210 research outputs found
Internet and Smartphone Use-Related Addiction Health Problems: Treatment, Education and Research
This Special Issue presents some of the main emerging research on technological topics of health and education approaches to Internet use-related problems, before and during the beginning of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The objective is to provide an overview to facilitate a comprehensive and practical approach to these new trends to promote research, interventions, education, and prevention. It contains 40 papers, four reviews and thirty-five empirical papers and an editorial introducing everything in a rapid review format. Overall, the empirical ones are of a relational type, associating specific behavioral addictive problems with individual factors, and a few with contextual factors, generally in adult populations. Many have adapted scales to measure these problems, and a few cover experiments and mixed methods studies. The reviews tend to be about the concepts and measures of these problems, intervention options, and prevention. In summary, it seems that these are a global culture trend impacting health and educational domains. Internet use-related addiction problems have emerged in almost all societies, and strategies to cope with them are under development to offer solutions to these contemporary challenges, especially during the pandemic situation that has highlighted the global health problems that we have, and how to holistically tackle them
âBasically... porn is everywhereâ: a rapid evidence assessment on the effects that access and exposure to pornography has on children and young people
This Rapid Evidence Assessment (REA) was commissioned by the Office of the Childrenâs Commissioner (OCC) as part of its Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Gangs and Groups (CSEGG). It was conducted by a consortium led by Middlesex University, to explore the effects that exposure and access to pornography have on children and young people. The CSEGG Inquiry was launched in October 2011 to better understand the scale, scope, extent and nature of child sexual exploitation in gangs and groups. An emergent issue was whether accessing and viewing pornography can have an impact on children and young peopleâs expectations and attitudes towards sexual activity and relationships. Despite limited recourse to previous evidence, professionals interviewed over the course of the CSEGG Inquiry raised concerns about the impact of pornography at 43 per cent of site visits and 48 per cent of evidence hearings (Berelowitz et al., 2012).
Professionals from many agencies reported particular concerns about the effects of pornography involving high levels of degradation, violence and humiliation, which they believe to be prevalent in material freely available online. Police case files that were reviewed cited instances of boys and young men referring to pornography during sexual assaults (Berelowitz et al., 2012). This REA was therefore commissioned to inform the CSEGG Inquiry Chair, Panel and Project Team, enabling them to add depth to their ultimate recommendations regarding child sexual exploitation in gangs and groups
Global gamers, transnational play, imaginary battlefield: encountering the gameplay experience in the war-themed first-person-shooter,Call of Duty
During the post-9/11 era we have witnessed the rise of war-themed digital games,
which are increasingly produced and distributed on a massive global scale. This new
form of 'militainment' re-formulates âthe military-entertainment complexâ industrial
model, and by repeatedly simulating historical/present/fictional war events and
adopting militaristic stories, creates an adrenaline-pumping interactive gaming
experience that the global gamers find very difficult to resist. Before 2011 the most
iconic war-themed first-person-shooter (FPS) digital game, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
2, achieved a new milestone of more than 20 million copies sold globally. After the
release of Call of Duty: Black Ops, the Facebook COD group became one of the top 20
fastest growing Facebook communities in 2010. At the time of writing this thesis, this
network community had already attracted more than 10 million fans worldwide.
Besides the well-known Call of Duty series, other FPS titles like Medal of Honor, Fallout,
and Battlefield series are all fed into the global gamersâ growing appetite for this
so-called âshootâemâallâ genre.
Within academia, scholars from different research disciplines also realized the
importance of gaming and have been trying to approach this conflict-based digital
game culture from various angles. The war-themed genre FPS is frequently challenged
by peopleâs negative impression towards its unpleasant essence and content;
questioning its embedded political ideologies, the violent sequences involved in the
gameplay and its socio-cultural influences/effects to individual and community etc.
However, the wide range of critical debates in this field has reflected the growing
interest of scholars in the complex political relationship between military and
entertainment sectors and industries, and the embedded P.R. network that is running
behind the gamesâ industrial structure and cultural production (see Wark 1996, Herz
1997, Derian 2001, Stockwell and Muir 2003, Lenoir and Lowood 2005, Leonard 2007,
Turse 2008, Ottosen 2009). Despite widespread academic interests in the subject, few
researchers have paid attention to the gamers who are the ones truly engaged
themselves to this genre. If we look at the research within game studies today, less
analysis is primarily focused on this unique shooter-gamer culture. In this regard, this
research adopts qualitative research methods to explore the gamersâ feelings, attitudes, and their
experiences in the war-themed FPS genre.
In terms of the research methods used, an online questionnaire was launched to
collect responses from 433 gamers across different countries, and 11 in-depth
face-to-face interviews with a community of COD gamers were also conducted in Taiwan between 2010 and 2011. The data which has emerged from the two research
methods reveals gamersâ perceptions about war gamesâ time narrative and realism.
Based on the interviews, the research analyses East Asian gamersâ construction of
meanings in this âwestern genreâ and provides some theoretical reflections about their
transnational FPS gameplay experience
Unmet goals of tracking: within-track heterogeneity of students' expectations for
Educational systems are often characterized by some form(s) of ability grouping, like tracking. Although substantial variation in the implementation of these practices exists, it is always the aim to improve teaching efficiency by creating homogeneous groups of students in terms of capabilities and performances as well as expected pathways. If studentsâ expected pathways (university, graduate school, or working) are in line with the goals of tracking, one might presume that these expectations are rather homogeneous within tracks and heterogeneous between tracks. In Flanders (the northern region of Belgium), the educational system consists of four tracks. Many students start out in the most prestigious, academic track. If they fail to gain the necessary credentials, they move to the less esteemed technical and vocational tracks. Therefore, the educational system has been called a 'cascade system'. We presume that this cascade system creates homogeneous expectations in the academic track, though heterogeneous expectations in the technical and vocational tracks. We use data from the International Study of City Youth (ISCY), gathered during the 2013-2014 school year from 2354 pupils of the tenth grade across 30 secondary schools in the city of Ghent, Flanders. Preliminary results suggest that the technical and vocational tracks show more heterogeneity in studentâs expectations than the academic track. If tracking does not fulfill the desired goals in some tracks, tracking practices should be questioned as tracking occurs along social and ethnic lines, causing social inequality
Aspects of digital game culture: the cases of eastern Europe and China
In 2006, a seminar on Aspects of Digital Game Culture was held at the TU Ilmenau, Department of Media Management. This seminar acknowledged the fact that in recent years, Digital Games (Computer-, Video- and Mobile-Games) have become an interesting topic for academic research. Within the booming sector of Game Studies the focus is no longer solely on the usage of digital games by children and teenager, or the influence digital games have on aggressive behaviour. Economic and cultural aspects of digital gaming play a significant role in the academic discourse on digital games.
This paper presents two empirical studies on intercultural aspects of digital gaming. The first study explores the importance of digital games in Eastern Europe. The second, extensive study focuses on the emerging games market in Chin
Contradiction
In the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the many facets of crisisâthe theme of last year's China Story Yearbookâfractured into pictures of contradiction throughout Chinese society and the Chinese sphere of influence. Contradiction: the ancient Chinese word for the concept holds within it the image of an unstoppable spear meeting an impenetrable shield. It describes a wide range of phenomena that English might express with words like conflict, clash, paradox, incongruity, disagreement, rebuttal, opposition, and negation. This yearâs Yearbook presents stories of action and reaction, of motion and resistance. The theme of contradiction plays out in different ways across the different realms of society, culture, environment, labour, politics, and international relations. Great powers do not necessarily succeed in dominating smaller ones. The seemingly irresistible forces of authoritarianism, patriarchy, and technological control come up against energised and surprisingly resilient means of resistance or cooptation. Efforts by various authorities to establish monolithic narrative control over the past and present meet a powerful insistence on telling the story from an opposite angle. The China Story Yearbook: Contradiction offers an accessible take on this complex and contradictory moment in the history of China and of the world
The medicalization of deviance in China
äşć´˛çŻç˝Şĺ¸ĺ¸ćConference Theme: Asian Innovations in Criminology and Criminal JusticePart 5: Juvenile Delinquency and JusticeConrad and Schneiderâs now classical work on the historical transformation of definitions of deviance from âbadnessâ to âsicknessâ is relevant for the situation in China today, although with some modifications. The weakly founded medical/psychiatric profession and the strong political/ideological discourse in China leads to a strange combination of medicalization and moralization, even criminalization of deviance. The âsickâ is often combined with the âbadâ, and âsicknessâ is often seen as a secondary sign of âbadnessâ. The pan-moralist tradition of ancient China seems to be closely combined with the Communist eraâs strong belief in political-ideological correctness, and its strong belief in social engineering. It is interesting to note that my research on crime and deviance in China in the 1980s and 1990s seems to be confirmed by todayâs discourse, although there are new moral panics and new forms of medical-moralistic definitions of deviance in China today. Still, the categories of deviance are very much socially constructed entities closely related to the moral-political order of present day China. I will use three cases to underline my argument. First, the type of deviance I call âmajority devianceâ, related to the case of the prejudice and dangers associated with the only-child. My second example has to do with what I term the âwayward girlâ and the moral panics concerning so-called zaolian â or âpremature loveâ among young girls. The third example is the new panic surrounding âinternet addiction disorderâ or IAD. While the âdiscoâ and the âdance hallâ were the sites of disorder in the 1980s and 90s, the wangba â or âinternet barâ is now seen as the most dangerous site of crime and deviance.postprin
Communicating Science
Modern science communication has emerged in the twentieth century as a field of study, a body of practice and a professionâand it is a practice with deep historical roots. We have seen the birth of interactive science centres, the first university actions in teaching and conducting research, and a sharp growth in employment of science communicators. This collection charts the emergence of modern science communication across the world. This is the first volume to map investment around the globe in science centres, university courses and research, publications and conferences as well as tell the national stories of science communication. How did it all begin? How has development varied from one country to another? What motivated governments, institutions and people to see science communication as an answer to questions of the social place of science? Communicating Science describes the pathways followed by 39 different countries. All continents and many cultures are represented. For some countries, this is the first time that their science communication story has been told
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