OSU Researchers Study How Russian Government Rallies Pro-Censorship Sentiment Among Citizens

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Researchers analyzing a survey of Russian citizens found that those who relied more on Russian national television news perceived the internet as a greater threat to their country than did others. This in turn led to increased support for online political censorship. These viewers were more likely to agree that the internet was used by foreign countries against Russia and that it was a threat to political stability within the country. Not surprisingly, those who saw the internet as a threat were also more likely to support online censorship.

Approval of the government of President Vladimir Putin amplified the impact of those threat perceptions on support for censorship, according to the study. Support for Vladimir Putin significantly strengthened the relationship between seeing the internet as a risk and supporting online censorship, the study found.

Researchers noted that the Russian regime uses its official news outlets, particularly television, to spread fear about anti-government sites. The regime often uses graphic metaphors to sensationalize the risk of some internet content, according to the researchers.

For example, the government has compared some websites it opposes to suicide bombers and tells citizens its response would be to use internet control and censorship to create a “bulletproof vest for the Russian society” said the researchers.

Researchers noted while it isn’t difficult to circumvent government censorship methods in a technical regard, but it can be very difficult to get around a well established mind-set that “censorship is good.”

The Ohio State University Honors Distinguished Faculty

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The Board of Trustees voted to award the title of Distinguished University Professor to Clark Larsen, Distinguished Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences, and David Weinberg, Henry L. Cox Professor of Astronomy.

The Distinguished University Professor designation is awarded after a lengthy nomination and review process. Selection includes automatic membership in the President’s and Provost’s Advisory Committee and a one-time award of $30,000 to be used for scholarly work. Only 56 other faculty members share the title.

Larsen is a biological anthropologist who studies human health and quality of life over the last 10,000 years of human evolution. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Weinberg studies the structure of the universe, dark energy and dark matter. He has received Ohio State’s Distinguished Scholar Award. He is a fellow of both the American Physical Society and the American Association or the Advancement of Science.

OSU Psychologist Publishes Book on Colorblindness

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Ohio State University Psychologist Philip Mazzocco has just published a new book which explores the topic of colorblindness, or people who claim to not see race. Mazzocco explores the fact that people with wildly different beliefs about race often share this belief in their colorblindness. The book is titled “The Psychology of Racial Colorblindness: A Critical Review.”

In his book, Mazzocco outlines a new model of what it means to be racially colorblind in today’s society. He disentangles the different meanings and comes up with four categories of colorblindness: protectionist, egalitarian, antagonistic and visionary.

Mazzocco doesn’t believe that any type of racial colorblindness is good for society, although some of the four types are clearly more offensive than others. The model for his book uses whites as the example, but the theory could be applied to anyone. The fact that these different varieties have been lumped together helps explain why research findings on the issue have been so contradictory, according to Mazzocco.

Most participants in Mazzocco’s initial study claimed to be racially colorblind – only about 27 percent said they weren’t. The egalitarian group was the largest at 29 percent, followed by protectionist at 20 percent, visionary at 18 percent and antagonistic at 7 percent.

The fact that nearly three-quarters of Americans claim to be colorblind is a problem, Mazzocco said, because claiming you don’t see race is “a conversation ender.”

“One of the implications of racial colorblindness is that we’re not going to have a discussion about the topic. You can have two people who say they’re colorblind, one of the visionary variety and one of the antagonistic variety, with wildly different sets of belief,” he said.

“But they may think they have similar viewpoints and therefore believe that many people share their opinions. If they had a true conversation, they may find out their views aren’t so common and they might need to consider other opinions.”

Mazzocco said colorblindness of any variety is harmful because it does not recognize the myriad problems minorities face in our society.

OSU Researchers Help Discover New Concussion Treatment In Mobile App

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Researchers from The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center collaborated on the study with Jane McGonigal of the Institute for the Future, who developed the mobile health app called SuperBetter after she suffered a concussion.

Results of the study are published online in the journal Brain Injury. But the kicker is this: generally speaking concussion patients are discouraged from activities like using phones, computers or watching television and even reading. But new research shows that teenagers who used a mobile health app once a day in conjunction with medical care improved concussion symptoms and optimism more than with standard medical treatment alone.

The American Academy of Neurology recommends limiting cognitive and physical effort and prohibiting sports involvement until a concussed individual is asymptomatic without using medication. However, this level of physical, cognitive and social inactivity represents a lifestyle change with its own risk factors, including social isolation, depression, and increased incidence of suicidal ideology, the researchers noted.

The 19 teens who participated in the study received standard of care for concussion symptoms that persisted beyond three weeks after the head injury, and the experimental group also used the SuperBetter app as a gamified symptoms journal.

Within the SuperBetter app, symptoms were represented as bad guys such as headaches, dizziness or feeling confused, and medical recommendations were represented as power ups, including sleep, sunglasses or an academic concussion management plan. Participants invited allies to join their personal network in the app and they could view their in-app activity and could send resilience points, achievements, comments and personalized emails in response to activity.

OSU Team Helps Make Discovery About the Contents of the Universe

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The Ohio State University and their colleagues from the Dark Energy Survey (DES) collaboration have reached a new milestone mapping the growth of the universe from its infancy to present day.

The new results released last Thursday confirm the surprisingly simple but puzzling theory that the present universe is comprised of only 4% ordinary matter, 26% mysterious dark matter, and the remaining 70% in the form of mysterious dark energy, which causes the accelerating expansion of the universe.

The findings are based on data collected during the DES first year, which covers over 1300 square degrees of the sky or about the area of 6,000 full moons. DES uses the Dark Energy Camera mounted on the Blanco 4m telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory high in the Chilean Andes.

The new results from the Dark Energy Survey will be presented by Kavli fellow Elisabeth Krause at the TeV Particle Astrophysics Conference in Columbus, Ohio, on Aug. 9, and by CCAPP’s Troxel at the International Symposium on Lepton Photon Interactions at High Energies in Guanzhou, China, on Aug. 10.