How Can Organizations Improve Virtual Onboarding? Key Learnings from the Pandemic

Onboarding, the process through which newcomers become organization's insiders, has gained increasing attention in recent years. Such attention is justified by the considerable costs that companies have to face when onboarding is not properly managed. The challenges to manage this process effectively have increased during the COVID-19 pandemic that forced many organizations to onboard newcomers remotely, while fully working from home. The purpose of this chapter is (1) to explore the main goals associated with the onboarding process, (2) analyse the challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic has generated on the onboarding of employees fully working remotely and (3) present some viable solutions to address these challenges. To do this, we developed a conceptual analysis that builds on literature resources and provides empirical illustrations. The chapter is structured as follows. We first summarize the general objectives of the onboarding process for newcomers and organizations. We then discuss the challenges and sustainable solutions for managing the onboarding remotely and help newcomers and organizations get attain their respective objectives. We conclude by reflecting on the post-pandemic scenario, highlighting opportunities for future research focused on the interplay between remote and in presence working domains. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023.

Privates: Theorizing Private Space in Trans Care

By "space," I mean a physical or digital, real or imagined, virtual and material environment in which social relations—individual or collective—can take place. Private property in the form of the home and land ownership—also a core element of American capitalist colonialist dream—continued to define legal claims to land that furthered policing, racial segregation, cisheteropatriarchal marriage, and other state violence. [...]community publics presume designers can produce environmentally-determined "community," Third, liberal publics are accessible to all—in a fictional world where everyone is equal. Relatedly, when nineteenth century, WASP, upper-class policies, laws, and norms deemed sex a private matter, gay men were forced to create their own counterpublics for their sexual rendezvous.

'I'm provax': Pro-vaccination personal histories and socialities of older Australians in the COVID-19 pandemic.

Vaccination scholarship often explores how social networks foster vaccine refusal and delay, revealing how social and institutional relations produce refusing or delaying parents and un- or under-vaccinated children. It is likewise critical to understand the development of pro-vaccination orientations by researching those who want to be vaccinated since such attitudes and associated practices underpin successful vaccination programmes. This article explores pro-vaccination sociality, personal histories and self-understandings during the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia. We draw upon 18 in-depth interviews with older Western Australians, documenting how they articulate 'provax' identities in opposition to those they depict as 'antivax' others. Provax identities were clearly anchored in and solidified through social relations and personal histories, as interviewees spoke of 'likeminded' friends and families who facilitated each other's vaccinations and referenced childhood experiences of epidemics and vaccinations. Access barriers relating to the vaccine programme drove interviewees to reimagine their provax status in light of not yet being vaccinated. Thus, interviewees' moral and ideological understandings of themselves and others were interrelated with supply-side constraints. We examine the development of self-proclaimed 'provaxxers' (in a context of limited access); how they imagine and enact boundaries between themselves and those they deem 'antivax'; and possibilities for public health research.

Pandemi, krisehåndtering og arbejdsliv

Da Mette Frederiksen lukkede ned for det danske samfund i midten af marts måned 2020 – som respons på den globale coronapandemi – var det en historisk uset grad af intervention på det danske arbejdsmarked, der medførte en næsten øjeblikkelig nedlukning for mange danske arbejdspladser både i det private og det offentlige. Det var på mange måder en usædvanlig beslutning, som fik store konsekvenser på stort set alle samfundsområder. Siden anden Verdenskrig, har der ikke været gennemført så pludselige og omfattende ændringer af arbejdsvilkår og arbejdets organisering med konsekvenser for de sociale relationer på arbejdspladser og for forholdene på arbejdsmarkedet mere generelt, som det skete under coronapandemien. I starten steg arbejdsløsheden voldsomt, og man indførte en række hjælpepakker til både virksomheder og lønmodtagere, som blev hjemsendt, f.eks. den såkaldte lønkompensation som skulle holde hånden under de ansatte i særligt udsatte brancher. Denne tilgang var ikke unik for Danmark. Alternate abstract:When Mette Frederiksen shut down Danish society in mid-March 2020 – in response to the global corona pandemic – it was a historically unprecedented degree of intervention in the Danish labor market, which led to an almost immediate shutdown of many Danish workplaces both in the private and the public sector. It was in many ways an unusual decision, which had major consequences in virtually all areas of society. Since the Second World War, there have not been such sudden and comprehensive changes to working conditions and the organization of work with consequences for social relations at workplaces and for conditions on the labor market more generally, as happened during the corona pandemic. At the start, unemployment rose sharply, and a number of aid packages were introduced for both companies and wage earners, who were sent home, e.g. the so-called wage compensation, which was supposed to hold the hand of the employees in particularly vulnerable industries. This approach was not unique to Denmark.

Determinants of COVID-19 vaccination readiness

The topic of the COVID-19 vaccination is widely present, and, since many countries struggle with vaccine hesitancy, the aim of this study was to examine determinants of vaccination readiness. The study involved 1,769 participants (76.3% females, 23% males, and 0.7% other) age range from 18 to 77 years. Participants completed online questionnaires related to demographic characteristics, personality traits (neuroticism and consciousness), vaccination readiness scale, and two scenarios related to social relations in the context of attitudes towards vaccination. The results showed that demographic characteristics were significant predictors of vaccination readiness, where women, the elderly, the more educated, those with higher socioeconomic status, and those who were not ill from COVID-19 had higher vaccination readiness. Contrary to expectations, persons high in neuroticism and low in conscientiousness had higher vaccination readiness. Vaccine-acceptant individuals, when compared to vaccine-resistant and vaccine-hesitant individuals, had higher vaccination readiness. Regarding the scenario in which the close person has similar or dissimilar attitudes towards vaccination, the obtained results showed that the manipulation with similar/dissimilar attitude has led to the attribution of different characteristics to close persons. A close person with similar attitudes was assessed more positively than a close person with different attitudes. The results of this study support the fact that individual factors are important for vaccination readiness and that differences in attitudes toward vaccination can affect close social relations, which has not been investigated so far in the context of COVID-19 vaccination. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

The neo‐nationalist ascendency: further thoughts on class, value and the return of the repressed

March 2020. On the borders of EU Europe, with the Covid pandemic threatening human lives, sociality and welfare everywhere, Syrian refugees on the ‘Balkan Route', bombed out of Idlib, are being beaten in the forests with wooden clubs by Romanian border guards before they are thrown back onto Serbian territory for further humiliations.1 Romanian return migrants, fleeing the Italian and Spanish Corona lockdowns en masse, are being told over the social networks that they should never have come back, contagious as they are imagined to be and a danger for a woefully underfunded public health system for which they have not paid taxes. Further South, the Mediterranean is once again a heavily policed cemetery for migrants and refugees from the civil wars in the Middle East and North Africa – collateral damage of Western imperial delirium and hubris – as Greece is being hailed by the European President for being the ‘shield' behind which Europe can feel safe from the supposedly associated criminality. Viktor Orbàn, meanwhile, has secured his corrupt autocracy in Hungary for another indefinite stretch of years after the parliament gave him powers to singlehandedly fight the Covid pandemic and its long-run economic after-effects in the name of the Magyars and in the face of never subsiding threats from the outside to the nation. Orbàn will also continue, even more powerfully so now, to fight immigrants, gypsies, gays, feminists, cultural Marxists, NGOs, George Soros, population decline, the EU, and everyone else who might be in his way. Critique from the EU is in Budapest rejected as being ‘motivated by politics'. Vladimir Putin, too, has just been asked by the Russian parliament to stay on indefinitely in his regal position, so as to safeguard Russia's uncertain national future. Erdogan of Turkey is sure to be inspired and will not renege from his ongoing and unprecedentedly brutal crackdown on domestic dissent and ‘traitors to the nation' while his armies are in Syria and Libya. Turkish prisons will continue to overflow.All these, and manifold other events not mentioned here, are part of processes in the European East that have been continuous (as in ‘continuous history versus discontinuous history') for at least a decade, all with a surprisingly steadfast direction. They appear to be diverse, occasioned by ethnographically deeply variegated and therefore apparently contingent events. Anthropologists, professionally spellbound by local fieldwork, are easily swayed to describe them in their singularities. But that singular appearance is misleading. These and similar events are systemically rooted, interlinked, produced by an uneven bundle of global, scaled, social and historical forces (as in ‘field of forces') that cascade into and become incorporated within a variegated and therefore differentiating terrain of national political theatres and human relationships that produce the paradox of singularly surprising outcomes with uncanny family resemblances. These forces can be summarily described as the gradual unfolding of the collapse of a global regime of embedded and multi-scalar solidarity arrangements anchored in national Fordism, developmentalism and the Cold War, into an uncertain interregnum of neoliberalised Darwinian competition and rivalry on all scales, with a powerfully rising China lurking in the background. Neo-nationalism appears from within this unfolding field of forces as a contradictory bind that seeks to enact and/or re-enact, domestically and abroad, hierarchy and deservingness, including its necessary flip side, humiliation. That is one aspect of the argument I have been trying to make since the end of the nineties (for example Kalb 2000, 2002, 2004), when such forces began to stir in the sites that I was working on and living in: The Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Hungary and Poland.That universalising argument is easily corroborated by events in the west of the continent, which paint a similarly cohesive though phenomenologically variegated picture.2 Marine Le Pen nd Matteo Salvini are still credibly threatening to democratically overthrow liberal globalist governments in France and Italy on behalf of the ‘people' and ‘the nation', and against the elites, the EU, immigrants, the left and finance capital. Dutch politicians, in the face of the global coronavirus calamity, still believe one cannot send money to Italy and the European South lest it will be spent on ‘alcohol and women'. Anonymous comments in the Dutch press on less brutal newspaper articles often echo the tone of the one that claimed that Southern countries were mere ‘dilapidated sheds … and even with our money they will never do the necessary repair work' (NRC 30 March 2020, comments on ‘Europese solidariteit is juist ook in het Nederlandse belang'). Until its impressive policy turn-around in April/May 2020 in the face of the Covid pandemic and the fast-escalating EU fragmentation amid a world of hostile and nationalist great powers, the German government did not disagree. It was Angela Merkel herself who set up the Dutch as the leaders of a newly conceived right-wing ‘frugal' flank in the EU under the historical banner of the Hanseatic League to face down the federalist and redistributionist South. That Hanseatic banner suggested that penny-counting, competitive mercantilism and austerity, and its practical corollary, an imposed hierarchy of ‘merit' and ‘successfulness', must hang eternally over Europe. Britain, meanwhile, has valiantly elected to leave the EU in order to ‘take back control' on behalf of what Boris Johnson imagines as the ‘brilliant British nation' (The Economist 30 January 2020). It would like to refuse any further labour migrants from the mainland, and seek a future in the global Anglosphere, beefed up by a revitalised British Commonwealth where hopefully, when it comes to ceremony, not juridical equality but imperial nostalgia and deference will rule (see Campanella and Dassu 2019).

Análisis de las Apps Covid en la Unión Europea: entre la excepcionalidad y la protección de los derechos fundamentales

Los retos a los que se enfrenta la Unión Europea crean en ocasiones situaciones de tensión, en las que la organización debe responder al mismo tiempo a la protección y garantía de los derechos fundamentales de su ciudadanía, y a necesidades de índole global que excepcionalmente requieren la suspensión de esos mismos derechos por un bien mayor. Este fue el caso durante la pandemia de 2020, en el que la Unión Europea y los Estados miembros decretaron cuarentenas en contra de la libertad de movimiento, para restringir los contactos e intentar contener los contagios. En este contexto se produjo también una implementación de políticas digitales para afrontar la gestión de la crisis, en concreto nos referimos a las aplicaciones covid de rastreo y vigilancia de los contactos entre individuos. Estas aplicaciones estaban sujetas a los requisitos y garantías del marco legislativo comunitario, que hemos visto evolucionar en los últimos dos años, para hacer frente a la creciente digitalización de los servicios públicos. El caso de las aplicaciones covid es paradigmático para observar cómo se ha producido esa adaptación. La injerencia de los estados de forma excepcional durante la crisis, pero regulada hoy en instrumentos de coordinación comunitarios, ha creado nuevos marcos de navegación en internet. Los usuarios cuentan ahora con un nuevo nivel de protección de sus datos personales y su derecho a la privacidad, que si bien venía garantizada por el Reglamento de Protección de Datos (679/2016), ha dado un importante paso adelante con la aceleración de la digitalización de la administración durante la pandemia. Además, a través de una crítica desde la teoría contractual, podemos ver cómo la Unión Europea ha respondido a las dinámicas globales a nivel de normativa digital, priorizando hoy un sistema de contrapesos y límites tanto a las empresas como a las administraciones públicas, en su intercambio con los usuarios en internet. Las aplicaciones covid materializan esas limitaciones y garantías de protección de los usuarios (esencialmente de su privacidad y derechos fundamentales), que nos llevan a plantear la creación de un nuevo contrato social digital, igual que se ha transformado en otras ocasiones para responder a cuestiones como la clase, el género, la raza y la ecología.Alternate :The challenges facing the European Union (EU) can sometimes create tensions, in which the organization must answer both to the protection and guarantee of the fundamental rights of its citizens, and to global needs that exceptionally require the suspension of those same rights for the greater good. In its liberal political tradition that believes in the existence of a public and a private sphere, it has established systems of checks and balances, rule of law and stable institutions to protect the rights and freedoms of its citizens.Yet sometimes these must be suspended in cases of exceptionality for their own preservation. This was the case during the 2020 pandemic, when the European Union and its member States decreed quarantines against the consolidated and fundamental freedom of movement of persons, to restrict contacts and try to contain contagions. In this context, digital policies were also implemented to deal with crisis management, like Covid applications for tracing and monitoring contacts between individuals. This invasion of the private sphere of citizens had to be accompanied by a set of limitations and guarantees, to protect this inherent and private individual's right. These applications were subject to the requirements of the European legislative framework (the commonly known acquis communautaire), which included several legal instruments laid out by the EU to create a framework to guide the performance of its member-state Governments on this matter. Apart from the GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive, we underline the importance of Recommendation (EU) 2020/518 that connects health rights, health management and data protection;and also, the importance of Communication 2020/C 124 I/01 th t set a series of ideal elements to guide apps functions, and established the importance that it is Government agencies that manage digital apps, so there is a guarantee of the protection of citizens' rights. Through the comparative study of how apps were managed when they first appeared in 2020 throughout most of 2021, and how apps evolved (both in management and use) in 2021 and throughout 2022, we can address the evolution of EU policy on digital matters, which have meant to create new frameworks for internet navigation. At first, there were 24 different apps for the 24 out of 27 Member States who decided to create and promote the use of these instruments among their citizens. Most of them were managed by national authorities (except for Austria and Romania who were managed by Red Cross and a local NGO respectively), and were developed by a public-private collaboration, or only public agencies.At the end of the crisis, at least politically since societal weariness and the economic crisis rendered it difficult to keep up the restrictions introduced in the spring of 2020, in June 2021 the EU created its GreenPass or vaccination passport.This policy was implemented in most countries and even though 24 different national health services were still in place, they all used the EU passport, available to citizens via their national health websites or apps. Even though the exceptionality of the pandemic has ended, one of the outcomes has been the establishment of a system of data gathering, storage and management for public means, managed by National Authorities, which has technically created a digital contract where the State guarantees citizens' digital rights. This is even more important as we attend to an increase in the digitalization of public services, especially since 2020.The changes were thus promoted in a state of exception during the crisis to regulate Government interference in the citizen's private sphere but have laid a roadmap for the development of the digital framework, which may lead to the conclusion of a digital social contract. The social contract appears in the EU's liberal tradition as a metaphor of the relation between the State and the individual, it defines the notion of sovereignty as the set of rights possessed by the citizen that may be subject to special protection. Hence, the social contract serves as the basis for creating modern societies, yet it is not permanent and can (and will) change when societies change accordingly. Several critiques have been made to the original social contract, creating new and developed contracts, including the class critique (from worker's movements and Marxism during the 19th Century to Piketty's present denouncing of social inequalities), the gender critique (as Carole Pateman's Sexual Contract puts it, the social contract institutionalized patriarchy), the racial critique (where Charles W. Mills develops the gender critique from a racial point of view where the social contract created a system of domination by the Western world) and finally the environmental critique (where its advocates claim for an eco-social contract or a nature social contract that shifts the approach to a bio-centric system). Therefore, the contract serves as a theoretical framework that can be changed, and in this case, it challenges the evolution towards a digital social contract. The evolution of internet and tech structures that support the web and its processes has been marked by three stages: its birth in the 80s by the hand of the State and linked to military research;its deregulation during the 90s and the privatization of the main telecommunications enterprises (in the case of the EU, the digital policy followed this trend);and the consolidation of a digital sphere in the 21st century, where the EU has taken a step back and created a set of instruments to guarantee the protection and freedom of its citizens when they navigate the internet. We can see how the EU has responded to global dynamics at the level of digital regulation, prioritizing today a multistakeholder system with s veral actors, and counterweights and limits for both companies and public administrations in their exchange with users on the internet. With the emergence of new spaces for social relations such as in the digital sphere, new types of sovereignty must be considered in order to guarantee the rights and privacy of users (we must not forget the importance of the separation between spheres, as fear liberalism reminds us, and of limiting exceptionality to those circumstances that really appear as such). Once the foundations on which the model of digital guarantees can be developed have been laid, the next step can be the creation of a real digital contract between users and the state on the internet. However, the contract is but an idea of reason for understanding politics and institutions, which begs the question of what digital politics we aspire to as societies.

La pandemia e il paradigma immunitario: le sfide della politica tra sicurezza e solidarietà

Over a short period of time, countries around the world have been facing health and economic risks due to the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic. In this paper, we use the immune paradigm to interpret the impact and consequences of the pandemic on society, in social relations and especially at the political level, when democratic systems are called to face new challenges. They concern the contrast between protection and security, on the one hand, and securitarian impulses on the other, in order to guarantee fundamental democratic freedoms;the extension of immunity protection as equally as possible, by contrasting the inequalities which in various areas (from health to the economy) have emerged and increased during the pandemic;the capacity to simultaneously guarantee the need for immunization and the drive for solidarity;finally, the propensity for forms of cooperation between States as opposed to forms of national sovereignty in dealing with the risks that arise at a global level.

Similar minds in the family: COVID-19 centrality and relationship quality

We examined whether perceived similarity in COVID-19 centrality (i.e., the extent to which one thinks of the pandemic as shaping current and future life) is associated with family relationship quality during the pandemic. Thinking that other family members are similar to oneself regarding the pandemic's centrality may improve the quality of family relationships. We collected data from Turkish family triads (i.e., mother, father, 18–25 years old child) and had 481 participants from 180 families. Participants rated their similarity in COVID-19 centrality with the other two family members and reported the general and daily quality of their relationship with them (relationship satisfaction, closeness, conflict). We analyzed the data using the Social Relations Model. We found that family members who, on average, perceived more similarity in COVID-19 centrality reported higher levels in positive attributes of general relationship quality (i.e., satisfaction and closeness). The effects on conflict and daily relationship quality were less conclusive. This research confirms that family members' reactions during the COVID-19 pandemic are interdependent. Perceiving that other family members are of similar minds about the centrality of the pandemic relates positively to some aspects of relationship quality. © 2023 International Association for Relationship Research.

Eteronomia versus autonomia. Emergenza e individualizzazione nel primo anno di pandemia in Italia

The essay presents the perceptions about risk and trust collected in Italy during the first year of Covid-19 using secondary analysis data. The aim is to show how the fallout of the pandemic goes beyond the sphere of health and extends to those of individual action and social relations. The hypothesis is that the prolonged interruption of the normality of everyday life has temporarily halted the individualisation process. Risk, mistrust, uncertainty of social cohesion and deterioration of public debate, as observed in the survey, have contributed to reducing the space for the achievement of personal autonomy by producing heteronomy.

Transnational lived citizenship turns local: Covid-19 and Eritrean and Ethiopian diaspora in Nairobi

This paper analyses how migrant community practices of transnational lived citizenship were altered by both, COVID-19 and the policy response from the Kenyan government. It is based on interviews with members of the Eritrean and Ethiopian diaspora residing in Nairobi. The paper demonstrates how policies introduced because of the pandemic caused migrant communities to lose local and remittance income. More than the loss of material resources, however, they were impacted by the elimination of social spaces that enable diaspora lives. These two dynamics have intensified a trend that may have been present before the pandemic, a local turn of transnational lived citizenship. By focusing on lived experiences and how they have been re-assessed during the pandemic, the paper argues that transnational lived citizenship is always in flux and can easily become reconfigured as more localized practices. The concept of transnational lived citizenship is demonstrated to be a useful lens for analysing shifting migrant livelihoods and belonging. © 2022 The Authors. Global Networks published by Global Networks Partnership and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Masks and emotional distance: a visual study of human relationships in the Covid-19 pandemic

This study addresses the social impact of the pandemic in terms of its effects on communication and emotion in spaces of everyday domestic activity. The aim is to visually and formally portray the personal, professional and citizen reality in the daily use of face masks. The analysis includes the adoption, advocacy or resistance to them, through various representative characters of different, referential social sectors. The effect of masks on communication and emotional relationships is explored through photo portraits and qualitative interviews developed in a small community in Southern Spain. This work seeks to better understand the communicative, personal and social consequences of such preventive measures.

Collaborer en contexte de COVID-19: Point de vue d'intervenants oeuvrant auprès de personnes judiciarisées sur les obstacles qu'ils ont rencontrés

Cet article se penche sur les réponses de 81 intervenants québécois oeuvrant auprès de personnes judiciarisées âgées de 16 à 35 ans à propos des défis que pose la crise sanitaire en matière de collaboration intra et interorganisationnelle. Ces intervenants, affiliés à diverses agences des milieux institutionnels et communautaires, ont rempli, entre novembre 2020 et juin 2021, un questionnaire portant notamment sur les effets de la crise pandémique sur leur capacité à travailler en collaboration. Les résultats de cette enquête montrent comment les conséquences de cette crise sont venues affecter la dimension organisationnelle de la collaboration intra et interorganisationnelle et encore davantage, sa dimension interactionnelle. En d'autres mots, ces résultats révèlent combien les relations humaines constituent un élément fondamental à la collaboration, tant celles que les intervenants développent entre eux que celles qu'ils développent avec leur clientèle. Au final, cet article porte à réfléchir sur les conditions essentielles à la collaboration ainsi que sur les attentes que l'on fait peser sur elle en faveur d'une meilleure intégration des services et d'un accompagnement mieux adapté à la complexité des trajectoires des personnes judiciarisées.Alternate :This article examines the responses of 81 Quebec practitioners working with criminalized individuals aged 16 to 35 who were surveyed about the challenges posed by the pandemic crisis in terms of intra- and inter-organizational collaboration. These practitioners, affiliated to various public and community agencies, completed, between November 2020 and June 2021, a questionnaire regarding the impact of COVID-19 on their ability to work in collaboration with other practitioners. The findings of this study show that the crisis has had particularly powerful effects on the organizational dimension of collaboration, and even more so on the interactional dimension of collaboration. More specifically, the findings indicate how human relationships constitute an essential aspect of collaborative practices, regarding both collaboration among practitioners and collaboration with clients. In conclusion, this article provides an opportunity to reflect on the conditions essential for collaborative work between practitioners, as well as on the expectations one should have with regard to the integration of services and the support of criminalized individuals.Alternate :Este artículo examina las respuestas de 81 trabajadores quebequenses que trabajan con personas judicializadas de entre 16 y 35 años sobre los retos que plantea la crisis sanitaria en términos de colaboración intra e interinstitucional. Entre noviembre de 2020 y junio de 2021, estos trabajadores, afiliados a diversos organismos institucionales y comunitarios, completaron un cuestionario sobre los efectos de la pandemia en su capacidad para trabajar juntos. Los resultados de esta investigación muestran cómo las consecuencias de esta crisis han afectado a la dimensión organizativa de la colaboración intra e interorganizativa y, sobre todo, a su dimensión interactiva. En otras palabras, estos resultados muestran cómo las relaciones humanas son un elemento fundamental de la colaboración, tanto las que los profesionales desarrollan entre sí como las que desarrollan con sus usuarios. Finalmente, este artículo reflexiona sobre las condiciones esenciales para la colaboración, así como sobre las expectativas que se depositan en ella en favor de una mejor integración de los servicios y de un apoyo mejor adaptado a la complejidad de las trayectorias de las personas judicializadas.

Impact Of Covid-19 Pandemic On Social Relations And Mental Health

The aim of this study is to understand the effects of covid-19 on docile relationships and mental health. The pandemic was an unacceptable development in people's lives throughout the globe. The pandemic had a major impact on the social behavior of the people. This study explores the social relationship and mental health domain of individuals and how it changed after the pandemic. The impact of being isolated from the world. And social interactions will also be explored in this paper. The study shows that the world will never be the same after the pandemic and that the lockdown has changed people emotionally and mentally. Copyright © 2022, Anka Publishers. All rights reserved.

SOCIAL CAPITAL AND SPREAD OF COVID-19 IN POLAND - DO MEMBERSHIP, TRUST, NORMS AND VALUES OR SHARED NARRATIVES MATTER?

The experience of the SARS-CoV-19 pandemic can be a source of valuable information for public health authorities. As we have seen, the incidence is not evenly distributed in space, and the factors influencing it are not fully understood. Aspects of biological, demographic, economic, environmental, and political nature are considered, but it is believed that the social factor may be of critical importance. The density and intensity of social relations, general trust and trust in the authorities, norms and values - i.e., social capital - may have a key impact on the scale of infections. The research conducted so far on this subject does not provide clear conclusions, and the post-communist society, inferior in social capital, has hardly been analyzed. Using data for 73 subregions of Poland and performing regression analysis, we investigate how social capital explains the level of infection rate in the first three waves of the epidemic. The analysis results have shown that the factor of "political leaning" was strongly and negatively related to the infection rate in Poland. The research results indicate that, contrary to the previous studies, structural capital has the same positive effect on reducing the epidemic. However, relational social capital promotes more significant morbidity.

Humour and mental health: a case study of Arthur Asa Berger

Purpose>This paper aims to elicit insight on how humour may support mental health from Arthur Asa Berger, Professor Emeritus at San Francisco State University, author of more than 150 articles and 90 books, many on humour and humorous artist.Design/methodology/approach>This case study, followed by a 10-question interview, intentionally embraces visual autobiography to present Arthur's creative humorous contributions.Findings>Arthur conveys the importance of humour, not so much from joke-telling, which can be problematic, but in fun conversations, witty remarks and puns. We learn of his 45 humour techniques, and ways to apply humour in teaching, writing and drawing for therapeutic benefit.Research limitations/implications>This is a personal narrative, albeit from someone who has been academically and personally involved with humour for over 60 years.Practical implications>Evidence of the benefits of humour for mental health is mounting. Appreciating and harnessing humour, including with the 45 humour techniques, whenever you can, is recommended.Social implications>Humour supports relationship building and social inclusion. Social humour is best when it amuses others, offers positive insights into social relationships and is life affirming to both the humourist and their audience.Originality/value>To the best of the authors' knowledge, Arthur was the first to publish a PhD dissertation on a comic strip and has been at the vanguard of humour application in teaching, academic writing, drawing, popular comedy and humorous murder mysteries for decades. Arthur will be 90 years old in 2023.

Hybrid individualized assistance-oriented learning system framework for STEM-Education

The imparting of knowledge and skills in STEM education, especially under the influence of the Covid-19 pandemic, is increasingly taking place online and through digital formats. The partially asynchronous instruction eliminates, on the one hand, the social relation in the learning process and, on the other hand, the direct experience with physical objects. Here, the digital learning systems provide learning tools and controls to support the learning process on a general basis. Existing methods for simulating physical objects (digital twins) are also used to a minimal extent. The following approach presents a learning system framework that enables individualized learning, including all dimensions (social, physical). Implementing a concept that uses a personalized assistance system to orchestrate the individual learning steps enables efficient and effective learning. Applying the learning system framework exemplifies the STEM education at Reutlingen University in the logistics learning factory Werk150. © 2022 IEEE.

MÁSCARAS COVID-19 E OUTRAS MÁSCARAS

Esta contribuição visa examinar alguns dos significados das máscaras covid-19 a luz da reflexão antropológica sobre máscaras. Argumenta que o uso da máscara covid-19 tem como consequencia involuntária uma sinalizagão radical da suspensão do corpo como instancia principal do relacionamento social. Aborda também as guerras culturais travadas em torno desse uso.Alternate :This paper seeks to examine the meanings of covid-19 masks from the perspective of the anthropological discussion of masks. It argues that the use of covid-19 masks has as its involuntary consequence a radical suspension of the body as an important instance of social relationships. It also addresses the cultural wars that surround this use.

K-Zones: a Machine Learning-Based System to Estimate Social Distancing Violations During Pandemic Eras

The outbreak of pandemics adversely influences various aspects of people's lives, including economies, education, careers, and social relations. Therefore, many authorities worldwide resort to imposing social distancing regulations to flatten the curve of new confirmed cases. This paper proposes a Machine Learning-based social distancing violation detection system. Unlike many contributions in the literature that use pairwise distance computation running in quadratic execution time, this paper introduces a novel technique that runs in linear time. The solution is considered a Video Surveillance System, and the experimental results show how the system effectively detects not only social distancing violations but also the severity of those violations. © 2022 IEEE.