One does not simply meme about organizations: Exploring the content creation strategies of user-generated memes on Imgur

This study explores how online publics are engaging with organizations by creating and sharing brand-related content online, outside corporate-controlled communication environments. This research employs a quantitative content analysis of memes shared on the social networking site Imgur to reveal how user-generated content conveys meaning about organizations. The analysis reveals brand-centric memes are generally classified as orphan memes, or memes that have distinct textual and visual characteristics separating them from established or emerging meme families. Memes about organizations are neither an overwhelming reflection of biting criticism or support, but rather a reflection of online public engagement with organizations that primarily use humor and textual brand features (or quiddities) to convey their commitment and satisfaction with the organization and unite meme families.     

Inappropriate Comparisons: The LGB Population's Missing Reference Group

ABSTRACT

Given that many professional organizations emphasize the need for comparing assessment results to appropriate reference groups in their codes of ethics, we consider this practice through an ecological perspective as it applies to the lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) population. The purpose of norming and types of assessment bias is discussed with respect to LGB population, which frequently lack specific norming data. The authors discuss whether the LGB population has characteristics similar to other commonly normed for groups and explore how group-shared constructs such as minority stress and internalized homophobia may introduce bias and affect the validity of assessments. A social anxiety assessment as well as a personality disorder inventory are examined for bias as case examples explaining how these assessments may exhibit bias when used with the LGB population. Increases in validity and effects on treatment planning are discussed as benefits of providing LGB-specific norms. Risks of providing these norms, such as minimizing subgroup differences and possibly increasing the risk of discrimination are also addressed before providing clinicians with recommendations as to how they may minimize the risk of bias in their assessment process.     

Ethnicity as cognition

This article identifies an incipient and largely implicit cognitive turn in the study of ethnicity, and argues that it can be consolidated and extended by drawing on cognitive research in social psychology and anthropology. Cognitive perspectives provide resources for conceptualizing ethnicity, race, and nation as perspectives on the world rather than entities in the world, for treating ethnicity, race, and nationalism together rather than as separate subfields, and for re-specifying the old debate between primordialist and circumstantialist approaches.     

Career and Lifestyle Expectations of Rural Eighth-Grade Students: A Second Look

Gender differences in rural eighth-grade students' curricular, career, and lifestyle expectations were examined. Girls expect to take more math classes in high school, select careers that require a college education, and plan to go to college more frequently than do boys. Boys and girls do not differ in their interest in various careers, although girls prefer occupations that involve people, whereas boys prefer occupations that involve things. Girls plan to work for as many years of their lives as do boys; however, girls are more likely to expect to work part-time, whereas boys expect to work full-time. Counseling implications are offered.     

Relationships between marital quality,social, and familial interactions by residential location: Implications for human service professionals

Gerontological literature is reviewed concerning the factors contributing to marital quality of later life couples. Data are presented which compare the marital quality of older couples residing in a retirement facility and elderly couples living in the community-at-large. The couples' interactions with friends and frequency of visits with children are examined in terms of the relationship between these variables and marital quality of the subjects. Implications for practice are discussed.Ellie Brubaker is Associate Professor of Sociology at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. Dr. Brubaker holds a Ph.D. in Social Work from the Ohio State University. Her current research is in the area of social service delivery to older families.Linda Ade-Ridder is Assistant Professor in the Department of Home Economics and Consumer Sciences and an associate of the Family and Child Studies Center at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Dr. Ade-Ridder received her Ph.D. in Marriage and Family Living at the Florida State University in 1983. Her current research is being conducted on the roles of women, including women in older marriages and eating disorders in women.     

Adult child and elderly parent household

Intergenerational households—adult child and elderly parents—are an alternative lifestyle. A review of the literature suggests that several factors are related to the level of stress in these households. A number of structural, individual family member and family factors which may influence the stress level in intergenerational households are explicated. It is suggested that community resources mediate the linkages between the structural factors, individual family member factors, family factors, and the level of stress in intergenerational households. A number of practice strategies for preventing and dealing with stress are discussed.     

Caregiving and cost of health care for later life families

In the future, the number of families providing care for elderly relatives as well as the costs associated with health care will continue to increase. The caregiving triad—individual, family and government—will need to balance the resources to meet the needs of the elderly. Public policy changes can assist older persons and their families as they address caregiving in the later years.     

Who is responsible for household tasks in long term marriages of the “young-old” elderly?

Little is known about the way in which golden anniversary couples divide the responsibility for household tasks. This article examines the division of responsibility for 12 households tasks within a sample of 18 couples. At least one partner is under 75 years of age, the findings indicate that these young-old couples have developed interdependent, gender differentiated divisions of household tasks, although they share several tasks. There is congruence between what they expect and how they actually divide the responsibility for household tasks.     

Digital hyperconnectivity and the self

Theory and Society - Digital hyperconnectivity is a defining fact of our time. In addition to recasting social interaction, culture, economics, and politics, it has profoundly transformed the self....     

Charles Tilly as a Theorist of Nationalism

This paper considers Charles Tilly as an important but underappreciated theorist of nationalism. Tilly’s theory of nationalism emerged from the “bellicist” strand of his earlier work on state-formation and later incorporated a concern with performance, stories, and cultural modeling. Yet despite the turn to culture in Tilly’s later work, his theory of nationalism remained state-centered, materialist, and instrumentalist—a source of both its power and its limitations.