Considerable Social Implications Research Articles

Social capital development in online education and its impact on academic performance and satisfaction

PurposeThe first objective is to investigate and determine the social capital development of students in online education. The second objective is to analyze the influence of social capital on students’ academic success and educational satisfaction. The third objective is to generate recommendations to foster social capital development.Design/methodology/approachA quantitative research approach is employed, with 264 respondents comprising students from colleges and universities in Malaysia. The data gathering instrument is an online questionnaire administered with the informed consent of participants. Data analysis is performed using structural equation modeling (SEM).FindingsThe results show that the faculty capital and peer capital components of social capital have not been compromised in online education, but the family capital component has declined. As such, it is concluded that there is a general decline in overall social capital in online education. These findings form the basis for recommendations on promoting social capital development among students in colleges and universities internationally.Research limitations/implicationsThis study focused on study periods during the COVID-19 pandemic where online learning and communication were strictly enforced, providing a unique opportunity to explore how students adapted their social capital development. However, this is not meant to be a representation of scenarios where students are given the option of either physical or online education or a combination of both.Practical implicationsAcademic and institutional management implications are evident, and recommendations are made based on the findings.Social implicationsThe findings and subsequent recommendations have considerable social implications in terms of social sustainability of education practices and policies.Originality/valueThe COVID-19 pandemic that started in March 2020 and subsequent prolonged periods of physical lockdowns in many countries have forced colleges and universities that customarily practice classroom education to shift to online education temporarily. This situation created a novel “natural experiment” when classes or programs from the same college or university that are customarily conducted in classrooms (in person) were conducted online during the pandemic, thus contributing to the originality of the findings.

Exploring the social implications of buying and selling cyber security

Governments, businesses, private citizens and even organised crime are increasingly investing in cyber security, with the cyber security industry growing in size and relevance. This paper demonstrates that markets for the buying and selling of cyber security should be subject to many of the same critical inquiries typically targeted at the private security industry. Using a number of illustrative examples of emerging trends in the commodification of cyber security it will be highlighted how these markets create significant social impacts and present similar dilemmas of democracy, justice, sovereignty, and deleterious side-effects for wider society. Key conceptual differences between cyber security commodities and ‘conventional’ security commodities will also be considered before arguing for an inter-disciplinary research agenda into the considerable social implications of the buying and selling of cyber security commodities.

Syncretic expertise in TED Talks

This paper focuses on the popularization of information related to environmental issues in media texts, with a particular focus on TED Talks. TED talks are a distinctive genre with has considerable social implications, especially when the presentations concern themes such as the environment, the understanding of which is a key determinant in the full realization of specific environmental policies. In this respect, this study suggests a critical need to go beyond the purely technical analysis of environmental issues by framing them within a wider discourse, which is more likely to influence the public at large. The paper explores a corpus of popular talks which deal with environmental issues and analyzes their macro-structural components. Methodologically, traditional genre analysis is integrated with a critical stimulus in order to unveil the strategies employed to overcome the technophilic/technophobic dichotomy which often typifies environmental discourse. The findings show the flexible and dynamic nature of TED Talks. Their communicative success lies specifically in the ability of the presenters to attract the audience’s attention by making use of different communicative strategies and drawing on different forms of expertise, within the specific structural constraints imposed by this genre.

Why are bathrooms inclusive if the stacks exclude?

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to deploy a critical discourse analysis (CDA) to consider exclusionary practices enacted by academic libraries as evidenced through resource provision. Specifically, this paper looks at the inclusion of trans and gender-nonconforming (TGNC) individuals in library guides, TGNC naming practices in abstracts and the physical shelving of transgender studies texts. This paper concludes with a discussion of methods to overcome such exclusionary practices in the future.Design/methodology/approachThis paper deploys CDA as informed by queer theory, affording a lens to consider how language and information are structured such that particular power dynamics emerge placing symbolic value on discursively normal identities. CDA helps illuminate when, how and why TGNC individuals remain excluded within academic librarianship practices.FindingsFindings show continued investments in heteronormative and cisnormative structures concerning information provision and access for TGNC patrons. TGNC patrons using library guides consistently fail to see any mentioned made of their respective identities aside from research about their identities. Patrons seeking information of personal value (i.e. coming out resources) find few resources. Further, library stacks and databases enact consistent microaggressions such as fetishizing, deadnaming and misgendering.Research limitations/implicationsThis project contains considerable social implications, as it pushes against a continued recalcitrance on the part of academic libraries to invest in neutrality by showing its failures regarding TGNC persons.Practical implicationsThis study possesses a considerable set of practical implications and highlights tangible problems that could be addressed with relative ease by academic librarians through either systemic reorganization of information or TGNC patrons. Alternatively, this work also suggests that if such reformations are not possible, academic librarians can take it upon themselves to call attention to such issues and purposefully mark these failings, thus making it clear that it is a current limitation of how libraries function and invite patrons (both cisgender and transgender) to challenge and change these representations through research and advocacy.Social implicationsThis project contains considerable social implications as it pushes against a continued recalcitrance on the part of academic libraries (and librarianship more broadly) to invest in neutrality. This study contests the idea that while possessing neutrality academic libraries also posit themselves as inherently good and inclusive. By showing the violence that remains enacted upon transgender and gender nonconforming folks through multiple venues within the academic library, this study makes clear that statements of negativity are thrust onto TGNC patrons and they remain excluded from an institution that purports to have their well-being as one of its core values.Originality/valueThe deployment of CDA within information science is still a relatively new one. While linguists have long understood the multiplicity of discourse beyond language, the application of this method to the academic library as a discursive institution proves generative. Furthermore, the relationship between academic libraries and their LGBTQ+ populations is both underrepresented and undervalued, a problem exacerbated when focusing on how transgender and gender nonconforming patrons see themselves and their relationships to the academic library. This paper shows the dire state of representation for these particular patrons and provides groundwork for positively changing such representations.

Sociocultural Determinants of Infertility Stress in Patients Undergoing Fertility Treatments.

Introduction:Involuntary childlessness is a distressing condition that has considerable social implications in developing nations.Aim:The present study aims to investigate the less known sociocultural determinants of infertility stress in patients undergoing assisted conception and reproductive treatments.Methods:This cross-sectional research was conducted on 300 men and women with primary infertility. The profile of sociodemographic variables, clinical variables, and sociocultural variables was collected using a locally devised questionnaire. Infertility stress was assessed using the psychological evaluation test.Statistical Analysis:Research data were analyzed using SPSS 15. Chi-square test is used for univariate analysis. Multiple logistic regression with enter method is used to examine the association between infertility stress and sociocultural variables.Results:The findings suggest that in both men and women, low spousal support, financial constraints, and social coercion in early years of marriage predicts infertility distress. Peer-support neither predicts nor protects against distress.Discussion:Family acceptance and social security for infertility is low. Stigma, concealment, and discrimination among men are reported to be high. Distress is three times greater in women with overinvolved family members who had unrealistic expectations from treatments. Taking continuous cycles of fertility treatments seems unaffordable for most patients. Subfertile individuals were socially perceived to be deprived, blemished, incomplete, and sexually incompetent.Conclusion:Data from this investigation, provides a glimpse into sociocultural aspects of infertility. The findings may be useful for identifying targets for individual and family-focused psychological interventions for distress reduction in infertility.

Bacteriology and constitutional health--genomics and proteomics: concepts in medicine and concepts in health insurance in the past and future

Future discussions on health issues on the individual or society level will be fundamentally linked to genetic dispositions. This genetic world will become reality in the same way the world of hygiene and bacteriology has become real for everyone. Approaches of molecular medicine for public health issues have not yet been created so far. The secret dreams of molecular eugenics must be made public and critically discussed. Up to now only a few monogenetically recessive hereditary diseases can be detected by screening. This kind of screening should be carefully considered. However, for the sciences, for medicine and thus for the physicians in practice, for health care sciences as well as for public health care, new tasks will emerge from genetics and molecular medicine. In individual as well as public health these new tasks will at first mainly turn in on the sphere of diagnosis and specific screening as well as health education and consultation. With regard to the considerable social implications the public health care sector should be aware of the coming issues of molecular medicine in time.