The emergence of the COVID-19 global pandemic in Ghana has resulted in various degrees of stigmatization. Previous studies have stressed the need for developing policies to curb the stigma towards ...COVID-19 survivors and healthcare workers. Some have investigated the knowledge and willingness of people to accept COVID-19 survivors. Others have also explored the experiences of health workers who have been victims of stigma from COVID-19. There is a need for further studies to understand COVID-19 related stigma and related psychological distress. The purpose of this study was to investigate the cases of COVID-19 related stigma and discrimination against healthcare workers, COVID-19 recovered patients, suspected persons of COVID-19, Asians, and persons with travel history from COVID-19 hotspot countries. The study was undertaken using the phenomenology approach to qualitative research. Purposive and snowball sampling techniques were used in recruiting the twenty-eight study participants. Data were garnered using interviews and focus group discussions. Data were analyzed using interpretative phenomenological analysis. The findings revealed that COVID-19 victims have faced various forms of stigma such as stereotyping, social exclusion, mockery, finger-pointing, and insults. The study recommends that the COVID-19 National Response Team in Ghana must put in place a robust psychosocial intervention plan for stigmatized persons to help them cope with the stigma and help in its prevention.
•COVID-19 victims face stigmatization in the form of social rejection and verbal abuse.•COVID-19 stigma victims face psychological distress that could lead to worsened health conditions.•Intensive public health education as well and a well-developed psychosocial intervention plan would help deal with COVID-19 stigma.
Marketing studies highlight the importance of recognizing different cultures and suggest that race plays an integral role in the functioning and ideological underpinnings of marketplace actions. ...Nevertheless, this role remains understudied in research on online consumer-to-consumer (C2C) interactions. Guided by extant literature and drawing on critical race theory, this study conducts two experimental studies that show how the race of online consumer reviewers influences other consumers’ interpretation of the quality of the reviews. This study contributes to the marketing literature by extending the existing knowledge of racial stigmatization and bias found in marketing communications to C2C exchanges. An understanding of the role, scope, and impact of consumer-driven stigmatization is of growing importance due to the growing empowerment of consumers in the business ecosystem. Regulatory frameworks are designed to protect consumers from unfair market practices on the part of firms and businesses. However, C2C interaction is a largely unregulated territory where our study demonstrates that entrenched racial stigmatization may still exist. The study findings reveal important implications and directions for future research.
Since its introduction as a concept, organizational stigma has become central to explaining how organizations or industries become tainted, and how they overcome and manage such taint. In this ...introduction to the Special Issue on organizational stigma, we start by exploring the origins of the concept, providing basic definitions and reviewing the existing research on stigmatization, stigma transfer and experienced stigma. The papers in this issue flesh out our understanding of what causes organizational stigma and its implications at different levels. The remainder of this introduction takes stock of this recent work to explore future research opportunities around the micro‐ and macro‐foundations of organizational stigma, the links with scandals, controversies and other negative social evaluations and research methods. As the concept of organizational stigma reaches a new stage, we argue that its explanatory power can be harnessed to explore new and increasingly relevant phenomena and contexts.
Terrorism has the potential to divide societies. It is particularly relevant to investigate how Islamist terrorism on social media is associated with Muslim minorities’ attitudes and behaviors. This ...study examined how seeing terrorism on social media relates to Muslim minority individuals’ perceived stigmatization. We further investigated how perceived stigmatization translates to social media behaviors, namely, terror-related online self-disclosure and correction of false information about religion. A survey among German Muslims ( N = 432) showed that social media use for information about terrorism was positively associated with perceived stigmatization. This relationship was moderated by individuals’ national identity, but not religious identity. Perceived stigmatization, in turn, positively predicted terror-related online self-disclosure and correction of false information about religion. The findings accentuate the role of social media use for minorities to cope and stand up for their in-group in the face of terror.
In this paper I develop a new explanation that furthers our understanding of why whistleblowers are frequently hated and stigmatized. I call into question the implicit assumption in the literature ...that whistleblowers are hated and stigmatized exclusively because they represent the ‘other’. Instead, I take a different view and argue that, especially where staff have a moral commitment to their work, whistleblowers may also be felt to be problematic because they unconsciously represent the lost good ‘self’ of staff members. I draw on Kleinian psychoanalytic ideas in developing theory, and use the crisis at the Mid Staffordshire National Health Service Trust in the UK as a contemporary case illustration. This paper contributes to the whistleblower literature as well as to the literature that applies psychoanalytic ideas to the study of management and organization, and it also identifies areas for future research.
In this paper, we present the outcomes of a narrative study of 13 interviews with six child and youth mental healthpractitioners and seven caregivers with a child between 12 and 24 years old involved ...with the mental health system and with a history of police involvement. The focus of the interviews was on the experiences of young people involved with the mental health system, and their caregivers, with police encounters. Two categories of themes emerged. Presented here are the outcomes that show the contradictions between the child and youth mental health and police systems as contributing factors to the stigmatization and criminalization of psychiatrically distressed children and youth. A call is made for a collaboration between the mental health and police systems rooted in a commitment for de-policing crisis responses in child and youth mental health.
Purpose:
This study is one of the first to examine the physical and mental health of transgender older adults and to identify modifiable factors that account for health risks in this underserved ...population.
Design and Methods:
Utilizing data from a cross-sectional survey of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender older adults aged 50 and older (N = 2,560), we assessed direct and indirect effects of gender identity on 4 health outcomes (physical health, disability, depressive symptomatology, and perceived stress) based on a resilience conceptual framework.
Results:
Transgender older adults were at significantly higher risk of poor physical health, disability, depressive symptomatology, and perceived stress compared with nontransgender participants. We found significant indirect effects of gender identity on the health outcomes via fear of accessing health services, lack of physical activity, internalized stigma, victimization, and lack of social support; other mediators included obesity for physical health and disability, identity concealment for perceived stress, and community belonging for depressive symptomatology and perceived stress. Further analyses revealed that risk factors (victimization and stigma) explained the highest proportion of the total effect of gender identity on health outcomes.
Implications:
The study identifies important modifiable factors (stigma, victimization, health-related behaviors, and social support) associated with health among transgender older adults. Reducing stigma and victimization and including gender identity in nondiscrimination and hate crime statutes are important steps to reduce health risks. Attention to bolstering individual and community-level social support must be considered when developing tailored interventions to address transgender older adults’ distinct health and aging needs.
Studies of illegitimate organizations have failed to present consistent definitions and to recognize that illegitimate organizations persist. Drawing on the emerging organizational stigma literature, ...I separate recoverable event-stigma from nonrecoverable core-stigma- --an extreme form of the poorly defined construct of illegitimacy. I examine the nature of core-stigma, the role of conflicting external audience evaluations that determine and express this stigma, and some organizational outcomes and responses. I end by proposing some implications for building a greater understanding of these and other illegitimate organizations and a possible agenda for future research.
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