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Graphical representations of political issues and economic trends are an increasingly popular means of conveying information to the public. However, graphs have the potential to shape public opinion by visually emphasizing or downplaying the information they convey. I randomly assign subjects to view graphs that represent the same underlying information but that differ in relative emphasis: one is consistent with a textual account of rising inequality, while the other de-emphasizes the same information by increasing the scale of the Y-axis. My results indicate that graphical frames provide powerful contextual cues: for Republicans and conservatives, exposure to the de-emphasizing graph results in a 40% decrease in expressed support for intervention against inequality relative to Republicans and conservatives in the control condition, despite the fact that both groups read the same textual information. My findings reveal how an increasingly important and unexamined form of political communication affects public opinion, also suggesting promising avenues for future research.

Professional organizations now accredit state and local agencies across several fields. This article investigates the attitudes of street-level bureaucrats toward their agencies and the tasks required of them in accredited and nonaccredited agencies. If accreditation changes bureaucratic attitudes in ways that build a sense of mission or shape functional preferences, it could lead to more effective public service delivery. The empirical subjects of this study are American municipal police departments and the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEAs). Analysis of quasi-experimental data from a survey of officers suggests that accreditation helps build a sense of mission at the street level but finds little evidence of an effect on functional preferences. Adapted from the source document.

Professional organizations now accredit state and local agencies across several fields. This article investigates the attitudes of street-level bureaucrats toward their agencies and the tasks required of them in accredited and nonaccredited agencies. If accreditation changes bureaucratic attitudes in ways that build a sense of mission or shape functional preferences, it could lead to more effective public service delivery. The empirical subjects of this study are American municipal police departments and the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEAs). Analysis of quasi-experimental data from a survey of officers suggests that accreditation helps build a sense of mission at the street level but finds little evidence of an effect on functional preferences.

Agency accreditation has grown steadily as a management strategy in recent decades. Accreditation is meant to help professionalize public administration work by requiring an agency to adopt policies and practices that are sanctioned by an external organization. Advocates claim that accreditation facilitates the diffusion of best practices and builds a culture of professionalism in an agency. Accreditation clearly leads agencies to adopt formal policies. This article identifies two ways in which accreditation might affect organizational culture: (1) by socializing employees, and (2) by signaling the agency's priorities to employees. Analyzing attitudinal data from officers in six American police departments, this study finds no association between accreditation and officers' own values, but finds that accreditation is strongly correlated with officers' perceptions of their agencies' priorities.

Scotland is unusual among nations with active research programs into sea urchin cultivation, in that despite having native edible species, there has not been a major fishery for sea urchins in recent times. Sea urchin aquaculture research is conducted by two laboratories in Scotland: since 1995 at the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) in Oban and more recently at Ardtoe Marine Laboratory (AML). SAMS has worked on larval culture methods, artificial diets, gonad enhancement, and grow out methods for Psammechinus miliaris, Echinus esculentus, and Paracentrotus lividus and conducted detailed studies of diet, gonadal fatty acid profiles, and carotenoid content. Over the years funding for the research has come from a wide variety of sources, including local and national government and the European Commission (EC). SAMS and AML work in partnership with local companies, mostly small to medium sized enterprises, and collaborate with researchers across Europe and globally.

AbstractAnalyzing audiovisual communication is challenging because its content is highly symbolic and less rule-governed than verbal material. But audiovisual messages are important to understand: they amplify, enrich, and complicate the meaning of textual information. We describe a fully-reproducible approach to analyzing video content using minimally—but systematically—trained online workers. By aggregating the work of multiple coders, we achieve reliability, validity, and costs that equal those of traditional, intensively trained research assistants, with much greater speed, transparency, and replicability. We argue that measurement strategies relying on the "wisdom of the crowd" provide unique advantages for researchers analyzing complex and intricate audiovisual political content.

AbstractSubstantial evidence exists that members of the US Congress vary in their lawmaking effectiveness. Less known, however, is whether constituents are sufficiently informed and inclined to hold their representatives accountable, based on their effectiveness. We conduct two separate survey experiments, informing some constituents about lawmakers' effectiveness and comparing their responses to those with the baseline level of information. We find that voters demonstrate little knowledge of their elected officials' lawmaking effectiveness. When presented with objective and credible information about lawmaking effectiveness, however, respondents express greater approval of more effective lawmakers. Effects are strongest among ideological moderates, but are even pronounced among partisans, who approve of effective representatives of the opposing party, and disapprove of ineffective representatives from their own party.

"The Commonwealth Blue Economy Series aims to support the development of the blue economy in Commonwealth member countries by providing a high-level assessment of the opportunities available for economic diversification and sustainable growth in small island developing states (SIDS). This second volume, Aquaculture, explores the potential for the development of a blue economy mariculture industry, as well as specific enabling conditions that could assist in moving towards economic reality where opportunities exist." - Provided by publisher

Social media data can provide new insights into political phenomena, but users do not always represent people, posts and accounts are not typically linked to demographic variables for use as statistical controls or in subgroup comparisons, and activities on social media can be difficult to interpret. For data scientists, adding demographic variables and comparisons to closed-ended survey responses have the potential to improve interpretations of inferences drawn from social media—for example, through comparisons of online expressions and survey responses, and by assessing associations with offline outcomes like voting. For survey methodologists, adding social media data to surveys allows for rich behavioral measurements, including comparisons of public expressions with attitudes elicited in a structured survey. Here, we evaluate two popular forms of linkages—administrative and survey—focusing on two questions: How does the method of creating a sample of Twitter users affect its behavioral and demographic profile? What are the relative advantages of each of these methods? Our analyses illustrate where and to what extent the sample based on administrative data diverges in demographic and partisan composition from surveyed Twitter users who report being registered to vote. Despite demographic differences, each linkage method results in behaviorally similar samples, especially in activity levels; however, conventionally sized surveys are likely to lack the statistical power to study subgroups and heterogeneity (e.g., comparing conversations of Democrats and Republicans) within even highly salient political topics. We conclude by developing general recommendations for researchers looking to study social media by linking accounts with external benchmark data sources.

Fisheries products are globally traded commodities, which have led to varying degrees of social and economic dependency for producing regions. These dependencies become more evident at times of major demand or supply shocks. Resilience to such shocks is intertwined with, and rooted in, the intra-sectoral structure and governance frameworks. This work analyses two large-scale, capital-intensive and export-oriented seafood sectors: Atlantic salmon and North-east Atlantic mackerel, responded to the environmental, economic and geopolitical shocks accompanying their development, from a UK perspective. Intra-firm controls are identified as elements, which have delivered resilience and strength in these two sectors. This work highlights the central, yet different role of the UK government in increasing their resilience and underlying producing regions. Our work contributes to the broader context of regional development and changing global food demand identifying both domestic and external threats to sustainability. Our approach aims to expand the debate around seafood production from 'food security' to a transdisciplinary analysis, which incorporates wider economic, social, and ecological sustainability aspects.