scholarly journals Gender Perspectives on Social Norms Surrounding Teen Pregnancy: A Thematic Analysis of Social Media Data

10.2196/13936 ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. e13936
Author(s):  
Kathryn M Barker ◽  
S V Subramanian ◽  
Robert Selman ◽  
S Bryn Austin

Background Social concern with teen pregnancy emerged in the 1970s, and today’s popular and professional health literature continues to draw on social norms that view teen pregnancy as a problem—for the teen mother, her baby, and society. It is unclear, however, how adolescents directly affected by teen pregnancy draw upon social norms against teen pregnancy in their own lives, whether the norms operate differently for girls and boys, and how these social norms affect pregnant or parenting adolescents. Objective This research aims to examine whether and how US adolescents use, interpret, and experience social norms against teen pregnancy. Methods Online ethnographic methods were used for the analysis of peer-to-peer exchanges from an online social network site designed for adolescents. Data were collected between March 2010 and February 2015 (n=1662). Thematic analysis was conducted using NVivo software. Results American adolescents in this online platform draw on dominant social norms against teen pregnancy to provide rationales for why pregnancy in adolescence is wrong or should be avoided. Rationales range from potential socioeconomic harms to life-course rationales that view adolescence as a special, carefree period in life. Despite joint contributions from males and females to a pregnancy, it is primarily females who report pregnancy-related concerns, including experiences of bullying, social isolation, and fear. Conclusions Peer exchange in this online forum indicates that American adolescents reproduce prevailing US social norms of viewing teen pregnancy as a social problem. These norms intersect with the norms of age, gender, and female sexuality. Female adolescents who transgress these norms experience bullying, shame, and stigma. Health professionals must ensure that strategies designed to prevent unintended adolescent pregnancy do not simultaneously create hardship and stigma in the lives of young women who are pregnant and parent their children.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn M Barker ◽  
S V Subramanian ◽  
Robert Selman ◽  
S Bryn Austin

BACKGROUND Social concern with teen pregnancy emerged in the 1970s, and today’s popular and professional health literature continues to draw on social norms that view teen pregnancy as a problem—for the teen mother, her baby, and society. It is unclear, however, how adolescents directly affected by teen pregnancy draw upon social norms against teen pregnancy in their own lives, whether the norms operate differently for girls and boys, and how these social norms affect pregnant or parenting adolescents. OBJECTIVE This research aims to examine whether and how US adolescents use, interpret, and experience social norms against teen pregnancy. METHODS Online ethnographic methods were used for the analysis of peer-to-peer exchanges from an online social network site designed for adolescents. Data were collected between March 2010 and February 2015 (n=1662). Thematic analysis was conducted using NVivo software. RESULTS American adolescents in this online platform draw on dominant social norms against teen pregnancy to provide rationales for why pregnancy in adolescence is wrong or should be avoided. Rationales range from potential socioeconomic harms to life-course rationales that view adolescence as a special, carefree period in life. Despite joint contributions from males and females to a pregnancy, it is primarily females who report pregnancy-related concerns, including experiences of bullying, social isolation, and fear. CONCLUSIONS Peer exchange in this online forum indicates that American adolescents reproduce prevailing US social norms of viewing teen pregnancy as a social problem. These norms intersect with the norms of age, gender, and female sexuality. Female adolescents who transgress these norms experience bullying, shame, and stigma. Health professionals must ensure that strategies designed to prevent unintended adolescent pregnancy do not simultaneously create hardship and stigma in the lives of young women who are pregnant and parent their children.


2019 ◽  
Vol 69 (4) ◽  
pp. 258-265 ◽  
Author(s):  
S Rees ◽  
D Cohen ◽  
N Marfell ◽  
M Robling

Abstract Background Understanding of what prevents doctors from seeking help for mental ill-health has improved. However, less is known about what promotes timely disclosure and the nature of doctors’ decision making. Aims This study aimed to define how doctors make decisions about their own mental ill-health, and what facilitates disclosure. It explored the disclosure experiences of doctors and medical students; their attitudes to their decisions, and how they evaluate potential outcomes. Methods Qualitative, semi-structured interviews with UK doctors and medical students with personal experience of mental ill-health. Participants were recruited through relevant organizations, utilizing regular communications such as newsletters, e-mails and social media. Data were subject to a thematic analysis. Results Forty-six interviews were conducted. All participants had disclosed their mental ill-health to someone; not all to their workplace. Decision making was complex, with many participants facing multiple decisions throughout their careers. Disclosures were made despite the many obstacles identified in the literature; participants described enablers to and benefits of disclosing. The importance of appropriate responses to first disclosures was highlighted. Conclusions Motivations to disclose mental ill-health are complex and multifactorial. An obstacle for one was an enabler for another. Understanding this and the importance of the first disclosure has important implications for how best to support doctors and medical students in need.


2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 140-159
Author(s):  
Anthony-Paul Cooper ◽  
Emmanuel Awuni Kolog ◽  
Erkki Sutinen

This article builds on previous research around the exploration of the content of church-related tweets. It does so by exploring whether the qualitative thematic coding of such tweets can, in part, be automated by the use of machine learning. It compares three supervised machine learning algorithms to understand how useful each algorithm is at a classification task, based on a dataset of human-coded church-related tweets. The study finds that one such algorithm, Naïve-Bayes, performs better than the other algorithms considered, returning Precision, Recall and F-measure values which each exceed an acceptable threshold of 70%. This has far-reaching consequences at a time where the high volume of social media data, in this case, Twitter data, means that the resource-intensity of manual coding approaches can act as a barrier to understanding how the online community interacts with, and talks about, church. The findings presented in this article offer a way forward for scholars of digital theology to better understand the content of online church discourse.


2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen M. Carley ◽  
L. R. Carley ◽  
Jonathan Storrick

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anika Oellrich ◽  
George Gkotsis ◽  
Richard James Butler Dobson ◽  
Tim JP Hubbard ◽  
Rina Dutta

BACKGROUND Dementia is a growing public health concern with approximately 50 million people affected worldwide in 2017 and this number is expected to reach more than 131 million by 2050. The toll on caregivers and relatives cannot be underestimated as dementia changes family relationships, leaves people socially isolated, and affects the finances of all those involved. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to explore using automated analysis (i) the age and gender of people who post to the social media forum Reddit about dementia diagnoses, (ii) the affected person and their diagnosis, (iii) relevant subreddits authors are posting to, (iv) the types of messages posted and (v) the content of these posts. METHODS We analysed Reddit posts concerning dementia diagnoses. We used a previously developed text analysis pipeline to determine attributes of the posts as well as their authors to characterise online communications about dementia diagnoses. The posts were also examined by manual curation for the diagnosis provided and the person affected. Furthermore, we investigated the communities these people engage in and assessed the contents of the posts with an automated topic gathering technique. RESULTS Our results indicate that the majority of posters in our data set are women, and it is mostly close relatives such as parents and grandparents that are mentioned. Both the communities frequented and topics gathered reflect not only the sufferer's diagnosis but also potential outcomes, e.g. hardships experienced by the caregiver. The trends observed from this dataset are consistent with findings based on qualitative review, validating the robustness of social media automated text processing. CONCLUSIONS This work demonstrates the value of social media data sources as a resource for in-depth studies of those affected by a dementia diagnosis and the potential to develop novel support systems based on their real time processing in line with the increasing digitalisation of medical care.


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