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Heterosexist comments are prevalent, but they can be combatted by recognizing and confronting them. Using a 2 (participant gender: woman, man) by 2 (heterosexist comment: gender-policing, sexuality-based) design, we evaluated gender differences in ratings of offensiveness and confrontations of heterosexist comments. In Study 1 (N = 110), participants imagined interacting with a person who made a heterosexist comment. In Study 2 (N = 86), participants interacted in-person with a confederate who made a heterosexist comment. In both studies, non-target (heterosexual) women rated the comments as more offensive as compared to non-target men. Notably, women anticipated confronting with more strength than men (Study 1), but in actuality confronted with similar strength as men (Study 2). We explored perceived perpetrator sexism, beliefs about appearing gay, and prior contact with sexual minorities as potential variables impacting gender differences and predicting confronting. Differences between anticipated and actual confronting are discussed.

Improving Offensive and Hate Speech (OHS) classifiers’ performances requires a large, confidently labeled textual training dataset. Our study devises a semi-supervised classification approach with ...

Online aggression is an increasingly significant problem in Internet-based communication systems (e.g., commenting platforms) with potentially negative effects on online participation and quality o...

With social media taking stand-up routines beyond their hitherto localised environments, there is growing irritation and backlash against comedians who supposedly tell unpleasant (or offensive) jok...

On 11 September 1973, a military coup was successfully launched against Chilean President Salvador Allende. British-made Hawker Hunter jets were used to attack the Chilean presidential palace, and ...

North Waziristan, one of the former tribal agencies of Pakistan, was brought to the spotlight largely by militancy and terrorism. After curtailing terrorism through the military offensive, the focu...

Racket sports such as padel are characterised by a variety of specific displacements and behaviours on the court with the aim to cover spaces and take an offensive advantage during the point. The a...

Brian Simon (1915–2002) was a leading advocate of comprehensive education in the second half of the twentieth century in Britain. In the 1980s, in the face of the ideological offensive from the New...

Recent analysis has interpreted Russia’s approach to the EU-led dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia through the lens of its actions in Ukraine. This has been characterised as “hybrid warfare” design...

Based on culture identity theory and schema theory, we investigate how model ethnicity influences the perception and effectiveness of potentially offensive nudity advertising in Asia and Western Eu...

This paper explores the graffiti and street art produced during the 2017 postal plebiscite for same sex marriage in Australia, including activists’ creative visual responses to the hate speech that proliferated in urban and suburban areas during this highly charged period. The paper has a particular focus on the wholesale erasure of street art and graffiti bearing political messages in support of, or against, marriage equality. Communities increasingly exert stewardship over the public visual landscape, and may engage directly in buffing graffiti or street art deemed offensive, or defending and restoring work deemed valuable. This analysis draws on repeat photography and video materials showing a series of attempted erasures of pro-same sex marriage murals by so called religious ‘activists.’ These materials show both the active challenges from passersby these erasures attracted, and the buffers’ defense of their actions, which affords a unique level of insight into the divisive social dialogue of this period.

Swear words express and arouse emotions and due to their taboo-contravening origin are charged with an offensive potential. By mirroring the functions they perform in real life, they contribute to ...

Russia has enlisted the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) and instrumentalised it as part of what can be described as a dynamic ‘soft-power offensive’. Its aim is to consolidate hierarchical power as a...

This research examines how a brand’s ad adjacency to offensive content influences consumers’ perceptions, emotions, and behavioral intentions toward the brand. Varying the type of offensive content...

Since the Kenya Defense Forces (KDF) launched their military offensive against al-Shabaab in 2011, the country has experienced an unprecedented number of retaliatory attacks mounted by the jihadist...

In recent decades there has been a clear decline in both the scale and how deep the Israeli military had penetrated into enemy territory. The article first examines how Israel managed to gain impre...

The recent history of the policing of Scottish football has been tempestuous. The enactment of the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act 2012 subjected those...

No industry has been immune to the #MeToo movement since its inception. The restaurant industry is especially susceptible to incidents of sexual harassing behaviors due to certain characteristics o...

Combining Constraint-led (ecological) and Step-Game (constructivist) approaches through an Action-Research (AR) design conducted throughout a competitive volleyball season, this study aimed to: (i) analyse the impact of increased tactical complexity on lateral and longitudinal collective synchronisation tendencies during defensive and offensive counterattack-subphases, and (ii) examine how opposition attacking contexts (i.e., playing in full-system or in-system) might influence synchronisation tendencies throughout each counterattack-subphase. Performance of a youth team, comprised of fifteen players, was studied across three AR-cycles. The team's competitive performance was analysed through three competitive matches (one per cycle). Team synchronisation tendencies were evaluated using the cluster-phase method and a 3 (matches) x 2 (counterattack-subphases) x 2 (opposition attacking contexts) x 2 (court directions) repeated-measures ANOVA were used to calculate the differences in cluster-amplitude mean values. Results showed that increments in tactical complexity (second AR-cycle) were followed by decreases in collective synchronisation tendencies, which were (re)achieved during the third AR-cycle, possibly due to the ecological-constructivist coaching intervention. Our findings imply that coaches could design representative and specific-didactical learning environments, predicated on a team's tactical needs and strategical ideas from a game-plan, framing player intentionality. Results also support the use of questioning strategies to narrow players' attentional focus, stimulating perceptual attunement to relevant constraints emerging in performance. Finally, the insider AR-design provided valuable contextualised insights on coaching interventions for developing collective coordinative structures.

The existence of three walls on both court sides in padel is a unique characteristic from which particular offensive and defensive behaviours emerged. The aim of this study was to assess the differ...

Introduction: Vaccinations are referred to as one of the greatest achievements of modern medicine. However, their effectiveness is also constantly denied by certain groups in society. This results in an ongoing dispute that has been gradually moving online in the last few years due to the development of technology. Our study aimed to utilize social media to identify and analyze vaccine-deniers’ arguments against child vaccinations. Method: All public comments posted to a leading Polish vaccination opponents’ Facebook page posted between 01/05/2019 and 31/07/2019 were collected and analyzed quantitatively in terms of their content according to the modified method developed by Kata (Kata, 2010). Sentiment analysis was also performed. Results: Out of 18,685 comments analyzed, 4,042 contained content covered by the adopted criteria: conspiracy theories (28.2%), misinformation and unreliable premises (19.9%), content related to the safety and effectiveness of vaccinations (14.0%), noncompliance with civil rights (13.2%), own experience (10.9%), morality, religion, and belief (8.5%), and alternative medicine (5.4%). There were also 1,223 pro-vaccine comments, of which 15.2% were offensive, mocking, or non-substantive. Sentiment analysis showed that comments without any arguments as well as those containing statements about alternative medicine or misinformation were more positive and less angry than comments in other topic categories. Conclusions: The large amount of content in the conspiracy theory and misinformation categories may indicate that authors of such comments may be characterized by a lack of trust in the scientific achievements of medicine. These findings should be adequately addressed in vaccination campaigns.

In the last few decades, Nonlinear Pedagogy (NLP) has emerged with the goal to promote a holistic approach through the use of Small-Sided Games (SSG), to optimize specific tactical defensive and of...

Indigenous and peasant communities in Latin America face an extractivist offensive characterized by multiple processes of dispossession and violence. These processes pose an existential threat to t...

Drawing on the formerly classified in-house journal KGB Collection, this article argues that active measures, commonly known as Soviet foreign influence operations, were the concept and practice in...

Through a range of local and national examples, Kushner explores how Britain has dealt with difficult histories, especially relating to racism, slavery and antisemitism. By utilizing insights from the history of emotions and the senses, he explores how the murder of George Floyd in the Covid-19 summer of 2020 brought to the fore issues of commemoration and belonging that have never been confronted and contested so intensively and heatedly before. His article argues for a bold response that is not afraid, through due process, to remove heritage that is deeply offensive, while recognizing the importance of ambiguity and complexity in re-representing and confronting troubling pasts, including the representation of perpetrators. In working towards a post-Covid-19 world, Kushner argues against returning to the ‘norm’ and instead towards a heritage and history that is sensitive, critical and inclusive, recognizing the presence of migrants in Britain, past and present.

Major powers have long used cultural institutes to enhance their appeal in foreign countries. As aspirant powers, Russia and China have recently launched cultural institutes of their own with the a...

The U.S., in its current offensive against Chinese high-technology industries, is employing export restriction measures developed during the Cold War as weapons for Western economic warfare against...

Republican candidates made headlines during the 2012 election season for their offensive statements regarding rape when defending a comprehensive ban on abortion. Using Lacan’s theory of psychosis,...

This paper focuses on the “charm offensive” of the Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif during the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal negotiations with the United States. Charm offensives are strat...

This paper unveils North Korean diplomatic offensive towards the U.S. in the late 1970s that began with the inauguration of president Jimmy Carter. Throughout 1976-1977, Chairman Kim Il Sung sought...

The aim of this study was to characterise and quantify offensive and defensive game play in the Australian Football League and analyse how it has evolved from 1999–2019. Nine offensive and twelve defensive variables were selected to represent their respective styles of play. Season averages for each variable were collected as well as an overall 21-season average and standard deviation. Offensive and defensive z-scores were calculated for each season and plotted relative to time. Offensive and defensive z-scores for each season showed a trend of an increase and decrease in offensive and defensive game play, respectively, up until about 2005–2007. These play pattern trends then clearly reversed and continue to evolve towards less offensive and more defensive game styles. Despite rule and interpretation changes to temper these trends, the 2019 season was the most defensive and least offensive in the period of review. Overall offensive game play has decreased across the period 1999–2019 while defensive game play has increased. Offensive play, however, was shown to be more closely related to success when compared to defensive play. This study provides a quantitative method of characterising offensive and defensive game play in Australian Rules Football. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

The dramatic increase in hate-related bullying and culturally and/or racially offensive comments or symbols in the wake of the 2016 election came as a surprise for many educators across the United ...

In 1968, protests against the old order swept the world. From the general strike in France and the student occupations in Paris to the Tet offensive in Vietnam, and from the Black Panthers in the U...

In the fall of 1944, during the stage of the preparation of the Soviet offensive in the Arctic, the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union prepared several memoranda with the ...

Israeli strategic culture is offensive and militaristic. However, in the pre-state period the Labor Zionist elites which later dominated the Israeli security establishment formulated a security nar...

This paper examines the strategies employed by six Arabic news channels in translating the controversial comments that Donald Trump made during his election campaign (2015–2016) and his first three...

This article examines the roles of nationalism, the historical case of World War One, and the Cult of the Offensive in explaining the growing conflict in the South China Sea. The article pays great...

Introduction: In March 2015 a Saudi-led coalition began an air campaign and ground offensive in Yemen. The conflict has resulted in at least 100,000 people killed and 3.2 million people internally displaced. Over the last 29 months of the war, the Yemen Relief and Reconstruction Foundation (YRRF), working through an informal network of indigenous volunteers, has successfully provided food, clothing, medicine and water filters to areas under siege. Context: Asymmetric warfare complicates humanitarian assistance. YRRF succeeds through an informal network: hundreds of Yemeni volunteers negotiating passage through competing armed checkpoints focussed on concrete, lifesaving action. Method: A case-study report about a local, informal, Yemeni-led relief organisation supported by remote financing and training. Findings: YRRF has succeeded in delivering food and clothing to more than 20,000 families, distributing more than 1200 water filters to remote villages and internally displaced families and medicine to five cancer centres. Innovative contribution: Yemen has multiple combatants within its territory, with competing systems for aid distribution and healthcare delivery. YRRF has developed an efficient and cost-effective technique for managing those complex environments while delivering care to fragile, and often displaced, populations in a war zone. Dynamic networks: local volunteers, working with local leaders, understanding culutral aspects, in country office, staying aploitical and meeting the needs of the population are key.

Research on the topic of taboo language was quite sparse throughout the twentieth century, and it was scattered across the many disciplines studying human communication. That situation has changed ...

There were at least three Korean Wars. The first was a civil war whose start date went back into the late forties. The 3 April 1948 uprising and the subsequent massacres of 30,000 people on Jeju se...

Thunder in the Argonne, the author asserts from the outset, tells the ‘complete’ and ‘untold story’ of the largest offensive operation in American military history: the Meuse-Argonne Offensive from...

In this issue, Macklin and Natanson examine some of the controversies that arise in randomized clinical trials (RCTs). They are particularly concerned that researchers may misrepresent novel interv...

Offensive cyber operations have become an integral and important part of the foreign policies of many countries in recent years. This is especially the case for great powers – such as the US, Russi...

The increasing uptake of environmental provisions in preferential trade agreements (PTAs) is well documented, but little is known about why countries prefer certain types of provisions over others....

The purpose of this study was to analyse the performance of professional rink hockey goalkeepers and ascertain whether this is influenced by the opposition’s offensive play. A sample of 40 ...

The analysis provides insights regarding the suitability of offensive versus defensive measures in countering a terror cell. It is shown that the optimal resource allocation is more offensive when ...

Since China launched the 16 + 1 forum for meetings with Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries in 2012, European observers have struggled to understand the Chinese approach. In contrast to it...

During and after the First World War, Belgian landscape architect and planner Louis Van der Swaelmen attempted to develop a ‘sociobiological’ theory and practice of landscape architecture, urbanism and urbanization. Both in his writings and designs he combined biological approaches with sociopolitical concerns. In this article, I will focus on the ambitions and ambiguities of this approach. First, a history of ideas will show how the sociobiological theory of Van der Swaelmen was the outcome of an intermingling of the science of ethology and landscape theory. This trajectory culminated in the book Préliminaires d’art civique, in which he created a theory of urbanism based on the idea of urbanization as a process following biological laws, and an urban design approach based on geographical and geobotanical knowledge. The second part of the article will trace the translation of these ideas into the design (process) of the garden suburbs Le Logis and Floréal and will further question the use of a biological approach in urbanism, offering a critical reflection on today’s (lack of) sociopolitical questions in ecological urbanism.

This article makes an original contribution to scholarship and the ongoing debate about the merits (or otherwise) of retaining the crime of offensive language in New South Wales – and equivalent of...

This article shows how China became a global competitor in the railway- and construction equipment industry by using a combination of defensive and offensive mercantilist policy tools. While many scholars in IPE have recognized that economic state intervention is still commonplace, the literature focusing on economic nationalism has failed to grasp its multifaceted feature. By confusing economic nationalism with protectionism, the possibility of outward-looking measures within a mercantile strategy has been neglected. The research that does recognize the ability of states to combine global economic integration and continued market intervention, demonstrates an empirical bias towards strategic emerging industries and state-owned enterprises. This article includes the role of offensive economic policy measures as well as less strategic sectors and private- owned enterprises in China’s mercantile strategies.