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The political aesthetics of cruelty: contemporary authoritarian politics and the struggle between sovereignty and relationality
No full textTechnology use for care, support and social connect in the community: preliminary findings from the DIALOGUE project
No full textDigital technologies (smart phones, tablets, smart speakers) are becoming prevalent in social care provision to facilitate older people to maintain independent living. However, there is a paucity of understanding of what type of technologies are being trialled by social care services, or if people are being offered to use them. To understand what type of technologies may/not be suitable for social care delivery, a series of workshops were conducted across three sites in England (Northeast, Southwest, Central England), with adults aged 65+ years. Eighteen older adults were recruited, thirteen were women, white British (n=16), seven self-reported a physical impairment, disability or a social care package in place. Findings identified four themes, 1. everyday technology use, 2. Perceived Benefits of Technology for Care and Independence, 3. Concerns and Barriers to Technology Adoption, 4. Priorities for Future Technology-Enabled Care. This work identifies the need for researchers to be cognisant of the challenges including digital literacy, and it lays the foundations for future research priorities in the field of applied research in social care
Can platform literacy protect vulnerable young people against the risky affordances of social media platforms?
No full textA qualitative study of young people with mental health difficulties sought to understand their digital experiences and identify whether their digital literacy helps them cope with online problems. The findings reveal how young people’s encounters with extreme online risk are amplified by platforms’ promotion of trending and viral content and intensified through the personalisation of content that can ‘trigger’ individual vulnerabilities. We conceptualise these twin processes in terms of risky affordances and show how young people are becoming hypervigilant in their efforts to understand them and take anticipatory and remedial action. In the process, they gain platform literacy, a form of digital literacy that responds to the challenges posed by platform architecture and business models and encompasses data and algorithm literacies. Specifically, young people gained platform literacy by critically examining and comparing social media platforms for their risky features at the interface (on the screen), business operation, and user support (beyond the screen). There were indications that this learning was facilitated by peer discussion, shared experimentation and reflexive deliberation about how their digital experiences relate to their individual biographies. When efforts to manage these risky affordances failed, the young people tended to blame themselves. However, they expected society to support them through improved digital literacy education, clinical support and platform regulation and design. Such systemic changes are vital if vulnerable youth are not to be left responsible for coping with the effects of powerful digital platforms on their mental health
Lottery or triage? Controlled experimental evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic on public preferences for allocation of scarce medical resources
No full textBackground: Bioethicists have advocated lotteries to distribute scarce health care resources, highlighting the benefits that make them attractive amid growing health care challenges. During the COVID-19 pandemic, lotteries were used to distribute vaccines within priority groups in some settings, notably in the United States. Nonetheless, limited evidence exists on public attitudes toward lotteries. Methods: To assess public support for vaccine allocation by lottery versus expert committee, we conducted a survey-based experiment during the pandemic. Between November 2020 and May 2021, data were collected from 15,380 respondents across 14 diverse countries. Respondents were randomly allocated (1:1) to 1 of 2 hypothetical scenarios involving COVID-19 vaccine allocation among nurses: 1) by lottery and 2) prioritization by a committee of expert physicians. The outcome was agreement on the appropriateness of the allocation mechanism on a scale ranging from 0 (strongly disagree) to 100 (strongly agree), with differences stratified by a range of covariates. Two-sided t tests were used to test for overall differences in mean agreement between lottery and expert committee. Findings: Mean agreement with lottery allocation was 37.25 (95% confidence interval [CI] 34.86–39.65), ranging from 21.1 (95% CI 15.07–27.13) in Chile to 62.33 (95% CI 54.45–70.21) in India. In every country, expert committee allocation received higher support, with mean agreement of 61.19 (95% CI: 60.04–62.35), varying from 51.25 in Chile to 69.77 in India. Greater agreement with lotteries was observed among males, higher-income individuals, those with lower education, and those identifying as politically right leaning. Conclusions: Despite arguments for lottery-based allocation of medical resources, we found low overall public support, albeit with substantial variation across countries. Successful implementation of lottery allocation will require targeted public engagement and clear communication of potential benefits. Highlights: This study surveyed 15,380 respondents from 14 diverse countries during the COVID-19 pandemic, analyzing international agreement with the appropriateness of using lottery allocation for scarce health care resources. There was universal preference for allocating vaccines by expert committee rather than by lotteries, but there was significant variation in agreement between countries, indicating the need for region-specific policy approaches. Successful implementation of lottery allocation requires targeted public engagement and communication of their benefits, especially with groups less supportive of lotteries
Storytelling in the Australian 2023 voice referendum campaign
No full textPersonal stories are a strategic tool often used by advocacy movements to pursue claims for equality. In the 2023 Voice referendum campaign in Australia, personal storytelling was used by the conservative No campaign to argue against the constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Through narrative analysis of the Yes and No campaigns, we highlight two storytelling dynamics. First, the autobiographical hero narrative, fused with the Australian ‘fair go’, to de-historicise inequality and de-emphasise experiences of colonisation and systemic racism. Second, personal storytelling’s strength in emphasising shared identity between storytellers and the public helped the No campaign’s defence of the status quo and their claims that constitutional recognition would be divisive. These narratives set the agenda for the campaign, making it difficult for the Yes campaign’s use of community strengths-based stories to convince the public that recognition of difference was key to achieving greater equality
The case for WTO collective action
No full textThis article considers whether Members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) can develop a collective response to a globally welfare-damaging situation that impacts individual Members differentially. We conclude that collective action remains within the letter and spirit of the WTO Agreements. We set out the enabling procedures for collective action in a WTO dispute setting, in particular, the use of the rarely used situation complaint. We were motivated by the United States’ move to redraw its trade relations and break from its international trade commitments through bilateral negotiations in which it holds asymmetric leverage, buttressed by a pre-emptive announced escalation in response to any attempt by counterparties to join in forging a collective response. We conclude that, if undertaken, collective action can raise each Member’s voice into a countervailing choir and, more importantly, it can reinforce the mutual benefits derived from the multilateral trading system. Collective action thus serves a double purpose in engaging domestic concerns and the collective interests of those intending to preserve the multilateral system on which each Member depends
The active patient: voicing and correcting behaviors by patients and families to ensure safety in healthcare organizations
No full textHealthcare research increasingly observes that patients and families can be highly active in trying to prevent medical accidents. However, the safety literature lacks a model of these behaviors. Addressing this gap would not only advance understanding on how patients and families contribute to healthcare safety, but also provide a general framework for studying how non-employee stakeholders such as citizens and service-users influence safety outcomes in other organizational contexts. Therefore, the current study aimed to establish a model of the behaviors used by patients and families to prevent accidents and ensure safety whilst in hospital. Using a mixed qualitative-quantitative research design, we analyzed 1,857 healthcare complaints submitted by patients and families to UK hospitals reporting poor treatment experiences. Our analysis focused upon reports within the complaints of healthcare users engaging in (1) voicing behaviors to raise concerns about safety with staff and (2) correcting behaviors to directly resolve safety issues. Approximately three quarters of complaints reported patients and families having engaged in voicing and correcting behaviors, with them often doing so to ensure the resolution of missed and emerging safety problems. The behaviors contributed to hospital safety outcomes through helping staff to spot and resolve errors and hazards, intervening to ensure that safety standards were maintained, and bypassing teams and hospitals when they were judged as too unsafe. The study adds to the literature by establishing a framework for studying how the behaviors of non-employee stakeholders in healthcare and other domains contribute to organisational safety
A new measure of issue polarization using k-means clustering: US trends 1988-2024 and predictors of polarization across the world.
No full textPolitical issue polarization worries scholars and the public alike. To understand what drives political issue polarization, longitudinal analyses and cross-national comparative research are necessary, but difficult to implement using current measures. We propose a new technique for measuring political issue polarization which is well suited to longitudinal and comparative analyses, using a machine learning algorithm called k-means clustering, which identifies coherent groups of politically-like-minded citizens from the bottom up. We analyse the between-cluster separation, within-cluster cohesion and size parity of the clusters to quantify a society’s political issue polarization. Using American National Election Studies data, we find that polarization increased in the USA from 1988 to 2024, driven by a period of rising separation between clusters from 2008 to 2020. Using World and European Values Survey data, we find that across the world, mass issue polarization is driven primarily by disagreement over cultural issues, but manifests differently depending on a society’s level of Human Development Index (HDI), with lower-HDI countries seeing culturally conservative clusters account for a majority of citizens, and higher-HDI countries having more culturally liberal and equally sized clusters. Different societal-level predictors, including ethnic fractionalization, wealth inequality and HDI, are associated with different aspects of polarization
Getting race talk right? The non-performativity of politically correct ‘Right Talk’ in German education
No full textWhite race talk is often angry, anxious, or avoidant; so how do white people who strive to be not-racist try to get it right? Drawing on nine months of fieldwork and 79 interviews in and about German schools, the article examines efforts at ‘Right Talk', from politically correct racial terminology to sensitised self-criticism. Talking right, however, is non-performative: It offers a way to sound not-racist without requiring anti-racist action. To illustrate this, the paper analyses discourses about the German “School[s] without Racism – School[s] with Courage” network and adds a German example to the largely Anglophone literature on race talk, racial literacy, and anti-discrimination in education. Concretely, it shows how anti-racism can become operationalised as (and consequently reduced to) “correct” learning and speaking. As a result, while Right Talk motivates more equitable language use, it ultimately protects white innocence and risks reinforcing what it claims to critique