In the Spotlight: Analyzing Sequential Attention Effects in Protest Reporting

During waves of contention, international media attention can be of crucial importance for activists and protest participants. However, media attention is a scarce resource and the competition over news coverage is high. While some emphasize the agenda-setting power of news outlets and argue that receiving coverage is determined by factors outside the protest movement, others suggest a dynamic relationship between media attention and activism where social movement organizations are assumed to have some agency to make it to the news. In this article, we contribute to the latter and analyze how protest can endogenously trigger more coverage. Building on insights from communication science, we argue that widely covered protests attract media attention and temporarily lower the selection threshold for subsequent incidents. Using fine-grained data on anti-regime protest in all authoritarian countries between 2003 and 2012, we find robust empirical evidence for this hypothesis. We also show that this effect becomes weaker and eventually disappears with increasing spatial and temporal distance from a highly salient event. These findings are important for research in contentious politics, since they allow us to gauge the extent to which protest activity on the ground may under certain circumstances be overreported in the media.     

Is there anything Left? The politics of social spending in new democracies

The evolution of public social expenditures displays divergent patterns across non‐western countries. This exploratory article argues that in order to understand the domestic sources of this divergence, institutional and structural explanations should be complemented with an actor‐oriented perspective. Analyses of the role of party politics in non‐OECD democracies, through multivariate fixed‐effect regressions using data from 46 countries between 1995 and 2015, reveals a robust positive association between shifts towards Left party government and increases in total public social expenditures, also when controlling for structural and institutional factors. This association however seems potentially conditional on sufficient levels of economic growth. While indicating an impact of partisanship, further research is arguably needed regarding the origins, organization and policy outputs of parties in more recently democratized countries, as well as regarding the conditions under which the ideological orientation of parties in government are actually consequential.     

Towards a Measurement of Extreme Left-Wing Attitudes

Previous research on left-wing extremism relied largely on measurements that are unsuitable to detect and track extreme attitudes. In the absence of a clearly defined instrument for left-wing extremism, researchers based their predictions largely on indicators like voting behaviour or the left—right self-placement scale. Building on a large-scale investigation of data from the past 20 years, the paper shows that such indicators do not serve as adequate proxies, since those labelled as ‘extreme’ do not hold extreme attitudes in most cases. Analysing a variety of left-wing extremist attitudes across the past two decades shows that there is indeed a core set of attitudes that seem to resemble what we would call a traditional left-wing extremist identity. The paper suggests an instrument that can serve as a starting point for further developing an index of left-wing extremism. Finally, the potential of the extreme left is assessed using the constructed index. The results show that the estimated potential of the new measure differs substantially from conventional measurements, not in quantity but in its composition. As a result, traditional measurements fail to predict actual left-wing extremism. In particular, anti-pluralist mindsets are heavily neglected. Implications are thus discussed for Germany, and the world at large.     

Establishing A Mission-Based Culture: Analyzing the Relation Between Intra-Organizational Socialization Agents,Mission Valence,Public Service Motivation,Goal Clarity and Work Impact

ABSTRACT

This study contributes to our understanding of how organizations can craft a mission-based culture by examining the relationship between mission valence, PSM, goal clarity, and work impact. More specifically, the study assesses how value-laden communication with multiple intra-organizational socialization referents is related with the cited variables. The developed hypotheses are tested using structural equation modelling and a sample of 585 non-managerial employees employed by a public welfare organization. The findings confirm the claim that position in an organizational hierarchy is not likely to influence the analyzed relationships. The magnitude of the relationships, however, diverges. In contrast to previous research, the study results indicate that, in the case of lower-level employees, PSM is the most powerful predictor of mission valence. Furthermore, the results indicate that exposure to organizational values via interaction with internal socialization agents is positively related with their perceived importance. The results thus not only confirm the relevance of incorporating the institutional setting when analyzing mission valence, but also provide further proof for an institutional theory of PSM by highlighting that different organizational socialization agents could play a distinctive role in crafting PSM and a mission-based culture.     

Sampling and statistical considerations for the Suchey–Brooks method for pubic bone age estimation: Implications for regional comparisons

Although the Suchey–Brooks (SB) system is currently the most widely used method for age-at-death estimation from the pubic bone, the system continues to evolve through stepwise improvements. Since the system was developed from a pubic bone sample derived mainly from North Americans, it is unclear how well it performs on populations from other continents. During the last decade, studies of the SB system on pubic bone samples from local populations in Europe and Asia have indicated regional differences in the relationship between age and pubic bone development. However, these studies have for the most part followed different research protocols, which make comparisons between their results less meaningful. It would be most useful if future regional analysis of the SB system were done in a rigorous and uniform fashion, following standard procedures. In this paper, sampling and statistical considerations are outlined that hopefully will help to standardize research on the SB system.     

Religion und Religiosit?t als Ursache von Homonegativit?t

Although the attitudes towards homosexuality have become more liberal especially in industrialized Western countries, there is still a huge variance in terms of the levels of homonegativity worldwide. This article seeks to explain this variance by means of a multi-level-analysis of 79 countries. The data stem from the last two waves of the World Values Survey. On the basis of this data, the article focuses on the power of the religious denomination of a person and her religiousness in order to explain her attitude towards homosexuality; for both variables a strong influence can be detected. In addition, the article indicates that, on the individual level, socio-demographic variables??e.g. age, gender, education, marital status or profession??are highly interconnected with the intensity of homonegativity. On the country-level, however, the main explanatory factors are both the economic development and the communist heritage. The article further highlights significant conditional relationships by introducing cross-level interactions and interaction terms on the individual level. The final model explains about 60% of the variance on the aggregate level and 30% on the individual level.     

Survived stab to the heart in a schizophrenic man

Schizophrenia is associated with a significant risk of suicide. According to recent research, 10-15 % of all schizophrenic patients die by suicide. It is not uncommon that the victims show sharp force injuries, so that the forensic pathologist first has to differentiate between self-infliction and involvement of another person. The authors' case report presents a 68-year-old schizophrenic patient who committed suicide by jumping out of a window of his apartment located on the second floor after inflicting multiple stab wounds to his thoracic region. At autopsy, an older stab wound to the apex of the heart was detected. In the criminal investigation, a suicide attempt made 13 days before could be ascertained. As the patient did not want to be taken to a hospital at that time, the injury had never been examined or documented. Since there was no evidence suggesting homicide, the older stab to the heart was interpreted as a tentative injury.     

Cardiac Changes Due to Electronic Control Devices? A Computer‐Based Analysis of Electrical Effects at the Human Heart Caused by an ECD Pulse Applied to the Body's Exterior

Electronic control devices (ECDs) deliver high‐voltage, low‐current energy pulses temporarily paralyzing a person. For the ECD–human interaction, we have developed a computer model using the SEMCAD program within which to simulate the electrical effects throughout the body resulting from the imposition of an ECD pulse at a particular point on the body surface. Our human body models were based on cross‐sectional MRIs and CT scans, with the dielectric properties of the various tissues assigned based on previously published values. We simulated the application of a single ECD pulse and calculated the resulting electric field strength and current and charge densities at different body locations. The results were compared with corresponding values obtained by other researchers in similar simulations. Furthermore, we simulated an application of a pulse of 20‐millisecond duration equal to the European household current of 50 Hz and to the ventricular fibrillation threshold. The resulting current level indicated at the heart muscle was 1/5 the level considered the threshold for triggering ventricular fibrillation.