Better eyewitness lineup improves accuracy, detecting innocence

Peer-Reviewed Publication

IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: NYDIA AYALA, LEFT, AND ANDREW SMITH IN PSYCHOLOGY HAVE DEVELOPED A REVISED METHOD FOR AN EYEWITNESS LINEUP. view more 

CREDIT: CHRISTOPHER GANNON/IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY

AMES, IA – Iowa State researchers have developed a new procedure to capture more information from eyewitnesses during police investigations and better detect a suspect's guilt or innocence.

During a typical eyewitness lineup, police display a “six pack” of photos. One is the police suspect. The other five are “fillers;” they fit the description of the culprit, but the investigators know they are innocent. The witness selects the person who best matches their memory or rejects the whole lineup if they don’t think the culprit is present. Investigators following best practices then ask the witness to rate how confident they are in their decision.

Previous studies have found a high confidence rating from eyewitnesses (i.e., 90% or more) implies greater accuracy. But when an eyewitness picks a filler or rejects the whole lineup, which happens in an estimated 24% and 35% of lineups, respectively, investigators miss out on potentially valuable evidence.

“The standard eyewitness line-up is a helpful tool for investigators, but it could be better and provide a lot more information,” said Andrew Smith, a cognitive psychologist and assistant professor at Iowa State.

Smith and Nydia Ayala, a fourth-year Ph.D. student, are interested in memory and decision-making in the context of the criminal justice system. Over the last three years, they’ve developed and repeatedly tested what they call the “Simultaneous Lineup Plus Rule Out Procedure.” Their latest study, published in Psychology, Public Policy and Law, adds to their findings that the procedure improves the accuracy of lineups and can help inform investigations.

Enhancing, not erasing

“One of the benefits of the rule out procedure is it’s highly feasible,” said Ayala. “We're not asking investigators to stop doing standard simultaneous lineups with six packs. We’re just asking them to tack six confidence questions onto the end."

With the researchers’ proposed change, eyewitnesses would still make an initial selection or rejection of the whole lineup and give a confidence rating for their decision. But then they’d look again at each of the photos they did not select from the first round and answer: how confident are you this is not the culprit?

“This ensures that even when a witness picks a filler or rejects a lineup, they still tell police something that speaks directly to the likelihood that the suspect is guilty or innocent. We’re not getting that with the standard lineup,” said Smith.

To show how this could be beneficial, Ayala gave the example of an eyewitness who selects the second face in a six pack with 60% confidence. If the second face was a filler, police following the standard lineup procedure would not receive any information about their suspect, the fourth face. With the new method, the eyewitness might look at the fourth face in the lineup and say the individual was not the culprit with 100% confidence. This could indicate that the police’s suspect is innocent.

“If cops use this procedure, they're going to do much better at knowing if they’re on the right track or need to go back to the drawing board,” said Smith. “It might also make for compelling evidence in court cases when defense lawyers have a witness who is able to say, ‘I’m 100% sure it is not that guy.’”

Results

In the researchers’ latest study, 3,281 participants watched a 90-second simulated crime video. The culprit’s face was in view for 45 seconds. After, the participants worked on word scrambles for four-five minutes to prevent them from rehearsing the image of the culprit. The researchers explained this was built into the experiment to mimic the natural passage of time real eyewitness experience between viewing a crime and completing a lineup.

The participants were randomly assigned to the standard lineup or rule out procedure and informed that they may or may not see the culprit from the video among the photographs.

With the standard lineup experiment, the researchers found that 11% of the participants who viewed a lineup that did not include the culprit were 100% confident in rejecting the whole lineup. They were accurate 81% of the time. But with the rule out procedure, nearly half (43%) of the participants said they were 100% confident that the innocent suspect was not the culprit, and their accuracy increased to 87%.

“That bump in accuracy from 81% to 87% was relatively small, but it’s not the whole story because the rule out procedure also drastically kicked up the number of people who can give high confidence rejections, which are highest in accuracy,” said Smith.

Essentially, the rule out procedure could mean more witnesses are able to indicate the likelihood that the suspect is guilty or innocent. Smith and Ayala say it’s time for the criminal justice system to move beyond standard lineups and adopt the rule out procedure.

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JOURNAL

Psychology Public Policy and Law

DOI

10.1037/mac0000018 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

The rule-out procedure: Increasing the potential for police investigators to detect suspect innocence from eyewitness lineup procedures.

Digital revolution inspires new research direction in ecosystem structural diversity

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PURDUE UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: A SPECIAL ISSUE OF THE JOURNAL FRONTIERS IN ECOLOGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT HIGHLIGHTS HOW A REVOLUTION IN DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY HAS CREATED THE NEED FOR A NEW RESEARCH FRAMEWORK TO ASSESS THE ECOLOGICAL ROLE OF STRUCTURAL DIVERSITY. PURDUE UNIVERSITY PHOTO/SONGLIN FEW view more 

CREDIT: PURDUE UNIVERSITY PHOTO/SONGLIN FEI

 WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — A special issue of the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment lays the foundation for pursuing structural diversity as a new research direction in ecology. The issue, funded by the National Science Foundation, also describes the digital data collection methods that enable the new research direction, and the applications of the work in various ecosystems.

   “Structural diversity is thinking about what elements occupy a space and how they have been arranged in the space,” said the special issue’s lead editor, Songlin Fei, a professor of forestry and natural resources and the Dean’s Chair of Remote Sensing at Purdue. “The hope is that we’re providing a framework that can be applied regardless of the system that you’re working in, from terrestrial to aquatic.”

   As Fei and three co-editors wrote in their overview, the special issue’s contributions “provide a new framework for structural diversity, new applications to ecological theory, and case studies.”

   The co-editors were Purdue’s Brady Hardiman, associate professor of urban ecology in Purdue’s Department of Forestry and Natural Resources; Elizabeth LaRue, assistant professor of biological sciences at the University of Texas at El Paso; and Kyla Dahlin, associate professor of geography, environment and spatial sciences at Michigan State University.

   Six of the seven lead authors in the special issue are early-career scientists who are developing applications for the 3D technologies that could result in new ecological theories. These technologies include light detection and ranging (lidar), and data sensors mounted on drones and satellites.

   “Adopting these emerging digital tools and technologies will enable the next generation of ecologists to gracefully operate a fleet of sensors to measure ecosystems and swim freely in the resulting ocean of data,” the editors wrote.

   Such methods form the basis of Purdue’s new Center for Digital Forestry, which Fei directs. As one of the five strategic investments in Purdue’s Next Moves, the center leverages digital technology and multidisciplinary expertise to measure, monitor and manage urban and rural forests to maximize social, economic and ecological benefits.

   “In the past, as scientists we measured the Earth as a flat entity,” said LaRue, a former postdoctoral researcher mentored by Fei and Hardiman. “That’s in part because we didn’t have good technology to measure 3D aspects of the planet.”

   Those aspects include elevation differences and fine-scale features such as the branching patterns of trees. Previously, researchers had to make such measurements by hand.

   “The technology is rapidly advancing. We need to catch up on the science and the theory that are being enabled by these 3D technologies,” she said. 

   The special issue notes that despite key work already started in forestry, more needs to be done in ecosystem types like wetlands, grasslands and marine ecosystems.

“Our knowledge is still quite limited about structural diversity in different ecosystem types,” LaRue said.     

Traditionally, scientists have sought to measure biodiversity by counting species and assessing their genetic diversity.

   “These existing measures come back to this basic question: How much of the available ecological space has been occupied by different organisms?” Hardiman said. “The more ecological space that has been occupied by different species, the more stable the system might be, because missing one species would not cause the collapse of the system.”

   But with the new 3D digital technologies, researchers can now quickly determine the layered arrangement of species within an environment, along with their size and number. Such capabilities benefit land managers as well as researchers. Managers now can often collect higher-quality data much faster and at less expense to help their decision-making. Sometimes they can simply use a cellphone app to make measurements that previously required a tape measure.

   The editors and authors of the special issue highlight four challenges that researchers need to address to realize the full potential of such digital advances in ecology. 

   The first challenge is for ecologists and environmental scientists to collaborate more extensively with colleagues in other specialties. The needed expertise ranges from aviation technology, engineering and computer science to graphic design, information science and the social sciences. 

   The second challenge is to apply supercomputers, cloud computing, machine learning and artificial intelligence to process the massive 3D data sets that digital technology now generates.     

   “A lot of the data we work with is publicly accessible and available,” Fei said. But researchers sometimes lack the expertise to take advantage of it. “They don’t have the computational capacity or the right tools to handle it,” he said.

   The third challenge is to adopt new approaches to better assess the hundreds of variables in ecosystem structure that 3D data sets now often present. Instead of depending on traditional hypothesis testing, the editorial team recommended that researchers should take data-driven approaches or combine the two.

   And finally, the editors emphasized the critical importance of training the next generation of ecologists in digital technology.

“New data-oriented skills such as acquisition, visualization, analysis, and management of large datasets must become essential parts of ecological training,” they wrote.

3D structural diversity in southern New Mexico

These images contain 3D data collected by drone-mounted sensors. The images compare structural diversity in a native grassland (top) with an area invaded by shrubs after cattle grazing (bottom) in the Jornada Experimental Range of southern New Mexico. The invaded area shows higher structural diversity.

CREDIT

Photo courtesy of Elizabeth LaRue/University of Texas at El Paso

JOURNAL

Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment

DOI

10.1002/fee.2520 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Systematic review

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Special Issue of Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

1-Feb-2023

Mistaken fossil rewrites history of Indian subcontinent for second time

A fossil turned out to be just a beehive, and the correction puts the geologic and life history of India back into contention

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

 

IMAGE: WHAT AT FIRST LOOKED LIKE A DICKINSONIA FOSSIL (ON THE LEFT) HAD DECAYED AND STARTED PEELING OFF THE ROCK IN JUST A FEW SHORT YEARS (ON THE RIGHT), A SIGN IT WAS SOMETHING MUCH MORE MODERN. view more 

CREDIT: GREGORY RETALLACK/JOE MEERT

In 2020, amid the first pandemic lockdowns, a scientific conference scheduled to take place in India never happened.

But a group of geologists who were already on site decided to make the most of their time and visited the Bhimbetka Rock Shelters, a series of caves with ancient cave art near Bhopal, India. There, they spotted the fossil of Dickinsonia¸ a flat, elongated and primitive animal from before complex animals evolved. It marked the first-ever discovery of Dickinsonia in India.

The animal lived 550 million years ago, and the find seemed to settle once and for all the surprisingly controversial age of the rocks making up much of the Indian subcontinent. The find attracted the attention of The New York Times, The Weather Channel and the scientific journal Nature as well as many Indian newspapers.

Only, it turns out, the “fossil” was a case of mistaken identity. The true culprit? Bees.

University of Florida researchers traveled to the site last year and discovered the object had seemingly decayed significantly – quite unusual for a fossil. What’s more, giant bee’s nests populate the site, and the mark spotted by the scientists in 2020 closely resembled the remains of these large hives.

“As soon as I looked at it, I thought something’s not right here,” said Joseph Meert, a UF professor of geology and expert on the geology of the area. “The fossil was peeling off the rock.”

The erstwhile fossil was also lying nearly vertical along the walls of the caves, which didn’t make sense. Instead, Meert says, fossils in this area should only be visible flat on the floor or ceiling of the cave structures.

Meert collaborated on the investigation with his graduate students Samuel Kwafo and Ananya Singha and University of Rajasthan professor Manoj Pandit. They documented the rapid decay of the object and photographed similar remains from nearby beehives. The team published their findings of the mistaken identity Jan. 19 in the journal Gondwana Research, which previously published the report of the serendipitous Dickinsonia fossil find.

Gregory Retallack, professor emeritus at the University of Oregon and lead author of the original paper, says he and his co-authors agree with Meert’s findings that the object is really just a beehive. They are submitting a comment in support of the new paper to the journal.

This kind of self-correction is a bedrock principle of the scientific method. But the reality is that admitting errors is hard for scientists to do, and it doesn’t happen often.

“It is rare but essential for scientists to confess mistakes when new evidence is discovered,” Retallack said in an email.

Correcting the fossil record puts the age of the rocks back into contention. Because the rock formation doesn’t have any fossils from a known time period, dating it can be difficult.

Meert says the evidence continues to point to the rocks being closer to one billion years old. His team has used the radioactive decay of tiny crystals called zircons to date the rocks to that time period. And the magnetic signature of the rocks, which captures information about the Earth’s magnetic field when the rocks formed, closely matches the signatures of formations confidently dated to a billion years ago.

Other scientists have reported findings supporting a younger age. The time period is essential to understand because of its implications for the evolution of life in the area and how the Indian subcontinent formed.

“You might say, ‘Okay, well what's the big deal if they are 550 million or a billion years old?’ Well, there are lots of implications,” Meert said. “One has to do with the paleogeography at the time, what was happening to continents, where the continents were located, how they were assembled. And it was a period when life was going through a major change, from very simple fossils to more complex fossils.”

“So trying to figure out the paleogeography at the time is very, very important. And in order to figure out the paleogeography, we have to know the age of the rocks,” he said.

The caves near Bhopal, India, host prehistoric cave art. Because they don't have any fossils, they are hard to date.

Large beehives dot the site. After they are abandonded and decay, they briefly resemble fossils of the primitive animal Dickinsonia.

CREDIT

Joseph Meert

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JOURNAL

Gondwana Research

DOI

10.1016/j.gr.2023.01.003 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Stinging News: ‘Dickinsonia’ discovered in the Upper Vindhyan of India not worth the buzz

Looking beyond microplastics, Oregon State researchers find that cotton and synthetic microfibers impact behavior and growth of aquatic organisms

Peer-Reviewed Publication

OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: LARVAL INLAND SILVERSIDES WITH COTTON MICROFIBERS IN THEIR DIGESTIVE TRACTS. view more 

CREDIT: OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY

CORVALLIS, Ore. – While microplastics have received significant attention in recent years for their negative environmental impacts, a new study from Oregon State University scientists found microfibers from synthetic materials as well as cotton impacted the behavior and growth of water organisms.

“We’re trying to shift the narrative a little bit because so much of the focus has been just on the plastics, but really we need to focus more generally on microfibers of all types,” said Susanne Brander, an associate professor and ecotoxicologist at Oregon State. “What we are seeing is that even the cotton, while it has less of an impact than the synthetic materials, still has an impact on the growth and behavior of the organisms we studied.”

The study, published this week in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, is being released at a time of increased attention on regulating microfibers. Like microplastics, microfibers are of concern because scientists are increasingly identifying them in water samples and finding they are causing adverse impacts in organisms and ecosystems.

A bill was recently introduced in Oregon that would require new clothes washers sold in the state be equipped with a microfiber filtration system. France recently approved a similar measure and several other countries, states and provinces are considering bills. Related, a study from Canada in 2021 found that washing machine filters reduce microfiber emissions.

Brander, who studies the responses of aquatic organisms to environmental stressors, believes other measures could be taken to reduce the release of microfibers, including increasing the sustainability of clothing so that it sheds less and passing laws that would require filters on both clothes washers and dryers. Previous studies have found dryers are an underestimated source of microfibers being released into the environment.

“The answer isn’t to stop using cotton but to have a better awareness and better control over the release of fibers,” Brander said.

For the new study, Brander’s lab, with support from the lab of Stacey Harper, a professor of toxicology and environmental engineering at Oregon State, created microfiber samples of different sizes from ropes made of cotton, polyester and polypropylene, all of which are commonly found in coastal waters, including in wild organisms such as rockfish and zooplankton that Brander’s students study.

The researchers then exposed larval and juvenile inland silverside and mysid shrimp, both model organisms for estuaries and coastal ecosystems, to the three microfiber types at three concentrations and different levels of salinity meant to mimic conditions in an estuary and measured behavioral responses, growth and ingestion levels in the two organisms.

Among their findings:

• Cotton had no effect on growth in silversides but did reduce growth in the mysids at the two lower salinities. This finding surprised Brander, who thought the researchers would find growth impacts on both organisms or neither, not just one. She speculated that the finding may be a result of the silversides being better at breaking down the cotton than the shrimp.
• Synthetic fibers reduced growth in both organisms over just a few days of exposure.
• Polyester and polypropylene had more of an effect on behavior than cotton did in both organisms. Brander believes this could be due to residual chemicals on the polyester and polypropylene, which could remain despite the researchers rinsing the microfibers.
• Cotton was not detected in the digestive tracts of silversides, however polyester and polypropylene were detected in the silversides’ stomach and gut lining. None of the fiber types were detected in mysid shrimps.
• Cotton impacted both organisms’ behavior more at higher salinities, whereas polyester and polypropylene had more behavioral impacts at lower salinities. This could be due to differences in the densities of the different materials, which influences how long they stay in suspension.

“Increasing amounts of microfibers are being detected in environmental samples and we really need to identify the risk associated with them, especially at sensitive early life stages of organisms,” Harper said. “This study and others begin to do that, but more research is needed.”

The research is supported by a National Science Foundation Growing Convergence Research Big Idea grant. The grant supports the Oregon State-based Pacific Northwest Consortium of Plastics, which Harper and Brander co-lead.

Harper and Brander are based in the Oregon State College of Agricultural Sciences. Harper also has an appointment in the College of Engineering. This research was led by Samreen Siddiqui, a former postdoctoral fellow in Brander’s lab. Graduate students Sarah Hutton and John Dickens and technician Emily Pedersen also contributed.

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JOURNAL

Frontiers in Marine Science

DOI

10.3389/fmars.2022.991650 

ARTICLE TITLE

Natural and synthetic microfibers alter growth and behavior in early life stages of estuarine organisms

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

31-Jan-2023

CAPTION

Larval inland silversides with polyester microfibers in their digestive tracts.

Larval inland silversides with polypropylene microfibers in their digestive tracts. 

Photo: Oregon State University.

What’s that sound? Automobile horn changed history and communications technology

On-campus launch for faculty member’s book about rise and fall of Klaxon automobile horn set Feb. 21

Book Announcement

PENN STATE

 

IMAGE: MATTHEW JORDAN, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR AND HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT OF FILM PRODUCTION AND MEDIA STUDIES IN THE DONALD P. BELLISARIO COLLEGE OF COMMUNICATIONS, WILL DISCUSS HIS LATEST BOOK DETAILING THE RISE AND FALL OF THE KLAXON AUTOMOBILE HORN AT A BOOK LAUNCH EVENT ON FEBRUARY 21. view more 

CREDIT: PENN STATE

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A new book by Penn State faculty member Matt Jordan chronicles the rise and fall of the Klaxon automobile horn, one of the first great electrical consumer technologies of the 20th century. Jordan, associate professor and head of the Department of Film Production and Media Studies in the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications, will discuss his research into the iconic horn’s history at a book launch event at 5:30 p.m. Feb. 21 in the Foster Auditorium of Paterno Library.

Matt McAllister, professor of media studies, will moderate the event and a question-and-answer session with the author following Jordan’s talk.

Jordan’s book, “Danger Sound Klaxon! The Horn That Changed History,” shares how the metallic shriek of the horn first shocked pedestrians, improving safety, and how savvy advertising strategies convinced consumers across the United States and western Europe to adopt the horn as the safest signaling technology available in the 1910s.

While the shrill-sounding horn improved early automobile safety and provided a positive impact for a communications technology, the book chronicles how the technology went awry because of world events.

Watch a YouTube video about the Klaxon at this link.

The widespread use of Klaxons in the trenches of World War I transformed how the public heard the car horn, according to Jordan, and its traumatic association with gas attacks ultimately doomed this once ubiquitous consumer technology.

By charting the meteoric rise and eventual fall of the Klaxon, "Danger Sound Klaxon!" highlights how perceptions of sound-producing technologies are guided by, manipulated and transformed through advertising strategies, public debate, consumer reactions and governmental regulations. Jordan’s book demonstrates how consumers are led toward technological solutions for problems themselves created by technology.

Jordan is a critical media scholar who works on the role of media in everyday culture and its impact on society. He teaches courses in film studies and media studies. His writing engages with how different popular media forms and technologies change the way that people see themselves and the world. Along with various academic publications on sound, technology and the impact of media on democracy, he writes essays for the popular press on his research topics as they relate to news of the day.

Jordan is the executive producer of the Penn State Humanities Institute’s Emmy-nominated documentary series “Humin Focus,” which is broadcast on WPSU and on the web. He also leads Penn State’s news Literacy Initiative, which includes hosting the “News Over Noise” radio/show podcast that is available on all podcast platforms and in most public radio markets across Pennsylvania.

Experts urge kids’ comic the Beano to stop promoting junk food brands

Many of the comic’s online quizzes revolve around food high in fat, salt and sugar. Experts call it “incredibly irresponsible” and want the company to change its policy

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BMJ

The website of the UK children’s comic the Beano describes itself as “100% safe for children” - but is its junk food-related content doing more harm than good?

An investigation by The BMJ shows how the Beano’s website - promoted as a digital hub for 6- to 12-year-olds - showcases products from well-known brands that are harmful to children,  including fast food, confectionery, soft drinks and ultra-processed food.

Since its launch in 2016, 47.9 million children have visited beano.com, which includes frequent references to well known high fat, salt and sugar (HFSS) brands, explain Claire Mulrenan and Mark Petticrew at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and freelance journalist Harry Wallop. 

For example, there is a ‘Ultimate McDonald’s Quiz,’ ‘How Well do you know the Nando’s Menu’ quiz, and a ‘Skittles jokes’ page. There is also an ‘Ultimate Food Logo’ quiz, whose ten answers are: Greggs, Heinz, Pizza Hut, Nando’s, Subway, Domino’s, Quorn, KFC, Pizza Express and Burger King.

There is even a quiz that features alcohol, with the question ‘how long have humans been making beer for?’ accompanied by an image of a pint being poured.

There is no suggestion that any of these quizzes have been paid for by the brands themselves, which could be deemed as a form of advertising known as “advergames” under the self-regulating UK Code of Non-broadcast Advertising and Direct & Promotional Marketing (CAP).

Health campaigners, however, are disappointed with Beano’s willingness to showcase so many junk food brands – and to put these brands right at the front of children’s minds, suggesting that a chocolate, fizzy drink or burger brand is “cool” – even if it’s not taking money from the companies themselves.

With estimates that 22% of reception aged schoolchildren are overweight or obese, rising to 37% of children by year 6, health experts are also deeply concerned.

Kat Jenner, director of nutrition, research, campaigns, and policy at the Obesity Health Alliance, says, “It is an incredibly irresponsible way of promoting unhealthy food,” while Boyd Swinburn, professor of population nutrition and global health at the University of Auckland and honorary professor at the Global Obesity Centre in Melbourne, believes that the company is being “naive” in giving “free advertising” to HFSS brands and products.

Through these quizzes and games, beano.com also collects data on children’s consumption preferences, which is then sold, on an anonymised basis, to companies looking to find out more about what children like and don’t like. 

Beano insists that its surveys meet all legal and data protection obligations, and say “any suggestion that Beano is somehow contributing to increased consumption of HFSS products in children is false, misleading and damaging.” 

Nevertheless, campaigners say that there’s a question around whether the company has an ethical duty to safeguard child health, write the authors.

Henry Dimbleby, lead author of the National Food Strategy, which called for a salt and sugar tax on processed food, says: “People at Beano might be thinking: ‘Oh, well, you know, it's just a little bit of fun, that's what the kids like.’ But I just think it is all pervasive in society. This stuff invades every element of their lives.”

Former health minister James Bethell agrees. Pointing to UK government plans to delay a ban on junk food adverts before 9pm on TV and online, he says: “What annoys me about this is just the relentlessness of it in young people's lives. There's no escape.”

Because Beano says that it hasn’t taken money from any of the HFSS brands that so often feature in its quizzes, the stricter (and now delayed) rules about marketing junk food to children would not stop the company from continuing to showcase so many burgers, pizzas, crisps, and fizzy drinks or from suggesting that these brands were “cool” write the authors. 

Nor would it stop the comic running Forknite, a game fronted by one of its characters Minnie the Minx who has “been served up a plate of vile veg and she needs your help to eat them and defeat them!”.

J. Bernadette Moore, associate professor of obesity at the University of Leeds, says, “This idea that children won’t like healthy food pervades all aspects of our society. Yet companies with such extensive young audiences must acknowledge that they are not merely reflecting child preferences but shaping them."

Beano responded, “We take enormous care in what we present to children particularly around health and wellbeing,” adding that its website also runs some positive content about fruit, vegetables, and healthy eating, including the “Ultimate Vegetarian Quiz.” 

But Swinburn argues that Beano must do better, and he called on the company to change its policy and to no longer showcase products that are harmful to children - including alcohol, fast food, confectionery, soft drinks, and ultra-processed food. 

He concludes, “Corporations which are clever enough to capture and hold children’s attention need to have very high ethical standards to ensure that they are not exploiting those same children by promoting unhealthy products to them.” 

 

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JOURNAL

The BMJ

DOI

10.1136/bmj.p197 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

News article

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Big Macs and the Beano: Is it time for the comic to drop the junk food brands?

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

1-Feb-2023

Lianhuanhua – Chinese comics as a specific cultural form

Grant and Award Announcement

UNIVERSITY OF FREIBURG

 

IMAGE: SINOLOGIST LENA HENNINGSEN RECEIVES ERC CONSOLIDATOR GRANT. view more 

CREDIT: PHOTO: PROVIDED. UNIVERSITY OF FREIBURG

Sinologist PD Dr. Lena Henningsen from the University of Freiburg has been awarded a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council (ERC) to fund her research project on comic culture in the People’s Republic of China. The European Union grant is one of the most prestigious awards for researchers in the EU. It is worth two million euros over a period of five years.

Independent Genre and Research Field

Henningsen’s project “Comics Culture in the People’s Republic of China (ChinaComx)” is devoted to Chinese comics as an independent cultural form: “‘Lianhuanhua’ – translated literally, linked images – are still largely unexplored,” says Henningsen. “Our project explores the intellectual, political, social, historical, and transcultural dimensions of this exciting medium.” Henningsen and her team will analyze comics from the People’s Republic of China with regard to Chinese and global comic culture – as well as the specific conditions of their production, circulation, and consumption. In the process, they will also address the question of whether and to what extent comics further the goals of state propaganda, such as the legitimization of the Communist Party of China, the creation of the “new socialist man,” and nation building – or whether they counteract these goals.

In clearly circumscribed case studies, the project analyzes adaptations into comics from literature and film, the conventions of text-image relations (and the breaking of these conventions), narrative qualities, as well as the visual language of lianhuanhua which is very much indebted to other visual forms of art, including traditional Chinese visual art, cartoons, propaganda posters, photography and movies. With its focus on practices and meaning making, ChinaComx moreover delves into the changing global cultural, political and economic connections within the socialist cultural sphere and beyond, tracing distinct and changing relationships of domestic and foreign elements. The project will cover developments since the late 1940s to the present and situate concrete phenomena within larger developments and traditions. “Our project has the goal of defining the term ‘Lianhuanhua’ as a distinct genre arising from a specific context as well as an independent research field,” says Henningsen, “similar to ‘mangas’ or ‘bandes dessinées.’”

Literature, Pop, Society

Lena Henningsen served from 2012 to 2022 as a junior professor at the University of Freiburg’s Institute of Sinology and is currently Principal Investigator of the research project “The Politics of Reading in the People’s Republic of China (READCHINA)”. In it, she and her team are studying intellectual, literary, and social change in China since the 1940s from the perspective of reading practices. She has already received an ERC Starting Grant for this project. Her research foci also include modern Chinese literature and culture, contemporary Chinese society, intellectual property and plagiarism, and pop culture and music in China. Henningsen was an elected member of the “Young Academy” from 2013 to 2018 and received the Leopoldina Early Career Award in 2016.