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Media coverage and speculation about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on suicide: a content analysis of UK news
Get PDFObjectives: Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been much concern and speculation about rises in suicide rates, despite evidence that suicides did not in fact increase in the first year of the pandemic in most countries with real-time suicide data. This public narrative is potentially harmful, as well as misleading, and is likely to be perpetuated by sensational news coverage.
Method: Using a bespoke database, we analysed the quality and content of print and online UK news (including opinion pieces) on the impact of COVID-19 on suicidality, based on adherence to international recommendations. Chi-square tests were conducted to examine variability in relation to key characteristics (e.g., type of publication) and to four ‘restriction phases’ (based on UK government official lockdown measures) over the first 14 months of the pandemic.
Results: We identified 372 stories about COVID-19 and suicidality in online and print news between the first UK lockdown (March 2020) and May 2021 (when restrictions were significantly eased in the UK). Throughout this period, over a third of articles (39.2%) and headlines (41.4%) claimed or predicted a rise in suicide, often attributed to feelings of entrapment and poor mental health (especially amongst young people), and fueled by expert commentary and speculation. Almost a third of reports were rated as being of negative quality (116, 31.2%), and at least half included no signposting to help and support. However, reporting improved in phases of less stringent COVID-19 restrictions and over time, with later articles and headlines including fewer negative statements and predictions about rises in suicides, and greater reliance on academic evidence.
Conclusions: As the longer-term consequences of the pandemic develop, and other national and global events unfold, it is increasingly important that the media, and the wider community of experts shaping its narratives, strive for a positive and evidence-informed approach to news coverage of suicide
Written submission for the Scottish Affairs Committee inquiry Defence in Scotland: The North Atlantic and the High North 2022-23
No full textRecommendations:
• Continue to build the UK’s defence presence and leadership in the High North.
• Further develop the UK’s presence in Arctic diplomacy.
• Develop Scotland as a key hub for UK Arctic diplomacy
• Engage constructively with China in Arctic diplomacy and commerc
The smallest bimolecular mass action reaction networks admitting Andronov–Hopf bifurcation
Get PDFWe address the question of which small, bimolecular, mass action chemical reaction networks (CRNs) are capable of Andronov–Hopf bifurcation (from here on abbreviated to ‘Hopf bifurcation’). It is easily shown that any such network must have at least three species and at least four irreversible reactions, and one example of such a network with exactly three species and four reactions was previously known due to Wilhelm. In this paper, we develop both theory and computational tools to fully classify three-species, four-reaction, bimolecular CRNs, according to whether they admit or forbid Hopf bifurcation. We show that there are, up to a natural equivalence, 86 minimal networks which admit nondegenerate Hopf bifurcation. Amongst these, we are able to decide which admit supercritical and subcritical bifurcations. Indeed, there are 25 networks which admit both supercritical and subcritical bifurcations, and we can confirm that all 25 admit a nondegenerate Bautin bifurcation. A total of 31 networks can admit more than one nondegenerate periodic orbit. Moreover, 29 of these networks admit the coexistence of a stable equilibrium with a stable periodic orbit. Thus, fairly complex behaviours are not very rare in these small, bimolecular networks. Finally, we can use previously developed theory on the inheritance of dynamical behaviours in CRNs to predict the occurrence of Hopf bifurcation in larger networks which include the networks we find here as subnetworks in a natural sense
Semiotics and its masters: volume 2
No full textA collection of cutting-edge work in recent semiotics.
Semiotics has ever-changing vistas in consonance with changes in the ever-increasing complexity of life on Planet Earth.
This book presents cutting-edge work in semiotics, projecting developments in the future of the field. Authored by leading semioticians, Semiotics and its Masters, Volume 2 contains essays on learning, transdisciplinarity, science, scaffolding, narrative, selfhood, ecosemiotics, agency, cybersemiotics, pornography, nostalgia, language and money. The volume presents a panorama of semiotics as it will develop in the third decade of the 21st century.
This book will furnish the reader with an overview of the challenges that face explorers in the contemporary world of signs
On the horns of a dilemma: experts as communicators for property-level flood risk adaptation measures
Get PDFThis paper investigates the role of flood risk experts in supporting homeowners to implement property-level flood risk adaption (PLFRA). Homeowners can reduce their flood risks by implementing PLFRA. However, oftentimes they need advice on what sort of and how to implement PLFRA. This means that tailored experts advice is necessary to inform homeowners on such measures. But experience shows that mere information is often insufficient to motivate homeowners to realize measures. This contribution explores the reasons for the ineffectiveness of expert advice by investigating how expert advice responds to homeowners’ rationalities. Based on a case study from Flanders, Belgium, this paper reveals how the relation between experts and homeowners differs related to different rationalities of homeowners. The paper uses Cultural Theory to discuss strategies on how experts, providing advice on property-level risk adaption, could move beyond engineering skills by also using risk communication skills in order to involve homeowners in flood risk governance
Integration discourses, the purification of gender and interventions in family migrations
Get PDFIn a hard-hitting critique of integration, Schinkel (2018) highlights the purification of class and race which evacuates explanatory variables from studies of integration as a concept and practice. Surprisingly gendered purification is left out. This article argues that a range of gender issues presenting migrant women, especially from Muslim countries, as being deficient in modernity and contributing to poor social reproduction through their family practices and transnational ties, were at the forefront of political calls for intervention in family lives and the implementation of integration measures in the past two decades. In part this reflects an attempt to alter the class composition of family migrants and bring them closer to middle class norms and values. Such reductionist and homogenising representations continue despite the complexity of contemporary family migrations and practices, thus reinforcing the continuing purification and simplification of categories of analysis in discussions of racialised gender and classed integration in West European societies
International intermediaries: a systematic literature review and research agenda
Get PDFIntermediaries such as trading companies, agents and merchants have played a key role in international business for centuries. Despite the growing importance of understanding the phenomenon of intermediaries, there are misperceptions and confusions regarding the concept and value of intermediaries, which result in disconnected and fragmented research findings. This study – based on an analysis of 101 articles published between 1985 and 2021 – aims to synthesise the conceptual developments and provide a more integrated understanding of both sourcing and trading intermediaries whose activities extend across national borders. The findings help to pave the way for further academic research by highlighting what we currently know and do not know about intermediaries, outlining the theoretically grounded research agenda for each of the three identified themes: (1) What are intermediaries? (2) When should intermediaries be used? and (3) How do intermediaries work and develop? The study shows that despite decades of research on this topic, the literature to date has been limited and scattered. Researchers are encouraged to consider the role of intermediaries in a bigger picture where intermediated exchanges exist not only in dyadic relationships, but also in triads or even in broader webs of networks
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning+ (LGBTQ+)
No full textThis chapter explores key concepts of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning+ (LGBTQ+) health, mental health and substance use. The chapter presents issues faced by LGBTQ+ individuals in society concerning discrimination and bullying, relationships with family and the perceived impact of ‘coming out’.
Evidence shows a need to ensure that health and social care professionals are capable of delivering care and support to a diverse population. However, issues with professional conduct and discrimination against LGBTQ+ people in health and social care continue to exist in the UK and most probably in most EU countries.
This unsatisfactory position indicates the need to ensure that health and social care professionals’ education includes the exploration of LGBTQ+ issues to enable health professionals to provide quality services that are free from prejudice to this population. However, there are numerous challenges which the educators must address and overcome to achieve this aim, including ignorance and fear; lack of confidence; negative religious, cultural and personal views; the lack of a learning culture that values diversity; and so on (Carr and Pezzella J Psychiatr Ment Health Nurs 24:553–60, 2017; Davy et al., Qual Res Educ 4:134–63, 2015).
The chapter presents issues faced by LGBTQ+ individuals in relation to discrimination and bullying, relationships with health and social care professionals as well as family and the perceived impact of ‘coming out’ on their well-being and mental health. Moreover, it addresses basic terminology around LGBTQ+, gender identity and sexual orientation. The chapter draws on the available literature and research on the topic and provides an overview and discussion on the need for LGBTQ+ inclusive services in health and social care
The un-human beings: the denial of Muslim migrants' bodies in India and Poland
Get PDFThis paper traces the political and legal discourses migrants in two distinct conditions—the postcolonial and the postsocialist of India and Poland respectively. The two countries have recently turned to nationalist right-wing politics with an increasingly hostile focus on foreign Others, particularly Muslims. In the context of increased global surveillance and criminalization of Muslims, we show how bodies of Muslim migrants are dehumanized and constructed as threats denying their humanity in the process. We do this through two cases of Ayub and Ameer; two Muslim men navigating their ‘illegality’ in two different contexts in India and Poland. This paper is a contribution to the literature on postcolonial and postsocialist theories and critical debates about the possibilities of dialogues between postsocialist and postcolonial geographies. The examples that we use demonstrate that the postcolonial and postsocialist nation states respond to global phenomena such as migration and Islamophobia, in ways that have discernible traces of their histories and are constituted distinctively from the Western metropoles
Care, aftercare, and the work of transmission: learning from Greenham Common
Get PDFThis text draws on the author’s experience of researching the women’s peace camp at Greenham Common (1981-2000) from an art historical perspective. An important chapter in British and global feminist heritage, Greenham is approached as a curatorial conundrum, in which the requirement for historicization intersects with a feminist desire for reactivation, and as an archival assemblage in the making, where apparent accidents and damage to collections are interpreted as their meaningful components. The peace camp’s archival sprawl is examined as an investment of care that demands reciprocation in the form of careful transmission through scholarly, activist, and further curatorial work. Pivoting on an expanded understanding of assemblage, the chapter argues that contemporary art practice offers a model for dealing with feminist heritage. This model relies on care while tolerating risk, suggesting that the two are in fact interconnected