A Content Analysis of Indirect, Verbal, and Physical Aggression in Television Programs Popular among School-Aged Girls

A content analysis of indirect, verbal, and physical aggression was conducted of 77 hours of television programming popular among fifth grade girls. Eighty-eight percent of programs contained aggression. Physical aggression occurred at a rate of 9.6 acts per hour, whereas indirect and verbal aggression occurred at a rate of 3.7 and 2.8 acts per hour, respectively. Rates of aggression varied by gender, age, and attractiveness of perpetrators, as well as by relationship between perpetrator and victim. Additionally, motivation and consequences of aggressive acts varied by form of aggression. Implications of the findings are discussed in light of current research and theories of media effects

Relationally Aggressive Media Exposure and Children’s Normative Beliefs: Does Parental Mediation Matter?

Research indicates that relationally aggressive media exposure is positively associated with relational aggression in children. Theories of media effects suggest that these associations may be mediated by aggressive cognitions. Although parental mediation can attenuate the effects of violent media, it is unknown whether there are similar benefits of parental mediation of relationally aggressive media. The current study examined concurrent and longitudinal associations between relationally aggressive television and movie exposure and normative beliefs about relational aggression, and whether parental mediation moderates these associations. Participants were 103 children (50% female) in grades 3-6 and their parents. The following year, 48 children (52% female) were again assessed. Relationally aggressive media exposure predicted concurrent relational aggression norms, even after controlling for physically aggressive media exposure and physical aggression norms. Relationally aggressive television and movie exposure predicted greater subsequent approval of relational aggression only among children whose parents engaged in low levels of active mediation

The time course of routine action

Previous studies of action selection in routinized tasks have used error rates as their sole dependent measure (e.g. Reason, 1979; Schwartz et al., 1998). Consequently, conclusions about the underlying mechanisms of correct behavior are necessarily indirect. The present experiment examines the performance of normal subjects in the prototypical coffee task (Botvinick & Plaut, 2004) when carried out in a virtual environment on screen. This has the advantage of (a) constraining the possible errors more tightly than a real world environment, and (b) giving access to latencies as an additional, finer grained measure of performance. We report error data and timing of action selection at the crucial branching points for the production of routinized task sequences both with and without a secondary task. Processing branching points leads to increased latencies. The presence of the secondary task has a greater effect on latencies at branching points than at equivalent non-branching points. Furthermore, error data and latencies dissociate, suggesting that the exact timing is a valid and valuable source of information when trying to understand the processes that govern routine tasks. The results of the experiment are discussed in relation to their implication for computational accounts of routine action selection

Fishing for a Future: Women in Community Based Fisheries Management

This is the story of women in the Community Based Fisheries Management (CBFM) project in Bangladesh. In rural Asia (Southern)-Bangladesh; many women are involved in inland fisheries and fish farming activities, yet annual statistics fail to capture their importance. Year after year these women continue to be essential in improving nutrition, increasing the production and distribution of food and enhancing the living conditions of their families. Yet, fisher-women remain among the poorest and most vulnerable in this part of the world. This is the story of many women, who through CBFM, have improved and will continue to improve the livelihood of their family. They are the women fishers of Bangladesh. This is their story

Munich Airport’s Third Runway and Stakeholder Communications

Airports create many benefits for their regions, but they also put a great burden on residents and communities in the near vicinity. The environmental impact is considerable. Naturally, growth and expansion plans for airports quickly generate controversy and resistance. Munich Airport (MUC), Germany’s second-largest airport after Frankfurt, has long planned to construct a third 4 km runway to increase capacity and ensure MUC’s position in a fiercely competitive aviation market. A 2012 citizen referendum has stopped these plans. This article examines the needs, instruments, limits and poten-tials of airport communications with its key stakeholders, us-ing the example of MUC, in the context of the runway project. It finds that innovative means opened up important channels for communication and citizen participation, but partly failed because of the inherent political conflicts between the airport and neighboring communities which prevented consensus. Ef-forts of information and dialog are not sufficient to win public support. More active mobilization of citizen, business and me-dia support is necessary to put voiceful opposition at bay