Search results

Introduction: As a type of poverty, relative poverty can be defined as being below the average welfare of society. Basic needs can be afforded, but individuals can’t take advantage of the welfare created by society. Today coding the reflection of welfare, sharing experiences has new meanings by new social media means. Instagram is especially preferred in visual sharing because of its filter options, live feed, or story mode. These features help the message sender to increase the effect of the message and the receiver to understand the reality with its different dimensions. It is not shocking that the images of welfare and its indicators are shared increasingly in social networks because storytelling in this media is fed. The visual strengthening is underlining the possession of the owner and the deficiency of the non-owner from their perspectives.

Purpose: This study examines the emotional effects of ideal life images shared on Instagram on other individuals. The aim is to reveal and define the meaning ascribed to such fractions of life with a visual appeal by people who cannot lead this kind of life.

Methodology: In accordance with the Social Learning Theory, the study assumes that people with relative poverty take notice of their own poverty through social media. The study investigates the emotions manifested by individuals who take notice of the things that they lack through social media. Thus, a qualitative study was designed and conducted using a phenomenological approach. The phenomenon of this study is failing to have. The objective of the study is to understand and determine what the individuals who do social comparisons feel they lack. For this purpose, the fundamental research questions of this study are as follows: RQ1: What are the main categories of Instagram posts that evoke a sense of deprivation in individuals?; RQ2: What do glamorous Instagram posts mean to individuals who are above the relative poverty threshold? The data gathered via the in-depth interview technique were analyzed using the computer-assisted qualitative analysis program (MaxqDa 2020). Qualitative content analysis and descriptive analysis were the forms of analysis used in the study.

Findings: The fact that there are negative links between passively consuming information on social media and well-being is supported by previous studies. This study exposes the experiences of “failing to have” due to upward social comparison in individuals who are above the relative poverty threshold in Turkey. The categories of shared content that evoke the feeling of deficiency in the participants are as follows: Travel/vacation, participation in social life, physical attractiveness, material possessions, and professional/academic career. The participants of the study are individuals who are above the relative poverty threshold for Turkey. The participants want to have “more than what they already have.” For this reason, it can be suggested that the main keyword summarizing the findings of the study is “more.” The study demonstrates that failing to travel and participate in social life deeply affects the participants and causes them to experience negative emotions.

This study aims to investigate the role of self-esteem in mediating the relationship between passive social networking usage (PSNU) and life satisfaction, as well as whether the relationships between PSNU and self-esteem/life satisfaction as well as self-esteem and life satisfaction vary by gender.

This research is conducted in compliance with the ethical standards of the American Psychological Association’s study on a subject of 304 students. Study participants are invited to participate in the survey by completing the anonymous questionnaire regarding passive social network usage, self-esteem and life satisfaction.

The findings indicate that self-esteem mediated the relationship between PSNU and life satisfaction. Furthermore, gender moderated the self-esteem and life satisfaction relationship, and such an effect was stronger for females than males.

This study, adopting a cross-sectional design and self-report scale, examined the relationship between PSNU and life satisfaction. However, the short study duration hindered establishing a cause-and-effect relationship. Credibility concerns arose from participant-induced noise variables in the self-report scale. Future research should use diverse methods to validate underlying mechanisms. Despite limitations, the study revealed self-esteem as a mediating factor, alleviating the negative impact of PSNU on life satisfaction. Both male and female users are encouraged to engage in self-education, valuing their self-esteem for heightened life satisfaction.

These findings contribute to the understanding of how passive social network usage predicts life satisfaction (mediating effect of self-esteem) based on social comparison theory and when self-esteem increases life satisfaction (moderating effect of gender) based on social role theory of gender differences.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how social media usage affects people’s life satisfaction through two competing explanatory mechanisms.

An online survey was conducted to collect data. And the partial least squares method was used to examine the relationships among the usage of social media, social benefit, social overload and life satisfaction.

The results indicate that usage of social media can make people achieve social benefit, thus leading to enhanced life satisfaction. Unexpectedly, though usage of social media can bring the negative consequences (e.g. social overload), social overload cannot predict a decreased life satisfaction.

Concentrating on the outcomes of social aspects by using social media, this study proposes the double-sided role of social media instead of single effect.

Second Life is a user‐created online virtual world, which is a place where people with shared interests can meet and be together and share information. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether Second Life communities foster and nurture social capital, whether social capital within Second Life is related to social capital outside the virtual world, whether some characteristics affect the likelihood of users having social capital, and whether some existing measure of social capital can be modified and used to study social capital in Second Life.

The study was based on a statistical analysis of data gathered in a web survey of a convenience sample (n= 67) of Second Life residents. The social capital measure used was based on Bullen and Onyx.

Second Life is an environment that fosters the emergence of social capital. Residents who consider themselves producers have higher levels of social capital than those who consider themselves non‐producers. Having social capital within Second Life is unrelated to having social capital outside the virtual world. The consistency of the instrument proved to be excellent for measuring social capital within Second Life and good outside the virtual world.

The small sample size and the composition of the research population limit the ability to generalise the findings.

Second Life is a potent environment for community building and collective action. However, communities and collective action within Second Life cannot be based on social activity outside the virtual world.

The present study is the first systematic investigation of social capital in Second Life.

This paper explores the evidence on risk and vulnerability to depression of older people, looking at the complex interplay between physical ill health, disability, loss of intimates and social relationships, loneliness and depression, and the resources and protective factors at individual, social and community level that either buffer risk or promote psychological well‐being. It concludes, with Blazer (2000), that effective strategies for the prevention, treatment and management of depression must ‘proceed across multiple domains simultaneously’, and address social, environmental and economic as well as medico‐biological factors if interventions are to prove effective in this greatly neglected field. Action at government level to address social inequalities throughout the life course would also have a significant protective impact on mental well‐being in old age.

This article presents a study of the social, emotional and physical health lifestyle behaviours of a socially marginalised segment of Canada's population: retired, widowed, immigrant mothers from a South Asian country. Using a narrative research process, we explore how present physical, emotional and social health leisure activities are influenced by behaviours from their childhood, with emphasis on migration to Canada, retirement and widowing as lifestyle behavioural change points. Our sample of immigrant women were living in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada during the time of the study. The study employed narrative inquiry, which is often used in migration studies. Our qualitative data analyses uncovered themes that linked present social health activities and early life behaviours and the influence on them of cultural constraints or stimulants. Three forms of sociocultural influences, gender segregation, patriarchal protection and early preparation for marriage, shaped adolescence and adult life as less physically active but more emotionally and socially healthy. Later life events, migration, retirement and widowing, enabled women to gain freedom to renegotiate and reconstruct late‐life styles to be more physically and socially active through ethno‐cultural social networks they had built after migration. The concluding discussion makes recommendations for health and social programme planning to draw attention to cultural realms that could help these women become physically active after migration without compromising traditional social behaviours.

Purpose: In this chapter, we develop a concept of social biographies which draws on social network and life course theories to examine how a diverse set of social relationships impacts health of sexual and gender minority (SGM) people over time.

Design/methodology/approach: We provide an overview of several decades of research on SGM people's social relationships, organizing this research within a social biographies framework.

Findings: We theorize about the importance of both the structure and content of SGM people's social networks for health, how these social relationships interact with each other, how these social biographies and their impacts shift across SGM cohorts and over the life course, and how they further are shaped by the intersection of a range of factors (e.g., race/ethnicity, social class).

Social biographies can remain constant or change over time, and relationships of all types and durations have the power to significantly improve or undermine health. This is in part because social ties both buffer and exacerbate the inimical effects of stress on health.

Originality/value: Traditional conceptualizations of relationships fail to reflect the diversity of relationships in SGM lives. Studying this diversity deepens our view of how social biographies influence health and how health inequities between SGM and cisgender and heterosexual (cishet) populations emerge. Studying social biographies of SGM people using theoretical and methodological tools from life course and social network perspectives reveals existing voids in the current literature, enabling researchers to better understand the shifting nature of social relationships in the twenty-first century.

This paper provides a general comparison between the ethos, methodological mission, and theoretical standpoint of the New Iowa School, established by Carl Couch and his students and Second Life, a three dimensional virtual world that invites particular forms of sociation. Despite differences in orientation and purpose, as well as biases in communication, we propose that the methodological and conceptual emphasis underlying the research generated from New Iowa School experimental studies can provide a useful framework for research into the virtual worlds created in Second Life. In the course of citing similarities and differences between the New Iowa School and Second Life, we also note that contrived worlds in laboratories and virtual worlds in user domains not only have relevant analogical processes to outside, in situ social worlds, but consist of social stages for performances that have application to the various social stages constructed by actors in the real world. In conclusion, we suggest that the New Iowa School and Second Life represent different but compatible realities in their own right, that the conceptual depth associated with the New Iowa School can inform research into Second Life interactions, and that each offer insights into the external worlds inhabited by real actors who navigate across time and space in their everyday lives.

In 2020, the coronavirus crisis ruptured societies and their everyday life around the globe. This chapter is a contribution to critically theorising the changes societies have undergone in the light of the coronavirus crisis. It asks: How have everyday life and everyday communication changed in the coronavirus crisis? How does capitalism shape everyday life and everyday communication during this crisis?

This chapter focuses on how social space, everyday life and everyday communication have changed in the coronavirus crisis.

The coronavirus crisis is an existential crisis of humanity and society. It radically confronts humans with death and the fear of death. This collective experience can on the one hand result in new forms of solidarity and socialism or can on the other hand, if ideology and the far-right prevail, advance war and fascism. Political action and political economy are decisive factors in such a profound crisis that shatters society and everyday life.

The main aim of this study is to highlight the significance of fostering social capital and improving the quality of work life (QWL) for the well-being of healthcare workers. The second objective of this research is to address a notable gap in the current knowledge by examining the mediating influence of QWL on the relationship between work-related social capital and life satisfaction within the healthcare profession.

This study used a cross-sectional research methodology to examine the complex relationships among the variables and included a sample of 330 individuals who are employed full-time in the healthcare profession in the North Indian Region.

The study confirms all research hypotheses, showing that social capital improves work life. Thus, work-life quality improves life satisfaction significantly. The mediation analysis in this study used bootstrapping to show that work-life quality mediates the association between social capital and life satisfaction.

Addressing social support issues and using effective human resource management tactics can improve employees’ work life and satisfaction. The findings are essential in collectivistic cultures because strong workplace relationships improve professional welfare.

This study differentiates itself by analysing social capital and QWL as multi-dimensional constructs inside the workplace, ensuring the results’ correctness and validity. This study provides a distinct viewpoint for scholars and practitioners, enhancing comprehension of the correlation between life satisfaction and work-related social capital within the healthcare industry.