Youth in Foster Care and Social Media: A Framework for Developing Privacy Guidelines

Although youth in foster care most likely use social media websites, there appears to be a lack of policy guidelines related to this use. When one considers youth in foster care, the state's mandate to provide safety, and foster parents' rights to exercise parenting responsibilities, the notion of privacy and the use of social media becomes complex. Critical Systems Heuristics will be introduced as a tool in developing policy recommendations. An application of this framework will be provided which can serve as a guide for an agency or workgroup tasked with developing policy guidelines for social media use by youth in foster care.     

Oppositional Defiant Disorder: The Psy Apparatuses and Youth Resistance

This article, situated in Foucauldian, anti-psychiatry, and mad studies literature, provides a theoretical intervention into the practice complexities and complicities of working with young people marked with the diagnosis of oppositional defiant disorder. Using a composite vignette as a proxy for social work practice, I map the particular harms of the deployment of the oppositional defiant disorder diagnosis, using Foucault and others to provide insight, in order to reorder and rethink work with young people marked as disorderly. Scholars effectively trace the manifold harms of the psychiatrization of young people; this article knits together the ways in which these harms operate, with the expressed intention of psychiatrizing youth resistance through multiple targets. The article concludes with tentative formulations for reconceptualizing youth resistance, in particular, using contributions from Sara Ahmed’s work on willfulness and Eve Tuck’s work on dangerous dignities. My aim is to use these emerging formulations to position our work with young people in alignment with their own resistance to injustice, rather than in concert with the efforts to psychiatrize their actions.     

Constructing Childhood: Discourses About School Violence in the Greek Daily Press

This study explores the construction of discourses about childhood in the Greek daily press. It employs the theoretical frameworks of the new sociology of childhood and critical discourse analysis to question which discourses of childhood are constructed in the daily press presenting cases where children were the victimisers in school violent episodes. The study showed that while there are distinct discourses constructed in the texts such as the romantic childhood, the minority group childhood, the homogeneous childhood and the childhood as actor, these tend to co‐exist textually. Results are critically discussed in relation to the positioning of children through everyday practices such as the daily press.     

The state and my happiness: Youth mental health,citizenship education and discursive contestations in contemporary Indonesia

Complementing studies on youth mental health that were mainly depoliticised, this article offers a discursive examination of youth mental health in an Indonesian educational context. We argue that subject positions enabled by the discourse of mental health were at odds with dominant constructions of an ideal Indonesian citizen. Drawing upon qualitative data from 22 teachers and 20 students in a junior high school in Indonesia and analyses of educational policies and textbooks, we identified three discourses underpinning the ideal(ised) constructions of young Indonesian citizen, namely, neoliberalism, (masculine) patriotism and (religious) moralism and discussed how these inhibited youth mental health.     

Illegal Aliens,Criminals, and Hypersexual Spitfires: Latin@ Youth and Pedagogies of Citizenship in Media Texts

This article aims to broaden the ways we conceptualize citizenship and implement citizenship education in social studies. To do so, the authors explore media texts as a curricular and pedagogical site for teaching lessons about citizenship. Specifically, the authors investigate how media drafts the boundaries of citizenship for Latin@ youth, and influences how young people come to understand who is and who is not perceived as a citizen entitled to rights and freedoms. Media texts, like formal social studies curricula, are powerful and enduring educators that shape how students know the world and imagine their place in it. Therefore, this article addresses how social studies teachers can integrate media texts into the classroom to explore representations of Latin@s and the impact that media has on our citizenship identities and experiences.     

Representations of autism in Australian print media

The mass media provides a frame for discourse around important health issues, and it has been widely demonstrated that the development and reinforcement of stereotypes of minority groups are strongly influenced by the news and entertainment media. An extensive search of academic databases failed to locate any studies which examined the representation of autism in the news media, although there were a number of articles on the media role in the autism and MMR debate. This paper reports on an examination of the extent, and nature, of coverage of ‘autism spectrum disorders’ in the Australian print media between 1996 and 2005. Key findings include a relatively limited amount of factual information and a dual stereotype of people labeled as having autism as either dangerous and uncontrollable or unloved and poorly treated. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the nature and tone of this coverage of autism and its potential impact on individuals described as ‘autistic’, their families and carers and the community in general.     

城市青年结婚消费问题的思考

结婚消费作为一种重要的家庭消费,直接反映城市家庭经济收入水平与社会经济发展状况。该文以当代城市青年结婚消费为主线,以安徽宿州为研究案例地,采取调查问卷与个案访谈相结合的实证研究方法。运用功能主义等相关社会学理论,详细描述了当代城市青年结婚消费的状况．认为经济因素、家庭因素及社会文化因素是影响当代城市青年结婚高消费的主要原因,揭示当代城市青年结婚消费中存在的年轻人“啃老”及其心理压力问题,提出从宣传、教育及服务三方面入手．倡导城市青年结婚消费合理化、理性化。     

The organization of diversity in a boxing club: Governmentality and entangled rationalities

This study answers a recent call for research on the complexity, locality, and use of power in the governing of diversity in organizations. We used the concepts of governmentally and of governing sameness and difference to explore multiple and heterogeneous ways of regulating gender diversity in organizations. Governmentally was defined as interrelated ways of reasoning and of using technologies of power within a boxing organization. We found that in their management of the full participation of women, participants used both sport and gender rationalities, each of which relied on different technologies of power in specific settings. Ambiguous meanings were strategically used to manage the participation of women in boxing and to maintain heroic masculine practices.     

Critical Discourse,Applied Inquiry and Public Health Action with Urban Middle School Students: Lessons Learned Engaging Youth in Critical Service-Learning

The Nuestro Futuro Saludable partnership designed a critical service-learning intervention focused on health equity and action. The 10-week afterschool intervention was implemented in a Boston middle school. Youths who took part in the intervention were knowledgeable about the social determinants of health in their communities, as well as to the barriers to health. Our findings indicate that engaging young people in a meaningful way will be critical if health improvement efforts are to be realized. We found that a critical service-learning framework that incorporates elements of applied inquiry and critical pedagogy was effective as a health intervention and provided opportunities for action.     

The Rules of (Dis)engagement: Black Youth and Their Strategies for Navigating Police Contact

Prior work on youth–police relations examines young people's general perceptions of the police, their differential treatment by police officers, and officers' discretion in dealing with youth. Yet researchers have largely neglected the question of how young people attempt to shape these encounters. I address this critical gap, while also incorporating the experiences of “on track” youth and young women—two groups that are not exempt from police contact but traditionally ignored in the youth–police literature. Drawing on semistructured group and individual interviews with 19 black young people in New York City, I investigate the strategies they employ or subscribe to in navigating police contact. Three types of strategies emerged from my analysis: avoidance, management, and symbolic resistance. Avoidance strategies are marked by young people's attempts to preemptively steer clear of officers on the street. Management strategies are employed by young people during police encounters to limit risk or harm, while symbolic resistance is a subtle tactic used by some youth to preserve their dignity in these interactions. This study also considers the gender differences in respondents' approaches and offers new insights into how they assess their police interactions in an era of highly publicized incidents of police brutality.     

The Pastor in the Basement: Discourses of Authenticity in the Networked Public Sphere

Applying Altheide's method of ethnographic content analysis, this article tracks competing discourses of authenticity in media coverage of Jeremiah Wright and Sarah Palin. The “pastor problems” of the last election demonstrate a bias toward issues of sincerity and authenticity in the networked public sphere. Pundits and bloggers use viral videos to construct rival representations of candidates’ backstage identities. Such debates favor “flat” notions of authenticity, however, and decontextualization tends to thwart the critical gatekeeping functions of journalism. Religion serves as a proxy for issues of race, prophetic critique is demonized, and apocalyptic thinking is normalized.     

Making Sense of Neoliberal Subjectivity: A Discourse Analysis of Media Language on Self-development

The influence of neoliberalism on culture and subjectivity is well documented. This paper contributes to understanding of how neoliberal ideology enters into the production of subjectivity. While subject formation takes place in multiple and contradictory ways and across multiple social sites, we focus on the increasingly popular media discourse of self-development, and examine it as a technology of neoliberal subjectification. Drawing on Foucauldian understandings, we analyze data from two different newspapers from two different national contexts, both of which are heavily influenced by neoliberalism. Based on our analysis, we detail four interrelated discourses—rationality, autonomy and responsibility, entrepreneurship, and positivity and self-confidence—demonstrating how these discourses constitute the neoliberal subject in ways consonant with neoliberal governmentality. There is no observable resistance to subject positions offered within these discourses. Self-development discourse instills stronger individualism in society, while constraining collective identity, and thus provides social control and contributes to preserving status quo of neoliberal societies.     

Effects of Photovoice: Civic Engagement Among Older Youth in Urban Communities

Youth civic engagement is critical to many community empowerment initiatives. Photovoice is a popular empowerment technique for disenfranchised groups, including youth. The technique has little published empirical support. This research assesses Photovoice as a youth mobilization project within the context of an ongoing community development initiative. It was hypothesized that Photovoice participation would (a) improve students' interest in civic engagement and (b) have greater impact on older rather than younger adolescents. Thirty-three (33) youths (15–21 years of age) completed a Survey of Youth Engagement before and after Photovoice participation. Results indicate a main effect for age, with youths 18 years of age and older scoring significantly higher than youths under 18 years of age. This study suggests that Photovoice promotes significant changes in perceived civic engagement among older youths.     

A Critical Examination of an Urban-Based Youth Empowerment Strategy: The Teen Empowerment Program

ABSTRACT

Youths from marginalized and disenfranchised communities can be empowered to advocate for social justice through civic engagement and sociopolitical action. Examining youth empowerment programs, using critical social theory, builds upon our understanding of sociopolitical systems and oppression and provides a lens to examine mechanisms of change while applying theory to practice. Jennings, Parra-Medina, Messias, and McLoughlin (2006 Jennings, L. B., Parra-Medina, D. M., Messias, D. K. H. and McLoughlin, K. 2006. Toward a critical social theory of youth empowerment. Journal of Community Practice, 14: 31–55. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]) have identified six dimensions of critical youth empowerment programs, which provide a framework for examining youth empowerment programs. This article presents the Teen Empowerment program, as implemented with high-risk youths in urban communities, and examines it along these six dimensions and provides a model for how to critically examine youth empowerment programs using this framework.     

Making Media for Themselves: Strategic Dilemmas of Prefigurative Work in Independent Media Outlets

This article explores independent youth media outlets, one sector of the broader media democracy movement, to theorize the strategic dilemmas that actors negotiate as they attempt to prefigure the media change that they want to see in the world. The outlets operate as noncommercial spaces for youth to challenge the norms of mainstream media through the collective production of oppositional media. In this millennium, we see the increased presence of these outlets across the country and globally as youth are building nodes of communication through differing digital platforms. The article draws out a case study of one independent media outlet, Youth Media Action, in an urban area in the northeastern part of the United States to trace the dynamics of how these outlets attempt to prefigure or model media change through their structures, practices, and content with a changing cast of participating youth groups. I then analyze the tensions that actors confront as they seek to model an ideal (a more just media system) within a constrained environment (overextended staff and resources). The focus on these prefigurative practices and politics affords a closer view of the ways that these sites seek to build a more inclusive, egalitarian, noncommercial media system with limited resources and educational and political practices that do not always resonate with the participating groups and youth. This research contributes to social movement work that focuses on dilemmas that groups face as they look to themselves to build and model systems of social change.     

Ordinary Usage of New Media: Internet Usage via Mobile Phone in Japan

Abstract:  This paper, by analyzing Internet usage via mobile phones in Japan, aims to clarify an aspect of information behavior in present-day Japanese society.
Many discourses on the mobile Internet in Japan, either positive or negative, emphasize its novelty and describe this new media as an exotic phenomenon. These discourses can be divided into two categories. The nationalistic discourses and the moral panic discourses. Both types of discourse have built certain images of social influences of the mobile Internet in the future. However, it would be unwise to conclude that those images of the mobile Internet express the reality of this new medium, simply because they lack empirical ground.
With these points in mind, based on the result of our national survey conducted in 2001, we would like to show the actual status of use of the mobile Internet and discuss that the ordinary usage is a critically important realm to understand the process of social reception of the mobile Internet. As our data shows, although the actual usage of the mobile Internet is not very conspicuous, it gives us a chance to understand how the mobile Internet has been integrated into our everyday lives.     

Covering the Dawsons: Racial Variation in Newspaper Framing of Urban Crime

This article uses newspaper coverage of a case from Baltimore, Maryland, to explore racial variation in the rhetorical framing of urban crime. In October 2002, seven members of the Dawson family were murdered in a house fire. The murders became an expression of Baltimore’s character and the lives of its residents. After analyzing 206 newspaper articles about the case, we find stark differences in the way the case, its causes, and its consequences are presented to readers. Newspapers with primarily white audiences—both “mainstream” and “alternative” papers—present the case as a horrific, singular instance, placing responsibility on the perpetrator. In contrast, articles in African American newspapers offer a complex web of explanation, calling attention to the structural inequalities and disparate access to state resources. Whereas white newspaper portray the Dawson family as martyrs in the drug war, black newspapers position the family as part of a wider of community of African Americans who are victims of slack policing, racial discrimination, and negligent social policy. We argue that these rhetorical differences are more than cosmetic. Rather, they provide a framework for better understanding the relationship between the press and policy makers. Differences in coverage of the case also contribute to our understanding of why blacks and whites have fundamentally different understandings of race in the United States.     

The Trouble With Condoms: Norms and Meanings of Sexuality and Condom Use Among School-Going Youth in Kenya

ABSTRACT

Despite knowledge of the effectiveness of condoms in preventing HIV transmission, condoms continue to be reported in only a minority of sexual encounters even with nonpermanent partners. This study used focus-group discussions with youth and interviews with community leaders from 22 communities in the Nyanza and Rift Valley provinces, Kenya, to examine the sociocultural influences on condom use among school-going youth. Three overarching themes emerged from a thematic analysis of the data. Condoms did not fit with the purposes, meanings, and understandings of sexuality; in fact, condom use violated most of these. Condoms were also thought to be dangerous for girls and women, to contribute to the spread of HIV, and to be unnecessary for protection against HIV. Finally, given the hardships of life and multiple diseases and circumstances that threatened life, HIV was seen as just another trouble of living. Sex without a condom, within this context, was described as one of the pleasures of a short life. The complexities of sexuality evidenced in the discussions of these youth and adults challenge the viability of the ABC (abstain, be faithful, use a condom) message as a preventive measure against HIV transmission.