Open Journal for Sociological Studies

67-84

Authors: Tshepo B. Maake

The paper investigates the factors that inform university undergraduate students’ perceptions of religiously sanctioned homophobia. Data was drawn from a quantitative survey conducted in 2017 on students’ perceptions of social norms, heteronormativity, and homophobia at a South African urban-based university. A total of 330 undergraduate students completed the survey. The study found statistically significant correlations between the factors of sex, degree of religiosity and family socialization and the undergraduate students’ perceptions of religiously sanctioned homophobia. Male students demonstrated more support for religiously sanctioned homophobia than did female students. Students with a higher degree of religiosity were more likely to support statements that enforced homophobia than did students with a lower degree of religiosity. Students who had been socialized in homophobic families were more likely to support religiously sanctioned homophobia than were students who had grown up in more tolerant families. The study did not find statistically significant correlations between the factors of frequency of exposure to religious services and place of origin and the undergraduate students’ perceptions of religiously sanctioned homophobia. The paper makes a substantive contribution to the limited South African studies that focus on the broader student population’s perceptions of religiously sanctioned homophobia.

5-14

Authors: Sandra Ristovska

his paper examines eyewitness video’s role as a policy-oriented mechanism for human rights by mapping out why and how human rights collectives have been aspiring to professionalize video activism. It shows how the systematic approaches to video production, standards, and training help these collectives tap more prominently into the institutional and legal environments where human rights agendas are developed, discussed, and implemented. The paper argues that the professionalization efforts result in a proxy profession that places activist and other eyewitness videos into institutional and legal service. These pragmatic policy achievements, however, may come at the expense of using video more creatively to advocate for bold programs for human rights and social change.

27-34

Authors: Sadia Jamil

The impacts of digital technology on news media industry manifest itself in different parts of the world. Many big media organizations, in developed Western countries, are now using AI technology and automation in their newsrooms. This is somehow not the case in developing countries that confront multi-facet challenges to embrace AI-related technological advancements in their news ecologies. This study specifically focuses on the case of Pakistan’s mainstream news media. Despite economic and technological constraints, the country’s news media is considered as vibrant and vocal within South Asia with massive expansion in the past fifteen years. Nevertheless, it is still in nascent stage in terms of technological advancements in news media industry. Therefore, using diffusion of innovation theory, this study aims to address issues in the adoption of AI technology and automation by Pakistan’s mainstream news media. To achieve this aim, this study employs the qualitative method of in-depth interviews. Findings suggests that the adoption of AI technology and automation is not without potential challenges at various stages of the diffusion of technological innovation. The Pakistani journalists from the Urdu language’s newspapers, regardless of their age and gender, are substantially resistant to accept technological innovations as compared to their colleagues from television news channels and English-language’s newspapers. This study highlights that the Pakistani journalists’ lack of awareness and their limited interest into AI-driven transformations underpin their resistance and fear to adopt technological innovations in routine practice. Interviewed journalists, regardless of their gender and age, express their concern that the use of automated journalistic tools can result in job redundancy in local news media ecology. This study highlights other obstacles too for the adoption of AI-driven journalistic practice in Pakistan’s mainstream news media including: economic and technological constraints, a lack of journalists’ training and an absence of government’s strategies and policies to deploy AI technology in news media industry like other sectors in Pakistan, and the country’s existing digital divide.

51-54

Authors: Christiana Constantopoulou

Conclusive remarks of the OJSS special issue.

57-70

Authors: Sofia Koutsiouri, Ioulia Antoniou & Anna Tsatsaroni

Many critical research studies have documented the complex ways in which global policies on school curricula are reshaped at national and local levels. This paper focuses on the discourses which regulate the recontextualizations of global policies in local school settings. The paper presents an empirical study on the enactments of language curricula in the Greek school education system. Using Bernstein’s theory of knowledge pedagogization, we analyze data produced by semi-structured interviews and classroom observations in five lower secondary state schools with socially and ethnically diverse student populations, in the inner city of Athens. Our findings show that, while the socially disadvantaged schools are regulated by discourses on inclusion, in the more advantaged schools of the study regulative discourses are related to performance management concerns. The paper points to the potential implications of such discourses, claiming that challenging educational inequalities requires to identify and act upon the discourses regulating teachers’ practices.

81-94

Authors: Godfrey Thenga

Human exploitation refers to the curtailment of fundamental human rights. The crime plays out notwithstanding the laws that criminalizes human abuses. This study explored the policing of human trafficking and forced labor in the Southern African countries of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and assesses the capabilities and abilities of law enforcement agencies in the region to curb the scourge. In this study a qualitative perspective was adopted with use of literature study and interviews. The prevalence of organized criminal groupings exacerbates the problem of human trafficking and forced labor in the region. Law enforcement corruption is rife as the police are often accused of acts of receiving bribes. There are capacity constraints in the policing agencies across the region which impacts negatively on proactive enforcement of protected goods. The study reveals that respective law enforcement agencies work in seclusion and do not systematize their databases to share information with other agencies owing to a prevailing cynicism amongst countries. It is proposed that there should be harmonization of law enforcement agencies’ databases to share information for intelligence purposes and to develop defensive and responsive response mechanisms to thwart the crime.

17-20

Authors: Ahmed Atia & Mohamed El-Attug

Institutional accreditation is often implemented as a tool for service enhancement or as a vehicle for educational change in broadly different settings. There is little evidence of the effect of accreditation, although there are indications in developed countries that facilities complying with initial low standards substantially increase their compliance levels as a result of engaging in accreditation programs funded by quality improvement interventions. This review intends to highlight on the profiling of accreditation in Libyan higher education institutions.

31-42

Authors: Archontoula Lagiou, Anna Asimaki, Gerasimos Koustourakis & Georgios Nikolaou

School space is an important factor in the realization of educational work since it shapes the material conditions for the implementation of the educational process. The aim of this paper, which focuses on a review of contemporary sociological scientific literature, is to investigate and highlight the effect of school space on the shaping of pedagogical practices, as well as on the pupils’ learning outcomes. Study and analysis of the content of research findings and relevant scientific papers reveal that school space is chiefly “mono-functional” and that both teachers and pupils remain caught up in the implementation of what are largely traditional pedagogical practices. School space clearly needs to be adapted to the new pupil-centered pedagogical methods, and this can only be achieved through the initiative and agency of the teachers. Finally, it is also clear that the pupils’ learning outcomes are to a great extent linked to the position they occupy in the space within the school classroom.

139-152

Authors: Ed Collom

This study concerns the role of human capital, social capital, age, and gender in acquiring a job as an entry-level barista. Employment records were coded and analyzed in order to identify the key factors differentiating this applicant pool. The results from multivariate models produce fewer positive associations between human capital and social capital indicators than the literature suggests. Those with greater educational attainment are more likely to have high-status references on their applications. As seen in previous literature, the social capital of applicants is not very relevant in acquiring this entry-level job. Overall, educational attainment was most salient in increasing the odds of being interviewed and hired. The managers responsible for these decisions appear to favor formal higher education over work experience or references. The findings are discussed vis-à-vis women’s gains in higher education, the growth of the service sector, and the aging of the U.S. population.