Trace Evidence: The Uncertainty of the Real

This article examines the impact of trace items through their evocation and elevation to the status of the sublime object. The authors focus on the impact that things left behind by the dead or missing have on those whose loved them, arguing that such traces provide a glimmer of materiality that those left behind can desperately crave

Performative Trolling: Szubanski, Gillard, Dawson and the Nature of the Utterance

In 2012 the Australian public witnessed three important examples of trolling play out in the public sphere that are the focus of this paper: the trolling of Julia Gillard’s Facebook page when she attempted to discuss education policy, the anonymous trolling of Charlotte Dawson’s Twitter page, and the trolling of Magda Szubanski on YouTube after she came out on The Project. These attacks may seem similar in that a public persona has been ridiculed and denigrated in flamboyant onslaughts. However, we will argue that there are important differences in the effects of these attacks, and that underpinning these are differences relating to the individual persona, the social medium and the nature of the utterance. The attacks on Gillard and Szubanski are primarily descriptive attacks on a deliberate and somewhat stage-managed public performance of identity, not a call to action. On the other hand, the anonymous trolling of Charlotte Dawson, which led directly to her attempted suicide, is clearly a performative utterance from the start, meant to have consequences on the object of attack. In Dawson’s case, the separation between her public persona and her private self is far less distinct than in the case of Gillard or Szubanski. These instances demonstrate that trolling exists on a performative continuum, engaging in constant disruption, but also lending itself to the production of social action. The kind of impact trolling will have depends, thus, on the affordances of social media, the persona under attack, and on the very nature of the utterance itself

The Violent Mother in Fact and Fiction

This book is essential reading for students, scholars, and fans of the psychological thriller. This book represents the first serious consideration of the 'domestic noir' phenomenon and, by extension, the psychological thriller

Family day care educators : an exploration of their understanding and experiences promoting children\u27s social and emotional wellbeing

This study aimed to explore family day care (FDC) educators&rsquo; knowledge of child social and emotional wellbeing and mental health problems, the strategies used to promote children&rsquo;s wellbeing, and barriers and opportunities for promoting children&rsquo;s social and emotional wellbeing. Thirteen FDC educators participated in individual semi-structured interviews. FDC educators were more comfortable defining children&rsquo;s social and emotional wellbeing than they were in identifying causes and early signs of mental health problems. Strategies used to promote children&rsquo;s mental health were largely informal and dependent on educator skills and capacities rather than a systematic scheme-wide approach. Common barriers to mental health promotion were limited financial resources, a need for more training and hesitance raising child mental health issues with parents. There is a need to build FDC educators&rsquo; knowledge of child social and emotional wellbeing and for tailored mental health promotion strategies in FDC.<br /

A new measure for multi-professional medical team communication: design and methodology for multilingual measurement development

BackgroundAs implementation science in global health continues to evolve, there is a need for valid and reliable measures that consider diverse linguistic and cultural contexts. A standardized, reproducible process for multilingual measure development may improve accessibility and validity by participants in global health settings. To address this need, we propose a rigorous methodology for multilingual measurement development. We use the example of a novel measure of multi-professional team communication quality, a determinant of implementation efforts.MethodsThe development and translation of this novel bilingual measure is comprised of seven steps. In this paper, we describe a measure developed in English and Spanish, however, this approach is not language specific. Participants are engaged throughout the process: first, an interprofessional panel of experts and second, through cognitive interviewing for measure refinement. The steps of measure development included: (1) literature review to identify previous measures of team communication; (2) development of an initial measure by the expert panel; (3) cognitive interviewing in a phased approach with the first language (English); (4): formal, forward-backward translation process with attention to colloquialisms and regional differences in languages; (5) cognitive interviewing repeated in the second language (Spanish); (6) language synthesis to refine both instruments and unify feedback; and (7) final review of the refined measure by the expert panel.ResultsA draft measure to assess quality of multi-professional team communication was developed in Spanish and English, consisting of 52 questions in 7 domains. This measure is now ready for psychometric testing.ConclusionsThis seven-step, rigorous process of multilingual measure development can be used in a variety of linguistic and resource settings. This method ensures development of valid and reliable tools to collect data from a wide range of participants, including those who have historically been excluded due to language barriers. Use of this method will increase both rigor and accessibility of measurement in implementation science and advance equity in research and practice

Mother, Monster, Mrs, I:A critical evaluation of gendered naming strategies in English sentencing remarks of women who kill

In this article, we take a novel approach to analysing English sentencing remarks in cases of women who kill. We apply computational, quantitative, and qualitative methods from corpus linguistics to analyse recurrent patterns in a collection of English Crown Court sentencing remarks from 2012 to 2015, where a female defendant was convicted of a homicide offence. We detail the ways in which women who kill are referred to by judges in the sentencing remarks, providing frequency information on pronominal, nominative, and categorising naming strategies. In discussion of the various patterns of preference both across and within these categories (e.g. pronoun vs. nomination, title + surname vs. forename + surname), we remark upon the identities constructed through the references provided. In so doing, we: (1) quantify the extent to which members of the judiciary invoke patriarchal values and gender stereotypes within their sentencing remarks to construct female defendants, and (2) identify particular identities and narratives that emerge within sentencing remarks for women who kill. We find that judges refer to women who kill in a number of ways that systematically create dichotomous narratives of degraded victims or dehumanised monsters. We also identify marked absences in naming strategies, notably: physical identification normally associated with narrativization of women’s experiences; and the first person pronoun, reflecting omissions of women’s own voices and narratives of their lived experiences in the courtroom