Social Media Management

Do foundations effectively use social media to engage stakeholders? Do usage and engagement vary by foundation type? This article has been written to stimulate discussion and research about social media use and user engagement by foundations beyond measuring social media presence. We analyzed Facebook usage and stakeholder engagement for three types of foundations: community, corporate, and independent grant‐making foundations. We found that although community foundations are more likely to have a social media presence, corporate and independent foundations are more likely to use Facebook and to effectively engage stakeholders. Findings illuminate the need to understand social media usage and engagement in addition to presence. We discuss potential benefits of social media use and provide practical communication management recommendations for nonprofit practitioners.     

Mental health in young Australians: a longitudinal study

This article discusses patterns in mental health of young Australians from age 19 through 25 and explores changes in mental health over these years. Data are derived from five waves of the Australian Life Patterns longitudinal study. The outcome variable in focus was self-reported mental health. Analyses were conducted in two steps using linear mixed models with both fixed and random effects. The analysis shows a negative linear trend in mental health status. The mental health of women was worse than that of men though a negative trend was found in both men and women. Though high socio-economic status (SES) individuals reported best mental health compared to their mid and low-SES peers, a negative trend was identified for them as well as for mid-SES participants. There is weak support for a negative trend among those of low-SES backgrounds. The study adds to evidence that there is a negative trend in mental health in young Australians but that this trend is not uniform across all young people. In light of this we argue the need for further research that analyses patterns of poor mental health in relation to social systems and institutions.     

‘A Hidden Group of Children’: Support in Schools for Children who Experience Parental Imprisonment

Schools have been identified as playing a key role in supporting the children of prisoners. This paper reports on a study, which explored the support provision offered in schools to children who experience parental imprisonment. By interviewing school representatives, stakeholders, parents and children, we illustrate the support available in schools, the issues that arise and ways in which support provision can be strengthened. Our findings indicate that children of prisoners often constitute a ‘forgotten’ group in schools, and we suggest that an awareness of these children and the challenges they face needs to be raised amongst education practitioners and policy‐makers.     

Infant externalizing behavior and parent depressive symptoms: Prospective predictors of parental pandemic related distress

Understanding predictors and effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic is a top-priority in research endeavors. The impact of COVID-19 on all components of family life and mental health cannot be overstated. This study emphasizes the need to investigate predictors of parents' responses to disaster by conceptualizing the depth of the impact of the pandemic using Bronfenbrenner's Bioecological Systems Model. We evaluate parents of infants as the center of the microsystem and discuss the importance of parents' responses to the pandemic for children's development. Specifically, utilizing a prospective design involving a sample of 105 infant-mother-father triads, we test the predictive effects of mothers' and fathers' mental health and infant externalizing behavior assessed prior to the pandemic when infants were 16-months on later pandemic related distress (PRD) approximately 1 year later. Results indicate that for both mothers and fathers, more depressive symptoms during their child's infancy predicted more PRD. Although mothers' reports of more child externalizing behavior significantly predicted more PRD, fathers' reports of externalizing were strongly, positively correlated with their concurrent depressive symptoms but not directly related to PRD. We demonstrate the importance of pre-existing mental health and parents' perceptions of their children's behavior as early as 16 months, in coping with disaster.     

Effects of 360° video on attitudes toward disaster communication: Mediating and moderating roles of spatial presence and prior disaster media involvement

Visual media technologies such as 360° video, augmented reality, and virtual reality are on the rise for immersive storytelling in a variety of public relations contexts. Yet there is a profound lack of scholarly research in public relations, crisis communication, and disaster communication to explore the effects of content displayed using these delivery formats on publics’ responses. To begin addressing the knowledge gap, this work reports results from a laboratory experiment investigating effects of media modality (traditional unidirectional video content vs. 360° omnidirectional video content) on attitudes toward the disaster communication content. Results demonstrate that 360° video featuring the aftermath of a natural disaster yields enhanced attitudes toward the helpful impact of the content. Importantly, mediation analyses show that (1) a sense of spatial presence underlies these effects, and (2) the mediating effects of spatial presence are attenuated by involvement with similar disaster media coverage (indirect experience).     

A transactional model of infant still‐face response and maternal behavior during the first year

The present study takes a transactional approach to extend understanding of temporal relations between parenting behaviors and infant response to the face‐to‐face still‐face, a widely used method assessing infants’ affective and behavioral response to a violation of social expectations. A low‐income, urban sample of 180 mothers and infants participated when infants were 4 and 6 months old. Directional relations between infants’ still‐face response (i.e., change in affect and gaze from interaction to still face) and three parenting dimensions were examined using cross‐lagged structural equation models. Infant still‐face response predicted later parenting behavior, while the reverse association was not significant. Specifically, infants with a greater reduction in positive affect from interaction to still face had parents with more positive parenting and less negative parenting behaviors 2 months later, controlling for prior parenting and concurrent infant behavior. Furthermore, infants who increased gaze to mother from interaction to still face had mothers who used more mental state talk 2 months later. Findings underscore the importance of examining transactional relations between infant and parent behaviors, and in particular highlight the influence of infants on parents. Acknowledging these infant‐effects is critical to the development and implementation of interventions targeting parent‐infant interactions.     

Parental Discussion of Child Sexual Abuse: Is It Associated with the Parenting Practices of Involvement,Monitoring, and General Communication?

We investigated whether parents who reported more positive parenting practices (i.e., monitoring, involvement, and communication) reported more discussion of child sexual abuse (CSA) with their children. Parents from Australia and the UK (N = 248), with children aged 6 to 11 years, completed an online survey. About half of parents reported directly discussing CSA, whereas 35% reported telling their children that CSA perpetrators may be family members. Rates of discussion were higher for other CSA-related topics such as body integrity and abduction. Correlational analyses showed that parents who reported speaking to their children about CSA also reported more positive parenting practices, more discussion of other sensitive topics, and assessed CSA risk for children (in general) to be higher. Discussion of CSA risk was not associated with parents' CSA knowledge, confidence or appraisal of own-child risk. Parents higher in positive parenting believed their children to be at less CSA risk. Parents who appraised higher own-child risk reported less positive parenting practices and were less confident about their parenting and their ability to protect their children from CSA. The findings are the first to report on the associations of parenting practices with parents' CSA discussion with their children.     

Narratives of fathering young children in Britain: linking quantitative and qualitative analyses

The paper examines how in Britain the time fathers and couples spend in employment shifts in the first years of children’s lives, the conditions under which this happens and how fathers feel about and experience time with their families and time in paid work. In order to achieve these aims new longitudinal analysis of the UK Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) is carried out together with secondary analysis of narrative case studies drawn from a qualitative study of Fatherhood across the Generations. By linking these datasets the paper examines the potential for corroboration and complementarity between different types of data. Further, it seeks to show how qualitative cases corroborate, elaborate and expand on the main employment trajectories in the MCS population of fathers and how these extend understandings of fathers’ experience of time within families.