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DO THE GIRLS of the Mary Erskine School in Edinburgh remember that the teaching staff once included—in the days when it was known at Queen Street Ladies' College—a writer of considerable distinction? James Logie Robertson was his name, but his works appeared with the pen‐name ‘Hugh Haliburton’.

This paper explores the rural experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic and seeks to understand the variations in these experiences between rural residents working in health care and those outside of health care occupations. This paper considers the impacts on physical health and access to health care (including challenges related to caretaking) as well as on mental health.

We interviewed 16 individuals living in rural communities in New Mexico between August and November 2020. These interviews were conducted through a virtual meeting platform (Zoom) or by phone and recorded. Then these interviews were transcribed and analyzed for key themes, and all themes were coded by at least two team members for inter-rater reliability.

Rural residency is linked to a wide range of health and health care inequities. From health care provider shortages, lack of internet infrastructure, and disruptions in access to resources when the closest resources are outside of the state, rural residents in New Mexico faced a wide range of unique challenges during the pandemic. This study also details from where rural residents obtain their health information, and we consider how politicization of the pandemic has impacted rural communities. The experiences of rural residents demonstrate how some policies fail to take into consideration the unique contexts of rural communities. All participants strongly identified with their roles as members of rural communities.

These interviews were conducted prior to the peak of pandemic transmission in these communities, so a follow-up should be conducted which reflects on the later stages. Future pandemic scholarship should consider the experiences of rural communities and address the unique challenges, needs, and strengths in developing best practices.

This paper provides unique insight into the lived experience of rural residents during the pandemic, and highlights disparities and challenges faced by health care workers as well as rural community members more broadly.

As artificial intelligence and machine learning become increasingly integrated into daily life, both individuals and institutions are growing dependent on these technologies. However, it's crucial to acknowledge that such advancements can introduce potential flaws or vulnerabilities. A case in point is the investigation conducted by the non-profit organization ProPublica into the COMPAS (Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions) risk assessment tool – a tool widely used by US courts to assess the likelihood of a defendant reoffending. To address the issue of underlying biases, including racial biases, which can lead to inaccurate predictions and significant social harm, we are delving into the current literature on algorithmic bias in decision systems. We are also exploring the evolving considerations of fairness and accountability in machine learning. Specifically, within the realm of predictive policing algorithms employed in the criminal justice system, our focus is on recent studies aimed at mitigating biases in algorithmic decision-making. This involves reassessing recidivism rates and implementing adversarial debiasing in conjunction with fairness metrics.

T. S. Eliot in London, Louis Gottschalk in Chicago, both re‐cently have voiced in public meet‐ings their concern at the decay of the private and the personal libraries—mortmain is setting in—the dead hand that libraries are placing upon the free flow of books. Libraries are often more concerned with the acquiring of books than they are with the books themselves. Too many libraries have too many books.

The problem of introducing novice teachers into the profession and professional development of future teachers is urgent due to the social significance of the professionalism factor in Russian continuous teacher education. Special attention on the part of the country's government, as well as local authorities, is paid to projects related to the effective adjustment of novice teachers in the professional pedagogical environment. This process implies joint work of school, university, ministry and department leaders and staff.

The leading mechanisms for the professional development of novice teachers are modernisation of initial teacher education and reflexive management technologies in schools. The creation of qualitatively new content and conditions of scientific and methodological support for novice teachers requires the development of network and productive innovations in the education system. It also implies the development of organisational models for the professional development of novice teachers, implemented at different levels.

This grant-funded research utilized conversational agents (CAs), specifically Alexa Flash Briefings, to deliver supplemental audio content across educational settings, expanding the online learning environment of graduate students, residency teachers and mentors. The study aimed to determine the perceived usability of Flash Briefings and explore participant experiences related to Flash Briefings.

To explore Flash Briefing usability and participant perceptions, a review of relevant literature and researcher experience feedback was conducted. Additionally, graduate student feedback was sought via a modified Children’s Usage Rating Profile (CURP) Assessment survey, which also included questions related to listening habits and provided space for participants to share open-ended qualitative feedback. Data were analyzed for themes and descriptive statistics were calculated.

Findings suggest an overall positive perception of the use of Flash Briefings. A mix of positive experiences and challenges are identified based on user population. The study provides valuable insights for refining the utilization of Flash Briefings in higher education settings.

Variable levels of participation across a small sample size minimizes the generalizability of the results and fails to explore perceptions of student teachers and mentors.

The study offers an initial indication of benefits and challenges found in the implementation of an innovative technological intervention.

There is a continued need and demand for extending online instructional accessibility and communication across broad geographic areas. This study considers a unique approach and provides a step toward closing this gap by analyzing the effectiveness this content modality offers in higher education.

Successful social marketing campaign to promote COVID-19 vaccination for the unvaccinated relies on increasing positive reactions but also reducing negative responses to persuasive messages. This study aims to investigate the relative effects of narrative vs non-narrative public service announcements (PSAs) promoting COVID-19 vaccination on both positive and negative reactions. Using social media as a tool for disseminating marketing campaigns provides a great opportunity to examine the effectiveness of narrative PSAs on vaccination intention, especially among unvaccinated young adults, who were the target audience of the social marketing. This study explores the role of empathy and psychological reactance as underlying mechanisms.

An experiment involving unvaccinated young adults was conducted with a one-factor, two-condition (message type: narrative vs non-narrative) design.

Results indicated that the narrative (vs non-narrative) PSAs led to greater empathy. While no direct effects of message type emerged on psychological reactance or vaccination intention, results of a serial multi-mediator model confirmed that empathy and psychological reactance mediated the effects of message type on vaccination intention.

The study extends the understanding of narrative persuasion by examining an underlying mechanism behind narrative persuasion in a COVID-19 PSA. This study provides empirical evidence of the important role of empathy in processing narrative PSAs. Moreover, the current study expands narrative persuasion’s applicability to COVID-19 vaccination intervention messages for unvaccinated young adults, highlighting the effectiveness of narrative persuasion as a social marketing communication tool.

Purpose – Police violence involving minority citizens is a significant problem in the United States. Efforts to explain the disparate treatment of minorities have often relied on structural-level racial threat hypotheses. However, research framed by this macro-level approach fails to consider meso-level characteristics of spatially specified places within cities. The place hypothesis maintains that police see disadvantaged minority neighborhoods as especially threatening and, therefore, use more violence in them. Reconceptualizing the racial threat model to include meso-level characteristics of place is essential to better explain police violence.

Design/methodology/approach – The argument is investigated using literature drawn from quantitative analyses of structural predictors of police violence and qualitative/quantitative studies of the police subculture and police behavior within disadvantaged neighborhoods.

Findings – Research on the effects of city-level racial segregation on police violence supports the place hypothesis that the incidence of police violence is higher in segregated minority neighborhoods. City-level segregation is, however, only a proxy for the degree of concentrated minority disadvantage existing at the meso-level. Community-level studies suggest that the police do see disadvantaged places as especially threatening and use more violence in them. Plausibly, meso-level neighborhood characteristics of cities may prove to be better predictors of the incidence of police violence than are structural-level characteristics in cross-city comparisons.

Originality/value – This analysis builds on structural-level racial threat theories by demonstrating that meso-level characteristics of cities are central to explaining disparities in the use of police violence. A multilevel approach to studying police violence using this analytic framework is proposed.