Family Cohesion and Romantic and Sexual Initiation: A Three Wave Longitudinal Study

Although the relation between family relationships and the timing of sexual debut has been the focus of many studies, research on mediating factors is scarce. This study examines whether low levels of family cohesion result in an earlier onset of romantic and sexual experiences, and whether the link between family cohesion and an early sexual debut is mediated by early romantic initiation. A longitudinal sample of 314 adolescent girls and 222 boys, aged 12–17 at Wave 1, completed questionnaires at three measurement points with three year intervals. The results showed that sexual debut followed romantic initiation for 77% of the participants. For early adolescent females (aged 12–14), high levels of family cohesion resulted in a later sexual debut and this association was fully mediated by a delay of romantic initiation. Among boys and older girls, timing of romantic initiation did not mediate the link between family cohesion and timing of sexual initiation. Early adolescent girls who have negative relationships with their parents turn to romantic relationships for intimacy and support, which subsequently provide the opportunity for an early sexual debut. Low levels of family cohesion thus primarily precipitate romantic initiation and sexual initiation appears to be secondary to this process among girls in this age group.     

The effects of tone,focus, and incivility in election debates

Previous research has found mixed evidence for the effectiveness of negative campaigning. Therefore, scholars have recently turned their attention to the question whether there are different dimensions of negativity. The present study contributes both empirically and methodologically to this debate by investigating the effects of three German chancellor debates using real-time response measurements of audience reactions. Following Brooks and Geer (2007. “Beyond Negativity: The Effects of Incivility on the Electorate.” American Journal of Political Science 51 (1): 1–16. doi:10.1111/j.1540-5907.2007.00233.x), we distinguish between debate statements along three different dimensions: negative versus positive tone, policy- versus person-focus, and civility versus incivility. Also, we demonstrate how debate content and real-time response measurements of audience reactions can be analysed using econometric time-series techniques. Our analyses show that civil policy-focused statements have a positive impact, as expected, while person-focused or uncivil statements rarely have positive effects. In the concluding section, the implications of our findings are discussed and directions for further research identified.     

Across time and space: Explaining variation in news coverage of the European Union

News about the European Union (EU) looks different in different countries at different points in time. This study investigates explanations for cross‐national and over‐time variation in news media coverage of EU affairs drawing on large‐scale media content analyses of newspapers and television news in the EU‐15 (1999), EU‐25 (2004) and EU‐27 (2009) in relation to European Parliament (EP) elections. The analyses focus in particular on explanatory factors pertaining to media characteristics and the political elites. Results show that national elites play an important role for the coverage of EU matters during EP election campaigns. The more strongly national parties are divided about the EU in combination with overall more negative positions towards the EU, the more visible the news. Also, increases in EU news visibility from one election to the next and the Europeanness of the news are determined by a country's elite positions. The findings are discussed in light of the EU's alleged communication deficit.     

Political Parallelism in Media and Political Agenda-Setting

This article investigates whether agenda-setting relations between newspapers and political parties are influenced by political parallelism. Our case is the Netherlands, a country characterized by high levels of journalistic professionalization and independent media. We focus on newspaper coverage and oral parliamentary questions and use time series analysis to inspect influence both of parliament on newspapers and of newspapers on parliament. The results show that parties respond only to issues raised in newspapers their voters read, and that newspapers only respond to the agenda of parties their readers vote for. This demonstrates that even in mediatized, professionalized media contexts, parallelism is still of importance to understand the relationship between media and politics.     

The Nonlinear Effect of Information on Political Attention: Media Storms and U.S. Congressional Hearings

Agenda-setting scholars have claimed that the typical punctuated pattern of governmental attention is a consequence of disproportionate information processing. Yet these claims remain unsubstantiated. We tackle this challenge by considering mass media coverage as a source of information for political actors and by examining the relationship between preceding media information and subsequent governmental attention. Employing data capturing U.S. media attention and congressional hearings (1996–2006), we find that the effects of media attention on congressional attention are conditioned by the presence of “media storms”—sudden and large surges in media attention to a given topic. A one-story increase in media attention has a greater effect on congressional attention in the context of a media storm, since media storms surpass a key threshold for catching policymakers’ attention. We find evidence that the influence of media attention on political attention is nonlinear; agenda-setting operates differently when the media are in storm mode.     

Why Nuclear Smuggling Matters

Nuclear leakage from the Newly Independent States of the former Soviet Union is an ongoing national security concern of the United States. While little weapons-usable material and no nuclear warheads have surfaced in international smuggling channels, observed data from seizures and arrests are not necessarily representative of the wider universe of illegal nuclear deals. Political and economic upheavals and associated nuclear security problems in Russia in the 1990s accentuated the risk of serious proliferation episodes. Adversaries such as Iran and Al Qaeda have tried to exploit these vulnerabilities to further their nuclear ambitions, although with uncertain results. Improved intelligence collection on the nuclear black market—who the players are, what items they seek, how they plan to obtain them and how successful they have been—should complement the essentially reactive and stationary risk management systems now in place in Russia and elsewhere.     

Why the media matter after all: A response to Pauwels

This is a response to Pauwels’ critique of our 2007 Electoral Studies article about the relationship between media content and anti-immigrant party support. We argue here, that Pauwels’ criticism falls short in three respects: (1) it is based on a selective presentation of our and others’ arguments; (2) it fails to distinguish between cross-sectional and longitudinal explanations of anti-immigrant party support; and (3) it presents an overly simplified re-analysis which fails to take into account the dynamic properties of the time-series. Certainly, Pauwels’ article contains some interesting suggestions for future research, but his assessment offers no strong evidence for a different interpretation of the relationship between media and anti-immigrant party support than the one given in our original article.     

Parliamentary Questions,Newspaper Coverage,and Consumer Confidence in Times of Crisis: A Cross-National Comparison

This article investigates the interactions among parliamentary questions, newspaper coverage on the economic crisis, and consumer confidence. It focuses on France, Spain, Germany, and the Netherlands for the period 2005–2016. Based on insights from political agenda-setting and media effects research, we expect multidirectional relationships to be present. Parliamentary records and newspaper archives are used to analyze the monthly amount of attention for the economic crisis. Pooled time series models and vector autoregression analyses are employed to demonstrate that indeed, politicians, journalists, and citizens depend on one another, but also that remarkable cross-national and over-time differences exist. In the countries where the economy was severely damaged by the crisis (France and Spain), news coverage is less strongly affecting both parliamentarians and citizens. However, when the economic situation worsens, political agenda-setting influences get stronger,while media effects on consumer confidence becomeweaker over time.