Lynn Schofield Clark

Emerging Battery-Ingestion Hazard: Clinical Implications

OBJECTIVES: Recent cases suggest that severe and fatal button battery ingestions are increasing and current treatment may be inadequate. The objective of this study was to identify battery ingestion outcome predictors and trends, define the urgency of intervention, and refine treatment guidelines. METHODS: Data were analyzed from 3 sources: (1) National Poison Data System (56535 cases, 1985–2009); (2) National Battery Ingestion Hotline (8648 cases, July 1990–September 2008); and (3) medical literature and National Battery Ingestion Hotline cases (13 deaths and 73 major outcomes) involving esophageal or airway button battery lodgment. RESULTS: All 3 data sets signal worsening outcomes, with a 6.7-fold increase in the percentage of button battery ingestions with major or fatal outcomes from 1985 to 2009 (National Poison Data System). Ingestions of 20- to 25-mm-diameter cells increased from 1% to 18% of ingested button batteries (1990–2008), paralleling the rise in lithium-cell ingestions (1.3% to 24%). Outcomes were significantly worse for large-diameter lithium cells (≥20 mm) and children who were younger than 4 years. The 20-mm lithium cell was implicated in most severe outcomes. Severe burns with sequelae occurred in just 2 to 2.5 hours. Most fatal (92%) or major outcome (56%) ingestions were not witnessed. At least 27% of major outcome and 54% of fatal cases were misdiagnosed, usually because of nonspecific presentations. Injuries extended after removal, with unanticipated and delayed esophageal perforations, tracheoesophageal fistulas, fistulization into major vessels, and massive hemorrhage. CONCLUSIONS: Revised treatment guidelines promote expedited removal from the esophagus, increase vigilance for delayed complications, and identify patients who require urgent radiographs.

Preventing Battery Ingestions: An Analysis of 8648 Cases

OBJECTIVES: Outcomes of pediatric button battery ingestions have worsened substantially, predominantly related to the emergence of the 20-mm-diameter lithium cell as a common power source for household products. Button batteries lodged in the esophagus can cause severe tissue damage in just 2 hours, with delayed complications such as esophageal perforation, tracheoesophageal fistulas, exsanguination after fistulization into a major blood vessel, esophageal strictures, and vocal cord paralysis. Thirteen deaths have been reported. The objective of this study was to explore button battery ingestion scenarios to formulate prevention strategies. METHODS: A total of 8648 battery ingestions that were reported to the National Battery Ingestion Hotline were analyzed. RESULTS: Batteries that were ingested by children who were younger than 6 years were most often obtained directly from a product (61.8%), were loose (29.8%), or were obtained from battery packaging (8.2%). Of young children who ingested the most hazardous battery, the 20-mm lithium cell, 37.3% were intended for remote controls. Adults most often ingested batteries that were sitting out, loose, or discarded (80.8%); obtained directly from a product (4.2%); obtained from battery packaging (3.0%); or swallowed within a hearing aid (12.1%). Batteries that were intended for hearing aids were implicated in 36.3% of ingestions. Batteries were mistaken for pills in 15.5% of ingestions, mostly by older adults. CONCLUSIONS: Parents and child care providers should be taught to prevent battery ingestions. Because 61.8% of batteries that were ingested by children were obtained from products, manufacturers should redesign household products to secure the battery compartment, possibly requiring a tool to open it.

Challenges of social good in the world of Grand Theft Auto and Barbie: a case study of a community computer center for youth:

This paper presents a case study of a community technology center (CTC) located in a lower income neighborhood of a high-tech city. Participant observation and interview-based research determined that while the CTC was popular among its targeted constituents, its use was not consistent with what the center’s supporters and policymakers envisioned. The emergent discrepancy between policymaker rhetoric and actual use is analyzed in light of different understandings of how internet access is perceived as a social good by policymakers, funders, and among disadvantaged communities. The article raises questions and suggests policy implications regarding how those most at-risk use community technology centers, how those centers may be funded, and how the relationship of computers and the social good must be reconceptualized to better address the issues of the digital divide that extend beyond the technological realm.

DIGITAL MEDIA AND THE GENERATION GAP

In many parts of the developed world, families engage with a wide range of communication media as a part of their daily lives. Parents often express mixed feelings about this engagement on the part of young people, however. Employing Baumbergs narrative-in-interaction analysis to interviews with 55 parents and 125 young people, this article explores both the discursive strategies parents employ when discussing their rules and regulations regarding digital technologies, and the strategies employed by their teenage young people in response. It considers how parents attempt to articulate authority in relation to digital media use among their teenage children, and how the ways in which teens interpret those parental attempts to express authority influence the strategies they themselves embrace regarding digital media. The article argues that although economically disadvantaged families experience the digital generation gap with particular intensity, their strategies reveal that they and their teenage children are able to deal with these challenges in creative and effective ways.

Ethnographic Interviews on the Digital Divide

Employing narrative analysis of ethnographic interviews with persons from a variety of socioeconomic, educational, and racial/ethnic backgrounds, this article examines the discursive structure of the digital divide debate as it is articulated among contemporary online users and non-users in the United States. The article argues that the discourse of individualism serves as a filter that shapes and distorts all private and public conversations about the digital divide and thus limits public debate on the subject. Some challenges to the dominance of individualism emerge when people discuss the digital divide in relation to the specific, lived situations of economic disadvantage. Yet we conclude that the potential political power of this critique is muted as it echoes rather than challenges the contradictions inherent to the promise of the digital era that are found at the heart of both corporate advertising and current social policies.

Parents, ICTs, and Children's Prospects for Success: Interviews along the Digital ''Access Rainbow''

Interviews with 52 parents of varying income levels and positions on the digital “access rainbow” are used to explore how parents discuss the widespread belief that ICT (information and communication technologies) access affects their childrens prospects for success. While all parents agreed that ICT competence is important, differences emerged along socioeconomic lines regarding how parents conceptualized the computer/success relationship. While upper-income parents demonstrated greater ICT proficiency and access and assumed that their children needed ICT proficiency for success, parents in the lower-income groups saw the need for ICT proficiency as more context-dependent and adopted broader definitions of success. All parents expressed concerns about the negative attributes of ICTs as entertainment rather than educational media; for lower- and middle-income families, however, this objection justified limits on use or access among children.

Cultivating the media activist: How critical media literacy and critical service learning can reform journalism education

The task of journalism education has been defined in relation to both the professional needs of the journalism industry and the need to educate well-informed citizens. A key part of journalism education involves introducing students to what Deuze (2005) terms the professional ideology of journalism, which includes commitments to public service, commitments to impartiality or objectivity, and a belief in the ideal of journalistic autonomy. Deuze has argued that this professional ideology has shifted in response to multiculturalism and new media. This article therefore sets out to explore the implications of these changes for journalism education and for the formation of the worldview of student journalists. The article considers a case study of a project involving critical service learning in an introductory class for journalism students. The article proposes that media activism, public journalism, and critical service learning may be drawn upon in journalism education as resources in the formation of an emergent journalistic worldview. Exploring student responses to this project through a framework of Youth Participatory Action Research, the article argues that such efforts can help journalism educators to achieve the pedagogical goal of enabling students to critique existing arrangements of power and develop a globally sensitive perspective while producing news stories across media platforms that reflect a deep appreciation for learning about and understanding the diverse communities they serve.

High school journalism and the making of young citizens

This article examines how involvement in high school journalism contributes to socialization into citizenship and, most crucially, to the development of a collective sensibility. Recent work by W Lance Bennett (2008), Zukin and his colleagues (2006), and Sara-Ellen Amster (2006) provides an interpretive lens for considering young people’s experiences with journalism and with citizenship. Interviews with 45 high school journalists from 19 different schools are analyzed, highlighting emerging definitions of citizenship as reflected in how young people discuss their work as student journalists. The study suggests that participation in the culture of high school journalism can provide young people with opportunities to develop the skills and experiences necessary for civic engagement, including the experience of collective decision-making. This study also argues that some young people come to understand the costs of engaged citizenship after negative experiences with their school’s administration, as such experiences reveal differing understandings of the roles of authority, journalism, and collective responsibility within the high school community that its high school journalism is meant to serve.

Researching children, intersectionality, and diversity in the digital age

Abstract Research on children’s and adolescents’ experiences with media and technology over the past century has largely echoed the concerns of the middle-class and majority culture. We discuss scholars’ corrective efforts, particularly in recent years, in moving beyond these narrow foci to investigate how young people situated across social classes, racial and ethnic boundaries, and forms of disability engage with new media. In particular, we examine how scholars have conceptualized similarities and differences among children and families in relation to interconnected systems of oppression and privilege. We discuss how their work has challenged deficit-based approaches to cultural and social difference to understand how diverse families and young people actively negotiate media and technologies in everyday life. We argue that an intersectional, asset-oriented approach to studying the lived experiences of youth and families opens exciting new avenues for research that prioritizes the rights of children and adolescents in the digital age.

Considering religion and mediatisation through a case study of J+K's big day (The J K wedding entrance dance): A response to Stig Hjarvard

This article reviews the strengths and weaknesses of Hjarvards theory of the mediatisation of religion. By suggesting actor-network theory as a methodological approach to the study of the mediatisation of religion, this article proposes a case study of the viral wedding video, J K wedding entrance dance, to highlight problems with the assertion that the media are replacing or displacing religions authoritative role in society. Drawing upon recent theories of how digital and mobile media are reshaping society by enabling participation, remediation and bricolage, I suggest instead that the media do not bring about secularisation, but rather that the media are contributing to a personalisation of what it means to be religious (or not). This article thus introduces an alternative definition to the concept of mediatisation: that mediatisation may be understood as the process by which collective uses of communication media extend the development of independent media industries and their circulation of narratives, contribute to new forms of action and interaction in the social world and give shape to how we think of humanity and our place in the world.