Cyberbullying Victimization and Depression in Adolescents: The Mediating Role of Body Image and Cognitive Schemas in a One-year Prospective Study

Cyberbullying, the harassment of others via new technologies, is a growing phenomenon with important consequences for its victims. Despite the growing interest in this new form of violence, only a few longitudinal studies have analyzed the relationship between cyberbullying victimization and psychological problems, such as depression, in adolescents. Furthermore, the mechanisms through which cyberbullying victimization contributes to the development of depressive symptoms remain almost unexplored. The current study assesses whether cyberbullying victimization predicts the increase in depressive symptoms over time and the role of body image and cognitive schemas in the association between cyberbullying victimization and depression. We hypothesized that victims of cyberbullying would develop a negative body image, the belief that others would hurt them and that they were defective to some degree, and that, as a consequence of these cognitions, they would increase their symptoms of depression. A sample of 1015 adolescents (mean age?=?15.43, SD?=?1.09) completed measures of depressive symptoms at three waves (T1, T2, and T3) spaced 6 months apart, measures of body image and cognitive schemas at T1 and T2, and measures of CB victimization at T1. Findings indicated that CB victimization at T1 predicted a worsening of body image and cognitive schemas of mistrust and defectiveness at T2, and those changes in cognitions predicted in turn an increase in depressive symptoms from T2 to T3. Gender differences were also examined. The model was very similar for boys and girls. However, changes in body image acted as a mediator between CB victimization and depression only in girls. Therefore, this study contributes to clarifying the cognitive mechanisms involved in the development of depression among victims of CB. These findings suggest that intervention programs with victims of CB should address the cognitions that are relevant for the development of depression.     

Responsibility and the Limits of Conversation

Both legal and moral theorists have offered broadly “communicative” theories of criminal and moral responsibility. According to such accounts, we can understand the nature of responsibility by appealing to the idea that responsibility practices are in some fundamental sense expressive, discursive, or communicative. In this essay, I consider a variety of issues in connections with this family of views, including its relationship to free will, the theory of exemptions, and potential alternatives to the communicative model. Focusing on Michael McKenna’s Conversation and Responsibility, I argue that communicative accounts, and the conversational model in particular, direct our attention to important and under-appreciated elements of our responsibility practices. However, rather than focusing on a model of conversation-as-address, as McKenna does, we do better to regard gossip as the paradigmatic conversational form that captures the main features of moral responsibility.     

Review of Roderic Broadhurst,Thierry Bouhours,Brigitte Bouhours,Violence and the Civilising Process in Cambodia

Asian Journal of Criminology -     

The impact of student-generated digital flashcards on student learning of constitutional law

This article describes, evaluates and reflects upon student creation of cloud-based digital flashcards as an authentic formative and summative assessment task designed for the deep learning of constitutional law. The usefulness of digital flashcards in online legal education is explored. The undergraduate law student participants in the study responded differently to the assessment task depending upon the constitutional law topic they were assigned, the perceived relevance of constructing digital flashcards to professional practice and how they reacted to this creative task. Building digital flashcards provides a potentially powerful authentic assessment task for the study of constitutional law provided it is designed to support semester long creation, validation and sharing of digital flashcards that students perceive as professionally relevant and educationally useful. Student recommendations for designing an assessment task involving the creation of digital flashcards are evaluated.     

Differences in contract design between successful and less successful franchises

The aim of this paper is to identify differences in contract design between successful and less successful franchise chains. Comparing contracts from both groups of companies, we observe, on the one hand, that (1) franchise contracts are unbalanced irrespective of the chain’s success: contracts cover franchisees’ obligations more than franchisors’ obligations. On the other hand, we find that (2) contracts in successful franchise chains are more complete (i.e. cover a larger number of contingencies) than the less successful ones and (3) this difference lies in the contingencies regarding franchisees’ obligations, which are more fully covered in the contracts of more successful chains. More specifically, within the contingencies regarding franchisees’ obligations, (4) successful chains restrict the franchisee decision rights more frequently on day-to-day business operations than on financial conditions or post-contractual contingencies. These findings can be explained because successful chains are more sensitive to franchisees’ opportunistic behavior, because they have learned how to manage and solve any potential conflicts, or because of differences in bargaining power. Finally (5) franchisors’ obligations are not statistically different between groups, which we interpret as evidence that relational contracting mechanisms do not substitute formalization.     

Pluralisme identitaire et nation unitaire en Suisse

Résumé: L’article s’interroge sur l’absence, en Suisse, d’un mouvement national interne qui s’opposerait au récit national fédéral. L’auto‐désignation comme nation, au sein de pays plurilingues comme le Canada, est l’indice de tensions linguistiques fortes, mais en Suisse, seul le concept de « communauté linguistique » se réfère à l’échelon ethnolinguistique. Même si les émotions identitaires et le rapport au territoire dans le canton de Fribourg rappellent la situation québécoise, les conflits linguistiques sont réglés exclusivement au niveau cantonal. Pour qu’émerge un discours national « infra‐suisse », il faudrait que l’appartenance romande ou alémanique soit considérée comme particulièrement centrale. Or, notre enquête auprès de 962 conseillers communaux de cantons bilingues montre que l’affiliation linguistique est importante et modèle les comportements politiques, mais qu’elle ne concurrence pas l’identification cantonale (particulièrement forte en Valais) ou l’identification suisse. Pour des raisons qui tiennent à l’histoire et à la géographie linguistique, la Suisse demeure une nation unitaire.     

Genetic study of 15 STRs loci of Identifiler system in Angola population

Angola is located in the African continent, in the area of southern Africa and has a population of approximately 14 million inhabitants. The Angola population has origin from Occidental and Southern Bantu people that came from the great lakes region, creating the most ever known African migration of our days.Allele frequencies for the 15 STRs loci in the AmpFlSTR Identifiler kit (D8S1179, D21S11, D7S820, CSF1PO, D3S1358, HUMTH01, D13S317, D16S539, D2S1338, D19S433, HUMVWA, TPOX, D18S51, D5S818, HUMFIBRA/FGA and including the segment of the X-Y homologous gene amelogenin) were studied for Angola population.The genotype frequency of the 15 STR loci showed no significant deviations from Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium expectations and great values for the combined power of discrimination and combined power of a priori exclusion validate the application of these markers in forensic genetics. Comparative analyses between Angola population data and other relevant population database from Africa, Europe and American are presented.     

Criminal Liability of Directors of a Private Limited Company Seated in Germany

During the last decade, a great number of German businesses formed private limited companies by shares in England and transferred the company’s real seat to Germany in order to avoid the minimum capital rules for the German limited liability company. The discrepancy between the place of registration and the real seat leads to questions about the criminal liability of company directors under English and German law. This article shows that English courts have jurisdiction over certain offences regardless of the place the director acted. In particular, he may be convicted for failing to comply with statutory duties under the Companies Act 2006 as well as false accounting or false statements under Theft Act 1968 ss. 17, 19. With respect to German law, the company law reform of 2008 explicitly imposed the duty to file for insolvency on directors of foreign corporations. Also, the criminal offence for failing to file for insolvency in § 15a (4) of the Insolvency Code is compatible with the freedom of establishment under European law. If the director causes a financial loss to the company by breaching his director’s duties, he may be convicted for breach of trust under § 266 of the Criminal Code regardless of the fact that the relevant duties are regulated by English law. The German Federal Supreme Court recently held that recourse to English company law in order to establish a criminal breach of trust does not violate the principle of legal certainty in Article 103 (2) of the Basic Law. Furthermore, German bankruptcy offences may apply if the director violates the authoritative English accounting standards.