How certain is ‘certain’?: exploring how the English-language media reported the use of calibrated language in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment Report

This article presents findings from an analysis of English-language media reports following the publication of the fifth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Assessment Report in September 2013. Focusing on the way they reported the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s use of ‘calibrated’ language, we find that of 1906 articles relating to the issuing of the report only 272 articles (14.27%) convey the use of a deliberate and systematic verbal scale. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s carefully calibrated language was rarely discussed or explicated, but in some instances scientists, political actors or journalists would attempt to contextualise or elaborate on the reported findings by using analogies to other scientific principles or examples of taking action despite uncertainty. We consider those analogies in terms of their efficacy in communicating (un)certainty

Choice, Risk, and Moral Judgment: Using Discourse Analysis to Identify the Moral Component of Midwives’ Discourses

Part 1. Communicating risk in healthcare -- Part 2. Communicating risk in legal processes -- Part 3. Communicating risk in social care -- Part 4. Communicating risk in environmental management and biosecurity -- Part 5. Mediating risk -- Part 6. Regulating risk368 page(s

Social representations, identity threat and coping amid COVID-19

This article describes an integrative social psychological framework within which human reactions to COVID-19 can be understood and predicted. It is argued that social representations of COVID-19 (and its mitigation strategies) must resonate among diverse communities, not be too threatening, and provide clear pathways for action and engagement

A ‘morning-after’ pill for HIV? Social representations of post-exposure prophylaxis for HIV in the British print media

Post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) is a biomedical approach to HIV prevention that is administered after a potential exposure to the virus. Although it was originally approved in the UK for occupational exposure to HIV among healthcare workers, PEP has remained a controversial method of preventing HIV infection following sexual exposure. To examine emerging social representations of PEP, we undertook a qualitative thematic analysis of 72 articles published in UK newspapers between 1997 and 2015. We focused on print media, as they still reflect broader societal debates, set the agenda for wider discussions in other media and contribute to shaping public perceptions and policy priorities. Our findings show that there were two major social representations of the use of PEP for HIV prevention amongst gay and bisexual men: a positive social representation of PEP as a relatively straightforward solution, where PEP is metaphorically framed as the ‘morning-after pill’, and a more negative social representation of PEP as posing risks and yielding uncertain outcomes. We also found a third social representation for the use of PEP amongst public health care workers, where PEP is represented as needed and deserved. The positive representation generally consisted of anecdotal statements, while the negative representation was substantiated by ‘expert’ and layperson voices, rendering the latter more akin to a hegemonic representation of PEP. We generally found a lack of technical information in all newspapers, and an information gap that might inhibit informed discussion and lead to entrenching polarised social representations and to the stigmatisation of some users of PEP

Fracking on YouTube: exploring risks, benefits and human values

Fracking or the extraction of shale gas through hydraulic fracturing of rock has become a contested topic, especially in the United States, where it has been deployed on a large scale, and in Europe where it is still largely speculative. Research is beginning to investigate the environmental and economic costs and benefits as well as public perceptions of this new energy technology. However, so far the social and psychological impact of fracking on those involved in it, such as gas workers, or those living in the vicinity of fracking sites, has escaped the attention of the social science research community. In this article we begin to fill this gap through a small-scale thematic analysis of representations of fracking in fifty YouTube videos, where the trailer of a controversial film, Gasland (Fox, 2010), has had a marked impact. Results show that the videos discuss not only environmental and economic costs and benefits of fracking but also social and psychological impacts on individuals and communities. These videos reveal a human face of fracking that remains all too often hidden from view

The chemopreventive polyphenol Curcumin prevents hematogenous breast cancer metastases in immunodeficient mice

Dissemination of metastatic cells probably occurs long before diagnosis of the primary tumor. Metastasis during early phases of carcinogenesis in high risk patients is therefore a potential prevention target. The plant polyphenol Curcumin has been proposed for dietary prevention of cancer. We therefore examined its effects on the human breast cancer cell line MDA-MB-231 in vitro and in a mouse metastasis model. Curcumin strongly induces apoptosis in MDA- MB- 231 cells in correlation with reduced activation of the survival pathway NF kappa B, as a consequence of diminished I kappa B and p65 phosphorylation. Curcumin also reduces the expression of major matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) due to reduced NF kappa B activity and transcriptional downregulation of AP-1. NF kappa B/p65 silencing is sufficient to downregulate c-jun and MMP expression. Reduced NF kappa B/AP-1 activity and MMP expression lead to diminished invasion through a reconstituted basement membrane and to a significantly lower number of lung metastases in immunodeficient mice after intercardiac injection of 231 cells (p=0.0035). 68% of Curcumin treated but only 17% of untreated animals showed no or very few lung metastases, most likely as a consequence of down-regulation of NF kappa B/AP-1 dependent MMP expression and direct apoptotic effects on circulating tumor cells but not on established metastases. Dietary chemoprevention of metastases appears therefore feasible. Copyright (c) 2007 S. Karger AG, Basel

Fearful Intimacies: COVID-19 and the Reshaping of Human–Microbial Relations

This article explores how COVID-19 could be reshaping human–microbial relations in and beyond the home. Media sources suggest that intimacies of companionability or ambivalence are being transformed into those of fearfulness. While a probiotic sociocultural approach to human–microbial relations has become more powerful in recent times, it seems that health and hygiene concerns associated with COVID-19 are encouraging the wholesale use of bleach and other cleaning agents in order to destroy the potential microbial ‘enemies’ in the home. We provide a brief background to shiĞ ing public health discourses on managing microbes in domestic seĴ ings over recent decades across the industrialised world, and then contrast this background with emerging advice on COVID-19 from news and advertisement sources. We conclude with key areas for future research

Social representations of ‘social distancing’ in response to COVID-19 in the UK media

The emergence and spread of a new pandemic, COVID-19, have raised topics of concern for health professionals, policy makers and publics across the globe. Governments have struggled to find the right policies to stop disease transmission, but all have introduced social distancing. In the United Kingdom this has come to be understood as staying at home and, when outside, maintaining a physical distance of approximately two metres between oneself and others. In this article, the authors examine the emergence of this new social representation as portrayed in one UK broadsheet and one tabloid with the widest circulation: The Times and The Sun, between early March and early April 2020. Using social representations theory and thematic analysis, the authors show that social distancing struggled to emerge from underneath government obfuscation. It was first seen as a threat to normal life, which in modernity is predicated on mobility; it was later portrayed as a threat to social order; and finally perceived as a burden that, like the lockdown (its conceptual twin), needed to be lifted