Search results for: Political social work

Authors: Hefin Gwilym

Abstract:

This paper will explore the political biographies of social workers in a neoliberal era. The findings are based on a research project for a successfully completed professional doctorate in social work. The methodology deployed for the research is a combination of constructivist grounded theory and biographical inquiry. The paper will present findings from 14 biographical interviews and will focus on one case study of a participant whose life story is richly informed by political social work. The 14 participants reflect different genders, ethnic identities, cultural and linguistic identities, age and length of social work careers. The participants also reflect different forms of political engagement, such as, as political activists and members of political parties, including parliamentarians. The findings demonstrate how deeply ingrained the social work identity is amongst the participants and how their political identity has remained strongly social democratic in nature despite the many changes in the social work profession since the rise of neoliberalism as a thought collective and policy package. The individual case study will explore the early roots of political identity in the childhood and nurturing years and the interface with subsequent social work and political careers. It will also explore the evolution of the participant’s political identity in the social work career. The case study will also present findings on how the participant has contributed to the political field with policy involvement and initiatives. The presentation will conclude with a discussion on how this particular group of social workers can best contribute to the future direction of the social work profession.

Keywords: Political social work, political biographies, neoliberal, grounded theory.

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Authors: Srikanth Bade

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This paper discusses how the usage of social media has altered certain discourses and communicated with the political institutions for major actions in Indian scenario. The advent of new technology in the form of social media has engrossed the general public to discuss in the open forum. How they promulgated their ideas into action is captured in this study. Moreover, these discourses happening in the social media is analyzed from certain philosophical traditions by adopting a framework. Hence, this paper analyses the role of social media in political communication and change the political discourse. Also, this paper tries to address the issue that whether the deliberation made through social media had indeed communicated the issue of political matters to the decision making authorities.

Keywords: Collective action and social capital, political communication, political discourse, social media.

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Authors: Chan Eang Teng, Tang Mui Joo

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With the viral factor on social media, the sense of persuasion is generated by repetition and popularity. When users’ interest is captured, political awareness increases to spark political enthusiasm, but, the level of user’s political participation and political attitude of those active users is still questionable. An online survey on 250 youth and in-depth interview on two politicians are conducted to answer the main question in this paper. The result shows that Facebook significantly increases political awareness among youths. Social media may not be the major trigger to political activism among youths as most respondents opined that they would still vote without Facebook. Other factors could be political campaigning, political climate, age, peer pressure or others. Finding also shows that majority of respondents did not participate in online political debates or political groups. Many also wondered if the social media was the main power switch that triggers the political influx among young voters. The research finding is significant to understand how the new media, Facebook, has reshaped the political landscape in Malaysia, creating the Social Media Election that changed the rules of the political game. However, research finding does not support the ideal notion that the social media is the major trigger to youth’s political activism. This research outcome has exposed the flaws of the Social Media Election. It has revealed the less optimistic side of youth political activism. Unfortunately, results fall short of the idealistic belief that the social media have given rise to political activism among youths in the 13^th General Election in Malaysia. The research outcome also highlights an important lesson for the democratic discourse of Malaysia which is making informed and educated decisions takes more commitment, proactive and objective attitude.

Keywords: Social media, political participation, political activism, democracy, political communication.

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Authors: Marta Czechowska-Bieluga

Abstract:

Social work education in Poland focuses mostly on developing competencies that address the needs of individuals and families affected by a variety of life's problems. As a result of the ageing of the Polish population, much attention is equally devoted to adults, including the elderly. However, social work with children and young people is the area of education which should be given more consideration. Social work students are mostly trained to cater to the needs of families and the competencies aimed to respond to the needs of children and young people do not receive enough attention and are only offered as elective classes. This paper strives to review the social work programmes offered by the selected higher education institutions in Poland in terms of social work training aimed at helping children and young people to address their life problems. The analysis conducted in this study indicates that university education for social work focuses on training professionals who will provide assistance only to adults. Due to changes in the social and political situation, including, in particular, changes in social policy implemented for the needy, it is necessary to extend this area of education to include the specificity of the support for children and young people; especially, in the light of the appearance of new support professions within the area of social work. For example, family assistants, whose task is to support parents in performing their roles as guardians and educators, also assist children. Therefore, it becomes necessary to equip social work professionals with competencies which include issues related to the quality of life of underage people living in families. Social work curricula should be extended to include the issues of child and young person development and the patterns governing this phase of life.

Keywords: Social work education, social work programmes, social worker, university.

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Authors: Pekka Makkonen, Georgios Lampropoulos, Kerstin Siakas

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This paper examines the impact of social media on knowledge work. It discloses and highlights which specific aspects, areas and tasks of knowledge work can be improved by the use of social media. Moreover, the study includes a survey about higher education students’ viewpoints in regard to the use of social media as a means to enhance knowledge work and knowledge sharing. The analysis has been conducted based both on empirical data and on discussions about the sources dealing with knowledge work and how it can be enhanced by using social media. The results show that social media can improve knowledge work, knowledge building and maintenance tasks in which communication, information sharing and collaboration play a vital role. Additionally, by using social media, personal, collaborative and supplementary work activities can be enhanced. Based on the results of the study, we suggest how knowledge work can be enhanced when using the contemporary information and communications technologies (ICTs) of the 21^st century and recommend future directions towards improving knowledge work.

Keywords: Knowledge work, social media, social media services, improving work performance.

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Authors: A. Irudaya Veni Mary, M. Victor Louis Anthuvan, P. Christie, A. Indira

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In India, social enterprises are working to create social value in various fields including education; health; women and child development; environment protection and community development. Although social enterprises have brought about tremendous changes in the lives of beneficiaries, the importance of their works is not understood thoroughly. One of the ways to prove themselves is to measure the impact, which in recent times has received much attention. This paper focuses on the study of social value created by the social enterprises in the field of community development. It also aims to put forth a research tool for measuring the social value created by the social enterprises in the field of community development. A close-ended interview schedule was prepared to measure the social value creation and it was administered among 60 beneficiaries of two social enterprises who work in the field of community development. The study results show that the social enterprises have brought four types of impact in the life of their beneficiaries; economic impact, social impact, political impact and cultural impact. This study is limited to the social enterprises those who work towards community development. This empirical finding will enable the reader to understand various types of social value created by the social enterprises working in the field of community development. This study will also serve as guide for social enterprises in community development activities to measure their impact and thereby improve their operation towards the betterment of the society. This paper is derived from an empirical research carried out to describe the different types of social value created by the social enterprises in India.

Keywords: Social enterprise, social entrepreneurs, social impact, social value, tool for social impact measurement.

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Authors: Sholpan Zhandossova, Erden Ordabek, Yelbolsyn Nazarov

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the article analyzes the national security as a scientific and practical problem, characterized by the state's political institutions to ensure effective action to maintain optimal conditions for the existence and development of the individual and society. National security, as a category of political science reflects the relationship between the security to the nation, including public relations and social consciousness, social institutions and their activities, ensuring the realization of national interests in a particular historical situation. In national security are three security levels: individual, society and state. Their role and place determined by the nature of social relations, political systems, the presence of internal and external threats. In terms of content in the concept of national security is taken to provide political, economic, military, environmental, information security and safety of the cultural development of the nation.

Keywords: Kazakhstan, national security, religious extremism

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Authors: Christine K. Fulmer

Abstract:

Social work education is competency based in nature. There is an expectation that graduates of social work programs throughout the world are to be prepared to practice at a level of competence, which is beneficial to both the well-being of individuals and community. Experiential learning is one way to prepare students for competent practice. The use of Problem-Based Learning (PBL) is a form experiential education that has been successful in a number of disciplines to bridge the gap between the theoretical concepts in the classroom to the real world. PBL aligns with the constructivist theoretical approach to learning, which emphasizes the integration of new knowledge with the beliefs students already hold. In addition, the basic tenants of PBL correspond well with the practice behaviors associated with social work practice including multi-disciplinary collaboration and critical thinking. This paper makes an argument for utilizing PBL in social work education.

Keywords: Constructivist theoretical approach, experiential learning, pedagogy, problem-based learning, social work education.

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Authors: Marc Solé, Francesc Giné, Magda Valls, Nina Bijedic

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What people say on social media has turned into a rich source of information to understand social behavior. Specifically, the growing use of Twitter social media for political communication has arisen high opportunities to know the opinion of large numbers of politically active individuals in real time and predict the global political tendencies of a specific country. It has led to an increasing body of research on this topic. The majority of these studies have been focused on polarized political contexts characterized by only two alternatives. Unlike them, this paper tackles the challenge of forecasting Spanish political trends, characterized by multiple political parties, by means of analyzing the Twitters Users political tendency. According to this, a new strategy, named Tweets Analysis Strategy (TAS), is proposed. This is based on analyzing the users tweets by means of discovering its sentiment (positive, negative or neutral) and classifying them according to the political party they support. From this individual political tendency, the global political prediction for each political party is calculated. In order to do this, two different strategies for analyzing the sentiment analysis are proposed: one is based on Positive and Negative words Matching (PNM) and the second one is based on a Neural Networks Strategy (NNS). The complete TAS strategy has been performed in a Big-Data environment. The experimental results presented in this paper reveal that NNS strategy performs much better than PNM strategy to analyze the tweet sentiment. In addition, this research analyzes the viability of the TAS strategy to obtain the global trend in a political context make up by multiple parties with an error lower than 23%.

Keywords: Political tendency, prediction, sentiment analysis, Twitter.

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Authors: Minjeoung Kim

Abstract:

This paper deals with the comparison of women’s political participation in Korea and China. Korean women are participated more in higher education. As the economic development and the women's social participation can enhance the possibility of women's political participation in advanced democratic countries, in Asian countries such as Korea and China in which Confucianism prohibited women to participate in public life and the process of nation building is different from western countries, the political power takes an initiative to implement policies for women's participation in politics and for women's consciousness.

Keywords: Korea, China, women, political participation, quota, education.

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Authors: Minjeoung Kim

Abstract:

This paper deals with the development and obstacles of Korean women-s political participation in recent years. Since the year 1948 after the declaration of a modern state, Korea has tried to establish the democracy but still in the field of women-s political participation it meets a lot of problems such as women-s political consciousness, male dominated political culture and institutional constraints. After the introduction of quota system in the list of political party, women-s political participation began to change its configuration. More women candidates have willingly presented at elections.

Keywords: Korean women, political participation, quota, education.

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Authors: Naeem Ahmed

Abstract:

Social work is a professional activity based on the approach of “helping people to help themselves” (Stroup). Social work education and practice both are based on humanitarian philosophy in which social workers try to increase the happiness of the society and to reduce the problems of society. Labour welfare is a specialised field of social work which especially focuses on welfare of organised and unorganised labour. In India labour is facing numerous problems in both organised and unorganised sectors because of ignorance, illiteracy, high rate of unemployment etc. In most of the Indian social work institutions we have this specialization with different names like Human Resource Management or Industrial Relation and Personnel Management or Industrial Relations and Labour Welfare or Industrial Social Work etc. Field work practice is integrated part of social work education curriculum in all specialised field. In India we have different field work practice models being followed in different institutions. The main objective of this paper is to prepare a universal field work practicum model in the field of labour welfare. This paper is exploratory in nature, researcher used personal experience and secondary data (model of field work practice in different institutions like Aligarh Muslim University, Pondicherry University, Central University of Karnataka, University of Lucknow, MJP Rohilkhand University Bareilly etc.) Researcher found that there is an immediate need to upgrade the curriculum or field work practice in this particular field, as more than 40 percent of total population engaged in either unorganised or organised sector (NSSO 2011-12) and they are not aware about their rights. In this way a social worker can play an important role in existing labour welfare facilities by making them aware.

Keywords: Fieldwork, labour welfare, organised labour, social work practice, unorganised labour.

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Authors: Zoaib Mirza

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Half of the Muslim countries in the world have declared Islam the state religion in their constitutions. Yet, none of these countries have implemented authentic Islamic laws in line with the Quran (Holy Book), practices of Prophet Mohammad (P.B.U.H) called the Sunnah, and his four successors known as the Rightly Guided - Khalifa. Since their independence, these countries have adopted different government systems like Democracy, Dictatorship, Republic, Communism, and Monarchy. Instead of benefiting the people, these government systems have put these countries into political, social, and economic crises. These Islamic countries do not have equal representation and membership in worldwide political forums. Western countries lead these forums. Therefore, it is now imperative for the Muslim leaders of all these countries to collaborate, reset, and implement the original Islamic form of government, which led to the prosperity and success of people, including non-Muslims, 1400 years ago. They should unite as one nation under Khalifat, which means establishing the authority of Allah (SWT) and following the divine commandments related to the social, political, and economic systems. As they have declared Islam in their constitution, they should work together to apply the divine framework of the governance revealed by Allah (SWT) and implemented by Prophet Mohammad (P.B.U.H) and his four successors called Khalifas. This paper provides an overview of the downfall and the end of the Khalifat system by 1924, the ways in which the West caused political, social, and economic crises in the Muslim countries, and finally, a summary of the social, political, and economic systems implemented by the Prophet Mohammad (P.B.U.H) and his successors, Khalifas, called the Rightly Guided – Hazrat Abu Bakr (RA), Hazrat Omar (RA), Hazrat Usman (RA), and Hazrat Ali (RA).

Keywords: Khalifat, Khilafat-e-Rashida, The Rightly Guided, colonization, capitalism, neocolonization, government systems.

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Authors: C. Schulz-Herzenberg

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Due to the legacy of apartheid segregation South Africa remains a divided society where most voters live in politically homogenous social environments. This paper argues that political discussion within one’s social context plays a primary role in shaping political attitudes and vote choice. Using data from the Comparative National Elections Project 2004 and 2009 South African post-election surveys, the paper explores the extent of social context partisan homogeneity in South Africa and finds that voters are not overly embedded in homogenous social contexts. It then demonstrates the consequences of partisan homogeneity on voting behavior. Homogenous social contexts tend to encourage stronger partisan loyalties and fewer defections in vote choice while voters in more heterogeneous contexts show less consistency in their attitudes and behaviour. Finally, the analysis shows how momentous sociopolitical events at the time of a particular election can change the social context, with important consequences for electoral outcomes.

Keywords: Political communication, social context, South Africa, voting behaviour.

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Authors: P. Mbecke

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Developmental social welfare implemented through developmental social work is being applauded internationally as an approach that facilitates social development theory and practice. However, twenty-two years into democracy, there are no tangible evidences that the much-desired developmental social welfare approach has assisted the post-apartheid macroeconomic policy frameworks in addressing poverty and inequality, thus, the derailment of the post-apartheid development approach in South Africa. Based on the implementation research theory, and the literature review technique, this paper recognizes social work as a principal role-player in social development. It recommends the redesign and implementation of an effective developmental social welfare approach with specific strategies, programs, activities and sufficient resources aligned to and appropriate in delivering on the promises of the government’s macroeconomic policy frameworks. Such approach should be implemented by skilled and dedicated developmental social workers in order to achieve transformation in South Africa.

Keywords: Apartheid, developmental social welfare, developmental social work, inequality, poverty alleviation, social development, South Africa.

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Authors: Zoaib Mirza

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Pakistan is an Islamic country that got its partition from India in 1947 so that the people could practice the religion of Islam. The political slogan to strive for independence was “What does Pakistan mean? There is no God but Allah”. The ideology of Pakistan was based on the notion that sovereignty only belonged to God Almighty (in Arabic, God means “Allah”), and Muslims will live in accordance with Islam principles. The Quran (Holy Book) and Sunnah (authentic practices of Prophet Mohammad, Peace Be Upon Him, that explains the application of the Quran) are foundations of the Islamic principles. It has been over 75 years, but unfortunately, Pakistan, due to its own political, social, and economic mistakes, is responsible for not being able to become a true Islamic nation to justify its partition from India. The rationale for writing this paper is to analyze the factors that led to changes in the democratic movements impacting the country's political, social, and economic growth. The methodology to examine the historical and political context of Pakistan’s history is by referencing the scholarly work of Israr Ahmed. He focused on Islamic theology, philosophy, and studies, offering insights into the historical and political context of the country. While from a Western perspective, Karl Marx, Mar Weber, Hannah Arendt, Sheldon Wolin, Paulo Freire, and Jacques Ranciere's philosophies specific to totalitarianism, politics, military rule, religion, capitalism, and superpower are used as the framework to analyze Pakistan’s democracy. The study's findings conclude that Pakistan's democracy is unstable and has been impacted by military and civilian governance, which led to political, social, and economic downfall. To improve the current situation, the citizens of Pakistan have to realize that the success of a nation is only dependent on the level of consciousness of the leader and not the political system. Therefore, it is the responsibility of every citizen to be conscious of how they select their leader and take responsibility for the current situation in Pakistan.

Keywords: Pakistan, Islam, democracy, totalitarianism, military, religion, capitalism.

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Authors: Subramaniam Chandran

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This paper explores the social and political imperatives in the sphere of public policy relating to social justice. In India, the colonial legacy and post-colonial social and political pressures sustained the appropriation of 'caste' category in allocating public resources to the backward class of citizens. For several reasons, 'economic' category could not be placed in allocating resources. This paper examines the reasons behind the deliberative exercises and formulating policies and seeks an alternative framework in realizing social justice in terms of a unified category. This attempt can be viewed as a reconciliation of traditional and modern values for a viable alternative in public policy making.

Keywords: Social justice, caste, public policy, communal quota

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Authors: Muhaimin Bin Sulam, Abdul Mutalib Embong, Azelin Mohamed Noor

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This paper presents the reinvention of the role of education (tarbiyyah) in the social influence of organizations focusing on the sustainability of a specific religio-political organization. The objective of the paper is to describe how the position secured by education could transform the organization while maintaining its objective and vision. The study employed the qualitative approach that involves data from conducted interviews. An analysis on the role political leaders play in educating the organization in the context of ideological struggle is also analyzed. The process description also evaluates how education could intellectualize its followers and members which inspires them to submit to their leaders and the organization. This extensive cultivation of religio-political doctrine could offer a new interpretation on politics.

Keywords: Religio-political organization. Malaysia, education (tarbiyyah), followers, political movement.

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Authors: Subramaniam Chandran

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This paper describes the evolution of language politics and the part played by political leaders with reference to the Dravidian parties in Tamil Nadu. It explores the interesting evolution from separatism to coalition in sustaining the values of parliamentary democracy and federalism. It seems that the appropriation of language politics is fully ascribed to the DMK leadership under Annadurai and Karunanidhi. For them, the Tamil language is a self-determining power, a terrain of nationhood, and a perennial source of social and political powers. The DMK remains a symbol of Tamil nationalist party playing language politics in the interest of the Tamils. Though electoral alliances largely determine the success, the language politics still has significant space in the politics of Tamil Nadu. Ironically, DMK moves from the periphery to centre for getting national recognition for the Tamils as well as for its own maximization of power. The evolution can be seen in two major phases as: language politics for party building; and language politics for state building with three successive political processes, namely, language politics in the process of separatism, representative politics and coalition. The much pronounced Dravidian Movement is radical enough to democratize the party ideology to survive the spirit of parliamentary democracy. This has secured its own rewards in terms of political power. The political power provides the means to achieve the social and political goal of the political party. Language politics and leadership pattern actualized this trend though the movement is shifted from separatism to coalition.

Keywords: Language politics, cultural nationalism, leadership, social justice

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Authors: Pratoom Rekklang

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The purposes of this study are to study political information exposure, politicians- perceptions, political attitudes and political participations among people in Bangkok Metropolitan Area. The sample consisted of 420 which were selected by using accidental sampling method. Questionnaires were administered to all of the respondents to obtain the data for this research. T-test, one-way ANOVA and Pearson-s correlation coefficient were used to analyze the data. The findings are as follows: The difference in gender, education, income and occupation has significantly effect upon political information exposures. The difference in age, income has significantly effect upon politicians- perceptions. The difference in income has significantly effect upon political attitudes. The difference in gender, income and occupation has significantly effect upon political participations. There were a significantly relations between political information exposures, political attitudes, political participations and between politicians- perceptions, political attitudes and political participations.

Keywords: Political Information Exposures, Politicians' Perceptions, Political Attitudes, Political Participations.

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Authors: Yee-May Chan

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In recent decades, it is observed that social work agencies have participated actively, and thus, have gradually been more influential in social work education in Hong Kong. The neo-liberal welfare ideologies and changing funding mode have transformed the landscape in social work practice and have also had a major influence on the fieldwork environment in Hong Kong. The aim of this research is to explore the educational role of social work agencies and examine in particular whether they are able to enhance or hinder critical reflective learning in fieldwork. In-depth interviews with 15 frontline social workers and managers in different social work agencies were conducted to collect their views and experience in helping social work students in fieldwork. The overall findings revealed that under the current social welfare context most social workers consider that the most important role of social work agencies in fieldwork is to help students prepare to fit-in the practice requirements and work within agencies’ boundary. The fit-for-purpose and down-to-earth view of fieldwork practice is seen as prevalent among most social workers. This narrow perception of agency’s role seems to be more favourable to competence-based approaches. In contrast, though critical reflection has been seen as important in addressing the changing needs of service users, the role of enhancing critical reflective learning has not been clearly expected or understood by most agency workers. The notion of critical reflection, if considered, has been narrowly perceived in fieldwork learning. The findings suggest that the importance of critical reflection is found to be subordinate to that of practice competence. The lack of critical reflection in the field is somehow embedded in the competence-based social work practice. In general, social work students’ critical reflection has not been adequately supported or enhanced in fieldwork agencies, nor critical reflective practice has been encouraged in fieldwork process. To address this situation, the role of social work agencies in fieldwork should be re-examined. To maximise critical reflective learning in the field, critical reflection as an avowed objective in fieldwork learning should be clearly stated. Concrete suggestions are made to help fieldwork agencies become more prepared to critical reflective learning. It is expected that the research can help social work communities to reflect upon the current realities of fieldwork context and to identify ways to strengthen agencies’ capacities to enhance critical reflective learning and practice of social work students.

Keywords: Competence-based social work, fieldwork, neo-liberal welfare, critical reflective learning.

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Authors: R. Gvelesiani, I. Gogorishvili

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The concept of economic policy and the practical economic policy diverge from each other at a certain stage of development. This is related to the concept of realization of the underlying problems. It comes with all the problems emerged in the market oriented economic order due to the political processes based on social welfare policy. The realization of the concept of economic policy is impeded by economic and political obstacles. If you want to fill the appeared between the concept and reality, it is necessary to identify and avoid these obstacles. It requires the following: increase of the level of the knowledge of prevention technology in understanding of economic relations, as well as political aspects of the formation of ideas; perfection of economic policy toolkit, and political methods. It is necessary to realize what is the main precondition of implementation and further development of the concept of economic policy, as well as the formation of opinions about economic and public safety. This is a broad consensus on the basic values of the content and the scale of action, which the general public wants to be realized.

Keywords: Economic Policy, Basic Problems, Social Welfare Policy.

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Authors: Víctor Manuel Muñoz-Sánchez, Antonio Manuel Pérez-Flores

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This paper analyzes the institutionalization of social protest in Spain. In the current crisis Podemos party seems to represent the political positions of the most affected citizens by the economic situation. It studies using quantitative techniques (statistical bivariate analysis), focusing on the exploitation of several bases of statistics data from the Center for Sociological and Research of Spanish Government, 15M movement characterization to its institutionalization in the Podemos party. Making a comparison between the participant's profile by the 15M and the social bases of Podemos votes. Data on the transformation of the socio-demographic profile of the fans, connoisseurs and 15M participants and voters are given.

Keywords: Collective action, emerging parties, political parties, social protest.

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Authors: Yasemin Gülşen Yılmaz, Süleyman Hakan Yılmaz, Muhammet Erbay

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Social media is among the most important means of communication. Social media offers individuals and groups with an opportunity for participatory socialization over the internet, which is free of any time and place restrictions. Social media is a kind of interactive communication and bilateral social network. Various communication contents can be shared and put into mass circulation easily and quickly through social media. These sharings are not only limited to individuals but also happen to groups, institutions, and different constitutions. Their contents consist of any type of written message, audio and video files. We are living in the social media era now. It is not surprising that social media which has extensive communication facilities and massive prevalence is used in politics. Therefore, the use of social media (Facebook) by political parties during the Turkish general elections held on June 7, 2015, has been chosen as our research subject. Four parties namely, AKP, CHP, MHP and HDP who have the majority of votes in Turkey and participate in elections in Konya have been selected for our study. Their provincial centers’ and parliamentary candidates` use of social media (Facebook) on the last three days prior to the election have been examined and subjected to a qualitative analysis by means of content analysis.

Keywords: Social media, June 7 general elections, politics, Facebook.

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Authors: Norraihan Zakaria, Abdul Rahman Othman

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Political blogs are one of the pivotal alternative communication channels for political news in Malaysia. Many have argued that the mushrooming of political blogs nurtures the effective realization of human rights in the country. The paper studies the ‘Malaysian political blog readers–human rights’ relationship by exploring these questions: Has traditional mainstream media become obsolete with the rise of political blogosphere? Why do blog readers visit political blogs? A survey was conducted and the findings revealed that traditional mainstream media is still a pertinent source for political news in the country. Apart from acquiring the latest political updates quickly and at anytime, blog readers compare the news published in political blogs with the ones reported in traditional mainstream media. This suggests that freedom of information is deemed as one of the prime motives for Malaysian blog readers clinging to political blogosphere.

Keywords: Freedom of information, Human rights, Malaysian political blog readers, Malaysian political blogosphere.

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Authors: Wondwosen Teshome B.

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Since 1991 Ethiopia has officially adopted multi-party democracy. At present, there are 89 registered political parties in the country. Though political parties play an important role in the functioning of a democratic government, how to fund them is an issue of major concern. Political parties and individual candidates running for political office have to raise funds for election campaigns, and to survive as political candidates. The aim of this paper is to examine party funding problems in Africa by taking the case of Ethiopia as an example. The paper also evaluates the motives of local and international donors in giving financial and material support to political parties in emerging democracies and assesses the merits and de-merits of their donations.

Keywords: Africa, State funding, Ethiopia, Political finance, Political party, Western donors.

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Authors: Feyzan Tuzkaya, Nihan S. Soylu, Çağlar Solak, Hilal Peker, Mehmet Peker, Kemal Özeralp, Ceren Mete, Ezgi Mehmetoğlu, Mehmet Karasu, Cihan Elçi, Ece Akca, Melek Göregenli

Abstract:

Perception, evaluation and representation of the environment have been the subject of many disciplines including psychology, geography and architecture. In environmental and social psychology literature there are several evidences which suggest that cognitive representations about a place consisted of not only geographic items but also social and cultural. Mental representations of residence area or a country are influenced and determined by social-demographics, the physical and social context. Thus, all mental representations of a given place are also social representations. Cognitive maps are the main and common instruments that are used to identify spatial images and the difference between physical and subjective environments. The aim of the current study is investigating the mental and social representations of Turkey in university students’ minds. Data was collected from 249 university students from different departments (i.e. psychology, geography, history, tourism departments) of Ege University. Participants were requested to reflect Turkey in their mind onto the paper drawing sketch maps. According to the results, cognitive maps showed geographic aspects of Turkey as well as the context of symbolic, cultural and political reality of Turkey. That is to say, these maps had many symbolic and verbal items related to critics on social and cultural problems, ongoing ethnic and political conflicts, and actual political agenda of Turkey. Additionally, one of main differentiations in these representations appeared in terms of the East and West side of the Turkey, and the representations of the East and West was varied correspondingly participants’ cultural background, their ethnic values, and where they have born. The results of the study were discussed in environmental and social psychological perspective considering cultural and social values of Turkey and current political circumstances of the country.

Keywords: Cognitive maps, East and West, politics, social representations, Turkey.

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Authors: Vesile Evrim, Aliyu Awwal

Abstract:

Today, there is a large number of political transcripts available on the Web to be mined and used for statistical analysis, and product recommendations. As the online political resources are used for various purposes, automatically determining the political orientation on these transcripts becomes crucial. The methodologies used by machine learning algorithms to do an automatic classification are based on different features that are classified under categories such as Linguistic, Personality etc. Considering the ideological differences between Liberals and Conservatives, in this paper, the effect of Personality traits on political orientation classification is studied. The experiments in this study were based on the correlation between LIWC features and the BIG Five Personality traits. Several experiments were conducted using Convote U.S. Congressional- Speech dataset with seven benchmark classification algorithms. The different methodologies were applied on several LIWC feature sets that constituted by 8 to 64 varying number of features that are correlated to five personality traits. As results of experiments, Neuroticism trait was obtained to be the most differentiating personality trait for classification of political orientation. At the same time, it was observed that the personality trait based classification methodology gives better and comparable results with the related work.

Keywords: Politics, personality traits, LIWC, machine learning.

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Authors: Subramaniam Chandran

Abstract:

The significance of psychology in studying politics is embedded in philosophical issues as well as behavioural pursuits. For the former is often associated with Sigmund Freud and his followers. The latter is inspired by the writings of Harold Lasswell. Political psychology or psychopolitics has its own impression on political thought ever since it deciphers the concept of human nature and political propaganda. More importantly, psychoanalysis views political thought as a textual content which needs to explore the latent from the manifest content. In other words, it reads the text symptomatically and interprets the hidden truth. This paper explains the paradigm of dream interpretation applied by Freud. The dream work is a process which has four successive activities: condensation, displacement, representation and secondary revision. The texts dealing with political though can also be interpreted on these principles. Freud's method of dream interpretation draws its source after the hermeneutic model of philological research. It provides theoretical perspective and technical rules for the interpretation of symbolic structures. The task of interpretation remains a discovery of equivalence of symbols and actions through perpetual analogies. Psychoanalysis can help in studying political thought in two ways: to study the text distortion, Freud's dream interpretation is used as a paradigm exploring the latent text from its manifest text; and to apply Freud's psychoanalytic concepts and theories ranging from individual mind to civilization, religion, war and politics.

Keywords: Psychoanalysis, political thought, dreaminterpretation, latent content, manifest content

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Authors: Ahmad Alsolami, Darren Mundy, Manuel Hernandez-Perez

Abstract:

Social media networks, such as Twitter, offer the perfect opportunity to either positively or negatively affect political attitudes on large audiences. The existence of influential users who have developed a reputation for their knowledge and experience of specific topics is a major factor contributing to this impact. Therefore, knowledge of the mechanisms to identify influential users on social media is vital for understanding their effect on their audience. The concept of the influential user is related to the concept of opinion leaders' to indicate that ideas first flow from mass media to opinion leaders and then to the rest of the population. Hence, the objective of this research was to provide reliable and accurate structural mechanisms to identify influential users, which could be applied to different platforms, places, and subjects. Twitter was selected as the platform of interest, and Saudi Arabia as the context for the investigation. These were selected because Saudi Arabia has a large number of Twitter users, some of whom are considerably active in setting agendas and disseminating ideas. The study considered the scientific methods that have been used to identify public opinion leaders before, utilizing metrics software on Twitter. The key findings propose multiple novel metrics to compare Twitter influencers, including the number of followers, social authority and the use of political hashtags, and four secondary filtering measures. Thus, using ratio and percentage calculations to classify the most influential users, Twitter accounts were filtered, analyzed and included. The structured approach is used as a mechanism to explore the top ten influencers on Twitter from the political domain in Saudi Arabia.

Keywords: Twitter, influencers, structured mechanism, Saudi Arabia.

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