European Commission along with its member states are targeting to attract and retain an increasing number of international students. Much of the earlier focus has been in what happens within the higher education context or in the public policy sphere while less attention is targeted on the communicative practices and how they (re)produce and position international students in the society. Communication forms the basis of social practices and the creation and continuation of social institutions like society (Voss & Lorenz, 2016) and higher education institutions. By taking the ongoing COVID19-pandemic as an example, we analyse the crisis communication targeting higher education students.
The aim of the paper is to analyse and compare actors, channels and content targeted at the international HE students in Finland during the pandemic time. The focus is particularly on the communicative practices of the national level actors. The main research question is how the communicative practices targeting higher education students differ between Finnish and international students. Using communication inequality (Ramandhan & Viswanath 2008, Viswanath 2006) as a theoretical framework, we specifically focus on the linguistic choices to differentiate these two student bodies. The data consist of ministerial documents and news pieces that are digitally provided at websites and social media sites. In a preliminary observation, we find some discrepancies among the actors in terms of the information provided and channels used supporting Palttala et al.’s (2012) observation on governments’ failing to communicate all different groups of people during a crisis.
This presentation will summarise the preliminary findings of our study which aims to document and analyse the experiences and well-being of Chinese and Chinese-presenting international students in the UK. The important contextual factors of this study include (1) the rise in hate crimes against East Asian communities in the early part of the COVID pandemic and (2) the continued increase in the number of Chinese students, who comprise the largest group of international students in the UK. Earlier research suggested that concerns around safety – both in relation to the COVID pandemic and racist incidents could affect student mobility from China.
Our study draws together data from freedom of information (FOI) requests, an online survey and semi-structured interviews to investigate (1) perceptions and experiences of aggression and (2) students informational practices during the pandemic. The latter refers to how students may have communicated their experiences of aggression and with whom. We employ insights from media studies, law and criminology, cultural sociology, and sociological studies of ‘resilience’ and social capitals to interpret our data. Our findings are intended to establish an evidence base to enable university staff and local communities to improve strategies and practices of safety and well-being of these students.
The idealised internationally mobile student is presented as seamlessly transitioning across space, translating and neutralising themselves within a globalised higher education (HE) sector. We argue, however, that enacting ‘coming to know’ and writing for doctoral students is a practice which often reinforces ‘otherness.’ We draw on research funded by the UK Council for International Student Affairs, involving running a writing group for international doctoral students in two UK HE institutions and interviewing the participants about their UK HE experiences of academic writing in English.
We identified the challenge for doctoral students of transitioning into an educational landscape whereby they feel ‘caught between places’. Academic writing in this context emerges to produce sensibilities of misinterpretation and (un)belonging, occupying a position characterised by ‘translating cultures.’ As such, the ‘mobile’ international student occupies a precarious space, epistemologically and politically. Within the current political context of Brexit and associated impacts, including ending UK participation in Erasmus student exchanges, decreasing numbers of incoming international students and what is identified as a ‘hostile climate’ (Griffiths & Yeo 2021), the status of the international student in UK HE appears increasingly problematic. Recent calls to decolonise universities (Bhambra et al, 2018) contrast with ‘nostalgia for empire’ (El-Enany, 2020) associated with Brexit. Drawing on a writing workshop pedagogy we are evolving, we explore the cultivation of spaces for academic writing that might traverse the tight borders of what constitutes legitimate knowledge, such that ideas might flow across the confines of space.
References:
Bhambra, G., Gebrial, D. & Nisancioglu, K. (Eds) Decolonising the University. London: Pluto.
El-Enany, N. (2020) Bordering Britain: Law, race and empire. Manchester University Press
Griffiths, M. & Yeo, C. (2021) ‘The UK’s hostile environment: Deputising immigration control’ Critical Social Policy https://doi.org/10.1177/0261018320980653
International student mobility has been increasingly affected by politics, culture, economics, natural disasters and public health. The Covid-19 pandemic caused unpredicted disruption to international students’ movement, which has challenged the primary host and sending countries, including the UK and China. This study focuses on UK’s prospective Chinese master students who have, reluctantly, suspended their studying abroad during the Covid-19 pandemic, and explores how these students strategically reimagine their overseas education in the future. A mixed-method approach was adopted, utilising survey and semi-structured in-depth interviews to investigate prospective Chinese international students’ experience and reflections in their deferral of overseas degree education. Besides the influence of health crisis, findings highlight the geopolitical situations, such as the somewhat tense relations between mainland China and the US, Australia, or Hong Kong has confined students’ overseas education destination to the UK as the “choice of no choice”. Regardless of parents’ pressure or suggestions in pursuing master’s degrees in Chinese universities as a safe alternative, students in this study demonstrate their strong agency and careful considerations on their education destination choices (e.g. academic climate, education quality, intercultural experience, etc.). UK universities are further suggested to better understand and support prospective international students who may face more unpredictable and even overwhelming challenges during and post the COVID-19 so as to facilitate better preparation for these students’ international education mobility in the future.
Existing scholarship on international student mobility has thus far focused primarily on where students have studied or pursued their degrees. However, this tends to obscure institutional differences within the same educational context. Drawing on a qualitative research project conducted in 2018, this paper examines a significant, yet understudied, role of higher education institutions in shaping international students’ experiences during and after their studies in the UK. Contrary to the relatively homogenised accounts of experiences and outcomes of those studying in the UK, it will show how they vary in important ways depending on institutions and students. These variations are explored in terms of educational status (i.e., the university’s position in global and national university rankings), organisational practices (i.e., the quality and quantity of careers support), and cultural and expressive characteristics (e.g., the place/location of institutions, the class and race/ethnicity of students and staff). The paper also delineates how individual students are differentially positioned in relation to each institution, pointing towards differences within the institution. The analysis speaks to wider debates concerning international higher education (particularly the implications for (re)producing social advantage across borders), while highlighting the complexity of international student mobility in the UK.
For a long time, internationalization strategies of higher education institutions across the world focused was on mobility abroad. However, international student mobility is a socially selective process, whereby students from lower socio-economic backgrounds are less likely to participate. Consequently, in recent years ‘internationalisation for all’, ‘inclusive internationalisation’ and ‘internationalisation at home’ have become prominent terms in internationalization strategies, aiming to provide internationalisation activities to all students, including those who remain at home. To our surprise, however, existing scholarship today did not investigate whether offering a broader array of internationalisation activities also reaches the objectives of such new internationalisation strategies, namely to reach a broader group of students, including those from traditionally disadvantaged backgrounds. To this end, in this paper we investigate the likelihood of different (social) groups to participate in different internationalisation activities, both at home and abroad, through an online survey conducted in 2019 at three institutions in two countries (hidden for peer review, n = 2,567). Our findings clearly indicate that the social composition of student populations needs to be taken into account when designing internationalisation strategies. Our results indicate that simply broadening the type of activities is not sufficient, as students from lower socio-economic backgrounds showed to be less likely to participate in any internationalisation activity. Overall, the findings suggest that inclusive internationalization might best be reached through integrating internationalization into the formal curriculum, in order to circumvent the barriers that might exist to participate in activities outside of the formal study schedule.
Since the introduction of social distancing measures to control the Covid-19 pandemic, the merge between young people’s digital lives and dating lives is now more pronounced than ever, as is the exacerbation of pre-existing social inequalities posed by harmful aspects of youth digital culture. In particular, as recent events have underscored, the blight of male violence on the lives of women and girls remains an urgent issue. Entering this policy space and contemporary debates on male sexual entitlement, the present paper reports original empirical research documenting “everyday” forms of violence apparently motivated by women’s sexual rejection of men in the dating app space. It discusses two complementary studies: one a digital ethnography of the Instagrams Bye Felipe and Tinder Nightmares, which crowdsource and post harmful messages men have sent women; the other, a narrative analysis of interviews with 13 women in their early twenties to thirties about relevant in-app and face-to-face experiences. Using Gavey’s (2005) work on the “cultural scaffolding” of sexual violence as a conceptual framework, the findings reveal how cultural narratives about heterosexual dating app culture prioritise men’s sexual interests and perspectives and obscure the moral wrongness of the actions of men who become abusive when rejected by women. The paper highlights the need for creative thinking about how to improve ways of holding such men accountable in the semi-anonymous environment of the dating app. It concludes with a call for a zero-tolerance approach towards misogyny to be adopted by practitioners and policy makers working across both “online” and “offline” anti-violence efforts.
This paper explores the legal and ethical implications of the use of digital technologies in the schooling environment which has become increasingly important since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. It expresses concern that the use of digital platforms in this context is not upholding children’s rights and puts children at risk of unnecessary, unethical and potentially harmful data processing. This paper acknowledges that there exists a tension between the protections offered under law and the reality of a digitised and connected learning environment. This presents a confusing and potentially hazardous path for the child, their parents and the school to navigate. Although schools act lawfully, the data processing that occurs when digital platforms are used can put children at risk. There is often no alternative option for a child who wants to, and must by law, receive an education, but to accept the invasive data practices now commonplace. The provision of alternatives is also logistically challenging for schools. We suggest that changes in digital schooling practices are needed. Until society reaches a stage in which all digital platforms are designed with the child’s rights and safety as the paramount consideration, there needs to be a realistically possible way that children can exercise their right to object (Article 21 UK GDPR) in the schooling context as well as greater awareness of how this can be practically achieved.
The past years have witnessed an increase in the number of studies examining the effects of studying abroad on labour market outcomes using advanced methods of causal inference. On balance, these studies suggest that studying abroad can positively affect graduates’ labour market performance. Only recently, the debate has shifted towards a systematic examination of heterogeneity in the returns to studying abroad. While this research has highlighted social inequalities in the returns to studying abroad depending on graduates’ social origin, we do not know whether returns to studying abroad differ by gender. However, such an analysis is highly relevant not only for the study abroad literature and higher education policy, but also for sociological and economic research addressing gender gaps in labour market performance more broadly. Does studying abroad constitute a mechanism which increases or decreases the gender wage gap? Drawing on the social role theory of sex differences, human capital theory, and signaling theory, we develop theoretical explanations for the existence of gender-specific effects of studying abroad on graduates’ labour income. We test these explanations using data from the Germany-wide 2005 DZHW Graduate Panel. These data allow us to examine the development of gender inequalities in the returns to study abroad during the first ten years of graduates’ careers. To model selection effects and approximate causal effects, we employ matching techniques, that is, both propensity score matching and a Heckman correction. We have concluded our data preparation phase and are currently producing our first set of results.
Girls in the Juvenile Justice System are routinely having their phones and internet access removed as a part of court orders. Inspired by Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems theory, this paper will demonstrate that phone removal causes a rupture to the girls’ digital ecology which exasperates the condition of strain in which crime and victimizations occur. Findings are generated from an ethnographic study that took place in a north eastern US city. This study looked at the role that phones and social media played in the criminalization and victimization of girls involved with the courts. 42 girls took part in focus groups and a series of interviews. 22 human service professionals were also interviewed. Over 50 hours were spent observing in court related meetings. Findings will demonstrate that removing the phone misunderstands the conditions and causes of technology facilitated crime and victimization along the online/offline binary. This research shows a phone is not simply an object but rather an environment and space full of social and structural interactions. Understanding the phone as part of a broader ecology illuminates why girls would subsequently commit more serious crimes to regain access to their digital ecology in an effort to protect themselves from harm.
While the internet provides ample opportunities for children to constructively engage with information and content, there also exist risks that are detrimental to their physical, social and psychological well-being. This study explores children’s self-reported experiences of online risks and their adopted risk mitigation strategies. Using eight focus groups consisting of fifty-one high school students from three communities in Trinidad, children were interviewed about their experiences online and the strategies used to ensure their safety. The results indicate that although it is acknowledged that children are aware of a multiplicity of risks, they only experience certain types of risks. Most children identified strategies and action which they believe allowed them to securely navigate the internet and social networking platforms. Additionally, whilst children did not specify the sources of their risk awareness or recall how they learned their risk management strategies, their behaviours online were mediated by parental concern in the form of parental monitoring. Although parental monitoring can be an effective strategy, the possibility exists that parents are not acutely aware of the plethora of risks that exist and as such are limited in monitoring their children from unknown and unexperienced risks. Consequently, this study questions the ability of children to mitigate unexperienced risks. An examination of parenting styles associated with their willingness to be informed about other potential online risks may be the ideal method that can be used to assist children in successfully mitigating online risks that they may not be aware of and have not yet experienced.
Recent headlines have been inundated with disclosures from past and present student’s stories of of sexual harassment and assaults across many influential secondary schools. Accompanying these stories have been the usual calls by particular commentators ready to blame pornography as the root cause of the problem. Pornography has been singled out from broader media ecologies as the cause of misogyny, violence against women; negative body image; but predominately is the fear that young people are learning more about sex from pornography, than from adult gatekeepers, mistaking porn for a manual for sexual intimacy. Much of the discussion of pornography talks of young people being ‘exposed’ to pornography; completely ignoring the fact that some young people actively choose to engage with pornography to satisfy their curiosity and for their own pleasure. However, research has shown, by discussing pornography solely in terms of harm, may negatively influence people’s perceptions of their own use, increasing shame, and embarrassment. Unfortunately, social conditions persist where attitudes to teenage sex are seen as problematic and the majority of parents and safe adults who work with them, refuse to acknowledge young people’s right to sexual citizenship. This is especially true for young women. Sex is still something that happens to women, that teenage boys do to girls. Perhaps, instead of focusing on porn, we concentrate on acknowledging young people’s right to sexual citizenship (especially that of young women); enabling them to recognise their own sexual rights and pleasures, developing empathy and the importance of acknowledging others rights too.
Image-based sexual abuse (IBSA) involves the taking or sharing (including threats to share) of intimate images of another person without their consent. Whilst the experiences of IBSA among adults has been documented, little research has examined such experiences among youth. This study aimed to address this gap by reporting on the extent and nature of IBSA and intimate image sharing, the impacts and fears of victims, the motivations of perpetrators, and the reactions of bystanders, among youth. To achieve this aim, a survey was carried out with 293 Australian respondents aged between 16 and 20 years. Results showed that 1 in 4 respondents had been victims of IBSA and 1 in 10 had been perpetrators of IBSA. The majority had targeted, or were targeted by, those with whom they had a previous close relationship. Perpetrators in most cases were motivated by the belief that it was funny and/or sexy or flirty, to get back at the person, or to impress friends. Victims experienced negative impacts on work/study performance and relationships. Half of the respondents had been bystanders of intimate image sharing and many reported feeling uncomfortable or embarrassed when shown or sent these images. Together, these findings highlight the pervasive nature of IBSA and its impacts. Implications surrounding the importance of the peer context, focusing upon consent and healthy relationships within education, and the need to challenge victim-blaming rhetoric associated with IBSA and intimate image sharing, are considered.
This paper examines how teenagers construct notions of risk and responsibility in relation to both ‘offending’ and ‘offensive’ behaviour on social media – concepts that are easily conflated among discussions of how to best address online harms (e.g., via legislation, regulation, education, etc.)
Findings are based upon interactive focus-group workshops with 189 pupils aged 11- 18 years old. Pupils articulated how ‘risky’ they thought certain content or conduct was in response to 12 stimuli example posts (ranging from the mildly inappropriate to serious criminal issues).
Using a framework of labelling theory of deviance, analysis shows how understandings of digital risk are underpinned by a multitude of pre-existing social, cultural, legal, political, and moral subjectivities. This creates complexity, confusion and contradiction – even among small homogenous groups – when it comes to ideas about criminality and culpability online.
For example, sharing an indecent video of a girl elicited the most disagreement and debate, despite numerous education initiatives re: image-sharing among under 18s. Meanwhile, a joke about blowing up an airport had a high consensus as the riskiest example (despite Paul Chambers famously having his conviction quashed in 2012).
The intended impact of this research is to raise awareness of the active role children play in upholding (or challenging) rapidly diverging social norms and boundaries online. As they represent both prolific consumers and producers of digital content, an understanding of young people’s perspectives is essential for policy makers working across the fields of law, criminal justice, education, and new media and technology.
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Youth-produced sexual images have been at the heart of moral panic and child protection concerns within public and legal discourse in the UK. This anxiety revolves around the notion that young people’s sharing of sexual images inherently triggers a chain reaction of harms and losses; from lost images, to lost innocence, lost privacy, and lost rights. Although the Protection of the Children Act 1978 and the Criminal Justice Act 1988 prohibit the circulation of nude images of under 18s in England, the criminal prosecution services have expressed a reluctance to criminalise young people for sharing images consensually amongst their peers. The non-legality of youth-produced sexual images means that educators and practitioners are unable to address the lived experiences of young people’s digitally-mediated relationships. As a result, young people are encouraged to refrain from sharing sexual images through deterrent-focused education messages, as exemplified by the Direspect NoBody campaign. I observe that this doubly negative framework upholds gendered double standards of sexual propriety and paradoxically engenders the very harms its aims to prevent, leaving young people who are exposed online unprotected. In this paper I aim to disrupt the victim-blaming discourse held in a dominant ‘pedagogy of regret’ and call for digital and sexuality education frameworks which promote a model of collective responsibility and a pedagogy of respect. Shame, loss and harm need not be a forgone conclusion for young people in the context of positive sexual rights and educational messages that Respect EveryBody.
Recent decades have seen a rapid decline in mental health among early adolescents. Moreover, new patterns have emerged in mental health issues, as a higher number of children from more resourceful backgrounds are getting affected in ways previously unseen. This development has by some researchers been described as a “new form of marginalization”, where mental health issues are no longer predominantly present among traditionally marginalized groups. A growing number of researchers have linked the decline in mental health among youth to a rise in experienced performance demands in general, but particularly in relation to social media. This study aims to understand how early adolescents’ experiences of performance demands when engaging with social media and their general well-being are structured by gender and class. The study was conducted among pupils in lower secondary education in Denmark and consists of focus group and individual interviews evenly distributed between four schools varying greatly on socioeconomic status of the school district (n=80). Connections between experienced performance demands on social media, self-critique and mental health complaints were common among middle/upper middle-class girls. However, girls also more often felt pressure to present stereotypical representations of gender and idealized versions of themselves on social media, but also felt surveilled and at risk of being labeled as “slutty”, shameful or lacking self-respect. Many middle/upper middle-class boys hardly ever posted pictures of themselves to a wider audience, as gender stereotypical representations of boys were viewed as distasteful and associated with masculine working-class culture.
This paper is derived in a larger study funded by the charity Catch22, which involved extensive focus groups and interviews conducted with 42 children and young people aged 10-22 years, during the COVID-19 lockdowns in the United Kingdom. A large number of the children and young people involved had experience of the criminal justice system, the care system and alternative education programmes. The study explored their experiences of online platforms, social media platforms, apps and gaming; experiences of online harms and the impact this had on their lives; perceptions of what ‘acceptable use’ is in online spaces; views on law enforcement’s role in addressing online harms and what future regulatory frameworks and arrangements should be developed. Further, the study included 15 qualitative semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders and professionals from police, safeguarding, youth work, victim service provision, tech and gaming companies, regulators and wider industry. It also involved collection and analysis of quantitative data from service providers pre-pandemic and during the UK lockdowns. This paper will explore the significance of sibling support. It will draw on the theory of ‘siblingship’ as developed by Goetting (1986). Young people described assisting younger siblings who experienced ‘unwanted content’ and ‘unwanted contact’. More broadly in relation to online safety, Third et al. (2013: viii) noted that older siblings can play a key role in ‘supporting the safe online engagement of younger users’. This paper also explores how young people refer to challenges and issues for younger children in online spaces, utilising them as an example of why better protections should be put in place.
Rather than being merely instrumental, social networking sites have become increasingly integral to the ways in which young people experience themselves. A popular cultural narrative of superficiality has been promoted with regards to social media, with users often criticised for being fake and self-absorbed. Focussing upon Instagram and Snapchat this paper seeks to re-locate discussion, questioning the perceived conflict between virtuality and authenticity, as well as challenging the widespread view that social media only has the capacity to foster narcissism. Working from a philosophical, phenomenological perspective, this paper develops ideas of ‘self-reflection’ and a ‘reflected-self’ in order to offer answers to the question ‘Who am I?’. Building upon the notion of storytelling, the constructive gaze, and visual communication it argues that SNS offer a different way of engaging with the real vs fake debate. Rather than arguing that social media encourages narcissistic portrayals of a fake, superficial veneer of life, perhaps born out of insecurity, it suggests that status updates can play an important role in authentic self-formation during adolescence.
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