Negative Representations Research Articles

Qualitative evaluation of the life experiences of spouses of prostate cancer patients receiving androgen deprivation therapy.

This study was conducted to qualitatively evaluate the life experiences of women whose spouses had been receiving androgen deprivation therapy. The purposive sample of the research, in which a descriptive phenomenological design was used, consisted of 15 women. The data were evaluated according to Colaizzi's phenomenological analysis steps. The views of the participants were classified into 7 themes: loss and grief, physical difficulties, socioeconomic difficulties, psychological difficulties, relational changes, strengths, and benefits. It was determined that women whose husbands had been receiving ADT experienced grief responses and physical, socioeconomic, and psychological difficulties. Psychological difficulties were found to include care burden, hospital stress, sexuality, and burnout. It was observed that the patients and their spouses experienced some positive and negative relational changes. Satisfaction with health services and resilience were facilitating factors for female spouses to adapt to the treatment process. It was determined that during the adaptation to the disease and treatment process, the participants had some needs such as family support, economic support, reduction of negative representations in the media, and enhancement of communication skills of health professionals. Moreover, they were found to have some benefits related to post-traumatic growth. Uro-oncology nurses can develop services intended to improve the well-being of the wives of men receiving ADT and use the knowledge and experience of uro-oncology nursing for the benefit of both patients and caregivers.

From the Ancient Persian Court to the Early American Drama: A Discourse Historical Analysis of the Representation of Esther and Persia

Abstract In efforts to pay homage to the establishment of nationalities, there is precedence in creating a binary opposition of “us” and “them” in some narrative contexts. This discursive construction within the narrative starts with the labeling of social elements, then proceeds to generalize the negative attributions, and then culminates elaborately in justifying the exclusion of many and the inclusion of some. Discourse Historical Analysis is a critical attempt to study power relations as reflected in the language of a (literary) text. The Book of Esther in the Old Testament recounts the story of the exiled Jews in Persia and the ill-fated conspiracy of the Persian prince to exterminate them. The most common opinion about the time and date of its composition is that it was composed among the Jewish diaspora in Persia during the reign of Xerxes I. The consolidation of their own Jewish nationality was indispensable while living an exiled life in Persia. As such, they cling to the idea of positive Jew and negative Persian representation in their recounts of the story of Esther in the Persian court. The interest in this biblical story has been maintained in numerous literary works. The focus of the present study is on the six late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century American plays that speak to this phenomenon. In light of Ruth Wodak’s DHA (2003), the present article studies the power relations between the Persian regal host and the expatriate Jews in these dramatic texts. Essentially concerned with the study of conflicting ideologies in the social and political spheres, the discursive function of language in the construction of a diasporic nationality is highlighted herein.

History of the administration of psychedelics in France.

This article reviews the historical protocols for the administration of "classic" psychedelics in France, from the 1920s to the 1960s. Taking a chronological approach, it investigates the way mescaline, LSD, and psilocybin were administered, the subjects involved, the route of administration, the dosage, and the epistemological context of the research. From the 1930s, the Sainte-Anne school dominated French experimentation with psychedelics, inserting these studies on "hallucinogens" into a biological conception of therapeutics, where the notion of "shock" dominated. The sessions show particularly anxious experiences, sometimes described as "torture" by the patients who underwent them. With just a few rare cases of recovery reported, these substances were not considered as medicines, but rather as tools for exploration in the context of experimental research; thought of not as psychedelics ("mind manifesters") but as psychodysleptics ("mind disruptors"). While these tools could be useful for the diagnosis of sick patients, French physicians did not manage to demonstrate clear therapeutic benefits in the use of psychedelics, perhaps because of their reluctance, in most cases, to determine an optimum dose, and also very often to appreciate the context of administration and the relationship with the patient. This article allows us to understand the reasons for the therapeutic failures reported by these early French psychedelic researchers, but also to help explain the current reluctance of French health professionals who in the face of the "psychedelic renaissance" remain strongly influenced by the very negative early representations of these substances.

SOLVING THE PROBLEM OF THE WHITENESS OF WEALTH

Peggy McIntosh details “white privilege” 1as including: being in the company of people of her own race; renting or purchasing affordable housing in a desirable area; having pleasant neighbors; shopping alone without being harassed or followed; and turning on the TV or opening the newspaper to see heavy representation of people of her own race. 2 The history of slavery is one major source of wealth disparity: four generations ago, African-Americans were a form of wealth as slaves and even before that, Africans in Africa were seen as primitive. The socioeconomic disadvantages to African-Americans and finding solutions to this problem, especially solutions through funding HBCU’s, targeted debt relief, and increased Black representation in the media, are the aims of this paper on the black-white wealth gap. The average per capita wealth of White Americans was $338,093 in 2019 but only $60,126 for Black Americans. 3 On average between 1950 and 2010, Black households held about 7 percent of their wealth in stock equity; among White households, it was 18 percent. According to the 2016 General Social Survey, a 55% majority of white Republicans agree with the statement that black Americans are worse off financially “because most just don’t have the motivation or willpower to pull themselves up out of poverty.” 4 42% of white Republicans thought black Americans were lazier than white Americans and 26% rated black Americans as less intelligent. 5 The history of the black-white wealth gap is entrenched in slavery and its after-effects. These effects include the Jim Crow rules, the sharecropping landownership system, discrimination, Congress passing unfair tax laws, the tenfold wealth gap, and attempts to fix it with affirmative action. One solution is the benefit of educating black students at historically black colleges and universities such as Howard, Morehouse, and Spelman: Wealthy philanthropists like Mackenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Jeff Bezos, making massive donations to HBCU’s so that Black universities can offer more scholarships to deserving Black students. Robert Smith, the wealthiest black man in the United States, promised to pay off the debts of the Morehouse College class of 2019. Therefore, enabling black students to afford college and allowing them to face fewer obstacles to graduating college are worthwhile, positive aspects of the HBCUs. The best solution to the black-white wealth gap is targeted debt relief, as opposed to blanket debt relief. Scholars argue for increasing Pell Grants so that they cover tuition, room, board and course materials to help more Blacks graduate debt-free. 6 Black students have less access to generational wealth and are the most likely to rely on debt to finance their educations. In this way, targeted debt relief would dramatically help Black students and college graduates. Another solution is more favorable representation of Blacks in the media. Stuart Hall argued that the solution to negative representations of Blacks were favorable portrayals of Blacks.

A war on prejudice: The role of media salience in reducing ethnic prejudice.

Ethnic prejudice poses a great challenge to the cohesion of current multicultural societies. Prior research has found that media portrayals of immigration-related issues might skew individual attitudes and feelings toward ethnic minorities. While these studies have focused on negative representations of ethnic minorities, less is known about the effects of media reports of unfortunate events affecting the victims of war, as in the case of the Ukrainian group in the Russia-Ukraine war. Therefore, the current research aims to examine whether media salience of this situation might change adolescents' ethnic prejudice against the Ukrainian minority. A total of 1016 ethnic-majority Italian adolescents (Mage = 15.66, SDage = 1.17, 49.61% females) completed online questionnaires during school hours before (T1: January/February 2022) and after (T2: April/May 2022) the Russia-Ukraine war onset. Additionally, the media salience of the war was quantified separately for the national newspaper and Twitter. Levels of prejudice significantly decreased from T1 to T2 for multiple ethnic minority groups but especially so for the Ukrainian group. The results of bivariate Latent Change Score models highlighted that increased salience of the war in the national newspaper was significantly associated with decreased prejudice against Ukrainians, regardless of adolescents' levels of self-reported newspaper consumption. Conversely, changes in the salience of the war on Twitter were not associated with changes in prejudice. These findings highlight the importance of media attention for the war's victims in skewing individuals' outgroup perceptions and feelings.

Quality of life in heterosexual menopausal women: The indirect effect of sexual and marital satisfaction, menopause representations, and psychological morbidity

Menopause may negatively impact Quality of Life (QoL). Our study used a cross-sectional design and research participants were 99 women in natural menopause. In our study, we analyzed the relationship between age at menopause onset, hormone therapy use, duration of couple relationship, menopause duration, psychological morbidity, marital satisfaction, menopause representations, and QoL following the Wilson and Cleary Health-Related QoL conceptual model. The authors found that negative representations, lower marital satisfaction, psychological morbidity, and shorter duration of menopause contributed to lower QoL. Moreover, the authors found that psychological morbidity and menopause representations (identity and control/cure dimensions) had an indirect effect between marital satisfaction and vasomotor, psychosocial, and sexual QoL. Also, we found that age at the onset of menopause showed a moderating effect in the final model. Future studies should replicate these results in a longitudinal design and analyze how the variables that showed a moderating role and indirect effects will function as moderators and mediators, respectively, over time.

Framing teacher identity in an era of accountability: Media and teachers’ narratives in Chile

This article presents the main results of a research project that aims to analyze teachers’ perceptions of media discourses and how those discourses influence their teacher identity. Based on focus groups with teachers from public, charter, and private schools in the Metropolitan Region of Chile, this study shows that teachers’ identities are results of their experiences, the audit culture context, and media discourses. However, in order to combat negative media discourse representations, teachers need to re-frame the conversation by becoming aware of media discourses and creating counternarratives to reposition themselves in society.

The faceless and vulnerable other – the visual portrayal of older people on German online news sites within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract Recent studies provide evidence that the coverage of older people's issues in the mass media during the COVID-19 pandemic was accompanied by a (re-)emergence of negative stereotypes surrounding the question of age. However, these studies primarily relied on written materials. As visual imagery has the power to attract greater attention than words, this study set out to investigate the visual portrayal of older adults in the mass media. Via web crawling, we identified a total of 3,560 articles with keywords such as ‘older adults’ and ‘COVID-19 pandemic’ in the four most popular online news sites in Germany during the first phase of the pandemic. We applied visual content analysis to assess the frequency of a diverse set of characteristics of older adults in the cover photos of the articles in question (N = 604). Older individuals were most often depicted as physically weak, alone, professionally taken care of, passive, living at home or in a nursing home, and cognitively inactive. The images – mostly of female passing persons – were characterised by a stereotypical presentation that evokes distance to the subject by cropping out any faces. Our results reflect findings on the negative media representation of older adults as homogenously vulnerable in verbal materials during the COVID-19 pandemic in contrast to increasingly diverse representations in pre-pandemic times. This stereotypical misrepresentation of older adults can be interpreted as visual ageism, which is amplified by their visual othering. Our findings demonstrate the need for the media to reflect upon these practices as negative age stereotypes have an impact on mental health for people of all ages.

Predicting sense of coherence among caregiving partners of persons with multiple sclerosis.

Within the framework of the Salutogenic Model of Health, this study aimed to investigate sense of coherence among caregiving partners of persons with multiple sclerosis (PwMS), and its relationship with perceived social support and illness beliefs conceived as generalized resistance resources in tension management. In this cross-sectional study, 398 caregiving partners of PwMS (Mage = 44.62; 34.9% women and 65.1% men) filled in questionnaires measuring sense of coherence (Sense of Coherence Scale-13), perceived social support from family, friends and significant others (Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support), and illness beliefs (Revised Illness Perception Questionnaire). Hierarchical linear regression analysis was performed to assess the contribution of perceived support and illness beliefs to sense of coherence, controlling for sociodemographic and clinical variables. Perceived support from family and beliefs concerning illness-related emotional representations, illness coherence, and treatment control emerged as significant predictors of participants' sense of coherence. Higher perceived support from family and stronger beliefs in illness coherence and treatment control were associated with higher sense of coherence, while more negative emotional representations were related to lower sense of coherence values. Findings lend support to the relevance of a salutogenic approach to caregiving in multiple sclerosis. They further suggest the usefulness of interventions that can promote caregivers' sense of coherence and successful coping in life by benefitting from family support, favoring the construction of a coherent illness view, offering comprehensive information and expert guidance on treatment and rehabilitation opportunities, and promoting adaptive management of negative emotions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Refugees at the gates. Vicarious contact and collective action for a disadvantaged group

Past studies demonstrated that vicarious contact (i.e., observing interactions between ingroup and outgroup representatives) affects outgroup-directed attitudes. This research sought to examine whether and, if so, how negative and positive vicarious contact with refugees influence host society’s members' collective action for this disadvantaged group. Two online experiments (total N = 1328) were conducted in the context of the Poland-Belarus border crisis. Participants watched a short video clip presenting an interaction between ingroup representatives (i.e., Poles) and refugees from the Middle East or Africa trying to enter Poland via Belarus. The valence of the interaction differed between experimental conditions. Both studies showed that negative vicarious contact increased participants’ levels of intergroup anxiety, which then predicted lower collective action for refugees. On the other hand, positive vicarious contact decreased intergroup anxiety as well as increased outgroup-directed empathy and collective action in Study 1 but not in Study 2. The results support the notion that negative representations of ingroup-outgroup interactions in the traditional and social media affect host societies’ members attitudes toward refugees and their willingness to engage for this group.

Subspace Clustering via Adaptive Non-Negative Representation Learning and Its Application to Image Segmentation

Self-representation subspace clustering based on graphs has the merits of capability and efficiency. However, the graph built by the self-representation methods has two issues: (i) usually lacking conciseness and informativeness due to the negative representation coefficients. (ii) no guarantee of an overall optimal solution due to the separation of representation learning and graph construction. To alleviate these issues, we propose a novel subspace clustering via learning non-negative representation with an adaptive graph. Specifically, we explicitly impose the non-negative constraint on the self-representation learning, ensuring that each data point is approximated from a group of homogeneous samples and enhancing the distinguishability of data representation. Meanwhile, an adaptive graph is developed so that both representation and the geometric structure of data are simultaneously learned in a unified procedure. Moreover, the learned representation is less sensitive to data noise imposed by the ℓ <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2,1</sub> -norm, so the adaptive graph will be further improved. An efficient optimization procedure is developed to find the optimal solution. Extensive experiments on subspace clustering and the extension application to image segmentation validate the advantages of our method against state-of-the-art methods.

What Style Guides Tell Secular Journalists about Muslims and Islam

Abstract Journalists in secular contexts report – accurately and fairly, we hope – on religious communities and events. Quantitative studies of media content and discourse have suggested a rise in reporting on religion in general and, since 9/11, Islam in particular, with misrepresentations and negative representations. I draw on findings from a new study evaluating journalistic style guides on their representation of Muslims and Islam. A researcher and I reviewed academic literature on style guides, surveyed news organisations across the UK for the tools they use, and assessed those tools. In this paper, I consider the representations that emerge in ten different resources, ranging from in-house style guides to documents prepared by charities and even that most basic of resources – the dictionary. I consider their ease of use, their currency, and the quality of their contents. I am also attentive to the political context: for example, The Guardian has a richer, fuller, and more explanatory set of entries related to the tradition and its adherents than The Daily Telegraph, and this matches assessments of how these news organisations treat Muslims and Islam. From this, I comment on the adequacy of these style guides for such an important news topic in the 21st Century and problematise the utility of style guides in general as a resource for uncertain journalists.

Euphemization and Derogation in Teacher Students’ Dialogic Discourse: A Critical Discourse Analysis

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) has become a widely used academic research method in the social, political, educational, and linguistic sciences. This paper aims to explain how teacher-student dialogic discourse is presented and evaluated differently to persuade the students. Van Dijk's (2004) framework, is used to identify discursive structures that lead to ideologically based parochial, context, ideology, and social cognition. The CDA of the teacher students’ dialogic discourse has highlighted the reality that ideologies are expressed, performed, sustained, and inculcated through discursive frameworks. In terms of measuring attitudes and opinions, the macro methodologies of positive self-representation and negative other representations have proven to be precise. Euphemism and derogation are frequently used in ideological language manipulations that aiming to portray the self and others negatively and positively. They show how positive self-representation or negative other-representation can serve ideological purposes. The CDA applied to the teacher and students' dialogic discourse in this article shows these in-group/out-group distinctions. The outcomes ofthis study could help students and teachers improve their critical thinking skills in language comprehension and production, as well as revitalize the undervalued idea of language competency.

Becoming Dad: Expectant Fathers' Attachment Style and Prenatal Representations of the Unborn Child.

How expectant fathers think and feel about the unborn child (prenatal representations), has shown associations with fathers' postnatal parenting behaviors, observed father-infant interactional quality and child cognitive development. There is limited knowledge about fathers' prenatal representations. The present study examined if fathers' partner-related attachment styles were related to their prenatal representations of the unborn child. In the "Little in Norway Study", an ongoing prospective, longitudinal population-based study, 396 expectant fathers completed the Experiences in Close Relationships Scale at enrollment (mean gestational week = 23.76, SD = 4.93), and in gestational weeks 27-35 completed three questions assessing prenatal representations. Correlations of attachment style and prenatal representations were reported using logistic regression analyses. We found that an avoidant attachment style by fathers were predicted to have absent or negative representations on all three items (1) "strongest feeling about the unborn child" (Cl = 1.19-2.73), (2) "thoughts about child personality" (Cl = 1.16-1.87), and (3) "experiences of relationship with the child" (Cl = 1.14-1.75). Father anxious attachment style was not significantly associated with absent or negative prenatal representations. Results suggest that expectant fathers with a partner related avoidant attachment style have an increased risk of having absent or negative prenatal representations of the unborn child.

Narratives of the Migrant Crisis

The migrant crisis affects the European territory, mainly the frontline states and the states connected to migratory routes, posing increasing difficulties in treating the asylum-seekers' demands, causing basic human rights violations, and leading tothe negative representation of migrants during the last decade. The political response to the issue, inherently connected to this critical situation, is examined in the case of three European Union (EU) states, Greece, Hungary, and Italy, demonstrating how the migration crisis constitutes a complex nexus, which leads to the implementation of non-inclusive policies. The migrant crisis demonstrates political, social as well as intercultural interactions that can be expressed by creative forms of expression such as poetry, revealing these interconnected spaces and the individual or collective representations of the migrant fragile status.

“Music as Method” in Marshallese Community-driven Research and Outreach during the COVID-19 Pandemic

This essay centers on the sound- and music-based methodologies of the Marshallese Educational Initiative (MEI) in terms of “community-driven research” that began in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic when the virus was taking a massive toll on the community. The MEI is a nonprofit based in Springdale, Arkansas, which is home to the largest diasporic Marshallese community in the continental US. The first part analyzes the MEI’s COVID-19 informational materials on their website from an audiovisual perspective. Although mitigating the day-to-day consequences of COVID-19 took a necessary priority, the MEI educational programmers were determined to examine the long-term consequences of social distancing (as community disenfranchisement) in a transpacific context and the negative media representation of Marshallese regarding COVID-19 cases. Consequently, they came up with a project called “Songs of Our Atolls,” that would facilitate intergenerational communication and combat negative stereotyping. The second part explores the “Songs” project from its inception to grant application to realization through the activism of Marshallese youth musicians (MARK Harmony). Based on interviews and my remote participation, I examine the studio-based outreach to elders through which the band engaged in conversations and intergenerational learning (through songs) in ways that maintained social proximity while keeping physical distance in culturally appropriate ways. The third part offers a critical assessment of potential directions for the “Songs” project, including bidirectional learning, that dovetails with part one of the essay, whereby the band would work on collaborative public service announcements with other youths and elders, which is a method inspired by Youth to Youth in Health (an organization in the Marshall Islands). My conclusion sums up the ethical importance of paying attention to sound and music in terms of communal health and situating these transpacific forms of culturally appropriate information dissemination and intergenerational learning in the broader diaspora.

War on paper: A critical discourse analysis of war reporting in Ethiopia

This study aims to examine the construction of the war between Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) and the central government, as well as its actors, in the local newspaper Bekur. Both a theoretical framework and a research methodology have been developed around critical discourse analysis (CDA). Methods for data analysis include Hodge's war discourse components and Van Dijk's ideological square. The findings indicate that Bekur constructed the war between TPLF forces and the central government as a war of existence. The stories portrayed the war in Ethiopia as a conflict between “country savers” and “dismantlers.” Furthermore, the TPLF forces—the out-group—are portrayed as country destabilizers, while the central government is portrayed as the country's saviour. The newspaper also represented the PM as central to winning the battle. Lastly, the positive representation of us, the in-group, and the negative representation of them, the out-group, in the newspaper seem to blatantly support the continuation of unequal power relations among those involved in the war in Ethiopia.

RESEARCH ON SCHOOL ATTENDANCE AND DROPOUT: SYNTHESIS OF THE SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE

Dropping out of school remains a complex and multidimensional phenomenon because of the multitude of factors involved in its study. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the various factors that may be involved in the study of school dropout (focus on African context). The definitions of this concept vary from one country to another in view of these realities. In addition, the factors listed have been divided into three main dimensions, starting with individual factors, i.e., those specific to the child, and family factors, which correspond to the child's family environment and the role of parents in the child's schooling. And finally, factors specific to the school environment (teacher-principal relations, principal's leadership, infrastructure, etc.). The indicators of dropout can be grouped into six points: lack of investment in learning, negative representation of the school, academic arrhythmia, learning difficulties, and poor academic performance, and refusal of school status outside of school.

Police of the psyche: the psychiatrist and psychiatry in Spanish punk songs.

Previous research has revealed that stigma is not restricted to people with mental health problems but extends to the professionals involved in their care and treatment. Unlike other artistic manifestations, the study of the depictions of psychiatry in popular music is still a less-explored topic. This article addresses the subcultural portrayals of the psychiatrist and psychiatric treatments within Spanish popular music. The predominance of negative depictions of mental health professionals as social control agents was a striking finding, given the topicality that characterises punk music. It is suggested that the allegorical role assigned to the psychiatrist in such a specific narrative framework, marked by ideological factors, could potentially explain these findings. In contrast to other cultural manifestations that show a tendency towards more balanced views of psychiatric treatment and practice, the negative representations in Spanish punk songs seem to have evolved little over decades, reflecting outdated views of the psychiatric approach.

#4446 THE CARE TRAJECTORY LEADING TO EMERGENCY DIALYSIS START: CROSSING PATIENTS’, GENERAL PRACTITIONERS’ AND NEPHROLOGISTS’ PERSPECTIVES

Abstract Background and Aims Emergency dialysis start (EDS) is an important issue to understand and tackle in CKD care. Late referral, absent previous nephrology care and higher comorbidity scores have been associated with EDS. However, how those quantitative risk factors happen and contribute to EDS remains unexplored. We conducted a qualitative study in France to identify and describe the mechanisms that shape the trajectories that lead to EDS, using patients, GPs and nephrologists perspectives. Method Three groups of participants were recruited in Brittany, north-west France: Patients who started dialysis in emergency between 2017 and 2019, GPs and nephrologists. Maximum variation sampling approach was used based on patients’ socio-economic profiles and GPs’ and nephrologists’ years and settings of practice. Semi-structured interviews were conducted between 2017 and 2020. A crossed thematic analysis between the 3 groups of transcripts was performed, informing how EDS trajectories come to be. Results Twenty patients, 12 GPs and 18 nephrologists were interviewed. Five main themes were identified: 1) Learning about dialysis, 2) Dialysis and nephrology care representations: a) an unacceptable biographical disruption, b) a dreadful invasive machinery, c) a straw that breaks the camel's back, 3) The gap between the “illness” perceived and the “disease” treated, 4) Slipping through the primary care prevention net, 5) the unavoidable unpredictability of CKD course. Conclusion This study shows how quantitative risk factors of EDS such as low or absent previous nephrology care are, in part, the results of an interplay between patients’ constructed representations of dialysis, relation with the medical sphere and CKD physiopathology. The results suggests a need for evaluation of kidney replacement therapy education programs and reinforcement of psychological care. Finally, results also support ambitious mass prevention campaign focused on kidney health to counter the persistent negative representation of dialysis and seal off prevention cracks younger patients slip through.