Sarah Pedersen

Gender Differences in British Blogging

This article asks whether blogging in the United Kingdom, which started later than in the United States, reproduces the gender differences in blogging behavior and the gender inequalities in recognition that have been observed in studies based largely on U.S. bloggers. A sample of 48 female and male British bloggers answered a questionnaire about their blogging practices and attitudes; data were also collected from their blogs and by means of online tools. For both sexes, blogging is mainly a leisure activity, and men and women find the same range of satisfactions in blogging. However, more women use blogging as an outlet for creative work, whether as a hobby or as a livelihood. The results support several reasons advanced in previous research for the lower public profile of women bloggers.

An Australian survey of women's use of pregnancy and parenting apps.

BACKGROUND There are now many pregnancy and parenting apps available on the market for both pregnancy and parenting. AIMS To investigate how Australian women use pregnancy and parenting apps, their attitudes about the information provided and data privacy and security related to such use, and what features they look for in these apps. METHODS An online survey was completed by 410 women who were pregnant or had given birth to at least one child in the past three years, were aged between 18 and 45 and were competent in English. FINDINGS The use of pregnancy and parenting apps was common among the respondents. Almost three quarters of respondents had used at least one pregnancy app; half reported using at least one parenting app. Respondents found the apps useful or helpful, particularly for providing information, monitoring foetal or child development and changes in their own bodies and providing reassurance. Yet many users were not actively assessing the validity of the content of these apps or considering issues concerning the security and privacy of the personal information about themselves and their children that these apps collect. CONCLUSION Apps are becoming important as a source of information and self-monitoring and for providing reassurance for Australian pregnant women and mothers with young children. Midwives and other healthcare professionals providing care and support for pregnant women and women in the early years of motherhood need to take womens app use into account and recognise both the potential and limitations of these apps.

Is it Friday yet? Mothers talking about sex online.

Inspired by the media furore over ‘penis beaker gate’ (October 2013), this article investigates the discussion of sex on the UK parenting website Mumsnet. It asks why there was such shock at finding mothers discussing sexual matters online, what types of discussion related to sex can actually be found on Mumsnet and why women use Mumsnet to discuss these matters. It suggests that the Internet in general offers a new place for women to discuss and discover their sexuality and that Mumsnet in particular offers an interactive and anonymous forum for women whose needs in this area are not met by the mainstream media. On Mumsnet women seek advice and support from others in similar situations, attempt to establish ‘norms’ relating to sexual behaviour, and supplement information given by health professionals.

Towards an Organizational Folklore of Policing: The Storied Nature of Policing and the Police Use of Storytelling

For police officers, much of the working day consists of telling stories about everyday policing and events. Although the study of narrative and storytelling in organizational contexts is an expanding area of research, the same cannot be said of the study of narrative and storytelling in a police context, which remains an under-researched, although not unexplored, subject of study. Using the work of management-narrative theorists such as David Boje and Yiannis Gabriel as a starting point, this article considers policing organizations and agencies as storytelling organizations. This is achieved through a literature review of the ‘storied’ nature of policing and the police use of storytelling in an organizational context. Thus, this reflective article contributes to the developing literature in the field by reviewing and mapping the literature, highlighting potential areas for future research.

‘It Took a Lot to Admit I Am Male on Here’. Going Where Few Men Dare to Tread: Men on Mumsnet

It may be unusual to consider men as a marginalised group, but the male users of the UK discussion forum Mumsnet form a very small minority. While Mumsnet states that it is ‘by parents, for parents’, the vast majority of the users of its discussion board, ‘Mumsnet Talk’ (which has 4.2 million monthly unique visitors), are women. Indeed, Mumsnet has a growing feminist voice (Pedersen and Smithson, 2013). The latest statistics from a Mumsnet census conducted in the autumn of 2013 show that men make up 16% of all users of Mumsnet but only 2–5% of core users.1 This chapter, which has been researched in collaboration with Mumsnet, investigates the motivations of these male users. It argues that the men use Mumsnet because they wish to be seen as parents rather than fathers and because they are attracted by the variety and quality of discussion on Mumsnet. However, not all users of Mumsnet are welcoming and thus the men have to decide whether or not to ‘out’ themselves as men and which discussions to enter.

Piety and charity in the painted glass of late medieval York.

What messages can the images in medieval churches give us about the motivations of their donors? When a wealthy medieval man or woman donated a statue or painted glass window or altar hanging to their parish church, such a gift would have been prompted by a mixture of motives, including a desire to remind passers-by to pray for their souls and probably a fair amount of self-advertisement. However, it is the contention of this paper that, frequently, the choice of a particular image used in the donation would be selected with careful thought and have its roots in the donors particular personal piety. The messages they were thus sending about their personal beliefs may have been instantly readable to their fellow parishioners, but these days require some translation before they can be fully grasped. This paper investigates the spiritual and secular motivations of a family of donors of some unique painted glass windows at All Saints, North Street parish church in York. The windows of the church offer a wealth of unusual later medieval glass, including a depiction of six of the Corporal Acts of Mercy; St Anne teaching the Virgin to read and the northern poem ˜The Prick of Conscience. This paper will concentrate on exploring one familys donations to the church. It argues that their choice of iconographic material and the act of donating the windows were part of the donors larger concern for maintaining the social fabric. The same concerns were expressed both in charitable acts during their lives and in their last will and testaments. It is suggested that such donations form part of a new and internalised piety and thoughtful charity inspired by more than the customs of the day.

‘The appy for a happy pappy’: Expectant fatherhood and pregnancy apps

ABSTRACT Many mobile software applications (‘apps’) related to pregnancy have been developed for the global market, yet little research has explored how expectant or new fathers are represented in such technologies. Drawing on a critical discourse analysis of the descriptions of pregnancy apps available in two major online stores, we identify how these media artefacts represent a problematic version of performing fatherhood. On the one hand, notions of ‘intimate’ fatherhood are enacted by emphasising the importance of men acquiring knowledge about pregnancy/childbirth and providing emotional and informed support to their partner as she experiences pregnancy, childbirth and new motherhood. However, many apps also condescend to expectant fathers and trivialize their role, assuming that they need entertainment, humour and encouragement to promote their involvement. We suggest that such meanings are reflected in wider social expectations, norms and paradoxes in relation to the role of men in contemporary parenthood. Further research is required to explore how men engage with apps and how apps contribute to their understandings and practices of expectant and new fatherhood.

Venting, joining and educating: motivations for knowledge sharing in the UK police blogosphere.

This article examines motivations for knowledge sharing in blogs written by police officers. It draws on the findings of a research project completed in 2011 based on content analysis of 63 blogs.

The appearance of women's politics in the correspondence pages of Aberdeen newspapers, 1900–14

Abstract A newspapers ‘Letters to the Editor’ column represents its readership in a unique way and can provide a useful ‘thermometer’ with which to measure the extent of critical debate and discussion a particular issue generated in a locality. In this article, the letters of women to the editor of the Aberdeen Daily Journal, 1900 to 1914, are analysed to discover the type of political issues with which these women concerned themselves. It is argued that the women must have felt particularly strongly about such issues since they were prepared to take their arguments outside their social circle and to identify themselves as politically active in the pages of their daily newspaper. Political issues dealt with include local government, the suffrage question and government legislation. While much of the evidence used comes from the letters of active suffragists who were usually members of national suffrage associations, it is argued that the period showed an expansion in the type of woman interested in politics, and the corresponding urge to write to the newspapers. This is evidenced in the number of women who firmly stated that they were not suffragists, but became politicised enough to write to the newspaper complaining about the Insurance Act in 1912.

'What is happening with your body and your baby': Australian women's use of pregnancy and parenting apps

Previous research has found that pregnant women and women in the early years of parenthood now often turn to digital media sources of information and support. One recent form of digital media to which they have access is the mobile software applications (‘apps’) available for smartphones and other mobile devices. There are now hundreds of such apps available on the market for both pregnancy and parenting. This article reports the findings of the online survey designed to investigate how Australian women use pregnancy and parenting apps, their attitudes about the information provided and data privacy and security related to such use, and what features they look for in these apps. A total of 410 women from around Australia completed the survey. The use of pregnancy and parenting apps was common among the respondents. Almost three quarters of respondents had used at least one pregnancy app, while half reported using at least one parenting app. The vast majority of respondents who had ever used a pregnancy app said that they found the apps useful or helpful, particularly for providing information, monitoring foetal development and changes in their own bodies and providing reassurance. While fewer women used parenting apps, those who did also found them useful as sources of information, for helping to monitor their children’s growth and development and to provide reassurance. Yet many women are not yet actively assessing the validity of the content of these apps or considering issues concerning the security and privacy of the personal information about themselves and their children that these apps collect.