Michael J. Breen

Fear of Social Isolation: Testing an Assumption from the Spiral of Silence

This study is designed specifically to test the fear of isolation assumption and to explore its position in the Spiral of Silence model. It has been unclear from the literature whether fear of isolation is antecedent to opinion formation and dominant opinion assessment or an intervening variable between opinion formation and willingness to voice the opinion. Path analyses are used to empirically investigate the relationship of the fear of isolation variable to other variables in the model. The study helps determine the importance of fear of isolation in the overall Spiral of Silence model. Several studies (e.g., Glynn & McLeod, 1984; Katz & Baldassare, 1992; Shamir, 1995) have found little or no support for the Spiral of Silence theory, but these did not include fear of isolation as a variable. We hope that measuring fear of isolation and including it in hypothesis testing will help move the development of the theory.

Suing the Pope and Scandalising the People: Irish attitudes to sexual abuse by clergy pre- and post-screening of a critical documentary

THE SEXUAL ABUSE OF children became a significant public issue in Ireland in the s, with frequent media reports about the issue. In the main these focused on the issue of abuse of children by members of the clergy and religious orders. Headline cases included the abuse perpetrated by Fr Brendan Smyth, a priest of a religious order who was convicted of multiple counts of sexual abuse of children and subsequently died in prison, and Fr Sean Fortune, a diocesan priest, who committed suicide before his court trial for abuse. While child sexual abuse by clergy was widely exposed in the early s, a subsequent additional scandal was the failure of the institutional Catholic Church to respond adequately to earlier complaints of abuse, and, in particular, to respond adequately to those who experienced abuse. As part of its response to the problem, the Irish Catholic bishops commissioned an independent research agency – the Health Services Research Centre (HSRC) at the Department of Psychology, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) – to undertake a programme of research on its behalf. Part of the remit to the research group was to examine the effects on the general public of child sex abuse by clergy. This was done by means of a national telephone survey (N=,), full details of which are reported elsewhere (Goode, McGee & O’Boyle, ). The survey itself took four months to complete. About half-way through the data collection period in , the main UK public service television channel (BBC) screened a documentary entitled ‘Suing the Pope’ which dealt in detail with complaints made to Church authorities about Sean Fortune and the alleged subsequent mishandling of those complaints. This programme was reported in some detail in the Irish media before its showing, and had a high number of Irish viewers since UK channels are accessible in Ireland. The documentary was also reported extensively in other media after screening and was subsequently re-shown on Irish public service channel RTE. The first TV screening provided a point of differentiation within the survey, with some  participants having responded before the screening and  afterwards. It