Multimedia Content Coding and Analysis: Unraveling the Content of Jihadi Extremist Groups' Videos

This article presents an exploratory study of jihadi extremist groups’ videos using content analysis and a multimedia coding tool to explore the types of video, groups’ modus operandi, and production features that lend support to extremist groups. The videos convey messages powerful enough to mobilize members, sympathizers, and even new recruits to launch attacks that are captured (on video) and disseminated globally through the Internet. They communicate the effectiveness of the campaigns and have a much wider impact because the messages are media rich with nonverbal cues and have vivid images of events that can evoke not only a multitude of psychological and emotional responses but also violent reactions. The videos are important for jihadi extremist groups’ learning, training, and recruitment. In addition, the content collection and analysis of extremist groups’ videos can help policymakers, intelligence analysts, and researchers better understand the extremist groups’ terror campaigns and modus operandi, and help suggest counterintelligence strategies and tactics for troop training.     

‘Coping with the job’: prison staff responding to self-harm in three English female prisons: a qualitative study

This study considers how those who work in prisons are affected by and respond to repetitive self-harm of imprisoned women in English prisons. This paper considers the perspectives of custodial staff working in this area on a day-to-day basis. Semi-structured face-to-face interviews were conducted with 14 prison staff and explored using techniques of thematic analysis. The interviews examined: the emotional impact of working with and witnessing self-harm incidents, coping strategies used, training and the support available to prison staff. Findings indicate the strategies used by staff to cope emotionally with such incidents and these include presenting a ‘façade of coping’, rejecting support and becoming desensitised. It is concluded that staff felt they must portray themselves as coping well with self-harm in prison even when they were troubled and emotionally affected by it. However, some did describe accepting help when outside of the prison and this has implications for how support can be offered in the future. It is recommended that more should be done to support and train staff in this area.     

A Catathymic Infanticide

Abstract: A case of infanticide committed by a 37‐year‐old married man, the father of three sons, is reported. Clinically depressed since adolescence, and also diagnosed with obsessive‐compulsive disorder and a dependent personality, the subject began to worry about killing someone a decade before the homicide. Increasingly disabled by his major depression, unable to work, and confined in his home, the idea that his only recourse was to kill one of his sons became fixed and frequent. Following his fourth psychiatric hospitalization, he took his 13‐month‐old son home from day care and drowned him in the bathtub. He then called the police and reported his crime. This sudden act of intentional killing was followed by a period of emotional relief and calmness, clearly illustrating the three stages of chronic catathymic homicide.     

Public employees in political firms: Part A. The patronage era

In part A. The patronage era we explain of the changing organization of public employees from patrons to spoilsmen. (Part B. Civil service and militancy, explains the evolution from spoilsmen to civil servants to militant unionists). Commonly, each transformation has been related only to some failing of its preceding form: patronage ended because of its corruption, civil service began because of its promise to stop corruption, and militancy spread because of the inadequacies of civil service. In contrast to these different explanations of each transformation of government employment, we offer the same explanation for each change: a public choice theory assumption that the new organizational form more efficiently maximized the mixture of votes, power, and income that politicians seek. Thus, when poor immigrants promised votes for insurance from urban hazards and businessmen promised graft in return for accommodations, spoilsmen effected the exchanges.     

TEACHING CONTROVERSIAL TOPICS

This essay, based on a presentation at the 2009 Future of Family Law Education conference at the William Mitchell School of Law, discusses strategies for teaching controversial topics, focused on reproductive rights and related gender issues.