“Tell Me So That I Can Help You”: Private Information and Privacy Coordination Issues in the Context of Eldercare

In order to provide competent care to aging parents, adult children, and older parents must renegotiate long-standing privacy boundaries that allow caregivers access to parents’ private information. It is reasonable to surmise that caregivers encounter privacy coordination issues when attempting to care for their aging parent. This study utilizes Communication Privacy Management theory to explore what content is considered private and what privacy coordination issues arise in the context of eldercare. Results from 27 in-depth interviews with adult children caring for an aging parent suggest that information concerning parents’ future care, health and well-being, and (in)capabilities were marked private. The findings also detail three disruptions to privacy coordination, including parental caregivers’ ambivalence toward managing parents’ care-related information. Critical implications of the study are discussed, which include how privacy turbulence may be a functional catalyst for boundary recalibration.     

Information, information systems, information society: interpretations and implications

The term “information” has become a universal and omnipresent keyword in almost all areas of our modern world—be it in science or society in general. This is not only obvious from the naming of whole scientific branches like Information Theory, Information Science or Informatics but even more from common speaking—characterising our present time and society as information age viz. information society. However, what “information” might mean, is by no means clear and there is a wide range of interpretations covering, among others, its technical, communicational, educational, mental, and scientific aspects. But is the use of the same term justified when adopted in Biology, Physics, Archaeology, Law, Communication Technology, and Informatics (to list just a few of the involved scientific branches) or do its different uses at least have some common characteristics—some sort of common denominator? Is information natural, e.g. manifesting itself as a material phenomenon residing in organisms, stars, atoms, or genes, or is it just a cultural product of human communication, thinking, and interpretation? In this article, we try to clarify some of the most important interpretations, discuss and contrast them with the Informatics point of view. Interpretations range from taking information as material, transferable signals (following Shannon’s Information Theory or the genetic approaches), treating it as a sign (following a semiotic approach), as a commercial product (now common in Web-based Information Business) to considering it a pure mental phenomenon bound to humans or human-like individuals or even to groups and societies. Based on these interpretations, we shall throw a critical glance on current trends in human science and society—focusing on the now popular concept of “information society”—and then derive some theses and guidelines for further research escorting the growth and dispersal of information technology. As it will turn out, an information society which defines itself through the number of computers, internet connections and network links is based on a very narrow, techno-centric concept of information. However, a reflection on the educational and cultural aspects of information might lead to a better-qualified society consisting of responsible and critical citizens.     

The effects of alternating mand and tact training on the acquisition of tacts

Two training procedures were compared with respect to the average number of training trials it took to teach new verbal responses to normal children. Mand contingencies were alternated with tact contingencies in one condition while only tact contingencies were in effect in the other condition. Normal, preschool children served as subjects and toy parts were the objects that were to be named. The results indicated that it took, on the average, fewer trials to teach part names (tacts) in the mand-tact condition than in the tact only condition. Although more research is needed to confirm this, it appears that mand contingencies involve stronger controlling variables and can facilitate the acquisition of a tact repertoire.

     

Sensory siege: dromocolonisation,slow violence,and poetic realism in the twenty-first century short story from Gaza

Since the Israeli disengagement from Gaza in 2005, the subsequent siege, and Israel’s military operations in the Gaza Strip, including ‘Operation Cast Lead’ in 2008/2009 and ‘Operation Protective Edge’ in 2014, it has become difficult to convey the normality of life in Gaza, a normality that is often elusive in a situation that is increasingly defined by the accelerated and technological violence of dromocolonisation, at the same time that it is marked by what Rob Nixon has termed ‘slow violence.’ To make these forms of violence visible and apprehensible, recent short fiction from Gaza has turned to poetic realism and the use of the sensory experience to represent life under siege. Contrary to visceral realism, which promotes a focus on the body as a site of victimhood and suffering, poetic realism allows the short story writers discussed in this article to reclaim agency and to define a Gazan identity that resists the subjection and subjectification of human rights discourses and of the Anglophone media by focusing both on the ordinariness and the extraordinariness of living in Gaza in the twenty-first century.     

The validity of subjective information as a formal concept applied to empirical analysis

Theoretical concepts which may be applicated in formalized contexts as well as by empirical research are relatively rare. The concepts of subjective information used in cybernetically oriented pedagogists (learning theorists) seems to be applicable in both ways. An analysis of its logical and empirical validity shows, however, that the basis of this concept is ambiguous. The concept is defined on the basis of statistical probability, but implicitly interpreted on the base of inductive probability. Thus the measurement and also the strategic application of subjective information are doubtful. This concept does not seem to be useful as a paradigm for the solution of analogous problems.     

Preliminary Results of a Longitudinal Study of Collegiate Alcohol Abuse

Abstract

Objective: Hookah smoking is a popular form of tobacco use on university campuses. This study documented use, attitudes, and knowledge of hookah smoking among college students. Participants: The sample included 943 university students recruited between February 2009 and January 2010. Respondents (M age = 20.02) included 376 males, 533 females, and 34 who did not report sex. Methods: An anonymous online questionnaire was completed by respondents. Results: In this sample, 42.9% of college students had tried hookah, and 40% of those individuals had used it in the past 30 days. Students perceived fewer negative consequences of hookah smoking compared with cigarette smoking. Age, sex, racial background, marijuana/cigarette use, and perceptions of side effects were significantly associated with hookah use. Conclusions: University students are misinformed regarding the health consequences of hookah smoking. Programs aimed at education, prevention, and intervention for hookah use are needed to address this growing public health concern.