The Perception of LGBTQ Influencers on Social Media

Social media brand influencers have become one of the biggest marketing and public relations trends of 2017, especially those who promote lifestyle brands (Glucksman, 2017). While many social media users are capitalizing on the “brand influencer” trend, people who identify as the LGBTQ, still struggle to connect with the heterosexual audience as brand influencers source. YouTube and Instagram are visual mediums that allow brand influencers to craft their expertise verbally and visually to communicate their expertise and enhance credibility. Using the source credibility theory, which posits that persuasiveness of the message is based on the perceived credibility of the source (Hovland et al, 1951), this study investigates how the LGBTQ and heterosexual influencers were perceived by the followers on the YouTube and Instagram platform. Using a Netnography approach, (n=4,646) comments were analyzed from YouTube and (n=16,683) from Instagram to identify positive, negative, and neutral sentiment. Findings demonstrate the LGBTQ community have a higher level of engagement, but at the same time, a high interest from followers on the sponsored posts. The commenters responding to the heterosexual influencers focus more on the influencer appearance rather than the content presented by them. Comments on Instagram are more explicit compared to YouTube

The Family Values: Is It Really About the Family? Analyzing The Family in the Egyptian Discourse Through a Sociological Lens

The Egyptian state has put on its shoulders the responsibility of protecting the family and its values. But how this family, in a massive society like Egypt, can be defined? In this paper, I argue that it has never been about protecting the family. However, it is an attempt to shape the citizens into small separate hives which give the State the power to gain access to the intimate details of its citizens’ lives through which they can be easily monitored, managed, and controlled. By analyzing Michel Foucault’s work on government, power, sexuality, and family, I travel through a historical journey during the modernization period in Egypt. I attempt to tell the evolution story of the nuclear family in the Egyptian legal discourse and how the state unnaturally shaped it through laws, courts, and intellectuals. This paper attempts to illustrate that what we believe is the ultimate truth is not always the case

Managing job-related stress among child protection social workers in Egypt: The role of religion and social support

In order to better understand stress and coping among Egyptian child protection social workers, this study aimed to: 1) assess the levels of burnout, secondary trauma and compassion satisfaction they experience; 2) discover to what extent they relied on religion and social support to cope with stress; and 3) to see if religion and social support along with gender and years of experience explained levels of burnout, secondary trauma and compassion satisfaction. A total of 80 male and female child protection social workers who had varying years of experience were given scales that measured their overall job-related stress levels (measured by ProQOL, version 5) as well as their use of religious and emotional and instrumental social support coping strategies (measured by two scales from the COPE Inventory). In addition, participants listed the top three things they did when feeling work-related stress. It was found that child protection social workers exhibited average levels of job-related stress (burnout and secondary traumatic stress) and high levels of compassion satisfaction. It was also found that they used religious coping more than coping through emotional or instrumental social support. Gender and years of experience did not have a significant effect on use of the three types of coping strategies or on the levels of stress (burnout and secondary traumatic stress) or compassion satisfaction. To see if the coping strategies of instrumental social support, emotional social support and religion along with gender and years of experience were predictors of burnout, secondary traumatic stress and compassion satisfaction, multiple regression analyses were run. Results showed that only religion significantly predicted higher levels of burnout and only emotional social support significantly predicted higher levels of secondary trauma. It also showed that both religion and instrumental social support significantly predicted higher levels of compassion satisfaction. The implications of this research for reducing stress and supporting successful coping are discussed

Power-sharing consociationalism in resolving South Sudan’s ethnopolitical conflict in the post- Comprehensive Peace Agreement era

This article uses Arend Lijphart’s notion of ‘power-sharing consociationalism’ to understand the mutually reinforcing conflict system and the barriers to resolving such conflicts in South Sudan. ‘Consociationalism’ has been affirmed as an ideal approach for resolving conflicts in ethnically divided societies, but in South Sudan, the formal institutions of power sharing have not delivered sustainable peace. Analysis in this article reveals that the implementation of the various ‘peace agreements’ and ‘deals’ deviated from classical ‘consociationalism’. Consequently limited attention  was paid to inter-ethnic tensions and too much emphasis was placed on the mechanics of power sharing among the executive and military institutions, leading to the proliferation of ‘organised political movements’. Rather than focusing on the mechanics of power sharing, a viable consociational model for South Sudan should concentrate on how such multifaceted layers of issues can be accommodated within a single settlement. Therefore, the South Sudan conflict system requires a stronger reconceptualisation of issues. Hence we have coined the term ‘tragedy of ethnic diversity’, not as a replacement of the well-known concept of ‘resource curse’, but as new thinking that might shape future research and scholarship in the increasingly complex South Sudan conflict system.Keywords: Consociationalism, power sharing, conflict resolution, ethnicity, tragedy of ethnic diversity, South Suda

Una reivindicació historiogràfica de l'«objecte polític»

L'estudi de la cultura material a través dels objectes que la constitueixen ha esdevingut una necessitat i, paral·lelament, una oportunitat per elaborar coneixement respecte del passat. Enrico Francia i Carlotta Sorba es fan ressò d'aquest potencial i, en comprendre la necessitat de dotar la història de mecanismes per historiar l'objecte, coordinen Political obects in the age of revolutions, volum coral a través del qual es proposen diverses perspectives per a l'estudi de l'objecte, però no de tots els objectes, sinó només dels que classifiquen com a «polítics

A satisfação dos utentes idosos nos cuidados continuados no Algarve

A presente investigação tem como objetivo geral conhecer o grau de satisfação dos utentes idosos internados nas Unidades Média Duração e Reabilitação (UMDR) e nas Unidades de Longa Duração e Manutenção (ULDM) do Algarve da Rede Nacional de Cuidados Continuados Integrados (RNCCI). A amostra é constituída por 91 idosos com idades compreendidas entre os 65 e os 91 anos internados em Unidades de Média Duração e Reabilitação e em Unidades de Longa Duração e Manutenção no Algarve. Quanto à metodologia delineada para esta investigação, esta assentou numa investigação de teor quantitativo, transversal e exploratório. Sendo esta investigação um estudo exploratório e transversal, os instrumentos utilizados para avaliação da satisfação dos utentes idosos foram o questionário sócio-demográfico e a construção de uma escala de avaliação da satisfação. Para análise dos resultados foram utilizados os testes estatísticos: teste t, o teste não paramétrico, Kruskal Wallis e o SPSS – versão 19. Os resultados obtidos permitem concluir que os utentes das UMDR e ULDM se encontram satisfeitos com a qualidade da prestação dos cuidados que lhes são prestados e com o internamento. De entre os resultados obtidos destaca-se, ainda, a identificação de três fatores principais responsáveis pela satisfação dos utentes internados nas UMDR e ULDM: 1) “ambiente físico, segurança e acolhimento profissional”; 2) “apoio familiar e social”; e 3) “informação e processo terapêutico”

The Bullangues of Barcelona (1835-1837): State of the Art

[cat] L'estudi històric de les primeres bullangues de Barcelona (1835-1837), peça clau en l'esdevenir de la inestable i turbulenta llarga dècada de 1830-1843, està sent hoste, a raó de la transformació en sentit social i cultural de la història política, d'una notable renovació historiogràfica. La convergència entre les aportacions de la historiografia socioeconòmica d'inicis de la segona meitat del segle XX, i la història política assentada durant les darreres dècades del mateix segle, ha facilitat la creació d'estudis holístics respecte del fenomen en qüestió. L'article que segueix elabora un estat de la qüestió en el qual es ressalta tal procés d'hibridació historiogràfica i, paral·lelament, es presenten els debats restants i els consensos assolits per la renovada història política de les bullangues de Barcelona.[eng] The historical research on the topic of Barcelona's first «bullangues», a key process to understand the unstable and turbulent long decade of 1830-1843, has been subject to a profound historiographical renovation caused by the adoption of a social and cultural perspective by political historians. The concurrence between the nineteenth-fifties to nineteen-seventies socioeconomic historiography and late-twentieth-century political historians, has enabled the creation of a new and holistic perspective of the phenomenon in question. The article that follows elaborates a historiographical review focusing on the aforementioned hybridization while, on the other hand, presents the debates and consensus that the new political history has constructed around Barcelona's first «bullangues»