The New International Library of Group Analysis
Drawing on the seminal ideas of British, European, and American group analysts, psychoanalysts, social psychologists, and social scientists, the books ...in this series focus on the study of small and large groups, organisations, and other social systems, and on the study of the transpersonal and transgenerational sociality of human nature. NILGA books will be required reading for the members of professional organisations in the fields of group analysis, psychoanalysis, and related social sciences. They will be indispensable for the “formation” of students of psychotherapy, whether they are mainly interested in clinical work with patients or in consultancy to teams and organisational clients within the private and public sectors.
The great popularity and extraordinary possibilities the Internet offers people in the field of information and communication, have made the Internet the subject of the Church's in-depth reflection ...as an important tool in broadly understood pastoral activities. This article contains a discussion of the effects of this observation and demonstrates how the Church uses the Internet and all Information and Communications Technology. Finally, we will indicate the positive aspects and difficulties facing the Church now operating in the Digital Age. Research clearly shows that the modern Church must use the Internet if it wants to meet people, be close to them and reach them with information. The Church must so consciously and skillfully - taking into account anthropological conditions and the nature of media, including theological premises. An important conclusion emerging from the research is a decisive "no!" concerning various forms of e-Church. The Church's opening up to ICT does not mean consent to transferring its activities onto the Internet. Ecclesiastical relationships are always interpersonal relationships: human-human and Divine-human. The Church - even a synodal one - is a community of persons, not an online discussion group or followers of the Pope, bishop, other pastor or influencer identifying with the Church. Keywords: Church, pastoral ministry, Internet, Information and Communications Technology, Media, Digital Age
There is good evidence to suggest that performance and image enhancing drug (PIED) use is increasing in Australia and that there is an increase in those using PIEDs who have never used another ...illicit substance. Peers have always been an important source of information in this group, though the rise of the Internet, and the increased use of Internet forums amongst substance consumers to share harm reduction information, means that PIED users may have access to a large array of views and opinions. The aim of this study was to explore the type of information that PIED users seek and share on these forums.
An online search was conducted to identify online forums that discussed PIED use. Three discussion forums were included in this study: aussiegymjunkies.com, bodybuildingforums.com.au, and brotherhoodofpain.com. The primary source of data for this study was the 'threads' from the online forums. Threads were thematically analysed for overall content, leading to the identification of themes.
One hundred thirty-four threads and 1716 individual posts from 450 unique avatars were included in this analysis. Two themes were identified: (1) personal experiences and advice and (2) referral to services and referral to the scientific literature.
Internet forums are an accessible way for members of the PIED community to seek and share information to reduce the harms associated with PIED use. Forum members show concern for both their own and others' use and, where they lack information, will recommend seeking information from medical professionals. Anecdotal evidence is given high credence though the findings from the scientific literature are used to support opinions. The engagement of health professionals within forums could prove a useful strategy for engaging with this population to provide harm reduction interventions, particularly as forum members are clearly seeking further reliable information, and peers may act as a conduit between users and the health and medical profession.
This descriptive and comprehensive study on the discursive struggle over interpersonal relations in online message boards is located at the fascinating interface of pragmatics and computer-mediated ...discourse – a research area which has so far not attracted much scientific interest. It sets out to shed light on the question how interpersonal relations are established, managed and negotiated in online message boards by giving a valid overview of the entire panoply of interpersonal relations (and their interrelations), including both positively and negatively marked behavior. With the first part of the book providing an in-depth discussion and refinement of the pivotal theoretical positions of both fields of research, students as well as professionals are (re-)acquainted with the subject at hand. Thus supplying a framework for the ensuing case study, the empirical part displays the results of the analysis of 50 threads (ca. 300,000 words) of a popular British message board.
Calls for improvement of undergraduate science education have resulted in numerous initiatives that seek to improve student learning outcomes by promoting changes in faculty teaching practices. ...Although many of these initiatives focus on individual faculty, researchers consider the academic department to be a highly productive focus for creating change. In this paper, we argue that it is important for change agents to understand the informal social structure of the academic department and introduce social network analysis techniques to uncover this social structure. Examples are given from data collected in five academic departments. A short sociometric web survey was used to ask instructors to identify colleagues with whom they discuss teaching and the frequency of their discussions. Techniques of social network analysis are used to determine the current state of the department, target participants for a change initiative, and anticipate the spread of new teaching ideas. Results suggest that these techniques identify informal structures that would otherwise be hidden and that may be important for planning change initiatives.
Abstract
Background
A growing body of evidence indicates that the COVID-19 pandemic has had detrimental mental health effects for pregnant women. However, little is known about the specific stressors ...that increased anxiety for pregnant women at the start of the pandemic. The present study aimed to better understand the concerns of pregnant women during the beginning COVID-19 pandemic by analyzing content posted during the month of March 2020 on online pregnancy message boards hosted on WhatToExpect.com.
Methods
All posts published between March 1–31, 2020 on nine different due-date specific WhatToExpect.com message boards were reviewed for COVID-19 relevance. Posts mentioning COVID-19 or its direct effects (e.g., “quarantine” or “stay-at-home order”) were included in our final sample. Data were coded by three authors according to a codebook developed inductively by all four authors. Posts were analyzed by overall frequency of appearance, by trimester, and temporally across the month of March 2020.
Results
Across the 5,541 posts included in our final sample, the most common topics were fear of COVID-19 exposure, concerns with labor and delivery, navigating social interactions, and disruptions to prenatal care. The most dominant topics by trimester were disruptions to prenatal care (first trimester), fear of COVID-19 exposure (second trimester), and concerns about labor and delivery (third trimester).
Conclusion
Our findings add to prior literature by demonstrating the salience of social concerns, which was the third largest COVID-19 topic in our sample. Emotional distress was most salient with regard to restrictions on birthing partners, but was apparent in everything from disruptions to pregnancy announcements, to cancelled baby showers, and limitations on newborn visitors. Given that anxiety during pregnancy is associated with worse maternal–fetal health outcomes, in the early stages of future pandemics healthcare providers should focus not only on strictly health-related concerns expressed by pregnant women, but also more broadly on other sources of anxiety that may be impacting the well-being and mental health of their patients.
Examines social interaction in second language voice-based chat rooms
How do speakers of English as an additional language manage their talk and interaction in chat rooms?
Christopher Jenks ...thoroughly analyses the interactional effects of technology, and explores in detail the social and linguistic implications of communicating in second language chat rooms. Providing a unique look at how second language talk is organized in an online setting, this book is essential reading for postgraduate students and scholars in computer-mediated communications, social interactions, TESOL and applied linguistics. It focuses on voice-based chat rooms instead of text-based ones, adding to and enriching the existing body of research on second language textbooks within computer-mediated communication studies. It contains multiple transcripts and figures to illustrate the discussion
Infectious disease outbreaks often have consequences beyond human health, including concern among the population, economic instability, and sometimes violence. A warning system capable of ...anticipating social disruptions resulting from disease outbreaks is urgently needed to help decision makers prepare appropriately. We designed a system that operates in near real-time to identify and predict social response. Over 150,000 Internet-based news articles related to outbreaks of 16 diseases in 72 countries and territories were provided by HealthMap. These articles were automatically tagged with indicators of the disease activity and population reaction. An anomaly detection algorithm was implemented on the population reaction indicators to identify periods of unusually severe social response. Then a model was developed to predict the probability of these periods of unusually severe social response occurring in the coming week, 2 and 3 weeks. This model exhibited remarkably strong performance for diseases with substantial media coverage. For country-disease pairs with a median of 20 or more articles per year, the onset of social response in the next week was correctly predicted over 60% of the time, and 87% of weeks were correctly predicted. Performance was weaker for diseases with little media coverage, and, for these diseases, the main utility of our system is in identifying social response when it occurs, rather than predicting when it will happen in the future. Overall, the developed near real-time prediction approach is a promising step toward developing predictive models to inform responders of the likely social consequences of disease spread.
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