‘Are you double dosed?’ How to ask friends and family if they’re vaccinated, and how to handle it if they say no

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Jessica Kaufman, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and Julie Leask, University of SydneyThe weekend is approaching, your fridge is stocked with cheese and you’re eager to organise a COVID-compliant picnic with other fully vaccinated adults which your local rules stipulate. But choose your guests wisely — only fully vaccinated people can attend, and fines apply if the rules are broken.

These new rules, coming into effect in New South Wales and Victoria, place the responsibility for policing vaccination on individuals. Vaccine passports may eventually allow businesses to check people’s vaccination status on entry, but there is no app to scan before gathering for a picnic or home event.

So how do you find out who’s vaccinated, and what do you do with that information?

How do you start the conversation?

Vaccination can feel like a loaded topic, something you might not want to discuss if you can avoid it. But it doesn’t have to be a minefield. We can actually take some tips about approaching tricky personal topics from the field of sexual health.

First, try to talk about vaccination before you’ve confirmed plans with someone, and before you’ve communicated the plans to others. Once you’re already at the picnic, the stakes are much higher. You’re more likely to either go along with something that doesn’t feel right to you or end up in an argument.

Offer your own vaccination status first. You could say something like

FYI, I got my second dose last month. These new rules mean everyone coming will have to be vaccinated. Have you had both doses? I want to make sure we’re OK to go ahead.

Keep the question casual. Asking someone’s vaccination status is reasonable in these circumstances — it isn’t because you don’t trust the person.

What if the person says no?

Don’t jump to conclusions. Depending on your relationship with the person, you may want to find out more. When approaching a conversation about COVID-19 vaccines, start with an open mind and be ready to listen.

Ask them if they’d like to talk about why they aren’t vaccinated. Maybe they have some specific concerns, maybe they’re waiting for an appointment or for a different vaccine to the one available to them now.

Let them share all their concerns before you jump in and try to answer or correct them.

If they’re open to it, you can help them weigh up the risks and benefits of the vaccines, share some facts about safety and effectiveness, or tell them what convinced you to get vaccinated.

Talking about your own experience can help normalise vaccination.

The person you’re talking to might not be on fence about the vaccine — they might be strongly opposed to it.

If that’s the case, your best strategy may be to establish your position and close the conversation. You could say:

OK, that’s not what I believe. But either way, we have to follow the rules.

Arguing with people who strongly oppose vaccination is rarely — if ever — effective, and it could ruin your relationship.

Try to talk about vaccination before you’ve confirmed plans with someone, and before you’ve communicated the plans to others.
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While rules are in place that exclude unvaccinated people for the time being, it’s not necessary to cut someone out of your life because they aren’t vaccinated.

As those rules are relaxed and we move from suppressing COVID-19 to living with COVID-19, we will need to re-calibrate our risk assessments.

Of course these decisions are personal, but if you and your family are fully vaccinated, the risk of catching COVID-19, particularly in an outdoor environment, is significantly reduced.

If you have children too young to currently get vaccinated, the risks from COVID-19 are low except in certain circumstances so you’ll need to weigh health risks against social benefits.

Social exclusion leads to more conspiratorial thinking — in other words, cutting people off when they believe in conspiracy theories often leaves them to go further down the rabbit hole, unchallenged by alternative views.

You may have more positive impact by maintaining a relationship, within your boundaries, and role modelling the behaviour you believe in.

What about the picnic?

If your friend is a bit hesitant or firmly against getting the vaccine, your picnic with them will have to wait.

When you explain this, you may want to distance yourself from the rules. For example, you could say:

The new rules say… Unfortunately it sounds like we can’t get together for now. It’s only a temporary thing — we should all be able to get back to normal in a few more weeks.

You didn’t make the rules, but we’re all living with them for now. If relevant, convey how important the relationship is.

From the beginning, managing COVID-19 well has required us to take the evidence, abide by public health orders and, when we can choose, weigh the risks of an activity against the benefits.

For these sensitive social negotiations around vaccines, masks and other measures, we will need to communicate with care to keep connecting with each other as safely as possible.

Jessica Kaufman, Research Fellow, Vaccine Uptake Group, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and Julie Leask, Professor, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

How China used the media to spread its COVID narrative — and win friends around the world

An official from the Chinese embassy in Zimbabwe greeting a plane carrying Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccines from China.
Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi/AP

Julia Bergin, The University of MelbourneAt the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Chinese President Xi Jinping enjoyed prime real estate in the centre of Serbia’s capital, Belgrade: his face plastered across a billboard with the words “Thank you brother Xi”.

The sign, courtesy of the pro-government tabloid Informer, was in response to China sending COVID-19 medical supplies to Serbia. It joined a long list of pro-China offerings of thanks from nations around the world during the pandemic in the form of overt propaganda or more subtle media messages.

A new report being published today by the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), which I co-authored with Louisa Lim of the University of Melbourne and Johan Lidberg of Monash University, has found Beijing’s global image has benefited from the pandemic, despite its origin in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

Over half of the 50 nations surveyed at the end of 2020 reported coverage of China had become more positive in their national media since the onset of the pandemic, while less than a quarter reported it had become increasingly negative.

The change was most favourable in Europe, which scored 6.3 on a scale of one to ten, where one is the most negative and ten is the most positive. China’s image plummeted in North America, coming in at 3.5.

The overall increase in positivity coincided with an uptick in Chinese outreach. Three-quarters of the journalists we surveyed said China had a visible presence in their national media, compared to 64% in a previous survey we conducted for IFJ in 2019.

Spreading propaganda through content-sharing agreements

China has long attempted to seed positive narratives of itself in foreign media, while blocking unfavourable coverage and redirecting the world’s attention onto Western failures.

To do so, Beijing taps into foreign media ecosystems with tailored offers of access and resources. It exports its propaganda to foreign media organisations through content-sharing agreements and memoranda of understanding with state-sponsored media outlets like Xinhua and China Daily.

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For example, Italy’s state-run news agency ANSA now publishes 50 Xinhua stories a day on its news wire, with Xinhua taking editorial responsibility for the content.

Beijing has also offered all-expenses paid tours to global journalists.

The desired outcome is for international media to amplify Chinese messages in their own languages in the pages of their own news outlets.

In this, COVID-19 acted as a catalyst. China activated its media dissemination channels overseas, inundating foreign outlets with domestic and international news offerings in local languages in a bid to seed positive stories about its management of the pandemic.

It also updated its toolkit with new tactics such as disinformation and misinformation, while clamping down on foreign reporting inside China through visa denials and journalist expulsions.

This vacuum in coverage of China by the foreign media created demand for stories from Chinese state channels. And this is being filled with state-sponsored content already available through content-sharing agreements.

New disinformation campaigns

As one of the first countries struck by the pandemic last year, Italy was the target of an aggressive Chinese disinformation campaign.

State-sponsored disinformation blamed Italy, not China, for instance, as the site of the initial outbreak of the new coronavirus.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesmen and ambassadors also shared on social media footage purporting to show Italians on their balconies applauding Chinese COVID aid as the Chinese national anthem was sung in the background. The footage was doctored from scenes that originally showed Italians clapping for their own medical workers.

As one Italian journalist commented during an IFJ roundtable discussion,

This fake news arrives even more rapidly than the virus.

More than 80% of the countries we surveyed expressed concern about disinformation in their national media. Respondents blamed China at about the same rate as Russia and the US. However, almost 60% of countries were unsure who was responsible for disseminating the false and misleading content.

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Since the start of the pandemic, Chinese disinformation efforts have become a new part of the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda tactics. State actors nicknamed “wolf warrior diplomats” took to social media platforms banned inside China, such as Twitter, to pump out a succession of conspiracy theories. These were then amplified by an army of Chinese ambassadors, foreign ministry spokesmen, and paid trolls.

This coordinated campaign to shift the COVID narrative across Western tech platforms has also been deployed to discredit democratic institutions, including the 2020 US presidential elections and the BBC’s reporting on China’s treatment of the Uyghur minority in Xinjiang.

How propaganda seeps into mainstream media

In Serbia, the Digital Forensic Center identified 30,000 tweets originating from Serbian accounts containing the keywords “Kina” (China) and “Srbija” (Serbia). These tweets praised Chinese aid and lambasted the European Union for its lack of assistance during the pandemic.

More than 70% of the content was produced by a huge pro-Serbian government network of bot accounts. During an IFJ roundtable discussion, one Serbian journalist said the government of President Aleksandar Vučić “does the work for China”.

Throughout the pandemic, Chinese medical aid was touted through mainstream Serbian media as “gifts”, despite the Serbian government’s refusal to reveal whether it had paid for the aid. Such coverage has a clear, positive impact on China’s image.

An office building in Belgrade with a billboard showing Serbian and Chinese flags reading, ‘Iron friends, together in good and evil!’
Darko Vojinovic/AP

One study by the Institute for European Affairs found as many as 40% of Serbian citizens believed China to be the country’s largest donor of medical aid. Only 17% correctly named the EU.

Our report for the IFJ also found nations receiving China’s COVID-19 vaccine were more likely to cover China’s handling of the pandemic in a positive light.

Two-thirds of recipient nations reported coverage had become more positive over the past year. The dominant narrative in their national media, they said, was “China’s fast action against COVID-19 has helped other countries, as has its medical diplomacy”.

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Despite this, most respondents cited Chinese attempts to control their national media as clumsy and ineffective.

In Italy, journalists talked about how the country has “the necessary antibodies” to identify fake news, while in Tunisia, they said China has “no impact on journalistic content”. And in Serbia, Chinese propaganda was deemed irrelevant.

But China’s efforts are making a real difference in many countries around the world, slowly but steadily redrawing the narrative landscape one story at a time.

Julia Bergin, Researcher, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Social activity can be good for mental health, but whether you benefit depends on how many friends you have

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Ziggi Ivan Santini, University of Southern Denmark; Paul E. Jose, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington; Robin Dunbar, University of Oxford, and Vibeke Jenny Koushede, University of Copenhagen

We know having friends is generally good for your happiness and mental well-being. Likewise, keeping socially active and engaging in formal social activities like volunteering has been linked to better mental health.

But it is also possible to have (or do) too much of a good thing. In a recent study, we tracked people aged 50 and older from 13 European countries over a two-year period to explore how volunteering, education, involvement in religious or political groups, or participating in sport or social clubs influenced their mental health.

We also looked at how many close social relationships people had — the kind of relationships in which they would discuss important personal matters. We found social activities especially benefited individuals who were relatively socially isolated (with three or fewer close relationships).

For people with a higher number of close relationships, engaging in social activities did not appear to enhance mental health. It could even be detrimental for some.

Who benefits from social activities

Social isolation is a major health issue. Apart from compromising the mental health of isolated individuals, it is linked to many other adverse health outcomes, including dementia, heart disease and stroke and premature death. But people who experience social isolation can take steps to improve their situation – for example, by engaging in formal social activities.

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Among individuals who were relatively socially isolated (people with three or fewer close relationships), we found more engagement in social activities was linked to improved quality of life and fewer symptoms of depression.

On a population level, our estimates suggest if such people were to engage regularly in social activities, we would see a 5-12% increase in people reporting better quality of life and a 4-8% reduction in people experiencing symptoms of depression. This would be a substantial change to population mental health, given more than 70% of people in our sample (aged 50+, in Europe) have three or fewer close relationships.

There are many reasons being socially active is linked to better mental health and well-being. Social activities can be a way to establish new relationships, provide opportunities for social support and foster a sense of belonging within a community.

Social activities can increase a sense of belonging within a group.
Shutterstock/Syda Productions

‘Too much’ social activity

While research so far has suggested having more social relationships is always better, our study indicates this may not be the case. Just like too much physical activity can compromise mental health, too much social activity can also backfire.

When we looked at how the study variables (quality of life, symptoms of depression) mapped against our two variables of interest (number of social activities, number of close relationships), we found U-shaped curves. That is, poor mental health at low levels of social activity, good mental health at moderate levels of social activity, and again poor mental health at high levels of social activity.

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Depression appeared to be minimised when people reported having four to five close relationships and being engaged in social activities on a weekly basis. Any more social activity than this, and the benefits started to decline, disappear or turn negative.

This downturn was particularly clear among individuals reporting seven or more close relationships. For these very busy people, engaging in social activities was linked to an increase in depressive symptoms.

Too much social activity can backfire and lead to exhaustion.
Shutterstock/Maksim Shmeljov

People typically report having an average of five close friends. Extroverts tend to report having more friends, but pay the price of having weaker friendships.

Because our social capital (essentially the time we have to devote to social interactions) is limited and roughly the same for everyone, extroverts in effect prefer to spread their social efforts thinly among many people. This is in contrast to introverts who prefer to focus their social efforts on fewer people to ensure those friendships really work well.

This trade-off is at the core of our capacity to engage in social activities. If you engage in too many, your social time is spread thinly among them. That thin investment might result in you becoming a peripheral member of numerous groups in the community rather than being embedded in the social centre where you can benefit from the support of your connections.

Another possibility is that too much social activity becomes a stress factor. This can lead to negative outcomes, such as social over-commitment, emotional and cognitive exhaustion, fatigue or feelings of guilt when social relationships are not properly nurtured because of limited time.

This raises another important consideration, albeit one we were not able to investigate empirically in our study. Family is an important part of our social world, not least in terms of the emotional and other support it provides. Devoting too much time to community activities means less time for family. That bottleneck might well prove to be detrimental to well-being because of the strain it could impose on family relationships.

So what’s the take-home message? Perhaps just this: if you want to live a happy and fulfilled life, be actively social — but do so in moderation.

Ziggi Ivan Santini, Postdoctoral associate, University of Southern Denmark; Paul E. Jose, Professor of Psychology, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington; Robin Dunbar, Professor of Evolutionary Psychology, Department of Experimental Psycology, University of Oxford, and Vibeke Jenny Koushede, Head of the Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Vital Signs: Why can’t Australia be friends with both US and China?

Richard Holden, UNSW

Australia’s prime minister, Scott Morrison, had to walk a series of fine lines in his official visit to the United States this week.

He had to appear supportive of US president Donald Trump without looking like a sycophant. He had to emphasise Australia’s deep bond with the United States without aggravating China.

There are, of course, important matters of international relations and geopolitics involved in how Australia positions itself regarding the interactions between China and the United States.

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But there’s also some pretty straightforward economics involved.

The economics of it all make it clear Australia had better find a way to stay on the good side of both the US and China.

Two years ago I wrote a report with Jared Mondschein of the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney titled Indispensable economic partners: the US-Australia investment relationship.

In that report – launched, incidentally, by then treasurer Scott Morrison – we highlighted that though China is Australia’s largest trading partner, the US is our largest economic partner more broadly.

Our indispensable investment partner

Australia has always been a capital-thirsty country, and our largest provider of foreign capital now and historically is the United States.

The cumulative value of two-way investment between the US and Australia is about A$1.5 trillion. US investment in Australia, totalling more than A$900 billion, comprises more than a quarter of all foreign investment. It is close to double the investment from second-placed Britain and roughly 10 times that from China.

US ownership of companies operating in Australia is also double that any other other country. US foreign direct investment (defined as owning 10% or more of a business) is responsible for more than 330,000 high-paying jobs (US-affiliated companies pay employees an average of more than A$115,000) and more than A$1 billion a year in research and development spending.

The US has more foreign direct investment into Australia than in all of South America, Africa or the Middle East.

Australians are heavily invested in the US, too. Australian companies from CSL to Atlassian see the US as both a large market and a springboard to the world. As our report highlighted:

The United States has been the largest destination of Australian investment for many years. Making up more than 28% of all Australian overseas investment, total Australian investment in the United States is valued at A$617 billion, more than seven times the A$87 billion that Australia has invested in China.

Our indispensable trading partner

That said, China is a crucial trading partner for Australia.

One-quarter of Australia’s exports go to China, which is an important source of high-quality low-cost goods for Australian consumers. Imports and exports both represent about 20% of Gross Domestic Product, and China is a key nation for both.

Furthermore, we might have just scratched the surface in terms of export potential. As the Chinese economy grows, there are big opportunities in agricultural products like Wagyu beef and services like education (already our third-largest export market).

China’s per capita GDP has grown rapidly in the past 30 years but still stands at A$9,600, compared with A$56,000 for Australia. There is a lot more room for growth. As China does so, its middle class will become an even more attractive market. For a relatively low-growth Australian economy, it’s a bright opportunity.

Maintaining both relationships

It will take some skilled diplomacy to keep both China and the US happy – particularly at a time when they are not particularly happy with each other. Among other things, it means not taking sides in their trade and currency disputes. There are no winners from that – and kudos to trade minister Simon Birmingham for having said so.

We can also continue to avoid taking a stance on contentious issues like the status of Taiwan.

None of this is easy, but it is terribly important.

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Perhaps the ultimate question, to paraphrase a classic 1975 pop song, is: “Why Can’t We Be Friends?”

Perhaps we can be friends with both China and the United States. It would certainly be in our national interest to do so. Perhaps both the US and China can see benefits in our respective bilateral relationships.

On the other hand, the band that had a hit with that 1975 classic was called War. Let’s hope that’s not an omen.

Richard Holden, Professor of Economics, UNSW

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

View from The Hill: Morrison rewards friends, avoids making enemies and announces new ambassadors

Michelle Grattan, University of Canberra

Scott Morrison’s new ministry mixes stability with dashes of innovation, box ticking, and the rewarding of friends.

The Prime Minister has maintained his record number of women (seven) in cabinet, and created a new entry to the history books by appointing the first Indigenous cabinet minister, Ken Wyatt, who will become minister for Indigenous Australians.

Let’s hope this is not a poisoned chalice for Wyatt, who previously held aged care and Indigenous health in the outer ministry. It is one of the hardest jobs and the expectations and pressures on him from Indigenous people will be enormous.

Morrison has highlighted the priority he wants to give to improving program implementation, including and especially the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

Rewards for friends

Stuart Robert, one of the Morrison friends and supporters promoted in the reshuffle, becomes minister for government services and minister for the NDIS, and is elevated to cabinet.

Robert will oversee a new Services Australia agency to “drive greater efficiencies and integration” of service delivery.

Addressing senior public servants the other day, Morrison lectured them on the need for “congestion busting” in the bureaucracy. The NDIS has had serious teething problems. Time will show whether Robert, who moves from assistant treasurer, can deliver on improving delivery. He personally has been the centre of political controversies and last year had to pay back about $38,000 for excessive internet use at home.

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Ben Morton, a Morrison confidant who travelled with him in the campaign, becomes assistant minister to the prime minister and cabinet, one of those nice “in close” positions that are all about relationships.

Greg Hunt, much praised by Morrison during the election, adds to his health job the position of minister assisting the prime minister for the public service and cabinet, which gives him extra access to the PM’s ear.

Energy and emissions together

In a major move, Morrison has brought together energy and emissions reduction under Angus Taylor. This means Taylor, whose performance as energy minister has been underwhelming, has responsibility for the climate change area as well as continuing to try to achieve lower power prices.

The government skated through the election with climate change not having as much electoral bite as expected and high energy prices failing to extract the political toll they might have. But this is going to be a hard policy area in the coming term, as industry will be looking for more investment certainty, and consumers will want better results on prices. Taylor will need to lift his game.

As expected and despite Morrison’s commitment during the campaign, Melissa Price is out of environment and out of the cabinet. She’s now in the outer ministry, in defence industry, where she can continue to be neither seen nor heard. As Morrison put it with delicate understatement: “Melissa and I discussed her role and she asked to be given a new challenge and I was happy to give her one”.

Senators to New York, Washington

Two top level diplomatic jobs make space for appointments to the Senate. Mitch Fifield, who held communications, is off to be United Nations ambassador in New York, and Arthur Sinodinos, who seemed a monty for a cabinet post after his return from sick leave, will replace Joe Hockey in Washington. Morrison said Fifield’s exit was by choice – that he could have stayed in his portfolio.

Jim Molan, who unsuccessfully attempted to survive as a senator by appealing for people to vote for him “below the line”, will hope to get the NSW Senate spot; Sarah Henderson, who lost Corangamite, will seek preselection for the Victorian vacancy.

Paul Fletcher, with a background in Optus, takes over Fifield’s communications portfolio.

A minister for housing

The core economic team of Josh Frydenberg in treasury and Mathias Cormann in finance remains, with Michael Sukkar, from the hard right in Victoria, becoming assistant treasurer and housing minister. He will be in charge of implementing the Coalition’s election promise for a deposit guarantee for first home buyers.

Alan Tudge keeps population, cities and urban infrastructure while being promoted to cabinet.

Notably, responsibility for industrial relations (previously with the now-departed Kelly O’Dwyer), has been handed to Christian Porter, who stays attorney-general and becomes leader of the House. Porter immediately signalled his law-and-order priority in industrial relations: “my initial focus will be on the law enforcement aspects of the portfolio, ensuring adherence with Australia’s industrial relations laws, particularly on building sites across Australia”.

Promotions for women

Of the females in cabinet Marise Payne, who retains foreign affairs, is the new minister for women, while Michaelia Cash, who was in a heap of trouble last term, has employment, skills, small and family business, gaining employment.

As he promised, Morrison has elevated Linda Reynolds, whom he appointed to cabinet in March, to defence, formerly held by Christopher Pyne, who left parliament at the election. This is a huge job for Reynolds, regardless of her background in the military. Alex Hawke, who is close to Morrison, becomes assistant defence minister, and minister for international development and the Pacific.

Sussan Ley is back in cabinet after a break, taking the downsized environment portfolio. Anne Ruston is promoted to cabinet, as minister for families and social services. Karen Andrews remains in industry and in cabinet.

Victorian senator Jane Hume, with a background in the superannuation industry, becomes an assistant minister in that area; former whip Nola Marino also becomes an assistant minister.

Fewer Nationals

The Nationals have lost a cabinet position, going from five to four – this results automatically from the change in their ratio within the Coalition – despite the fact they did well at the election.

Morrison confirmed that McCormack chose who went into the portfolios the Nationals have. Nationals sources say McCormack pressed for a better deal on portfolios, Liberal sources deny this.

Nationals deputy leader Bridget McKenzie has got agriculture (first womanin that job), which means David Littleproud, who previously held agriculture and water resources, ends up with water resources, drought and other bits and pieces.

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Among those not moving, Peter Dutton stays in home affairs, Dan Tehan in education and Simon Birmingham in trade.

Morrison has put his stamp on his team without being radical. Notably, no one was dumped to the backbench.

And the chance of an early return for parliament

Meanwhile Morrison also hinted he was hoping that, despite the current advice, there was a chance parliament could be brought back before July 1 to pass the tax cuts so the first tranche could be delivered from then.

He told his news conference:

We are awaiting advice from the [Australian Electoral Commission] as to when the return of writs will be provided.

At present they’re saying that’s June 28 and there’s a possibility of that occurring earlier. That presents different opportunities for when [we] might be able to recall parliament.

Delivering those tax cuts right on time is something Morrison would really like to do. It’s a fair bet the AEC is being urged strongly to “deliver” those writs early, if it’s humanely possible.

Meanwhile on the Labor side, Richard Marles is now assured of becoming deputy leader to Anthony Albanese, after Clare O’Neil – who like Marles is from the Victorian right – said on Sunday she would not contest the deputy leadership.

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For the fridge door:

pm.gov.au

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Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Phubbing (phone snubbing) happens more in the bedroom than when socialising with friends

Some social situations are more conducive to phubbing than others.
Shutterstock

Yeslam Al-Saggaf, Charles Sturt University

Have you ever been around people who spend more time looking at their phone than they do at you? Then you know what it feels like to be “phubbed” – and you’re probably guilty of doing it yourself.

Phubbing is the practice of looking at your phone while in the presence of others. And as smartphones become ever more entwined in the everyday lives of Australians, phubbing has become so common that many people think it’s normal.

People phub during work meetings, while socialising with friends at cafés, while having dinner with their family, while attending lectures and even while in bed.

But how common is phubbing in Australia? And in what social situations is it most prevalent?

To find out, we surveyed 385 people and asked them how often they look at their smartphones while having face-to-face conversations with others. They recorded their answers as: never, rarely, sometimes, often, or all the time.

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We’re more likely to phub family than colleagues

We found 62% of those surveyed reported looking at their smartphone while having a face-to-face conversation with another person or persons.

Gender made no difference to how often someone phubbed. Neither did geography, with people living in the city and the country phubbing equally as often. But younger people phubbed others more frequently than older people. And people phubbed their partners most of all.

https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/jpObh/2/

The study also revealed smartphone users phubbed their parents and children more frequently than they phubbed their colleagues at work, clients and customers. These findings suggest a professional attitude towards using the smartphone in the workplace.

We phub more in bed than when socialising

Some social situations are more conducive to phubbing than others.

We found people phubbed each other more when commuting together on public transport, during work coffee or lunch breaks, when in bed with their partners, when travelling together in private transport and when socialising with friends.

People were less likely to phub others during meetings, during meal times with family, and during lectures and classes.

https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/rCAbg/1/

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Boredom isn’t the main reason people phub

We were interested in finding out whether boredom plays a role in phubbing behaviour so we asked our survey participants to complete an eight-item Boredom Proneness Scale.

Sample questions included “I find it hard to entertain myself” and “many things I have to do are repetitive and monotonous.”

We found boredom did explain why people phub, but that the influence of boredom is very small. Other factors, such as the “fear of missing out” (FOMO), lack of self-control, and internet addiction may play a more important role in phubbing behaviour.

The effect of phubbing depends on the situation

Looking at the smartphone while a person is having a face-to-face conversation with another person is a relatively new phenomenon. While it may violate some people’s expectations, it’s no simple task to categorise the behaviour as good or bad.

One theory suggests that when people get phubbed they might judge the behaviour according to how important the phubber is to them. For example, phubbing among friends is probably more acceptable than a subordinate phubbing a manager during a work-related meeting.

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While that might be good news for the workforce, it’s not great for close relationships. Phubbing partners can make them feel less important and this can decrease the satisfaction with the relationship. In the case of children, especially those at a vulnerable age, phubbing them can make them feel unloved, which can have a detrimental effect on their well-being.

Our findings can be used to inform programs, policies and campaigns that aim at addressing the phubbing phenomenon.

It’s clear from the research smartphone users are more likely to phub those who are closely related to them than those less close to them. So next time you get phubbed when you are out with someone, take it as a compliment – it could mean they consider you a close friend.

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The research discussed in this article will be published in the Proceedings of the 2018 International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS).

Yeslam Al-Saggaf, Associate Professor, Charles Sturt University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Company boards are stacked with friends of friends so how can we expect change?

Sherene Smith, RMIT University

Social connections drive board appointments and more than two-thirds of directors in the 200 largest public companies are on the board of multiple companies. So whoever replaces ex-AMP chairwoman Catherine Brenner will likely be drawn from a small pool of people.

Brenner resigned after the Financial Services Royal Commission heard AMP had misled regulators, among a number of other scandals.

Treasurer Scott Morrison expects more resignations at the Commonwealth Bank following a damning report from the banking regulator.

I’ve interviewed directors, as well as looked at data from ongoing surveys of Australia’s top 200 public companies, and found there aren’t a lot of outsiders.

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We can see this anecdotally as well. ANZ chairman David Gonski is a mentor to ex-AMP chairwoman Catherine Brenner. Gonski was also chairman of Coca-Cola Amatil when Brenner was appointed to the board in 2008.

Meanwhile Brenner’s sister-in-law, Maxine Brenner, sits on the boards of Orica Ltd, Origin Ltd and Qantas Airways.

The corporate governance crisis in Australia will not be solved by greater gender diversity on boards or director independence given how many directors sit on multiple boards and how important social connections are to get there. It shows there truly is no diversity or independence on Australian company boards.

Board diversity is barely improving

Women held just 18.1% of the board seats in ASX100 companies in 2012. This improved marginally to 25.2% by 2015.

In 2015, 58% of the directors in the ASX100 (the 100 largest companies on the ASX) and 49% in the ASX200 (the 200 largest) were personally connected to the companies. This means they were either a substantial shareholder, supplier, customer, former executive, founder, adviser or had “a material contract” with the company on which board they served.

Having a vested interest in a company can impair a director’s judgment. It may motivate a director to serve their own interests and not look after the best interests of a company and its stakeholders, as seen with the failure of Enron and HIH Australia.

Excluding outsiders

My interviews with directors suggest that board members are recruited in a fashion that excludes qualified “outsiders”. For instance, one director told me that identifying the most qualified person was not necessarily the focus of recruitment:

What was decided was that those of us who were at the board could look at who we knew … I was not comfortable with that process and I fought that process and didn’t win. My preference was that we advertise for appointed members, but the feeling around the table was we would rather have people we know rather than people who come from an ad, and I didn’t get far pushing that change. I felt it was a boys’ club and I wasn’t happy with it. Being honest, it wasn’t casting the net wide enough.

When I pressed my interviewees on how they achieved board membership, many reflected on skills, qualification and experience. However, when the interviewees spoke about recruiting new board members the process is unstructured, featuring factors such as “reputation” and “background”. One interviewee said:

The background of the candidate is very important so you feel comfortable, or you feel there’s less chance of making a mistake if you choose this person.

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My research found that the social identity of candidates is a significant criterion in the selection of Australian company boards. Closed social networks are the primary means of identifying new board members.

What attempts there are to increase diversity and independence are narrowly focused on eliminating the “boys’ club” by having more females on boards.

This violates discrimination legislation that states recruitment should be open and accessible, based on clear assessment of skills, training and relevant experience.

The use of closed networks in the recruitment and selection of board members also creates other problems related to “group think”. Group think creates a situation where board members are more concerned with being a liked and connected member of a particular social group. As a result members will conform to the status quo, which guarantees them membership perks such as highly paid directorship roles.

A direct outcome of the group think mentality are boards signing off on questionable business practices as we currently see in the banking sector. Coupled with a self-regulated system this is a recipe for disaster.

Sherene Smith, PhD student, RMIT University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Your online privacy depends as much on your friends’ data habits as your own

Many social media users have been shocked to learn the extent of their digital footprint.
Shutterstock

Vincent Mitchell, University of Sydney; Andrew Stephen, University of Oxford, and Bernadette Kamleitner, Vienna University of Economics and Business

In the aftermath of revelations about the alleged misuse of Facebook user data by Cambridge Analytica, many social media users are educating themselves about their own digital footprint. And some are shocked at the extent of it.

Last week, one user took advantage of a Facebook feature that enables you to download all the information the company stores about you. He found his call and SMS history in the data dump – something Facebook says is an opt-in feature for those using Messenger and Facebook Lite on Android.

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This highlights an issue that we don’t talk about enough when it comes to data privacy: that the security of our data is dependent not only on our own vigilance, but also that of those we interact with.

It’s easy for friends to share our data

In the past, personal data was either captured in our memories or in physical objects, such as diaries or photo albums. If a friend wanted data about us, they would have to either observe us or ask us for it. That requires effort, or our consent, and focuses on information that is both specific and meaningful.

Nowadays, data others hold about us is given away easily. That’s partly because the data apps ask for is largely intangible and invisible, as well as vague rather than specific.

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What’s more, it doesn’t seem to take much to get us to give away other people’s data in return for very little, with one study finding 98% of MIT students would give away their friends’ emails when promised free pizza.

Other studies have shown that collaborating in folders on cloud services, such as Google Drive, can result in privacy losses that are 39% higher due collaborators installing third-party apps you wouldn’t choose to install yourself. Facebook’s data download tool poses another risk in that once the data is taken out of Facebook it becomes even easier to copy and distribute.

This shift from personal to interdependent online privacy reliant on our friends, family and colleagues is a seismic one for the privacy agenda.

How much data are we talking about?

With more than 3.5 million apps on Google Play alone, the collection of data from our friends via back-door methods is more common than we might think. The back-door opens when you press “accept” to permissions to give access to your contacts when installing an app.

WhatsApp might have your contact information even if you aren’t a registered user.
Screen Shot at 1pm on 26 March 2018

Then the data harvesting machinery begins its work – often in perpetuity, and without us knowing or understanding what will be done with it. More importantly, our friends never agreed to us giving away their data. And we have a lot of friends’ data to harvest.

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Explainer: what is differential privacy and how can it protect your data?

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The average Australian has 234 Facebook friends. Large-scale data collection is easy in an interconnected world when each person who signs up for an app has 234 friends, and each of them has 234 and, so on. That’s how Cambridge Analytica was apparently able to collect information on up to 50 million users, with permission from just 270,000.

Add to that the fact that the average person uses nine different apps on a daily basis. Once installed, some of these apps can harvest data on a daily basis without your friends knowing and 70% of apps share it with third parties.

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7 in 10 smartphone apps share your data with third-party services

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We’re more likely to refuse data requests that are specific

Around 60% of us never, or only occasionally, review the privacy policy and permissions requested by an app before downloading. And in our own research conducted with a sample of 287 London business students, 96% of participants failed to realise the scope of all the information they were giving away.

However, this can be changed by making a data request more specific – for example, by separating out “contacts” from “photos”. When we asked participants if they had the right to give all the data on their phone, 95% said yes. But when they focused on just contacts, this decreased to 80%.

We can take this further with a thought experiment. Imagine if an app asked you for your “contacts, including your grandmother’s phone number and your daughter’s photos”. Would you be more likely to say no? The reality of what you are actually giving away in these consent agreements becomes more apparent with a specific request.

The silver lining is more vigilance

This new reality not only threatens moral codes and friendships, but can cause harm from hidden viruses, malware, spyware or adware. We may also be subject to prosecution as in a recent German case in which a judge ruled that giving away your friend’s data on Whatsapp without their permission was wrong.

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Australia should strengthen its privacy laws and remove exemptions for politicians

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Although company policies on privacy can help, these are difficult to police. Facebook’s “platform policy” at the time the Cambridge Analytica data was harvested only allowed the collection of friends’ data to improve the user experience of an app, while preventing it from being sold on or used for advertising. But this puts a huge burden on companies to police, investigate and enforce these policies. It’s a task few can afford, and even a company the size of Facebook failed.

The silver lining to the Cambridge Analytica case is that more and more people are recognising that the idea of “free” digital services is an illusion. The price we pay is not only our own privacy, but the privacy of our friends, family and colleagues.

Vincent Mitchell, Professor of Marketing, University of Sydney; Andrew Stephen, L’Oréal Professor of Marketing & Associate Dean of Research, University of Oxford, and Bernadette Kamleitner, , Vienna University of Economics and Business

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

How to Loose Friends

Antisocial Social Networking

The link below is to an article that takes a look at ‘antisocial’ social networking and social networks.

For more visit:
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jun/01/antisocial-networks-social-media-private-thoughts-apps-distance-online-friends-technology