Hygiene and Biosecurity: The Language and Politics of Risk in an Era of Emerging Infectious Diseases

Infectious diseases, such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and avian influenza, have recently been high on the agenda of policy makers and the public. Although hygiene and biosecurity are preferred options for disease management, policy makers have become increasingly aware of the critical role that communication assumes in protecting people during outbreaks and epidemics. This article makes the case for a language-based approach to understanding the public perception of disease. Health language research carried out by the authors, based on metaphor analysis and corpus linguistics, has shown that concepts of journeys, pathways, thresholds, boundaries and barriers have emerged as principal framing devices used by stakeholders to advocate a hygiene based risk and disease management. These framings provide a common ground for debate, but lead to quite different perceptions and practices. This in turn might be a barrier to global disease management in a modern world.     

Restricted and Elaborated Modes in the Cultural Analysis of Politics1

The “cultural turn” that swept across the social sciences a generation ago ushered in renewed attention to the cultural analysis of politics. Yet despite this growing area of research, there remains a lack of integration between cultural and noncultural studies of political phenomena. Should this state of affairs be a source of concern for cultural sociologists? I believe it should be. In this essay, I outline reasons why this is the case and what might be done to address this issue. Drawing loosely on Basil Bernstein’s distinction between “restricted” and “elaborated” codes, I suggest that cultural analyses of politics need to be more “elaborated” in nature and I offer three guidelines that can orient this type of research program.     

The Limited Role of Formal Statistical Inference in Scientific Inference

ABSTRACT

Such is the grip of formal methods of statistical inference—that is, frequentist methods for generalizing from sample to population in enumerative studies—in the drawing of scientific inferences that the two are routinely deemed equivalent in the social, management, and biomedical sciences. This, despite the fact that legitimate employment of said methods is difficult to implement on practical grounds alone. But supposing the adoption of these procedures were simple does not get us far; crucially, methods of formal statistical inference are ill-suited to the analysis of much scientific data. Even findings from the claimed gold standard for examination by the latter, randomized controlled trials, can be problematic.

Scientific inference is a far broader concept than statistical inference. Its authority derives from the accumulation, over an extensive period of time, of both theoretical and empirical knowledge that has won the (provisional) acceptance of the scholarly community. A major focus of scientific inference can be viewed as the pursuit of significant sameness, meaning replicable and empirically generalizable results among phenomena. Regrettably, the obsession with users of statistical inference to report significant differences in data sets actively thwarts cumulative knowledge development.

The manifold problems surrounding the implementation and usefulness of formal methods of statistical inference in advancing science do not speak well of much teaching in methods/statistics classes. Serious reflection on statistics' role in producing viable knowledge is needed. Commendably, the American Statistical Association is committed to addressing this challenge, as further witnessed in this special online, open access issue of The American Statistician.     

Experimenter Presence or Absence: An Experimental Analogue with Implications for Organizational Behavior Management

Students performed a simulated bank-proofing task individually in a lab with either the experimenter present or absent. Although run rates were similar, those in the Experimenter-Absent Group were off-task twice as much during sessions. Error frequencies for both groups were low and similar while rates of responding were significantly higher (+13%) in the Experimenter-Present Group because participants were off-task less often. Most human lab experiments fail to specify whether experimenters are present or absent in the room and this extraneous variable is a potential confound that should be controlled in future studies.     

Damaged Goods: Perception of Pornography Addiction as a Mediator Between Religiosity and Relationship Anxiety Surrounding Pornography Use

Recent research on pornography suggests that perception of addiction predicts negative outcomes above and beyond pornography use. Research has also suggested that religious individuals are more likely to perceive themselves to be addicted to pornography, regardless of how often they are actually using pornography. Using a sample of 686 unmarried adults, this study reconciles and expands on previous research by testing perceived addiction to pornography as a mediator between religiosity and relationship anxiety surrounding pornography. Results revealed that pornography use and religiosity were weakly associated with higher relationship anxiety surrounding pornography use, whereas perception of pornography addiction was highly associated with relationship anxiety surrounding pornography use. However, when perception of pornography addiction was inserted as a mediator in a structural equation model, pornography use had a small indirect effect on relationship anxiety surrounding pornography use, and perception of pornography addiction partially mediated the association between religiosity and relationship anxiety surrounding pornography use. By understanding how pornography use, religiosity, and perceived pornography addiction connect to relationship anxiety surrounding pornography use in the early relationship formation stages, we hope to improve the chances of couples successfully addressing the subject of pornography and mitigate difficulties in romantic relationships.     

Social media dialogues in a crisis: A mixed-methods approach to identifying publics on social media

Despite the promise of social media to engender dialogue, the common approach to studying social media may prioritize monologue, whereby research considers the strategies organizations use in targeting publics, particularly in a crisis. This study uses a mixed-method approach to analyze dialogue in a crisis—semantic network analysis and content analysis. Specifically, this study examines the emotional expression and crisis coping behaviors on social media during two separate terror attacks: the Paris terror attacks in 2015 and the Barcelona terror attacks in 2017. Results demonstrate how publics may be identified and understood through semantic network analysis and content analysis. This study also shows the connection between emotions and coping, expanding the crisis communication literature in public relations, and suggests the need to consider agenda-setting and resilience in crisis communication research. Finally, we discuss this study’s implications for assuming a dialogic orientation in public relations.     

Canadian Sociology for Sale? Academic Branding in the ‘Neo-Liberal Age’

Narratives about the influence of neo-liberal forces on post-secondary education are legion within the contemporary literature. Some have recently argued that the promotional tactics used by Canadian sociology departments reflect the broader corporatization of the system, highlighting the vocationalization of the discipline at the hands of market forces. We conduct a mixed-methods analysis of the marketing practises used by English-speaking sociology departments in Canada and find only limited support for this argument. Instead, observed promotional tactics appear to be quite diverse, aimed at multiple stakeholders, and reflecting the complex institutional environment in which sociology departments operate.