BETWEEN BROADCASTING POLITICAL MESSAGES AND INTERACTING WITH VOTERS

Politicians across Western democracies are increasingly adopting and experimenting with Twitter, particularly during election time. The purpose of this article is to investigate how candidates are using it during an election campaign. The aim is to create a typology of the various ways in which candidates behaved on Twitter. Our research, which included a content analysis of tweets (n?=?26,282) from all twittering Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat candidates (n?=?416) during the 2010 UK General Election campaign, focused on four aspects of tweets: type, interaction, function and topic. By examining candidates' twittering behaviour, the authors show that British politicians mainly used Twitter as a unidirectional form of communication. However, there were a group of candidates who used it to interact with voters by, for example, mobilizing, helping and consulting them, thus tapping into the potential Twitter offers for facilitating a closer relationship with citizens.     

Self-generated motives for gambling in two population-based samples of gamblers

In the present study, self-generated responses to a question regarding reasons for gambling from two epidemiological surveys were combined and placed into another earlier motivational model for alcohol use, adapted for gambling. Of the 3601 reasons, 954 could be categorised into the model's categories: (a) coping motives (internal, negative reinforcement); (b) enhancement motives (internal, positive reinforcement); and (c) social motives (external, positive reinforcement). Results indicate that coping gamblers experienced greater gambling severity and psychopathology, enhancement gamblers were most likely to gamble while intoxicated and social gamblers were more likely to choose socially-related gambling. An examination of remaining motives suggests additional categories may be warranted – specifically financial and charitable reasons. These findings offer some support for the model; however, it may need to be expanded to account for other motives. The study highlights the advantages and limitations of using self-generated reasons to study gambling motivation.     

Limit your time,gamble responsibly: setting a time limit (via pop-up message) on an electronic gaming machine reduces time on device

In the current study, we assessed whether undergraduate electronic gaming machine (EGM) gamblers would be more apt to set a time limit and spend less time gambling when asked to consider setting an explicit time limit prior to their gambling session. To this end, participants (N = 43) were randomly assigned to a time limit pop-up condition or control condition, both of which involved gambling on an EGM in a virtual reality (VR) casino. In the time limit pop-up condition, participants were asked (via pop-up message) to consider setting a time limit on play and entering that limit in an available text box prior to commencing play. In the no time limit pop-up condition, participants engaged in play immediately upon accessing the EGM in the VR casino (i.e. they were not exposed to a time limit pop-up message). As predicted, participants who were explicitly asked to consider setting a time limit on their EGM play were significantly more likely to do so and spent less time gambling than those who were not given such instructions. The results provide preliminary support for the contention that setting a time limit on EGM play is an effective responsible gambling strategy.     

The Self-serving Bias and Beliefs about Rationality

Most previous experiments attempting to establish the existence of the self-serving bias have confounded it with strategic behavior. We design an experiment that controls for strategic behavior (Haman effects) and isolates the bias itself. The self-serving bias that we measure concerns beliefs about the rationality of others. We find very limited support for the existence of the bias. To help understand why the bias seems to hold in some settings but not in others, we discuss a distinction between biases that are self-serving and those that are actually self-defeating. (JEL C92 )     

Organizational ethics, decision making, undecidability

In this paper we develop a conceptualisation of organizational decision‐making as a practice that is, necessarily, ethical. The paper starts with a discussion of the notion of decision‐making as it relates to organizational rationality and the relationship between management and control. Drawing on Derrida's discussions of undecidability and responsibility, we suggest that as well as being able to consider organizational decision‐making as an instance of (albeit bounded) rationality or calculability, it can also be regarded as a process of choice amongst heterogenous possibilities. On that basis, we follow Derrida in arguing that for a decision to be considered an instance of responsible action it must be made with neither recourse to knowledge of its outcome nor to the application of pre‐ordained rules. Illustrating our argument with a discussion of Eichmann's ‘I was just following orders’ defence, we suggest that rules for ethical decision making, rather than ensuring ethical outcomes, can work to insulate organizations from moral responsibility. We conclude with a discussion of ethics and democracy in relation to responsible decision making in organizations.     

Business Ethics as Practice

In this article we develop a conceptualization of business ethics as practice. Starting from the view that the ethics that organizations display in practice will have been forged through an ongoing process of debate and contestation over moral choices, we examine ethics in relation to the ambiguous, unpredictable, and subjective contexts of managerial action. Furthermore, we examine how discursively constituted practice relates to managerial subjectivity and the possibilities of managers being moral agents. The article concludes by discussing how the ‘ethics as practice’ approach that we expound provides theoretical resources for studying the different ways that ethics manifest themselves in organizations as well as providing a practical application of ethics in organizations that goes beyond moralistic and legalistic approaches.     

Community development and urban regeneration

The history of urban regeneration in the United Kingdom andits connections with community development are complex, especiallyas there have been significant differences in Scotland, England,Wales and Northern Ireland. In this article I highlight somekey turning points and themes in the Scottish context. I thendescribe the situation in the city of Dundee.     

Re-discovering the social: neo-liberalism and hybrid practices of governing in rural natural resource management

Since the 1980s, natural resource management (NRM) in rural Australia has been underpinned by rationalities and technologies of governing that constitute agricultural landscapes and resource managers in economically rational terms. While it is tempting to interpret these forms of regulation as part of a broad shift away from social forms of governing, this paper argues that ‘the social’ remains of crucial significance in understanding how both natural environments and the capacities of individuals to manage these environments are constructed. Drawing upon recent work in the Foucauldian-inspired literature on governmentality and, in particular, Stenson and Watt's (Urban Studies 36(1) (1999) 189–201) concept of hybrid governance, this paper examines how particular representations of ‘the social’ are assembled through strategies of NRM. Using the National Landcare Program (NLP) and Natural Heritage Trust (NHT) as examples, we consider how ‘social’ data is being incorporated into resource management strategies, and how this re-shapes both ‘the social’ and NRM as domains of governance. While the NLP and NHT incorporate concerns about social responsibility, they define these in terms of the capacity of individuals to respond to changing economic circumstances. This effectively defines land managers as socially and ecologically responsible only to the extent that they have the managerial capacities to pursue economically ‘rational’ practices. In concluding, we argue that hybrid practices of governing are indeed evident in NRM in Australia and that the concept of ‘hybrid governance’ requires further attention in understanding how rural spaces are made knowable and shaped as objects of knowledge.     

Common Mechanisms in Infant and Adult Category Learning

Computational models of infant categorization often fail to elaborate the transitional mechanisms that allow infants to achieve adult performance. In this article, we apply a successful connectionist model of adult category learning to developmental data. The Supervised and Unsupervised Stratified Adaptive Incremental Network (SUSTAIN) model is able to account for the emergence of infants' sensitivity to correlated attributes (e.g., has wings and can fly). SUSTAIN offers 2 complimentary explanations of the developmental trend. One explanation centers on memory storage limitations, whereas the other focuses on limitations in perceptual systems. Both explanations parallel published findings concerning the cognitive and sensory limitations of infants. SUSTAIN's simulations suggest that conceptual development follows a continuous and smooth trajectory despite qualitative changes in behavior and that the mechanisms that underlie infant and adult categorization might not differ significantly.     

The FACE YOUR FEAR Club: Therapeutic Group Work with Young Children as a Response to Community Trauma in Northern Ireland

This paper outlines therapeutic group work with young childrenin response to acute community trauma in Northern Ireland. Thechildren in question were the focus of a highly publicized disputeconcerning access to their school. The work was carried outby NOVA, a Barnardo’s (Northern Ireland) trauma supportservice. Part one outlines the theoretical framework. It highlightsthe relevance of ‘continuous traumatic stress syndrome’(Straker, 1987) in this context and its challenge to individualistictrauma accounts. Developmental considerations in trauma arealso outlined and the role of protective factors is discussed.Consideration is also given to the socio-political context.Part two summarizes group preparation, process and perceivedbenefits. Process observations are made with reference to threekey outcome themes: (i) reducing fear; (ii) increasing control;(iii) restoring connections. Perceptions of group benefit frompre- and post-questionnaires are then outlined with referenceto implications for achieving these outcomes. Questionnaireresponses highlighted four tasks and processes for effectivepractice in this context: (i) communication; (ii) emotionalsupport; (iii) management strategies and (iv) meaningmaking.Further, active partnerships with the whole support matrix–parents,teachers and community–are highlighted throughout as centralto good outcome.