International Journal of Conflict and Violence (IJCV - Universität Bielefeld)
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Law Students’ Judgments of a Rape Victim’s Statement: The Role of Displays of Emotion and Acceptance of Sexual Aggression Myths
Full text linkFemale rape victims who display “appropriate” emotions (versus “inappropriate” or no emotions) are often judged to be more credible. The authors studied the interplay of different emotion displays with perceivers’ acceptance of modern myths about sexual aggression (AMMSA) in predicting judgments of credibility and blame. Law students (N = 120) completed a 16-item AMMSA scale and watched a video showing a simulated interview with a rape victim (played by an actress). The emotion displayed by the victim (sad, angry, or neutral) was experimentally manipulated; her statement’s verbal content was held constant. Main dependent variables were perceived victim credibility, victim blame, severity of the injury, and likelihood of recovery. Results showed that AMMSA strongly predicted all dependent variables across conditions. Effects of displayed emotions were less pervasive and depended on participants’ gender and AMMSA: At higher (vs. lower) levels of AMMSA, women – but not men – judged the sad victim’s statement to be most credible, and the angry victim’s statement to be least credible, with the neutral statement falling in between. The findings suggest that perceivers may be better at keeping their judgements free from unwanted external influences (the emotional displays) than unwanted internal influences (their own AMMSA). The authors discuss future directions regarding the mechanisms involved and practical implications for the legal context
Critical Media Literacy and Islamist Online Propaganda: The Feasibility, Applicability and Impact of Three Learning Arrangements
Full text linkThe networked structure of the internet facilitates the dissemination of extremist messages and often makes removal impossible. Equipping media users with critical (preventive) skills appears a more promising strategy than trying to block any exposure to extremist messages. Although various prevention programs follow this approach, research on their impact and success is scarce. This contribution describes how prevention programs can benefit from systematic evaluation using the example of the CONTRA school program, which seeks to foster critical media literacy with regard to extremist online messages via three sub-dimensions: awareness, reflection, and empowerment. The feasibility, applicability and impact of methods and measures developed in the context of CONTRA were assessed using an innovative mixed method design. The contribution describes the scientific approach of the prevention program, outlines the results of the evaluation and extrapolates from this prevention program to the general question of best practices for prevention programs with a specific focus on the school context
Why Targets of Economic Sanctions React Differently: Reference Point Effects on North Korea and Libya
Full text linkThe international community has frequently introduced economic sanctions to curb the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, to which each target nation has reacted differently. This paper explores the reasons why each target of economic sanctions reacts differently by specif- ically building a model based on reference point effects, and by analyzing the cases of North Korea and Libya. According to the results, when the reference point level increases, as in the case of North Korea, the target resists more firmly; on the other hand, when the reference point decreases, like in the case of Libya, the target resists more subtly
Understanding How and Why Young People Enter Radical or Violent Extremist Groups
Full text linkThe process of (violent) radicalisation and subsequently joining of radical or violent extremist groups was studied using semi-structured interviews with (young) people who considered themselves as radicals or violent extremists in left-wing, right-wing or religious settings. The data was gathered in Belgium from March through November 2013. Though modest in number (12), the interviews tell us a lot about factors that play a role in (violent) radicalisation and the organisation of radical or violent extremist groups through online and offline recruitment and daily activities. The results of the interviews are linked to the existing theoretical frameworks on (violent) radicalisation, including factors underlying engagement and recruitment. They show that new social media are not as relevant as currently asserted, but that offline methods of recruitment are still uppermost. They also make clear that the content of the ideology is not the first impetus for searching, but that a general discontent with society comes first, a search for ways of dealing with this discontent, and an orientation associated with the search. This has implications for the way society should deal with young people and radical convictions and the alternatives that should be provided
The Relationship between Homicide and Suicide: A narrative and conceptual review of violent death
Full text linkIn this paper, we provide a narrative review of the theoretical discourse and empiric research on the relationship between homicide and suicide.Understanding of homicide and suicide has evolved from religious condemnation during the Middle Ages, to medicalization in the 1800s, and socialization in the 1900s. There is a long historical tradition of treating homicide and suicide as a single phenomenon. Contemporary thought, the stream analogy, posits that homicide and suicide are acts of violence, differentiated only by the direction of aggression. Empiric research has provided modest evidence supporting the stream analogy theory. A more comprehensive framework that incorporates cultural domains is needed to advance the research field on homicide and suicide
When Suicide Kills: An Empirical Analysis of the Lethality of Suicide Terrorism
Full text linkWhy are some suicide terrorist attacks deadlier than others? Suicide bombers, unlike stationary bombs, are self-guided human weapons; they can deliver and detonate explosives at a specific time and place with precision. Coding and analyzing new data on over four hundred suicide terrorist incidents from all around the world between 1998 and 2015, this paper argues that the number of fatalities resulting from suicide attacks is a function of strategic choices made by the perpetrators, such as where to attack and whom to target. Results of this analysis show that suicide attacks that seize targets of opportunity are the most lethal. Specifically, suicide attacks that target civilians in enclosed and easily accessible places, and that are undertaken by multiple perpetrators result in the highest numbers of fatalities. Understanding these strategic tactical attributes of suicide terrorism is fundamental to devising effective counterterrorism strategies that aim at hardening soft targets and minimizing the lethal impact of these attacks
Government Protection against Terrorists Funded by Benefactors and Crime: An Economic Model
Full text linkWe model a game involving a terrorist, the terrorist’s benefactor, and a government protecting against terrorism. The terrorist generates terrorism effort using its own resources, funding from a benefactor, and crime. Crime can be lucrative for a terrorist but may deter benefactors, thus causing a strategic dilemma. The model accounts for resources, costs of effort, valuations of terrorism by the three players, and crime production characteristics. We determine how a variety of model parameters, the government, and the benefactor influence a terrorist’s terrorism and crime efforts, and relative ideological orientation along a continuum from ideological to criminal. We determine which factors impact government protection, for example that it is inverse U shaped in terrorism effort. We determine the implications of letting the benefactor choose optimal funding and/or punishment for crime, for example eliminating punishment if both are chosen optimally. The model parameters are estimated for sixty-five terrorist groups using the global terrorism database and the fragile states index
The Demonic Genius of Politics? Social Action and the Decoupling of Politics from Violence
Full text linkThis paper explores why new ways of “knowing” and acting on violence could lead to a reconsideration of Weber’s pessimistic coupling of politics and violence. This coupling remains hugely influential almost a century after it was formulated. It has become possible to revisit it, firstly, because of the potential for new interdisciplinary conversations. These have opened up ways of understanding violence as a properly social phenomenon and the significance of our vulnerable, social bodies to its reproduction. Secondly, social action on violence has led to recognition as “violence” of varied acts of somatic harm previously not named as such. In the process, expressions of violence reproduced over time and through spaces of socialization (from the intimate to the construction of the nation state) are socially and politically de-sanctioned. Politics and the State could be reconceptualised as essential for reducing (rather than monopolizing) violence and creating conditions to live together without it
How Violence Breeds Violence: Micro-dynamics and Reciprocity of Violent Interaction in the Arab Uprisings
Full text linkThis article builds on the recent trend of analyzing violent interaction through visual data, but goes one step further than existing research studying the emergence of violence by investigating the micro-dynamics of how violence evolves. The article applies micro-sociological analysis of video material from the uprisings in Bahrain, Tunisia, and Syria as well as interviews with activists, opposition politicians, and journalists from the three countries. The material supports Randall Collins’s (2008) argument that the emergence of violence is constrained by particular situational circumstances where the perpetrator is able to dominate the victim and/or to avoid direct contact with the victim. However, contrary to what one might expect if emotional domination precedes violence, this does not mean that attacks are rarely followed by counter violence. Rather, this article argues that violence is often reciprocal with parties mirroring each other in action-reaction sequences. Hence, violence can be considered a form of interaction ritual in its own right – a dance-like sequence – initially inhibited by the human tendency to fall into each other’s rhythms, but once initiated promoted by exactly that tendency
The Impact of Terrorism-induced Fear on Job Attitudes and Absenteeism Following a National Traumatic Event: Evidence from Pakistan
Full text linkThe purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of terrorism-induced fear on employee job attitudes and absenteeism in the weeks following the Army Public School attack in Peshawar, Pakistan. The paper is based on questionnaire data collected from 204 faculty members of public sector universities in Peshawar using snowball sampling technique. We applied partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to analyze the entire impact path and found substantial support for our hypotheses. The results suggest that fear of terrorism affects absenteeism directly, as well as indirectly via job attitudes. Further, perceived organizational support is found to attenuate the negative relationship between fear of terrorism and job attitudes. Very few studies have examined the impact of societal variables such as national traumatic events on jobrelated outcomes