All News is Bad News: Newspaper Coverage of Political Parties in Spain

Spain has a highly partisan media system, with newspapers reaching self-selected partisan audiences and espousing explicitly partisan editorial preferences. Do the newspapers of the left and right differ in how they cover politics in ways that can be predicted by their partisan leanings? We review theories of issue ownership, journalistic standards, and information scarcity and test hypotheses derived from each. We find that the parties converge substantially in virtually every aspect of their coverage. Few differences emerge when we look at what topics are covered or in the dynamics of which topics gain attention over time. However, we confirm important differences across the papers when they make explicit reference to individual political parties. Journalistic norms result in a surprising focus on the faults of one’s enemies, however, rather than the virtues of one’s allies. Our assessment is based on a comprehensive database of all front-page stories in El País and El Mundo, Spain’s largest daily newspapers, from 1996 through 2011.     

Computer Simulations to Investigate the Consequence of Blunt Head Impact

Blunt head impact as sustained in falls or punches against the head can result in rupture of bridging veins. Computer simulations were performed to simulate three different types of falls and punches against the head. The relative brain‐skull motion was recorded. The falls resulted in impact on the backside of the head, whereas the punches struck the face. The maximum resultant translational and rotational acceleration, the Head Injury Criterion (HIC), and the characteristics of the relative brain‐skull motion, as well as the coup and contre‐coup regions were determined. The maximum resultant translational acceleration was found to be between 2982 and 3541 m/s² for falls and between 814 and 942 m/s² for punches. The maximum resultant rotational acceleration reached 632–1000 rad/s² for falls and 252–620 rad/s² for punches. The HIC for falls was found to be at least 1357 and at most 130 for punches. The major brain‐skull displacement calculated for falls and punches was 6.6 and 4.2 mm, respectively. The results of this study suggest that falls are associated with a higher risk for bridging vein ruptures than punches and that cerebral contusions at the contre‐coup side are more serious.     

Divided Government,Legislative Productivity,and Policy Change in the USA and France

The concept of “divided government” is more complicated than scholars have allowed. In the USA, truly unified government, where the president enjoys a filibuster‐proof majority in the Senate as well as a majority in the House, is rare. In France, truly unified government has been more common, but divided government has also occurred several times. Democratic governance requires that parties address important issues and they do so regardless of the patterns of institutional control. Nevertheless, policy changes or important laws are affected by the higher level of institutional friction associated with divided government. Looking at both the USA and France, we find that periods of unified government show higher levels of production of important laws in the USA, but we find no difference for overall legislative productivity.     

Law and the middle class

This paper draws upon ethnographic evidence from a suburb of New York City to address the relationship between social class and the use of law. In the community studied, middle-class people are less likely than working-class people to complain to legal officials about the conduct of their personal associates such as relatives and neighbors. It appears that the greater transiency and atomization of middle-class people militate against their use of law by reducing the amount of negative information antagonists have about one another and by making avoidance a more attractive means of conflict management. Beyond this, the higher social status of middle-class people itself seems to result in a greater reluctance to use law in personal matters: Because they are generally equal or superior to legal officials in social standing, middle-class people are less willing than lower-status people to submit to their judgment. In light of this, it may be necessary to qualify the prevailing view that higher-status people have a greater propensity to use law as a means of conflict management. Where personal matters among themselves are concerned, the opposite may be the truth.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association, Madison, Wisconsin, June 1980. For commenting upon various aspects of the work presented here, I would like to thank Donald Black, Kai Erikson, Sally Engle Merry, Frank Romo, Susan S. Silbey, and Stanton Wheeler.     

Preemptive and reactive spending in U.S. House races

This paper examines the spending behavior of candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives. Particular attention is paid to the timing of receipts and expenditures over the complete 2-year election cycle. Incumbents raise and spend large amounts of money very early in the race, and this preemptive spending may have a great impact on the selection of challengers and therefore on electoral outcomes. In addition, a model of reactive spending is tested for the general election period. Incumbents' expenditures are a function of the underlying partisan division in the district, the strength of the challenge, and candidates' feelings of vulnerability. Incumbents are strategic actors who attempt to maximize their chances of reelection. Early in the term, they spend preemptively in an effort to influence the selection of their challengers. Later in the term, they spend in reaction to the strength of their challengers' campaign. The role of money in congressional campaigns is neither simple nor direct. More attention needs to be given to the strategic uses of money in the period leading up to the general election campaign as well as to the dynamics of receipts and expenditures over an entire election cycle.     

Drug testing by urine and hair analysis: complementary features and scientific issues

Hair analysis and urinalysis are complementary tests for establishing drug use. Hair analysis provides long-term information, from months to years, concerning both the severity and pattern of drug use. In contrast to this, urinalysis can indicate only drug use, and then generally only that which has occurred within the last 2–3 days. Field studies have demonstrated that hair analysis is considerably more effective than urinalysis at identifying drug users. This difference is due to the wider surveillance window of hair analysis and to the susceptibility of urinalysis to evasive maneuvers. The main concerns with urinalysis are endogenous evidentiary false positives caused by passive drug exposure, e.g., ingestion of poppy seed. This problem arises from the hypersensitivity of the urine test, i.e. the need to use low cut-off levels in order to compensate for the temporary recording of drug use. This problem does not occur with hair analysis since its wide window of detection and permanent record of drug use ensure that the detection efficiency of the test is not compromised by the use of more effective cut-off levels guarding against passive endogenous drug exposure. On the other hand, exogenous evidentiary false positives due to external contamination of hair by drugs present in the environment (e.g., smoke) are the main concern of hair analysis. This problem, however, can be effectively avoided by washing the hair specimen, by kinetic analyses of the wash data, and by measurement of metabolites. The possibility of bias due to race and/or hair color is avoided by the exclusion of melanin from the analysis of hair. The safety and effectiveness of hair testing has been established by extensive field studies with over 400 000 specimens.     

Fake Claims of Fake News: Political Misinformation,Warnings, and the Tainted Truth Effect

Political Behavior - Fact-checking and warnings of misinformation are increasingly salient and prevalent components of modern news media and political communications. While many warnings about...     

Did the “Road to the White House Run Through” Letterman? Chris Christie,Letterman, and Other-Disparaging Versus Self-Deprecating Humor

In this article we present the results of an experiment designed to disentangle the effects late-night talk show viewership have on presidential candidate evaluations. Respondents in one condition viewed a short video clip of David Letterman humorously disparaging New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, thought by many at the time to be considering a run for the presidency in 2016. Those in a second condition saw a short clip of Christie engaging in self-deprecating humor while appearing as a guest on Letterman's program. Compared with respondents in a control condition, those in the other-disparaging humor condition had lower evaluations of Christie and reported a lower likelihood of voting for him in 2016, while those in the self-deprecating humor condition had higher evaluations of him and expressed a greater likelihood of voting for him. The research has practical implications for modern campaigns and also serves to clarify some of the seemingly contradictory findings of earlier political humor effects research.