In July 2017, a law aimed at reversing the decline in vaccination cover (Law 119/2017) made child vaccination mandatory in Italy. The law sparked a heated debate which was a breeding ground for disinformation and misinformation but also set the stage for some initiatives that have tried to combat the problem. This paper analyzes the Twitter vaccine-related information environment by focusing on the information sources shared by about 500,000 tweets published within three years – 18 months before and after the promulgation of the Law 119/2017 on mandatory vaccinations – highlighting clusters of sources shared by the users and changes in problematic and quality information throughout that period. Results show that the politicization of the topic was associated with the growing spread of problematic information. They expose the vaccine-related information environment as characterized by an homophilic and polarized structure grouping together and opposing, on the one hand, anti-vaccination, blacklisted sources, alternative therapy and conspiracy websites, and on the other, scientific and health sources, revealing that despite the new initiatives aimed at increasing quality information and fighting problematic information online, there was a lack of scientific information both during and after the debate on the vaccinations law, while problematic information appears to have increased in volume over the years.
Practically all studies on household survey sampling have given some space to the different dwelling selection processes. Since most surveys are administered to ONE person within each household, reselection is necessary within those households where there are two or more people. This study compares two within-household selection methods: the last-birthday method and the Kish method. The hypothesis is that the last-birthday method represents the population better than Kish method. It complements the “classic” representation of sex and age distribution with the representation of educational attainment, labor force participation rates, employment and unemployment by sex. The data from the European Social Survey (8 th wave) shown point toward accepting this hypothesis. In spite of the last-birthday method producing a greater selection of women, the differences in educational level and labor force participation are smaller than with the Kish method.
The global spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has lead to the integration of physical activity, through the Web, into everyday life, giving rise to new concepts of identity and unprecedented forms of sociality. The aim of the present investigation was to understand and interpret the experiences of a group of Web users, namely their multi-faceted digital identity, social interactions, and the emerging relationship between their offline and online lives. We were thus able to verify the hypothesis that the online and offline worlds can become integrated generating an augmented reality both in terms of identity and relationships. Specifically, we investigated a Facebook group of female fitness enthusiasts, who were obliged to alter their approach to sport and physical activity following the adoption of government measures to contain the spread of the virus: lockdown (phase 1) and post-lockdown (phase 2). The research was conducted using both qualitative methodology, consisting of participant observation and semi-structured interviews, and the quantitative tool of the questionnaire. Our results show that the physical world and digital world brought together digital communication strategies and real physical bodies moving towards a connected integrated model of sports and physical activity. © 2021. All Rights Reserved.
This essay is a contribution to the existing debate on the progress of sociological scientific production over the last 25 years (1991-2016). In contemporary society, the exponential developments consolidate or refute the sense of the implementation of theories, methods and topics in the sociological sciences. Besides, Sociology addresses new topics that require an innovative empirical framework, beneficial on understanding the complexity of reality and to respond to any new challenges. Starting from an analytical assessment of the report 25 Anos de Sociologia , edited by Alexis Romero Salazar (2017), this article aims to highlight the progression of several disciplinary sectors of Latin American sociological production. Whereas it is difficult to include all the sociological areas in this overview, the choice fell on the following: education, family, religion, economy, political processes, communication, migration and – last but not least – the recognition of the empirical significance of social imaginary.
The Covid-19 pandemic has provided an unparalleled experience of disruption of individual everyday routinary lives as well as of societal organization. Sport as a field of practices and as an economic sector has been strongly affected by the lockdown as a global response, suffering from the shutdown of competitive sports at all levels and from the postponement of mega-events. Within these hard times, imposing strong limitations to the possibility for athletes and the general population to move around, work out and socialize, sport workers were compelled to come up with new ways to make people exercise: one of the solutions adopted has been by using social media and online platforms to host training activities. In this article we will analyze data from an online survey involving coaches, athletic trainers and other sport workers from three sport sub-fields: a team sport, basketball;an individual sport, tennis;and a wide array of activities, the fitness and wellness world. We will focus on the impact of “going online” in those three sport subfield, exploring the different attitudes and practices adopted to adjust sport training by providing exercising through online communication devices without physical co- presence. © 2021. All Rights Reserved.
