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Examining the role of family, media, peers in young Caucasian men’s understandings of body dissatisfaction: a thematic analysis using the tripartite influential model and social comparison theory
Get PDFThis study explores the factors contributing to body dissatisfaction among young Caucasian men. It focuses on family, peers, and media influences, addressing a gap in the literature that rarely integrates men’s experiences. The research draws on the Tripartite Influence Model and Social Comparison Theory, using thematic analysis to examine semi-structured interviews with eight participants aged 20–21. The research considers participants’ sexual orientation and country of origin when analysing the data. The findings show that family, peers, and the media positively and negatively shape body dissatisfaction among participants. Positive familial support can enhance body image, while negative comments from family members and peers exacerbate dissatisfaction. Social media was found to often reinforce unattainable body standards. The research contributes to the limited literature on men’s body dissatisfaction by expanding the application of the Tripartite Influence Model and Social Comparison Theory to this population. The study underscores the need for greater societal awareness and a more inclusive approach to body image research that considers diverse ethnic backgrounds and sexual orientations. We argue that more attention needs to be paid to men’s body dissatisfaction, as men are often excluded from these discussions. This study provides valuable insights into the dynamics of male body image, offering a foundation for future research and societal discourse on this often-overlooked issue
The cultural industries of India
No full textThe Cultural Industries of India is the first book length study dedicated to the Indian cultural and creative industries. By covering specific aspects of the cultural and creative sectors in India– from film festivals to music and performing arts, from cinema to tourism, including a policy review on innovation in the creative industries – the various chapters offer a comprehensive overview of the relationship between the cultural and creative industries and the wider economic, social, cultural and political processes taking place within India and its diaspora. The study of cultural and creative industries in India is important not only for their potential for economic growth and its knock-on effect on social and cultural development, but also because their analysis reveal the ways in which cultural production shapes politics and identities, income generation and urban renewal. This volume focuses on questions of structural inequalities within the sector at the local level, and to account for asymmetries in economic power and the possibility to circulate and access symbolic content within and beyond the boundaries of the Indian nation.
This book will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of creative and cultural studies, economics, history, development studies and media studies in India. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Cultural Trends
Road pothole detection from smartphone sensor data using improved LSTM
No full textRoad abnormalities can be caused by man-made and natural disasters that affect the safety of drivers and damage vehicles. Therefore, several automatic road monitoring approaches have been proposed to monitor the road surface and detect road abnormalities like potholes. However, low accuracy in detecting the pothole in low-light conditions is taken as the main problem in this work. To address this issue, we presented an Improved Long Short Term Memory model (ILSTM) that combines a three-layer deep LSTM with a One-Dimensional Local Binary Pattern (1D-LBP) layer to detect the presence of potholes during low-light conditions and extract features such as the number of neighbouring samples and pixel values. The proposed strategy collects the pothole data from accelerometer and gyroscope sensor data using a smart phone. This model is used to classify the sensor data and label it either as a pothole or normal. Besides, this makes classification possible and extracts the location of the pothole. Evaluation results demonstrate that the proposed ILSTM approach is also robust to low lighting conditions with a detection accuracy of 99% and requires less execution time in classifying potholes and non-pothole regions on the pothole dataset collected with the help of an accelerometer and a gyroscope
International relations and foreign policy
No full textAs scholarly and public interest in populism increased rapidly in recent years, many researchers have turned to the previously understudied question of the international dimensions of populism. Developments like the Brexit vote in the 2016 referendum in the United Kingdom (UK) and the Donald Trump victory in the United States (US) elections of the same year pointed to the roots of populism in dynamics that transcend national borders, like immigration and exposure to international trade. The rise of populist leaders across Europe, America and Asia raised the question of whether populism is a structural feature of world politics, intertwined with other systemic, political and economic, parameters of international relations (IR). And, as populists have entrenched themselves in power, it has become easier to study consistently their foreign policy preferences and actions. As a result, the literature on the international relations of populism–whether of the ‘outside-in’dynamic of international developments fostering populism at the national level or the ‘inside-out’process of populist foreign policy–is one of the fastest-growing areas of the populism literature today. This chapter offers an overview of this field in two parts
“It is a kind of freedom that entrepreneurship provides you”: Female Recipient Remittance Recipients’ entrepreneurship journey in Nepal
Get PDFThe paper explores the entrepreneurship journey of left-behind and returnee female migrants (referred to as Remittance Recipient Female Entrepreneurs, RRFEs), and specifically their motivations, the challenges they face and the types of support that they need or would like. Returnee migrants are often represented as agents of development (Riano, 2022). However, we have scant knowledge of how Nepalese RRFEs exercise their agency as entrepreneurs – the opportunities and challenges they face as well as the coping strategies that they employ. The paper therefore offers a valuable opportunity to extend our understanding within the under-researched areas of entrepreneurship and migration literature in developing countries. We conducted 36 in-depth interviews with RRFEs (left-behind and returnee migrant women), involved in small scale businesses in Nepal. The analysis shows that the key motivations for Nepalese RRFEs were financial independence, time and skill utilisation, and a sense of identity. RRFEs had to carefully navigate their family responsibilities and acquire new skills (through training) to set up their businesses. While patriarchal values and beliefs were the biggest obstacles to achieving success in business for left-behind women, migrant returnees faced different challenges, mainly reintegration back into society, and a lack of support. This demonstrates the need for support from the community, family (e.g., household chores, childcare), and institutional support (e.g., access to loans/lower interest rates, training, and reintegration into society/jobs)
An evidence review of the connections between sexual exposure and contact sexual offending
Get PDFThis report was written by Dr Fiona Vera-Gray and Professor Clare McGlynn, commissioned by the College of Policing. It comprises a rapid review of the evidence published since 2014 on sexual exposure (commonly termed ‘indecent exposure’) including cyberflashing and its connections to contact sexual offending. It also sets out implications of the findings for policing and recommendations for further research
IEEE Workshop on Cyber Forensics in Social Media (CFSM-2024)
Get PDFSocial network analysis is the study of relationships between social entities, a field significantly enriched by the recent advances in internet technologies and social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. These platforms offer unprecedented opportunities for individuals to connect, communicate, and share their perspectives on a vast array of topics. The dynamic and ever-evolving nature of social networks, coupled with the massive scale of user participation, poses significant challenges for researchers, particularly in data mining and machine learning. The International Conference on Social Networks Analysis, Management and Security (SNAMS-2024) aims to provide a comprehensive forum for researchers, practitioners, and industry experts to present and discuss their latest findings and innovations in the realm of social network analysis. This conference seeks to explore the vast opportunities in social networks, addressing both theoretical and practical challenges. SNAMS-2024 is dedicated to fostering an environment where students, scientists, engineers, and researchers can exchange ideas, present novel research contributions, and share experiences across all facets of social networks
“I can't fail, you know, cause my failure is not just mine”. An interpretative phenomenological analysis of how black male counselling or clinical psychologists experience their professional identities
Get PDFBackground
The difficulties of engaging black men with mental health services and the positive outcomes that can be experienced once black men engage in such services, like psychological therapy, are well documented (e.g., Wade, 2006; Whaley, 2001; Stevenson et al., 2021). However, there is a lack of discussion in the literature regarding how black males experience being psychologists in a predominantly white industry (BPS, 2018). Research has explored the complex concepts of personal, social and professional identity (e.g., Erikson, 1968; Tajfel & Turner, 1979; Ibarra, 1999) and how these can impact individuals’sense of belonging to a profession. However, literature was lacking in understanding how these identities form and are experienced when the individuals in question are black and male.
Rationale and Aims
This research sheds light on this marginalised section of the psychological community. It aims to better understand how black male counselling or clinical psychologists experience their professional identities.
Design and Method
The data gathered via semi-structured interviews of six counselling or clinical psychologists’ lived experiences were analysed using a qualitative methodology, interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) (Smith et al., 2009).
Findings and Conclusions
Three superordinate themes were developed: ‘Lack of belonging to the profession’, ‘Personal identity informs professional identity’ and ‘Representing my community’. These themes were then discussed within the context of existing literature. It was found that the participants experienced a sense of not belonging to the profession due to feeling different from their peers, but they found ways to reduce the negative impact of this difference.
Counselling psychologist participants experienced an additional layer of difference, initially feeling inferior to their clinical colleagues before finding solidarity in their professional identity. Participants expressed an integration of their professional and personal identities, reflecting on how their race and gender have influenced their development, present experience, and future aspirations as practitioner psychologists. Finally, it was found that participants felt there to be importance in representing their community, by being themselves, feeling pressure not to fail and helping those who are a part of their communities.
The research has helped to illuminate one aspect of the experience of being a black male practitioner psychologist. Raising awareness of these experiences can help individuals consider their conscious and unconscious prejudices, validate and name experiences shared with the participants, be used in service development, and generate future research
Understanding participation experiences in sport programs for the acculturation of refugee youth: a comparative study of two different programs in the US and Sweden
No full textSports can help refugees mitigate traumas, connect with others, and learn positive values. In this illustrative comparative study, we compare two sport programs for the acculturation of refugees in the US and Sweden. Our aim is to describe both programs, compare them with the literature, and present suggestions for the field. Hence, we placed the program participants at the center of their acculturation process and used interpretivism to understand their experiences of joining the program and engaging with the sport culture in their countries of resettlement, as well as to account for the benefits they perceived from participation
Assessment of growth monitoring among children younger than 5 years at early childhood development centres in Nelson Mandela Bay, South Africa
Get PDFIntroduction:
Early childhood development (ECD) centres are important community hubs in South Africa and act as sites for community detection of childhood nutrition problems. This study aimed to assess the ability of trained ECD practitioners with optimal support to correctly classify the nutritional status of infants and young children at ECD centres in the Nelson Mandela Bay.
Methods:
A descriptive, cross‐sectional study was used to collect data from 1645 infants and children at 88 ECD centres. Anthropometric measurements were taken by trained fieldworkers and growth monitoring and promotion infrastructure was audited at ECD centres.
Results:
Of the sample, 4.4% (n = 72) were underweight by weight for age Z‐score (WAZ < −2) and 0.8% (n = 13) were severely underweight (WAZ < −3). Results showed that 13.1% (n = 214) were stunted by height for age Z‐score (HAZ < −2) and 4.5% (n = 74) were severely stunted (HAZ < −3). The prevalence of moderate acute malnutrition was 1.2% and severe acute malnutrition was 0.5%, while the prevalence of overweight was 9.2% and the prevalence of obesity was 4%. A significant level of agreement between the correct interpretation and the ECD practitioners' interpretation was observed across all the anthropometric indicators investigated. The true positive wasting cases had a mean mid‐upper arm circumference (MUAC) of 14.6 cm, which may explain the high false negative rate found in terms of children identified with wasting, where ECD practitioners fail to use the weight for height Z‐score (WHZ) interpretation for screening.
Conclusion:
By using ECD centres as hub to screen for malnutrition, it may contribute to the early identification of failure to thrive among young children. Although it was concerning that trained ECD practitioners are missing some children with an unacceptably high false negative rate, it may have been due to the fact that wasting in older children cannot be identified with MUAC alone and that accurate WFH plotting is needed. Onsite mentorship by governmental health workers may provide ECD practitioners with more confidence to screen children for growth failure based on regular WFH measurements. Moreover, ECD practitioners will be more confident to monitor the Road to Health booklets for missed vaccinations, vitamin A and deworming opportunities