Families and Social Media Use: The Role of Parents' Perceptions about Social Media Impact on Family Systems in the Relationship between Family Collective Efficacy and Open Communication

Communication through social media characterizes modern lifestyles and relationships, including family interactions. The present study aims at deepening the role that parents’ perceptions about social media effects on family systems can exert within their family functioning, specifically referring to the relationship between collective family efficacy and open communications within family systems with adolescents. A questionnaire to detect the openness of family communications, thecollectivefamilyefficacyandtheperceptionsabouttheimpactsofsocialmediaonfamilysystems wasadministeredto227Italianparentswhohadoneormoreteenagechildren,andwhouseFacebook and WhatsApp to communicate with them. From the results, these perceptions emerge as a mediator in the relationship between the collective family efficacy and the openness of communications, suggestingthatitisnotonlytheactualimpactofsocialmediaonfamilysystemsthatmattersbutalso parents’ perceptions about it and how much they feel able to manage their and their children’s social media use without damaging their family relationships. Thus, the need to foster parents’ positive perceptions about social media’s potential impact on their family relationships emerges. A strategy could be the promotion of knowledge on how to functionally use social media

The Crisis of the Representative Democracy and The New Social Movements

La crisi economico-finanziaria globale di questi ultimi anni è stata l’elemento scatenante di una serie di crisi sociali e politiche. Gli Stati europei insistono nell’adottare politiche improntate al libero mercato e, contemporaneamente, a smantellare gli investimenti nel welfare. Aumentano le disuguaglianze e la povertà e, come se non bastasse, le banche hanno ridotto i prestiti alle famiglie e alle imprese.Le popolazioni locali, costretti a sopportare sacrifici odiosi e iniqui, si sentono sempre più estranee alla politica tradizionale. Fortunatamente, sta emergendo nei cittadini europei un’esigenza di passare dalle politiche incentrate sulla centralità. Nuove forme di associazionismo si stanno affermando, tuttavia, l’attivismo dei nuovi gruppi, oltre ad essere privi di un mandato democratico, appaiono assai eterogenei per ambito di interesse e ancora lontani dall’idea di una democrazia veramente partecipativa.The economic and financial crisis in the last few years has been the main trigger for a series of social and political crisis. European states insist adopting free market policies and, simultaneously, to dismantle investment in welfare. This situacion increase inequality and poverty and, moreover, a reduced willingness on the part of banks to finance businesses and households. Local populations, forced to endure heinous and wicked sacrifices, feel increasingly alien to traditional politics. Fortunately, it is emerging among European citizens need to switch from the centrality of markets and the banks of citizens’ rights priorities. New forms of cooperation are emerging, however, the activism of the new groups as well as being without a democratic mandate, appear very heterogeneous by area of interest, and still far from the idea of a genuine and democratic partecipation

Participatory visual methods in the ‘Psychology loves Porta Capuana’ project

This article describes the use of participatory visual and multimedia methods as part of a participatory action research carried out in a highly degraded urban area of a metropolis. The project was developed by the ‘I love Portacapuana’ committee in collaboration with community psychology lab and 180 undergraduate psychology students of the University of Naples Federico II. The joint use of visual tools such as photographs and videos with Internet-based collaborative work groups – through social networks such as Facebook – has proved effective in interpreting the needs of local citizens. This process has also involved a thorough analysis in terms of strengths and weaknesses as well as opportunities and threats in the local context. Indeed, the integration of visual tools into the broader framework of community diagnosis has fostered an interactive dialogue between the local community, researchers and local authorities. This, in turn, has lead to the outlining of a series of intervention strategies for local urban regeneration

Healthcare Professionals’ Perceptions and Concerns towards Domestic Violence during Pregnancy in Southern Italy

Background: Literature on pregnancy highlighted a large number of women abused by their partners, especially among low-income teenagers attending hospital for pregnancy check-ups. Pregnancy represents a key moment for diagnosing domestic violence. Method: This study explores health professionals’ perceptions and concerns about domestic violence against women in services dealing with pregnant women. The twenty-four interviewees were from an Obstetrical-Gynecological walk-in Clinic in the south of Italy. The textual data has been complementarily analyzed by means of two dierent procedures: Symbolic-structural semiotic analysis and Thematic content analysis. Results: What emerges is that the interviewees of the clinic do not regard the issue of domestic violence as a matter of direct interest for the health service. The clinic is seen as a place for urgent contact, but one where there is not enough time to dedicate to this kind of patient, nor an adequate space to care for and listen to them. Obstetricians and health personnel expressed a negative attitude when it comes to including questions regarding violence and abuse in pre-natal reports. Training for health and social professionals and the empowering of institutional support and networking practices are needed to increase awareness of the phenomenon among the gynecological personnel

Ending Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) and Locating Men at Stake: An Ecological Approach

Interventions for ending intimate partner violence (IPV) have not usually provided integrated approaches. Legal and social policies have the duty to protect, assist and empower women and to bring offenders to justice. Men have mainly been considered in their role as perpetrators to be subjected to judicial measures, while child witnesses of violence have not been viewed as a direct target for services. Currently, there is a need for an integrated and holistic theoretical and operational model to understand IPV as gender-based violence and to intervene with the goal of ending the fragmentation of existing measures. The EU project ViDaCS—Violent Dads in Child Shoes—which worked towards the deconstruction and reconstruction of violence’s effects on child witnesses, has given us the opportunity to collect the opinions of social workers and child witnesses regarding violence. Therefore, the article describes measures to deal with IPV, proposing functional connections among different services and specific preventative initiatives. Subsequently, this study will examine intimate partner violence and provide special consideration to interventions at the individual, relational, organizational and community levels. The final goal will be to present a short set of guidelines that take into account the four levels considered by operationalizing the aforementioned ecological principles

Local community experience as an anchor sustaining reorientation processes during COVID-19 pandemic

In recent months, Italian citizens have alternatively experienced a forced, total or partial, loss of their opportunities to go out and meet their social network or their reduction, according to the restrictions locally needed to contain the spread of the COVID-19 outbreak. The effects of these unprecedented circumstances and restrictions on their local community experience are still to be deepened. Consequently, this study investigated young citizens’ experiences of and attitudes towards their local communities of belonging after ten months of alternatively strict and partially eased restrictions. The World Café methodology was used to favor the exchange of ideas and open new viewpoints among participants. What emerged suggests that the communities of belonging may have worked as anchors to which young citizens clung as an attempt not to be overwhelmed by the disorientation brought about by the loss of their daily life (e.g., routines, life places, face-to-face sociability). On the one hand, this suggests that a renewed focus on local communities and a more involved way of living in them may stem from this tough time. On the other hand, these results point out the need for more meaningful and actively engaged people–community relationships as drivers for recovery processes under emergency circumstances

Migration and situated contexts: natives and Maghrebian habitants of San Marcellino (South Italy)

Literatures on ethnic identity and acculturation strategies - integration, assimilation, separation or marginalization (Berry,1997) - have shown how host populations perceive migrants and that migrant populations may be viewed very differently by the majority group or the larger society. We could understand the complex interaction between individual factors, the individual’s belonging to a group, the intragroup and intergroup dynamics, while bearing in mind that at the same time the dimensions we have mentioned interact reciprocally within the group and with external groups. For this reason, we have conducted semi-structured interviews with inhabitants – natives and Maghrebian – in an area in the territory surrounding Naples where there is a Mosque and which has a high density of various kinds of migrants. This self-descriptive tool of the interview aims at collecting information ranging from a description of oneself to a description of others and of the context. With relation to the aforementioned objectives, the participants were selected on the basis of a theoretical sampling: natives and Maghrebian migrants with various characteristics and social roles, with and without reciprocal contacts. The interviews and the textual materials gathered were audio-recorded. They were transcribed and underwent qualitative analysis by means of the methodology of grounded theory. This is a “substantive theory”, which is derived via an inductive method from the study of a phenomenon, an explanation, an interpretation of a specific phenomenon which is particular because it is built by means of a theory (Corbin & Strauss, 2008). This study thus intends to identify classification systems which support the representation of the self and of others in terms of belonging or extraneousness in relation to contexts which imply various levels of sharing, participation and trust in order to promote forms of interconnection and planning involving the different cultures simultaneously present in a given territorial community. In this regard, recognising the reciprocal classifications enables us to investigate the elements which are supposed to be the basis of processes of integration

Ubiquitous processes strengthening neighbourhood communities: How neighbourhood‐related social media can foster the active involvement of citizens and build resilient communities

Modern local communities are undergoing deep changes due to modern social and cultural processes and to the widespread use of ubiquitous, neighbourhood-related social media. Indeed, the latter shape citizens' experiences in terms of both local relationships and opportunities for shared aims and behaviours. Therefore, this study endeavours to unravel the impact of neighbourhood-related social media on users' sense of community (SoC), sense of responsible togetherness (SoRT), and perceptions of community resilience via their potential in enhancing their informal neighbouring behaviours and civic engagement. Nine hundred and sixty-five Italian citizens (30.1% males; Mage = 22.80; SDage = 4.88) answered an online questionnaire; Structural Equation Modelling was used to run a multiple sequential mediation model having community resilience as the final outcome. The results confirm the positive relationship of such social media with users' informal neighbouring behaviours and civic engagement but show that only civic engagement mediates its relationships with SoC, SoRT, and perceptions of community resilience. Altogether, this opens interesting venues for future developments in both research and intervention fields, with reference to (a) further unravelling the intertwinement between online and local social dynamics and environments, and (b) better understanding how such intertwinement and this kind of social media could represent tools for the promotion of community building processes and of local resilience in community interventions

Sense of responsible togetherness, sense of community, and civic engagement behaviours: Disentangling an active and engaged citizenship

Local communities should represent entities where individuals get answers to their affiliation needs and for which they feel responsible, but in modern ones, increasingly complex ways of living together are fostering citizens' civic and social disengagement. The present study addresses the relationships between the cognitive, affective, and behavioural components of an active and engaged citizenship. Five hundred and fifty-five Italian citizens answered an online questionnaire about their Sense of Responsible Togetherness, Sense of Community, and Civic Engagement Behaviours. The results support Sense of Community as a mediator in the relationship between Sense of Responsible Togetherness and civic engagement behaviours, suggesting that the representations about community members being active and responsible, and having opportunities to meet and match, could at the same time strengthen their tie to that community and foster their civic engagement for it. This could set up a cycle of enhancement and empowerment for individuals and communities through increasing the opportunities for local generative interactions and civic engagement

Redefining the setting of intervention in combating violence against women: The voice of professionals in emergencies

Gender-based violence (GBV) is a worldwide phenomenon, comparable to global epidemics and pandemics. The most widespread form of violence is domestic violence (DV). During the COVID-19 pandemic, DV increased because the former reinforced the underlying risk factors. The most appropriate model to address GBV is the ecological model, which allows addressing individual, relational, collective, and organisational levels of analysis and their interaction. Aim of the study was to identify organizational dimensions to improve the effectiveness of services against GBV in emergencies. To this end, ten professionals from gender-based anti-violence services who served during the lock-out were interviewed. The interviews were conducted and analysed through Thematic Analysis Methodology. Results show that during the pandemic many difficulties arose in the organisation of interventions and settings, and new potentials emerged too, especially in remote work, which offered new possibilities to reorganise the services work. The pandemic results highlight methods and strategies that can be applied to develop an operational model to deal with violence against people during emergencie