Emergent organization and responsive technologies in crisis: Creating connections or enabling divides

I articulate and employ a situational boundary-making approach to study the emergence of organization and technology at a shelter during Hurricane Katrina. My analysis of qualitative data shows how emergent organization occurred at the shelter as situational entanglements consisting of three main elements: a salient moment in time, key actors, and boundary-making practices. Key actors' responses to salient moments in time enacted both distinction and dependency between organizational and technological actors, resulting in a divided organization. This analysis extends emergent approaches by showing how organization and technology are situationally organized and emerges through the (in)determinacy of meaning. Implications are also discussed for disaster managers to assess the success and failure of technology during a response. © The Author(s) 2012

Resilience and economic empowerment: A qualitative investigation of entrepreneurial Indonesian Women

The development of female entrepreneurs in Indonesia is an integral part of Muslim women\u27s economic contributions and empowerment. However, there is a lack of reliable research about female entrepreneurship and how gender may affect the experiences of business ownership in Indonesia. Therefore, the aim of this study is to explore the challenges encountered by these women entrepreneurs on a daily basis. Qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted with 30 female Indonesian entrepreneurs. Participants were recruited using theoretical and maximum variation sampling techniques. Content analysis was then used to analyze the data. Results revealed high levels of variations, both within and between women, suggesting that the quality of business entrepreneurship and success depended largely on the personal characteristics of these women, rather than on any system of formal education or training. This study also found that many women displayed resilient coping strategies when dealing with business failures. As a consequence, they were able to thrive despite restrictive social, cultural and political constraints. The paper highlights the importance of the experiences of female entrepreneurs in a developing country and the need to integrate the development of female entrepreneurship as a part of women empowerment effort

Student midwives perspectives on the efficacy of feedback after objective structured clinical examination

Students’ experience of feedback is considered an indicator of the efficacy of the assessment process. Negative experiences of feedback are unproductive in terms of the likelihood that students will act upon and learn from assessment. To understand the impact of feedback on learning this study explored the experiences of student midwives after receiving feedback following Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE). Data were collected from second year undergraduate student midwives who had recently completed OSCE, via a focus group. Students reported raised stress levels, concerns around legitimacy of feedback, and inconsistencies in the manner in which feedback was articulated. Assessment feedback in higher education should be used to empower students to become self-regulated learners. This is important for student midwives for whom a considerable amount of leaning is spent in practice. The study has implications for midwifery academics concerned with modes of assessment and quality of assessment feedback in midwifery education

Support through patient internet-communities: Lived experience of Russian in vitro fertilization patients

The article is concerned with the life experiences of infertile women going through infertility treatment and their need for social and psychological support, which they try to find in their immediate social environment. The Internet has become one place where everyone can find “people like oneself.” The best support is received from these people who are in the same life situation and are able and willing to share their lived experiences with each other. Communication via the Internet and the formation of a virtual community of patients has both positive and negative aspects, all of which are examined in the article. On the one hand, it creates a psychologically favorable atmosphere and might potentially increase the success rate of IVF treatment. On the other, this leads to the seclusion of patients within the circle of “similar people” and sometimes to negative attitudes towards people outside the circle. The article is based on the author's “netnography” research of a virtual community of Russian In-Vitro Fertilization (IVF)1 patients

@THEVIEWER: Analyzing the offline and online impact of a dedicated conversation manager in the newsroom of a public broadcaster

This study is built around the appointment of a dedicated “conversation manager” at the Flemish public broadcaster VRT. We focus on (1) the impact of the conversation manager on Twitter activity of the viewers and (2) the impact of the tweeting audience in the newsroom. Our framework combines journalistic as well as social media logics in Bourdieu’s field framework, for which we combine Twitter data and newsroom inquiry. The network analysis of Twitter activity shows the impact of the conversation manager, although his activities are primarily guided by traditional journalistic values. In turn, the tweeting audience impacts newsroom practices, predominantly as an indicator of audience appreciation. To conclude, social media data further complicate the definition and understanding of “the public.

Shifting Winds: Using Ancestry DNA to Explore Multiracial Individuals\u27 Patterns of Articulating Racial Identity

This study explored how genotype information affects identification narratives of multiracial individuals. Twenty-one multiracial individuals completed individual interviews before and after receiving a DNA analysis to clarify their genetically based racial ancestry. Based on results, this article proposes patterns of articulating racial identity by multiracial individuals. Four patterns extend evolving research in multiracial identification, namely (1) the individual articulates a monoracial identity; (2) the individual articulates one identity, but this can shift in response to various conditions; (3) the individual articulates an extraracial identity, opting out of traditional categories applied to race; and (4) the person distinguishes traditional categories of race from culture and owns the two identities in different ways. Implications of these findings are discussed. First, adding new ancestry DNA information further muddles the neat categories of race, consistent with the view of race as socially constructed. Second, results emphasize the fluidity of identification for multiracial individuals. Third, DNA information challenges the neat percentages people tend to associate with their backgrounds. Particularly for younger multiracial individuals, there was less of a sense that race was a real thing and more that culture played a big part in how they saw themselves

Medical Students’ Views and Ideas About Palliative Care Communicatio Training

This study focused on the undergraduate medical student to identify views and ideas held toward palliative care communication training, pedagogical approaches to this training, and its perceived effectiveness and use in the medical field. Two focus groups consisting of fourth-year medical students were conducted, and their responses were analyzed using grounded theory categorization. Results indicated that students: (a) prefer to learn nonverbal communication techniques, (b) believe that natural ability and experience outweigh communication curriculum, (c) view the skill of breaking bad news as largely dependent on knowledge and expertise, and (d) prefer curriculum on palliative care and hospice to consist of information (eg, advance directives) rather than communication skills. Implications for these interpretive themes are discussed as well as future research and practice.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

Development of a Model System to Identify Differences in Spring and Winter Oat

Our long-term goal is to develop a Swedish winter oat (Avena sativa). To identify molecular differences that correlate with winter hardiness, a winter oat model comprising of both non-hardy spring lines and winter hardy lines is needed. To achieve this, we selected 294 oat breeding lines, originating from various Russian, German, and American winter oat breeding programs and tested them in the field in south- and western Sweden. By assaying for winter survival and agricultural properties during four consecutive seasons, we identified 14 breeding lines of different origins that not only survived the winter but also were agronomically better than the rest. Laboratory tests including electrolytic leakage, controlled crown freezing assay, expression analysis of the AsVrn1 gene and monitoring of flowering time suggested that the American lines had the highest freezing tolerance, although the German lines performed better in the field. Finally, six lines constituting the two most freezing tolerant lines, two intermediate lines and two spring cultivars were chosen to build a winter oat model system. Metabolic profiling of non-acclimated and cold acclimated leaf tissue samples isolated from the six selected lines revealed differential expression patterns of 245 metabolites including several sugars, amino acids, organic acids and 181 hitherto unknown metabolites. The expression patterns of 107 metabolites showed significant interactions with either a cultivar or a time-point. Further identification, characterisation and validation of these metabolites will lead to an increased understanding of the cold acclimation process in oats. Furthermore, by using the winter oat model system, differential sequencing of crown mRNA populations would lead to identification of various biomarkers to facilitate winter oat breeding

Is a ‘new feminist visibility’ emerging in the UK PR industry? Senior women’s discourse and performativity within the neoliberal PR firm

Despite persistent gender inequalities, the Public Relations (PR) industry in the UK has historically reflected unease with feminism (Yaxley, 2013; L'Etang, 2015). However, indications of a ‘new feminist visibility’ raise significant questions. Do these feminist moves reflect a blossoming of feminist practice in the PR industry? Or rather, in an occupation that is strongly intertwined with neoliberalism and promotional culture (Miller and Dinan, 2000; Cronin, 2018), is the PR industry emblematic of a highly individualised ‘neoliberal feminism’ (Rottenberg, 2014) and a postfeminist sensibility in which ‘multiple and contradictory ideas’ co-exist? (Gill, 2016: 622). Adopting Edley’s (2000) discourse analysis framework, data drawn from interviews with seven senior female practitioners, supported by observational data, was critically explored in relation to literature in gender sociology, cultural studies and feminist literature in PR. While the online presence of women’s networks in PR provide evidence of a feminist visibility to address inequalities, the ‘subject positions’ and ‘interpretative repertoires’ in the data were characteristic of neoliberal feminist individualism that calls upon women to provide for their own needs and aspirations through ‘self help’ measures. Further, while sex discrimination in the PR industry featured prominently within the discursive repertoires of some participants, inequalities in everyday agency practice were either left unchallenged in response to client expectations or tackled through individual actions. Contradictory repertoires, including the repudiation of sexism, were indicative of entrepreneurial discourse (Lewis, 2006) and a postfeminist sensibility (Gill et al, 2017). Senior PR women providing client services appear to have limited scope beyond individualised, performative strategies to challenge the structures that perpetuate inequalities in PR and bring about transformative change (Golombisky, 2015). Although findings are limited to a small-scale study, this paper contributes a unique perspective of the intersections between neoliberalism, third wave feminism, postfeminism and performativity within the UK PR industry. Keywords: Neoliberalism, postfeminism, performativity, discourse, women, public relations agencie

The Development of Inclusive Learning Relationships in Mainstream Settings: A Multimodal Perspective

The debate regarding the inclusion of children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) in mainstream education in the UK partly revolves around what makes the classroom environment inclusive. Through the potential offered by the specific qualitative methodologies employed, this study aimed to explore the development of teachers’ pedagogical practices and learning relationships upon the inclusive education of children with special educational needs and disabilities in two primary school classes. The study considered the views and behaviours of primary school pupils with and without special educational needs, primary school teachers and teaching assistants (TAs) in one mainstream school. Drawing on a multimodal approach to discourse analysis to account for the complex relationships between symbolic and non-verbal modes of classroom signification, the study explored how meaning is produced in classrooms and children’s modes of communication, as well as in teachers’ practices. The two classes are compared on the basis of teaching observations, interviews, transcripts of dialogues, and analyses of classroom organisation and decoration. This paper suggests that the greatest influence on the educational and social outcomes of students with special educational needs is the behaviour and practices of the classroom teacher