1,721,128 research outputs found
Episode 27: You can't be what you can't see part 2
No full textIn our interview with Elizabeth Reed, we discuss the media’s influence — for better or for worse — on LGBTQ identity, culture, and interpretations. We learn how “identities are constituted within, not outside of representation,” we discuss how to combat media invisibility, the ways that the LGBTQ community faces discrimination, how the media is central in articulating *everyone’s* identity
Lesbian, bisexual and queer motherhood: crafting radical narratives and representing social change through cultural representations
No full textThe heterogeneity of family: Responses to representational invisibility by LGBTQ parents
Full text linkThis article draws on qualitative research data collected in semi-structured interviews conducted during 2013 and 2014 with 30 lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ) parents living in England and Scotland. It explores how LGBTQ parents respond to media representations of families like theirs, and build narratives of family identity from limited cultural resources. Media, encompassing a range of cultural representational resources, including advertisements, television, books and films, produces specific knowledges about LGBTQ families. Participants argued that popular entertainment media (including Modern Family) offered a limited range of representations of LGBTQ parents and concretizes knowledge about the shape of families. I argue that available representations fail to acknowledge the diversity of non-heterosexual family forms and that this representational gap results in socio-cultural invisibility. I explore the responses LGBTQ parents had to such gaps and how they negotiated, or rejected representational meanings in order to consolidate new narratives of family
Lesbian, Bisexual and Queer Motherhood: Crafting Radical Narratives and Representing Social Change through Cultural Representations
Full text linkThis article examines how lesbian, gay, bisexual and queer (LGBQ) women negotiate mother identity narratives through critical engagement with diverse media representations. I draw on the reported experiences of LGBQ mothers living in Great Britain, collected in semi-structured, in-depth qualitative interviews during 2013 and 2014. Interview data is used to examine how queer and social-radical positions are articulated through, and to explore LGBQ women’s relationship to, the identity of mother and its attendant traditional gender role. The LGBQ women I spoke with identified a range of representations drawn from sources including graphic novels, children's books, and television, as significant in their negotiation of mother identities. I argue LGBQ women's selection and usage of representations illustrates their deliberate, conscious and ideologically driven negotiations of cultural images and indicates the way in which media is central in articulating mother identities.
I conclude by suggesting that traditional images of motherhood, and the existing vocabulary of mothering, are radically redeployed by women whose identities fall outside of the heteronorm. Further, I demonstrate that the use of existing representations of motherhood to describe different non-heterosexual mother identities is a key way in which LGBQ women model social change and seek to circulate alternative, validated narratives of motherhood
Defining the illness trajectory of metastatic breast cancer
No full textBackground: with significant developments in the management of metastatic breast cancer, the trajectory of progressive breast cancer is becoming increasingly complex with little understanding of the illness course experienced by women, or their ongoing problems and needs.Aim: this study set out to systematically explore the illness trajectory of metastatic breast cancer using models from chronic illness as a framework.Design: longitudinal mixed methods studies detailing each woman's illness trajectory were developed by triangulating of narrative interviews, medical and nursing documentation and an assessment of functional ability using the Karnofsky Scale. The Corbin and Strauss Chronic Illness Trajectory Framework was used as a theoretical framework for the study.Participants: ten women aged between 40 and 78?years, with metastatic breast cancer.Results: women’s illness trajectories from diagnosis of metastatic disease ranged from 13?months to 5?years and 9?months. Eight of the 10 women died during the study. Chronic illness trajectory phases identified by Corbin and Strauss (pretrajectory, trajectory onset, living with progressive disease, downward phase and dying phase) were experienced by women with metastatic breast cancer. Three typical trajectories of different duration and intensity were identified. Women's lives were dominated by the physical burden of disease and treatment with little evidence of symptom control or support.Conclusions: this is the first study to systematically explore the experience of women over time to define the metastatic breast cancer illness trajectory and provides evidence that current care provision is inadequate. Alternative models of care which address women's increasingly complex problems are neede
The experience of living with metastatic breast cancer
No full textOver the last 10-15 years the medical management of metastatic breast cancer has improved survival, so women are living longer with progressive disease. Little is understood about women’s problems and needs and how they live their everyday lives. This study aimed to explore the experience of women with metastatic breast cancer by applying three phases: a cross-sectional survey exploring quality of life, experience of care and where they turned for support; exploration of the narratives of 30 women considering the social consequences of living with progressive breast cancer on identity; and finally triangulating medical and nursing documentation, a measure of physical functioning and ten women’s narratives to define the illness trajectory of metastatic breast cancer. Phase 1: Quality of life was found to be poor with women experiencing a significant symptom burden. Experience of care was poor with unmet information and support needs. There was little evidence of General Practitioner or palliative care involvement in care. Phase 2: In weathering the oscillations of progressive disease, women faced threats to their social identity. Women sought ways to maintain their social roles and social order to avoid social isolation. To do this they adopted contingent identities: stoicism or absolved responsibility. Women used these contingent identities to mediate any discontinuity between the self, the body and social order. These self-representations were used by women to maintain their social roles and social order and in doing so avoiding being discredited and socially isolated. Phase 3: Mapping women’s illness trajectories identified three typical trajectories. The illness trajectories demonstrated the complexity of living over time with progressive disease, through phases which give definition to a previously ill-defined pathway. Living with metastatic breast cancer challenges the personal resources of the individual and poses interesting questions about how healthcare professionals provide information, effective symptom control, and emotional and practical support to women. Current models of care are not meeting women’s needs and new approaches to care provision need to be considered
Surveying the experience of living with metastatic breast cancer: comparing face-to-face and online recruitment
No full textWith its growing use, the Internet offers researchers a novel approach in reaching those they seek to study locally, nationally or globally. The purpose of this paper is to describe our experience of using the Internet as one means of recruiting to a research study exploring the experience of women with metastatic breast cancer and to compare the methodological issues of using face-to-face and online approaches to survey recruitment. The survey incorporated the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Breast (FACT-B) quality of life measure, a patient experience with care measure and open ended text questions about respondents’ physical, emotional and practical needs. Recruitment was done face-to-face in two cancer centres and on the Breast Cancer Care (it is the UK’s leading provider of information, practical assistance and emotional support for anyone affected by breast cancer) Website, recruiting 110 people in the cancer centres and 125 from the Website. The age range was 25–84. Website respondents were significantly younger than cancer centre respondents (<0.000). They also had significantly lower social well-being on the FACT-B scale and were less satisfied with information and advice (<0.000) and their personal experience of care (<0.010). Finally, we consider the role of the Internet in research and the methodological and ethical challenges this presents both now and in the future
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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