone with children are as likely to mention other family members as those who live in family households. Yet the importance of family does vary considerably by gender and age. Women give more importance to family events and events in the lives of other family members than do men. Young people are far more self-centred than older people but whether this is a generational or life-stage difference is open to question.     

Trials of the postmodern

Abstract

The criminal courtroom is an important institutional site where a modernist epistemology works hard to keep the postmodern disturbance of such concepts as ‘truth’ and ‘reality’ at bay. Nevertheless, some popular television programs exploit the imagistic conditions of postmodernity in order to volatilize the truths certified as final ones by criminal courts. Similarly, in the first trial of the LAPD officers who beat Rodney King, the prosecution team exploited the instability of truth in a mediatized society in order to resignify events whose meanings had previously been configured quite differently. This essay examines these events as manifestations of cultural and political contestation in an image-saturated society where the modernist ‘reality principle’ has dissolved and been replaced by a mediatizing process of resimulation and resignification.     

A gendered lens for building climate resilience: Narratives from women in informal work in Leh,Ladakh

In this paper, we critically examine the gendered impacts of climatechange related extreme events upon workers in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region. Climate change impacts disproportionately affect the livelihoods of women engaged in informal work like weaving from their homes and street vending. Existing research suggests that women are more likely to be among the most vulnerable in such extreme events as well as are vital agents to develop climate resilience within their communities. We draw upon unique quantitative and qualitative data to critically examine the lived experiences of female informal workers from Leh, Ladakh (India). Drawing on the work of Duchek (2020),  we explore how women informal workers navigate their daily strategies of anticipating, coping, and adapting toward climate change. From this analysis, we offer novel empirical evidence about gendered climate resilience and suggest broad recommendations for building climate resilience within mountain communities.     

Resiliency in the Aftermath of Repetitious Violence in the Workplace

Summary

The definition and occurrence of traumatic events is expanding and impacts everyone's lives in some way. The degree to which a violent event impacts an individual, a group, a workplace or the community varies. Unfortunately violent events are all too common. Businesses are realizing the significance of violence as a workplace problem and the varying degrees of trauma that has a devastating impact on employee retention, workplace functionality and personal well-being. The events can include industrial or natural disasters; worksite accidents; organizational changes; suicide; homicides; robbery; assault; threats of violence and even terrorism. How prepared an organization is varies and may be correlated with how resilient individuals and the entire workplace are after workplace violence/trauma. This article focuses on what workplace violence and trauma includes, the effects of repeat events, how resilient people are while trying to prevent additional events if possible in the workplace.     

Socioeconomic status differences in vulnerability to undesirable life events

Previous research has documented consistently that persons holding low-socioeconomic status (SES) positions are more strongly affected emotionally by undesirable life events than are their higher-status counterparts. Two types of resources have been implicated in this differential vulnerability: financial resources and a broader class of coping resources, including social support and resilient personality characteristics. We present an analysis that disaggregates measure of life events and of SES to identify which events and which components of SES are most important for understanding differential vulnerability. We document that the lower-SES vulnerability persists across all types of personal events. In addition, we find that differential vulnerability is not confined to income but extends to education and occupational status as well. On the basis of these patterns, we conclude that differential vulnerability reflects more than a simple economic reality. Previous research offers speculative evidence that status differences in past and current social environments may explain differential vulnerability, especially through their effects on the socialization of resilient personality characteristics. We propose future research that could help to evaluate the validity of these speculations.     

From the Heart of the Middle East, the Energy of the Future: North Adriatic LNG Terminal

Petroleum is still our most important energy source and it will certainly remain that way for a long time to come. Moreover, an end of oil use is not foreseeable at the present. However, reserves are declining. Liquefied natural gas (LNG), on the other hand, is available in abundant quantities. Nevertheless, the use of LNG is useful to solve a significant problem: the LNG power stations produce much lower CO₂ emissions than petroleum. In fact, an 80% carbon dioxide reduction should be possible, as several companies are currently working on cleaner power stations, such as the LNG ones. Alternative energies are often not used enough as sources of energy. It is therefore all the more important that energy companies put a great deal of effort into supporting sustainable energy and developing cleaner technology, in order to make people less dependent on power from petroleum.      

Life's predictable unpredictables and the career plans of youth

A review of the status attainment research failed to discover a model that takes into account possible effects of unforeseen, consequential life events on the career plans of youth. The present longitudinal study found that 30.4% of 536 respondents indicated that something major had happened to change their occupational or educational plans in an important way. Race and sex differences were discovered with respect to whether a major happening was perceived to have occurred and with respect to the nature of the event. White women were found to be peculiarly vulnerable to the impact of unforeseen events. About half of all respondents who indicated that a consequential event had occurred cited marriage or having a child as the event. Relatively few in the low‐income sample cited financial problems as unpredictable events. Respondents who reported any consequential event were found to be less satisfied with their jobs and less happy with their marriages. It would be desirable to include measures of unforeseen consequential events in future status attainment research.     

Expected Impact of Sex-Related Events on Dating Relationships

Students at a midwest university were asked to indicate their expectations concerning how their commitment to and the stability of their dating relationship would change as a result of severa1 sex-related events occurring. Subjects were told to imagine that these events had happened either to the self or to the partner (randomly assigned). These events were: testing positive on the AIDS antibody test, getting a full case of AIDS, having an heterosexual extrarelational affair, having a homosexual extrarelational affair, being raped, contracting herpes, getting pregnant, and having an abortion (the latter two were always presented as happening to the female partner). Subjects expected that most of these events would negative1 affect their commitment to their dating relationship and the actual stability of the relationship. The results from an ANOVA indicated that how subjects responded to some of the events depended on their gender and/or on whether the events were presented as occurring to the self or to the partner. These differences are discussed and suggestions are made for further research.