The social work academic community is currently considering and critiquing the idea of evidence-based practice (EBP). Given the vital part that practicum education plays in the social work profession, understanding the views of field instructors on this subject is essential. The George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University surveyed 283 field instructors within 180 agencies and found that the majority (87%, N=235) viewed it as a useful practice idea. However, most of the indicators employed to assess use of scientific evidence in social work practice revealed that it occurs too infrequently. A lack of time was reported as the greatest obstacle. recently, the social work academic community has been considering and critiquing the idea of evidence-based practice (EBP), an important paradigm shift designed to promote the consistent use of scientifically validated information and effective interventions in social work practice (

Year after year, the public has recognized nursing as the most trusted profession according to the annual survey conducted by Gallup regarding honesty and ethics of professions. 1 Yet, when 1,500 opinion leaders were asked who will have the most influence on healthcare reform, nurses ranked last after executives from the insurance, pharmaceutical, and healthcare industries; physicians; and patients. The leaders recognized that nurses could make a strong contribution, but faced barriers, including a perception that nurses aren't decision makers or revenue-generators. 2 Nurses can increase their voice in healthcare reform and in patient care and clinical management by using business skills to improve personal accountability. Developing a successful business plan, for example, can help you introduce and gain approval for a project. Objective rather than subjective, the business plan is a step-by-step format that includes the necessary facts, financial effect, and projected outcomes (see A business plan in action).The key components of a business plan are the executive summary, general description of the project, market analysis and plan, financial analysis and model, organization structure and operating plan, and evaluation plan. You can find suggested business plan outlines within your own organization, your professional organization, or online. Executive summaryAlthough the executive summary is placed first in the final document, it should be prepared last, after all components of the plan have been finalized. This summary provides a one-page synthesis and overview of the plan so that the reader can understand the plan's objective and the major steps required.

No abstract

Drawing on a qualitative analysis of 5996 tweets and 480 mainstream news stories about the Florida State University (FSU) and the Ohio State University (OSU) shootings, we examine who emerges as opinion leaders during crises, the kinds of narratives they help construct about school shootings, and the relative civility of these narratives. We find that the opinion leaders who emerge after a crisis are assumed to have local knowledge about the incident and/or are able to quickly curate information about the incident. In addition, we find that the quality of information spread by opinion leaders is critical to narrative construction and civility. The largely fact-based narratives associated with the FSU incident were far more civil than the OSU narratives, which were based on disinformation and polemics. We conclude the article by calling on scholars to take a more nuanced approach to conceptualizing and studying opinion leaders.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

This year's Communication, Information Technologies and Media Sociology (CITAMS) special issue of Information, Communication & Society received a record number of submissions. While a large number of high-quality submissions certainly made our jobs as editors difficult, it provided us an opportunity to spotlight the diversity of the work being done on ICTs as well as digital and mass media more generally. This, we believe, is particularly important to do in a quickly growing and changing area. The special issue includes theoretical papers, methodological papers, empirical papers, and research notes. Amidst these, we selected works with distinct theoretical orientations, a range of methodological approaches, and a myriad of empirical concerns. Theoretical contributions traverse science and technology studies (STS), social psychology, symbolic interaction, and broad debates about structure and agency. Methods represented in the issue include qualitative interviews, quantitative surveys, experimental design, and both 'big data' and 'small data' approaches to social media analysis. Authors use these methods to answer pressing research questions about artificial intelligence, education, digital inequality, media framing, and the interplay of racism and sexism online. We made a concerted effort to include work by scholars at different stages in their careers, doing research on different parts of the world and working inside as well as outside of academia. We open the issue with four papers presenting theoretical and methodological advances in ICT studies. The central theoretical and methodological concerns of these works feature in subsequent empirical papers and research notes within the issue, demonstrating their relevance to ongoing intellectual conversations. Attending to critical questions of theory and method is crucial for a rapidly changing field, as such work defines and refines the ways scholars approach dynamic objects of study. Locating agency remains an ongoing concern for sociologists and STS scholars theorizing human-technology relations. In the first theoretical paper, Maria Erofeeva reviews several approaches to agency, synthesizing them into a four-part model. Erofeeva draws on the ventriloqual perspective on communication, actor-network theory (ANT), and contemporary affordance theory. Distinguishing between inscription (built-in technological agencies) and attachment (human perceptions of technologies) the paper argues that the ventriloqual perspective is overly human-centred, ANT is overly object centered, and contemporary affordance theory strikes a human-technology balance but requires more explicit attention to how agency operates. Erofeeva uses existing empirical work