Thesis (Ph. D.)--Michigan State University. Dept. of Communication, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Mar. 27, 2009). Includes bibliographical references (p. 120-128). Also issued in print.

Thesis (M.A.) - Carleton University, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 55-64). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Background: A serious problem in the work environment are threats and violence. This is a growing problem in health care. Workplaces providing mental health care is one of the workplaces that is at risk of exposure. Nurses may suffer from severe psychological and physical consequences afterwards. Aim: The aim of the study was to describe nurses' experiences of threats and violence in the field of mental health care. Method: The study was conducted at a hospital in southern Sweden. Ten nurses were interviewed for 30-60 minutes. The interviews were recorded in order to be written down later. The material was subjected to qualitative content analysis. Results: The processed material was subdivided into four categories: The view on threats and violence, approach to threats and violence over time, reactions on threats and violence and safety-creating factors. Everyone in the study had been exposed to threats and violence at work. Nurses described that with growing work experience, their approach to meet threats and violence changed. They were not as much affected as they were in the beginning of their work, and rather stood back instead of entering into confrontation with the patients. Experienced staff, education and secure premises are some of the factors to increase safety to staff. Conclusion: Working within psychiatric in-patient care department inevitably entails coming into contact with threats and / or violence at some point. Patients with a variety of psychiatric disorders may have difficulties expressing their needs in an appropriate manner. One last resort, when a patient is lacking a feeling of being understood, can be to communicate his needs through threats and violence. Linking a patient's behavior to his illness often helps nurses to gain a better understanding of why the patient is acting out.

Risk analysis shows us what can happen, why it can happen, how it can happen, where it can happen and whom it will be affected. Risk analysis should bring an answer to the question of what action the city is subjected to threats, how much the city vulnerable to these threats, how can it be a high probability that the threat exploits a certain vulnerability and what impact it would have on the city could have. The general aim of the thesis was analysis of risk municipalities with extended powers Tyn nad Vltavou. The theoretical part was generally described legislation that is closely concerned with the issue of crisis management is very complex and is treated long line of laws, government regulations, as well as implementing regulations. Also, the basic concepts related to the issue of crisis management. Furthermore, in this thesis in theoretical part explains what they are threats and risks. The threat and risk becoming key concepts of security terminology. These concepts are closely linked and work together, so sometimes are confused or incorrectly used. On the basis of an analysis of the security environment in which the Czech Republic is, to identify specific threats to its security - security threats. It is listed here as well as the types of crisis situations, which are the basis for contingency planning. The methodical approach of risk analysis and the effectiveness of risk analysis is provided in relation to the selection methods of analysis and for what purpose can be selected. Another point is the emergency planning. Emergency planning is a preventive instrument whose sole aim is to identify existing risks and to raise awareness of possible risks in a given area, minimizing the harmful effects of emergencies on the lives and health of people, livestock, environmental, cultural and property, lay down measures to prevent or limiting the effects of the incident and the possible way of removing consequences. Mention is also emergency plan, structure and use of the municipality with extended powers. Another part is the crisis management of the municipality with extended powers. Area of crisis management from the perspective of the potential of state administration at the level of municipalities with extended powers is marked by the high complexity of dealing with the likely threat, because there are intertwined with all legal norms, regulations, decrees, instructions and guidelines. An important component of the theoretical part happens to the organizational rules of the municipal office of a municipality with extended powers in relation to the characteristics of the municipality with extended competence in crisis management and in a normal state. In terms of location analyzed town Tyn nad Vltavou was necessary mention of nuclear safety, radioactivity and princ iple of operation of the nuclear power plant. The practical part focuses on the gathering of available internal and general information and documentation concerning the town Tyn nad Vltavou and its surroundings and analysis of regulations, documents and methodologies related to the town Tyn nad Vltavou and its surroundings. The practical part presents characteristics of the administrative district of municipalities with extended powers Tyn nad Vltavou, the sociodemographic conditions, agricultural land resources, protection of the landscape and monuments, hygiene, environment, transport infrastructure, housing and recreation. It also states the threats and risks of the city and its surroundings, the composition of the Crisis Staff, Security Council and flood the city authorities. There is a risk analysis method KARS and given a semi-structured interview with a representative of the crisis management of the city. Processing and evaluation of acquired and now these results was performed in MS Word, MS Excel.

This study focuses on contrasting responses to two highly provocative acts from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: Ariel Sharon's controversial visit to the Temple Mount in February 2000, and a Palestinian terrorist cell's suicide bombing of a nightclub in Tel Aviv in 2005. Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount in 2000 led to the second intifada, the bloodiest outbreak of violence in the conflict's recent history. However, what followed the suicide attack in Tel Aviv in 2005 were several weeks of restraint from both sides. This study positions media texts as antecedents and consequents to these two key focal points in history and examines their content. The central method for the study is quantitative content analysis. Three newspapers were selected primarily for their ability to set the public agenda: English editions of the Israeli Haaretz and Jerusalem Post, and the Palestinian Al-Quds, translated into English from its original Arabic. The corpus for the study comprised 820 news and opinion articles about Arab-Israeli relations from one week of articles from each side of Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount and one week of articles from each side of the suicide bombing. Media texts were coded for two operationally defined constructs: inflammatory words and conciliatory words. Inflammatory words were fighting words symptomatic of violent and aggressive behavior. Conciliatory words were related to pacification, symptomatic of appeasing, and passive behavior. Built-in dictionaries of Diction, Version 6.14.5, a software program, were used to confirm the validity of the two principal constructs. Results confirmed the newspapers' propensity to focus on violent news and also suggested that media content is likely to be shaped and influenced by acts of violence on the ground. Results also supported speech-act theory and indicated that inflammatory or violent texts in the media perform the functions of agenda-setting or news-framing and potentially cultivate violent behavior among readers. The constructs of inflammatory and conciliatory words and their application in constructing a practical Threat Index are among the key contributions of this study.

This study examined the role of autonomy support (AS) in the relationship between stereotype threat (ST) and performance on a subset of the Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices (RSPM) using a 2 x 2 factorial design. It was hypothesized that: 1. There would be significantly fewer correct answers in ST conditions compared to non-ST conditions, 2. There would be a significantly higher number of correct answers in AS conditions compared to non-AS conditions, 3.The relationship between ST conditions and performance would be moderated by AS conditions 206 African American college students from a mid-sized Midwestern university participated in the study. Performance, measured by the overall number of correct items answered from a set of 14 problems from the RSPM and also difficult and easy subsets of these problems, was the dependent variable and participants also completed a survey. Participants in ST conditions performed better than those in non-ST conditions. There was no difference in performance for participants in AS and non-AS conditions. High academic identified participants in AS conditions performed significantly better than similar participants in non-AS conditions on all items. Low academic identified participants in ST conditions performed better than those in non-ST conditions, only on easy items. These results provide information on the role of AS and item difficulty in stereotype threat situations.

abstract: Existing work suggests that intergroup negativity is caused by dissimilarities of values between groups. In contrast, I propose that incompatible values--regardless of whether they are similar or dissimilar--cause intergroup negativities. Because values act as cues to tangible goals and interests, groups' values suggest desired outcomes that may conflict with our own (i.e., incompatible values). The current study conceptually and empirically disentangles value-dissimilarity and value-incompatibility, which were confounded in previous research. Results indicated that intergroup negativities were strongly predicted by value-incompatibility, and only weakly and inconsistently predicted by value-dissimilarity. I further predicted that groups' values cue specific threats and opportunities to perceivers and that, in reaction to these inferred affordances, people will experience threat-relevant, specific emotional reactions (e.g., anger, disgust); however, results did not support this prediction. I also predicted that, because the inferred threats that groups pose to one another are not always symmetric, the negativities between groups may sometimes be asymmetric (i.e., Group A feels negatively toward Group B, but Group B feels neutral or positively toward Group A). This prediction received strong support. In sum, reframing our understanding of values as cues to conflicts-of-interest between groups provides principles for understanding intergroup prejudices in more nuanced ways. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Psychology 2017

Social media analytics is a critical research area spawned by the increasing availability of rich and abundant online user-generated content. So far, social media analytics has had a profound impact on organizational decision making in many aspects, including product and service design, market segmentation, customer relationship management, and more. However, the cybersecurity sector is behind other sectors in benefiting from the business intelligence offered by social media analytics. Given the role of hacker communities in cybercrimes and the prevalence of hacker communities, there is an urgent need for developing hacker social media analytics capable of gathering cyber threat intelligence from hacker communities for exchanging hacking knowledge and tools. My dissertation addressed two broad research questions: (1) How do we help organizations gain cyber threat intelligence through social media analytics on hacker communities? And (2) how do we advance social media analytics research by developing innovative algorithms and models for hacker communities? Using cyber threat intelligence as a guiding principle, emphasis is placed on the two major components in hacker communities: threat actors and their cybercriminal assets. To these ends, the dissertation is arranged in two parts. The first part of the dissertation focuses on gathering cyber threat intelligence on threat actors. In the first essay, I identify and profile two types of key sellers in hacker communities: malware sellers and stolen data sellers, both of which are responsible for data breach incidents. In the second essay, I develop a method for recovering social interaction networks, which can be further used for detecting major hacker groups, and identifying their specialties and key members. The second part of the dissertation seeks to develop cyber threat intelligence on cybercriminal assets. In the third essay, a novel supervised topic model is proposed to further address the language complexities in hacker communities. In the fourth essay, I propose the development of an innovative emerging topic detection model. Models, frameworks, and design principles developed in this dissertation not only advance social media analytics research, but also broadly contribute to IS security application and design science research.

In a series of experiments, with a total sample of over 2,400 participants, this thesis investigates how various threats that customers may encounter influence the customers’ subsequent purchase and choice behaviors. Furthermore, this thesis examines whether individuals’ predicted behaviors in certain consumer contexts are congruent with customers’ actual behaviors in these very contexts. Paper I takes an evolutionary approach and investigates whether a status threat to male customers, induced by exposure to physically dominant men, results in compensatory consumption of products that signal status through price or size. Paper II takes a reactance-based approach and examines whether customers whose freedom to touch has been threatened compensate by touching, and ultimately purchasing, a larger number of products. Paper III investigates whether threats to customers’ self-control in one domain influence choice behavior and consumption preferences in another unrelated domain. More specifically, the paper examines whether exposure to attractive opposite-sex faces (and hence a subtle activation of sexual desire and its associated pleasure-seeking mindset) makes individuals more motivated to choose and consume unhealthy-but-rewarding foods.      The main findings of this work can be summarized as follows: Consumer threats result in compensatory consumption, not only in the specific domain under threat, but also in unrelated or only symbolically similar domains. Such compensatory responses are in direct contrast to consumer lay beliefs and even the predictions made by marketing professors and other scholars, which suggests that people are generally unaware of the impact that certain threats have on their behavior. These results should be as interesting for customers who want to make informed choices and resist various influence attempts as for marketers, advertisers, and retail managers who want to influence customers. / In a series of experiments, this thesis investigates how threats that customers may encounter influence their subsequent purchase and choice behaviors. Moreover, this thesis examines whether individuals’ predicted behaviors are congruent with customers’ actual behaviors in certain consumer contexts. Paper I investigates whether a status threat to male customers, induced by physically dominant men, results in compensatory consumption of products that signal status through price or size. Paper II examines whether customers whose freedom to touch has been threatened compensate by touching, and ultimately purchasing, more products. Paper III investigates whether attractive opposite-sex faces threaten individuals’ self-control, thereby making them more motivated to choose and consume unhealthy-but-rewarding foods. The results reveal that consumer threats do indeed lead to compensatory consumption. Such compensatory responses are in direct contrast to lay beliefs and even predictions made by marketing professors, suggesting that people are generally unaware of the impact certain threats have on their behavior. These results should be as interesting for customers trying to make informed choices as for marketers, advertisers, and retail managers trying to influence customers.

Strong social ties correspond with better health and well being, but the neural mechanisms linking social contact to health remain speculative. This study extends work on the social regulation of brain activity by supportive handholding in 110 participants (51 female) of diverse racial and socioeconomic origins. In addition to main effects of social regulation by handholding, we assessed the moderating effects of both perceived social support and relationship status (married, cohabiting, dating or platonic friends). Results suggest that, under threat of shock, handholding by familiar relational partners attenuates both subjective distress and activity in a network associated with salience, vigilance and regulatory self-control. Moreover, greater perceived social support corresponded with less brain activity in an extended network associated with similar processes, but only during partner handholding. In contrast, we did not observe any regulatory effects of handholding by strangers, and relationship status did not moderate the regulatory effects of partner handholding. These findings suggest that contact with a familiar relational partner is likely to attenuate subjective distress and a variety of neural responses associated with the presence of threat. This effect is likely enhanced by an individual's expectation of the availability of support from their wider social network.