News Media, Crime and Fear of Violence

Finland witnessed a surge in crime news reporting during the 1990s. At the same time, there was a significant rise in the levels of fear of crime reported by surveys. This research examines whether and how the two phenomena: news media and fear of violence were associated with each other. The dissertation consists of five sub-studies and a summary article. The first sub-study is a review of crime reporting trends in Finland, in which I have reviewed prior research and used existing Finnish datasets on media contents and crime news media exposure. The second study examines the association between crime media consumption and fear of crime when personal and vicarious victimization experiences have been held constant. Apart from analyzing the impact of crime news consumption on fear, media effects on general social trust are analyzed in the third sub-study. In the fourth sub-study I have analyzed the contents of the Finnish Poliisi-TV programme and compared the consistency of the picture of violent crime between official data sources and the programme. In the fifth and final sub-study, the victim narratives of Poliisi-TV s violence news contents have been analyzed. The research provides a series of results which are unprecedented in Finland. First, it observes that as in many other countries, the quantity of crime news supply has increased quite markedly in Finland. Second, it verifies that exposure to crime news is related to being worried about violent victimization and avoidance behaviour. Third, it documents that exposure to TV crime reality-programming is associated with reduced social trust among Finnish adolescents. Fourth, the analysis of Poliisi-TV shows that it transmits a distorted view of crime when contrasted with primary data sources on crime, but that this distortion is not as big as could be expected from international research findings and epochal theories of sociology. Fifth, the portrayals of violence victims in Poliisi-TV do not fit the traditional ideal types of victims that are usually seen to dominate crime media. The fact that the victims of violence in Poliisi-TV are ordinary people represents a wider development of the changing significance of the crime victim in Finland. The research concludes that although the media most likely did have an effect on the rising public fears in the 1990s, the mechanism was not as straight forward as has often been claimed. It is likely that there are other factors in the fear-media equation that are affecting both fear levels and crime reporting and that these factors are interactive in nature. Finally, the research calls for a re-orientation of media criminology and suggests more emphasis on the positive implications of crime in the media. Keywords: crime, media, fear of crime, violence, victimization, news

Bridging East and West : The Establishment of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in the United States Foreign Policy of Bridge Building, 1964-1972.

The dissertation examines the foreign policies of the United States through the prism of science and technology. In the focal point of scrutiny is the policy establishing the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and the development of the multilateral part of bridge building in American foreign policy during the 1960s and early 1970s. After a long and arduous negotiation process, the institute was finally established by twelve national member organizations from the following countries: Bulgaria, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), France, German Democratic Republic (GDR), Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Poland, Soviet Union and United States; a few years later Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands also joined. It is said that the goal of the institute was to bring together researchers from East and West to solve pertinent problems caused by the modernization process experienced in industrialized world. It originates from President Lyndon B. Johnson s bridge building policies that were launched in 1964, and was set in a well-contested and crowded domain of other international organizations of environmental and social planning. Since the distinct need for yet another organization was not evident, the process of negotiations in this multinational environment enlightens the foreign policy ambitions of the United States on the road to the Cold War détente. The study places this project within its political era, and juxtaposes it with other international organizations, especially that of the OECD, ECE and NATO. Conventionally, Lyndon Johnson s bridge building policies have been seen as a means to normalize its international relations bilaterally with different East European countries, and the multilateral dimension of the policy has been ignored. This is why IIASA s establishment process in this multilateral environment brings forth new information on US foreign policy goals, the means to achieve these goals, as well as its relations to other advanced industrialized societies before the time of détente, during the 1960s and early 1970s. Furthermore, the substance of the institute applied systems analysis illuminates the differences between European and American methodological thinking in social planning. Systems analysis is closely associated with (American) science and technology policies of the 1960s, especially in its military administrative applications, thus analysis within the foreign policy environment of the United States proved particularly fruitful. In the 1960s the institutional structures of European continent with faltering, and the growing tendencies of integration were in flux. One example of this was the long, drawn-out process of British membership in the EEC, another is de Gaulle s withdrawal from NATO s military-political cooperation. On the other hand, however, economic cooperation in Europe between East and West, and especially with the Soviet Union was expanding rapidly. This American initiative to form a new institutional actor has to be seen in that structural context, showing that bridge building was needed not only to the East, but also to the West. The narrative amounts to an analysis of how the United States managed both cooperation and conflict in its hegemonic aspirations in the emerging modern world, and how it used its special relationship with the United Kingdom to achieve its goals. The research is based on the archives of the United States, Great Britain, Sweden, Finland, and IIASA. The primary sources have been complemented with both contemporary and present day research literature, periodicals, and interviews.

Juoksuhaudoista yhteiskuntaan : Vuosien 1965-1975 sotilaallista maanpuolustusta ja puolustusvoimia koskevan joukkotiedotuksen diskursiivinen tarkastelu

The Finnish society developed rapidly in the 1960´s and 1970´s. This was result of international trends. Development of education, urbanization and wide organization of society increased discontent towards prevailing social structure and towards the power elite. Development of technology created possibility to present radical perspectives in mass media. This caused widely spread discussions dividing opinions. The purpose of this thesis was to complement research on national defence and the Finnish Defence Forces especially between years 1965 and 1975. The task of research was to clarify how changes in society and how the significance of this change was interpreted in public discussion about national defence and development of the Defence Forces. The most essential points for this thesis turned out to be discourses structured from public discussion. Main research material consisted of approximately 35000 news, editorials, articles and opinions presented in mass media supplemented by literature, committee reports and other archival sources. Frame of reference for this thesis is based on relativistic worldview. According to this, social reality is relative and there is no single truth. Environment has significant influence on the issue how knowledge and truth are formed. Data analysis was based on critical discourse. The key objective was to clarify the effects of broad changes in society using discursive methods. One essential goal was to form order of discourse using linguistic analysis and also connect discourses to wider sociocultural custom. On this thesis I came to the conclusion that on the review period there were five significant ensembles of discourse. They consisted of several discussions focused on different themes. The discourse of official security policy aimed to define national defence and the position of the Defence Forces as parts of foreign policy. Foreign policy is often perceived as the most significant part of security policy. Historical memory, geographical position of Finland and also the state contracts, changes in international warfare, tasks of the Defence Forces and increasing critic of national defence and the difference in thinking between generations formed the discourse of security policy. In the discourse of the liability to military service, the issue was about individual responsibility to society and national defence. Resisters and unarmed defence demands, encouraged by international examples were the themes. The discourse pointed out how mass media is used to influence and forced the Defence Forces to develop the practices in public information. The discourses of democracy and politics were closer to internal development of the Defence Forces to integrate more into society. The discourse of democracy focused in changing power relationships of the Defence Forces that were known as authoritarian. Issues like conscript and personnel union activity had lot of similarities to general social development. The discourse of politics presented how the Defence Forces were pushed towards parliamentary decision making. The personnel was granted the same rights as other population. Themes related to the discourse on the will to national defence were development of mental national defence, increasing education on national defence and creation of more open public information culture. According to discourses presented above I can state, that the position of the Defence Forces in society was changed between years 1965-1975. This change was advanced by the Defence Forces reformed attitude towards mass media and public information in general. Active participation in public information important became important instead of only answering topics. This positive development created an atmosphere, that was easier for the public to understand and create own pictures of the armed forces. Due to this, I can describe that the defenders and supporters of the armed forces were stuck in their trenches, until discussions presented in discourses and themes developed the Defence Forces to be better fitting part of society. Key words; society, national defence, Defence Forces, discourse, mass media, security policy, liability to military service, conscription, democracy

Expression of microinjected foreign DNA in silkworm,bombyx mori

As a prelude to achieving transgenesis in Bombyx mori, conditions have been established for successful microinjection of cloned foreign genes into the silk worm eggs. A sharpened metallic needle is used to pierce the thick chorion layer of the eggsheil, approaching through a droplet of DNA solution deposited on its surface. The microinjection is carried out within 2-2.5 h after oviposition and the injected eggs show 3-5% hatchability and 80-90% survival. Such larvae continuously expressed the microinjected cloned reporter gene, beta-galactosidase, placed under the control of a constitutively expressed cytoplasmic actin A3 gene promoter from B. mori. The expression is seen in different tissues, viz. the fat body, tracheae and the silk glands, till the late larval instars. The microinjected DNA sequences are retained in the adult G(o) moths.

Supervised matching of comments with news article segments

Comments constitute an important part of Web 2.0. In this paper, we consider comments on news articles. To simplify the task of relating the comment content to the article content the comments are about, we propose the idea of showing comments alongside article segments and explore automatic mapping of comments to article segments. This task is challenging because of the vocabulary mismatch between the articles and the comments. We present supervised and unsupervised techniques for aligning comments to segments the of article the comments are about. More specifically, we provide a novel formulation of supervised alignment problem using the framework of structured classification. Our experimental results show that structured classification model performs better than unsupervised matching and binary classification model.

Long-Term Sustained Release of Salicylic Acid from Cross-Linked Biodegradable Polyester Induces a Reduced Foreign Body Response in Mice

There has been a continuous surge toward developing new biopolymers that exhibit better in vivo biocompatibility properties in terms of demonstrating a reduced foreign body response (FBR). One approach to mitigate the undesired FBR is to develop an implant capable of releasing anti-inflammatory molecules in a sustained manner over a long time period. Implants causing inflammation are also more susceptible to infection. In this article, the in vivo biocompatibility of a novel, biodegradable salicylic acid releasing polyester (SAP) has been investigated by subcutaneous implantation in a mouse model. The tissue response to SAP was compared with that of a widely used biodegradable polymer, poly(lactic acid-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA), as a control over three time points: 2, 4, and 16 weeks postimplantation. A long-term in vitro study illustrates a continuous, linear (zero order) release of salicylic acid with a cumulative mass percent release rate of 7.34 x 10(-4) h(-1) over similar to 1.5-17 months. On the basis of physicochemical analysis, surface erosion for SAP and bulk erosion for PLGA have been confirmed as their dominant degradation modes in vivo. On the basis of the histomorphometrical analysis of inflammatory cell densities and collagen distribution as well as quantification of proinflammatory cytokine levels (TNF-alpha and IL-1 beta), a reduced foreign body response toward SAP with respect to that generated by PLGA has been unambiguously established. The favorable in vivo tissue response to SAP, as manifest from the uniform and well-vascularized encapsulation around the implant, is consistent with the decrease in inflammatory cell density and increase in angiogenesis with time. The above observations, together with the demonstration of long-term and sustained release of salicylic acid, establish the potential use of SAP for applications in improved matrices for tissue engineering and chronic wound healing.

Unsupervised training for mandarin broadcast news and conversation transcription

A significant cost in obtaining acoustic training data is the generation of accurate transcriptions. For some sources close-caption data is available. This allows the use of lightly-supervised training techniques. However, for some sources and languages close-caption is not available. In these cases unsupervised training techniques must be used. This paper examines the use of unsupervised techniques for discriminative training. In unsupervised training automatic transcriptions from a recognition system are used for training. As these transcriptions may be errorful data selection may be useful. Two forms of selection are described, one to remove non-target language shows, the other to remove segments with low confidence. Experiments were carried out on a Mandarin transcriptions task. Two types of test data were considered, Broadcast News (BN) and Broadcast Conversations (BC). Results show that the gains from unsupervised discriminative training are highly dependent on the accuracy of the automatic transcriptions. © 2007 IEEE.

The CU-HTK Mandarin broadcast news transcription system

This paper discusses the development of the CU-HTK Mandarin Broadcast News (BN) transcription system. The Mandarin BN task includes a significant amount of English data. Hence techniques have been investigated to allow the same system to handle both Mandarin and English by augmenting the Mandarin training sets with English acoustic and language model training data. A range of acoustic models were built including models based on Gaussianised features, speaker adaptive training and feature-space MPE. A multi-branch system architecture is described in which multiple acoustic model types, alternate phone sets and segmentations can be used in a system combination framework to generate the final output. The final system shows state-of-the-art performance over a range of test sets. ©2006 British Crown Copyright.