Digital communications, social support and psychological well-being in adolescents

Concerns about potential adverse socio-psychological consequences have commonly accompanied the introduction of new communication media. These have often been focused on the effects of media on the younger and vulnerable sectors of society. The present research examines on line text-based communications and the use of mobile phones specifically in terms of the role and function of SMS text messages by young people. The role of these media is conceived widely so as not to concentrate on any adverse influences but their use in the normal everyday social experiences of young people. Young people constitute a major sector of the consumers of these digital media. Social support is conceived as an important function of text-based digital communications just as it has been demonstrated to be crucial to a great deal of socio-psychological functioning. In order to assess the impact of the digital media on psychological functioning, the concept of psychological well-being is employed to be indicative of the absence of significant levels of psychological problems such as stress, anxiety, loneliness and depression. [Continues.

The BBC’s reporting of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

The purpose of this report is to provide evidence in the form of a content analysis of the BBC’s reporting of what the BBC calls the ‘Israeli-Palestinian conflict’. The report, commissioned by the BBC’s Board of Governors, is intended to aid the Independent Panel, appointed by the BBC’s Board of Governors, to come to a judgment concerning whether the BBC’s reporting of this subject is impartial. It is informed by our experience of news media content analysis in many fields, and is designed to provide accurate and robust data on the content of BBC and other media news coverage of this conflict in a defined period

COVID-19 RESEARCH REPORT: The impact of the Pandemic on Community Sport provision and participation

Opening paragraph:This is a research report that includes a partnership collaboration study between Manchester Metropolitan University and five Active Partnerships (AP) in the north of England. Active Partnerships are strategic agencies for sport and physical activity that operate at a sub-regional level. The collaboration is also supported by evidence, insight and policy guidance from Sport England central research and evaluation team. The project has been discussed with Sport England. The core Active Partnerships that have been the geographical focus of this study include:✓ Active Cheshire;✓ MSP (Merseyside Sport Partnership);✓ GreaterSport (Greater Manchester AP);✓ Yorkshire Sport Foundation (Active Partnership for South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire);✓ Active Lancashire

Cajoling or coercing: would electoral engineering resolve the young citizen–state disconnect?

The relationships between citizens and their states are undergoing significant stresses across advanced liberal democracies. In Britain, this disconnect is particularly evident amongst young citizens. This article considers whether different electoral engineering methods - designed either to cajole or compel youth to vote - might arrest the decline in their political engagement. Data collected in 2011 from a national survey of 1,025 British 18 year olds and from focus groups involving 86 young people, reveal that many young people claim that they would be more likely to vote in future elections if such electoral reforms were implemented. However, it is questionable whether or not such increased electoral participation would mean that they would feel truly connected to the democratic process. In particular, forcing young people to vote through the introduction of compulsory voting may actually serve to reinforce deepening resentments, rather than engage them in a positive manner

Do I Have My Attention? Speed of Processing Advantages for the Self-Face Are Not Driven by Automatic Attention Capture

We respond more quickly to our own face than to other faces, but there is debate over whether this is connected to attention-grabbing properties of the self-face. In two experiments, we investigate whether the self-face selectively captures attention, and the attentional conditions under which this might occur. In both experiments, we examined whether different types of face (self, friend, stranger) provide differential levels of distraction when processing self, friend and stranger names. In Experiment 1, an image of a distractor face appeared centrally – inside the focus of attention – behind a target name, with the faces either upright or inverted. In Experiment 2, distractor faces appeared peripherally – outside the focus of attention – in the left or right visual field, or bilaterally. In both experiments, self-name recognition was faster than other name recognition, suggesting a self-referential processing advantage. The presence of the self-face did not cause more distraction in the naming task compared to other types of face, either when presented inside (Experiment 1) or outside (Experiment 2) the focus of attention. Distractor faces had different effects across the two experiments: when presented inside the focus of attention (Experiment 1), self and friend images facilitated self and friend naming, respectively. This was not true for stranger stimuli, suggesting that faces must be robustly represented to facilitate name recognition. When presented outside the focus of attention (Experiment 2), no facilitation occurred. Instead, we report an interesting distraction effect caused by friend faces when processing strangers’ names. We interpret this as a “social importance” effect, whereby we may be tuned to pick out and pay attention to familiar friend faces in a crowd. We conclude that any speed of processing advantages observed in the self-face processing literature are not driven by automatic attention capture

An empirical examination of factors associated with Game Transfer Phenomena severity

Game Transfer Phenomena (GTP) (i.e. altered perceptions, spontaneous thoughts and behaviors with game content) occur on a continuum from mild to severe. This study examined the differences between mild, moderate and severe levels of GTP. A total of 2,362 gamers’ participated in an online survey. The majority of gamers experienced mild levels of GTP. The factors significantly associated with severe levels of GTP were: (i) being students, (ii) being aged 18 to 22, (iii) being professional gamers, (iv) playing videogames every day in sessions of 6 hours or more, (iv) playing to escape from the real world, (v) recalling dreams always or very often, (vi) having a sleep disorder, mental disorder or reported dysfunctional gaming, and (vii) having experienced distress or dysfunction due to GTP. In addition, having used drugs and experiencing flashbacks as side-effects of drug use were significantly less likely to be reported by those with mild levels of GTP. In general, the findings suggest that those with higher levels of GTP share characteristics with profiles of gamers with dysfunctional gaming (e.g., problematic and/or addictive gaming)

Retinotopic Mapping of Categorical and Coordinate Spatial Relation Processing in Early Visual Cortex

Spatial relations are commonly divided in two global classes. Categorical relations concern abstract relations which define areas of spatial equivalence, whereas coordinate relations are metric and concern exact distances. Categorical and coordinate relation processing are thought to rely on at least partially separate neurocognitive mechanisms, as reflected by differential lateralization patterns, in particular in the parietal cortex. In this study we address this textbook principle from a new angle. We studied retinotopic activation in early visual cortex, as a reflection of attentional distribution, in a spatial working memory task with either a categorical or a coordinate instruction. Participants were asked to memorize a dot position, with regard to a central cross, and to indicate whether a subsequent dot position matched the first dot position, either categorically (opposite quadrant of the cross) or coordinately (same distance to the centre of the cross). BOLD responses across the retinotopic maps of V1, V2, and V3 indicate that the spatial distribution of cortical activity was different for categorical and coordinate instructions throughout the retention interval; a more local focus was found during categorical processing, whereas focus was more global for coordinate processing. This effect was strongest for V3, approached significance in V2 and was absent in V1. Furthermore, during stimulus presentation the two instructions led to different levels of activation in V3 during stimulus encoding; a stronger increase in activity was found for categorical processing. Together this is the first demonstration that instructions for specific types of spatial relations may yield distinct attentional patterns which are already reflected in activity early in the visual cortex

The supernatural characters and powers of sacred trees in the Holy Land

This article surveys the beliefs concerning the supernatural characteristics and powers of sacred trees in Israel; it is based on a field study as well as a survey of the literature and includes 118 interviews with Muslims and Druze. Both the Muslims and Druze in this study attribute supernatural dimensions to sacred trees which are directly related to ancient, deep-rooted pagan traditions. The Muslims attribute similar divine powers to sacred trees as they do to the graves of their saints; the graves and the trees are both considered to be the abode of the soul of a saint which is the source of their miraculous powers. Any violation of a sacred tree would be strictly punished while leaving the opportunity for atonement and forgiveness. The Druze, who believe in the transmigration of souls, have similar traditions concerning sacred trees but with a different religious background. In polytheistic religions the sacred grove/forest is a centre of the community's official worship; any violation of the trees is regarded as a threat to the well being of the community. Punishments may thus be collective. In the monotheistic world (including Christianity, Islam and Druze) the pagan worship of trees was converted into the worship/adoration of saints/prophets; it is not a part of the official religion but rather a personal act and the punishments are exerted only on the violating individual

Scaling up from protected areas in England: The value of establishing large conservation areas

Protected areas (PAs) are vital for conserving biodiversity, but many PA networks consist of fragmented habitat patches that poorly represent species and ecosystems. One possible solution is to create conservation landscapes that surround and link these PAs. This often involves working with a range of landowners and agencies to develop large-scale conservation initiatives (LSCIs). These initiatives are being championed by both government and civil society, but we lack data on whether such landscape-level approaches overcome the limitations of more traditional PA networks. Here we expand on a previous gap analysis of England to explore to what extent LSCIs improve the representation of different ecoregions, land-cover types and elevation zones compared to the current PA system. Our results show the traditional PA system covers 6.37% of England, an addition of only 0.07% since 2001, and that it is an ecologically unrepresentative network that mostly protects agriculturally unproductive land. Including LSCIs in the analysis increases the land for conservation more than tenfold and reduces these representation biases. However, only 24% of land within LSCIs is currently under conservation management, mostly funded through agri-environment schemes, and limited monitoring data mean that their contribution to conservation objectives is unclear. There is also a considerable spatial overlap between LSCIs, which are managed by different organisations with different conservation objectives. Our analysis is the first to show how Other Effective Area-Based Conservation Measures (OECMs) can increase the representativeness of conservation area networks, and highlights opportunities for increased collaboration between conservation organisations and engagement with landowners