Depression in the aftermath of eviction : A one-year follow-up study of a disruptive housing life event

Eviction from housing is an institutionalized social process affecting millions in the western world, but very little is understood about its impact on people’s lives. Guided by George Brown and Tirril Harris’s landmark sociological research on disruptive life events, together with evidence that home is an important ‘place’, this study aims to contribute to an understanding of eviction’s fallout by considering depression as a potential outcome. Taking advantage of unique data on all evictions in Sweden and linking to longitudinal registers, this study seeks to determine whether working-age adults facing imminent eviction in 2009 had a greater risk of depression in the following year compared, using penalized maximum likelihood logistic regressions, to a control group randomly drawn from the Swedish population. Results indicate that imminent eviction is significantly associated with subsequent depression, even accounting for a range of social, economic, geographic and behavioral characteristics. Contrary to expectations, the findings are not robust for gender differences. Recent mental illness is the only control variable significantly moderating the association of interest, which remains significant regardless of illness history. The results provide grounds for treating eviction as a disruptive life event in its own right.

News framing in different language versions of state-sponsored international media : A case of Russian and English versions in RT and Radio Liberty

The current paper examines the dissimilarities that have occurred in news framing by state-sponsored news outlets in their different language versions. The comparative framing analysis is conducted on the news coverage of the Russian intervention in Syria (2016) in RT and Radio Liberty in Russian and English languages. The certain discrepancies in framing of this event are found in both news outlets. The strongest distinction between Russian and English versions occurred in framing of responsibility and humanitarian crisis in Syria. The study attempts to explain the identified differences in a framework of public diplomacy and propaganda studies. The existing theories explain that political ideology and foreign policy orientation influences principles of state propaganda and state-sponsored international broadcasting. However, the current findings suggest that other influence factors may exist in the field – such as the local news discourse and the journalistic principles. This conclusion is preliminary, as there are not many studies with the comparable research design, which could support the current discussion. The studies of localized strategies of the international media (whether private networks or state-funded channels) can refine the current conclusions and bring a new perspective to global media studies.