The evolution of regime imaginaries on the Chinese Internet

ABSTRACT

This study examines popular perceptions about the ruling state on the Chinese Internet before and along the state’s project of ‘online public opinion guidance.’ We chose two historical moments from 2011 and 2016, and systematically captured and analysed massive amounts of speech traces on Weibo that contain the term tizhi, a discursively flexible, yet distinctive, concept onto which sentiments related to the state are projected. Combining semantic network clustering and critical discourse analysis, our analyses have revealed, historically and macroscopically, the relative dominance of differing ways of evaluating regime legitimacy on the Chinese Internet. Among other things, the previously dominant legitimacy-challenging imaginary grounded in (Western) democratic references has imploded and become absorbed by a nationalist, ‘civilizational competition’ discourse that enhances regime legitimacy. Additionally, the legitimacy-criticizing imaginary within the party-state’s ‘reform framework’ has become depoliticized into administration-focused compartments. By exploring the ‘regime imaginaries’ held by ordinary people, this study complements the scholarship on Chinese state legitimacy that predominantly focuses on historico-structural analyses, policy initiatives, or the party elite’s normative justifications. It also makes methodological and conceptual advances for researching the complex cultural frames, political tropes, and repertoires of local references that comprise regime imaginaries.     

Perceptions of older adult jurors: the influence of aging stereotypes and jury laws

ABSTRACT

The present study examined younger (18–30 years, N?=?100) and older adults’ (66–89 years, N?=?100) responses to a jury duty questionnaire assessing perceptions of jury duty, their capability to serve, and the capability of older adults to serve. We also explored perceptions of the senior jury opt-out law (a law that allows those over a certain age (e.g. 65 years) to opt-out of jury duty). We assessed why participants believe this law is in place and experimentally examined if informing older adults about this law impacted their jury questionnaire responses. Results demonstrated that older adults were significantly more likely to want to serve compared to younger adults; however, younger adults provided lower capability ratings of older adult jurors compared to older adults. Younger adults’ open-ended explanations for these ratings indicated negative aging stereotypes (i.e. in part, believing that older adult jurors are less capable because of declining health and biased beliefs). Older adults also had a significantly lower rate of agreement with the senior jury opt-out law. Although informing older adults about this law did not impact their perceptions of themselves as potential jurors, it did enforce more negative attitudes towards older adult jurors as a whole.     

A ‘class of no political weight’? Interracial Marriage,Mixed Race Children and Land Rights in Southern New Zealand, 1840s-1880s

ABSTRACT

Interracial marriage was a defining feature of interaction between local Ngāi Tahu and newcomers in southern New Zealand from the early nineteenth century. Scholarship has explored the importance of such relationships to development of New Zealand’s early resource-based economies and to colonial assimilation policies. However, the experiences of cross-cultural households and families in colonial New Zealand are less well documented.

Using a body of writing produced by fathers and their mixed-race children in response to land claims investigations in the mid-nineteenth century, this article explores the political, economic and social world of interracial families in southern New Zealand. The correspondence over land rights reveals the ongoing importance of kinship ties through generations as colonial expansion impinged on these communities. Through petitioning and letter writing, fathers and children contested what marriage and family meant and strategically asserted their individual and collective identity in the face of increasing land dispossession and economic hardship.     

The impact of extralegal factors on perceived credibility of child victims of sexual assault

ABSTRACT

The study examined the impact of victim age, victim gender, and perpetrator gender, across five domains of witness credibility: accuracy, believability, competency, reliability and truthfulness. The study also investigated which of these sub-constructs is the best predictor of guilt. 231 adult lay-people completed a survey measuring perceived credibility. Victim age emerged as having the most consistent effect, with the 5- and 10-year-old victims rated as more credible than the 15-year-old victim. Despite their legal incapacity to consent to sex, 15-year-old victims appear to be viewed as ‘quasi-adults’. Victims were rated as more accurate and truthful when the defendant was male compared to when the defendant was female. This may be due to the availability heuristic, as cases involving female defendants are less common. A significant main effect for victim gender was found for the competency sub-construct, such that males were rated as more competent than females. This result suggests that gendered attitudes and stereotypes may begin in childhood and extend to complainants of sexual assault. Main effects for accuracy and truthfulness, were qualified by three-way interaction effects. The five-factor model of perceived credibility accounted for 42% of variance in guilt perceptions, with truthfulness emerging as the strongest predictor of guilt.     

Postmortem genetic testing in sudden unexplained death: A public health laboratory experience

Sudden unexplained death in the young poses a diagnostically challenging situation for practicing autopsy pathologists, especially in the absence of anatomic and toxicological findings. Postmortem genetic testing may identify pathogenic variants in the deceased of such cases, including those associated with arrhythmogenic channelopathies and cardiomyopathies. The Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene (WSLH) is a state-run public health laboratory which performs postmortem genetic testing at no cost to Wisconsin medical examiners and coroners. The current study examines sequencing data from 18 deceased patients (ages 2 months to 49 years, 5 females) submitted to WSLH, from 2016 to 2021. Panel-based analysis was performed on 10 cases, and whole exome sequencing was performed on the most recent 8 cases. Genetic variants were identified in 14 of 18 decedents (77.8%), including 7 with pathogenic or likely pathogenic variants (38.9%). Whole exome sequencing was more likely to yield a positive result, more variants per decedent, and a larger number of variants of uncertain significance. While panel-based testing may offer definitive pathogenic variants in some cases, less frequent variants may be excluded. Whole exome testing may identify rare variants missed by panels, but increased yield of variants of uncertain significance may be difficult to interpret. Postmortem genetic testing in young decedents of sudden unexplained death can provide invaluable information to autopsy pathologists to establish accurate cause and manner of death and to decedent's relatives to allow appropriate management. A public health laboratory model may be a financially advisable alternative to commercial laboratories for medical examiner's/coroner's offices.     

The Only Thing That Stops a Guy with a Bad Policy is a Guy with a Good Policy: An Examination of the NRA’s “National School Shield” Proposal

With the recent tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, CT, the public and the government are looking for solutions to school violence. The National Rifle Association (NRA), a Second Amendment, pro-gun advocacy group, has proposed an “education and training emergency response program” called The National School Shield, which advocates the placement of armed security in schools. Although the program sounds provocative, serious questions complicate its plausibility, necessity, motive, and effectiveness. Furthermore, the potential policy and practical ramifications of encouraging armed security forces in U.S. schools are complex. The authors examined the proposal’s key elements from a public policy perspective and determined that the NRA program would be expensive in terms of both implementation and civil and/or criminal liability, would increase juvenile contact with the criminal justice system, would increase the potential for injuries and deaths from firearms, and would potentially only serve to increase profits for those invested in security industries. More potentially effective and safe policy alternatives are offered.     

Sexual Harassment, PTSD, and Criterion A: If It Walks Like a Duck …

Sexual harassment and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are two topics that generate heated debate in the social science literature. When the two are combined in the civil litigation context, the intensity of the debate is heightened by the adversarial context of the courts. The current paper examines research on both sexual harassment and PTSD separately, before addressing the issues that arise for psychologists and psychiatrists who serve as expert witnesses in sexual harassment litigation. Proposed resolutions of controversies are offered that attempt to expand the knowledge base for expert witnesses on the topic of sexual harassment as well as work within the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV-TR; American Psychiatric Association 2000) framework of PTSD.     

How much privacy do clouds provide? An Australian perspective

Cloud computing is becoming the standard operating process, communications system and underlying infrastructure of the Internet. This is of paradigm-shifting significance to the law. Multinationals, such as Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft, own and operate the cloud computing infrastructure of the Internet as well as influencing its culture. They have been called the Four Horsemen of Technology and consider Microsoft their inspiration.¹ Business can now be transacted at the speed of thought. The digital nervous system that Bill Gates envisioned is blossoming as cloud computing. However, sovereign nations can no longer effectively regulate the telecommunications systems within their borders without the tacit compliance of these cloud operating multinationals. The aim of this paper is to determine whether or not cloud computing infrastructure can support privacy regulation yet remain practical.     

Implications of Partner Agreement of IPV for the Gender Symmetry Controversy

Because romantic partners frequently disagree on the violence in their relationship, relying on nondyadic data for perpetration and victimization rates, especially to inform the gender symmetry controversy, is problematic. In order to have a more nuanced understanding of gender symmetry, we urge researchers to be cautious when drawing symmetry conclusions from non-dyadic samples. Furthermore, using both partners, we suggest that researchers employ more qualitative approaches to ascertain IPV agreement, note times in which either partner reports IPV as an indicator of the presence of violence, and investigate the extent to which conclusions regarding gender symmetry stem from participant selection bias.