Federalism in Corporate/Securities Law: Reflections on Delaware, California, and State Regulation of Insider Trading

In this brief Essay, I offer some thoughts on both the theory and the politics underlying the federalism question. My comments will touch on some of the controversies and also look at a somewhat quieter question, the state regulation of insider trading. Over the course of the last few years, judges in California and Delaware have traveled markedly different routes on questions involving the states\u27 role in regulating insider trading. A California court of appeal has recently expanded the reach of the state insider trading statute to cover a claim alleging misconduct in California by an executive of a Delaware chartered company. By contrast, Delaware Vice-Chancellor Leo Strine has hinted strongly that Delaware courts should consider getting out of the business of regulating insider trading entirely, notwithstanding a venerable old Delaware case long cited for the proposition that insider trading naturally breaches the fiduciary duty of loyalty. These contrasting approaches make a nice pair from which to think through the federalism question free from the blinding glare of controversy surrounding Eliot Spitzer, the shareholder ballot access proposal, or Sarbanes-Oxley

The Canterbury tales : an insider's lessons and reflections from the Canterbury Earthquake Sequence to inform better public communication models : a thesis presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English and Media Studies at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand

This research evaluates the public earthquake preparedness communication before the Canterbury Earthquake Sequence (2010-present) and examines communication learnings to create recommendations for improvements in implementation for these campaigns in future. The research comes from an “insider” perspective from someone who worked on these campaigns in Canterbury before the earthquakes. In this research I use this insider lens to analyse the Q-Files booklets, developed by the Public Education Public Information group (PEPI) and coordinated by the Canterbury Civil Defence Emergency Management (CDEM) Group, both groups in which I worked professionally before the earthquakes. These booklets aimed to communicate the geological hazards and risks in Canterbury to persuade publics to prepare. For my analysis, I developed a “best practice matrix”, derived from the most relevant literature, to determine how closely these booklets aligned to best-practice academic research. I also used readability tests and word counts to triangulate the data. I interpreted that the Q-Files were overly long, jargon-laden text filled with little positive outcome expectancy messages, and would have failed to persuade most people that earthquakes were a real threat in Canterbury. Paradoxically, it is likely these booklets created fatalism in publics who read them. While the overall intention was positive, to scientifically explain geological risks to encourage the public to prepare for these events, my analysis identified that the implementation could have been greatly improved. After summarising my findings, I shared these insights with my community of practice and found that many of my former colleagues shared with me their frustrations, concerns and disappointments with not only the Q-Files but the overall management of public preparedness communication within Canterbury. Finally, I reflect on what it means to have been part of the development of a failed risk communication campaign. I interpret that scientism was the fundamental belief system inspiring the PEPI group in Canterbury to create the Q-Files. I argue that the PEPI group created echo-chamber-like effects, supporting and reflecting their own belief systems in their public communication. The group’s self-containment led to the creation of documents filled with jargon, gobbledygook and scientificism. Based on my findings, I highlight areas for improvement in strategic approaches for more successful campaigns in future as well as potential research pathways

Researching from Within: Moral and Ethical Issues and Dilemmas

With the proliferation of taught research degrees over the last few years, the number of people undertaking research within their own institution is rising. This article examines the ethical and moral dilemmas confronting such ‘insider’ researchers. Although all research has implications for those involved, in this paper we argue that undertaking interpretive insider research within your own institution or organisation makes these implications even more acute. By reviewing the literature in this area and drawing on the authors’ experiences of undertaking two separate interpretive studies at institutions where they were members of staff, the article discusses key issues of gaining access, anonymity, researcher bias and power. Although undertaking insider research can be problematic, it is argued that researchers should be able to enter the setting with confidence, as long as the appropriate ethical boundaries are established at the outset and constantly re-visited throughout the process

Ethnographies of the imagined, the imaginary and the critically real: Blackness, whiteness, the north of England and rugby league

Rugby league is part of the white, working-class (male) culture of the north of England, and is a sport that is used by its supporters to (re)produce both an imagined community of nostalgic northernness and an imaginary community of locally situated hegemonically masculine belonging. The invented traditions of its origins link the game to a white, working-class twentieth-century culture of mills, pits, terraced houses and pubs; a culture increasingly marginalised, reshaped and challenged in this century. In this paper we use two medium-term, ethnographic research projects on rugby league (one from Spracklen; the other an on-going project by Timmins) to explore northernness, blackness, whiteness and our own roles in the ethnographies as 'black' and 'white' researchers researching 'race' and identity in a community that remains (but not exclusively) a place for a working-class whiteness to be articulated. We argue that our own histories and identities are pivotal in how we are accepted as legitimate ethnographers and insiders, but those histories and identities also posea critically real challenge to us and to those in the community of rugby league with whom we interact. © 2010 Taylor & Francis

The insider on the outside: a novel system for the detection of information leakers in social networks

Confidential information is all too easily leaked by naive users posting comments. In this paper we introduce DUIL, a system for Detecting Unintentional Information Leakers. The value of DUIL is in its ability to detect those responsible for information leakage that occurs through comments posted on news articles in a public environment, when those articles have withheld material non-public information. DUIL is comprised of several artefacts, each designed to analyse a different aspect of this challenge: the information, the user(s) who posted the information, and the user(s) who may be involved in the dissemination of information. We present a design science analysis of DUIL as an information system artefact comprised of social, information, and technology artefacts. We demonstrate the performance of DUIL on real data crawled from several Facebook news pages spanning two years of news articles

Embodying feminist research: learning from action research, political practices, diffractions and collective knowledge.

In the past three decades, feminists and critical theorists have discussed and argued the importance of deconstructing and problematizing social science research methodology in order to question normalized hierarchies concerning the production of knowledge and the status of truth claims. Nevertheless, often, these ideas have basically remained theoretical propositions not embodied in research practices. In fact there is very little published discussion about the difficulties and limits of their practical application. In this paper we introduce some interconnected reflections starting from two different but related experiences of embodying 'feminist activist research'. Our aim is to emphasise the importance of attending to process, making mistakes and learning during fieldwork, as well as experimenting with personalized forms of analysis, such as the construction of narratives and the story-telling process

Researching coethnic migrants: privileges and puzzles of "insiderness"

This article reflects on fieldwork experiences with coethnic migrants in London to challenge understandings of insiderness centred in shared ethnicity, as well as the usefulness of the insider-outsider divide in migration research more generally. Drawing on examples from a study of migrants' social relations, it shows how gender, migrant status, and occupational position sometimes shape research encounters in more important ways than shared ethnicity. Furthermore, whilst shared ethnicity is undoubtedly useful in certain respects, participants' ethnicised discourses and practices may also generate feelings of distance in the coethnic researcher. Whilst supporting the "ethnic bias" critique to migration studies (GLICK SCHILLER, ÇAĞLAR & GULDBRANDSEN, 2006), the analysis thus highlights how both ethnic and non-ethnic factors alternate or interact to create perceptions of insiderness or outsiderness in specific research contexts

Emotion, empathy and exit: reflections on doing ethnographic qualitative research on sensitive topics

Within ethnography, observation and participation are interwoven as sociological research practice that involves watching, listening and asking questions about people’s daily lives and experiences, and the meaning they attach to these. For ethnographic researchers a close and regular engagement with participants raises both practical and ethical challenges related to intrusion, relationship boundaries and issues of ‘attachment’ on leaving the field. Research that has the added dimension of profound sensitivity may also present the researcher with the challenge of managing the impacts on them of emotional stress caused by watching people’s discomfort and suffering. This article discusses the author’s methodological reflections on an ongoing ethnographic study of a cancer drop-in centre, focusing on the ways in which emotion and empathy shape researcher-respondent rapport. An underpinning theme of the discussion is the potential for emotion deluge and fatigue on the part of the researcher and the consequent need to establish self-care strategies

A Taxonomy for Attack Patterns on Information Flows in Component-Based Operating Systems

We present a taxonomy and an algebra for attack patterns on component-based operating systems. In a multilevel security scenario, where isolation of partitions containing data at different security classifications is the primary security goal and security breaches are mainly defined as undesired disclosure or modification of classified data, strict control of information flows is the ultimate goal. In order to prevent undesired information flows, we provide a classification of information flow types in a component-based operating system and, by this, possible patterns to attack the system. The systematic consideration of informations flows reveals a specific type of operating system covert channel, the covert physical channel, which connects two former isolated partitions by emitting physical signals into the computer's environment and receiving them at another interface.Comment: 9 page