Societies, Volume 12, Issue 2 (April 2022) – 43 articles

Research has historically exploited Indigenous communities, particularly in the medical and health sciences, due to the dominance of discriminatory colonial systems. In many regions across Canada and worldwide, historical and continued injustices have worsened health among Indigenous Peoples. Global health crises such as climate change are most adversely impacting Indigenous communities, as their strong connection to the land means that even subtle changes in the environment can disproportionately affect local food and health systems. As we explore strategies for climate change preparedness and adaptation, Indigenous Peoples have a wealth of Traditional Knowledge to tackle specific climate and related health issues. If combined with digital citizen science, data collection by citizens within a community could provide relevant and timely information about specific jurisdictions. Digital devices such as smartphones, which have widespread ownership, can enable equitable participation in citizen science projects to obtain big data for mitigating and managing climate change impacts. Informed by a Two-Eyed Seeing approach, a decolonized lens to digital citizen science can advance climate change adaptation and preparedness efforts. This paper describes the ‘Bridge Framework’ for decolonizing digital citizen science using a case study with a subarctic Indigenous community in Saskatchewan, Canada. Full article

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a leading technology in the digital transformation. AI is expected to cause job losses in general, initially in professions associated with routine activities, and subsequently in the field of creative professions. The present article analysed the results of the authors’ own empirical sociological survey of the attitude of Bulgarian translators towards AI, and the ways in which it will change their profession. Most of them perceive artificial intelligence and automatization as threats to the profession. According to them, digital technologies and AI will modify the profession by relieving human translators of the routine, technical part of the job. Hence, translators will predominantly edit machine-translated texts, and teach artificial intelligence to perform machine translation. The conclusion of the analysis demonstrates that, in the case of Bulgarian translators, such pessimistic scenarios about mass jobs destruction are not justified. In addition, expectations of a deterioration in quality of work as a result of digitalization in the near future are not justified in the case of the translating profession. The present survey results serve as a basis for further research about the impact of artificial intelligence on other creative professions. Full article

Memorable events of the 21st century that will be rightly or wrongly be remembered includes the global financial crisis of 2007/08, the election of Mr Donald Trump as President of the United States of America, and Brexit (the United Kingdom (UK) voting to leave the European Union) in 2016. Others include the emergence of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, and the war between Russia and Ukraine. Since 2016, Brexit has continued to dominate global politics. Conceptually, this article explores the Brexit dilemma, the formalization of Brexit agreements, and the post-Brexit impact on the economy and society. How did Brexit happen? What are the underlying causes of Brexit? Is Brexit connected to Euroscepticism and populism? By evaluating these contexts, important issues and debates can be reconciled to advance knowledge on Brexit, UK politics, the regional political system, and the rise of populism. This article is currently relevant since it coincides with an obvious upsurge in interest in the post-Brexit Global Britain. Full article

Internal workplace practices and policies in policing are based on a notion of fairness and equal opportunity. Yet police organizations are frequently criticized for discriminatory policing practices, unfair and biased workplace practices, and poor interpersonal treatment of officers. Whilst there is a wide body of research examining diversity in relation to external police practices, there is a lack of knowledge regarding diversity and internal workplace practices; particularly from the perspective of police detectives who often have more substantial policing experience and longer employment histories than other non-commissioned officers. Contributing new findings to the extant policing literature, this research analyzes data collected from interviews with twenty police detectives working in one of the largest Australian police organizations. It suggests that police detectives in this study have negative perceptions of diversity, and associate diversity with unfair advantages in the workplace. In Australian culture, the phrase ‘rorting the system’ is an informal expression used to describe individuals or groups of people who take unfair advantage of a public service or workplace policy to change their circumstances. The findings suggest that detectives in this study believe diversity enables some officers to take advantage of workplace policy and ‘rort’ the system. Full article

We examined the moderating role of race on the relationship between religion and death penalty attitudes in the United States. We operationalized religion by distinguishing four dimensions: religiosity, spirituality, afterlife beliefs, and denomination. Using 2018 General Social Survey data from 1054 adults, collected by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, we show that the impact of each dimension of religion varies across racial groups. Logistic Regression results showed that the likelihood of support for the death penalty was associated with religiosity, spirituality, belief in hell, being female, and being liberal. Adding race as an interaction term moderated the associations of religiosity and spirituality. Full article

This study explored item-level change in pre-service teachers’ attitudes toward teacher- and parent-initiated parent involvement across four diverse universities. Pre-service teacher (N = 1658) attitudes toward parent involvement were measured before and after exposure to the online Parent Teacher Education Connection (PTEC) curriculum which provides information about Epstein’s six types of parent involvement. The four universities infused this curriculum differently into their coursework. Results showed that items demonstrated change related to how the four universities infused parent involvement curriculum into coursework. Overall, teacher-initiated involvement items showed more changes than parent-initiated items. Across the whole sample, there was change in items related to all six types of parent involvement. Results highlighted the importance of infusing parent involvement into the curriculum or teaching a full course, including activities placing pre-service teachers in the role of the parent, including service learning, and focusing on cultural diversity. Full article

Although it is important to communicate scientific knowledge, it seems that this assumption is even more evident when it comes to environment-related themes, which have gained more relevance in the public sphere in the last decades. This article evaluates the spectacularization techniques of technology and science displayed as if they were the only solution to the environmental crisis. Firstly, from a literature perspective, this article shows the evolution of science communication and the relationship between society and science over the last centuries. After that, it presents a critical view on the excessive optimism around technology and scientific advancement, arguing that the possible solutions to the environmental crisis cannot come exclusively through technology substitution. The article thus shows that there is today a clear distinction between science communication and the communication of science as a mass product, which is promoted today by different stakeholders to manipulate public opinion for different reasons. Finally, the article identifies some common elements of this phenomenon that we call technowashing, insofar as it aims at a laundering of responsibilities and harmful impacts of business and political decisions. Full article

Reading is an essential competence students learn in school. One question is how parents can support their children and their reading competence, particularly at the beginning of elementary school. Guided by this question, this study investigated the longitudinally reciprocal relationship between parental school- and home-based involvement with children’s reading competence. We also tested whether school- and home-based involvement mediated the relationship between structural context variables (e.g., migration background) and reading competence. A total of 254 parent–child dyads answered a questionnaire at two measurement points, i.e., at the beginning and the end of the first grade in elementary school. Home-based involvement and reading competence were negatively, reciprocally related to each other. Furthermore, we found a negative association between reading competence at the beginning of grade 1 and the relative change in school-based involvement at the end of grade 1. No mediation effects of school- and home-based involvement in the relation between structural context variables and reading competence were found. This paper provides a deeper understanding of the complex interrelations of the family–school partnership during the first school year. Full article

Honour-based violence has garnered significant attention within Canadian national discourses, especially within popular media and political rhetoric. Frequently conceptualized as a culturally specific form of violence embedded with patriarchal understandings of honour, these crimes have been mobilized within mainstream media to vilify certain ethnic and racial communities, particularly from the Global East. Relying on ethnocentric explanations, honour crimes are imagined as foreign phenomena that have been imported into Canada by immigrant populations who actively resist assimilation and fail to adopt liberal Western values of equality and freedom. This paper seeks to unsettle these very tropes surrounding the “honour crime” label using a postcolonial feminist lens. Drawing on the murder case of Aqsa Parvez, this paper calls into question the discursive strategies used to construct “honour crimes” and the racialized tropes that they perpetuate. Further, this paper examines how this label is mobilized to carry out “political work” and support certain political agendas, which include managing immigrant populations. Full article

Online content trustworthiness has become a topic of significant interest due to the growth of so-called ‘fake news’ and other deceptive online content. Deceptive content has been responsible for an armed standoff, caused mistrust surrounding elections and reduced the trust in media, generally. Modern society, though, depends on the ability to share information to function. Citizens may be injured if they don’t heed medical, weather and other emergency warnings. Distrust for educational information impedes the transfer of knowledge of innovations and societal growth. To function properly, societal trust in shared in information is critical. This article seeks to understand the problem and possible solutions. It assesses the impact of the characteristics of online articles and their authors, publishers and sponsors on perceived trustworthiness to ascertain how Americans make online article trust decisions. This analysis is conducted with a focus on how the impact of these factors on trustworthiness varies based on individuals’ age, education and gender. Full article

The field of digital parenting is an emergent and dynamic area of research. This paper presents a structured literature review of research papers published between 2016 and 2021 which report empirical studies of parenting in the online space. Studies were sourced from Scopus and Web of Science using combinations of parent*/father/mother AND engage*/involve*/participat* AND online/digital*/virtual. A corpus of 144 papers were subjected to a first round of analysis, which resulted in the identification of two main clusters: Digital Parenting (Digi-P) and Digital Parental Involvement in Schooling (Digi-S). The first of these, constituting 92 papers, was the focus of a thematic analysis which is reported in this review. This review analysis is informed by theories of mediation in general, and parental mediation specifically. It finds that restrictive mediation was the most commonly reported parental approach to managing children’s online activities; that child age, gender, and vulnerability and parents’ ICT knowledge and experience impact on parents’ mediation practices; that children and parents have different perspectives and knowledge about children’s online activities; that parents’ online activities also impact on their children; and that parenting at a distance is supported by digital tools. Full article

The main aim of this paper is to examine how negative phenomena, such as a pandemic, can result in positive cultural shifts and an upgrade of the urban image. The research was conducted employing an in-depth interview approach at the end of 2021, based on a semi-structured protocol with 15 participants. The answers of the respondents are conditioned by the socio-demographic differences. They show the urban image and cultural opportunities of the city. The image of the city is changing under different cultural influences, which are caused by events in the region or globalization. The self-awareness of the history, tradition and heritage that the people of Novi Sad have should be nurtured in order to preserve the image of the city with the strength of the majority of the immigrant population. The title ‘European Capital of Culture’ has been well received, but its impact will be best seen at the end of the year. COVID-19The COVID-19 pandemic favored and popularized cycling, awakened environmental self-awareness and solidarity, brought culture to the streets and beautified the city’s image. Everything that could not be placed on the street, it was entered and placed in the virtual world. Full article

Hotel naming can contribute to cultural exchange, and big countries boasting lengthy peripheries and sharp “cores” are suitable for studying this contribution. Foreign cultural and linguistic imprints in hotel names is studied in four big cities of Russia, namely Rostov-on-Don, Nizhniy Novgorod, Krasnoyarsk, and Vladivostok. It is established that the hotels with names bearing foreign-culture elements constitute up to 20–25% of all hotels in each given city. These elements can be linked to many, chiefly West European countries. The English foreign-language elements are the most common, whereas the French and Italian elements occur in subordinate numbers. The linguistic-cultural types of the hotel names are commonly toponyms and landscape-related symbols. The imprint of foreign cultures and languages in the hotel names diminishes together with the increase in distance from the western state border. Full article

The Spanish press relayed the events that unfolded during the migratory incident that occurred in Ceuta and Melilla on 17 May 2021. Considering the media’s key role in social and ideological construction, the purpose of this article is to analyze the informative treatment that the Spanish press gave to this incident, contributing to the study of the image that is shown about the migrant population in the media. For this, the present qualitative study performed a critical analysis, using the Atlas software. Ti 8, of the discourse featuring in the newspaper publications of El País, El Mundo, La Vanguardia and ABC. The results demonstrated the following tendencies: a negative-tone discourse; the invisibility of migrant women; and a “we” vs. “them” narrative. In the light of this reality, we suggest that improvements be made, including a shift in the media’s populist discourse and a greater focus on diasporas. Full article

Migratory flows have a specific influence in the European and Portuguese demographic context. Societies’ commitment to ensure fundamental rights of all citizens and migrants includes the promotion of health. This study aims to describe migrants’ health policies and access to the health system in Portugal within the European framework. We carried out a mixed methods approach, analyzing health policies in European Union countries and public health key indicators from statistical secondary data collected from Eurostat and Migrant Integration Policy Index. This data was complemented with a survey applied to immigrants living in Portugal. Portugal is a European country known for its favorable immigrant integration policies and has developed access to the health care system. However, our study has shown that greater investment is needed to overcome limitations or social inequalities which inhibit migrants’ access. Additionally, we sought to present a comparative analysis between Portugal and European Union countries, which can contribute to improve health systems within the current crisis. Full article

The literature on the health care of migrant patients has often emphasized the importance of cultural skills and cultural humility that caregivers must bring to their care. Recent work has emphasized the importance of adopting a structural reading of this competency. Based on two empirical surveys conducted in France and Germany in facilities providing access to care for migrants with precarious residency status, this article demonstrates the importance of competency linking in terms of what is produced by structures and institutions and what is produced during medical interactions between patients, medical professionals, and volunteers. The complexity of accessing health protection systems for migrants with precarious residency status is often the main structural and institutional barrier to care. To remove this barrier, health professionals can develop legal and administrative competency regarding residency and health rights. They can also develop institutional and practical competency regarding the possibilities of access to health care for people without health coverage in the local geographical context. Structural competency is also effective in deconstructing the stigma and discrimination that minority groups experience in the healthcare system. Full article

The role of the patient’s mother tongue in clinical communication is of vital importance and yet it is not always dealt with adequately by healthcare professionals and healthcare systems. Cultural competence should deal with and redress asymmetries in doctor–patient communication, including those having an impact on the patient’s mother tongue. The aim of this study was to answer a research question: what are the health professionals’ perceptions of the importance and role of the patients’ mother tongue in diglossic situations? To answer our research question, we carried out two focus groups, one with doctors and another with nurses working in public hospitals in the Valencian Community (Spain) where two languages share officiality, Catalan and Spanish. Yet, Catalan is a right and Spanish a duty. The results showed that perceptions of professionals in relation to the importance of the patient’s mother tongue in situations in which two official languages coexist in an asymmetric relationship vary a great deal and seem to form a continuum of positive and negative judgements. Different values were represented in the participants’ perceptions, ranging from respect for and full alignment with the patient’s perspective to negative perceptions. More qualitative and quantitative research on health professionals’ attitudes and values is needed to understand the role of the patient’s mother tongue in clinical communication. Educational and institutional efforts are also needed to redress the linguistic and cultural asymmetries that have a negative impact on patients in terms of inequality, inefficiency, and even exclusion. Full article

Seeking to support qualitative researchers in the artful development of feminist care scholarship, our goal here is to ‘look back’ on how we have conceptualized the problems of care and developed research that illuminates the social organization of care in distinct ways. As part of a ‘feminist care scholar retrospective’, we present five condensed ‘reverse research proposals’, which are retrospective accounts of past research or scholarly activity. From there, we discuss how each project begins with a particular problematic for investigation and a particular conception of care (e.g., as practices, as work, as a concept) to illuminate facets of the social organization of care shaping paid and unpaid care work and its interpretations. These approaches reveal multiple and overlapping ways that care is embodied, understood and organized, as well as ways care can be transformed. Full article

The past few years have witnessed the development of prejudiced attitudes in some places in Europe. Biases alike are often considered a consequence of increased migratory movements to the continent and have also been connected to a more general crisis of the European Union political project. However, societies have diversely responded to migration even in countries presenting similar economic performances and immigrant inflows. Akin different reactions have raised some important questions: is prejudice connected to a broader European crisis and what does the latter consist of? This article responds to these research questions through a multilevel analysis of 24 European countries, and shows that the percentages of migrant population alone are not associated to anti-migrant sentiments. Such a situation has instead been the case only in those countries that have concurrently experienced cuts to the two key public sectors of education and health care, which constituted the pillars of the European Welfare State and one of the cores of the European Union’s political project. Full article

Online reviews have become a fundamental element in searching for and buying a tourism service. In particular, in the phase of post-pandemic caused by the COVID-19, social media are important channels of inspiration of dreams and encouragement to begin envisioning future trips. However, the growing trend of fake reviews is becoming a big issue for consumers. This study proposes and empirically validates a new model that enables predicting consumers’ Credibility Perception of Online Reviews (CPOR) related to tourism, considering all integrated factors of the communication process. A survey was carried out via a structured questionnaire. In particular, 615 answers from Italian travel groups were collected, and correlation and regression analyses were conducted. Results show that the website brand, advisor’s expertise, reviews’ sidedness and consistency, and consumer experience are significant predictors of CPOR. Website usability and reputation are instead weak predictors. This study provides the design and test of a credibility model, contributing to the theoretical and empirical advancement of the literature and enhancing the knowledge on consumer behavior. Full article

This article examines the contemporary industrial semiotic landscape in the town of Velenje, Slovenia, to determine the (positive or negative) collective imaginaries and discourses about industry in the local community. To this end, the semiotic landscape is mapped for signs and symbols of past and present industry, 33 randomly selected short interviews are conducted to understand the residents’ attitudes towards industrial symbols and industrial development in general, and a content analysis of official strategic documents is conducted to determine how industry is represented by officials and whether there are efforts to reimage the town. We found that the industrial past and present are well represented by industrial symbols and are a matter of pride and collective identity for the residents. However, the industrial tradition is hardly represented in official documents: Influenced by the prevailing post-industrial discourses, local authorities have begun to construct new territorial identities in order to increase the town’s attractiveness and economic growth. Currently, both ideas seem to coexist in Velenje. We argue that industrial symbols can become a reference point to create an alternative perception of a modern consumer society based on past industrial values, such as collective well-being, solidarity, and equality. Full article

Research has frequently focused on the increased likelihood of violence and homicide among gang-involved individuals, as well as on the factors that contribute to this violence. Such work has examined the relationship between immigration and the frequency of crime, as well. However, there is a dearth of research examining the likelihood of gang-related homicide and the presence of both gang migrants from within the U.S. and those from abroad in a given community. The current paper utilizes National Youth Gang Survey data to examine the relationship between law enforcement perceptions of gang migrants in their jurisdiction and the frequency of gang-related homicide. The results reveal that gang-related homicides have a significant and negative association with the presence of gang migrants. These findings have important policy implications for understanding and addressing serious gang violence and homicide at the community level. Full article

Information communication technologies, as technologies of human relations (ICRT), are linked with pedagogical patterns. Co-design, as a dialogic, participatory, and relational process, leads task based Massive Open Online Course (tMOOC) to justify the use of ICRT for lifelong learning. From sociocultural constructivism principles, patterns offer possibilities for participation by collaborating with professionals (teachers, designers, researchers) and students. On this subject, patterns involve everyone in the learning scenario, transferring best practices in the pattern language. Applying triangulation as a methodology, we are focused on two aims: analyzing the documentation of pedagogical patterns as a technology of relation (O.1), and synthesizing the information according to tMOOC (O.2). Eleven documents are worked on, including scientific articles, research reports, and a conference paper. As a result, patterns are explored and described according to their processes, structures, modalities, methods, and resources. Finally, it is concluded that patterns underline collaborative tasks where the methodology based on design (IBL) is beneficial for the digital competence of educators. However, evaluative research directed to platforms in real contexts is necessary, attending to group management, metrics, and modeling. Full article

This article considers how meta-narratives can be created through arts-based educational research as a way to shift personal positions and values, using a monologue called Unsettling the settler, written by the author. The creation of meta-narratives that disrupt ideas of national identity, the safety and security of patriarchal and colonial regimes, and who gets to decide what knowledge is worth knowing are essential as antiracist solidarity processes that seek to create belongingness, care and responsibility. This article picks up a thread from a long-term research project in which the author learnt from her participants (actors, audience members and the production team) that performing anti-racist, decolonizing work necessarily begins with an examination of one’s positionality (i.e., body/position/identity/race/cultural background, etc.). “Doing the work” means that one must be committed to sitting with discomfort and accept that there are no easy solutions as a part of the process of change. Full article

Populism in Germany is not a new phenomenon. For a long time, the alleged integration problems of Turkish workers in Germany have been at the center of the dominant discourse and academic studies. This paper demonstrates how ‘symbolic violence’ as collective habitus frames the human capital of Turks as deficient, a phenomenon which has prevailed even prior to the recent populist movements. Drawing on a company case study, interviews, and observations, our empirical investigation operationalises and expands the Bourdieusian conceptual trinity of habitus, capital, and symbolic violence through the lens of ethnicity and how it relates to populism. Full article

Many researchers and practitioners agree that a specific skillset helps to provide good healthcare to migrant and minority patients. The sciences offer multiple terms for what we are calling ‘diversity competence’. We assume that teaching and developing this competence is a complex, time-consuming task, yet health professionals’ time for further training is limited. Consequently, teaching objectives must be prioritised when creating a short, basic course to foster professionals’ diversity competence. Therefore, we ask: ‘What knowledge, attitudes and skills are most important to enable health professionals to take equally good care of all patients in evermore diverse, modern societies that include migrant and (ethnic) minority patients?’ By means of a modified, two-round Delphi study, 31 clinical and academic migrant health experts from 13 European countries were asked this question. The expert panel reached consensus on many competences, especially regarding attitudes and practical skills. We can provide a competence ranking that will inform teaching initiatives. Furthermore, we have derived a working definition of ‘diversity competence of health professionals’, and discuss the advantages of the informed and conscious use of a ‘diversity’ instead of ‘intercultural’ terminology. Full article

Mobile applications viewed as digital social change tools are focused on sustainable development, particularly in topics that address ecology and the environment. In this research, the aim is to systematize a review of the 10 most downloaded mobile applications in this context, but deepening on those that use game elements in their interface, organizing them according to components, mechanics and playful dynamics. Findings demonstrate the role of levels and achievements as more repeated dynamics, and challenges and feedback as more relevant elements in gameplay, and finally, emotions and narratives as components of the gamified experience. The incorporation of these elements in mobile games shows that digital gamification in the environmental context is organized from an alternative perspective, where argumentation, the succession of events, the progressive incorporation of difficulty and the interaction with the computerized system modify the traditional view that sees gamification as a superficial system of points. Full article