GPs in cyberspace: the sociology of a 'virtual community'

It has been argued that on-line networked communication can enable the establishment of ‘virtual communities’. Empirical data from an electronic discussion group for general medical practitioners (GPs) are used to evaluate these claims, and to explore the similarities and discrepancies between on-line and face-to-face interactions. A distinct social order for this ‘community’ is reported, and the strategies to establish this order in a textual environment are discussed. Participants went through a cycle of integration into membership, and some generated distinctive virtual identities or personae. The notion of a ‘virtual community’ is critically discussed. Participants interacted as if they were part of a community, but it is suggested that the interactions on the list are best understood as extensions of the wider social relations of general practice. The study of virtual communities may thus have relevance for wider issues of social inclusion and citizenship. The paper also includes reflections on ‘cyberethnography’, and suggestions for further research are offered.     

STRANGE YET STYLISH HEADGEAR VR consumption and the construction of gender

This article examines how gender is inscribed and reproduced in the consumption of Virtual Reality (VR) technologies. The focus is on how virtual reality systems become embedded in 'everyday life' through leisure and consumption, and how the spectacles and disciplines associated with consumption sites produce gendered virtual subjects. Studies of new communications technologies have tended to polarize between 'cyberpunk'/'cyberfeminist' visions of bodily transcendence in 'cyberspaces', and the critique of such visions from social theorists who focus on the reproduction of social and cultural inequalities through technical systems. These approaches tend to neglect the specific sites in which the social relations of VR are played out. A 'multi-sited' ethnographic study of immersive virtual reality systems is the basis for discussion of how virtual reality technologies produce gender in specific sites. Virtual systems are positioned and used differently in various locales such as arcades and art galleries, bars and theme parks and cafes. The article discusses the practices of consumption which (re)produce and maintain conventional bodily and subjective boundaries. What relationships are becoming institutionalized? Are new conventions of gender created in these consumption relationships? The construction of spectacle and space, and the specific bodily disciplines required for participation in virtual realities in locations of consumption is particularly important in the formation of gender dynamics. Multiple subject positions are offered through competing technical, economic and cultural practices in diverse sites. These positions can establish new conventions of virtual identities and experiences, but also remain shot through with familiar operational categories of gendered identities and bodily practices. This article argues that immersive virtual reality technologies cannot be understood without some consideration of the locales in which they are embedded, and the social identities they make possible or constrain. A local, reflexive and feminist orientation assists in understanding the gendered dynamics associated with 'becoming virtual'.     

Growing Down Like a Banana: Solomon Islands Village Women Changing Gender Norms

This article presents Solomon Islands village women’s opinions about gender norms. It explores their perceptions of their ability to be involved in leadership roles and decision-making, and their analysis of how they conceive of their abilities changing. It attempts to unravel the ‘push-pull’ experience for Solomon Islands rural women—a push towards modernity equated with gender equity and development, and the pull of traditional gender roles for women embedded in notions of what it means to be a good Solomon Islander woman. It concludes that women’s empowerment must be viewed as a journey that encompasses women’s strategic and practical interests relating to agency in a variety of locations. This article contributes to understanding some aspects to women’s empowerment and how international NGOs and other development entities may have a role in creating space for women’s self-reflection, public commentary and visibility in secular social space.     

Trapped in Space? Children's Accounts of Risky Environments

The purpose of this article is to explore children's perceptions and experiences of safety and risk in one highly contested interface area in Belfast. Interface areas are landscapes divided by physical and symbolic boundaries on the basis of religious/ethno‐national identification. The research draws on maps and focus group discussions with young teenagers from four schools in an interface area located in North Belfast. The teenagers identified both private and public places of risk that they faced in their everyday lives. The types of risks produced by this environment are outlined and the teenagers’ strategies for managing the daily risks that they faced in their everyday lives are assessed. The data reveal how teenagers negotiate movement across different types of space and illustrate the extent to which their immediate geographical environment is dependent on its location within wider political, social and cultural systems.     

How to search a social network

We address the question of how participants in a small world experiment are able to find short paths in a social network using only local information about their immediate contacts. We simulate such experiments on a network of actual email contacts within an organization as well as on a student social networking website. On the email network we find that small world search strategies using a contact’s position in physical space or in an organizational hierarchy relative to the target can effectively be used to locate most individuals. However, we find that in the online student network, where the data is incomplete and hierarchical structures are not well defined, local search strategies are less effective. We compare our findings to recent theoretical hypotheses about underlying social structure that would enable these simple search strategies to succeed and discuss the implications to social software design.     

Life beyond the screen: embodiment and identity through the internet

This paper explores on-line and off-line identities and how relationship are formed and negotiated within internet environments that offer opportunities to meet people on-line and move into relationship off-line. To do this it draws on an analysis of users experiences of internet dating sites that are designed for those who wish meet others in the hope of forming an intimate relationship. Locating analyses in the context of the individualized sociability of late modernity, it is argued that virtual interactions may be shaped by and grounded in the social, bodily and cultural experiences of users. It is shown that disembodied anonymity that characterizes the internet acts as a foundation for the building of trust and establishing real world relationship rather than the construction of fantasy selves. The paper concludes with a discussion of the wider significance of this for understanding disembodied identities and interactions and the impact of cyberspace on off-line sociability.     

Party on wheels: mobile party spaces in the Norwegian high school graduation celebration

Research on partying and nightlife often emphasizes commercial control while overlooking participants’ creativity and agency. Due to their age, appearance and transgressive partying, participants in the Norwegian high school graduation celebration have limited access to bars and pubs in the ordinary night‐time economy. To create alternative party spaces under their own control they utilize the spatial opportunities offered by automobility. Groups of students get together many years in advance and buy old buses which they refurbish to become rolling nightclubs that enable them to ‘transcend space’ through partying while on the move. These mobile party spaces provide a material and symbolic centre of communion and a tight space for physical assembly that enhances the production of intense positive emotions. In a cat‐and‐mouse game with the police, the buses provide a sense of nomadic autonomy, and enable participants to drink heavily for days on end. The study examines how youth may creatively zone their own party spaces within the context of automobility and how these mobile spaces again shape the partying that goes on within them. While this party practice opens up for autonomy, creativity and social transgressions reminiscent of liminal phases or carnivals, at a deeper level participants clearly reproduce class‐based differences and exaggerate conventional practices and symbols.     

‘I shouldn’t be living there because I am a sponger’: negotiating everyday geographies by people with learning disabilities

Learning disability policy has for some time been framed by the goal of inclusion which purports to enable people with learning disabilities to lead a ‘life like any other’ person. This article examines the extent to which this is the case in England, by tracing the lived experiences of people with learning disabilities within their communities. The article draws on two interlinked qualitative studies involving interviews that examined their local place-based experiences of inclusion and exclusion. The findings reveal ‘moments of inclusion’ and opportunities for social encounter from peer support, but these were situated amidst wider experiences of exclusion and harassment.     

Do Open Educational Resources Help Contingent Sociology Faculty Acquire Teaching Resources and Form Collegial Relationships?

Access to resources and social relationships are important for teacher development. Unfortunately, within higher education contingent faculty often are under resourced and poorly integrated into their department’s social network. This shortfall could be addressed by Open Educational Resources (OERs), which are websites that freely distribute pedagogical resources and provide a platform for educators to form collegial relationships. The current research focuses on the OERs that have formed around American sociology to assess the characteristics of the faculty who use them, the pedagogical resources they acquire from them, and how often their users form collegial relationships online. Analysis of an online survey of 275 sociology OER users finds that contingent faculty are acquiring resources from the sites. While only a small percentage of faculty are forming collegial relationships via these sites, they are doing so without occupational status, gender, or racial differences.     

Communities within communities: Changing ‘residential’ areas at Cultus Lake,British Columbia

Research focusing upon rural Canada continues to highlight the complex outcomes arising from rural-urban interactions within particular geographic settings. In the ‘city's countryside’, amenity landscapes located near the urban fringe are developed as the domain of vacation- and recreation-seeking urban residents. Yet, these recreation amenity sites are also set within an existing rural landscape. The land uses and social patterns found within this setting represent an outcome of the interactions between these competing landscapes. This paper examines residential change within the rural-recreational areas around Cultus Lake, British Columbia. Comparison of the local population to those living permanently within the cottaging areas is made across selected socio-economic characteristics and household activity patterns. These comparisons are extended to the group level by examining social and spatial constructions of local community ‘institutions’. Together, these comparisons suggest a ‘shared but separate’ geographic space.     

I Want to Be Your Friend: The Effects of Organizations’ Interpersonal Approaches on Social Networking Sites

Publics tend to use social networking sites mainly for interpersonal communication purposes. Corporate communication focusing on promotional activities, thus, might create negative sentiments toward the organization within those platforms. This experimental study examined the effect of organizations’ interpersonal approaches to communication (e.g., nonpromotional messages, high interactivity) in social networking sites using real and fictitious companies. Our results suggest that publics consider corporate activities in social networking sites more negatively when they perceive those platforms as a personal space. However, publics evaluate an organization more positively when it is highly interactive with its publics on these platforms. Finally, publics who perceive the platform as a personal space have a more positive attitude toward the organization when the organization is both highly interactive and employs nonpromotional messages.     

The struggle for ‘our streets’: the digital and physical spatial politics of the Ferguson Movement

ABSTRACT

The Ferguson Movement of 2014 and 2015 reached national salience immediately following the murder of Michael Brown, after residents took to social media platforms to report from what many activists called ‘ground zero.’ Some popular and scholarly conversations have couched the movement largely through its online manifestations; this study, however, places the movement within the intersections of digital and physical space as well as the broader political context of St. Louis. Triangulating data from 21 unstructured interviews with local activists in St. Louis, Missouri with GIS and digital media analysis, we illustrate how activists in the Ferguson Movement organized within St. Louis’ physical space and challenged popular arguments about resistance in digital space. Consequently, we argue that social movements’ placeness remain important despite recent emphases on digital media.     

Violent continuities: telling stories of one sexual minority life in the African Great Lakes region

This article examines the multi-layered continuities of violence experienced, navigated and narrated by those in the Great Lakes region from the perspective of one life. Drawing on the unfolding life stories of Alex, a sexual minority refugee in Uganda, it focuses upon the complex predicament of persecution and marginalisation of the region’s sexual minorities, as they navigate protracted political conflict, displacement and wider intersecting forms and sources of violence. This article aims to draw attention back to the lived realities of violence as they are interpreted and articulated through time and space in situated acts of speaking. An ethnographic life stories approach compels us to consider the agency of those who navigate complex constellations of intersecting and multiple forms of violence woven through the fabric of everyday life, the social topographies within which people navigate and the wider sociocultural, political and legal dimensions within which they live.     

The contextual and social locations of older women's experiences of disability and decline

Understandings of disability and decline within health and social care seem to focus mainly on the bodies and function of older persons. However, the way that older people's experiences of disability and decline are fixed into rigid functional classifications such as ‘frailty’ are problematic. Drawing on the narratives of twelve diverse older English-speaking women in Montreal, Canada, I will argue that older women's experiences are more connected with the contexts within which they experience disability and decline, and the social locations they bring to these experiences, than the functional limitations of their bodies. Older women's stories – particularly those related to the home and the bus – reveal the clash between dominant understandings of ‘frailty’ and older women's contextual and social experiences of disability and decline; expose tensions within health and social care practices; and highlight the potential which exists in both context and social location.     

New ethnicities online: reflexive racialisation and the internet

In this article we analyse the emergence of Internet activity addressing the experiences of young people in two British communities: South Asian and Chinese. We focus on two web sites: http://www.barficulture.com and http://www.britishbornchinese.org.uk , drawing on interviews with site editors, content analysis of the discussion forums, and E‐mail exchanges with site users. Our analysis of these two web sites shows how collective identities still matter, being redefined rather than erased by online interaction. We understand the site content through the notion of reflexive racialisation. We use this term to modify the stress given to individualisation in accounts of reflexive modernisation. In addition we question the allocation of racialised meaning from above implied by the concept of racialisation. Internet discussion forums can act as witnesses to social inequalities and through sharing experiences of racism and marginalisation, an oppositional social perspective may develop. The online exchanges have had offline consequences: social gatherings, charitable donations and campaigns against adverse media representations. These web sites have begun to change the terms of engagement between these ethnic groups and the wider society, and they have considerable potential to develop new forms of social action.     

Space,gentrification and traditional open-air markets: how do vendors in the Carmel market in Tel Aviv interpret changes?

Space is often believed to lose its importance in the global era as individuals cease to interact face-to-face in favor of online communication. Studying the Carmel market located in city center Tel Aviv, Israel aims to show how space, in a global city, is constantly produced, reproduced, and transformed in reaction to the changes in the community that uses the space and remains an invaluable resource for its users. By specifying the vendors’ perspective on the changes the market undergoes, this article offers an often missing aspect of the study of space, gentrification, and human action. It argues that public spaces in gentrified areas provide the vendors with means to instill their actions, traditional values which often lose their primacy in a global era and gain social recognition. I spent two years of participant observation and detailed ethnographic interviews with vendors. These have led me to conclude that in addition to a steady income that access to space provides, the vendors claim access to space to enable them to sustain familial values and offer to members of the community the opportunity of face-to-face interaction. Also they interpret their interaction with the new clients as a means of compensating for lack of social upward mobility.     

Comprehensive neighbourhood mapping: developing a powerful tool for child protection

This paper proposes ‘comprehensive neighbourhood mapping’ as a schema for gathering and interpreting information within a given geographical area which is informed by imaginative thinking about the safety of children and young people from sexual crime. It would build upon current forms of profiling by local authorities, health authorities and central Government. CNM would actively involve local people, in partnership with agencies, in ‘mapping’ danger points and support points. Eight components are discussed, including environmental issues, locations of sex offenders, sites where teenagers meet and share information, supportive individuals and organizations. Some issues for pilot projects are discussed, including the need to set up planning and implementation groups and to integrate CNM into wider child protection and community safety strategies. CNM is grounded in an ecological perspective which sees partnership approaches as essential and believes an overarching view of neighbourhood needs, based on detailed local information and understanding of how different forms of harm interconnect, is crucial in developing child protection strategies. At times of acute official anxiety about community ‘lynch‐mob’ reactions to known paedophiles, CNM aims to build communities which instead are informed and thoughtful about child protection. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cafe Culture in France and the United States: A Comparative Ethnographic Study of the Use of Mobile Information and Communication Technologies

Mobile (or personal) information and communication technologies are changing our communication opportunities and expectations and altering the nature of communication in public places. This study explored the uses and implications of these technologies through participant observation and interviews in cafes, public places at the heart of communities where people gather for beverages, food, and company, as well as for other activities. Cafes were ideal research contexts because (a) they provide convenient and acceptable entree into communities of place; (b) they serve important social, psychological, and economic functions; and (c) many are sites of a nexus of face-to-face and mediated interactions. Findings indicated that many people in American cafes routinely background their face-to-face experiences as they focus on electronic space rather than on physical space. In contrast, mobile information and communication technologies are generally not impacting people's experiences of physical space in cafes in Paris. Cross-cultural differences in the usage of mobile information and communication technologies in "third places" are explored.     

Building relationships on social networking sites from a social work approach

ABSTRACT

Our current age of connectedness has facilitated a boom in interactive dynamics within social networking sites. It is, therefore, possible for the field of Social Work to draw on these advantages in order to connect with the unconnected by strengthening online mutual support networks among users.

The aim of this article is to examine whether ‘connectedness’ in social networking sites improves online social capital and resilience of social service users.

Through our analysis of social networks carried out on an experimental model, we observed the patterns of connectedness on Facebook of 50 social service end-users from Málaga, Spain. The detection of online communities through the modularity algorithm has allowed us to ascertain whether individuals’ offline realities mirror their online realities. At the same time, we examined the influence certain interactions (likes, comments, etc.) have on leadership through online ethnography. Finally, online social capital, understood as the combination of connectedness and online interaction, has been correlated with users’ resilience. The results reveal that both connectedness and interaction feed themselves and have correlations with resilience.     

“If You Knew Who I Really Am …”

This paper describes the work of a White lesbian analyst with her White gay male patient who carries a secret feminine self of which he is mortifyingly ashamed. Together they discover this feminine self as the site of childhood gender trauma—for years the patient was violently and persistently bullied for not being a masculine-enough boy. To enable this patient to address his shame and find an internal space to develop an authentic gender identity, analyst and patient must take account of and process the field of the treatment room as it exists within the larger social/political field of Trump’s America, in which the forces of misogyny, homophobia, gender rigidity, and racism combine to collapse any breathable space for this dyad’s multiple “deviant” identities.