The relationship between crime and social media has become an increasingly important topic in a networked world. However, the use of social media in relation to violent crime is little understood. This unique book, by an expert in the field, addresses this gap by analysing what those involved in homicide do with social media.
Using three international cases in which perpetrators confessed to homicide on social media, it investigates the practices of those involved, providing a groundbreaking conceptual framework of use to criminologists. It argues that such confessions convey important insights not only into the individual offender but also the social and cultural context of contemporary homicide.
The COVID-19 pandemic has shed fresh light on the ways that social media and digital technologies can be effectively harnessed to support relationship-based social work practice. However, it has also highlighted the complex risks, ethics and practical challenges that such technologies pose.
This book helps practitioners and students navigate this complex terrain and explore and build upon its multiple opportunities. It uses real-life examples to examine how practitioners can assess the impact of new technologies on their professional conduct and use them in a way that enhance public confidence and relationship-based practice.
The authors explore how digital technologies can support multiple areas of service including social work with children, families and adults, mental health social work, youth justice and working with online communities. They also consider regulatory questions and provide a roadmap for good practice.
Social media platforms hold vast amounts of biographical data about our lives. They repackage our past content as ‘memories’ and deliver them back to us. But how does that change the way we remember?
Drawing on original qualitative research as well as industry documents and reports, this book critically explores the process behind this new form of memory making. In asking how social media are beginning to change the way we remember, it will be essential reading for scholars and students who are interested in understanding the algorithmically defined spaces of our lives.
47 4 Social media data Adrian Tear and Humphrey Southall Introduction As the ‘participatory’ Web 2.0 model has supplanted ‘publication’ on the World Wide Web, several rapidly evolving sites and applications, such as Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Wikipedia and YouTube, have promoted the creation and enabled, to varying extents, the retrieval of increasingly large volumes of user-generated content. Some of these human-made digital artefacts consisting of text, shared web links, audio, image or video files are publicly posted allowing widespread, although seldom
Introduction Social media have gradually entered our lives, to the point where it seems almost impossible nowadays to live a whole day completely disconnected. Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Twitter, Snapshot ... technologically mediated interaction has become a feature of contemporary life. And yet, this technological immersion has not deprived us of the relational dimension of our lives, but rather seems to have made it sharper and more intense. Some technological features of these platforms even amplify the relational choices we are called on to make
93 4 Social media and adult social work Peter Buzzi and Sharon Allen Introduction One of the primary objectives of adult social work is to support and safeguard adults in order to promote individual autonomy, increase and maximise individual choice, and enhance people’s health and wellbeing while ensuring their safety and protection. Adults who access services are often challenged by complex needs and burdened by social stereotypes and stigma that aggravate their difficulties; these include individual vulnerability and human frailty, isolation, social
177 8 Social media and social work regulation Claudia Megele, Lyn Romeo and Peter Buzzi Introduction The effective regulation of professionalism and digital practice in an increasingly mediated world, one dominated by a rapidly changing socio-technological, cultural and practice landscape, presents significant and evolving challenges and opportunities spanning from frontline practice to strategic management of services and from education to employment and regulation of social work. However, the notion of digital practice in social work is relatively new
113 5 Social media and mental health social work Ruth Allen and Peter Buzzi Social media: our modern social and emotional environment The relationship between social media and mental health is often dominated by a discourse of risk and negative outcomes. From the mental health consequences of ‘overuse’ of social media (Pantic et al, 2012), to the potential psychological and emotional consequences of ‘cyberbullying’ and ‘trolling’ of adults and children and young people, to the risks associated with online sites that promote self-harm or suicide (Guardian
93 FIVE Social media and the neoliberal subject Introduction In Communication Power Castells (2009) differentiates between what he terms as ‘mass communication’ and ‘mass self-communication’. The former emerged with the rise of new technologies in industrial societies. Newspapers, radio, TV and so on all enabled messages to be communicated to mass audiences. With the rise of the internet, however, a different and more interactive form of mass self-communication has become the norm. More commonly associated these days with social media sites, mass self
121 EIGHT Social media for students in practice Joanne Westwood Introduction This chapter examines social media in social work practice contexts and settings and explores how agencies, organisations and practitioners can ensure that it is used safely. In social work practice, the barriers to engagement with social media and, in particular, the concerns about practitioner, service user and carer privacy and confidentiality are amplified. This chapter explores the opportunities that social media presents in practice contexts, as well as the possible threats
