Peddling a semiotics of fear: a critical examination of scare tactics and commercial strategies in public health promotion

In this study, we critically examine the ways in which a nationwide health promotion campaign – the 2013 Diabetes UK/Tesco diabetes campaign, the largest of its kind in the UK – seeks to raise the general public's awareness of Type 2 diabetes. We subject a series of six campaign images (including their layout and accompanying text) to a multimodal discourse analysis, identifying the presence of a range of fear-inducing, stigmatising and commercial strategies, through which the campaign emphasises the dangers of diabetes and advocates personal responsibility for assessing both individual and others' risk of the disease. Specifically, we describe, in multi-semiotic detail, three discursive techniques deployed in the campaign to achieve these ends: (1) the depiction of grief and amplification of diabetes-related danger, (2) the promotion of diabetes risk and localisation of individuals' responsibility for their health and (3) the commercial branding and framing of the Diabetes UK/Tesco partnership – including the promotion of goods and services – as a means of diabetes prevention and management. Our findings raise concerns about the moral legitimacy of using fear-inducing and commercial strategies in order to (effectively) raise public awareness of and responses to Type 2 diabetes, strategies which do little to address the environmental factors which are associated with increasing rates of the disease.     

Female serial killers in the United States: means,motives, and makings

Most studies that have focused on female serial killers (FSKs), although informative, have examined limited sample sizes. We consulted mass media reports of demographics, motives, methods, mental health, and victim characteristics of 64 FSKs who committed their crimes in the US from 1821 to 2008. Consistent with other studies, our data showed that FSKs were typically White, educated, have been married, and held a caregiving role (e.g. mother, health care worker). Nearly 40% of FSKs in this sample experienced some form of mental illness. Their most common motive for murder was financial gain, and their most common method of killing was poisoning. FSKs knew all or most of their victims, and most were related to their victims. In all cases, FSKs targeted at least one victim who was a child, elderly, or infirm – those who had little chance of fighting back. We interpret these killers’ behaviors from clinical and evolutionary angles.     

Ranking of United Kingdom Law Journals: An Analysis of the Research Assessment Exercise 2001 Submissions and Results

Notwithstanding the Chancellor of the Exchequer's announcement in the 2006 Budget that, after the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise ('RAE 2008'), it is the government's firm presumption that the system for assessing research quality and allocating quality-related funding to United Kingdom universities will be mainly metrics based, RAE 2008 is vitually certain to proceed and to have considerable significance for legal research in the United Kingdom. In this rapidly developing and controversial context, this paper uses statistical analysis of the data from RAE 2001 to construct a series of metrics-based rankings which, when taken together, provide a reliable and coherent ranking of leading United Kingdom law journals.     

Ethical Dilemmas & Nursing Praia

Anne J. Davis et al., Ethical Dilemmas & Nursing Practice (Stamford: Appleton & Lange, 4th ed., 1997): 275 pp., ISBN 0-8385-2283-1 (paper), $34.95. To order call 1-800-423-1359.