Journal articles on the topic 'Sex role in mass media Australia'

This research examines the rise of Islamic populism in Indonesia and understands it as an instrument to clear a new pathway for populism movement into popular culture. Ummi magazine is one of the religious media used to be political vehicles of stablishing constituencies, especially for the Tarbiyah movement in the Soeharto era to the current tendency to popularize the Tarbiyah identity as a new lifestyle. Historically, The Tarbiyah movement in Indonesia is a social and political movement among Indonesian Muslimah students, especially activists in the Suharto period. Muslim middle class entrepreneurs launched a campaign of ‘economic jihad. This research uses a qualitative approach by interpreting and studying the data contained in Ummi Magazine. Media studies were carried out in the January 2017 to 2018 editions. The data obtained were described and associated with the magazine's transformation as an ideological medium and Muslim women's lifestyle today. The result shows that the magazine's transformation from ideology magazine to lifestyle magazine can influence readers because there are more new readers. Whether Ummi as a media for da'wah and a women's magazine, it is still perceived by the readers to apply ideological coercion or simply provide an alternative lifestyle or consumption where religious independence is the main characteristic of the magazine. We argue that Islamic populism is mainly a medium for coercion ideology to gain tracks to power, while the poor remain as ‘floating mass’, and entrapped in many so-called 'empowerment' projects. Populism can be interpreted as a communication style in which a group of politicians considers themselves to represent the people’s interests contrasted with elite interests. Nevertheless, the populism approach is gaining momentum. Abdullah, I. (1996). Tubuh, Kesehatan, dan Struktur yang Melemahkan Wanita. Kumpulan Makalah Seminar Bulanan. Pusat Penelitian Kependudukan UGM.Al-Abani, S. M. N. (1999). Jilbab Wanita Muslimah. Pustaka At-Tibyan.Ahmed, L. (1992). Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of Modern Debate. Yale University Press.Al-Ghifari, A. (2005). Kerudung Gaul, Berjilbab Tapi Telanjang. Mujahid Press.Armbrust, W. (2000). ‘Introduction’, Mass Mediation: New Approaches to Popular Culture In The Middle East and Beyond. University California Press.Askew, K. (2002). ‘Introduction’, The Anthropology of Media: A Reader.Blackwell.Astuti, S. N. A. . (2005). Membaca Kelompok Berjilbab Sebagai Komunitas Sub Kultur. Universitas Gadjah Mada.BPS. (2017). Statistika Pendapatan. BPS Publication. Banet-Weiser, S. (2006). “I just want to be me again!”: Beauty pageants, reality television and post-feminism. Feminist Theory, 7(2), 255–272. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464700106064423Banna, H. (2011). Majmu’ah Rasail Al Iman As Syahid (Risalah Pergerakan Ikhawanul Muslimin. Era Intermedia. Barthel, D. (1976) . The Impact of Colonialism on Women’s Status in Senegal.Ph.D Dissertation, Harvard University.Barthes, R. (1977). Image, Music, Text. Fortana Press.Bertrand, I., & Hughes, P. (2005). Media Research Methods: Audiences, Institutions, Texts. Palgrave Mecmillan.Bordo, S. (1995). Unbearable Weight : Feminism, Western Culture, and The Body. University of California Press.Branner, S. (1995). Why Women Rule the Roost: Rethiking Javanese Ideologies of Gender and Self-Control. In Bewitching Women, Pioner Men. University of California Press.______. (1996). ‘Reconstructing Self and Society, Javannese Muslim Women and The Veil’. American Ethnologist.Bruneinessen, M. v. (2002). ‘Genealogies of Islamic Radicalism in Post-Suharto Indonesia’. South East Asian Research. Champagne, J. (2004). Jilbab Gaul. Bali. Latitudes, 46, 114-123.Damanik, A. S. (2000). Fenomena Partai Keadilan: Transformasi 20 Tahun Gerakan Tarbiyah di Indonesia. Mizan.Durkin, K. (1985). Television and Sex Role Acquisition I: Content’. British Journal of Social Psycology, 24, 102-113.Effendi, B. (2003). ‘Islam Politik Pasca Suharto’. Refleksi, 5(2).El-Guindi, F. (1991). Veil, Modesty, Privacy, and Resistance. Berg.Frederick, W. H. (1982). Rhoma Irama and The Dangdut Style: Aspects of Contemporary Indonesian Popular Culture. Indonesia, 34, 103-130.Featherstone, M. (2001). The Body in Consumer Culture. In The Body: Social Process and Cultural Theory. SAGE Publication.Foucault, M. (1981). The Order of Discourse. Routledge and Keagon Paul.Fukuyama, F. (2018). Against Identity Politics. Foreign Affairs, Sptember/October, 1-25.Gough, Y. A. (2003). Understanding Women Magazine. Routledge.Gautlett, D. (2002). Media, Gender, and Identity: An Introduction. Routledge.Geetzt, C. (1973). The Interpretation of Culture. Verso.Gill, R. (2009). Mediated Intimacy and Post Feminism: a Discourse Analytic Examination of Sex and Relationship advice in Woman’s Magazine. Discourse and Communication Journal, 3(4), 345-369. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750481309343870Gramsci, A. (1992). Selection from The Prison on Notebooks. International Publisher.Gorham, B. W. (2004). The Social Psychology of Stereotypes: Implications for Media Audiences. In Race/Gender/Media: Considering Diversity Across Audiences, Content, and Producers. Pearson.Hall, S. (1997). The Work Of Representation. In Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. SAGE Publication.Handayani, D. (2014). Performatifitas Muslimah dalam Majalah Ummi. At-Tabsyir. Jurnal Komunikasi Penyiaran Islam, 2(1), 73-98. http://doi.org/10.21043/at-tabsyir.v2i1.461.Hanifah, U. (2011). Konstruksi Ideologi Gender pada Majalah Wanita (Analisis Wacana Kritis Majalah Ummi). KOMUNIKA: Jurnal Dakwah dan Komunkasi, 5(2), 199-220. https://doi.org/10.24090/komunika.v5i2.170Imdadun, R. (2005). Arus Baru Iislam Radikal: Transmisi, Revivalisme Islam Timur Tengah ke Indonesiaan. Erlangga.Itzin, C.(1986). Media Images of Women: The Social Construction of Ageism and Sexism. In Feminist Social Psycology: Developing Theory and Practice. Milton Keynes. Open University Press.Kailani, N. (2008). Budaya Populer Islam di Indonesia: Jaringan Dakwah Foru Lingkar Pena. Jurnal Sosiologi Reflektif, 2(3). Kellner, D. (1995). Cultural Studies, Identities and Politics Between The Modern and Postmodern. Routledge.Machmudi, Y. (2006). Islamizing Indonesia: The Rise of Jamaah Tarbiyah and The Presperous Justice Party (PKS). PhD Dissertation, Australia National University.Maulidiyah, L. (2014). Wacana Relasi Gender Suami Istri dalam Keluarga Muslim di Majalah Wanita Muslim Indonesia. Universitas Airlangga.Parihatin, A. (2004). Ideologi Revivalisme Islam dalam Majalah Perempuan Islam (Analisis Wacana pada Majalah Ummi). Universitas Indonesia. Qadarawi, Y. (2004). Al Islamu wal Fannu. Islam Bicara Seni. Era Intermedia. Qutb, S. (1980). Ma’alim fi Al Tariq (Petunjuk Jalan-Milestone). Media Dakwah.Rozak, A. (2008). Citra Perempuan dalam Majalah Wanita Islam UMMI. Jurnal Penelitian Agama. VXII(2), 332-354.Storey, J. (2010). Culture and Power in Cultural Studies: The Politics of Signification. Edinburg University Press.Ulfa, N. M. (2016). Dakwah Melalui Media Cetak (Analisis Isi Rubrik Mutiara Islam Majalah Ummi). Islamic Communication Journal, 1(1), 73-89.

<p align="justify">Marriage equality or the equal status of same-sex marriage has undergone a rather tough road in Australia, involving diverging opinions in parties at the state and federal levels and constitutional amendments. It appears that people in power set the agenda on the legalization of same-sex marriage. However, it cannot be denied that social media played an almost decisive role in this process because it enabled the gathering of massive public opinion to pressure the government to make changes. To be specific, social media or social networking sites offered platforms for people concerned to share reports about the progress of foreign countries in legalizing same-sex marriage, to express their opinions and to launch campaigns in support of their beliefs. This essay explores the role that social media played in the legalization of marriage equality movement in Australia from the perspectives of the public sphere theory and the agenda-setting theory.</p>

This paper aims to analyze the way in which the media reports of sex offences tend to reinforce traditional sexual scripts and gender identities. Compared to investigations into male sex offenders, female sex offending is relatively underresearched, undertheorized, and misunderstood (Hayes and Carpenter, 2013). We argue that the media’s reinforcement of traditional scripts has hindered the development of awareness of sex offending by women, depicting them as aberrations, that is, as “female pariahs.” As Harris (2010) notes, female sex crimes cannot be explained by male theories of crime. To address this issue, we examined 487 media reports from Australia and the United Kingdom and found that, as key stakeholders in public debate, the media does indeed play a crucial role in shaping the public perceptions of female sex offenders as aberrations and pariahs. This distorted view influences approaches to understanding and acknowledging sex offending by women as well as hindering the safe and timely reporting of offences by victims.

(1) Background: Improving sexual autonomy among women in sexual unions comes with various benefits, including the reduction of sexually transmitted and blood-borne infections. We examined the relationship between mass media exposure and safer sex negotiation among women in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). (2) Methods: The study involved a cross-sectional analysis of Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data of 29 sub-Saharan African countries. A total of 224,647 women aged 15–49 were included in our analyses. We examined the association between mass media exposure and safer sex negotiation using binary logistic regression analysis. The results are presented using a crude odds ratio (cOR) and adjusted odds ratio (aOR), with their respective confidence intervals (CIs). Statistical significance was set at p < 0.05. (3) Results: The overall prevalence of safer sex negotiation among women in sexual unions in SSA was 71.6% (71.4–71.8). Women exposed to mass media had higher odds of negotiating for safer sex compared with those who had no exposure (aOR = 1.94; 95% CI = 1.86–2.02), and this persisted after controlling for covariates (maternal age, wealth index, maternal educational level, partner’s age, partner’s educational level, sex of household head, religion, place of residence, and marital status) (aOR = 1.40; 95% CI = 1.35–1.46). The disaggregated results showed higher odds of safer sex negotiation among women exposed to mass media in all the individual countries, except Ghana, Comoros, Rwanda, and Namibia. (4) Conclusions: The findings could inform policies (e.g., transformative mass media educational seminars) and interventions (e.g., face-to-face counselling; small group sensitization sessions) in SSA on the crucial role of mass media in increasing safer sex practice among women in sexual unions. To accelerate progress towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goal five’s targets on empowering all women and safeguarding their reproductive rights, the study recommends that countries such as Ghana, Comoros, Rwanda, and Namibia need to intensify their efforts (e.g., regular sensitization campaigns) in increasing safer sex negotiation among women to counter power imbalances in sexual behaviour.

The authors set to investigate the influence of the Mass Media on adolescents' knowledge of and behavior towards sex and sexuality, especially, regarding early sex, the use of contraceptives and condoms. The participants were drawn from five secondary schools in Owerri Municipality, the Capital of Imo State, Nigeria. The simple size included 100 respondents made up of males and females between the ages of 10 and 19 years drawn from simple random sampling. Questionnaire containing semi-structured (close-ended) questions. Interview sessions involving media workers form select radio, television and newspaper houses in Owerri were conducted. Three research questions and one hypothesis were used to straighten the study. Results showed the respondents mean age for first sex is 17.8 years. The findings show that the media did not have very significant influence at 0.05 on adolescents' sexual behavior, especially, as regards, having first sex experience. This result is explained by the fact that most the respondents lived in boarding hostels and may not have access to media, while in school. It was recommended the influence of family members, including parents and peer groups should be given priority attention when adolescent sexual behavior is discussed, especially, in Nigeria where extended family members play a vital role in the socialization of the adolescents.

This article examines media representations of same-sex sexuality in Senegal, and analyses how same-sex sexuality has been covered in a selection of Senegalese newspapers since the early 2000s. Drawing on Stuart Hall’s perspective on the role of mass media and ideology and the theory of Critical Discourse Analysis, this article describes how discourses produced by selected Senegalese newspapers generate and circulate ideological meanings. This article intends to underline the ways in which Senegalese media have come to fabricate a certain image of gay and lesbian people, often portrayed as deviant, mad or abnormal.

After mass media, ethnic-themed restaurants are possibly the second most influential socialising agents of foreign cultures. Whereas the media often depicts foreign cultures in a stereotypical manner, the opportunity exists in the hospitality field to offer consumers a more detailed and accurate insight into a culture. Yet, is this what consumers really want? This paper addresses an important question: How do spaces of consumption affect the perception and representation of ‘authentic’ culture? To explore this, a four-stage, cross-cultural (ie Australia and United States) qualitative study was undertaken to examine the role the Outback Steakhouse chain of restaurants plays in representing Australian culture in the United States. Findings revealed that US subjects were more accepting of the restaurant environment where it matched the images of Australia perpetuated by the media. By contrast, Australian subjects indicated that the image this restaurant provides is a largely stereotypical, outdated, inaccurate representation of their culture. Research implications and recommendations from a marketing, hospitality, and tourism perspective are provided.

In Australia in the 1980s, large numbers of remote Indigenous radio stations were established due to a perception that the introduction of mainstream satellite programming in remote areas would act as a form of cultural nerve gas (Remedio, 2012: 295) that would threaten the very isolation that had helped to preserve what remained of traditional language and culture (Guster, 2010: 9). There are parallels here with the development of remote media in Mexico and Canada, where local radio networks focusing on cultural content production were established in response to impending development and imposed sources of mass media. In each country, broadcasters in remote communities have, in recent years, been producing increasing amounts of hyper-local cultural and language-based content. This article examines the role played by Indigenous media in remote areas of Australia, Canada and Mexico in creating an alternative cultural voice for traditional communities and maintaining language and culture.

PurposeSex education in China has been promoted for many years, but limited data are available regarding the sources from which adolescents receive sex‐related knowledge. The present study was designed to examine the sources from which Chinese adolescents obtain their information on puberty, sexuality and STI/HIV/AIDS, and whether there are any differences in sources of sex knowledge according to adolescents' demographic characteristics and sexual status.Design/methodology/approachThe data were collected in 2001 in Changchun City, China. Unmarried adolescents 15‐19 years of age (322 males and 360 females) were included in a cross‐sectional survey using self‐administered questionnaires.FindingsSchoolteachers and mass media were identified as the two most important sources of sex knowledge. Sources of sex knowledge among adolescents on various topics (puberty, sexuality, and STI/HIV/AIDS) differed by the level of taboo associated with these topics in Chinese culture. The percentage of adolescents obtaining knowledge for puberty, sexuality, and STI/HIV/AIDS from teachers declined by topic (45.4, 30.7 and 18.4 percent, respectively), while the percentage of adolescents obtaining knowledge from television/movie increased by topic (6.7, 12.2 and 27.5 percent, respectively). Adolescents obtained knowledge on topics with less taboo (e.g. puberty) from teachers and obtained knowledge on topics with more taboo (e.g. sexuality, STI/HIV/AIDS) from mass media. However, this differs by having been sexually experienced or not. Parents were the primary source for sex knowledge on less taboo subjects. Doctors were the primary source for STI/HIV/AIDS knowledge. Sexually active adolescents obtained sex knowledge mainly from peers or mass media, while those adolescents who were not sexually experienced identified teachers and parents as the main sources of sex knowledge.Originality/valueThe current study illustrates that it is necessary to improve and enhance current sex education programs in China by recognizing and strengthening the role of parents, teachers, and health care professionals in adolescent sex education.

During the Cold War in Australia, the political agenda was dominated by the threat of communism. One factor in building this agenda was the ‘counter-propaganda operations’ of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) which regularly released unattributable information to selected mass media outlets. In the period when these activities were most prevalent (1960–72), ASIO officers had regular contact with editors and with selected journalists on major newspapers and television. This formed part of a broader ‘cultural Cold War’ in which anti-communism was an organising principle. This article outlines new information on these activities, suggests that these operations were more extensive than previously thought, and discusses this relationship in terms of the scholarly work on media sources, government-sponsored intervention in the media and classical theories of propaganda. It suggests that one way to understand the controversial media role in counter-propaganda operations lies in the relationship between police and crime reporters.

Mass media culture and its role in defining, inculcating and shaping sexual orientation of a society cannot be gainsaid. In this paper, the mass-mediated western feminist scholarship failure in Africa is interrogated in the wake of Sex Robots such as ‘Samantha.’ The argument is that these sex robots function to normalise woman body objectification. The study aims to anchor on Pan African project perspective and the ontological formulation of the African woman as human-being deserving her voice concerning her experiences with patriarchal social structures. The mass media, in its romanticisation of western feminist scholarship denies African woman this voice. There are four fundamental questions central to this paper: 1) what are the epistemological foundations of western feminist scholarship in patriarchal Africa? 2) What is the political economy of western feminist scholarship in sex robotics in Africa? 3) Can sex robots fill the western-feminist-scholarship-born inorganic sexist relation in Africa? And 4) what alternative framework is fit for African woman transformation and emancipation project? The study analyses the feminist scholarship from the past, present and future to give possible solutions to challenges and failures of the strategy toward woman emancipation and transformative agenda in Africa and the developing world.

This Special Issue tackles increasing urgent questions about the role and performance of the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery, a unique and valuable institution central to Australian political journalism. These questions about the Press Gallery’s contribution to political life include: how might we understand the changing authority and effectiveness of the Press Gallery? Has Australia entered an era when media failures are damaging the country’s ability to affect reform? Are we witnessing a twin assault on the quality of Australian democracy from politicians and the media? The articles gathered here offer a variety of tools and perspectives useful for thought and action in this moment in history – when political reporting is fundamentally disrupted, and with it the democratic forms that have grown up in lockstep with mass media. They chart changes and longer-term trends, and particularise broader shifts in political journalism and communication, providing both information and theoretically engaged analysis.

Tourist destinations worldwide are periodically jeopardised by natural disaster events that threaten tourists’ safety; consequently, the tourism industry is impacted. Mass media has a role to communicate and warn the public about disaster. Media portrayal on disaster events is likely to contribute to the tourism industry recovery and resilience. However, media has played a role in sending a negative message to tourists, making them hesitate to visit the destination. Limited researches have focused on how the media frames disaster events, and how policy makers could intervene. Based on analysis of media coverage of the Surabaya terrorist attack in 2018 and Mt. Agung eruption in 2017, this paper looked at how media framed disaster events and its consequences to the tourism industry policy. A content analysis of mass media from both national and international newspapers of Australia, Malaysia, and Singapore were conducted. The research identified five different framings on the two disasters, including source of problems, impact, solution, responsibility, and adaptive versus maladaptive. Findings also highlights the limited policy response towards these potentially negative media portrayal. Based on these findings, partnership between media and the government should be fostered to encourage post-disaster recovery.

Sex educationis a sistem of medical and pedogogical actions in order to teach parents, children, teenagers and young people right attitude to sex questions. For most people the nenecessity of sex education and sex enlighenment is obvious. It is caused by epidemic outbreak of sexually trancmitted diseases STD), the leadership of Russia in the abortion rate, low reproductive aspiration, the descencion of age of the beginning of sexual life and the increase of number of sex partners. Numerous of researches show that nowdays girls teenagers have low level of sex reprodactive education and inadequate sex education in their families, that does not go with modern requirments. The suorces of information of such issues as sex attitude, STD, abortion for teenagers are mass media and the Internet as well as close social enviroment (parents and family members - 59,8 %, friends - 44,6 %). The doctors are ment to play the lading role in sex education of teenagers, in the first place - pediatricians as they contact with the tenagers most closely and regularly. Most girls (77 %) would like to get information while talking to the doctor privatly; the other 23 % prefer lections at school, broshures and booklets. The article presents the theoretical and methodological foundation of sex education of teenagers, and the role of the pediatrician in it. The paper highlights the essential principles and ways of sex education.

<p>This article examines the image of women in soy sauce advertisements in the mass media. In general, the image of them in the mass media is depicted by stereotypes and patriarchal cultures inherent in them. They are generally described as agents of domestic roles and sex objects, who must be discriminated and subordinated. The theory used in this paper is gender relationship and mass media with qualitative content analysis. The theory is applied to analyze the positions between men and women in order to realize gender equality. Using qualitative content analysis, ABC soy sauce ads “true husbands want to cook” shows that there is a reconstruction concept of the relationship between men and women from a stereotypical and patriarchal culture to be a culture of gender equality. In this advertisement, the domestic job that is identified with the duty and responsibility of woman being able to be reconstructed into a role that can be performed by all people including men. It can shape public opinion about the image of women who must not be discriminated in the mass media.</p>

The lack of information received by adolescents about reproductive health and lack of knowledge causes an effect on adolescent attitudes toward sexual behavior. Destination of the research for factors associated with adolescent attitudes toward class xi premarital sexual relations (intercourse) Medan of Dharma Bakti Senior High School year 2014. The role of parents also influence adolescent attitudes toward premarital sexual relations. Additionally teenagers often receive information about sex instead of one source, even misleading, for example, of the mass media that actually abused by teens. This research is analytic approach to cross-sectional design with a sample size of 60 respondents. Data were analyzed using univariate and bivariate Chi-Square test. The analysis showed that factors associated with adolescent attitudes toward premarital sexual intercourse in high school is Dharma Bakti field of reproductive health knowledge p value = 0,005 (<0,05), the role of parents p value = 0,001 (<0,05), the role of the mass media p value = 0,010 (<0,05). It is expected that the school can make this research as a guide to improve the provision of information or education about reproductive health especially about sex education for adolescent in school.

AbstractObjectiveTo examine whether social media and online behaviours are associated with unhealthy food and beverage consumption in children.DesignA cross-sectional online survey was used to assess Internet and social media use, including engagement with food and beverage brand content, and frequency of consumption of unhealthy foods and beverages. Linear regression models were used to examine associations between online behaviours, including engagement with food and beverage brand content, and consumption of unhealthy foods and beverages, adjusting for age, sex and socio-economic status.SettingNew South Wales, Australia, in 2014.SubjectsChildren aged 10–16 years (n417).ResultsWatching food brand video content on YouTube, purchasing food online and seeing favourite food brands advertised online were significantly associated with higher frequency of consumption of unhealthy foods and drinks after adjustment for age, sex and socio-economic status.ConclusionsChildren who have higher online engagement with food brands and content, particularly through online video, are more likely to consume unhealthy foods and drinks. Our findings highlight the need to include social media in regulations and policies designed to limit children’s exposure to unhealthy food marketing. Social media companies have a greater role to play in protecting children from advertising.

Background Adolescents use social media more frequently than other age groups. Social media has been described as a safe environment for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer and/or questioning (LGBTQ) adolescents. As part of mixed-methods research investigating the association between social networks and sexual agency, we present qualitative findings on how LGBTQ adolescents connect online to form support networks. Methods We recruited 30 adolescents aged 14–17years who identified as LGBTQ in terms of their gender or attraction in the longitudinal Social Networks and Agency Project. Semi-structured interviews were conducted online or face-to-face across Australia. Thematic analysis was used to explore perceptions and experiences of participants in relation to social media use and relationships. Results Two overarching themes were identified: LGBTQ adolescents use social media for identity, relationships and wellbeing support. Social media is not always free of discrimination for LGBTQ adolescents. Many LGBTQ participants joined Facebook groups to connect with LGBTQ peers. Facebook was considered a vital support for those with mental health concerns including suicidal ideation. Participants gave and received support from group members, which was considered useful for those feeling isolated or victimised. LGBTQ adolescents formed friendships, romantic relationships and gained information on sex, relationships, and sexual health from these groups. Participants described negative experiences including discrimination within Facebook groups, mismanaged groups and exposure to anti-LGBTQ sentiments. Conclusion Social media is an environment where LGBTQ adolescents can connect, educate and support each other, which may have beneficial effects for this marginalised group. There remain issues with social media including discrimination against and within LGBTQ communities.

This article examines the role of digital media in three recent national election campaigns: Australia in 2007 and Canada and New Zealand in 2008 . Examining the process of technology adoption and strategic use by parties and individual candidates, it explores similarities and differences in the use of these evolving campaigning channels. Against the current literature on variables influencing technology adoption, specific attention is given to the use of different communication channels as tools to target specific audiences, the adoption of a wide variety of technologies to ensure broad (‘mass’) reach, and the co-ordination of messages across different platforms. The analysis aims to identify structural, organisational, technological and cultural determinants of variation in the adoption and deployment of these technologies.

Background:Adolescents use social media more frequently than other age groups. Social media has been described as a safe environment for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer and/or questioning (LGBTQ) adolescents. As part of mixed-methods research investigating the association between social networks and sexual agency, we present qualitative findings on how LGBTQ adolescents connect online to form support networks.Methods:We recruited 30 adolescents aged 14–17years who identified as LGBTQ in terms of their gender or attraction in the longitudinal Social Networks and Agency Project. Semi-structured interviews were conducted online or face-to-face across Australia. Thematic analysis was used to explore perceptions and experiences of participants in relation to social media use and relationships.Results:Two overarching themes were identified: LGBTQ adolescents use social media for identity, relationships and wellbeing support. Social media is not always free of discrimination for LGBTQ adolescents. Many LGBTQ participants joined Facebook groups to connect with LGBTQ peers. Facebook was considered a vital support for those with mental health concerns including suicidal ideation. Participants gave and received support from group members, which was considered useful for those feeling isolated or victimised. LGBTQ adolescents formed friendships, romantic relationships and gained information on sex, relationships, and sexual health from these groups. Participants described negative experiences including discrimination within Facebook groups, mismanaged groups and exposure to anti-LGBTQ sentiments.Conclusion:Social media is an environment where LGBTQ adolescents can connect, educate and support each other, which may have beneficial effects for this marginalised group. There remain issues with social media including discrimination against and within LGBTQ communities.

Abstract Background. A recent meta-analysis of 9 case-control and 5 cohort studies reported a positive association of transfusion history with risk of NHL (RR=1.20; 95% CI 1.07-1.35), which was only evident in cohort (RR=1.25) and not case-control (RR=1.05) studies (Castillo et al., Blood 2010;116:2897-2907). Risk was similar in men and women, and for transfusions before or after 1992. In subset analyses, elevated risk was only apparent for chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and not diffuse large B-Cell lymphoma (DLBCL) or follicular lymphoma, but power was low. To further investigate these findings, particularly from studies conducted after 1990, better assess confounding, and address heterogeneity by NHL subtypes, we conducted an individual-level, pooled analysis of 13 case-control studies in the InterLymph Consortium (including 11 studies conducted after 1990; 8 studies were not included in the published meta-analysis). Methods. There were a total of 10,805 cases and 14,026 controls with transfusion data from 13 studies conducted in Europe, North America, and Australia. Transfusion history and other risk factors were self-reported in interviewer-administered or self-administered questionnaires. All risk factor data were harmonized centrally, and cases were grouped into NHL subtypes according to the WHO classification using guidelines from the InterLymph Pathology Working Group. Odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated using logistic regression, adjusted for age, sex, and study center. Results. The median age at diagnosis was 60 years for cases (range, 18-97) and 59 years for controls (range, 16-97). The overall prevalence of a history of any transfusion in controls was 15.5%, was higher in women (18.6%) than men (13.0%), and increased with age, but was not associated with race/ethnicity (Asian, Black, Hispanic, White, other) or geographic region after adjusting for age and sex. Among whites, history of any transfusion was inversely associated with NHL risk among men (OR=0.74; 95% CI 0.65-0.83) but not women (OR=0.92; 95% CI 0.83-1.03); there were no significant results for other race/ethnicity groups, and ORs were highly variable and imprecise due to small sample sizes. Thus analyses were restricted to white men, where there was no trend with the number of transfusions, time since first transfusion, age at first transfusion, or decade of first transfusion. Further adjustment for socioeconomic status, body mass index, smoking, alcohol use or hepatitis C virus (HCV) seropositivity did not alter these results. The associations were stronger in hospital-based (OR=0.56; 95% CI 0.45-0.70) than population-based (OR=0.84; 95% CI 0.72-0.98) studies, and were stronger in studies from Southern Europe (OR=0.53; 95% CI 0.36-0.79) than northern Europe (OR=0.67; 95% CI 0.53-0.83) or North America (OR=0.82; 95% CI 0.70-0.98). For NHL subtypes, statistically significant inverse associations were observed for follicular lymphoma (OR=0.70; 95% CI 0.56-0.88), DLBCL (OR=0.72; 95% CI 0.59-0.87), and CLL/SLL (OR=0.67; 95% CI 0.52-0.87), whereas weaker and non-statistically significant associations were observed for mantle cell (OR=0.81; 95% CI 0.54-1.23), marginal zone (OR=0.78; 95% CI 0.54-1.15), lymphoplasmacytic (OR=0.82; 95% CI 0.47-1.42) and peripheral T-cell (OR=0.83; 95% CI 0.49-1.40) lymphomas. Conclusion. Contrary to earlier results, transfusion history was inversely associated with risk of NHL and the common subtypes of follicular lymphoma, DLBCL and CLL/SLL among white men, whereas associations were null among white women and other racial/ethnic groups. These results were not explained by confounding by lifestyle factors or HCV seropositivity, era of first transfusion, hospital versus population-based study design, or geographic location. Despite dramatic changes in transfusion practice over the past 40 years, results were similar for decade of first transfusion, suggesting secular trends are a less likely explanation. Our results are unexpected and bias cannot be ruled out. Further studies, particularly cohort studies, are needed to clarify the role of transfusion history in NHL risk. Disclosures No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.

ABSTRACTBased on data from SKKRI (Indonesian Adolescent Reproductive Health Survey) teenagers claimed to have supports who had prenuptial sexual intercourse aged 14-19 years (women 34.7%, men 30.9%) 24-19 years old (female 48.6%, male 465%). The persistence of this study was to find out the relationship of knowledge, the role of mass media and the role of family with prenuptial sex behavior in students of grade XI SMK Muhammadiyah Lebaksiu. This study used cross sectional method with the purpose of significant the liaison of independent variables and dependents, data composed by using questionnaires. The number of samples was 133 grade XI students at SMK Muhammadiyah Lebaksiu. Results of the study students who had had prenuptial sex as many as 106 respondents (79.7%) and students who had never had prenuptial sex as many as 27 respondents (20.3%). Statistical results presented that there is a liaison between mass media (p.value = 0.013) and the family (p.value = 0.020) with prenuptial sex behavior. From the results of this research, it is expected that educational institutions provide information related to the knowledge and impact of prenuptial sex behavior and for students are expected to use their communication media more wisely and to always be open with their parents.ABSTRAKBerdasarkan data Survey Kesehatan Reproduksi Remaja Indonesia remaja mengakui memiliki teman yang sudah pernah melakukan hubungan seksual pranikah usia 14-19 tahun (laki-laki 30,9%, perempuan 34,7%,) usia 24-29 tahun (laki-laki 465%, perempuan 48,6%,). Tujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui hubungan pengetahuan, peran media massa dan peran keluarga dengan perilaku seks pranikah pada siswa-siswi kelas XI SMK Muhammadiyah Lebaksiu. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode cross sectional dengan tujuan mengetahui hubungan variabel independen dan dependen, data dikumpulkan menggunakan kuesioner. Sampel sebanyak 133 siswa kelas XI di SMK Muhammadiyah Lebaksiu. Dari hasil penelitian diperoleh diperoleh hasil siswa yang yang sudah pernah melakukan seks pranikah sebanyak 106 responden (79,7%) dan siswa yang belum pernah melakukan seks pranikah sebanyak 27 responden (20,3%). Dari hasil uji statistik didapatkan hasil yang menunjukan terdapat hubungan antara peran media massa (p.value = 0,013) dan peran keluarga (p.value = 0,020) dengan perilaku seks pranikah. Dari hasil penelitian ini diharapkan institusi pendidikan memberikan informasi terkait pengetahuan dan dampak dari perilaku seks pranikah serta bagi siswa-siswi diharapkan untuk menggunakan media komunikasinya lebih bijak dan agar selalu terbuka dengan orang tuanya.

AbstractThis article applies Systemic Functional Grammar and Critical Discourse Analysis to assess the linguistic choices of feminist and masculist reproductive rights rhetoric. It explains these methodologies and provides a discursive history of the reproductive rights movement. Publications of advocacy groups and the mass media are analysed as data of current rhetorical trends. These interpretations conclude that female-affirmative rhetoric offsets contemporary feminist efforts by marginalising men and excluding considerations of paternity. This article suggests that in solely emphasising women's procreative rights, such feminist rhetoric potentially renders women to the role of primary parental agent, reinforces traditional sex-stereotypes, and incites inter-sex antagonism.

Objective To examine the effect of a mass media campaign designed to increase bowel cancer screening participation. Methods We assessed weekly participation, from January 2015 to December 2017, in the Australian National Bowel Cancer Screening Program in Victoria, where a seven-week campaign aired in mid-2017, and in the adjacent comparison state of South Australia. Participation, defined as the number of immunochemical faecal occult blood tests returned out of those invited by the Screening Program in the past 16 weeks, was analysed using negative binomial regression. Results Compared with non-campaign weeks, there was an increase in the return rate in the campaign state during campaign weeks (adjusted return rates non-campaign weeks = 34.4% vs. campaign weeks = 45.3%, p < 0.01), not observed in the comparison state (38.3% vs. 40.3%, p > 0.05). The increase in the return rate was significantly greater in the campaign state (Rate Ratio of Campaign/Non-Campaign weeks = 1.31, p < 0.01) than the comparison state (1.05, p > 0.05, interaction p < 0.001), and did not differ significantly by age, sex or socio-economic area. The relative increase was greater among never-participants (Rate Ratio of Campaign/Non-Campaign weeks = 1.24) than previous-participants (1.16), interaction p < 0.001). Conclusions This mass media campaign increased bowel cancer screening participation, including from never and low participation subgroups. To maximize participation and ensure equitable population benefit, repeated campaigns that reach eligible people about bowel cancer risks and potential life-saving benefits of screening should be standard.

Mass media and its content on various platforms play a significant role in shaping knowledge in society, including the knowledge about sexuality. This article discusses news on LGBT on four Indonesian online media—Viva.co.id, Republika.co.id, Tempo.co.id, and Detik.com—by conducting quantitative content analysis. The result shows that the news on LGBT in 2020 centred on three main issues: the ban on gay individuals joining the army/police, the male rape case committed by Reynhard Sinaga, and male same-sex sexual intercourse in Wisma Atlet. The news structure on LGBT does not pay attention to the information depth, as indicated by the lack of paragraph numbers in the news and the lack of 5W+1H construction. In addition, the coverage is often one-sided, making it unbalanced. Eventually, the construct about LGBT becomes biased.

This present article mainly intends to evaluate conjunctive and disjunctive trends in modern urban culture development within the context of augmented social reality, which is characterized by hybridity, saturation with machinery and technology, the availability of communicators. The methodological foundation of the study is the materials of the sociological study carried out by the authors over the course of 2020 in three areas of Belgorod, including a) the questionnaire survey of the urban people (500 individuals) on the basis of a quota (by age and sex), multistage and zoned sampling; b) the expert surveys; c) Focus groups (urban youth, and mass media staff). Given the results of the conducted sociological study, the authors state the presence of a dynamic balance between disjunctive and conjunctive tendencies in the cultural sphere growth, at least in towns.

The era of audiovisual culture began more than a hundred years ago with the advent of cinema, and is associated with a special language that underlies non-verbal communication processes. Today, screen influence on humans is dominant, as the generation for which computer is an integral part of everyday life has grown. In recent years, non-verbal language around the world has been a major tool in the fight for influence over human consciousness and intelligence. Formation of basic concepts of media education, which later developed into an international pedagogical movement, in a number of western countries (Great Britain, France, Germany) began in the 60’s and 70’s of the XX century. In Canada, as in most highly developed countries (USA, UK, France, Australia), the history of media education began to emerge from cinematographic material. The concept of screen education was formed by the British Society for Education in Film (SEFT), initiated by a group of enthusiastic educators in 1950. In the second half of the twentieth century, due to the intensive development of television, the initial term “film teaching” was transformed into “screen education”. The high intensity of students’ contact with new audiovisual media has become a subject of pedagogical excitement. There was a problem adjusting your children’s audience and media. The most progressive Canadian educators, who have recognized the futility of trying to differentiate students from the growing impact of TV and cinema, have begun introducing a special course in Screen Arts. The use of teachers of the rich potential of new audiovisual media has greatly optimized the learning process itself, the use of films in the classroom has become increasingly motivated. At the end of 1968, an assistant position was created at the Ontario Department of Education, which coordinated work in the “onscreen education” field. It is worth noting that media education in Canada developed under the influence of English media pedagogy. The first developments in the study of “screen education” were proposed in 1968 by British Professor A. Hodgkinson. Canadian institutions are actively implementing media education programs, as the development of e-learning is linked to the hope of solving a number of socio-economic problems. In particular, raising the general education level of the population, expanding access to higher levels of education, meeting the needs for higher education, organizing regular training of specialists in various fields. After all, on the way of building an e-learning system, countries need to solve a set of complex technological problems to ensure the functioning of an extensive network of training centers, quality control of the educational process, training of teaching staff and other problems. Today, it is safe to say that Canada’s media education is on the rise and occupies a leading position in the world. Thus, at the beginning of the 21st century, Canada’s media education reached a level of mass development, based on serious theoretical and methodological developments. Moreover, Canada remains the world leader in higher education and spends at least $ 25 billion on its universities annually. Only the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia are the biggest competitors in this area.

Masturbation is the activity of stimulate with touch or sex organs own up and down my leg . It is influenced by a factor of the development of the reproductive organs of growth that occurs in adolescents. Due to change sexual maturity is biologically experienced by teenager is one of the things that can cause teenagers experienced confusion in the face of sexual impulse is by masturbates. This study aims to analyze determinan of masturbation in adolescents public SMA Negeri 3 Tapung Kampar district in 2017. Method this study used a cross sectional. The sample collection in this research be conducted by way of technique stratified random sampling namely high school students which is going to be based on the number of sample were randomly selected a total of desired many as 87 students . Analysis done in univariat and bivariat by test statistic chi-square aimed at independent and to connect between variable. The research results show that 75,9 % of respondents exposed to mass media, 78.2 % of respondents knowledge low, 60,9 % of respondents have people parents are not had a role, 77 % of respondents have leverage their peers an influential.From the test chi-square shows that there are meaningful relations between the media mass (pvalue = 0,001 and or = 6,591 2,126-20,429), knowledge (pvalue = 0,018 and or = or = 4,200 1,405-12,558 ), the role of parents (pvalue = 0,001 and or = 8,533 2,726-26,708 ), and influence their peers (pvalue = 0,005 and or = 5,091 1,713-15,128). The conclusion the results of research 4 variables studied (mass media, knowledge, parent role and peer influence) 4 variable have significant relationship with masturbation and suggestions to make parents more able to establish more intensive communicate with adolescents

This study assesses the overall health awareness level of students of the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at Yarmouk University/Jordan who are supposed to have an important leadership role among mass media professionals in Jordan. A Health Awareness Test (HAT) was administered to a random sample of 139 students of this group (52.85% of the target population). Findings revealed that their overall average performance on the HAT was significantly much lower than the acceptable criterion score determined by the HAT authors. Female students' performance on the HAT was significantly higher than males' performance. The academic level of these students (2nd, 3rd or 4th academic year) did not have significant influence on their scores. Furthermore, the two-way ANOVA analysis showed that there was no significant difference in the achievement of the study subjects on the HAT by sex and academic level. The major sources of the health awareness information of these students ranked by order were: mass media, self-education, academic preparation (information included in the curricula), family and peers, and finally cultural events in the form of extra-curricular activities at the University. Recommendations based upon these results are given.

Background. Childhood obesity is becoming a major health issue and contributes to increasing the risk of cardiovascular disease in adulthood. Since dysregulated metabolism of bile acids (BAs) plays a role in progression of obesity-related disorders, including steatosis and hypertension, this study aimed to investigate BAs profiles in obese children with and without steatosis and hypertension, as well as exploring the interplay between BAs profile and vascular function. Methods. BAs concentrations were quantified with liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry in 69 overweight/obese children and adolescents (mean age, 11.6 ± 2.5 years; 30 females). Liver steatosis was defined with abdomen ultrasonography, whilst hypertension was defined according to the current European guidelines. Vascular function was assessed with ultrasound technique, by measuring carotid intima media thickness (cIMT) and common carotid artery distensibility (cDC). Results. Total and individual glycine-conjugated BAs concentrations were found to be significantly higher in males compared to females, as well as in pre-pubertal compared to pubertal stage (p < 0.05 for both). No difference in BAs concentration was observed between hypertensive and normotensive subjects. Total BAs and glycine conjugated BAs were significantly higher in participants with steatosis compared to those without (p = 0.004 for both). The values of total glycine-conjugate acids were positively correlated with cDC and this association remained significant in linear regression after adjusting for sex, age, pubertal stage, body mass index and aspartate aminotransferase. Conclusion. The results suggest a possible role of BAs in the pathogenesis of liver and/or vascular damage in children and adolescent. Further studies are hence needed to validate these preliminary findings.

ABSTRACTBackground and purpose: Japanese encephalitis (JE) is a public health issue that can be prevented by immunization programs. Indonesia began the JE immunization campaign in Bali through simultaneous immunization for children aged 9 months to 15 years. Although information dissemination has been carried out, knowledge, perceptions and characteristics of mother and child can influence the acceptance and uptake of immunization for children. This study aims to determine the factors that influence acceptance of JE mass immunization in Bali Province.Methods: Secondary data analysis was performed on the results of the JE Supplementary Immunization Activities (SIA) Udayana University survey which consisted of 1,284 mothers and 2,107 children. The survey was conducted from June-August 2018 in nine districts/cities in Bali Province. The association between knowledge, perception and respondents’ characteristics with acceptance of JE mass immunization was analyzed with chi square test and multivariate analysis was conducted using logistic regression.Results: The proportion of children who received immunization was 93.9% (95%CI: 92.8-94.9). The results of the bivariate analysis showed that there was a significant association between acceptance of JE mass immunization with the child’s age, sex, educational status, complete basic immunization history, mother’s perception of severity, benefits, barriers, knowledge and sources of information (p<0.05). Multivariate analysis shows that the variables which significantly increase JE mass immunization acceptance are information from a combination of media and face to face education (AOR=3.95; 95%CI: 2.01-7.77), schooling children (AOR=2.43; 95%CI: 1.23-4.79), living outside of Denpasar City (AOR=2.32; 95%CI: 1.49-3.62), children who have received complete basic immunization (AOR=2.22; 95%CI:1.42-3.49), face to face information only (AOR=2.11; 95%CI: 1.21-3.70) and girls (AOR=1.68; 95%CI: 1.15-2.46).Conclusion: Information disseminated via a combination of media and face to face is the strongest variable influencing JE mass immunization acceptance. Providing appropriate information through a combination of media and face to face education by health or non-health workers needs to be considered. Keywords: Catch-up campaign, immunization campaign, Japanese encephalitis

Carotid intima–media thickness (cIMT) is a subclinical marker of atherosclerotic development, which is impaired in adolescents with obesity. This study aimed to analyze the impact of physical activity (PA), cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF), body mass index (BMI), and body composition changes on the cIMT of adolescents with obesity. Longitudinal data (6 months) from adolescents aged 12–18 years, with a BMI ≥97th percentile, previously recruited for the non-randomized controlled trial PAC-MAnO (Clinicaltrials.gov-NCT02941770) were analyzed using partial correlations controlling for sex and pubertal status and multiple regressions. A total of 105 adolescents (51.4% girls, 86.7% Caucasian), 14.8 ± 1.8 years old, with a BMI z-score of 3.09 ± 0.74 were included. Total body fat mass (TBFM) (F(1,91) = 23.11, p < 0.001), moderate–vigorous PA (MVPA) (F(1,91) = 7.93, p = 0.0006), and CRF (mL/kg/min) (F(1,90) = 19.18, p < 0.001) predicted cIMT variance with an R2 of 0.24, 0.09, and 0.23, respectively. MVPA changes showed a high correlation with CRF variation (r(91) = 0.0661, p < 0.001). This study suggests that although cIMT is impaired in overweight adolescents, improvements in TBFM, MVPA, and CRF are associated with cIMT improvement. Although both energy intake and MVPA may influence TBFM, MVPA plays the most relevant role in cIMT development due to its direct association with CRF.

Despite the obvious economic advantage of using relatively unknown personalities as endorsers in advertising campaigns, the choice of celebrities to fulfill that role has become common practice for companies competing in today's cluttered media environment During the past decades, celebrities have had a growing influence on consumers through mass media such as television. The proliferation of entertainment media worldwide has increased the exposure of celebrities to consumers and given them i.e., celebrities, an iconic status. In this article, we explore few important research questions. First, we seek to determine how attractive is celebrity based television advertising (CBTA) to the Indian consumer and what is the effect of CBTA on consumers' brand choice behavior? Next, we seek to explain how important is the celebrity-product match up? Lastly we seek to explain whether consumer attitudes towards CBTA, with respect to brand-choice behavior, vary by demographic variables such as sex and income. These research objectives were pursued through the empirical study of respondents in New Delhi. The data was analyzed primarily by One Sample t-test and One Way ANOVA. The main findings showed that the Indian consumers were interested in celebrity endorsements in advertising and found it attractive. Further, CBTA was found to positively influence consumers' brand choice behaviour. The study also found that celebrity-product match up was important for customers and that consumers' brand-choice is influenced by CBTA, due to demographic characteristics such as sex and income.

BackgroundMass media campaigns can be used to communicate public health messages at the population level. Although previous research has shown that they can influence health behaviours in some contexts, there have been few attempts to synthesise evidence across multiple health behaviours.ObjectivesTo (1) review evidence on the effective use of mass media in six health topic areas (alcohol, diet, illicit drugs, physical activity, sexual and reproductive health and tobacco), (2) examine whether or not effectiveness varies with different target populations, (3) identify characteristics of mass media campaigns associated with effectiveness and (4) identify key research gaps.DesignThe study comprised (1) a systematic review of reviews, (2) a review of primary studies examining alcohol mass media campaigns, (3) a review of cost-effectiveness evidence and (4) a review of recent primary studies of mass media campaigns conducted in the UK. A logic model was developed to inform the reviews. Public engagement activities were conducted with policy, practitioner and academic stakeholders and with young people.ResultsThe amount and strength of evidence varies across the six topics, and there was little evidence regarding diet campaigns. There was moderate evidence that mass media campaigns can reduce sedentary behaviour and influence sexual health-related behaviours and treatment-seeking behaviours (e.g. use of smoking quitlines and sexual health services). The impact on tobacco use and physical activity was mixed, there was limited evidence of impact on alcohol use and there was no impact on illicit drug behaviours. Mass media campaigns were found to increase knowledge and awareness across several topics, and to influence intentions regarding physical activity and smoking. Tobacco and illicit drug campaigns appeared to be more effective for young people and children but there was no or inconsistent evidence regarding effectiveness by sex, ethnicity or socioeconomic status. There was moderate evidence that tobacco mass media campaigns are cost-effective, but there was weak or limited evidence in other topic areas. Although there was limited evidence on characteristics associated with effectiveness, longer or greater intensity campaigns were found to be more effective, and messages were important, with positive and negative messages and social norms messages affecting smoking behaviour. The evidence suggested that targeting messages to target audiences can be effective. There was little evidence regarding the role that theory or media channels may play in campaign effectiveness, and also limited evidence on new media.LimitationsStatistical synthesis was not possible owing to considerable heterogeneity across reviews and studies. The focus on review-level evidence limited our ability to examine intervention characteristics in detail.ConclusionsOverall, the evidence is mixed but suggests that (1) campaigns can reduce sedentary behaviour, improve sexual health and contribute to smoking cessation, (2) tobacco control campaigns can be cost-effective, (3) longer and more intensive campaigns are likely to be more effective and (4) message design and targeting campaigns to particular population groups can be effective.Future workFuture work could fill evidence gaps regarding diet mass media campaigns and new-media campaigns, examine cost-effectiveness in areas other than tobacco and explore the specific contribution of mass media campaigns to multicomponent interventions and how local, regional and national campaigns can work together.Study registrationThis study is registered as PROSPERO CRD42015029205 and PROSPERO CRD42017054999.FundingThe National Institute for Health Research Public Health Research programme.

Abstract Objectives Sex differences exist in obesity associated with cardiovascular disease; however, underlying mechanisms are not completely understood. Previous studies from our laboratory demonstrated that the prorenin receptor (PRR) and its soluble form (sPRR) contribute to adipogenesis and blood pressure control. The present study aimed to determine whether adipose-sPRR stimulated obesity is associated with hypertension and whether it is sex-dependent. Methods Transgenic mice on the C57BL/6 J background were generated expressing the human form of the soluble prorenin receptor (HsPRR) in a Cre-inducible manner. Male mice expressing Cre recombinase under the control of the adiponectin promotor were bred to heterozygote HsPRR/+ female mice to generate mice over-secreting sPRR (adi-HsPRR) and control littermate mice (CTL). The secretion of sPRR in the media doubled in primary adipocytes of adi-HsPRR mice compared to control mice (sPRR. CTL: 3729 ± 805 pg/ml; adi-HsPRR: 6170 ± 1237 pg/ml, P &lt; 0.05) validating the mouse model. Male (CTL = 4; adi-HsPRR = 8) and female mice (CTL = 10; adi-HsPRR = 10) were fed a low-fat (LF) diet or a high-fat diet (HF) for 20 weeks. Body weight was assessed weekly and EchoMRI was examined monthly. Results After 20 weeks on LF diet, adi-HsPRR male mice gained significantly more weight than CTL male mice (CTL: 25.1 ± 0.8 g; adi-HsPRR: 29.0 ± 0.8 g P &lt; 0.05), whereas no significant differences in body weights were observed in female mice. The body composition revealed a significant increase of fat mass, specifically in the epidydimal fat (CTL: 0.35 ± 0.04 g; adi-HsPRR: 0.61 ± 0.07 g, P &lt; 0.05), and lean mass of HsPRR male mice compared to CTL male mice. In contrast, female mice exhibited similar body weights (CTL: 20.6 ± 0.3 g; adi-HsPRR: 20.4 ± 0.4 g) and there was no differences of fat mass or lean mass between CTL and adi-HsPRR female mice. The sex-specific mechanism of sPRR on adipogenesis and blood pressure (by radiotelemetry) with LF and HF diet is currently under investigation. Conclusions Overall, sPRR stimulated body weight gain and fat mass expansion in male mice but not in female mice suggesting that female mice are protected from sPRR induced-hypertrophic effect. Funding Sources R01_HL142969–01 Yiannikouris, PI 07/15/2018–06/30/2022 NIH/NHLBI Title: The role of soluble prorenin receptor in hypertension associated with obesity Role: Ph.D Graduate Student.

The eighties and nineties have wit nessed a renewed and unpre cedented Interest in men and mas culinity due to the emergence of the alleged contemporary 'crisis of masculinity'. This has been most preva lent in popular culture representations, which appear on the sur face to offer the modern man a whole range of 'new' roles and rela tionships, freeing him from patria chal entrapment and the dicates and demands of the traditional male sex role. The New Man Is Imaged as soft, sensitive, expressive and un afraid to show his emotions. New erotosized Images have made their appearance, and men are Imaged as sex objects in a way that only women were represented In the past. However, the question arises as to what these Images mean, and whether or not they represent any change In the patriarchal status quo In Western societies. In this article an attempt is made to deconstruct some of the new notions of masculinity in the light of the contempo rary 'crisis of masculinity', and the new popular culture representations of men In the mass media.

Oxidative stress plays an important role in the development of atherosclerosis. Excess visceral adipose tissue (VAT) and increased carotid intima-media thickness (IMT) are risk factors for coronary artery disease. We tested the hypothesis that VAT and IMT were associated with systemic oxidative stress. Healthy men and women (n = 565) matched for ethnicity (Aboriginal, Chinese, European, and South Asian) were recruited. Plasma malondialdehyde, a biomarker of oxidative stress, was measured as thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS). VAT and IMT were determined by computerized tomography and ultrasound scans, respectively. Plasma TBARS levels correlated with VAT and total atheroma burden (sum of IMT area and plaque area) in the entire cohort. When stratified by ethnicity, plasma TBARS levels correlated with distinct body composition and arterial measures in different ethnic populations with more associations present amongst Chinese and Europeans relative to Aboriginals and South Asians. VAT was associated with plasma TBARS levels independent of age, sex, ethnicity, smoking, and body mass index. Plasma TBARS levels were associated with IMT, the presence of plaques, and total atheroma burden, independent of age, sex, ethnicity, smoking, body mass index, and VAT. The association with total atheroma burden remained significant even when adjusted for apolipoprotein B. Results from the present study indicate that oxidative stress is positively associated with VAT as well as diffuse and focal carotid atherosclerosis in apparently healthy men and women.

Abstract Context: Estrogen treatment of men with prostate cancer is associated with increased cardiovascular morbidity and mortality; however, the role of endogenous estrogen levels for atherosclerotic disease in men is unknown. Objective: The objective of the study was to determine whether endogenous serum estradiol (E2) levels predict the progression of carotid artery intima-media thickness in men. Design, Setting and Participants: This was a population-based, prospective cohort study (the Atherosclerosis and Insulin Resistance study) conducted in Göteborg, Sweden, among 313 Caucasian men without cardiovascular or other clinically overt diseases. Carotid artery intima-media thickness, an index of preclinical atherosclerosis, was measured by ultrasound at baseline (58 yr of age) and after 3 yr of follow-up. Serum sex hormone levels and cardiovascular risk factors (body mass index, waist to hip ratio, systolic blood pressure, serum triglycerides, plasma c-peptide, and smoking status) were assessed at study entry. Intervention: There was no intervention. Main Outcome Measures: Association between baseline total and free E2 levels and progression of carotid intima-media thickness over 3 yr with adjustments for cardiovascular risk factors was measured. Results: In univariate analyses, both total and free E2 levels at baseline were positively associated with the annual change in intima-media thickness. In linear regression models including E2 and cardiovascular risk factors, low-density lipoprotein and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol and E2 were identified as independent predictors of progression of carotid artery intima-media thickness (total E2 beta = 0.187, P = 0.001; and free E2 beta = 0.183, P = 0.003). Conclusions: Circulating E2 is a predictor of progression of carotid artery intima-media thickness in middle-aged men. Further studies are needed to investigate the role of endogenous E2 for incident cardiovascular disease events.

ABSTRACT Purpose: Leptin has been implicated as a pathogenetic contributor to atherosclerosis. We aimed to investigate the association of leptin level with ischemic stroke. Materials and Methods: We prospectively enrolled 52 patients with acute ischemic stroke and measured leptin levels and compared with age- and sex-matched healthy controls. Risk factors, body mass index (BMI), biochemical parameters, intima–media thickness (IMT) on carotid vertebral Doppler and neuroimaging was done. Data were entered into MS-Excel and appropriate statistical analysis was done using SPSS software version 21.0. P = 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: Serum leptin was significantly elevated in stroke patients (6598.1 ± 1035.1) compared to controls (3090.7 ± 698.86) (P < 0.01). Patients had higher BMI (26.9 ± 1.7) than controls (26.9 ± 1.7) (P < 0.00). BMI, total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, white blood cell (WBC) count, erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), and C reactive protein (CRP) were significantly elevated in stroke patients than controls. Correlation analysis among patient group showed that serum leptin positively correlated with CRP (r - 0.41, P - <0.05), WBCs (r - 0.28, P - <0.05), ESR (r - 0.429, P - <0.01) total cholesterol (r - 0.31, P - <0.05), LDL-cholesterol (r - 0.19, P - <0.05), and IMT (r - 0.714, P - <0.001). Conclusion: Our study showed high leptin levels in patients with stroke. Stroke patients with high leptin had higher BMI and inflammatory markers. The results of our study indicate that leptin may have a role in atherosclerosis mediated through inflammation. Future research should be directed toward understanding the role of leptin in the pathogenesis of cerebrovascular diseases and its potential role in preventive treatment of ischemic stroke.

Film is a medium of visual communication that plays a role in the dissemination of women's concept discourse in Indonesia, one of which is due to its distinctive characteristics that can last for a long period of time, potentially wider in its dissemination, including also being a mass media hypnotic culture. The film is closely related to the concept of gaze, male gaze in the cinematography industry, which according to overly uses men's views, which is positioning women as subjects who have no power over themselves (self-possessiveness) but as objects of male gaze. Women become commodities in the film, a sex object that is commodified to construct an image that represents the position of women is as an additional role that is not important in one film narrative. In the male gaze narration, women in the film do not act, but become part of the actions of men. Morally, male gaze assumes that the behavior of women in films has a vacuum, but in Garin Nugroho's 'Setan Jawa’ using Deleuze's cinematic study, women are positioned to have other representations that differ from the ethics of cinematics which do not place women as signs of sex objectification for the sake of fulfillment of men's desires, but as subjects who are fully empowered and may wish of themselves.

Abstract Background: The association of changes in oxidative and proinflammatory states with vascular function after diet and exercise intervention among obese children has not been previously explored. Methods: In this 6-week diet and exercise intervention study in 35 obese children, age 12 to 18 years, we evaluated the relationship between changes in anthropometric indices, measures of insulin resistance, C-reactive protein (CRP), oxidized LDL (ox-LDL), and oxidative stress markers with changes in carotid intima-media thickness (C-IMT) and flow mediated dilation (FMD) of the brachial artery. Results: At the end of the study, body mass index (BMI), waist circumference, and percentage body fat were decreased (P &lt;0.05), but participants remained overweight (BMI ≥ 95th percentile). Although FMD improved (P &lt;0.05), the improvement in C-IMT did not reach statistical significance. The changes in BMI, waist circumference, fat mass, ox-LDL, malondialdehyde (MDA), CRP, insulin, and homeostasis model assessment for insulin resistance (HOMA-IR) had an inverse correlation with the changes in mean FMD after adjustment for age and sex, with the highest correlations documented for ox-LDL, CRP, and WC. The age- and sex-adjusted changes in ox-LDL, waist circumference, CRP, MDA, and body fat mass had the highest correlations with changes in C-IMT. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that a common inflammatory stress condition associated with childhood obesity, notably with abdominal fat deposition, may play a role in the development of the earliest stages of proatherosclerotic inflammatory processes and subsequent vascular dysfunction. These changes might be partially reversible by short-term diet and exercise intervention, even if patients do not reach ideal body weight.

Background: Patients and physicians both play an important role in the diagnosis of malignant melanoma. Objective: The purpose of this study was to assess important factors of delay in diagnosis at different centers and on three continents. Methods: Between October 2001 and October 2002, patients with histologically confirmed invasive melanoma were included in the study and given an established questionnaire. Recorded patients and tumor characteristics included age, sex, anatomic location, Breslow thickness, patients' awareness of the lesion and time with suspicion, and physicians' time (delay) before the operation. Results: The study included 985 patients (486 males, 499 females): 253 from Germany, 464 from Sweden, 58 from Brazil, and 210 from Australia. More females detected their lesions by themselves. The change to a darker color (21 %) and enlargement of the area of the lesion (19%) were the major signs. The highest knowledge among patients that early detection may improve the outcome was found in Sweden and Australia. At each center, the media (newspaper, magazine, radio, and television) provided the best sources of information about melanoma. Twenty to 33% of all physicians initially consulted missed the melanoma diagnosis, independent of their specialty. Conclusions: There are still factors for the delay in melanoma diagnosis in different countries and continents, but the differences are rather small. The results should be included in planning prevention campaigns in this specific field and in the education of medical students, physicians of all specialties, and other health professionals.

Objective: We aimed to characterize circulating HMGB1 (high-mobility group box-1) levels, one of the better-characterized damage-associated molecular patterns, with respect to age, sex, and race in the general population, and investigate the longitudinal associations of HMGB1 with inflammatory markers, obesity, and preclinical markers of cardiovascular disease. Approach and Results: The analyses included 489 participants (50% Blacks, aged 24.6±3.3 years at the first visit) with up to 4 follow-up visits (1149 samples) over a maximum of 8.5 years. Systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity, and carotid intima-media thickness together with plasma HMGB1, hs-CRP (high-sensitivity C-reactive protein), IFN-γ (interferon-γ), IL-6 (interleukin-6), IL-10 (interleukin-10), and TNF-α (tumor necrosis factor-α) were measured at each visit. At baseline, plasma HMGB1 concentrations were higher in Blacks compared with Whites (3.86 versus 3.20 ng/mL, P <0.001), and in females compared with males (3.75 versus 3.30 ng/mL, P =0.005). HMGB1 concentrations increased with age ( P =0.007), and higher levels of obesity measures ( P <0.001). Without adjustment for age, sex, race, and body mass index, HMGB1 concentrations were positively associated with hs-CRP, IL-6, TNF-α, systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, and carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity ( P <0.05) but not IL-10, IFN-γ or carotid intima-media thickness. After covariate adjustments, the associations of HMGB1 with hs-CRP, and carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity remained statistically significant ( P <0.05). Conclusions: This study demonstrates the age, sex, and race differences in circulating HMGB1. The increasing circulating concentrations of HMGB1 with age suggest a potential role of HMGB1 in the pathogenesis of chronic low-grade inflammation, obesity, and subclinical cardiovascular disease risk.

This paper investigates media representations of international insecurity through a selection of newspaper cartoons from some of the major daily Australian broadsheets. Since 2001, cartoonists such as Bruce Petty, John Spooner and Bill Leak (in The Age and The Australian) have provided an ongoing and vehement critique of the Australian government's policies of ‘border protection’, the ‘war on terror’ and the words of mass distraction associated with Australia joining the war in Iraq. Cartoonists are often said to represent the ‘citizen's perspective’ of public life through their graphic satire on the editorial pages of our daily newspapers. Increasingly, they can also be seen to be fulfilling the role of public intellectuals, defined by Richard A. Posner as ‘someone whose place it is publicly to raise embarrassing questions, to confront orthodoxy and dogma, to be someone who cannot easily be co-opted by governments and corporations’. Cartoonists enjoy an independence and freedom from censorship that is rarely extended to their journalistic colleagues in the print media and it is this independence that is the vital component in their being categorised as public intellectuals. Their role is to ‘question over and over again what is postulated as self-evident, to disturb people's mental habits, to dissipate what is familiar and accepted, to re-examine rules and institutions’ (Posner, 2003: 31). With this useful — if generalised — definition in mind, the paper considers how cartoonists have contributed to debates concerning international insecurity in public life since 2001.

IntroductionUnderstanding the complexities of change in eating behaviours, mental health, well-being and weight is crucial to inform healthcare and service provision, particularly in light of the exacerbating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aims to address the need for more comprehensive cross-sectional and longitudinal evidence, by tracking eating behaviours, mental health, health related behaviours and weight over a 12-month period, in a sample of young adults (18–35 years) in the UK and Australia.Methods and analysisOnline surveys administered via the Prolific online research platform will be used for data collection at baseline, 6 months and 12 months. The survey (approximately 45 min) measures demographics, the impact of COVID-19, body mass index (BMI), weight management and health service usage, eating behaviours, personality, mental health, and health-related behaviours. An optional substudy component at each time point aims to validate self-reported weight in the main survey through images. Study inclusion criteria are; aged 18–34 years at baseline, BMI ≥20 kg/m2, and residing in the UK or Australia. A target of 500 participants at baseline was set, recruited through Prolific, and with recruitment stratified by BMI, sex and country. The proposed analyses include creating static predictive models using baseline data (eg, using latent class analysis, factor analysis or similar), and mapping changes longitudinally (eg, using multivariate regressions). These analyses will enable changes in the study measures to be identified, as well as predictors and outcomes of change.Ethics and disseminationEthical approval was granted by Leeds Beckett University, UK (reference number 86004) and the University of Newcastle, Australia (reference number H-2022–0110). Study findings will be disseminated through scientific journals, conferences, institute websites and social media, and briefings tailored to policy, practice and the public, with the intention to help inform the future development of health and well-being care and support for young adults across Australia and the UK.

Introduction The aim of this paper is to examine whether recent catastrophic tsunamis have driven a cultural shift in the awareness of Australians to the danger associated with this natural hazard and whether the media have contributed to the emergence of “tsunami” as a new Australian catastrophe. Prior to the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami disaster (2004 IOT), tsunamis as a type of hazard capable of generating widespread catastrophe were not well known by the general public and had barely registered within the wider scientific community. As a university based lecturer who specialises in natural disasters, I always started my public talks or student lectures with an attempt at a detailed description of what a tsunami is. With little high quality visual and media imagery to use, this was not easy. The Australian geologist Ted Bryant was right when he named his 2001 book Tsunami: The Underrated Hazard. That changed on 26 December 2004 when the third largest earthquake ever recorded occurred northwest of Sumatra, Indonesia, triggering the most catastrophic tsunami ever experienced. The 2004 IOT claimed at least 220,000 lives—probably more—injured tens of thousands, destroyed widespread coastal infrastructure and left millions homeless. Beyond the catastrophic impacts, this tsunami was conspicuous because, for the first time, such a devastating tsunami was widely captured on video and other forms of moving and still imagery. This occurred for two reasons. Firstly, the tsunami took place during daylight hours in good weather conditions—factors conducive to capturing high quality visual images. Secondly, many people—both local residents and westerners who were on beachside holidays and at the coast at multiple locations impacted by the tsunami—were able to capture images of the tsunami on their cameras, videos, and smart phones. The extensive media coverage—including horrifying television, video, and still imagery that raced around the globe in the hours and days after the tsunami, filling our television screens, homes, and lives regardless of where we lived—had a dramatic effect. This single event drove a quantum shift in the wider cultural awareness of this type of catastrophe and acted as a catalyst for improved individual and societal understanding of the nature and effects of disaster landscapes. Since this event, there have been several notable tsunamis, including the March 2011 Japan catastrophe. Once again, this event occurred during daylight hours and was widely captured by multiple forms of media. These events have resulted in a cascade of media coverage across television, radio, movie, and documentary channels, in the print media, online, and in the popular press and on social media—very little of which was available prior to 2004. Much of this has been documentary and informative in style, but there have also been numerous television dramas and movies. For example, an episode of the popular American television series CSI Miami entitled Crime Wave (Season 3, Episode 7) featured a tsunami, triggered by a volcanic eruption in the Atlantic and impacting Miami, as the backdrop to a standard crime-filled episode ("CSI," IMDb; Wikipedia). In 2010, Warner Bros Studios released the supernatural drama fantasy film Hereafter directed by Clint Eastwood. In the movie, a television journalist survives a near-death experience during the 2004 IOT in what might be the most dramatic, and probably accurate, cinematic portrayal of a tsunami ("Hereafter," IMDb; Wikipedia). Thus, these creative and entertaining forms of media, influenced by the catastrophic nature of tsunamis, are impetuses for creativity that also contribute to a transformation of cultural knowledge of catastrophe. The transformative potential of creative media, together with national and intergovernmental disaster risk reduction activity such as community education, awareness campaigns, community evacuation planning and drills, may be indirectly inferred from rapid and positive community behavioural responses. By this I mean many people in coastal communities who experience strong earthquakes are starting a process of self-evacuation, even if regional tsunami warning centres have not issued an alert or warning. For example, when people in coastal locations in Samoa felt a large earthquake on 29 September 2009, many self-evacuated to higher ground or sought information and instruction from relevant authorities because they expected a tsunami to occur. When interviewed, survivors stated that the memory of television and media coverage of the 2004 IOT acted as a catalyst for their affirmative behavioural response (Dominey-Howes and Thaman 1). Thus, individual and community cultural understandings of the nature and effects of tsunami catastrophes are incredibly important for shaping resilience and reducing vulnerability. However, this cultural shift is not playing out evenly.Are Australia and Its People at Risk from Tsunamis?Prior to the 2004 IOT, there was little discussion about, research in to, or awareness about tsunamis and Australia. Ted Bryant from the University of Wollongong had controversially proposed that Australia had been affected by tsunamis much bigger than the 2004 IOT six to eight times during the last 10,000 years and that it was only a matter of when, not if, such an event repeated itself (Bryant, "Second Edition"). Whilst his claims had received some media attention, his ideas did not achieve widespread scientific, cultural, or community acceptance. Not-with-standing this, Australia has been affected by more than 60 small tsunamis since European colonisation (Dominey-Howes 239). Indeed, the 2004 IOT and 2006 Java tsunami caused significant flooding of parts of the Northern Territory and Western Australia (Prendergast and Brown 69). However, the affected areas were sparsely populated and experienced very little in the way of damage or loss. Thus they did not cross any sort of critical threshold of “catastrophe” and failed to achieve meaningful community consciousness—they were not agents of cultural transformation.Regardless of the risk faced by Australia’s coastline, Australians travel to, and holiday in, places that experience tsunamis. In fact, 26 Australians were killed during the 2004 IOT (DFAT) and five were killed by the September 2009 South Pacific tsunami (Caldwell et al. 26). What Role Do the Media Play in Preparing for and Responding to Catastrophe?Regardless of the type of hazard/disaster/catastrophe, the key functions the media play include (but are not limited to): pre-event community education, awareness raising, and planning and preparations; during-event preparation and action, including status updates, evacuation warnings and notices, and recommendations for affirmative behaviours; and post-event responses and recovery actions to follow, including where to gain aid and support. Further, the media also play a role in providing a forum for debate and post-event analysis and reflection, as a mechanism to hold decision makers to account. From time to time, the media also provide a platform for examining who, if anyone, might be to blame for losses sustained during catastrophes and can act as a powerful conduit for driving socio-cultural, behavioural, and policy change. Many of these functions are elegantly described and a series of best practices outlined by The Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency in a tsunami specific publication freely available online (CDEMA 1). What Has Been the Media Coverage in Australia about Tsunamis and Their Effects on Australians?A manifest contents analysis of media material covering tsunamis over the last decade using the framework of Cox et al. reveals that coverage falls into distinctive and repetitive forms or themes. After tsunamis, I have collected articles (more than 130 to date) published in key Australian national broadsheets (e.g., The Australian and Sydney Morning Herald) and tabloid (e.g., The Telegraph) newspapers and have watched on television and monitored on social media, such as YouTube and Facebook, the types of coverage given to tsunamis either affecting Australia, or Australians domestically and overseas. In all cases, I continued to monitor and collect these stories and accounts for a fixed period of four weeks after each event, commencing on the day of the tsunami. The themes raised in the coverage include: the nature of the event. For example, where, when, why did it occur, how big was it, and what were the effects; what emergency response and recovery actions are being undertaken by the emergency services and how these are being provided; exploration of how the event was made worse or better by poor/good planning and prior knowledge, action or inaction, confusion and misunderstanding; the attribution of blame and responsibility; the good news story—often the discovery and rescue of an “iconic victim/survivor”—usually a child days to weeks later; and follow-up reporting weeks to months later and on anniversaries. This coverage generally focuses on how things are improving and is often juxtaposed with the ongoing suffering of victims. I select the word “victims” purposefully for the media frequently prefer this over the more affirmative “survivor.”The media seldom carry reports of “behind the scenes” disaster preparatory work such as community education programs, the development and installation of warning and monitoring systems, and ongoing training and policy work by response agencies and governments since such stories tend to be less glamorous in terms of the disaster gore factor and less newsworthy (Cox et al. 469; Miles and Morse 365; Ploughman 308).With regard to Australians specifically, the manifest contents analysis reveals that coverage can be described as follows. First, it focuses on those Australians killed and injured. Such coverage provides elements of a biography of the victims, telling their stories, personalising these individuals so we build empathy for their suffering and the suffering of their families. The Australian victims are not unknown strangers—they are named and pictures of their smiling faces are printed or broadcast. Second, the media describe and catalogue the loss and ongoing suffering of the victims (survivors). Third, the media use phrases to describe Australians such as “innocent victims in the wrong place at the wrong time.” This narrative establishes the sense that these “innocents” have been somehow wronged and transgressed and that suffering should not be experienced by them. The fourth theme addresses the difficulties Australians have in accessing Consular support and in acquiring replacement passports in order to return home. It usually goes on to describe how they have difficulty in gaining access to accommodation, clothing, food, and water and any necessary medicines and the challenges associated with booking travel home and the complexities of communicating with family and friends. The last theme focuses on how Australians were often (usually?) not given relevant safety information by “responsible people” or “those in the know” in the place where they were at the time of the tsunami. This establishes a sense that Australians were left out and not considered by the relevant authorities. This narrative pays little attention to the wide scale impact upon and suffering of resident local populations who lack the capacity to escape the landscape of catastrophe.How Does Australian Media Coverage of (Tsunami) Catastrophe Compare with Elsewhere?A review of the available literature suggests media coverage of catastrophes involving domestic citizens is similar globally. For example, Olofsson (557) in an analysis of newspaper articles in Sweden about the 2004 IOT showed that the tsunami was framed as a Swedish disaster heavily focused on Sweden, Swedish victims, and Thailand, and that there was a division between “us” (Swedes) and “them” (others or non-Swedes). Olofsson (557) described two types of “us” and “them.” At the international level Sweden, i.e. “us,” was glorified and contrasted with “inferior” countries such as Thailand, “them.” Olofsson (557) concluded that mediated frames of catastrophe are influenced by stereotypes and nationalistic values.Such nationalistic approaches preface one type of suffering in catastrophe over others and delegitimises the experiences of some survivors. Thus, catastrophes are not evenly experienced. Importantly, Olofsson although not explicitly using the term, explains that the underlying reason for this construction of “them” and “us” is a form of imperialism and colonialism. Sharp refers to “historically rooted power hierarchies between countries and regions of the world” (304)—this is especially so of western news media reporting on catastrophes within and affecting “other” (non-western) countries. Sharp goes much further in relation to western representations and imaginations of the “war on terror” (arguably a global catastrophe) by explicitly noting the near universal western-centric dominance of this representation and the construction of the “west” as good and all “non-west” as not (299). Like it or not, the western media, including elements of the mainstream Australian media, adhere to this imperialistic representation. Studies of tsunami and other catastrophes drawing upon different types of media (still images, video, film, camera, and social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and the like) and from different national settings have explored the multiple functions of media. These functions include: providing information, questioning the authorities, and offering a chance for transformative learning. Further, they alleviate pain and suffering, providing new virtual communities of shared experience and hearing that facilitate resilience and recovery from catastrophe. Lastly, they contribute to a cultural transformation of catastrophe—both positive and negative (Hjorth and Kyoung-hwa "The Mourning"; "Good Grief"; McCargo and Hyon-Suk 236; Brown and Minty 9; Lau et al. 675; Morgan and de Goyet 33; Piotrowski and Armstrong 341; Sood et al. 27).Has Extensive Media Coverage Resulted in an Improved Awareness of the Catastrophic Potential of Tsunami for Australians?In playing devil’s advocate, my simple response is NO! This because I have been interviewing Australians about their perceptions and knowledge of tsunamis as a catastrophe, after events have occurred. These events have triggered alerts and warnings by the Australian Tsunami Warning System (ATWS) for selected coastal regions of Australia. Consequently, I have visited coastal suburbs and interviewed people about tsunamis generally and those events specifically. Formal interviews (surveys) and informal conversations have revolved around what people perceived about the hazard, the likely consequences, what they knew about the warning, where they got their information from, how they behaved and why, and so forth. I have undertaken this work after the 2007 Solomon Islands, 2009 New Zealand, 2009 South Pacific, the February 2010 Chile, and March 2011 Japan tsunamis. I have now spoken to more than 800 people. Detailed research results will be presented elsewhere, but of relevance here, I have discovered that, to begin with, Australians have a reasonable and shared cultural knowledge of the potential catastrophic effects that tsunamis can have. They use terms such as “devastating; death; damage; loss; frightening; economic impact; societal loss; horrific; overwhelming and catastrophic.” Secondly, when I ask Australians about their sources of information about tsunamis, they describe the television (80%); Internet (85%); radio (25%); newspaper (35%); and social media including YouTube (65%). This tells me that the media are critical to underpinning knowledge of catastrophe and are a powerful transformative medium for the acquisition of knowledge. Thirdly, when asked about where people get information about live warning messages and alerts, Australians stated the “television (95%); Internet (70%); family and friends (65%).” Fourthly and significantly, when individuals were asked what they thought being caught in a tsunami would be like, responses included “fun (50%); awesome (75%); like in a movie (40%).” Fifthly, when people were asked about what they would do (i.e., their “stated behaviour”) during a real tsunami arriving at the coast, responses included “go down to the beach to swim/surf the tsunami (40%); go to the sea to watch (85%); video the tsunami and sell to the news media people (40%).”An independent and powerful representation of the disjunct between Australians’ knowledge of the catastrophic potential of tsunamis and their “negative” behavioral response can be found in viewing live television news coverage broadcast from Sydney beaches on the morning of Sunday 28 February 2010. The Chilean tsunami had taken more than 14 hours to travel from Chile to the eastern seaboard of Australia and the ATWS had issued an accurate warning and had correctly forecast the arrival time of the tsunami (approximately 08.30 am). The television and radio media had dutifully broadcast the warning issued by the State Emergency Services. The message was simple: “Stay out of the water, evacuate the beaches and move to higher ground.” As the tsunami arrived, those news broadcasts showed volunteer State Emergency Service personnel and Surf Life Saving Australia lifeguards “begging” with literally hundreds (probably thousands up and down the eastern seaboard of Australia) of members of the public to stop swimming in the incoming tsunami and to evacuate the beaches. On that occasion, Australians were lucky and the tsunami was inconsequential. What do these responses mean? Clearly Australians recognise and can describe the consequences of a tsunami. However, they are not associating the catastrophic nature of tsunami with their own lives or experience. They are avoiding or disallowing the reality; they normalise and dramaticise the event. Thus in Australia, to date, a cultural transformation about the catastrophic nature of tsunami has not occurred for reasons that are not entirely clear but are the subject of ongoing study.The Emergence of Tsunami as a “New Australian Catastrophe”?As a natural disaster expert with nearly two decades experience, in my mind tsunami has emerged as a “new Australian catastrophe.” I believe this has occurred for a number of reasons. Firstly, the 2004 IOT was devastating and did impact northwestern Australia, raising the flag on this hitherto, unknown threat. Australia is now known to be vulnerable to the tsunami catastrophe. The media have played a critical role here. Secondly, in the 2004 IOT and other tsunamis since, Australians have died and their deaths have been widely reported in the Australian media. Thirdly, the emergence of various forms of social media has facilitated an explosion in information and material that can be consumed, digested, reimagined, and normalised by Australians hungry for the gore of catastrophe—it feeds our desire for catastrophic death and destruction. Fourthly, catastrophe has been creatively imagined and retold for a story-hungry viewing public. Whether through regular television shows easily consumed from a comfy chair at home, or whilst eating popcorn at a cinema, tsunami catastrophe is being fed to us in a way that reaffirms its naturalness. Juxtaposed against this idea though is that, despite all the graphic imagery of tsunami catastrophe, especially images of dead children in other countries, Australian media do not and culturally cannot, display images of dead Australian children. Such images are widely considered too gruesome but are well known to drive changes in cultural behaviour because of the iconic significance of the child within our society. As such, a cultural shift has not yet occurred and so the potential of catastrophe remains waiting to strike. Fifthly and significantly, given the fact that large numbers of Australians have not died during recent tsunamis means that again, the catastrophic potential of tsunamis is not yet realised and has not resulted in cultural changes to more affirmative behaviour. Lastly, Australians are probably more aware of “regular or common” catastrophes such as floods and bush fires that are normal to the Australian climate system and which are endlessly experienced individually and culturally and covered by the media in all forms. The Australian summer of 2012–13 has again been dominated by floods and fires. If this idea is accepted, the media construct a uniquely Australian imaginary of catastrophe and cultural discourse of disaster. The familiarity with these common climate catastrophes makes us “culturally blind” to the catastrophe that is tsunami.The consequences of a major tsunami affecting Australia some point in the future are likely to be of a scale not yet comprehensible. References Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). "ABC Net Splash." 20 Mar. 2013 ‹http://splash.abc.net.au/media?id=31077›. Brown, Philip, and Jessica Minty. “Media Coverage and Charitable Giving after the 2004 Tsunami.” Southern Economic Journal 75 (2008): 9–25. Bryant, Edward. Tsunami: The Underrated Hazard. First Edition, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001. ———. Tsunami: The Underrated Hazard. Second Edition, Sydney: Springer-Praxis, 2008. 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Probably the most (in)famous Australian teenager of recent times, now-17-year-old Kim Duthie—better known as the “St Kilda Schoolgirl”—first came to public attention when she posted naked pictures of two prominent St Kilda Australian Football League (AFL) players on Facebook. She claimed to be seeking revenge on the players’ teammate for getting her pregnant. This turned out to be a lie. Duthie also claimed that 47-year-old football manager Ricky Nixon gave her drugs and had sex with her. She then said this was a lie, then that she lied about lying. That she lied at least twice is clear, and in doing so, she arguably reinforced the pervasive myth that women are prone to lie about rape and sexual abuse. Precisely what occurred, and why Duthie posted the naked photographs will probably never be known. However, it seems clear that Duthie felt herself wronged. Can she therefore be held entirely to blame for the way she went about seeking redress from a group of men with infinitely more power than she—socially, financially and (in terms of the priority given to elite football in Australian society) culturally? The many judgements passed on Duthie’s behaviour in the media highlight the crucial, seldom-discussed issue of how problematic behaviour on the part of women might reinforce patriarchal norms. This is a particularly sensitive issue in the context of a spate of alleged sexual assaults committed by elite Australian footballers over the past decade. Given that representations of alleged rape cases in the media and elsewhere so often position women as blameworthy for their own mistreatment and abuse, the question of whether or not women can and should be held accountable in certain situations is particularly fraught. By exploring media representations of one of these complex scenarios, we consider how the issue of “complicity” might be understood in a rape culture. In doing so, we employ Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi’s highly influential concept of the “grey zone,” which signifies a complex and ambiguous realm that challenges both judgement and representation. Primo Levi’s “Grey Zone,” Patriarchy and the Problem of Judgement In his essay titled “The Grey Zone” (published in 1986), Levi is chiefly concerned with Jewish prisoners in the Nazi-controlled camps and ghettos who obtained “privileged” positions in order to prolong their survival. Reflecting on the inherently complex power relations in such extreme settings, Levi positions the “grey zone” as a metaphor for moral ambiguity: a realm with “ill-defined outlines which both separate and join the two camps of masters and servants. [The ‘grey zone’] possesses an incredibly complicated internal structure, and contains within itself enough to confuse our need to judge” (27). According to Levi, an examination of the scenarios and experiences that gave rise to the “grey zone” requires a rejection of the black-and-white binary opposition(s) of “friend” and “enemy,” “good” and “evil.” While Levi unequivocally holds the perpetrators of the Holocaust responsible for their actions, he warns that one should suspend judgement of victims who were entrapped in situations of moral ambiguity and “compromise.” However, recent scholarship on the representation of “privileged” Jews in Levi’s writings and elsewhere has identified a “paradox of judgement”: namely, that even if moral judgements of victims in extreme situations should be suspended, such judgements are inherent in the act of representation, and are therefore inevitable (see Brown). While the historical specificity of Levi’s reflections must be kept in mind, the corruptive influences of power at the core of the “grey zone”—along with the associated problems of judgement and representation—are clearly far more prevalent in human nature and experience than the Holocaust alone. Levi’s “grey zone” has been appropriated by scholars in the fields of Holocaust studies (Petropoulos and Roth xv-xviii), philosophy (Todorov 262), law (Luban 161–76), history (Cole 248–49), theology (Roth 53–54), and popular culture (Cheyette 226–38). Significantly, Claudia Card (The Atrocity Paradigm, “Groping through Gray Zones” 3–26) has recently applied Levi’s concept to the field of feminist philosophy. Indeed, Levi’s questioning of whether or not one can—or should—pass judgement on the behaviour of Holocaust victims has considerable relevance to the divisive issue of how women’s involvement in/with patriarchy is represented in the media. Expanding or intentionally departing from Levi’s ideas, many recent interpretations of the “grey zone” often misunderstand the historical specificity of Levi’s reflections. For instance, while applying Levi’s concept to the effects of patriarchy and domestic violence on women, Lynne Arnault makes the problematic statement that “in order to establish the cruelty and seriousness of male violence against women as women, feminists must demonstrate that the experiences of victims of incest, rape, and battering are comparable to those of war veterans, prisoners of war, political prisoners, and concentration camp inmates” (183, n.9). It is important to stress here that it is not our intention to make direct parallels between the Holocaust and patriarchy, or between “privileged” Jews and women (potentially) implicated in a rape culture, but to explore the complexity of power relations in society, what behaviour eventuates from these, and—most crucial to our discussion here—how such behaviour is handled in the mass media. Aware of the problem of making controversial (and unnecessary) comparisons, Card (“Women, Evil, and Gray Zones” 515) rightly stresses that her aim is “not to compare suffering or even degrees of evil but to note patterns in the moral complexity of choices and judgments of responsibility.” Card uses the notion of the “Stockholm Syndrome,” citing numerous examples of women identifying with their torturers after having been abused or held hostage over a prolonged period of time—most (in)famously, Patricia Hearst. While the medical establishment has responded to cases of women “suffering” from “Stockholm Syndrome” by absolving them from any moral responsibility, Card writes that “we may have a morally gray area in some cases, where there is real danger of becoming complicit in evildoing and where the captive’s responsibility is better described as problematic than as nonexistent” (“Women, Evil, and Gray Zones” 511). Like Levi, Card emphasises that issues of individual agency and moral responsibility are far from clear-cut. At the same time, a full awareness of the oppressive environment—in the context that this paper is concerned with, a patriarchal social system—must be accounted for. Importantly, the examples Card uses differ significantly from the issue of whether or not some women can be considered “complicit” in a rape culture; nevertheless, similar obstacles to understanding problematic situations exist here, too. In the context of a rape culture, can women become, to use Card’s phrase, “instruments of oppression”? And if so, how is their controversial behaviour to be understood and represented? Crucially, Levi’s reflections on the “grey zone” were primarily motivated by his concern that most historical and filmic representations “trivialised” the complexity of victim experiences by passing simplistic judgements. Likewise, the representation of sexual assault cases in the Australian mass media has often left much to be desired. Representing Sexual Assault: Australian Football and the Media A growing literature has critiqued the sexual culture of elite football in Australia—one in which women are reportedly treated with disdain, positioned as objects to be used and discarded. At least 20 distinct cases, involving more than 55 players and staff, have been reported in the media, with the majority of these incidents involving multiple players. Reports indicate that such group sexual encounters are commonplace for footballers, and the women who participate in sexual practices are commonly judged, even in the sports scholarship, as “groupies” and “sluts” who are therefore responsible for anything that happens to them, including rape (Waterhouse-Watson, “Playing Defence” 114–15; “(Un)reasonable Doubt”). When the issue of footballers and sexual assault was first debated in the Australian media in 2004, football insiders from both Australian rules and rugby league told the media of a culture of group sex and sexual behaviour that is degrading to women, even when consensual (Barry; Khadem and Nancarrow 4; Smith 1; Weidler 4). The sexual “culture” is marked by a discourse of abuse and objectification, in which women are cast as “meat” or a “bun.” Group sex is also increasingly referred to as “chop up,” which codes the practice itself as an act of violence. It has been argued elsewhere that footballers treating women as sexual objects is effectively condoned through the mass media (Waterhouse-Watson, “All Women Are Sluts” passim). The “Code of Silence” episode of ABC television program Four Corners, which reignited the debate in 2009, was even more explicit in portraying footballers’ sexual practices as abusive, presenting rape testimony from three women, including “Clare,” who remains traumatised following a “group sex” incident with rugby league players in 2002. Clare testifies that she went to a hotel room with prominent National Rugby League (NRL) players Matthew Johns and Brett Firman. She says that she had sex with Johns and Firman, although the experience was unpleasant and they treated her “like a piece of meat.” Subsequently, a dozen players and staff members from the team then entered the room, uninvited, some through the bathroom window, expecting sex with Clare. Neither Johns nor Firman has denied that this was the case. Clare went to the police five days later, saying that professional rugby players had raped her, although no charges were ever laid. The program further includes psychiatrists’ reports, and statements from the police officer in charge of the case, detailing the severe trauma that Clare suffered as a result of what the footballers called “sex.” If, as “Code of Silence” suggests, footballers’ practices of group sex are abusive, whether the woman consents or not, then it follows that such a “gang-bang culture” may in turn foster a rape culture, in which rape is more likely than in other contexts. And yet, many women insist that they enjoy group sex with footballers (Barry; Drill 86), complicating issues of consent and the degradation of women. Feminist rape scholarship documents the repetitive way in which complainants are deemed to have “invited” or “caused” the rape through their behaviour towards the accused or the way they were dressed: defence lawyers, judges (Larcombe 100; Lees 85; Young 442–65) and even talk show hosts, ostensibly aiming to expose the problem of rape (Alcoff and Gray 261–64), employ these tactics to undermine a victim’s credibility and excuse the accused perpetrator. Nevertheless, although no woman can be in any way held responsible for any man committing sexual assault, or other abuse, it must be acknowledged that women who become in some way implicated in a rape culture also assist in maintaining that culture, highlighting a “grey zone” of moral ambiguity. How, then, should these women, who in some cases even actively promote behaviour that is intrinsic to this culture, be perceived and represented? Charmyne Palavi, who appeared on “Code of Silence,” is a prime example of such a “grey zone” figure. While she stated that she was raped by a prominent footballer, Palavi also described her continuing practice of setting up footballers and women for casual sex through her Facebook page, and pursuing such encounters herself. This raises several problems of judgement and representation, and the issue of women’s sexual freedom. On the one hand, Palavi (and all other women) should be entitled to engage in any consensual (legal) sexual behaviour that they choose. But on the other, when footballers’ frequent casual sex is part of a culture of sexual abuse, there is a danger of them becoming complicit in, to use Card’s term, “evildoing.” Further, when telling her story on “Code of Silence,” Palavi hints that there is an element of increased risk in these situations. When describing her sexual encounters with footballers, which she states are “on her terms,” she begins, “It’s consensual for a start. I’m not drunk or on drugs and it’s in, [it] has an element of class to it. Do you know what I mean?” (emphasis added). If it is necessary to define sex “on her terms” as consensual, this implies that sometimes casual “sex” with footballers is not consensual, or that there is an increased likelihood of rape. She also claims to have heard about several incidents in which footballers she knows sexually abused and denigrated, if not actually raped, other women. Such an awareness of what may happen clearly does not make Palavi a perpetrator of abuse, but neither can her actions (such as “setting up” women with footballers using Facebook) be considered entirely separate. While one may argue, following Levi’s reflections, that judgement of a “grey zone” figure such as Palavi should be suspended, it is significant that Four Corners’s representation of Palavi makes implicit and simplistic moral judgements. The introduction to Palavi follows the story of “Caroline,” who states that first-grade rugby player Dane Tilse broke into her university dormitory room and sexually assaulted her while she slept. Caroline indicates that Tilse left when he “picked up that [she] was really stressed.” Following this story, the program’s reporter and narrator Sarah Ferguson introduces Palavi with, “If some young footballers mistakenly think all women want to have sex with them, Charmyne Palavi is one who doesn’t necessarily discourage the idea.” As has been argued elsewhere (Waterhouse-Watson, “Framing the Victim”), this implies that Palavi is partly responsible for players holding this mistaken view. By implication, she therefore encouraged Tilse to assume that Caroline would want to have sex with him. Footage is then shown of Palavi and her friends “applying the finishing touches”—bronzing their legs—before going to meet footballers at a local hotel. The lighting is dim and the hand-held camerawork rough. These techniques portray the women as artificial and “cheap,” techniques that are also employed in a remarkably similar fashion in the documentary Footy Chicks (Barry), which follows three women who seek out sex with footballers. In response to Ferguson’s question, “What’s the appeal of those boys though?” Palavi repeats several times that she likes footballers mainly because of their bodies. This, along with the program’s focus on the women as instigators of sex, positions Palavi as something of a predator (she was widely referred to as a “cougar” following the program). In judging her “promiscuity” as immoral, the program implies she is partly responsible for her own rape, as well as acts of what can be termed, at the very least, sexual abuse of other women. The problematic representation of Palavi raises the complex question of how her “grey zone” behaviour should be depicted without passing trivialising judgements. This issue is particularly fraught when Four Corners follows the representation of Palavi’s “nightlife” with her accounts of footballers’ acts of sexual assault and abuse, including testimony that a well-known player raped Palavi herself. While Ferguson does not explicitly question the veracity of Palavi’s claim of rape, her portrayal is nevertheless largely unsympathetic, and the way the segment is edited appears to imply that she is blameworthy. Ferguson recounts that Palavi “says she was able to put [being raped] out of her mind, and it certainly didn’t stop her pursuing other football players.” This might be interpreted a positive statement about Palavi’s ability to move on from a rape; however, the tone of Ferguson’s authoritative voiceover is disapproving, which instead implies negative judgement. As the program makes clear, Palavi continues to organise sexual encounters between women and players, despite her knowledge of the “dangers,” both to herself and other women. Palavi’s awareness of the prevalence of incidents of sexual assault or abuse makes her position a problematic one. Yet her controversial role within the sexual culture of elite Australian football is complicated even further by the fact that she herself is disempowered (and her own allegation of being raped delegitimised) by the simplistic ideas about “assault” and “consent” that dominate social discourse. Despite this ambiguity, Four Corners constructs Palavi as more of a perpetrator of abuse than a victim—not even a victim who is “morally compromised.” Although we argue that careful consideration must be given to the issue of whether moral judgements should be applied to “grey zone” figures like Palavi, the “solution” is far from simple. No language (or image) is neutral or value-free, and judgements are inevitable in any act of representation. In his essay on the “grey zone,” Levi raises the crucial point that the many (mis)understandings of figures of moral ambiguity and “compromise” partly arise from the fact that the testimony and perspectives of these figures themselves is often the last to be heard—if at all (50). Nevertheless, an article Palavi published in Sydney tabloid The Daily Telegraph (19) demonstrates that such testimony can also be problematic and only complicate matters further. Palavi’s account begins: If you believed Four Corners, I’m supposed to be the NRL’s biggest groupie, a wannabe WAG who dresses up, heads out to clubs and hunts down players to have sex with… what annoys me about these tags and the way I was portrayed on that show is the idea I prey on them like some of the starstruck women I’ve seen out there. (emphasis added) Palavi clearly rejects the way Four Corners constructed her as a predator; however, rather than rejecting this stereotype outright, she reinscribes it, projecting it onto other “starstruck” women. Throughout her article, Palavi reiterates (other) women’s allegedly predatory behaviour, continually portraying the footballers as passive and the women as active. For example, she claims that players “like being contacted by girls,” whereas “the girls use the information the players put on their [social media profiles] to track them down.” Palavi’s narrative confirms this construction of men as victims of women’s predatory actions, lamenting the sacking of Johns following “Code of Silence” as “disgusting.” In the context of alleged sexual assault, the “predatory woman” stereotype is used in place of the raped woman in order to imply that sexual assault did not occur; hence Palavi’s problematic discourse arguably reinforces sexist attitudes. But can Palavi be considered complicit in validating this damaging stereotype? Can she be blamed for working within patriarchal systems of representation, of which she has also been a victim? The preceding analysis shows judgement to be inherent in the act of representation. The paucity of language is particularly acute when dealing with such extreme situations. Indeed, the language used to explore this issue in the present article cannot escape terminology that is loaded with meaning(s), which quotation marks can perhaps only qualify so far. Conclusion This paper does not claim to provide definitive answers to such complex dilemmas, but rather to highlight problems in addressing the sensitive issues of ambiguity and “complicity” in women’s interactions with patriarchal systems, and how these are represented in the mass media. Like the controversial behaviour of teenager Kim Duthie described earlier, Palavi’s position throws the problems of judgement and representation into disarray. 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