Employees’ Relational Work on Social Media

Given how social media are commonly used in contemporary Nordic countries, social media platforms are emerging as crucial for relational work between employers, employees, and potential employees. By means of a discursive psychology approach, this study investigates employers’ constructs of relational work on social media through the use of two interpretative repertoires: the repertoire of loss of control and the repertoire of ever-presence. The consequences of these interpretative repertoires are a masking of power relations, especially between employers and young employees in precarious labor market positions and those with limited digital knowledge or financial means. Further, the positioning of social media as part of a private sphere of life means the invasion of not only employees’, but also managers’ private time and persona. The result of this study hence calls for the need to understand relational work on social media as part of normative managerial work.

Biographies in talk: A narrative-discursive research approach

This paper demonstrates the contribution a synthetic narrativediscursive approach can make to understanding biographical work within a research interview. Our focus is on biographical work as part of the ongoing, interactive process through which identities are taken up. This is of particular interest for people who, for example, are entering a new career and can be seen as “novices” in the sense that they are constructing and claiming a new identity. Following a discussion of the theoretical and methodological background in narrative, discourse analytic and discursive work in social psychology (e.g. Bruner, 1990; Edley, 2001; Potter and Wetherell, 1987; Wetherell, 1998), the paper presents an analysis of biographical talk from an interview study with postgraduate Art and Design students. Our interest is in their identity work, including biographical work, as novices in their fields. The analysis illustrates the approach and the key analytic concepts of, first, shared discursive resources, such as interpretative repertoires (e.g. Edley, 2001) and canonical narratives (e.g. Bruner, 1991), and, secondly, troubled identities (e.g. Wetherell and Edley, 1998; Taylor, 2005a) . It shows how speakers’ biographical accounts are shaped and constrained by the meanings which prevail within the larger society. For our participants, these include established understandings of the nature and origins of an artistic or creative identity, and the biographical trajectory associated with it. The particular focus of our approach is on how, in a speaker’s reflexive work to construct a biographical narrative, the versions produced in previous tellings become a constraint and a source of continuity.

THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF MASCULINITY ON NEW MEDIA: EKSI SOZLUK AND INTERPRETATIVE REPERTOIRES

In this article, the entries about “being a man” on Ekşi Sözlük are analysed through the Critical Discursive Psychology approach. The extracts were analysed with the Critical Discursive Psychology approach and interpretative repertoires were revealed. As a result of the analysis, 6 different interpretative repertoires were obtained. In the first of these, “The ‘essence’ and ‘other’ inside the man” repertoire, being a man is explained based on the "natural-given" differences. In the "preoccupation with sexuality" repertoire, sexuality is positioned in the most central area of men's lives. In the "responsibilities and obligations" repertoire, being a man is defined by a number of responsibilities expected from men by society. In the "patriarchal system and the mother's son" repertoire, it is stated that men's behavioral practices are determined by the patriarchal system and this is supported and maintained by mothers. In the "car, football, repairs: masculine performance" repertoire, it is stated that certain masculine activities serve as the criteria for being a man. Finally, the meaning in the "woman versus masculinity" repertoire, being a man is defined over the oppositions established with women. Keywords Masculinity, critical discursive psychology, interpretative repertoires, new media

Characteristics of interpretative repertoires of perceiving other people in individual “images of the world”

Various sociocultural, value-related and normative contexts of individual and group existence are simultaneously supported by the postmodern society. Their mismatch is partly responsible for intra- and interpersonal conflicts and crises in the system of relations. Therefore, nowadays researchers stay focused on the problem of systematizing the subject’s ideas about other people and other social phenomena. The problem is always relevant for international and Russian psychologists, since these cognitive formations affect the behavioral strategies of a person in everyday communication with people around him/her. The purpose of this theoretical study was to determine cognitive structures in interpretative repertoires of perceiving other people. The objects of the study were the phenomena of “interpretative repertoire”, “mental representations”, “social representations”, “frames”, mediating perception of communication partners as one’s “own” people and “alien” people. We formulated the hypothesis of the study regarding the interconnections of social representations, mental representations and frames as cognitive formations, which determine the interpretative repertoires in perceiving one’s “own” people and “alien” people, and those embodied in them. The following methods were applied: theoretical socio-psychological analysis of approaches to the phenomena of “interpretative repertoire”, “mental representations”, “social representations” and “frames” in Russian and foreign psychology; analysis of the results of the empirical research. The scientific novelty of the study is that for the first time a theoretical socio-psychological model of cognitive structures was developed in the interpretative repertoires of perceiving another person, as one’s “own” person or an “alien” person. We disclosed the interconnections between interpretative repertoires and social representations, mental representations and frames in social cognition based on the example of empirical studies of the subject’s ideas about one’s “own” people and “alien” people, “enemies” and “friends”. Their results indicate differences in the interpretative repertoires of describing another person in a metaphorical-narrative form.

Robots in Healthcare? What Patients Say

In this paper, we analyse patients’ perspectives on the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic systems in healthcare. Based on citizens’ experiences when hospitalised for COVID-19, we explore how the opinions and concerns regarding healthcare automation could not be disassociated from a context of high pressure on the health system and lack of resources, and a political discourse on AI and robotics; a situation intensified by the pandemic. Thus, through the analysis of a set of interviews, a series of issues are identified that revolve around the following: the empirical effects of imagined robots, the vivid experience of citizens with the care crisis, the discomfort of the ineffective, the virtualised care assemblages, the human-based face-to-face relationships, and the automatisation of healthcare tasks. In light of these results, we show the variability in patients’ perspectives on AI and robotic systems and explain it by distinguishing two interpretive repertoires that account for different views and opinions: a well-being repertoire and a responsibility repertoire. Both interpretative repertoires are relevant in order to grasp the complexity of citizens’ approaches to automatisation of healthcare. Attending to both allows us to move beyond the dominant (political) discourse of technology markets as the only way to respond to healthcare challenges. Thus, we can analyse and integrate patients’ perspectives to develop AI and robotic systems in healthcare to serve citizens’ needs and collective well-being.

Nobody cares for men anymore: Affective-discursive practices around men’s victimisation across online and offline contexts

Men’s victimisation is a central topic in online discussions, particularly in the manosphere, where its emphasis is often combined with a strong anti-feminist stance. This article examines the interplay of affects and discourse in meaning-making around men’s victimisation both in online discussions and among social and crisis workers asked to comment upon meanings circulating online. By using the concept of affective-discursive practice, the analysis shows how this meaning-making reiterates socially shared interpretative repertoires and positionings that mobilise affects based on sympathy, anger and hate. Furthermore, the article demonstrates how the practitioners respond to these affective meanings by adopting positions of responsibility, while also redirecting and neutralising online affect. The article contributes to knowledge on the interaction between online and offline meaning-making around men’s victimisation, and to building an understanding of affects and discourse in seemingly moderate meaning-making around this topic that however resonates and links with the more extreme anti-feminism of the manosphere.

Análisis discursivo sobre el sentido de comunidad de los latinoamericanos en Málaga

This article presents the results of a qualitative study whose interest lies in understanding how Latin Americans residing in Malaga build their sense of community. To collect information, 23 in-depth interviews were conducted with people from Latin America. Through a detailed analysis of these interviews, three Interpretative Repertoires were identified: The diffuse limits of the sense of community, communities as the backbone of the sense of community, and the language of love as a facilitator of the sense of community. The importance of formal and informal organizations for the development of a sense of local community is highlighted. The sense of community, related to the place of residence, is the result of a mental process of overlapping senses of community towards communities, where the language of love is the protagonist. A limitation, and the potential of this study, is that the sense of community is the subjective manifestation of the community, so the experiences of each person influence its social construction.