Institute for Social Sciences in the 21st Century (ISS21) - Journal articles
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Item The social media, online and digital abuse and harassment of social workers, probation officers and social work students in Ireland: A national survey(Oxford University Press, 2024-06-08) Burns, Kenneth; Halvey, Olwen; Ó Súilleabháin, Fiachra; O’Callaghan, Elaine; Coelho, GabrielAn estimated five billion people use social media globally. The digital world enables networking and community-building beyond geographical and jurisdictional boundaries, it can facilitate information-sharing and knowledge development, and facilitates speedy access and communications links. On the other hand, digital and social media platforms can also be sources and purveyors of hurt, discrimination, defamation, hatred, abuse, cyberbullying and disinformation. Their increased usage within professional practice has become a nascent area for scholarly debate and research. Our scoping literature search indicated that there are very few studies examining this issue within the profession. This article seeks to address a considerable gap in the research by reporting the findings from an exploratory study in Ireland focusing on social workers, probation officers and social work students. Three hundred seventy-nine participants completed an online survey on their experiences of using social media, with eighty-three (21.9 per cent) participants indicating that they had experienced online and digital abuse and harassment. Facebook, Twitter (now X), and email were the top three sources of abuse and harassment by platform.Item A systematic review of the lived experiences of the energy vulnerable: Where are the research gaps?(Elsevier Ltd., 2024-05-10) Hihetah, Claudia; Ó Gallachóir , Brian; Dunphy , Niall P.; Harris, Clodagh; Science Foundation IrelandThe transition to a low-carbon world, coupled with energy supply uncertainties, has heightened the urgency to better understand the experiences of vulnerable groups who lack affordable and adequate energy. Access to energy is crucial for their health, well-being, and social stability. However, there are significant knowledge gaps relating to the lived experiences of energy vulnerable groups that this paper directly addresses. There is a wide body of literature focusing on the quantification of, and policy response to, energy poverty alongside a fast- growing area of research on the lived experience of the energy vulnerable. This paper's systematic review of research on the lived experiences of the energy vulnerable reveals 46 peer-reviewed articles published between 2011 and 2021. Its review highlights diverse approaches to exploring energy vulnerability, the range of vulnerable groups investigated and different motivations for focusing on lived experiences. The results point to a number of key gaps in the literature in terms of definitions and terminologies, geographic coverage, gender, life stage (specifically children), ethnicity (ethnic minorities absent) and ability (people with disabilities are a further gap). It concludes that there is a need for more context-specific, mixed-methods and longitudinal studies in this area. Having identified gaps in the literature, it recommends how some of these can be addressed and reflects on how studies focused on the lived experience of energy poverty should advance.Item ‘I would love to do something about it’: young men’s role in addressing violence against women in Ireland(Bristol University Press, 2024) Bolton, Robert; Edwards, Claire; Leane, Máire; Ó Súilleabhain, Fiachra; Horizon 2020This article reports on how young people (aged 18–24) and stakeholders working in the area of violence against women (VAW) in Ireland, perceive young men’s role in addressing VAW. We find that men are considered well positioned to intervene as active bystanders and to engage in feminist allyship. However, several barriers to men’s active bystanding and engagement with the issue of VAW, as well as ethical, theoretical and practice issues, need to be considered. These include: the privileging of men’s willingness to listen to other men, thereby devaluing women’s perspectives; pluralistic ignorance where men feel other men do not share their discomfort of violence-supportive practices; and a tendency for men to default to confrontational modes of active bystanding. We highlight how these issues are even more pertinent to address given the presence of political forces that seek to stymie men’s support for feminist activism and causes related to gender politics.Item Intersecting vulnerabilities and compounded risks of women asylum seekers working in care during COVID-19 in Ireland(Bristol University Press, 2024-02-28) Daly, Felicity; O’Riordan, Jacqui; Carolan Trust; Dr Geraldine FennellThis article explores findings from a qualitative participatory study with asylum seekers in Ireland employed in the healthcare sector during the COVID-19 pandemic. By extending an intersectional analysis framework, we demonstrate how the vulnerability of care workers living within the international protection accommodation system ‘under the care’ of the state intersects with power exercised by the neoliberal care market and is compounded by global health controls instituted during the pandemic. Participants reveal a lack of autonomy and forms of precarity that were not faced by other care workers, particularly increased risk of exposure to COVID-19 and multiple forms of stigma.Item Reimagining care discourses through a feminist ethics of care: analysing Ireland’s Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality(Bristol University Press, 2022-12-16) Loughnane, Cliona; Edwards, Claire; Carolan Research Trust, IrelandThe COVID-19 pandemic brought to the fore stark gendered care inequalities and the inadequacy of care provision across states. This article presents a feminist-ethics-of-care-informed discourse analysis of the representation of care that emerged at the Irish Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality – an innovative government-created citizen deliberation process. It identifies how care was represented as a ‘problem’ of both gender inequality and the market, and uncovers key silences, which ignored care as a universal need of all citizens and the significance of care networks to sustaining caring. We propose the necessity of ethics-of-care-based understandings to address post-pandemic care challenges.