Blindspots and Blurred Lines: Dallas Smythe,the Audience Commodity,and the Transformation of Labor in the Digital Age

Dallas Smythe's notion of the audience commodity provides a starting point for much work within the political economy of communication. First advanced when commercial television was the dominant medium, the controversial idea has proven to be an increasingly useful way of conceptualizing media economics in the digital age. Originally posited as a critique of Western Marxism's concern with ideology over materiality, two generations of media scholars have elaborated upon the idea. First, scholars offered it greater specificity and utility by connecting the political economy of media to more general concerns regarding labor, gender, and race. More recently, the audience commodity has become an increasingly useful theoretical tool, demonstrating how digital technologies enable new forms of economic exploitation. Rather than binding media studies to a rigid structuralism, the audience commodity helps illuminate the fluidity of media economies and culture under neoliberalism. I conclude that scholars may productively utilize and expand upon the audience commodity to answer contemporary questions about media and alienation, the state, and social movements.     

Nativity and Self‐Assessed Health among Pre‐Retirement Age Hispanics and Non‐Hispanic Whites1

Economic, social and familial resources are known to influence subjective health assessments. We examine the salience of nativity in determining how these resources influence self‐assessed health using a large, nationwide sample of Hispanic and non‐Hispanic white adults. The results indicate that while education, accumulated assets and marital status benefit the physical and emotional health of the native and foreign‐born, family resources and income are significant only for the native‐born. English language proficiency is a significant protective factor for both groups and is especially protective for immigrants. These surprising findings call into question previous studies stressing the positive role of the family in maintaining immigrant health.     

LOSING BY LESS? IMPORT COMPETITION,UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE GENEROSITY,AND CRIME

Increased import competition from China has brought about a host of negative consequences for the most exposed industries and labor markets. Do social programs attenuate these harmful effects? We examine changes in import competition between 1990 and 2007, taking crime as our outcome of interest and unemployment insurance as our mitigating program. We find strong evidence that counties with access to more generous unemployment insurance experienced relatively smaller increases in trade‐induced property crime. This highlights a new and important positive externality of unemployment insurance. (JEL H00, R10)     

Morals,Ethics and practice — in search of social justice

Abstract

This paper reports a study of sources of influence on moral and ethical decision-making in social work practice. Practitioners from ten government and five non government agencies kept journals about the main moral issues they faced over a one-month period and were then interviewed about the nature of those issues, their resolution and the influences that shaped those resolutions. Practitioners' personal moral perspectives were found to be the main sources of influence on resolutions to a wide range of dilemmas and most of those resolutions did not conform to accepted social wok ethical practice principles. Even though the results of this study are drawn from a small sample, some implications are suggested for practitioner development, professional ethics and social work education.     

The problem of justification in social work

Abstract

In this paper we argue that the real test of professional social work practice is whether it can be plausibly, effectively and defensibly justified. Since the early 1950s social work in Australia has engaged in a strategy of professionalisation. This strategy and its implications were described by McDonald and Jones in 2000. This paper supports the concerns expressed. We argue that the way out of our profession's dilemma is by focusing on the problem of justification. The main questions addressed by McDonald and Jones appear to be: What is professional social work practice? Does the concept of professionalism serve us and our clients well now? What form should social work take in the future? Their answer is ‘that the “strategy of professionalisation”, as conventionally conceived by Australian social work, is no longer viable in the emerging milieu.’ We build on that answer by exploring the notion of justification in terms of the concepts Foundationalism, Coherentism and Reliabilism. We conclude by suggesting that the immediate task for social work in this new century is to solve the problem of justification.     

Making Human Behavior Theory Real Through the Unreal: Fiction in the HBSE Classroom

This article examines the use of fictional literature as a method for helping students apply human behavior theory in competent practice. When students and educators read a poem, short essay, or novel, it allows them the opportunity to join together as an audience as they tease out teachable lessons from the story. The authors posit that when used in human behavior and the social environment courses, fictional literature allows educators and students to experience abstract content as more concrete. Following a brief literature review, we examine one novel through the lens of three different human behavior theories.     

Health Care innovation and children in poverty: lived experiences of caregivers of children with disabilities in a medicaid-serving ACO

This paper reports the results of a qualitative study of caregivers of children with disabilities enrolled in a Medicaid-serving accountable care organization (ACO). The state of Ohio mandated ACO enrollment for Medicaid-eligible children with disabilities in 34 of 88 counties effective July 2013. Research participants were queried in focus groups and individual interviews about their children’s care experiences and care coordination after enrollment. Most told researchers that they themselves are their children’s care coordinators, and many indicated that resource scarcity is a more pressing problem than fragmented care. Data analysis identified a theme of scarcity and four categories of insufficiency that made caregiver efforts on behalf of their children more difficult: a lack of health services under managed care, resource constraints on other agencies and programs for which families were eligible, a lack of financial support, and a lack of family support. A conceptual framework places ACO care coordination among more upstream factors and identifies ways in which ACOs serving Medicaid populations may wish to address the social determinants of the well-being of children with disabilities. Implications for future research are discussed.