Packing Heat: Attitudes Regarding Concealed Weapons on College Campuses

Gun violence at American colleges and universities has rekindled the debate surrounding concealed weapons on campus. This study examined college student and faculty opinions on two college campuses, focusing on their attitudes towards private citizens carrying concealed guns on campus. Data were collected during the fall 2008 and spring 2009, and over 2,100 students, staff, faculty, and administrators on the two campuses participated in the research. The results indicate over 70 % of respondents oppose the option of carrying concealed guns on campus. In addition, the idea of more guns on campus makes the majority of students and faculty feel less safe, and allowing concealed weapons serves to decrease the sense of campus safety. This study continues to empirically advance the argument that those who live, work, and study do not want more guns on campus. Further research in this area, including an expanded range of the nation’s college campuses, should be explored.     

When the wires cross: Ensuring diversity in the era of video dialtone

For more than 50 years, the Federal Communications Commission, Congress and the courts have regulated different mass media differently to achieve an ill‐defined objective of diversity. Contemporary communications innovations that increase the intermingling of media exacerbate the difficulty of clarifying diversity objectives and distinguishing between regulators’ economic and speech concerns. Hybrid media, such as telephone provision of video (called video dialtone) challenge historical assumptions, definitions and mechanisms for achieving communications diversity.

This article explores video dialtone as a case study of the diverse and sometimes contradictory efforts of federal policy makers to adapt the historical goal of diversity to emerging and rapidly changing communications technologies. The author suggests that the much‐touted era of communications abundance is not a utopia. Technical and financial constraints will inhibit the development of virtually infinite communications capacity. Moreover, increased communications capacity alone will not necessarily preserve or enhance communications diversity or resolve power differences among owners and users of communications media.     

How women use family networks to facilitate migration: A comparative study of Irish and Polish women in Britain

Within migration studies there has been a tendency to focus on a single case study of a particular national group. Adopting a comparative approach may raise new and interesting questions or challenge conventional thinking on migration. While on the surface, at least, Irish and Polish migrants would appear to have many commonalities, there has been surprisingly little comparative analysis of these two groups. Drawing on my own research on these migrants in the British context, I focus on women as a large but under-researched aspect of both groups. This paper suggests ways in which such a comparison could be undertaken by using social networks as a useful comparative tool. A social networks perspective not only allows a probing analysis of migration strategies, but also provides a framework within which to compare across different migrant groups, such as for example, examining the role of family networks (here and there) in migration processes. In addition, this approach enables an examination of dynamism over time and how migrants develop relationships within spatially dispersed as well as locally embedded ties.     

The sins of the father: The destruction of the Republican family in Franco's Spain

The postwar years in Spain were little more than the perpetuation of the Civil War on an ideological terrain, as the Franco Regime consistently vilified the memory of the Second Republic and remorselessly persecuted the defeated Republicans. In fact, nationalist diatribes against communism and its attendant ills of separatism and laicism were invariably expounded in medical terminology, referring as they did to the “cancer” and “virus” which had devastated the nation during the Civil War. This empirically unverifiable theory sustained that a large scale extermination (the Civil War) had to be carried out to rid Spain of this “virus” thus preempt the contagion of this fervently Catholic and patriotic nation. Horkheimer affirms that the family is the microcosm of the fascist state, as the relationship between siblings and parents replicates the obedience of the citizen to the fascist state. As Republican traits were at antipodes to the prescribed national attributes, the Francoist State sought to destroy the Republican family by a myriad of measures such as the inculcation of a zealous National Catholicism in their children, which in turn precipitated both selfhatred and the children's outright rejection of their parents. However, the social persecution of the defeated transcended indoctrination: in the postwar years, the horrendousness of life for the Republicans was compounded by the State's quasi reconversion policy, which resulted in Republican children being forcibly removed from their homes, and been adopted by pro-Francoist families, or in many cases, rehoused by religious orders which, within a decade, witnessed a huge increase in the number of supposed orphans becoming seminarists. In this article, I intend to elaborate on both the means by which the Francoist State eradicated the Republican family, and its long-term consequences.     

Capacity Building for New Parliamentarians: Survey of Orientation and Induction Programmes

This article reports original research which built on conceptual issues previously identified by the authors. A survey of national parliaments sought information on orientation and induction programmes offered to first term members and on members' perceptions of those programmes. An overview of findings is presented and significant issues identified. Most programmes provided passive development through information and a handbook rather than active skill development. Few used training processes and techniques that were based on contemporary adult learning principles. There were sharp divisions over training and development in dealing with ethical issues. The findings suggest considerable potential for the further development of programmes and for sharing information about programmes in order to assist capacity building for parliamentarians and thereby enhance the performance of parliaments and individual members.     

Attributions of blame in a hypothetical internet solicitation case: Roles of victim naivety,parental neglect and respondent gender

Abstract

This study investigates attributions towards the perpetrator, the victim and the victim's parents in a hypothetical internet solicitation case. A community sample of 187 respondents read a vignette outlining an internet chatroom conversation between a 10-year-old girl and a 25-year-old man, followed by a depicted sexual assault, before rating 26 attribution items. Principal components analysis extracted six reliable and interpretable factors which were then subjected to a two-respondent gender×two-victim age×two-victim internet naivety×two-parental neglect between-subjects multiple analyses of variance (MANOVA). While levels of victim naivety had no impact on any measure, parents who were neglectful of their child's online activities were deemed more culpable for their child's later abuse than were parents who took an active interest in their child's activities. In general, females deemed the victim more credible than males. Implications are discussed.     

Preaching to the Choir: Americans Prefer Communicating to Copartisan Elected Officials

Past work suggests that partisan attachments isolate citizens from encountering elite messages contrary to their points of view. Here, we present evidence that partisan attachments not only serve to filter the information citizens receive from political elites; they also work in the other direction, isolating politicians from encountering potentially contrary perspectives from citizens. In particular, we hypothesized that Americans prefer expressing their opinions to politicians who share their party identification and avoid contacting outpartisan politicians. Three studies—drawing on a mixture of observational, field experimental, and natural experimental approaches—support this hypothesis: Citizens prefer to “preach to the choir,” contacting legislators of the same partisan stripe. In light of evidence that contact from citizens powerfully affects politicians’ stances and priorities, these findings suggest a feedback loop that might aggravate political polarization and help explain how politicians of different parties could develop different perceptions of the same constituencies.     

Assessing the impact of stricter alcohol advertising standards: the case of Beam Global Spirits

Reducing youth exposure to alcohol advertising is a global health priority. In most countries around the world, the alcohol industry is given the opportunity to regulate itself with respect to advertising practices. Generally, the alcohol industry self‐regulations are lax, allowing youth to be disproportionately exposed to alcohol advertising. However, Beam Global Spirits and Wine (Beam) voluntarily adopted more restrictive advertising standards in the United States in 2007. This study assessed Beam's compliance with their new standard and estimates its effect on youth exposure and advertising costs. We found that Beam's compliance with its more restrictive standards was imperfect, but never‐the‐less, we estimated that youth exposure to alcohol advertising was reduced compared to other spirits brands. Beam's more restrictive standards did not increase their advertising costs, and therefore other alcohol companies should consider adopting similar standards around the world. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

From absent to present pasts: civil society,democracy and the shifting place of memory in Brazil

This article takes Alexis de Tocqueville’s concern with the emotional life of citizens as a cue for exploring the role of collective memory within ‘the self-organizing sphere’ and asking how the invocation of memory affects progress towards democracy. The article hones in on the Brazilian experience, re-assessing Brazil’s amnesiac past as well as its much-lauded ‘turn to memory’. Against common assertions that Brazil’s ‘turn to memory’ will enhance the country’s democratic credentials, this article argues that the move from an ‘absent’ to a ‘present’ past in Brazil in fact bodes rather mixed prospects for the country’s democratic deepening.