The role of external broadcasting in a closed political system

This article investigates the role and impact of external broadcasting (radio and television) on a closed political system, through the example of the two post-war German states: the West German Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the East German German Democratic Republic (GDR). The aim is to debunk myths about the influence of external broadcasting on the events that led to German reunification in 1990. The study follows a historical approach and discusses what role external media played during the years of a divided Germany. The findings are based on several historical sources, research reports from the 1950s and 1960s and over 100 biographical interviews with former residents of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The article analyses the impact of external broadcasting on citizens and the political elite in times of crisis as well as during everyday life

Towards a characterization of behavior-disease models

The last decade saw the advent of increasingly realistic epidemic models that leverage on the availability of highly detailed census and human mobility data. Data-driven models aim at a granularity down to the level of households or single individuals. However, relatively little systematic work has been done to provide coupled behavior-disease models able to close the feedback loop between behavioral changes triggered in the population by an individual's perception of the disease spread and the actual disease spread itself. While models lacking this coupling can be extremely successful in mild epidemics, they obviously will be of limited use in situations where social disruption or behavioral alterations are induced in the population by knowledge of the disease. Here we propose a characterization of a set of prototypical mechanisms for self-initiated social distancing induced by local and non-local prevalence-based information available to individuals in the population. We characterize the effects of these mechanisms in the framework of a compartmental scheme that enlarges the basic SIR model by considering separate behavioral classes within the population. The transition of individuals in/out of behavioral classes is coupled with the spreading of the disease and provides a rich phase space with multiple epidemic peaks and tipping points. The class of models presented here can be used in the case of data-driven computational approaches to analyze scenarios of social adaptation and behavioral change.Comment: 24 pages, 15 figure

Modeling Contact and Mobility Based Social Response to the Spreading of Infectious Diseases

We present here a set of prototypical mechanisms aimed at modeling the social adaptation and response triggered in the population by the knowledge of the spreading of an infectious disease. We define models that couples the spreading of information and behavioral changes with the spreading of the infectious disease by considering the local and non-local prevalence-based information available to individuals in the population. The behavioral changes are modeled both as the onset of effective social distancing and contact reduction as well as changes in the mobility patterns of individuals. The defined models exhibit a rich phase space with multiple epidemic peaks and threshold behavior. In addition, we show that in specific cases the change of mobility pattern may counterintuitively enhance the disease spreading. The class of models presented here can be used in the case of data-driven computational approaches to analyze scenarios of social adaptation and behavioral chang

Risk communication and the social amplification of risk

Risk communication is a novel concept in the scientific pursuit to understand and analyze risk related decisions and behavior in modem society. But the new term has only changed the focus of attention from a static description of what risk means for different communities to a dynamic analysis on how these communities exchange information about risk and adjust their behavior.The concept of social amplification of risk provides a framework for the analysis of communication as well as other social activities and constitutes a dynamic model which facilitates the systematic interpretation of empirical data and attempts to integrate the existing perspectives into a higher-order terminological model. The concept will certainly not encompass all perspectives,and it will not be capable of unifying different scientific camps