28,102 research outputs found
Flaunting it on Facebook: Young adults, drinking cultures and the cult of celebrity
Copyright © Antonia Lyons; Tim McCreanor; Fiona Hutton; Ian
Goodwin; Helen Moewaka Barnes; Christine Griffin; Kerryellen
Vroman; Acushla Dee OâCarroll; Patricia Niland; Lina Samu
Print publication available from: http://www.drinkingcultures.info/Young adults in Aotearoa/New Zealand (NZ) regularly engage
in heavy drinking episodes with groups of friends within
a collective culture of intoxication to âhave funâ and âbe
sociableâ. This population has also rapidly increased their use
of new social networking technologies (e.g. mobile camera/
video phones; Facebook and YouTube) and are said to be
obsessed with identity, image and celebrity. This research
project explored the ways in which new technologies are
being used by a range of young people (and others, including
marketers) in drinking practices and drinking cultures in
Aotearoa/NZ. It also explored how these technologies
impact on young adultsâ behaviours and identities, and how
this varies across young adults of diverse ethnicities (Maori
[indigenous people of NZ], Pasifika [people descended
from the Pacific Islands] and Pakeha [people of European
descent]), social classes and genders.
We collected data from a large and diverse sample of young
adults aged 18-25 years employing novel and innovative
methodologies across three data collection stages. In total
141 participants took part in 34 friendship focus group
discussions (12 Pakeha, 12 Maori and 10 Pasifika groups)
while 23 young adults showed and discussed their Facebook
pages during an individual interview that involved screencapture
software and video recordings. Popular online
material regarding drinking alcohol was also collected (via
groups, interviews, and web searches), providing a database
of 487 links to relevant material (including websites, apps,
and games). Critical and in-depth qualitative analyses across
these multimodal datasets were undertaken.
Key findings demonstrated that social technologies play a
crucial role in young adultsâ drinking cultures and processes
of identity construction. Consuming alcohol to a point of
intoxication was a commonplace leisure-time activity for
most of the young adult participants, and social network
technologies were fully integrated into their drinking cultures.
Facebook was employed by all participants and was used
before, during and following drinking episodes. Uploading
and sharing photos on Facebook was particularly central to
young peopleâs drinking cultures and the ongoing creation of
their identities. This involved a great deal of Facebook âworkâ
to ensure appropriate identity displays such as tagging (the
addition of explanatory or identifying labels) and untagging
photos.
Being visible online was crucial for many young adults,
and they put significant amounts of time and energy into
updating and maintaining Facebook pages, particularly with
material regarding drinking practices and events. However
this was not consistent across the sample, and our findings
revealed nuanced and complex ways in which people from
different ethnicities, genders and social classes engaged
with drinking cultures and new technologies in different
ways, reflecting their positioning within the social structure.
Pakeha shared their drinking practices online with relatively
little reflection, while Pasifika and Maori participants were
more likely to discuss avoiding online displays of drinking
and demonstrated greater reflexive self-surveillance. Females
spoke of being more aware of normative expectations around
gender than males, and described particular forms of online
identity displays (e.g. moderated intake, controlled selfdetermination).
Participants from upper socio-economic
groups expressed less concern than others about both
drinking and posting material online. Celebrity culture
was actively engaged with, in part at least, as a means of
expressing what it is to be a young adult in contemporary
society, and reinforcing the need for young people to engage
in their own everyday practices of âcelebritisingâ themselves
through drinking cultures online.
Alcohol companies employed social media to market
their products to young people in sophisticated ways that
meant the campaigns and actions were rarely perceived as
marketing. Online alcohol marketing initiatives were actively
appropriated by young people and reproduced within their
Facebook pages to present tastes and preferences, facilitate
social interaction, construct identities, and more generally
develop cultural capital. These commercial activities
within the commercial platforms that constitute social
networking systems contribute heavily to a general âculture
of intoxicationâ while simultaneously allowing young people
to âcreateâ and âproduceâ themselves online via the sharing of
consumption âchoicesâ, online interactions and activities
Evaluation of the Choose Life North Lanarkshire Awareness Programme: Final Report
The Centre for Menâs Health at Leeds Metropolitan University, with consultants from MRC Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, Glasgow, and Menâs Health Forum, Scotland (MHFS), were appointed to conduct the Choose Life (North Lanarkshire) evaluation, beginning in March 2011. The key evaluation questions are: 1. How has the social marketing approach to increase awareness of crisis service numbers and de-stigmatise understandings and attitudes about suicide worked? 2. Has the programme as implemented been effective? Which aspects of the programme have been particularly effective? 3. Has this programme been of benefit to the community, in particular young men aged 16-35? 4. What contribution has the community made to the effectiveness of the programme
Clubbing masculinities: Gender shifts in gay men's dance floor choreographies
This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Journal of Homosexuality, 58(5), 608-625, 2011 [copyright
Taylor & Francis], available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/00918369.2011.563660This article adopts an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the intersections of gender, sexuality, and dance. It examines the expressions of sexuality among gay males through culturally popular forms of club dancing. Drawing on political and musical history, I outline an account of how gay men's gendered choreographies changed throughout the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. Through a notion of âtechnologies of the body,â I situate these developments in relation to cultural levels of homophobia, exploring how masculine expressions are entangled with and regulated by musical structures. My driving hypothesis is that as perceptions of cultural homophobia decrease, popular choreographies of gay men's dance have become more feminine in expression. Exploring this idea in the context of the first decade of the new millennium, I present a case study of TigerHeat, one of the largest weekly gay dance club events in the United States
Sovereign of Herself : Womenâs Narratives of âLived Atheismâ
Peer reviewedPublisher PD
Age and generations in everyday organisational life: neglected intersections in studying organisations
This paper highlights and critically analyses age and generation-related issues and their intersections with other social divisions in working life, and their importance for how work, careers, organisations and related work innovations are constructed. We draw mainly on qualitative data from nine case organisations in Finland and focus on the following questions: 1) What aspects of age and generational relations are articulated in the case organisations studied?; 2) How do age and age-generations intersect with other social divisions in workplaces? We work from the data in forming and recognising thematic groupings, and identify five main forms of discursive talk about age and generation: physical restrictions; retirement issues; age diversity as a strength; lack of a particular age group; along with silence on age or age as a non-issue. As such, the dynamics and intersections about and around age and generation in organisations are complex, multi-dimensional, and often contradictory and ambiguous. Building on an online survey (n = 122) and through interviews (n = 53) and qualitative fieldwork in nine organisations, we contribute to empirical, policy, intersectional, and theoretical areas and debates on age, generations and intersectionality at work, organisations and work innovation
Critical Review of Research on Families and Family Policies in Europe Conference Report
This report was produced by FAMILYPLATFORM. FAMILYPLATFORM (SSH-2009-3.2.2 Social platform on research for families and family policies) is funded by the EUâs 7th Framework Programme (âŹ1,400,000) and has a duration of 18 months (October 2009 â March 2011). The consortium consists of the following 12 organisations: 1) Technical University Dortmund (Coordinators); 2) State Institute for Family Research, University of Bamberg; 3) Family Research Centre, University of JyvĂ€skylĂ€; 4) Austrian Institute for Family Studies, University of Vienna; 5) Demographic Research Institute, Budapest; 6) Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon; 7) Department of Sociology and Social research, University of Milan-Bicocca; 8) Institute of International and Social Studies, Tallinn University; 9) London School of Economics; 10) Confederation of Family Organisations in the European Union (COFACE), Brussels; 11) Forum delle Associazioni Familiari, Italy; 12) Mouvement Mondial des MĂšres, Brussels; Contact [email protected] or visit http://www.familyplatform.eu for more information.The aim of this Critical Review Report is to describe and report on the international conference "Families and Family Policies in Europe - A Critical Review", wich took place in Lisbon, at the Institute for Social Sciences (University of Lisbon), in May 2010. Organized by FAMILYPLATFORM consortium, the main objective of this 3 day conference was to carry out a critical review of existing research on families and family policies in Europe. Drawing on expert reviews of the state of the art, critical statements by stakeholders and policy makers, and debate on the major challenges for research and policies, the conference was organized with a view to providing a major forum for discussing and identifying the design of future family policies and research.FAMILYPLATFORM (SSH 2009.2.2 Social platform on research for families and family policies): funded by the European Unions 7th Framework Programme for 18 months (October 2009 â March 2011)
The time benefits of young adult home stayers in France and Italy: a new perspective on the transition to adulthood?
This article analyses how two co-residing generations contribute to the housework workload in Italy and France during the early 2000s. It studies the intergenerational exchange of time between young adults and their parents by indirectly comparing the level of domestic comfort enjoyed by young people in the two closely neighbouring countries. A focus on the reasons for staying in the parental home provides an explanation for the tendency of young Italian adults to prolong their stay in the family nest. The results of time-use surveys suggest that young Italians (especially young men) may benefit more than their French counterparts in co-residing with their parents. Beyond the compositional or structural effects, they perform fewer domestic tasks than their French counterparts, a result that is related to different cultural practices
Medium for empowerment or a 'centre for everything': studentsâ experience of control in digital environments within a university context
In maximising opportunities to nurture rich and productive learning communities, there is a need to know more about the cultures and sub-cultures that surround virtual learning environments (VLEs). Drawing from a small-scale interview study of studentsâ digital practices, this paper explores how different discourses may have patterned a group of studentsâ experiences of VLEs. Unlike studies which have focused upon evaluations of specific projects or interventions, this study investigated their experience across their course. It explores the student identities they associated with digital environments and the power relationships which seemed to pattern how they positioned themselves (or felt positioned) as learners. Whilst none were intimidated by technical aspects, the student identities available to them seemed to vary, as did their perceptions of the student identities associated with university-sponsored digital environments. The analysis considers three aspects of their experience: how they related to the VLE itself, how they related to others through this, and the alternative communities they created to attempt to manage their engagement with the VLE. The paper concludes by arguing for further research which focuses on the broader student experience across courses in order to explore how university-based digital environments intersect with studentsâ identities as learners
Thinking intergenerationally about motherhood
This paper draws on The Making of Modern Motherhoods study, which explores how a contemporary generation of women are creating motherhood, and how intergenerational dynamics of mother daughter relationships can provide insight into the interplay of historical, biographical and generational processes. The study combines an intergeneration and longtitudinal research design, building 12 case studies from an initial interview sample of 62 expectant first time mothers. The paper begins with a review of the conceptual tools employed within the study in order to make sense of rich empirical data, including memory, generation, co-existence and configuration. These themes are then realised through a detailed case history of the Calder family â tracing the impact of the arrival of a new generation. This thick description enables us to see beyond the individual towards the historically contingent configuration that is a âfamilyâ. By counter posing the horizontal dimensions of the generation against the vertical dimension of historical process and intergenerational change it is possible to capture a sense of how people live, creating change in order to establish continuity. The paper concludes by exploring the contingency of formations of mothering and their connectedness over time, through reflections on the interplay of historical, generational and biographical temporalities
Analysing Web Images
The visual is fundamental to internet experience which itself is an almost unavoidable feature of our lives as workers, consumers, family members, and as researchers. However, despite the recent interest in the visual in business and management research, web images have yet to become a key focus of analysis. This chapter discusses different forms of image found on the internet and explores ways in which these might be analysed.
Imagine for a moment the internet without images. Then consider your own organizational website or one relating to an organization you are researching; look at its coverage in the news or how it promotes its products online. It is likely you may even find more images than text. We suggest that these web images offer potential insights into a wide range contemporary of work-related debates of interest to business and management researchers. Such insights might inform understandings of particular organizational processes or, as in our own research exploring constructions of age and ageing at work, inform an understanding of the internet as a critical communicative context for organizing, organizations and those working in them.
In this chapter we examine the potential of these data for informing research and consider key questions to pose when setting out on such a research project. Given the variety and potential of web images we first provide an overview of these data before exploring a specific example in depth to offer further methodological examination
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