Relationships between Occupational Stress, Change in Work Environment during the COVID-19 Pandemic, and Depressive and Anxiety Symptoms among Non-Healthcare Workers in Japan: A Cross-Sectional Study

This study aims to clarify the effect of occupational stress and changes in the work environment on non-healthcare workers’ (HCWs) mental health during the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan. A web-based, cross-sectional survey was conducted from 16 to 17 December 2020. Data from 807 non-HCWs were included. We evaluated occupational stress using the Generic Job Stress Questionnaire (GJSQ). Depressive and anxiety symptoms were assessed using the Japanese version of the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 and the Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7-item scale, respectively. We collected demographic variables, work-related variables, and the variables associated with COVID-19. The adjusted odds ratios for depressive and anxiety groups were estimated using multivariate logistic regression analyses, adjusted for all the demographic variables, work-related variables, COVID-19-related variables, and the six subdivided GJSQ subscales. The results confirm a relationship between variance in workload, job future ambiguity, social support from coworkers, having contact with COVID-19 patients, and depressive and anxiety symptoms. Paying attention to job future ambiguity, the variance in workload at the workplace and individual perspectives, promoting contact and support among coworkers using online communication tools, and reducing contact with COVID-19 patients, will be useful for decreasing the depressive and anxiety symptoms among non-HCWs.

Impact of Online Emotions and Netiquette on Phubbing from a Gender Perspective: Educational Challenges

During adolescence, the Internet is mainly used for purposes of socialization. Non-verbal elements limit online communication, thus leading to widespread use of emotional resources. It would be preferable if virtual interaction did not reduce the quality of person-to-person contacts, particularly thanks to the adoption of netiquette (respectful treatment of others online). Phubbing, the tendency to check one’s mobile phone during a face-to-face conversation, has become a widespread practice that causes anxiety and can lead to social exclusion. Educating on this behavior could be related with emotional content and with netiquette. This study’s objectives are to analyze the extent to which the use of netiquette and online emotional content are associated with and can predict phubbing, taking gender differences into account. 935 adolescents (ages 12-17, 55,1% female) from 13 schools in the region of Aragon (Spain) responded to our questionnaire. Results are revealing: the level of online emotional content increases the level of phubbing; online emotional expression is the most influential risk factor in both genders; netiquette protects girls to a greater degree. We discuss the educational challenges posed by guaranteeing the responsible use of social networks.

Fostering Communication

The period of transition for foster youth into independent adulthood is an important life stage, and one that has yet to be explored in HCI circles. We studied an online community centered on the experiences of former foster youth through the first year of its existence to better understand how online spaces are being used by this population. Our mixed-method study included the coding of all posts from the first year of the online community and offers a mix of quantitative and qualitative findings. These findings include alignments and gaps in an established descriptive framework from the field of social work as it relates to the online communication of former foster youth. It also includes how the domains from the framework co-occur, and some potential implications of these co-occurrences. Future research on this subject is warranted, particularly related to why former foster youth seek online platforms to engage in conversations on these topics and how effective community members perceive the platform to be in safely and securely facilitating their needs.

Digital Entrepreneurship via Sustainable Online Communication of Dentistry Profession, Oradea, Romania: A Longitudinal Analysis

Dentistry is an entrepreneurially oriented public interest profession that must maintain a balance between professional specificity and business sustainability. Communicating with patients is vital in a competitive system, and the dentist needs to use handy resources such as websites and social media. The aim of this research is (a) to examine whether websites and social networks are a digital entrepreneurship tool used in the dentistry profession in Oradea, a city in full economic development in Romania, to promote the profession nationally and internationally, (b) to compare the changes made using digital tools in the period between 2018–2021 for all licensed dentists in the mentioned city (between 430–450 people, depending on the stage of analysis) using the content analysis method and (c) to identify how the lockdown period imposed by the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic influenced not only the sustainability of the medical services provided to the population but also the communication practices of the dental offices. The results of examining the dentist’s online presence reveal that there is an interest among practitioners to grow their business sustainably through a digital presence that is increasingly relevant to them and their clients, but the potential remains under-exploited.

Can Acting Out Online Improve Adolescents’ Well-Being During Contact Restrictions? A First Insight Into the Dysfunctional Role of Cyberbullying and the Need to Belong in Well-Being During COVID-19 Pandemic-Related Contact Restrictions

Connecting with peers online to overcome social isolation has become particularly important during the pandemic-related school closures across many countries. In the context of contact restrictions, feelings of isolation and loneliness are more prevalent and the regulation of these negative emotions to maintain a positive well-being challenges adolescents. This is especially the case for those individuals who might have a high need to belong and difficulties in emotional competences. The difficult social situation during contact restrictions, more time for online communication and maladaptive emotion regulation might lead to aggressive communication patterns in the form of cyberbullying perpetration. In an online study with N = 205 adolescents aged 14–19 (M = 15.83, SD = 1.44; 57% girls), we assessed the frequency of online and offline contacts, need to belong, emotion regulation problems, feelings of loneliness, and cyberbullying perpetration as predictors of adolescents’ well-being. In particular, we explored whether cyberbullying perpetration might function as a maladaptive strategy to deal with feelings of loneliness and therefore predicts well-being. This effect was expected to be stronger for those with a higher need to belong and with higher emotion regulation problems. Results of a hierarchical regression analysis revealed that well-being was significantly predicted by less emotion regulation difficulties, less feeling isolated and more cyberbullying perpetration. We also tested whether the need to belong or emotion regulation problems moderated the association between cyberbullying and well-being. While the results for emotion regulation problems were not significant, the moderation effect for the need to belong was significant: For students with a high need to belong, well-being was more strongly related to cyberbullying perpetration than for students with a medium need to belong. For students with a low need to belong, cyberbullying was not significantly associated with well-being. That cyberbullying perpetration predicted well-being positively is rather surprising in the light of previous research showing negative psychosocial outcomes also for cyberbullying perpetrators. The moderation analysis provides a hint at underlying processes: In times of distance learning and contact restrictions, cyberbullying may be a way of coming into contact with others and to regulate loneliness maladaptively.

Communication and the student experience in the time of Covid-19: An autoethnography

The Covid-19 pandemic creates physical barriers and raises issues about online learning and course design. These must be overcome in order to continue teaching three English language support papers in a transnational education programme. This autoethnography explores online communication strategies and their effect on students’ learning experience. Moodle logs, teacher observations and other qualitative data from the first year of emergency online teaching were evaluated. This analysis prompted several improvements to communication strategies. Additional forum activities, scaffolding and feedback have had a positive effect, and increased use of informal communication via WeChat has bolstered learner persistence. These findings can be applied to the design of other online and blended courses, especially those linked to English language teaching in China.

Digital Disclosure of Delinquency: Online Peers and the Sharing of Offline Crime

Digital communication poses challenges for scholars interested in the link between peers and crime since youth are often less inhibited online and can more easily share their opinions and experiences with offline activities. Drawing on longitudinal data from middle and high school students, this study explores how online communication impacts the sharing of personal and peer delinquency. Criminogenic risk factors are largely unrelated to the digital disclosure of personal delinquency among those who offend; however, peer online disclosure is related to self-reported delinquency, independent of perceived peer delinquency. These findings suggest cyberspace may extend offline mechanisms of peer influence beyond providing a unique source of online influence.

Staying Online, Staying Connected: Exploring the Effect of Online Chatting on Adolescents’ Psychological Well-being during COVID-19 Quarantine

Rooted in scholarship of social connectedness and social support, this research raises the question: Can online chatting help mitigate the negative psychological influence of physical distancing during COVID-19? By a correlational and cross-sectional research design, the current study testified the mediating role of two factors—social connectedness and perceived social support in the relationship between online chatting and three indicators of psychological well-being (happiness, self-esteem, and loneliness) for adolescents. This research demonstrated the potential of online chatting in mitigating the severity of quarantine from the supplementary perspective of online communication effects on adolescents, which provided a further insight into understanding the ways in which adolescents use media during school closure. Possible contingent factors that should be paid special attention to in future researches are discussed.

Collective, unruly, and becoming

Online contexts offer an important source of information and emotional support for those facing involuntary childlessness. This article reports the results from an ethnographic exploration of TTC (trying-to-conceive) communication on Instagram. Through a new materialist approach that pays attention to the web of intraacting agencies in online communication, this article explores the question of what material-discursive bodies (constructs of embodiment and medical information) emerge in TTC communication as the result of shared images and narratives of bodies, symptoms, fertility treatments, and reproductive technologies. Drawing on a lengthy ethnographic immersion, observations of 394 Instagram accounts, and the close analysis of 100 posts, the study found that TTC communication produces collective, unruly, and becoming bodies. Collective bodies reflect collectively acquired, solidified, and contested medical knowledge and bodies produced in TTC communication. Unruly bodies are bodies that do not conform to standard medical narratives. Becoming bodies are marked by their shifting agency, such as pregnant or fetal bodies.

Processes of Socialization to Sexuality and Discrimination in the Web Society

The diffusion of new media, of online communication, and the increasingly evident overlap between online and offline environments generates a specific question for scientific research on how these contents can represent an opportunity for “emancipation” and at the same time new areas in which can experience processes of exclusion, in particular for the LGBT community. In this sense, social media offers transgender people a wide range of tools and applications to create new knowledge, interact with other people, create new meeting opportunities, or trace new relationships and/or new emotional and sexual experiences. This research work aims to investigate the psychological, relational, and social aspects of transgender people who use social media and dating apps as communication spaces and relational environments in order to outline the peculiar aspects of media consumption, regulatory access and processes of stigmatization, and social discriminations by the web.