“We need more clips about Putin,and lots of them:” Russia’s state-commissioned online visual culture

In this article, we examine how the Putin government is attempting to respond and adapt to the YouTube phenomenon and the vibrant oppositional online visual culture on Runet. We show how these processes are giving rise to new forms of state propaganda, shaped and driven above all by the quest for high-ranking search-engine results and the concomitant desire to appeal to the perceived new sensibilities of the Internet generation through the commissioning and production of “viral videos.” We focus in particular on the videos created by Iurii Degtiarev, a pioneer in the development of this genre, whose works we explore in light of the “Kremlingate” email leaks, which offer inside information on the strategies and aims being pursued on the online visual front of the campaign to manage the Russian mediascape, and Degtiarev’s own reflections on this subject. Examining the output of young creatives patronized by the Kremlin offers a “bottom-up” view to supplement studies of the Russian ideological and media landscape as shaped by “political technologists” such as Vladislav Surkov and Gleb Pavlovskii.     

Boxed In: Human Cargo and the Technics of Comfort

Since the 1990s, public outcries over the “return” of human cargo commonly point to the physical horrors of travel as a key sign of the inhuman and the unfree in contemporary social life. Whether in debates over migrant shipwrecks across the Mediterranean or over air rage battles on budget American flights, the moving vehicle and its uncomfortably tight quarters often serve as the space par excellence for grappling with questions of proper stranger sociality and the limits of “fellow feeling” or moral sympathy in a globalizing world. This paper examines how a relatively novel problem of “comfort” came to inform and shape the politics of mobility starting in the late eigteenth century when abolitionists first successfully argued for distinguishing the human/izing rights of passengers from the movement of nonhuman goods through sensory invocations of the techno-rational and embodied terrors of the slave ship. Through both the historical and contemporary cases discussed, this paper suggests that the problem of comfort was never just a technical one of cramped transport resolvable through mere material and instrumentalist means. Rather, comfort is better described as a form of technics in so far as its technical-material dimensions are always already entangled with an existing social repertoire of ideas, habits, and aspirations, that is, it has aesthetic and affective capacities as part of moral imaginaries of how to deal with Others and, in turn, how to live the good life.     

Traumatic Injury Pattern Analysis in a Light Rail Transit Death: A Retrospective Case Study

Within the context of medical examiner's offices, forensic anthropologists are increasingly being asked to assist with the interpretation of traumatic skeletal injury. This case study presents an example of trauma analysis performed by forensic anthropologists at the Maricopa County Forensic Science Center in Phoenix, Arizona. The primary goal of this study is to document an uncommon pattern of traumatic injury—severe grinding abrasions of the lower appendage that macroscopically resemble sharp force trauma, especially as observed in dismemberment cases—resulting from an individual being dragged beneath a Light Rail train for c. 1.7 miles. The abraded skeletal elements include a femoral shaft fragment, a femoral head portion, and the right foot. Second, this study aims to illustrate the efficacy of forensic anthropological analysis of patterned skeletal trauma. Finally, this study demonstrates the critical importance of analyzing scene information before drawing conclusions as to the etiology of a traumatic injury pattern.     

A randomized experimental study of sharing crime data with citizens: Do maps produce more fear?

The larger roles of the community in crime prevention and improvements in technology have increased police–citizen communication and the distribution of information from police departments to private citizens. Combined, these changes have led to the current movement among law enforcement agencies toward sharing both summary reports and maps of crime with community groups. Although the dissemination of crime information is intended to benefit community members, there is a lack of empirical evidence demonstrating the effects of crime mapping on citizen perceptions and fear of crime. This experiment compared three formats for disseminating crime data; two popular types of crime maps (i.e., graduated symbol and density) and the traditional tabular format of crime statistics. A randomized experimental design was used to measure residents fear of crime and their perception of the safety of different areas of Redlands, CA. Overall, residents who viewed either type of map reported less fear than those who viewed tabular statistics. Respondents who viewed graduated symbol maps consistently reported less fear than either density maps or tabular statistics. However, there were differences depending on the type of map. While graduated symbol maps were associated with the lowest levels of fear of robbery, theft or assault; density maps produced different reactions depending on the area of the city. Finally, the maps did not stigmatize high crime areas of Redlands. Where statistically significant differences existed, respondents who were given maps were more likely to recommend someone move into an area than those who were given tabular statistics.     

Overcoming Challenges to Using Evidence-Based Interventions in Schools

The Center for School Mental Health Assistance at the University of Maryland recently completed a review of evidence-based prevention and treatment programs that can be used by school mental health clinicians. Based on the review, a school-based program operating in 22 Baltimore City schools has purchased and trained clinicians in a number of protocols for evidence-based interventions. We present findings from this review and make pragmatic recommendations for school mental health programs to overcome the challenges associated with the use of evidence-based interventions.She received her doctorate in childclinical psychology from the University of Missouri-Columbia. Her research interests are in the area of the development, prevention, and treatment of juvenile delinquency and youth externalizing disorders.who does research in the area of childrens mental health services and the implementation of wraparound services in real-world settings.University of Maryland School of Medicine. His research is in the area of testing the effectiveness of School Mental Health Programs and the effects of community violence on youth mental health.involved in research related to school mental health, school-based health centers, and prevention of risky behavior among adolescents.Postdoctoral fellow at the time of the study.Postdoctoral fellow at the time of the study.     

“Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” I Do: Postwar Australian Wine,Gendered Culture and Class

During an era of expanding social inclusion in the 1960s and 1970s, Australians increasingly drank more wine than at any previous time in colonial or national history. These wines were made in new styles and consumed in accordance with new habits across gender and class. The morphology of one of Australia’s most popular “introduction wines” of this period, Lindeman’s Ben Ean Moselle, reveals the emergence of new elements of national character. From being advertised to women in the late 1960s as “just right”, Ben Ean’s cultural messaging in the 1970s flirted with general appeal to men and women of the new middle class: “anywhere, anytime”. Then, by the mid-1980s, the ascendancy of this light, semi-sweet table wine was halted by the emergence of an elitism in which new professionals favoured consumer products of provenanced distinction. The arc of Ben Ean’s rise and fall symbolises an informalisation and subsequent reformalisation of values, conventions and identities during a time of social and cultural flux.