Norm and Context in the Social Sciences (Book Review)

Reviewed Title: Norm and Context in the Social Sciences. Sander Griffioen and Jan Verhoogt, eds. (New York: University Press of America) 1990. 295 pp

Impact of WW II on the Reformed Dutch in The Netherlands and Canada: A Comparison

From Suffering and Survival: The Netherlands, 1940-1945, a four-day conference held at Dordt College in the fall of 1990 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Nazi occupation of The Netherlands and the 45th anniversary of The Netherlands\u27 liberation

I Love Coyotes, but I Love My Cat Too: Community-Reported Emotional Responses to Canis latrans in the Portland Metropolitan Area

In an urban setting, coyote (Canis latrans) observations elicit a variety of reported emotional responses—including complex combinations, such as concern for humans and pets with love for nature and wildlife. The Portland Urban Coyote Project is a community science project that collects reported observations of coyotes in the Portland metropolitan area and provides outreach materials to the community. Since 2013, the project has collected over 16,000 reported observations of coyotes. In 2021, the report form was updated to include the question How did you feel about this observation? with a 5-point Likert scale from very negative to very positive or unsure. An open-ended follow-up question asked for an explanation of the rating; we coded these responses into common themes. Analysis of 3,245 sightings revealed that more people (43.1%) felt positive about observing a coyote than negative (33.5%) or neutral (23.5%). The most common theme (36.8%) across coyote observations was seeing coyotes as a threat to humans, pets, or other animals. The second most common theme (24.7%) was a love for nature, wildlife, or coyotes in particular. Most observations (85.4%) had one central theme; however, some observations (14.6%) demonstrated significant nuance with at least two major themes—sometimes with considerable tension between the themes. Feelings about coyote observations were generally the same from residents living in different areas of the Portland metro. We discuss how understanding these tensions, differences, and nuances helps inform wildlife management research and outreach materials

Resilience-Focused Journalism: The Motivations, Tactics, and Impact of the Los Angeles Times Coverage of Earthquake Risk

As disasters and climate change threaten more and more people around the world, it is increasingly important for communities to adopt resilience policies. However, despite considerable benefits and the high probability of a return on investment, resilience policies are often neglected. In this article, we examine the agenda setting campaign by the Los Angeles Times that helped create the conditions for mandatory retrofitting ordinances to succeed where previous attempts failed. Through in-depth interviews with journalists and editors at the Times, and policymakers involved in the debate, we illustrate the motivations, tactics, and impact of their coverage of earthquake risk in Southern California. The article contributes to the understanding of agenda setting, risk communication, and local news production by demonstrating why and how journalists can effectively communicate risks and enable policy change, which could apply to a range of environmental threats

How Development Affects News Media Coverage of Earthquakes: Implications for Disaster Risk Reduction in Observing Communities

Previous research suggests that lesson-drawing news coverage of disasters can create windows of opportunity for policy learning in the observing communities. This is especially important for cities facing similar vulnerabilities to disaster-affected communities, where they can learn from their events to pursue disaster risk reduction policies to mitigate against those risks at home. However, little is known about the conditions under which newspapers in at-risk communities provide the type of news coverage necessary for policy learning. Using logistic regression to analyze an original dataset produced from a content analysis of five newspapers’ coverage of five earthquakes, we demonstrate that the level of development of the disaster-stricken community systematically influences the nature of news coverage in at-risk communities. These results have important implications for the understanding of urban disaster risk reduction, suggesting that the conditions for bottom-up policy learning are more likely to occur following disasters in wealthier countries

Agenda Setting, Localization and the Third-Person Effect: An Experimental Study of When News Content Will Directly Influence Public Policy Demands

Building from the third-person effect model of DRR policy adoption and mediated policy learning, this study provides an experimental examination of how specific elements of news media’s localisation of distant events directly influence public opinion. Controlling for salience effects, the construction of affinities between the distant, stricken community and the newspaper’s audience is argued to create a sense of shared vulnerability to the reported disasters. This is correlated within an increase in the respondent’s intention to act directly and an increase in their willingness to punish elected officials who do not act accordingly. The construction of difference between the communities, even though it is not related to risks related to the disaster, is argued to create implicit reassurances that the observing community does not need to act. This leads to an increased intention to act directly in opposition to efforts to reduce risk, but a neutral response towards political actors who pursue risk reduction policy actions

Information Searching and Satisficing Process for IT Decision Making Process of SMEs

Information Technology (IT) can provide Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) with competitive advantage, effective management, and improved business performance. Decision making is an integral process of achieving a successful IT investment. SME owner-managers are usually the key IT decision makers despite the fact that they often do not possess sufficient IT skills. This study examines how SME managers search and prioritise information that guides their IT decisions. This study adopted a qualitative research method and conducted interviews with eleven SME owner-managers in Nigeria and South Africa to understand the process of IT investment based on the information available to the decision-makers. Owner-managers of small manufacturing, servicing, and retail companies were the participants of this study. Thematic data analysis technique was employed to analyse the data collected in this study. The findings of this study revealed that SME owner-managers face specific challenges like insufficient information to guide IT choice, limited resources when making IT decisions and lack of formalised approach to the decision-making process. The finding in this study provides an insight into strategies to formalise SME owner-managers’ IT decision-making process. This study concludes that, the formalisation of information searching process for IT choices in SMEs is crucial to achieving better IT investments

Dynamical mass of the O-type supergiant in Zeta Orionis A

A close companion of Zeta Orionis A was found in 2000 with the Navy Precision Optical Interferometer (NPOI), and shown to be a physical companion. Because the primary is a supergiant of type O, for which dynamical mass measurements are very rare, the companion was observed with NPOI over the full 7-year orbit. Our aim was to determine the dynamical mass of a supergiant that, due to the physical separation of more than 10 AU between the components, cannot have undergone mass exchange with the companion. The interferometric observations allow measuring the relative positions of the binary components and their relative brightness. The data collected over the full orbital period allows all seven orbital elements to be determined. In addition to the interferometric observations, we analyzed archival spectra obtained at the Calar Alto, Haute Provence, Cerro Armazones, and La Silla observatories, as well as new spectra obtained at the VLT on Cerro Paranal. In the high-resolution spectra we identified a few lines that can be associated exclusively to one or the other component for the measurement of the radial velocities of both. The combination of astrometry and spectroscopy then yields the stellar masses and the distance to the binary star. The resulting masses for components Aa of 14.0 solar masses and Ab of 7.4 solar masses are low compared to theoretical expectations, with a distance of 294 pc which is smaller than a photometric distance estimate of 387 pc based on the spectral type B0III of the B component. If the latter (because it is also consistent with the distance to the Orion OB1 association) is adopted, the mass of the secondary component Ab of 14 solar masses would agree with classifying a star of type B0.5IV. It is fainter than the primary by about 2.2 magnitudes in the visual. The primary mass is then determined to be 33 solar masses