A preliminary examination of public opinion in Australia on the use of biometric devices or identifiers in everyday life

Since the September 11,2001 terrorist attacks in New York City, many countries including Australia have been able to justify the use of biometric devices for identification and surveillance of their own citizens and others in the name of national security.

This paper reports on the preliminary findings of a survey that examined Australians' views and experiences with the use of biometric devices in everyday situations in the context of their potential to serve as a 'Panopticon' to keep the nation's citizenry under surveillance. It discusses the adoption of the new communication technology from the point of view of the Justification model that sees technology choice as social
gambling and the pluralist view of technology that sees technology as neutral in itself but as having negative or positive effects on society based on how It is used.

The paper proposes the need for Australian society to balance citizens' right to privacy and civil liberties with the right to stay alive and safe from terrorism and how it may be done with the necessary legal and regulator)' safeguards.

Decisionmaking in a glass house : mass media, public opinion, and American and European foreign policy in the 21st century

"Decisionmaking in a Glass House: Mass Media, Public Opinion, and American and European Foreign Policy in the 21st Century" edited by Brigitte L. Nacos, Robert Y. Shapiro and Pierangelo Isernia is reviewed.

Australian public opinion on citizenship and transnational ties in Asia

At a time of increasing national security, this article explores the ways in which migrant communities from Asia feel a sense of attachment to exclusive and inclusive forms of national citizenship while at the same time maintaining transnational links. Drawing on data from the Australian Survey of Social Attitudes (2003), the study utilises a quantitative methodology. The strength of this methodological approach lies in its capacity to describe the importance of different categories in shaping public opinion on citizenship and transnational connections in Asia. This study compares the views of Asian-Australians with the rest of the Australian population.

Law-and-order politics, public-opinion polls, and the media

Over the past two decades, considerable political rhetoric has focused on the need to get tough on crime. Justification for this hard-line approach has been the public's apparent concem about rising crime rates and its increasing dissatisfaction with criminal sentencing. In this paper, we consider characteristics both of the measurement of public opinion and of the influences upon public opinion that may contribute to the depiction of a fearful, punitive community. In particular, we identify sources of bias in the methods and contexts of opinion-polling that promote a distorted representation of the discrepancy between community expectations of sentencing and the practices of the judiciary. We argue that the practices of pollsters, politicians, and media combine to create a self-sustaining obstacle to considered community discussion of crime and criminal sentencing.

Public opinion and ethics

The article reports on the complicated relationship between public opinion and ethics and discusses how large a role, if any, public opinion should play in issues related to health care, such as euthanasia. In the article the author offers her opinions on democracy and on the role that public opinion plays in solving ethical issues related to health care.

Proportionality in sentencing: the need to factor in community experience, not public opinion

This is the first book to address the question of what role public opinion should play in the way criminal offenders are punished.Should public opinion determine—or even influence—sentencing policy and practice? Should the punishment of criminal offenders reflect what the public regards as appropriate? These deceptively simple questions conceal complex theoretical and methodological challenges to the administration of punishment.In the West, politicians have often answered these questions in the affirmative; penal reforms have been justified with direct reference to the attitudes of the public. This is why the contention that politicians should bridge the gap between the public and criminal justice practice has widespread resonance. Criminal law scholars, for their part, have often been more reluctant to accept public input in penal practice, and some have even held that the idea of consulting public opinion constitutes a populist approach to punishment.The purpose of this book is to examine the moral significance of public opinion for penal theory and practice. For the first time in a single volume the editors, Jesper Ryberg and Julian V. Roberts, have assembled a number of respected criminologists, philosphers, and legal theorists to address the various aspects of why and how public opinion should be reflected in the way the criminal justice system deals with criminals. The chapters address the myriad complexities surrounding this issue by first weighing the justifications for incorporating public views into punishment practices and then considering the various ways this might be achieved through juries, prosecutors, restoratifve justice programs, and other means.

Public opinion, social cohesion and the politics of immigration in South Korea

This article analyses public opinion in order to explore the politics of immigration in South Korea. It argues that there are divergent views about immigration and the obligations of the host society to accommodate migrants. Younger, better-educated citizens are representative of a majority that has a generally positive view of immigrants and immigration. A sizeable minority of older and less well-educated citizens, however, is warier of immigration and its effects on South Korean society. Men were more likely than women to have a positive view of immigration, but the differences along gender lines were small. The article also finds that attitudes towards immigration depend to a significant degree on how migrants are described. It thereby highlights the possibility that South Korea’s leaders could use immigration for political gain while also seeking to attract new migrants in order to resolve the country’s economic and demographic problems.

Cycles in public opinion and the dynamics of stable party systems

We study a dynamic model of elections where many parties may enter or exit political competition. At each election a new political leadership arrives for each party. The leadership cannot choose the party's platform (ideological identities are fixed) but must decide whether or not to contest the election. Contesting elections is costly and this cost is higher if the party has recently been inactive. The distribution of voters' ideal policies, or public opinion, changes over time via a Markov process with a state independent persistence parameter. We characterise stable party systems where the set of contestants is invariant to the recent most observed opinion. We show that stable party systems exist only when public opinion is sufficiently volatile, while highly persistent moods lead to instability and change in the party system whenever public opinion changes.

Vigilantism, the press and signal crimes 2006 - 2007

The clear presence of vengeance as an underlying motive behind calls for self-help in the immediate aftermath of some violent homicides indicates that community protection is largely irrelevant where vigilantism is associated with these 'signal crimes'. This paper documents the characteristics of five major cases between 2006 and 2007 where the threat ofcommunity-generated vigilante activity received media coverage, the nature of that coverage, the role of police in cautioning the public to reassert their legitimacy and monopoly over the correct procedures for conducting criminal
investigations and the implications of these issues in light of the moral 'outrage' associated with the status of the victim in each case. In an era of increased community concern about crime, it appears vigilantism is an important rhetorical indicator of the level of collective insecurity prompted by fatal assaults, especially in regional areas characterised by underlying racial
tensions and cases involving vulnerable child victims. However, when viewed alongside the virtual victimhood promoted by stylised press reporting, it appears 'vigilantism' is a pertinent signifier of public anxiety over the timing, location and antecedents of some serious violent crimes, rather than a descriptor of any substantive community-generated measures aimed at promoting greater levels of public safety.

The original bailout of US corporations : the public relations bailout

More than a trillion of taxpayer dollars are currently being used to bail out the US banking, mortgage and car industries. This invokes an interesting connection to public relations the last time drastic US government involvement with corporations was contemplated. This pre-First World War crisis of the free enterprise system involved a deficit not of money but of favourable public opinion. The requirement was for vast amounts of public opinion and public policy work by a reported at least 1200 – what were at that time called – press agents. This was the period when public relations emerged as a fundamental plank of US and ultimately of global culture. The thesis of this article is that many aspects of the world we live in cannot be properly understood without a better analysis of the first bailout of US corporations—the public relations bailout.

Violent offending : the efficacy of a unitary and transtheoretical intervention

Examines "best practice" in reducing recidivism. Compares two interventions for violent offenders, and examines whether their different theoretical orientations (unitary or transtheoretical) affected program efficiency. Although the transtheoretical intervention was more efficacious, insufficient adherence to best practice principles within implementation of both programs significantly impinged upon program success.

The good news about television: attitudes aren't getting worse: tracking public attitudes toward TV advertising

Periodically tracking public sentiment toward television advertising (TVA) is an important barometer for the advertising industry and its myriad stakeholders. To date, however, most studies of consumers’ attitudes to TVA have been cross-sectional. This study, alternatively, provides a quasi-longitudinal examination of Australian attitudes toward TVA across four time points (2002, 2005, 2008, and 2010). Findings suggest that although attitudes toward TVA are generally negative, in fact they have not deteriorated over time. Considerable scope consequently exists for improving consumer attitudes toward TVA.