Image repair in the aftermath of inaccurate polling: How the news media responded to getting it wrong in 1948 and 2016

The US presidential elections of 1948 and 2016 produced surprise outcomes when the predicted winners ended up losing the election. Using image repair theory, this article explains the strategies the media used to repair their image in light of predicting the wrong winner. Using a qualitative analysis of news coverage that immediately followed the 1948 and 2016 presidential elections, this study finds that the media utilized similar image repair strategies of offering explanations for poor information, highlighting the media’s good reporting, diminishing the harm caused by the inaccurate predictions, and justifying the inaccurate predictions of both elections. However, the media responses in 1948 and 2016 differed greatly in tone and in the utilization of a new attack strategy to deflect criticism of the media itself. These strategies suggest that media use of image restoration is limited because of the unique societal expectations placed on the press, and that the media’s inaccurate 2016 predictions and subsequent attack strategies may have been contributed to the heightened criticism of mainstream news.     

The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Intimate Partner Violence Advocates and Agencies

Relatively few studies have considered the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on intimate partner violence (IPV) advocates or the agencies where they work. In this study, based on United States IPV advocates’ experiences working with survivors during the COVID-19 pandemic, we conducted interviews to explore: 1) personal challenges and resilience working as IPV advocates during the COVID-19 pandemic; 2) how agencies adapted to the pandemic to support IPV survivors and advocates; and 3) specific needs and challenges of culturally-specific agencies. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 53 IPV advocates from June to November 2020. Participants were included if they worked directly with survivors, identified as an IPV advocate, worked at a US-based agency, and spoke and understood English. We created a sampling matrix to ensure adequate representation from IPV advocates serving survivors from communities which have been marginalized. Interviews were conducted through a virtual platform by a trained member of the research team. We used an inductive thematic analysis approach, with weekly coding meetings to resolve discrepancies in coding. Five themes emerged from the data: 1) IPV advocates described how working as an IPV advocate during the COVID-19 pandemic impacted them personally; 2) agencies developed new methods of addressing IPV advocates’ needs; 3) agencies developed new solutions to address pandemic-related client needs; 4) transitioning advocacy work to virtual formats created challenges but also opportunities and; 5) pandemic limitations and impacts compounded pre-pandemic challenges for culturally specific agencies. IPV advocates are frontline workers who have played essential roles in adjusting services to meet survivor needs during the COVID-19 pandemic while simultaneously coping with pandemic impacts on themselves and their agencies. Developing inter-agency collaborations and promoting advocates’ safety and wellbeing during future public health crises will help support IPV survivors.

     

The role of community in facilitating service utilization

Guided by an integrated theory of parent participation, this study examines the role community characteristics play in influencing a parent's decision to use voluntary child abuse prevention programs. Multiple regression techniques were used to determine if different community characteristics, such as neighborhood distress and the community's ratio of caregivers to those in need of care, predict service utilization levels in a widely available home visiting program. Our findings suggest that certain community characteristics are significant predictors of the extent to which families utilize voluntary family supports over and above the proportion of variance explained by personal characteristics and program experiences. Contrary to our initial assumptions, however, new parents living in the most disorganized communities received more home visits than program participants living in more organized communities. The article concludes with recommendations on how community capacity building might be used to improve participant retention.     

Sustainability labelling as a tool for reporting the sustainable development impacts of climate actions relevant to Article 6 of the Paris Agreement

The architecture of global carbon markets has changed significantly since the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals were both agreed in 2015. Voluntary, international cooperative approaches established in Article 6 of the Paris Agreement allow Parties to work together to achieve the targets set out in their respective Nationally Determined Contributions to limit global warming to an increase below 1.5–2 °C. In Article 6.4, a sustainable mitigation mechanism is established for which rules, modalities and procedures will be developed internationally considering the experience and lessons learned from existing mechanisms, such as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and its Sustainable Development (SD) Tool. Historically the issue of making integrated assessments of sustainable development and mitigation actions has been politically and methodologically controversial for many reasons: developing countries fear that an international definition of SD will interfere with their sovereignty and therefore their ability to define their own development pathways; players in the carbon market fear that markets can only handle one objective, namely mitigation outcomes; and sustainable development is regarded as too complex and costly to be measured and quantified. In an effort to address these concerns, the article proposes a new methodology for the sustainability labelling of climate mitigation actions relevant to Article 6 approaches. The article draws on an application of the CDM SD tool to analyse 2098 Component Programme Activities that had entered the CDM Pipeline by January 2017. The article demonstrates that assessment of the sustainable development benefits of climate actions can be graded and labelled based on the analysis of qualitative data, which is less costly than applying a quantitative approach.

     

A Novel Application of a Cryosectioning Technique to Aid Scat Hair Microanalysis

Scat hair presents a diverse profile of hairs for morphological assessment that may find versatile applications in wildlife forensic investigations. Successful morphological assessment of scat hair microstructure, however, depends on a robust sectioning methodology. We assessed the feasibility and efficacy of a cryosectioning technique compared to that of a gold standard hand‐sectioning technique. Scat hairs were embedded in paraffin wax and hand‐sectioned, while cryopreserved scat hairs were sectioned with a cryostat. The results showed that cryosectioning preserved the pristine morphology of the scat hair and provided cross sections more amenable to high‐resolution imaging of hair internal microstructure than hand‐sectioning. The cryosectioning technique may find novel applications as a more reliable and robust technique to aid (i) scat hair internal microstructure analysis for cross‐referencing with species identification keys in wildlife forensic studies and (ii) downstream toxicological analysis in wildlife forensic studies as hair biochemistry is not altered during cryopreservation.     

Can You Build a Better Cop?

Research Summary

By drawing from psychology and economics, we present an experimental evaluation of a procedural justice training program designed to “slow down” police officers’ thought processes during citizen encounters. We find that officers who were randomly assigned to participate in training were as engaged in the community as similarly situated officers, but they were less likely to resolve incidents with an arrest or to be involved in incidents where force was used. These changes were most evident among officers who worked in areas with a modest level of risk.

Policy Implications

Police officers who are actively engaged with the public can reduce crime through general deterrence and by arresting criminals. Nevertheless, excessive discretionary arrests and the use of force by officers can reduce public trust in the police. To date, there is scant evidence as to how police departments can successfully train officers to balance enforcement and public trust in the field. Through our study, we demonstrate that a relatively minor supervisory intervention may cause substantive changes in how police and citizens interact with each other.