The 4R-SUCCESS program: promoting children’s social and scholastic skills in dyadic classroom activities

Research on peer mediated learning shows that students learn through interactions with classmates, but little is known about the skills that children need to be productive learning partners, and educators lack programs for teaching children how to collaborate effectively with classmates. Described in this article is a program of research that was undertaken to address these needs by: (1) empirically creating a collaborative skills curriculum for grade school children, and (2) developing, refining, and implementing a class-wide program for improving grade school children’s social and scholastic skills for collaborative learning activities (i.e., the 4R-SUCCESS program).     

‘Going viral’ and ‘Going country’: the expressive and instrumental activities of street gangs on social media

Based on social media content analysis and focus groups with young people, the current study explores expressive and instrumental uses of the internet among street gangs. ‘Trap rap’ videos posted on YouTube and orientated around life as a drug dealer are identified as the ultimate cultural artefact for denoting London, UK, gang culture. These videos serve an expressive purpose in terms of reputation building, but also shed light on the instrumental business of gangs – specifically, illicit drugs sales via ‘country lines’. Looking beyond the artefact toward how these videos are created, disseminated, and consumed, reveals the instrumental organisation of gangs and how social rules and behaviours within them are monitored and enforced. The current study thus contributes to gang research from the UK, and the growing body of literature on gang and gang member use of the Internet, with implications for research and practice.     

‘Only Connect’: Unifying the social in social work and social media

‘Only Connect…live in fragments no longer’

(E.M. Forster, Howards End).

This paper utilises ‘Only Connect’, the epigraph from Forster’s novel ‘Howards End’ as the starting point for exploring the challenges and opportunities of integrating social networking with relationship based social work practice. The paper discusses the more deleterious implications of social networking, whilst assuming a deliberately optimistic stance to uncover ways in which the opportunities afforded by online space can be utilised effectively within social work education and practice. Whilst recognising that social networking platforms are transforming constantly, the paper adopts Kaplan’s definition of social media as a ‘group of internet based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0’. Whilst much of the discussion within the paper relates to Twitter and Facebook, two of the most endemic international social networking platforms, it is also applicable to myriad forms of social networking. The paper begins with a discussion of UK professional conduct cases and explores these both within Klein’s concept of splitting and historical attitudes to new technologies. Drawing from emerging research data and other examples, the positive relational practices educed by social media within social work education and practice are emphasised and discussed. The paper concludes by highlighting Forster’s plea for connection and recommending that social work embraces the renewed opportunities provided by online networking.     

Horses and baseball: social work’s cultivation of one’s ‘third eye’

Active self-reflection is a sophisticated and subtle, multi-layered process that requires learning the capacity to constantly self-monitor. These fundamental interactive skills, the core of a competent social worker, are important to work in any context. Using two distinct metaphors, one relating to horses, the other to baseball, the article will explore the importance of developing competency skills and utilize a ‘third eye.’ In current social work education curricula the use of self may not be prioritized, practiced, or well understood. Evidence from human and veterinary medicine as well as social work, are discussed. An example of an undergraduate BSW course using simulated clients and standardized measures is discussed. The paper includes a brief review of the preliminary findings for a small pilot study and the relevance to future research is considered.     

Professional purpose and academic legitimacy: Ross’s social control and the founding of American sociology

The community of inquiry moved through two phases between 1876 and 1911, and Ross emerged as a transitional figure. From Spencer's text through the 1896 work of Franklin Giddings, sociologists sought identity. Only through comparison with other social sciences could sociologists realize the true scope of their own discipline. Sociology was grounded in biological, and thus social, determinism. Human institutions were categorized but were not controlled. Recently received his doctorate in American intellectual history at Florida State University.     

Place and tactical innovation in social movements: the emergence of Egypt’s anti-harassment groups

This study examines the first two years of a tactical innovation that emerged in 2012 in Egypt, which involved activist groups organizing patrol-type "intervention teams" to combat sexual violence against women in public spaces. Findings reveal that the new tactic took different forms in the two places in which it was deployed, even though the same actors employed it. I argue that the place in which a new tactic emerges shapes the form it takes. When coming up with a new collective action tactic, activists elaborate visions about how to carry out their actions based on their collective identities and taste in tactics. But as they start experimenting with the new tactic on the ground, they learn about the places' material affordances, symbolic valence, and power relations, as well as the constraints and opportunities that they represent. The material properties of places shape activists' possibilities of movement, patterns of communication, field of vision, and capacity to escape repression or reach safe spaces. The configuration of actors in a place shapes the nature of their interactions with others on the ground, possible alliances, and sources of conflict. The symbolic meanings of places shape the resonance of a group’s actions and the degree of resistance that actors face. Place in part determines the ability of activists to develop a tactic in the form that best fits their preferences.     

Source of complexity in the social and managerial sciences: an extended Sen’s theorem

Many disciplines, including the social, behavioral, and management sciences, search for appropriate aggregated outcomes—a search that can be frustrated by complexities and inefficiencies. As shown here, explanations for these difficulties can be found in social choice. Indeed, it is shown why some of these problems are direct consequences of adopted approaches (e.g., management style, choice of a division of labor, or even the use of expertise and experts), and they cannot be avoided. These results are motivated by Sen’s Theorem from decision theory.     

Demonstrations against demonstrations: the dispiriting emotions of the Kremlin’s social media ‘mobilization’

This article proposes a new approach to understanding Russian pro-regime counter-demonstrations, arguing that starting from 2014, they have acquired a distinctively demobilizational outlook: whereas the opposition seeks to mobilize the population to action, what suits the regime best is a safely de-mobilized majority. This interpretation requires a perspective different from that used for studying opposition demonstrations: instead of seeing the regime’s social media strategy for promoting counter-demonstrations as attempts to attract maximum involvement, the message should be judged on its capacity to discourage large-scale collective action. To show how this works in practice, the two biggest recent pro-regime counter-demonstrations are analysed: their context and background and the promotion of them on their official VKontakte pages and in related Twitter posts by prominent pro-regime tweeters. What may appear as strategies to mobilize for counter-demonstrations emerge as efforts to engender emotions that serve the regime’s purpose of keeping the population apolitical and passive.     

The red and the black: China’s social credit experiment as a total test environment

China's social credit system is an unusually explicit case where technology is used by multiple actors to turn human behavior into a test object on behalf of the state's goal of modifying the larger social environment, making it an intriguing setting for thinking about the new sociology of testing. This article considers how China's search for a usable “credit” score to both allocate financial resources and explicitly measure a citizen's trustworthiness creates an emergent experimental system of governance similar to, yet not quite captured by, the kinds of experimental processes observed in literature on the platform as a form of market-based governance. As a site where “seeing like a state” and “seeing like a market” converge, the social credit system is a vantage point for observing the changing relationship between moral and economic domains in an era of digital platforms. The article highlights the experimental quality of the system and its emerging system of governance structured around reward and punishment and argues that strategic ambiguity, institutionalized through the affordances of digital platforms, is an important part of the design of this large-scale social experiment.     

Exploring the relationship between corporate reputation and the public’s crisis communication on social media

Among traditional crisis communication research, the public is often treated as passive receivers of firm-dominated crisis communication. Social media has changed the situation since the public have now become senders and engage in secondary crisis communication (SCC) that affects corporate crisis management. However, our understanding of the mechanism of SCC on social media is still limited. This study aims to reveal how the public engages in the decision-making process related to SCC from a social control perspective by critically considering the broadcasting and social network functions of social media. Our research hypotheses were supported by a survey conducted after a real crisis in China. The results indicate that cognitive reputation results in SCC by causing the public to feel morally violated, and that such feelings of violation lead to individuals being more likely to engage in SCC given the perception of support for their opinions on social media. Thus, this research provides a better understanding of SCC from the public’s perspective in the context of social media.     

WeChat: social and political development of China’s dominant messaging app

This article traces the development of the Chinese social media app WeChat from its origins to its current role as a leading communications tool for some 600 million Chinese citizens. It analyzes the ways the small-group oriented app is changing China’s social connections, as it enhances trusted, personal contacts while transforming opportunities for larger online group formation. The article assesses methods the Chinese Government employs to monitor and control WeChat communication, and provides a case-focus study. It also considers the apolitical features, in particular, those related to entertainment and personal social relations, which have made important contributions to WeChat’s great popularity.     

Reactivating the ‘communist hypothesis’: Alain Badiou and social work

It has been argued that Alain Badiou could contribute to social work's engagement with social theory. This paper critically responds to this assertion and identifies some of the theoretical problems associated with Badiou's core conceptualisations. Divided into two sections, it will begin by outlining his main thematic preoccupations and will go on to focus on his interpretation of the significance of Saint Paul, the apostle. The second half of the paper will dwell on Webb's attempt to connect Badiou to social work so as to disrupt focal ideas on ‘diversity’ and ‘difference’. This section will conclude by critically exploring Badiou's comments on children, children's rights and abuse. Although, so far receiving no attention in the social work literature, his interventions on these matters are problematic in that they imply that children lie outside the ‘one world’ politics that he promotes. Despite such criticisms, it is concluded Badiou's theorisation needs to be included within the academic literature of European social work.     

Changing things for the better: the use of children and young people’s reference groups in social research

The use of reference groups made up of members of the population being researched has been encouraged within the qualitative research literature. This paper describes the use of reference groups made up of children and young people and promotes them as a space within which co-reflexive activities can help researchers reconsider their research approaches and assumptions, their methodologies and methods and the new knowledge created. The paper uses three case studies to highlight the benefits the authors have encountered as well as those identified by children and young people themselves.     

The paradoxical effects of communicating CSR activities: Why CSR communication has both positive and negative effects on the perception of a company’s social responsibility

Supporting societal goals and sustainable developments can help a company to be seen as socially responsible. This corporate social responsibility (CSR) must be communicated effectively as too intensive communication could negatively affect the company’s perception. These negative effects may be caused by an imbalance between the amount of CSR communication and the actual extent of CSR activities. Two experiments show that increased CSR communication has a negative indirect effect on perceptions of a company’s social responsibility, mediated by persuasive intent and reactance. However, depending on the extent of a company’s actual CSR activities, there is also a countervailing direct effect: A high extent of CSR communication positively affects perceptions of a company’s social responsibility if the company engages in a great number of CSR activities. In contrast, if a company only engages in a few activities but communicates a lot about it, this positive effect may even become negative.     

Young people’s leisure patterns: testing social age,social gender,and linguistic capital hypotheses

We analysed young people’s leisure activities in order to identify their leisure habitus, discover how they combined activities into leisure patterns, and examine how leisure patterns were socially structured. We argue that the effects of age, gender, and language on how young people’s leisure patterns are structured are mediated by social class. We found that leisure practices could be classified in terms of three habitus: the frequent leisure habitus, the cultural activity habitus, and the social vs. entertainment habitus. The different combinations of these three leisure habitus by young people resulted in four patterns which we refer to as social, omnivorous, entertainment, and religious leisure patterns. The association of leisure patterns with indicators of social position suggests that, as predicted by our theoretical framework, age, gender, and language effects are diminished once we take into account the mediating role of social class. Young people’s leisure practices are therefore socially differentiated, with young immigrants forming a vulnerable group that should be the particular focus of youth leisure policies.     

Young people’s education biographies: family relationships,social capital and belonging

This paper examines complexities and interdependencies of key family relationships which anchor young people’s educational biographies. It is well recognised that young people’s education pathways in late modernity are strongly dependent on their ability to draw on the range of resources available, and that socio-economic status and family resources play a central role in this process. Less is known about how such relationships anchor young people’s education biographies. Drawing on theories of social capital and belonging in dialogue with qualitative interviews, and situated in studies of rural youth and education, this article considers how young people themselves talk and make decisions about their education in relation to complex family connections. These connections, contestations and negotiations between young people and central family members highlight how the late modern economy impacts on young people’s intimate relationships, and sheds light on the ongoing work of youth to resolve such tensions around their schooling in daily life.