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When agencies make statements about the law, people listen. This insight yields a fundamental tension. According to one set of views, such agency statements, and their ability to influence public behavior, are critical not only for a well-functioning bureaucracy but also for our entire system of government. According to another set of views, this agency power, if left unchecked, could border on tyranny. Administrative law responds to this tension through an extensive, purportedly comprehensive, framework that attempts to police agency statements. The framework places different types of agency statements into different legal categories. On the one hand, legislative rules make new binding law. On the other hand, less formal guidance (including interpretive rules and policy statements) offers an agency's interpretive or policy positions about the law. Scholars and courts have long debated the categorization effort as well as what legal consequences flow from it. This Article identifies a striking gap in this categorization framework. As a critical part of their service to the general public, agencies often simply explain the law. Although such explanations are central to agency interactions with the public, the intricate administrative law framework that applies to agency statements fails to capture such explanations. Agency explanations of the law could be seen as a subset of existing categories of agency statements (such as "legislative rules," "interpretive rules," or "policy statements"), but agency explanations do not fit comfortably into any of these categories. All of these regimes assume that agencies are communicating what the law is or what agencies believe it to be. But when agencies provide such explanations to the public, they often present the law as simpler than it is or what agencies believe it to be. We argue that administrative law's failure to address communications between agencies and the general public reflects a broader "democracy deficit. " Administrative law fails to ensure that agency communications with the general public occur in ways that are consistent with essential features of democratic governance, such as transparency, public scrutiny, and debate. In contrast, when sophisticated parties and industry insiders engage with agencies regarding formal guidance, there are ample protections to engender agency transparency and provide affected parties with opportunities to contribute to the guidance. After identifying the democracy deficit in administrative law, we propose a framework for infusing agency communications with the general public with the same administrative law and democratic values as those that apply in interactions between agencies and sophisticated parties. These reforms would encourage public participation in drafting and issuing agency explanations of the law, provide opportunities to challenge published agency explanations, and allow members of the public to rely on certain agency explanations and to bind the agencies to follow these statements in enforcing the law. We also identify the types of agency communications with the public that most urgently need reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main purpose of this paper is to assess the validity of the contention that, over the past few decades, the public sphere has undergone a new structural transformation. To this end, the analysis focuses on Habermas's recent inquiry into the causes and consequences of an allegedly 'new' or 'further' [erneuten] structural transformation of the political public sphere. The paper is divided into two parts. The first part considers the central arguments in support of the 'new structural transformation of the public sphere' thesis, shedding light on its historical, political, economic, technological, and sociological aspects. The second part offers some reflections on the most important limitations and shortcomings of Habermas's account, especially with regard to key social developments in the early twenty-first century. The paper concludes by positing that, although the constitution of the contemporary public sphere is marked by major—and, in several respects, unprecedented—structural transformations, their significance should not be overstated, not least due to the enduring role of critical capacity in highly differentiated societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews the evolution of public relations from its pre-science period to the present-day using Thomas Kuhn's theory of scientific development. The review discusses how public relations scholarship has grown and reached scientific maturity, in parallel with the institutionalization of public relations' professional practice and higher education. This article highlights the evolving nature of the discipline, including the paradigmatic shift toward a multifunctional definition of public relations and focus on relationship theories, ethics, public behavior, and technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: The unprecedented nature of COVID-19 pandemic lockdown order projected to contain the pandemic and the global use of the police to enforce the order has necessitated the investigation of public (non-compliant) behavior and police intervention (misconduct). Given that the phases of easing the lockdown and reopening of the economy were already underway in Nigeria in September 2020, four months post-lockdown, this period was deemed suitable to collect the data. Data description: The data consists of 30 participants' (25 individuals and five police personnel) views regarding the reasons that exacerbated the violation and the 'alleged' unethical practices of police personnel while enforcing the lockdown. However, it benefits the broader scientific community in areas such as policing, disaster risk reduction, pandemic management and public administration. It is valuable in police reforms against unethical practices and gives clear policy directions to policymakers and authorities in managing future public health emergencies. Also, it is useful in understanding the public awareness about the pandemic and public (mis)trust and disposition towards the government authorities on the obedience to law and public health safety advisories to contain a pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the article, the author discusses the process of autotheoretical self-construction of the public self by focusing on pop musician Taylor Swift. Other topics include the opinions of feminist scholars like Robyn Wiegman, Arianne Zwartjes, and Lauren Fournier on auto theory, and how Swift showed calculated self-construction in her interviews, song lyrics, and public performances.

This article investigates the determinants of public support for consultative and binding mini-publics at the local level in Belgium. The study demonstrates that while enraged (politically dissatisfied) and engaged (politically efficacious) citizens are more supportive of both forms of deliberative mini-publics, citizens who are at once enraged and engaged are more likely to support more radical reforms of representative democracy, including binding uses of sortition that would lead to the replacement of elected politicians by citizens selected by lot. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online platforms can help public information campaigns reach target audiences who are unlikely to engage with content distributed via traditional media. This paper adds to this emergent literature, as the first study of the Ending the Harm campaign, which is designed to change public discourse about paramilitary-style attacks in Northern Ireland. Campaign effects were explored through interviews (N = 7) conducted with key stakeholders, as well as the results of a quantitative survey of residents (N = 805) in areas most affected by these attacks. Results indicate that exposure to the ETH advertisements correlated with a belief that PSAs were unjustified. Platforms like Snapchat helped the campaign reach younger demographics (16–34 years old). Nevertheless, it was unclear whether self-reported changes in attitude toward PSAs would lead to sustained behavioral changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Letters to the Editor and Other Comments" is a selection of comments the artist Morgan Fisher made on Facebook during Trump's presidency. Most were copies of letters he had sent to various departments at the New York Times criticizing its coverage of the president. They are "a record," writes George Baker, "of an artist's engagement with a moment, one through which we have evidently still not passed. The practice ... was almost daily, more or less constant, an insistent and repeated holding of the public sphere to account, perhaps even a willing of it into existence." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the COVID-19 pandemic to date, particular histories have come to serve as touchstones for the pandemic experience. The specific form this historical imagination takes can be significant as it is likely to shape people's understandings and responses to the pandemic with consequences for official policy, community action and public behaviour. This research examines this imaginative space in Aotearoa/New Zealand's public media during COVID-19, asking what past epidemics have been invoked and how. We conducted a content and thematic analysis of media stories in Aotearoa/NZ from February 2020 to December 2021. This analysis reveals how historical experiences are made meaningful in the context of the present crisis, and how the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted New Zealanders to look back on their histories for lessons and cautionary tales as they imagine possible futures. While the 1918 flu was the most frequent touchstone in both years, the focus of the stories changed, reflecting changes in public health policies. In 2020, the stories mirrored the major public health measures enacted by the government, namely isolation and quarantine requirements and lockdowns. They focused on anchoring the present in past experiences, collectively framing the 'extraordinary' as something more 'ordinary' and thus helping people to cope with the new crisis. In 2021, the focus on Māori populations increased, reflecting the emerging disparities in vaccination rates, as did explicit messaging encouraging vaccination. The sense of urgency grew, with the past providing impetus for present action, to bring about—or avert—particular imagined futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present work aims to offer a theoretical and methodological approach on self-presentation in cyberpsychology. The study of this phenomenon, of interest to multiple disciplines, includes a wide spectrum of definitions, theoretical models and evaluation methods that require review. First, the origin and differentiation of the term selfpresentation from other related terms is examined. Next, a theoretical journey is made on the concept of self-presentation and the main models used to explain and address this phenomenon. Finally, the different methodologies used in research are presented, their advantages and limitations when applied in the evaluation of online selfpresentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do people behave in the seconds after they become aware they have been caught up in a real-life transport emergency? This paper presents the first micro-behavioral, video-based analysis of the behavior of passengers during a small explosion and subsequent fire on a subway train. We analyzed the behavior of 40 passengers present in the same carriage as the explosion. We documented the first action of the passengers following the onset of the emergency and described evidence of pro- and anti-social behavior. Passengers' first actions varied widely. Moreover, anti-social behavior was rare and displays of pro-sociality were more common. In a quantitative analysis, we examined spatial clustering of running behavior and patterns in passenger exit choices. We found both homogeneity and heterogeneity in the running behavior and exiting choices of passengers. We discuss the implications of these findings for the mass emergency literature and for evacuation modeling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Behavioural public policy analysts have examined cases of individuals' failures of reason or judgement to attain their ends and have used these to justify 'means' paternalism: a form of government intervention that tries to save individuals from the consequences of those reasoning failures and to enable them better to achieve those ends. This has been challenged on a number of grounds, including too great a focus on choice-preserving interventions such as nudges, the privileging of future preferences over current ones and the possibility of state failures as damaging to individual well-being as the original reasoning failure. This paper summarizes the principal arguments in favour of means paternalism and then addresses these challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have long studied the influence of parties on citizens' policy preferences. Experiments conducted outside Canada have convincingly shown that the cues offered by political parties can influence people's attitudes. However, the most prominent study of party cue effects in Canada finds weak effects, concluding that Canadian parties are less influential because they are less clearly ideological than parties elsewhere. We propose that parties are actually more influential than they appear because party cue effects partly depend on variables other than partisanship, notably attitudes toward the cue-giver. This is especially true in countries like Canada with multi-party systems. We show that attitudes toward parties are not clearly reflected in partisanship in Canada. We then show that more specific measures of party and leader attitudes better account for how experimental participants react to cues than does party identification alone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canada has often been seen as immune from the powerful backlash against globalization and immigration that has driven political shifts elsewhere. This article challenges this belief, at least in part, by tracing the evolution of public attitudes toward immigration and analyzing the factors that have shaped the trajectory for over three decades. Drawing on nearly forty years of Environics Focus Canada surveys, combined with annual data on macro-economics and immigration flows, findings here suggest that Canadians' tolerance toward immigration responds to immigration flows and is heavily influenced by macro-economic conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The public must routinely practice precautionary behaviors to control the spread of COVID-19, as no vaccines and antiviral treatments are currently available. This paper examines the public's knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) related to COVID-19 and their relationships and identified the pandemic's vulnerable populations to provide recommendations for behavioral interventions and policies.Methods: Data collection took place over 3 days (June 26-29) via an online survey 5 months after the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) confirmed the first COVID case in South Korea; 970 subjects were included in the statistical data analysis.Results: Knowledge directly affected both attitudes (e.g., perceived risk and efficacy belief) and practices (e.g., personal hygiene practices and social distancing). Among the influencing factors of COVID-19 preventive behaviors, efficacy belief was the most influential and significant practice factor. It mediated the relationship between knowledge and all three preventive behaviors (wearing facial masks, practicing hand hygiene, and avoiding crowded places). The level of knowledge varied by sociodemographic characteristics. Females (β = 0.06, p <  0.05) and individuals with higher levels of education (β = 0.06, p <  0.05) demonstrated higher levels of knowledge.Conclusion: To increase precautionary behaviors among the public, health officials and policymakers must promote knowledge and efficacy belief. Future interventions and policies should also be developed in a 'person-centered' approach, targeting vulnerable subgroups, embracing them, and closing the gap of KAP toward COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the growing body of literature on the determinants of public behavioral changes with respect to climate change issues, little (and often controversial) research has explored the mechanism of how publicly available information about climate change issues influences public behavior. Drawing upon prior research on this topic, we propose a model to examine the influence of the amount of publicly available information on public behavior towards climate change risks. Theoretical foundations were drawn from the marketing and the social-psychological literature on behavior. Data was collected via an online survey from a large sample of 1126 French individuals, right before, during and after the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris. Results of structural equations modeling indicate that an increase in publicly available information about causes and consequences of climate change, as well as about actions to be taken to mitigate it, has an important positive influence on public problem awareness. This in turn positively influences both personal efficacy and public behavioral intentions to fight climate change, two key mediators that spur positive changes in desired climate-friendly public behaviors. • Public information on climate change causes, consequences, and actions fosters sustainable behavior intentions. • Climate problem awareness positively influences both personal efficacy and intentions to fight climate change. • The effect of informedness on climate-friendly behavior is mediated by awareness, personal efficacy and intention. • Decrease in mass media information risks being interpreted by the public that climate change is no longer a threat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A central aspect of post-conflict policing literature holds that the new force must differentiate itself from its predecessor. In the efforts to democratize Iraqi police, trainers and recruits alike espouse lofty ideals regarding who should join and how police should behave. However, these ideals are directly contradicted by low qualification levels and the public behavior of police. Drawing from an intensive ethnographic study of police training in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), I argue that while having broken from the forced conscription of the Hussein era, the new force is staffed by economic conscription, comprised of reluctant volunteers who joined to escape poverty and receive little training on the new responsibilities of democratic police. While the methods of conscription have changed, the results remain the same – a force comprised largely of people who do not want to be police and who do not respect the rights of citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While violence among the fans of competitive sports has received much scholarly attention (e.g., Elias & Dunning, 1986; Giulianotti, 2005), far less has been written about aggression targeted at community athletes like public runners. Yet accounts of such harassment figure prominently in runners' own narratives. This article explores the phenomenon of runner harassment through these accounts and my own experiences as a long-time public runner, drawing first from the literature on fan aggression and second, from sociological work concerning behavior in public places more generally (e.g., Gardner, 1980, 1995; Goffman, 1963). It argues that jogger harassment can be understood in relation to the particular bodily form that running takes—that is, to the sweating, disheveled, panting body of public running— which both violates rules of public vs. private bodily display and signals an unacceptable degree of "involvement" (Goffman, 1963) in the activity and, ultimately, the self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the present study was to examine the influence of self-presentational efficacy on social anxiety in an exercise context. Participants for this study were 68 female exercisers. Self-presentational efficacy was manipulated in two groups, high and low efficacy. Individuals in the low efficacy group showed higher levels of three measures of social anxiety (social anxiety in exercise classes M = 17.69, physical appearance anxiety M = 17.69, and social physique anxiety M = 30.89) than those in the high efficacy group (social anxiety in exercise classes M = 12.34, p < .001, physical appearance anxiety M = 12.71, p < .013, and social physique anxiety M = 25.87, p < .003). Furthermore, participants in the low efficacy group (M = 3.47) indicated that they were looking less forward to the upcoming aerobics class compared to those in the high efficacy group (M = 6.68, p < .001). Thus it appears that self-presentational efficacy has a potent influence on social anxiety in exercise contexts. Potential applications to exercise settings and future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do news media increasingly portray a distorted world image when reporting menace? The purpose of this study is to investigate how media attention for negative incidents evolves over time and how this relates to real-world trends and public responses. A longitudinal content analysis (1991-2015) of media coverage of aviation incidents is used to provide a systematic investigation into the trends of media attention related to real-world data. Results show that while the total number of aviation incidents declined across time, relative media attention increased. Time series analysis revealed that media attention for these negative incidents was negatively associated with shifts in public responses—i.e. air travel behavior—whereas real-world statistics on aviation incidents did not seem to explain variation in public behavior. Moreover, when exploring the variation in the coverage of media attention, increasing presence of mediatization facets was observed as a potential explanation for the over-time rise in disproportional attention to negative news. In conclusion, news media may have a blind spot for progression and a distorted media reality can be a predictor of public responses instead of reality itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Calls are made by governments, university management and industry to increase university-industry (U-I) collaboration to find solutions for societal and economic problems that are too complex to be tackled within one sector alone. Researchers are often expected to realise these ideas, but when it comes to everyday research and knowledge development, individuals may encounter barriers to accomplishing this. The paper presents an empirical study of researchers' view on U-I collaboration. Our focus in the analysis, inspired by the Lewinian field theory, is on the hindering forces that might create barriers to collaboration from a researcher's perspective. Contrary to the previously used approaches taken in force field analysis, we perform a qualitative study, which might be better suited for this framework. In the literature on U-I collaboration, 'orientation-related' and 'transaction-related' barriers have been identified. In our analysis, we discuss hindering forces on the individual, intra- and interorganisational levels. In total, we find 18 key areas to identify possible hinders for collaboration and based on a Lewinian perspective, we suggest that removing hindering forces can benefit U-I collaboration. The paper recognises the need to regard universities as equal partners in U-I collaboration for sustainable knowledge production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Legal governance and regulation are becoming increasingly reliant on data collection and algorithmic data processing. In the area of copyright, online protection of digitized works is frequently mediated by algorithmic enforcement systems intended to purge illicit content and limit the liability of YouTube, Facebook, and other content platforms. But unauthorized content is not necessarily illicit content. Many unauthorized digital postings may claim legitimacy under statutory excep- tions like the legal balancing standard known as fair use. Such exceptions exist to ameliorate the negative effects of copyright on public discourse, personal enrichment, and artistic creativity. Consequently, it may seem desirable to incorporate fair use metrics into copyright policing algorithms, both to protect against automated over-deterrence and to informusers of their compliance with copyright law. In this Essay, I examine the prospects for algorithmic mediation of copyright exceptions, warning that the design values embedded in algorithms will inevitably become embedded in public behavior and consciousness. Thus, algorithmic fair use carries with it the very real possibility of habituating new media participants to its own biases and so progressively altering the fair use standard it attempts to embody. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the current study was to clarify whether interdependent behavior among the Japanese is aligned with their expectations regarding others’ behavior or their own preferences. The participants were privately asked about their preference for independence or interdependence and their expectations regarding others’ independent or interdependent behavior. Then, they were asked to publicly express whether their own behavior was indicative of independence or interdependence. When comparing the participants’ preferences, expectations, and actual behavior, I found that interdependence was only evident in their expectations and public behavior; i.e., the participants answered that they preferred independence rather than interdependence, whereas they expected that others are interdependent and identified themselves as interdependent in public. These findings suggest that interdependent behavior among the Japanese is based on their expectations regarding others’ behavior rather than their own preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Isoniazid (INH) is metabolized by N-acetyl transferase-2 into Background: Over recent years, an increase in the use of pharmaceutical products has been observed. The lack of clear guidelines in India for the patients regarding the safe disposal of unwanted, unused, expired medicines are increasing the risk of accidental poisoning and environmental hazards. Therefore, this study was conducted to investigate the safe storage and disposal of unused and expired medicine by the public among rural and urban Indian population. Methods: This was an observational, prospective cross-sectional survey conducted for one year period from December 2015 to November 2016 and involved a random sample of households. A self-administrated questionnaire was administered to the study participant considering certain inclusion and exclusion criteria. Results: A total of 1000 subjects agreed to participate and responded to the questionnaire. Most of respondents (58.3%) have unwanted or unused medicines, additionally, the expired medicines were noted to be 29.3%. Furthermore, the major reason for having unwanted or unused and expired medicines at home was 39.2% expecting its use in future, whereas, the least reason was a change in prescription (5.9%). Most of respondents (57.9%) agreed that pharmacists provided the information regarding proper storage and safe disposal of medicines. The most common method for disposal of household medicines was disposal in the trash (78.6%). 4% of the participants return unwanted or unused and expired medicines back to the pharmacy. Conclusion: Our study concluded that most of the respondents dispose of medicines unsafely. On the other hand, an appropriate medication disposal greatly impacted by patient education. Therefore, healthcare providers particularly pharmacists are literally better equipped to educate the public and create adequate awareness for proper storage and safe disposal of unwanted or unused and expired medicine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

EU authorities have come to engage with transnational private standards in the domain of sustainability in forms which are different from the traditional interplay based on agency relations and incorporation by reference. This phenomenon is evident in the domain of global value chain sustainability where the employment of voluntary sustainability standards (VSS) is permitted in certain EU measures. This contribution depicts the main features of orchestration as a distinct form of public action involving transnational private regulation. It lays down the reasons underpinning public 'use' of forms of public authority, it highlights the potential for orchestration in publicising transnational private rules and it exposes the hidden dynamics stemming from the interplay between public and private rules. It discusses the conditions under which orchestration can enhance the effectiveness of public measures, and how orchestration can transform transnational private regimes by steering their substance and procedures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impacts of non-native, invasive grey squirrels ( Sciurus carolinensis ) on broadleaf woodlands and red squirrel population ( Sciurus vulgaris ) are well recognised among wildlife professionals, yet efforts to control the species across its expanding range require substantial time and resources. Through collaboration, wildlife professionals and communities can more effectively implement the population monitoring and control programmes necessary to conserve native species under threat. However, for such collaboration to be successful, wildlife professionals must first understand public attitudes towards grey squirrels, and the control methods available. Through a national level survey ( n  = 3758) we examine the UK public's attitudes to red and grey squirrels, and the acceptability of seven control methods. Results show that much of the public have little knowledge of the grey squirrel's negative impacts. In fact, contrary to the notion of a pest species, the presence of grey squirrels is often desirable. Furthermore, those control methods recommended by wildlife professionals are regarded by the public as some of the least acceptable. Those most accepting of controls include males, older generations, those most knowledgeable about squirrels and people who are aware of squirrel management being practiced in their local area. To foster more fruitful collaboration, wildlife professionals should raise awareness of why particular control methods are preferred, highlight the damage grey squirrels cause to other valued species, and offer local communities a variety of roles which contribute to the wider goal of native species conservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Popular framings of the contemporary urban Indian waste crisis focus on the crucial need for public behavior change. This article provides an exploratory study of the ideology and work of two social media campaigns - Swachh Bharat (Clean India) Mission and The Ugly Indian, a social media group - which emphasize the need for inculcating ‘modern’ civic behaviors of not littering, and volunteering to clean up public spaces, and examines the following questions: What types of urban imaginaries are invoked in the discussions of urban filth? Do these discussions betray structural (class-based) biases in the aesthetic ideologies they imagine and invoke? Do these discussions reify the public-private dichotomy that has puzzled scholars concerned with hygiene in urban India? Discourses deployed in these campaigns reproduce colonial and post-colonial narratives of hygiene as a ‘cultural problem’ premised on an idea of a pre-modern urban subject who needs to be disciplined. By focusing on behavior change, these campaigns privilege an understanding of waste as an aesthetic problem rather than as a much more complicated infrastructural one. As these campaigns focus on highlighting and celebrating the volunteer labor of the privileged, they may also obfuscate the economically necessary labors of the marginalized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Local preparedness against earthquakes has been recently highlighted in research and policies on disaster management and risk reduction promotion in Iran. To advance the understanding of public preparedness and how it can be applied in diverse localities, further information is required about the predictors of people's adoption of mitigation activities and earthquake preparedness. A synthesis of the available published research results on earthquake preparedness and the influencing factors in Iran are presented in this literature review. It emphasizes the complexity of both the concept of preparedness and the contextual factors that mediate its adoption. The predominant roles of public awareness, trusted information resources, social capital and community collaboration as predictors are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public attitudes on homelessness can and has influenced policies and services for homeless populations. This study surveyed national public attitudes about homelessness in the 21st century and examined changes in attitudes in the past two decades. An online survey of public attitudes about homelessness was conducted with 541 U.S. adults across 47 states in November 2016 using Amazon Mechanical Turk. Survey results were compared to two public surveys conducted in 1990. Compared to previous surveys, the current sample endorsed more compassion, government support, and liberal attitudes about homelessness. The largest changes were related to increased support for homeless individuals to use public spaces for sleeping and panhandling. When asked about the demographic composition of the homeless population, the contemporary sample tended to overestimate the proportions who were young and racial/ethnic minorities, while underestimating the proportions who were married, or had mental health or substance abuse problems. Together, the findings suggest there has been an increase in compassion and liberal attitudes toward homelessness in the past two decades. Greater support for homeless individuals during an era of economic recessions and governmental homeless initiatives presents opportunities for new public health approaches to address homelessness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Of the Christocentric devotions which achieved widespread popularity in later medieval Scotland, the cult of the Holy Blood gained the greatest prominence. Strong Scottish connections with the blood-relic centres at Bruges and, to a lesser extent, Wilsnack, primarily established by Scotland’s urban merchant class, provided the conduit for the development of the cult in the east coast burghs from the second quarter of the fifteenth century. The cult remained principally an urban phenomenon and was associated closely with the guildry of those burghs in which Holy Blood altars were founded. Holy Blood devotion, while by no means exclusively associated with members of the merchant community, provided a vehicle for expression of guild identity and, as in Bruges, a mechanism for the regulation and control of guild members’ public behaviour. That regulatory function, however, was secondary to the cult’s soteriological significance, its popularity in urban Scotland reflecting the wider late medieval European lay quest for closer and more direct personal connections with God. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Digital media is a platform of immediate presence that rests on a demediatized communication. It favors virtual collective action that allows digital citizens, in contexts of accentuated social inequality, to construe themselves as anti-establishment. Our research explores the co-participative construction of an online shitstorm, in comments posted on websites generated to respond to power abuse and inequity in Chilean society. The construction of citizens’ anger in digital discourse will be analyzed in light of the postulates of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and in the perspective of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). The corpus analyzed consists of 500 comments issued between April and July 2016 to contest a powerful Chilean businessman who uploads a video to YouTube to defend himself from the public verbal attacks of a congressman. The results of the analysis show representations related to corruption, power abuse and inequity from people who conceal in the economic power they have to assert they are ordinary citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Celebrity cancer deaths can focus public attention on the disease like few events can. However, not all celebrities or their families are open about the exact cause of death. Anecdotal reports suggest that some do not reveal the exact cause of death due to fears of stigma associated with the specific type of cancer. However, empirical evidence regarding whether or how the cause of death actually impacts public perceptions and behaviors is lacking. A three (cause of death: nonspecified cancer, liver cancer, or lung cancer) by two (celebrity obituary: David Bowie or Alan Rickman) fully factorial between-subjects online experiment (N = 390) tested a proposed model of effects on identification, discrete emotional reactions, stigma-related perceptions, and behavioral intentions. Results suggest that specific causes of death do not have a direct impact on stigma but they can alter identification and emotional reactions, such as compassion and anxiety, which subsequently shape stigma-related perceptions and behavioral intentions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I introduce how the 2008 financial crisis appears in the Spanish recent drama. Although the impact of the crisis has been studied in other genres and artistic expressions such as narrative, poetry, or comics, this issue needs more attention in Spanish contemporary drama. The article proposes a critical analysis ofNada que perder(Bazo, Romero, and Yagüe, 2016). In this play, we can observe a new perspective of the crisis that not only holds the ruling class responsible for the situation, but also charges the ordinary people with irresponsibility and lack of public conscience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several years ago, a negotiated, consensual abduction scenario took place in downtown Toronto, Canada. Following the public abduction the captive was taken to a secure, private location and (consensually) subjected to physical and sexual aggression: 'gang-rape'. The public abduction involved five queer and trans persons, some of whom are people of colour. In a Foucaultian context, an abduction scenario eludes surveillance and remains invisible until revealed. During the abduction scenario some citizens stopped, observed, and considered using their cellular phones, visibly concerned with what they were witnessing. At one point the scenario paused for consultation and explanation with bystanders troubled by what they interpreted as potentially criminal behaviour. This response can be understood as policing non-normative, public, physical activity. What are the limitations of Sadomasochism (S/m) in the public sphere? And how are identifications of class, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality positioned in this analysis? To those inexperienced with S/m, unfamiliar with consensually aggressive activity, there can be a questioning of psychological contiguity. In the twenty-first century there has been a mainstreaming of kink. Yet, there remain limitations of public tolerance for S/m as counter-conduct. Through the work of Warner and Munoz, this paper suggests the scenario can be interpreted as a counterpublic. This research is an autoethnographic account of the scenario and addresses the limitations on S/m scenarios conducted in the public sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In February of 1910 the Argentine press reported the disappearance of dozens of Middle Eastern immigrants in Patagonia. According to the police department in charge of the investigation, at least several of the missing immigrants of Arab origin had been killed and eaten by local groups of indigenous people. Immigrants from the Middle East, who were vulnerable as newcomers to the region, did not respond to the crisis of murder and cannibalism as “Arabs” or as Argentineans, but as Patagonians. This kind of public behavior opens a window not only to the importance of local identities at the subnational level in Argentina, but also the role of local and negative experiences in the integration of immigrants and ethnic minorities. This article explores the complexities of the interaction between immigrants from the Middle East and the indigenous population in Patagonia in order to rethink the local experience of ethnic-migrant minorities in Argentina. It argues that Argentine identity of Arabic-speaking immigrants in Patagonia emerged mainly as a result of shared local or regional interests rather than merely through an attachment to the federal state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent debates about the moral climate in China have focused on its citizens' purported loss of traditional values and interest in the public good. Chinese society, particularly in the countryside, is described in terms of a moral vacuum: the absence of shared values through which citizens' public behavior might contribute to the nation's greater good. The Chinese state is reforming its judicial system with the aim of making it more accessible to its citizenry, so that law and legal rights create bonds between individuals and the collectivity. This approach envisions legal mediation as a vehicle to bring law to the countryside. This article, however, shows that in rural Yunnan, the law and legal rights are seen as instruments of disenfranchisement. This article demonstrates that Yunnanese rural society is better described as a moral 'plenum' than as a 'vacuum.' It also shows that Chinese law, via temporary use rights to local resources, is ousting alternative regimes of resource management. These alternative regimes are predicated on local villagers' participation in and responsibility for the public good. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the information of the public׳s views on the solar energy use in Yemen. It examines the public knowledge of, attitudes and behavioral intentions that include the variables “willingness to pay, “willingness to change” and “willingness to invest”, and then compare them. A personal interview with 348 urban household and 258 rural household was performed. The descriptive statistics, Chi-square for independence, odds ratios, Mann–Whitney and Kruskal–Wallis tests were the statistical tools employed in the analysis. The results showed that, the citizens in both areas have a moderate level of knowledge about renewable energy resources, the benefits and drawbacks of solar energy use in the power sector, and the solar power technologies. Despite that, they have highly positive attitudes towards the use of renewable energy, particularly solar energy and its technologies. They also accept to engage in the renewable energy activities, which aim to improve the quality of the electrical service provided in the country. The findings also indicate 66%, 55.7% and 78.4% of urban citizens are willing to pay, to change and to invest compared to 70%, 55.4% and 75.6% of rural citizens. The “place of residence” factor affected significantly the citizens’ knowledge level about renewable energy; wind, biomass and geothermal energy; renewable energy resources; the drawbacks of solar energy use in the power sector; and the solar power technologies. It also affected significantly the citizens׳ attitudes towards the use of solar power technologies at home. The implications for the policymakers are that elevating the knowledge and awareness of the citizens by formal and informal education, and enacting effective supportive policies assists in encouraging the citizens to use renewable energies in their daily lives would lead to achieve the country’s renewable energy targets for 2025. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the role of news media on climate change and sustainable energy in the shaping of audience opinions and beliefs and the possible relation of these to behaviours. It reports on a series of studies conducted between 2011 and 2014 which develop existing approaches to audience reception analyses by using innovative methodologies which focus specifically on the negotiation of new information in response to existing beliefs, perceptions and behavioural patterns – both in the short and long term. Audience groups are introduced to new information, to which the range of responses is examined. This approach allows for an exploration of the interplay of socio-political and personal factors as well as the identification of the potential informational triggers for change. The findings suggest that media accounts are likely to have a shaping role in relation to behaviours under a range of specific and coinciding conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on effective communication of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) paints a complex and occasionally contradictory picture of the role of alignment between corporate activities and CSR actions, classically termed "corporate fit". Some authors highlight the importance of such alignment for effective communication of CSR, whereas other authors suggest that such fit can engender skepticism and public behaviors that harm the company. In addition, more recent work suggests the importance of "personal fit", which refers to alignment between CSR actions and what receivers of the CSR communication consider to be personally relevant. In order to clarify this complex picture, we randomly assigned 86 young people to three groups: one was exposed to CSR communication showing corporate fit, another to CSR communication showing personal fit, and the third to control (non-CSR) communication. In contrast to what the literature might predict, we found that the CSR message with corporate fit was as persuasive as the control message for convincing subjects to rate the company as sincere and honest and to be willing to sign a declaration in favor of the company. The message with personal fit led to higher ratings of sincerity and honesty, as well as greater willingness to sign the declaration. These results suggest the need to re-assess the role of classical corporate fit in the communication of CSR actions, and they raise the possibility that other types of fit exist and may even be stronger determinants of the effectiveness of CSR communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Waste collection systems are a relevant component of solid waste management systems implemented worldwide. Although relevant to the success of waste management, the development of waste collection systems has been disorganized and dissimilar. Lack of a common definition and characterization of waste collection systems and components has complicated the development and analysis to date in scientific research fields such as technological advances, costs optimization and assessment, environmental impacts, policy compliance, and public behavior. This paper presents a taxonomy for classifying waste collection systems considering the dichotomy of containers and vehicles. Key waste collection systems are presented to exemplify all components used to build the taxonomy, and a case study in the Greater Lisbon area, Portugal, is presented to confirm that the taxonomy is simple, easy to apply and interpret, visual, and related to manufacturers' catalogues. Key elements differentiate container and vehicle components and specify which and how components are compatible. The classification can identify waste collection systems through two trees, one for containers and another for vehicles, generating information to be used by experts from several scientific fields and waste collection managers and planners to close the knowledge gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban stormwater run-off is a threat to stream ecosystems. New approaches to stormwater management aim to protect urban streams from such impacts, by retaining, treating and using stormwater at its source. As up to ∼50% of runoff from urban surfaces comes from private property, fostering stormwater retention requires effective householder engagement. We evaluated householder participation in the Little Stringybark Creek project, a stormwater retrofit programme aimed at waterway protection, using qualitative enquiry through formal and informal interviews to identify factors that influenced participation. Participation was governed by multiple factors, with financial incentives and personal co-benefits of tanks primary motivators, while process complexity and distrust were primary barriers. Results suggest an approach combining education to encourage review of subjective norms and attitudes, with incentives to mitigate behavioural controls can transform public behaviour towards sustainable stormwater management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Influenza pandemics can severely impact human health and society. Understanding public perception and behavior toward influenza pandemics is important for minimizing the effects of such events. Public perception and behavior are expected to change over the course of an influenza pandemic, but this idea has received little attention in previous studies. Our study aimed to understand the dynamics of public perception and behavior over the course of the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic. Three consecutive cross-sectional surveys were administered among Beijing residents with random-digit dialing techniques in March 2008 and August and November 2009. Effective samples of 507, 508 and 1006 respondents were interviewed in each of the three surveys, respectively. The mean scores of risk perception were low to moderate across the three surveys. The perceived risk of infection of self was significantly lower than that of the community, revealing an optimistic bias. Longitudinally, the perceived risk of contracting H1N1 increased, whereas the perceived risk of being unable to obtain medicine and medical care once influenza permeated the community first increased and then decreased. Responsive actions toward influenza varied. Most respondents took actions that required little extra effort, such as ventilating rooms; these actions did not change over time. Comparatively, a smaller number of respondents took actions for coping with influenza, such as vaccination; however, these actions were taken by an increasing number of respondents over time. The association between risk perception and behavior was unstable. Positive, insignificant, and negative associations were obtained in the three surveys. In conclusion, the evolving patterns of risk perception and responsive behavior over the course of an influenza pandemic are sensitive to how risk and behavior are defined and scoped. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the students’ perceptions regarding unethical practices in the Romanian educational system. This research topic is highly sensitive, because it is about teachers’ deviations from norms and malpractices. The aims of our research are: to investigate the perceptions of Romanian students on the weight of unethical practices by comparison with appropriate pedagogical practices; to analyse the perception of students on the hierarchy of unethical practices; to draw comparisons between the respective perceptions regarding unethical practices by taking into account three variables (level of instruction, gender and residential status). The data was collected from a sample of 452 Romanian university and high-school students. The instrument we have used was a questionnaire, designed specifically for this purpose. The concept of unethical practices was operationalized into several categories of indicators: indicators of teaching practices, assessment practices indicators, indicators of relationship management and of teacher public behaviour. The results reveal several findings: (1) Romanian students are quite critical regarding the evaluation of their teachers’ morality. (2) Favouritism and discrimination in assessment are perceived as the most frequent unethical practice. (3) High-school students are more critical than university students, boys are more critical than girls and those from the urban residence are more critical than those from the rural residence in terms of appreciating the morality of their teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Weeds are a major threat to biodiversity globally degrading natural areas of high conservation value. But what are our attitudes about weeds and their management including weeds in national parks? Do we know what a weed is? Do we consider weeds a problem? Do we support their management? Are we unintentionally spreading weeds in parks? To answer these questions, we surveyed visitors entering a large popular national park near the city of Brisbane, Australia. Park visitors were knowledgeable about weeds; with >75% correctly defining weeds as ‘plants that grow where they are not wanted’. About 10% of the visitors, however, provided their own sophisticated definitions. This capacity to define weeds did not vary with people’s age, sex or level of education. We constructed a scale measuring visitors’ overall concern about weeds in parks using the responses to ten Likert scale statements. Over 85% of visitors were concerned about weeds with older visitors, hikers, and those who could correctly define weeds more concerned than their counterparts. The majority think visitors unintentionally introduce seeds into parks, with many (63%) having found seeds on their own clothing. However, over a third disposed of these seeds in ways that could facilitate weed spread. Therefore, although most visitors were knowledgeable and concerned about weeds, and support their control, there is a clear need for more effective communication regarding the risk of visitors unintentionally dispersing weed seeds in parks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the reasoning that contextual variations are important for understanding differences in forest cognitions, this study examined forest values and management attitudes in the general public in Germany (n= 1135) and Sweden (n= 1311) by means of a questionnaire. Results indicated that the public in both countries emphasised similar forest values, and the overall pattern was comparable for different types of forest, although certain differences based on forest type and country were evident. For example, the German public was more ecologically oriented, whereas the Swedish public was more production oriented in its forest values and management attitudes. Furthermore, ecological and various anthropocentric forest values were perceived to be quite compatible, with the Swedish respondents perceiving this to a greater extent than the German. The overall cognitive structure of forest values and management attitudes was similar in both countries, although differences were revealed, particularly regarding attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]