Social Visibility Research Articles

Estimating the Social Visibility of Abortions in Uganda and Ethiopia Using the Game of Contacts.

Social network-based data collection methods that rely on third-party reporting have emerged as a promising approach for measuring abortion in restrictive settings. In order for these methods to accurately measure abortion incidence, they must also assess the visibility of abortions within social networks. Failure to do so may result in estimates affected by transmission bias, caused by imperfect knowledge of all abortions within one's social network. In this paper, we present exploratory research that uses respondent-driven sampling (RDS) and the game of contacts method to measure abortion visibility in four sites in Uganda and Ethiopia. We assess the existence of potential biases in the game of contacts estimate of abortion visibility in each site by conducting several internal and external validity tests. While these tests provided some promising results, other factors such as the representativeness of the RDS samples, direct versus indirect abortion knowledge transfers, and the generalizability of the study sites may have introduced biases into the final estimates of abortion visibility in this study. We conclude by making recommendations on how applications of this methodology could be improved to better estimate abortion-related transmission bias.

Phthisis and Romantic Sensibility: The Social Construction of the Idea of Illness

This article aims to understand the process of social construction of the idea of phthisis as a “romantic” illness. The construction of the discursive space on phthisis expresses the conjuncture coalitions of interests that shape the different discursive registers produced by various agents from diverse social spaces (political, medical, religious, literary), making it possible to recognise, legitimise and promote the social visibility of the idea of phthisis as a “romantic” illness. Phthisis, associated with a romantic aesthetic, was seen as a hereditary disease or an illness associated with fate that affected the sensitive souls of the romantic elites, namely young people, women and fragile beings who were consumed by “sad passions”. Received: 1 June 2024 / Accepted: 21 October 2024 / Published: 05 November 2024

Consuming 'God Juice': Using 'ethnopharmacological-connoisseurship' to situate trenbolone use and knowledge among image and performance enhancing drug communities.

Trenbolone, a potent anabolic-androgenic steroid (AAS), is used for its muscle growth benefits but poses significant health risks, including psychosocial issues. Existing research among humans is limited by lack of targeted investigation. This study addresses gaps in existing research by leveraging the ethnopharmacological expertise of trenbolone consumers. By engaging with the community's connoisseurship, we sought to enhance harm reduction strategies and foster collaboration between consumers, scholars and health practitioners. An international sample of trenbolone consumers (N = 30) were interviewed. Interviews explored trenbolone use, knowledge levels and harm reduction strategies. Analysis involved an iterative categorisation approach, incorporating the lead author's lived experience with trenbolone. Participants described trenbolone as both a physical enhancer and a source of psychological boosts, tempered by adverse effects such as emotional volatility and intrusive thoughts. Despite warnings about its dangers the drug's allure was amplified by social media and community visibility. Consumers spoke of a developing connoisseur-like knowledge about trenbolone through personal and shared experiences. Through this collective expertise, they developed harm reduction strategies such as conservative dosing and regular health monitoring. This study demonstrates the importance of integrating ethnopharmacological-connoisseurship from the image and performance enhancing drug community to develop a contextually relevant understanding of AAS use-trenbolone being one of these. By elevating community insights, we advocate for a collaborative approach to harm reduction. Ultimately, we call for partnerships between researchers, health professionals and consumers to enhance health and reduce harm in image and performance enhancing drug communities.

Spanish football clubs on social media: Use of social networking accounts in languages other than Spanish

The objective of this article is to examine the utilization of social media accounts in languages other than Spanish by Spanish football clubs, within the framework of a broader inquiry into the social media visibility of sports entities. The research employs a strictly quantitative methodology, centered on the content analysis of the social media accounts belonging to the 20 clubs participating in the 2023/24 season of LaLiga EA Sports. The findings reveal that virtually all clubs manage accounts in languages other than Spanish. Among these football clubs, X emerges as the predominant social network for managing multiple accounts in different languages. Notably, following Spanish, English stands out as the most prevalent language, although other languages such as French, Arabic, Japanese, and Chinese are increasingly gaining prominence.

Consumerist discourses on social media and language teacher educator identity tensions

AbstractThis study investigates the impact of social media discourses, espoused by neoliberal and consumerist ideologies, on a language teacher educator's (LTE) identity negotiation. Through a collaborative case study, it examines Hassan's (the second author) experiences with social media in the Iranian English language teaching (ELT) context over three years. The data consist of extensive email discussions and four online meetings between the authors over one year. The analysis of Hassan's narratives reveals dominant social media discourses emphasizing sameness, omniscience, and commercialized luxurious lifestyles. These discourses often equate social media visibility with professional qualifications, pressuring Hassan to conform to trends that conflict with his sense of professionalism and authenticity. Hassan's emotional struggles and identity tensions led to critical reflection and ongoing negotiation of his professional identity. The findings underscore the need for professional development programs that support LTEs in navigating the pressures of self‐branding while maintaining their professionalism. Additionally, the study calls for further research into the long‐term effects of social media on professional identity and well‐being across diverse cultural and institutional contexts.

Navigating the disclosure landscape: Parents' perspectives on healthcare professionals' role in supporting intersex children and families.

Intersex, an umbrella term, describes individuals with sex characteristics that cannot be exclusively categorized into binary definitions of male or female. The intersex community faces a lack of social visibility perpetuated by a history of medical discrimination and pathologization shaped by "normalizing" genital surgeries without the child's consent. Despite efforts to reform clinical practice, there remains a paucity of research centering the needs of the intersex community and their families. This study explored parents' perspectives on how healthcare professionals (HCPs), such as genetics professionals, can provide patient-centered education and support when parents first learn of their child's intersex variation, with the aim of offering recommendations to HCPs to promote parental adjustment and protect intersex children's right to autonomy. Thirteen qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 parents of intersex children. Through reflexive thematic analysis, under the framework of an agency-based approach to intersex health, thematic categories were inductively conceptualized, including barriers and facilitators to HCPs' sensitivity and to parental adjustment in the early disclosure environment. Barriers to HCPs' sensitivity were imposed by educational, religious, or medical institutions, along with sociocultural prejudices and pathologizing language. Barriers to parental adaptation included uncertainty regarding their child's future, sociocultural gender norms, and unsuitable information provision. Incorporating parental needs in the disclosure environment can facilitate familial acceptance, including normalization of variations of sex characteristics (VSCs), enhanced medical education, facilitation of patients' navigation, and prioritization of parents' social support needs.

From Social Visibility to Political Invisibility: The School in Nationalist Taiwan as Fulcrum for an Evolving World Ethos

From Social Visibility to Political Invisibility: The School in Nationalist Taiwan as Fulcrum for an Evolving World Ethos

Invited commentary: Does social media visibility reveal any cracks in the ceiling for women surgeons' career advancement?

Invited commentary: Does social media visibility reveal any cracks in the ceiling for women surgeons' career advancement?

Between Fact and Fiction: Elizabeth II’s Funeral and Its Connection to The Crown on X (Twitter)

Television series enhance the social visibility of their content, as is the case with Queen Elizabeth II and The Crown. Netflix is the streaming television platform that has turned Peter Morgan’s successful series (2016) into a television icon where the monarch is the main protagonist, taking us on a biographical journey that mixes the historical and the political with fiction. The main character is made to seem more humane and is brought closer to the general public, all of which leads to a transmedia narrative. This research aims to analyze the content of the messages published on Twitter during the days surrounding the Queen’s State funeral in September 2022 and their connection with the series through the hashtag #TheCrown. The topics that have become trends worldwide are quantitatively analyzed, using different digital tools. The sample collected 1,489,279 tweets published during the days from the announcement of the death of Elizabeth II to the day of her funeral (from 8 to 19 September 2022). The results show nodes of connection between different players and linked communities to #TheCrown while offering the traffic generated by the hashtag with different nodes and edges.

The experience of social (in)visibility in narratives about ostracism

Abstract This work involves a comprehensive review of qualitative research focused on analysing the experience of social ostracism. The voices of the ostracized are essential for uncovering that subtle, small, invisible, and silent practices of social exclusion, such as not paying attention, treating someone like air, lack of interest, or being left out, are sufficiently real and painful enough for those who have to deal with them. The term “social (in)visibility” allows us to openly name feelings that are an internal response to external ostracism, but which remain unexpressed in everyday interactions. The article focuses on understanding the role of social attention and social recognition in social encounters. As the social challenges described document a set of practices that prevent engagement in social interactions and reinforce cultural otherness, the construct of “social (in)visibility” may thus provide a framework for explaining how the lack of acknowledgment of someone’s presence in an appropriate manner in a given situation initiates the process of excluding those with so-called ‘spoiled identities’ and may help reveal mechanisms of escalating negativity. The work concludes with reflections on future research areas and the practical implications of social (in)visibility within the context of social relationships, co-presence, and social encounters.

The image of the absent narrators: personal migrant memories in Žilnik’s docu-experiments

ABSTRACT The study is concerned with the possibility of reframing the visibility of migrants onscreen in Želimir Žilnik’s documentary films. It is claimed that Žilnik’s selected works such as the Kennedi trilogy open up a space for reversing the lens of the dominant hegemonies of viewing by enacting a productive instability in performing their actual lives on the one side but also provoking the spectators to reconstruct stories in the same way the protagonists do. In including the voice of the migrant, as well as (de)constructing his own presence, we can understand Žilnik’s films as formulating a political background in the very logic of the frame that disrupts self-colonising or balkanising perspective as it gives voice to those that were usually silent, silenced or implicated. The study proposes a possible space, both physical and epistemological for the articulation of the right to be seen in films that thematise those usually found on the outskirts of social visibility by proposing that complex narratives and images irreducible to the general idea of ‘the Balkans’ can be a transformative social and cultural gesture as it rearticulate power-positions of those marginalised of the level of counter-narrative, counter-archive, and the counter-image.

Spanish football clubs and social media visibility: The case of LaLiga EA Sports (2023/24 season)

Spanish football clubs and social media visibility: The case of LaLiga EA Sports (2023/24 season)

Exploring the content of epilepsy fellowship program websites: an analysis of information available to applicants

BackgroundProgram websites are essential resources in the process of residency and fellowship application. We evaluated the information furnished on these resources by Epilepsy fellowship programs. The extent of information provided was compared across geographic zones, academic affiliation, and national ranking.MethodsA list of Epilepsy fellowship programs was derived from the Fellowship and Residency Electronic Interactive Database (FREIDA). Links to program websites were obtained directly from FREIDA or using Google’s search engine. Online data was categorized to reflect program information, education, recruitment, compensation, epilepsy center-specific information, and social media presence. Data points under each category were collected to develop a standardized scoring system. The frequency of criterion present was compared across geographic zones, academic affiliation, and national ranking using parametric and non-parametric statistical tests. Significance was determined at a p-value ≤ 0.05 for all cases. The study utilized IBM SPSS version 28 and Python 3.11.3.ResultsWe analyzed 80 Epilepsy fellowship programs. The most reported feature was the program director’s name and email (100.0%). The least reported features included board pass rates (1.3%), preparatory boot camp (8.8%), and post-fellowship placements (11.3%). Programs were found to be well-represented on X (88.8%), Facebook (81.3%), and Instagram (71.3%). Most (85.0%) of the programs were searchable through Google. The scores for program information, education, recruitment, compensation, epilepsy center-specific information, and social media visibility did not significantly vary based on location, academic affiliation, or rank status.ConclusionsOur results demonstrate that despite an online presence, there is much room for improvement in the content available to the applicant. To improve the Match process and attract a roster of well-informed fellows, Epilepsy fellowship programs should furnish program websites with up-to-date information relevant to program information, education, recruitment, compensation, and epilepsy center-specific information.

LITERATURA GAY E A ABORDAGEM DOS ESTUDOS CULTURAIS

This Communication intends to analyze literature through the approach of cultural studies as a current of literature criticism. In this sense, it is considered pertinent to discuss that the concept of culture implies thinking beyond the product created by a minority, since exercising cultural criticism implies understanding how a given society works (CEVASCO, 2005). On the other hand, defenders of other currents of literary criticism accuse it of being militant, of having no method, however, they are wrong when they say there is no method, as we can draw up a panel of cartographies for this and thus have a method, a path to study of gay literature, for example. To this end, the research carried out followed a qualitative approach and a bibliographical type, as it involves an investigation carried out by consulting books and periodicals, both printed and available on the internet in digital libraries and blogs. Among the authors read Cevasco (2005), Matterlat and Neveu (2006), Bhabha (2014), Silva (2010), Hall (2014) and others. Therefore, literary critics who accuse cultural studies scholars need to step back and realize that as societies change and new historical realities are constructed, gays move from invisibility to social visibility, as does the literature that deals with them.

Medication use for the management of professional performance: between invisibility and social normalisation

ABSTRACT This article aims to explore pharmaceuticalisation processes in professional work contexts. The approach focuses on identifying patterns of medicine and dietary supplement use for managing work performance, and on discussing the relationship between these consumption practices and work-related pressure factors. This analysis adapts the notions of ‘normalisation’ to understand the extent of cultural acceptability of these practices, and the notion of ‘differentiated normalisation’ to capture the tension between the trend towards normalisation of such consumption and its partial social (in)visibility within work settings. Empirical support for this analysis is based on a sociological study conducted in Portugal on professions under high performance pressures. The study involved three professional groups – nurses, journalists and police officers. A mixed methods approach was used, including focus groups, questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. Overall, the results show a trend towards the use of medicines and supplements for performance management, which reveals itself as a cultural response to work-related social pressures. Such consumption coexists with irregular patterns of either occasional or long-term use, as well as heterogeneous processes of ‘normalisation’ and ‘hidden’ consumption. Conclusions point to a social interconnection between the intensification of work pressures and the pharmaceuticalisation of work performance.

Conversions to Shiʿism in Italy and Editorial Ventures

This article presents an in-depth analysis of two interrelated topics, namely Italians’ conversions to Shiʿism and their contribution to disseminating knowledge about Twelver Shiʿism in Italy. Employing a combination of historical and sociological methods, the article explores the underlying motivations driving this religious mobility, with a particular focus on the influence of Traditionalist authors such as René Guénon and Julius Evola and the Iranian Revolution on the digital and paper publications of converts. Moreover, the paper investigates the converts’ proclivity for editorial initiatives and social visibility, which can be attributed to their penchant for social engagement and political activism. To conduct this investigation, semi-structured interviews, literature analysis, and historical sources were adopted. This research establishes a strong correlation between the reasons for conversion and the portrayal of Shiʿism in the converts’ literary works. In summary, the distinct characteristics of Italian Shiʿism are intricately intertwined with the factors influencing conversion to this religion.

Single ladies and freedom of speech: gendered explanations for, and effects of, violence in politics

Violence towards elected representatives violates the personal integrity and freedom of representation of the municipal officeholders, thus potentially harming democracy at large. An original survey of Danish municipal council members’ experience of psychological, sexual and physical violence shows that two thirds have experienced at least one of the five types of psychological violence enquired about, while a third have experienced sexual and physical violence, respectively. More violence is experienced by women, the younger, those living on their own and those with larger TV exposure and social media visibility. However, except for sexual violence and being single, gender does not interact with these variables. Turning to the effect of violence, whether representatives feel that they have freedom of speech is negatively correlated with their experience of psychological and sexual violence. In the case of sexual violence, the effect is gendered. In sum, violence experience is skewed and may harm both descriptive and substantive representation.

What Motivates Consumers’ Purchase Intentions in E-Commerce Live Streaming: A Socio-Technical Perspective

The surge in popularity of e-commerce live streaming is evident among sellers and consumers. However, a holistic examination of the influencing factors of consumers’ purchase intention from the perspective of social and technical systems is still limited. Utilizing the socio-technical systems theory, we investigate the effects of social and technical system factors on consumers’ flow experience and how flow affects consumer purchase intention in the live streaming setting. Furthermore, we identify how optimal stimulation level moderates the relationship between socio-technical system factors and flow. Empirical results (N = 355) indicate that flow can be strengthened through social system factors (financial bonds, social bonds) and technical system factors (visibility, guidance shopping), consequently affecting consumer purchase intention. In terms of the moderating effects, the optimal stimulation level positively moderates the relationships between social bonds, visibility, guidance shopping, and flow.

Effect of Green Supply Chain Management and Corporate Social Responsibility Practices on Small and Medium Enterprises

This article examines the impact of green supply chain management and corporate social responsibility on small and medium-sized enterprises. It emphasizes the importance of sustainability, environmental protection, and social responsibility in achieving economic benefits. Green supply chain management helps establish an environmental image, increase product value, and attract more consumers and investors, enhancing corporate competitiveness. As environmental regulations strengthen, small and medium-sized enterprises face increasing environmental pressure. Green supply chain management reduces resource consumption, environmental impact, and risks, promoting long-term stable development. Corporate social responsibility practices improve a company's social image, visibility, and partnerships with stakeholders, creating favorable conditions for long-term growth. These practices also require continuous innovation and management progress, fostering trust relationships with suppliers, customers, and investors. By implementing these practices, small and medium-sized enterprises can provide a better working environment, improve employee satisfaction, and reduce talent loss. The research results have significant theoretical and practical implications for promoting sustainable development in these enterprises.

From Social Visibility to Political Invisibility: The School in Nationalist Taiwan as a Fulcrum for an Evolving World Ethos by Allen Chun (review)

From Social Visibility to Political Invisibility: The School in Nationalist Taiwan as a Fulcrum for an Evolving World Ethos by Allen Chun (review)