Testing Cognitive Models to Characterize Trauma Anniversary Reactions Marked by Stress and Growth

Objective: Contemporary theories conceptualize the anniversary of a traumatic event as a trauma reminder capable of activating posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. The current study uses the cognitive stress and growth model to examine this model’s usefulness in characterizing anniversary reactions. Method: Participants ( N = 197) were MTurk workers who endorsed an “emotionally charged reaction on or near the anniversary of a tragic event.” They completed assessments of PTSD, posttraumatic growth (PTG), sense of control, rumination, and trauma centrality. Results: Multiple regression analyses found both anniversary-related stress and PTSD symptoms were associated with similar factors with similar magnitude across both outcomes. Trauma centrality was uniquely associated with anniversary-related PTG. Conclusions: Anniversaries marked by stress are characterized by factors similar to PTSD generally, but growth-related reactions have different correlates compared to PTG outside the reaction. These findings suggest the anniversary period may be a time of self-reflection about the event and its impact.

Maternal mortality-a three-year retrospective study in a rural medical college of India

Background: Maternal mortality is a tragic event as family revolves around a mother. The deadly obstetrical triad of hemorrhage, preeclampsia and infection has accounted for a third of all deaths. This study was conducted to assess maternal mortality ratio, demographic profile and causes of maternal death.Methods: This retrospective longitudinal study was conducted in the department of obstetrics and gynecology for a period of three years from 1st January 2018-31st December, 2020. Total no of death during this period was 134.Records of deaths and demographic profiles were retrieved from the medical record library of aforesaid hospital.Results: There were 134 maternal deaths amongst 56815 live births with MMR 235.85. The majority of deaths were in 20-29 year of age group and most of the deaths seen in multigravida. The 91.79% death was observed within the 24 hours and after 72 hours. Eclampsia, preeclampsia and hemorrhage were leading cause of maternal death seen in the study.Conclusions: Maternal mortality is higher than national MMR. Majority of maternal death were preventable by proper antenatal care, early detection of high-risk pregnancies and their timely referral to tertiary care centre.

The Academic Impacts of 2015 Nepal Earthquake: Evidence from Two Secondary Schools in Sindhupalchok District

How do natural disasters affect academic performance? Despite numerous studies having been conducted after the 2015 Nepal earthquake, the academic impacts of this tragic event have rarely been explored. Applying the OLS estimation on the microdata collected through a questionnaire survey among 189 secondary school students of two secondary schools in one of the hardest-hit rural villages, we found that students’ average annual test scores dropped by 7% after the earthquake. Human losses measured by the incidence of death or injury and economic losses proxied by the level of house damage in a respondent’s family were found to be significant in the decline in the annual test scores of the respondents. Because secondary schools are usually not very close for most of the students in rural mountainous communities, we controlled for time taken to reach school, which was also found to significantly increase the magnitude of the drop in the test score. However, students’ level of happiness measured using the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire (OHQ) and the mother’s level of education were found to be significant in reducing the magnitude of the drop in the test score of students. The findings suggest more support is needed for students who faced higher levels of human and economic loss in their family.

The problem of dissolution of the Soviet Union in the narratives of Russian political parties

The dissolution of the Soviet Union is one of the key events in the history of Russia. The USSR ceased to exist, which prompted the beginning of the history of modern Russia. The political parties of the Russian Federation have formed the own historical memory of the event, as well as offered the original approaches towards the collapse of the USSR. The author analyzes the perspective of modern parties on the crisis of the Soviet model, their attitude towards the dissolution of the USSR, as well as assessment of the historical figures of that period. The official documents of the most popular political parties, as well as speeches and publications of their leaders served as the sources for this research. Although all political parties perceive the collapse of the Soviet Union as a tragic event that could have been avoided, there are different opinions on the causes. The three groups of factors that contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union are determined: economic problems; administrative crisis due to political errors of the government; and international conspiracy. The communist organizations mostly adhere to the latter one. The historical politics of the parties is dominated by an extremely critical attitude towards the central historical figures of the Soviet era. The members of the State Emergency Committee receive limited support in the historical narratives of the Communist Party, and such is given to the President of the USSR in liberal publications. The parties drew parallels between the present time and the period of Perestroika. The conclusion is made on the need to overcome (or prevent) the gap between the government and society, keep confidence of the citizens in the government in order to avoid the recurrence of devastating events.

Death Alive: The Challenges of Live Reporting On Disasters and Tragedies

Given that recordings of wars, terrorist attacks, earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, and other tragic and catastrophic events have become commonplace and ubiquitous in the modern mediated world, this paper questions the importance and role of the media as a mediator in distributing these recordings to the public. The role of the media in providing credible information in situations of crisis is very important, but also difficult, especially when it comes to live reporting, when there is no possibility to control the situation and when no one can know whether we will see death or hear it live. The paper uses a case study of two regional news televisions (N1 and Al Jazeera Balkans) reporting on the earthquake inPetrinja (Croatia), to show the weight of dilemmas and challenges that a journalist faces when he experiences, sees, and records a tragic event, and must report about it immediately - ethically, professionally and objectively. The aim of the paper is therefore to point out the reality of the journalistic profession in which sometimes, not with the intention of relativizing journalistic objectivity, there may still be a gap between ideals and practice.

Collective Bargaining Misjudged: The Marikana Massacre

The tradition of violence during collective bargaining processes in South Africa (particularly during a strike) can be traced back to the colonial period, where the struggle for better employment terms and conditions was conflated with the struggle for freedom from political oppression, apartheid and the colonial regime. An example in this regard is the Sharpeville uprising. In this case, the State’s reaction to the uprising was to call upon the armed forces to quell the situation, and in the process, lives and limbs were lost; nobody was held accountable for this. This was surely a bad legacy to leave for modern times! However, fifty-two years later, South Africa experienced a déja vu moment in the form of the Marikana massacre, which was also chillingly reminiscent of the massacre by apartheid police at Sharpeville in 1960. The writing of this article is informed by the need to avoid another Marikana massacre. The authors bemoan the manner in which this tragic event was handled and argue that, with the right attitude and the right application of resources, the massacre could have been avoided. The authors also lament the approach employed in dealing with the aftermath of the Marikana massacre and conclude that the status quo gives credence to the saying that “an apple does not fall far from the tree”. The prosecution of the perpetrators is delayed, no compensation is given to bereft families, and it remains to be seen who was at fault, even after a “good-for-nothing” yet costly Commission of Inquiry has completed its task.

Modelling the Degree of Emotional Concern: COVID-19 Response in Social Media

The massive impact caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has left no one indifferent, becoming an unprecedented challenge. The use of protections such as sanitary masks has become increasingly common, restrictions in our daily lives, such as social distancing or confinements, have had serious consequences on the economy and our welfare state. Although the measures imposed throughout the world follow the same pattern, they have been applied with different criteria depending on the country. Over extended periods of time, people tend to change their perception of an event and its magnitude, or in other words, they stop being so concerned despite the seriousness of the matter. In this paper, we introduce a new metric to quantify the degree of emotional concern of people being affected by a topic, and we confirm how populations from different countries follow this trend of downplaying the effect of the pandemic and reach a state of indifference. To do this, we propose a method to analyze the social media stream over time extracting the different emotional states from the Russel Circumplex plane and computing the shifting created by the tragic event—the pandemic. We complete this metric by incorporating searching behavior to reflect not only push contents but also pull inquiries. The resulting metric establishes a relationship between the pandemic and the emotional response by defining the degree of Emotional Concern. Although the method can be applied to any location with a significant and varied amount of geo-localized social media streams, the scope of this paper covers the most representative cities in Europe.

On the problem of framing the tragic event in the zone of military-political tension in the reportage discourse of ideologically alternative media

The research – based on the material of the Russian and American daily print publications – systematically analyzed alternative forms of coverage of the incident with the MH17 airliner that crashed near Donetsk on July 17, 2014. It is revealed that in the publications under consideration, when reporting a tragic event, the same frames with conflicting conceptual content are activated. The basis of the conflict is the ideological stereotypes that the publications adhere to. The qualitative analysis has shown that in the media with different ideological attitudes, during the reconstruction of the tragedy, the frames of opponents are used in order to refute their implicit conceptual content. As a result, the Russian and American media cover the tragic eventfulness in a contrasting way. The same frames used by the alternative media reproduce the dramatic event with the Boeing MH17 in a mirror way: each of the publications blames the ideological antagonist for the incident. The watershed line between the concepts of reportage framing and propaganda is blurred. As a result, taking into account the geopolitical factor, it is possible to determine similar and differentiating features between the strategic narratives of the Russian and American media. The relevance of the research is seen in the need to determine the content of the frames identified in a discursive work about tragic events and their impact potential on the target audience. This relevance is based on the distinction between the basic and additional content of mass media frames in terms of the expression of alternative opinions on the issues under discussion. It contributes to the clarifying such concepts as «impartial coverage of current events», «language specifics of analytical discourse in the post-truth era», «deliberate restriction of the amount of information and the choice of sources for recreating the event canvas». The discussion between the Russian and American media regarding the MH17 tragedy reflects the reportage management of journalists who occupy contrasting ideological positions, and captures the logic of shaping the political agenda in a globalizing and at the same time disunited world.

“An Unfinished Story”: Genealogy of the Kielce Pogrom Victims (Selected Problems and New Research Possibilities)

The article examines the usefulness of the genealogical method in research on the Kielce pogrom. An analysis of the stories of individual people – victims of the pogrom will reveal a broader background of this tragic event. In the text, we will also try to answer some important research questions. Is the list of victims complete? Does it include the names of people who did not, in fact, perish during the pogrom? In addition, the article presents new research areas within the described issues.