Michael Adorjan
Biographic Data
| ID | 224525 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Michael Adorjan |
| GIVEN NAMES | Michael |
| FAMILY NAME | Adorjan |
| SIGNATURE | ADORJAN M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Calgary |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1900-2087 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 35 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 88 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 34 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Ethical Processes and Dilemmas during Research with Youth on Cyber-Risk
In this article, we reflect on the ethical processes and dilemmas we encountered in almost a decade of qualitative research with teenagers about digital technologies and cyber-risk. Our research underscores both the opportunities and challenges of teenagers’ engagements with digital technologies, including cyberbullying and image-based sexual harassment and abuse (i.e., non-consensual sexting), on popular social media platforms. Our current resea…
Responding To Cyber Risk With Restorative Practices
Restorative practices are gaining traction as alternative approaches to student conflict and harm in schools, potentially surpassing disciplinary methods in effectiveness. In the current article, we contribute to the evolving understanding of restorative practices in schools by examining qualitative responses from educators regarding restorative interventions for online-mediated conflict and harm, including cyberbullying and sexting. Participants…
Perspectives on restorative practices and online-mediated harm in schools
While many schools have gravitated away from an emphasis on 'zero tolerance' discipline, embracing a range of 'restorative practices' (RP), only a handful of empirical studies have examined how RP have been received by educators. Moreover, frameworks which embrace RP in the classroom often neglect newer forms of online-mediated conflict and harm (e.g., cyberbullying, 'sexting'). The current study, drawing on 77 qualitative interviews with Canadia…
Correctional Officers and Social Media
In this article, we draw from 159 qualitative interviews with Canadian correctional officers (COs) exploring their experiences and attitudes regarding social media. We frame our study within the “synoptic” mode of surveillance and public visibility—referring to the many observing the few—impacting public safety personnel, exploring the perceived vulnerabilities of COs, including toward prisoners, management, the organization, and the public. We h…
Educators and synoptic prudentialism
Surveillance plays several interrelated and essential roles in contemporary education. In the current article, we explore the understandings and experiences of educators related to surveillance; especially the 'vertical' surveillance 'from below' students themselves direct towards educators both inside and outside of the classroom (referred to as 'sousveillance'). We also explore the prudential 'intrapersonal' and reflexive surveillance undertake…
Parental Technology Governance
Research on parental mediation of children’s online engagements situate historically longstanding anxieties within the dynamics of present-day information communications technologies (i.e., concerns over new “cyber risks,” as well as opportunities). Yet, there remains a lack of emphasis on children’s reactions to and experiences with parental strategies and responses. In the current article, we highlight research involving semi-structured focus …
The Gendered Dynamics of Sexting as Boundary Work
‘Sexting’ as a form of sexual expression and experimentation has grown increasingly ubiquitous among teens. In addition to fostering intimacy and closeness among selected partners, sexting between minors incurs considerable risks to youth mental, physical, social and emotional wellbeing. Current debates on sexting focus on the conflicting role of pressure and pleasure among youth. We highlight findings from 35 focus groups with Canadian teens exa…
Through the Social Problems Looking Glass
Smartphone and social media addiction
Addiction" to internet-connected technology continues to dominate media discourses of young people. Researchers have identified negative outcomes, including decreased mental health, resulting from anxieties related to technology, e.g., a fear of missing out and social connectivity related to online technologies. Not enough is known, however, regarding young people's own responses to these ideas. This paper highlights discussions with teenagers ar…
The rise and ongoing legacy of localism as collective identity in Hong Kong
China’s new National Security Law, enacted in Hong Kong on 30 June 2020, has amplified widespread concerns among the city’s population regarding the implications of this law. These concerns have at root anxieties related to Hong Kong’s resinicisation, referring to anxieties over Hong Kong's political and economic dependence on mainland China, including loyalty and patriotism towards the motherland. This paper explores these developments in relati…
Synoptic Prudentialism
This paper examines police officer perceptions of risk when using (often official police) social media sites. We argue that for police it is not the ‘few observing the many’ model of panoptic surveillance that matters most; rather, it is the synoptic gaze of the ‘many observing the few’ that matters most. We propose a new concept, that of synoptic prudentialism, which we argue involves an individual’s or organization’s reflexive actions and adjus…
We’re both here to do a job and that’s all that matters’
Reflecting on new trans prisoner placement policies within Canadian federal prisons, in light of recent changes instigated under the Canadian Liberal Trudeau government, we provide knowledge from cisgender correctional officer (CO) recruits regarding these policy changes and underscore their views of working with officers who identify as transgender. Canada’s new policies recognize the presence of trans prisoners and create new protocols accordin…
Time as Vernacular Resource
Agnostic Interactionism and Sensitizing Concepts in the 21st Century
In this paper, we reflect upon our experiences taking a graduate qualitative methodology course with Dr. William (Billy) Shaffir. We highlight Billy’s approach to ethnographic research and his declaration to “just do it.” Rather than just absorbing theoretical knowledge from the literature, Billy taught us to be wary of the dangers of a prior theorization and how it can distort rather than shed light on empirical investigations. Despite his bel…
Bert Spector, Constructing Crisis
A New Privacy Paradox? Youth Agentic Practices of Privacy Management Despite “Nothing to Hide” Online
Focus groups conducted with Canadian teenagers examining their perceptions and experiences with cyber risk, center on various privacy strategies geared for impression management across popular social network sites (SNS). We highlight privacy concerns as a primary reason for a gravitation away from Facebook toward newer, more popular sites such as Instagram and Snapchat, as well as debates about the permeability of privacy on Snapchat in particula…
Youth Responses to the Surveillance School
The recent rise of so-called ‘surveillance schools’ is often justified given the need to engender a safe and secure educational environment for students—a fusion of pedagogical and security motives. This article contributes knowledge regarding the attitudes and lived experiences of teenagers in response to school-based surveillance. Focus groups centre discussions on two areas: the effectiveness of policies regarding technology in the classroom a…
A Special Issue on the Sociology of Childhood and Youth in Canada
This is the introduction to a special issue, focusing on the sociology of chilhdhood and youth in Canada
Social Constructionism Now More Than Ever
If a girl's photo gets sent around, that's a way bigger deal than if a guy's photo gets sent around
Youth, particularly female teens, are encouraged to self-monitor and be responsible for their actions online in order to avoid harm from cyberbullying, ‘sexting,’ and other forms of cyber-risk. Highlighting findings from 35 focus groups with Canadian teens regarding sexting, we show the continued saliency of a gendered double standard applied to the online distribution of nudes. Our sample of male and female teens (n = 115) from urban and rural r…
From knowledge to action? The Youth Criminal Justice Act and use of extrajudicial measures in youth policing
Since its implementation, several studies have asserted that the Youth Criminal Justice Act [YCJA] (2003) has been successful in lessening the number of Canadian youth sent to court and later incarcerated. However, earlier work has not addressed the limitations of the YCJA in provinces where its provisions have only been partially implemented due to limited resources. Analyses of quantitative data derived from a survey of police officers in an At…
Youth perceptions of police in rural Atlantic Canada
Canadian research on public perceptions of police is limited, especially studies examining rural youth. Most research examining youth perceptions and experiences of police, both within and outside of Canada, has been conducted in urban areas. In this article, we highlight findings from a case study of rural youth that explores how youth in remote, rural areas perceive the police and the factors that shape their perceptions. We examine the influen…
Engaging with Ethics in International Criminological Research
Fandom and coercive empowerment
This article examines how the relationship between consumers and producers of cultural products is shaped by the proprietary nature of digital platforms. Drawing on 4 years of online observation and analysis, we examine the relationship between the producers of online Chinese fiction, amateur writers, and their consumers, that is, the fan communities of readers who respond to their work. Enabled by Chinese literary websites, readers act like spon…
Interpretive Sociology
Interpretive sociology, at heart, embraces the principle that social life is subjective and that those who systematically study social life should attend to how people make sense and interpret their social world, actions, and identities. Inspired by Max Weber, it has influenced the emergence of symbolic interactionism and ethnomethodology, among other hermeneutically focused sociological paradigms. Interpretive sociologists often employ ethnograp…
If a girl's photo gets sent around, that's a way bigger deal than if a guy's photo gets sent around
Youth, particularly female teens, are encouraged to self-monitor and be responsible for their actions online in order to avoid harm from cyberbullying, ‘sexting,’ and other forms of cyber-risk. Highlighting findings from 35 focus groups with Canadian teens regarding sexting, we show the continued saliency of a gendered double standard applied to the online distribution of nudes. Our sample of male and female teens (n = 115) from urban and rural r…
Igniting Constructionist Imaginations
Smartphone and social media addiction
Addiction" to internet-connected technology continues to dominate media discourses of young people. Researchers have identified negative outcomes, including decreased mental health, resulting from anxieties related to technology, e.g., a fear of missing out and social connectivity related to online technologies. Not enough is known, however, regarding young people's own responses to these ideas. This paper highlights discussions with teenagers ar…
Resinicization and Digital Citizenship in Hong Kong
Under the “one country, two systems” model fashioned after its handover to China in 1997, Hong Kong, a Special Administrative Region of China, is to retain its rule of law, capitalist system, and accompanying political and ideological independence. However, tensions remain centered on concerns held by many Hong Kong citizens over the “resinicization” of Hong Kong, related to anxieties regarding the putative erosion of political and ideological fr…
Stockholm Syndrome as Vernacular Resource
First coined in 1973 to describe a pathological response on the part of individuals involved in kidnapping or hostage-taking situations, the label “Stockholm syndrome” has since been used in a much broader range of contexts including reference to wife battering and human trafficking, and in debates about gender and race politics as well as international relations. Tracing the domain expansion of Stockholm syndrome since the 1970s, we examine how …
Colonial responses to youth crime in Hong Kong
This article examines colonial responses to youth crime in Hong Kong, focusing on the 1960s, when riots involving large numbers of youth drew concern among officials over spillover from the Cultural Revolution in Mainland China; and on the 1970s, when the Government initiated a program of state building focused on instilling citizen identification with Hong Kong, youth in particular. Elite reaction is examined through a series of Legislative Coun…
Unveiling the cloak of competence
A New Privacy Paradox? Youth Agentic Practices of Privacy Management Despite “Nothing to Hide” Online
Focus groups conducted with Canadian teenagers examining their perceptions and experiences with cyber risk, center on various privacy strategies geared for impression management across popular social network sites (SNS). We highlight privacy concerns as a primary reason for a gravitation away from Facebook toward newer, more popular sites such as Instagram and Snapchat, as well as debates about the permeability of privacy on Snapchat in particula…
Social Constructionism Now More Than Ever
The rise and ongoing legacy of localism as collective identity in Hong Kong
China’s new National Security Law, enacted in Hong Kong on 30 June 2020, has amplified widespread concerns among the city’s population regarding the implications of this law. These concerns have at root anxieties related to Hong Kong’s resinicisation, referring to anxieties over Hong Kong's political and economic dependence on mainland China, including loyalty and patriotism towards the motherland. This paper explores these developments in relati…
Time as Vernacular Resource
Making sense of Going Straight
While most research on desistance targets Western contexts, we offer a point of comparison through an examination of the experiences of a selected group of male ex-offenders upon their discharge from prison in Hong Kong. To achieve this aim, this qualitative study gives a detailed account of Hong Kong ex-prisoners’ accounts of desistance. Semi-structured interviews focusing on prisoner re-entry were conducted with 23 Hong Kong Chinese ex-prisoner…
Parental Technology Governance
Research on parental mediation of children’s online engagements situate historically longstanding anxieties within the dynamics of present-day information communications technologies (i.e., concerns over new “cyber risks,” as well as opportunities). Yet, there remains a lack of emphasis on children’s reactions to and experiences with parental strategies and responses. In the current article, we highlight research involving semi-structured focus …
The Gendered Dynamics of Sexting as Boundary Work
‘Sexting’ as a form of sexual expression and experimentation has grown increasingly ubiquitous among teens. In addition to fostering intimacy and closeness among selected partners, sexting between minors incurs considerable risks to youth mental, physical, social and emotional wellbeing. Current debates on sexting focus on the conflicting role of pressure and pleasure among youth. We highlight findings from 35 focus groups with Canadian teens exa…
Synoptic Prudentialism
This paper examines police officer perceptions of risk when using (often official police) social media sites. We argue that for police it is not the ‘few observing the many’ model of panoptic surveillance that matters most; rather, it is the synoptic gaze of the ‘many observing the few’ that matters most. We propose a new concept, that of synoptic prudentialism, which we argue involves an individual’s or organization’s reflexive actions and adjus…
Fandom and coercive empowerment
This article examines how the relationship between consumers and producers of cultural products is shaped by the proprietary nature of digital platforms. Drawing on 4 years of online observation and analysis, we examine the relationship between the producers of online Chinese fiction, amateur writers, and their consumers, that is, the fan communities of readers who respond to their work. Enabled by Chinese literary websites, readers act like spon…
Emotions Contests and Reflexivity in the News
The author explores how three Canadian newspapers address appropriate reactions to youth crime during the 1990s. While recent scholarship has emphasized the ways in which moral panics have become more complexly represented within mass media, the author pays attention to how such representational tactics are played out, drawing particular attention to emotional reactions to youth crime. Comparing and contrasting regional and national, as well as t…
Educators and synoptic prudentialism
Surveillance plays several interrelated and essential roles in contemporary education. In the current article, we explore the understandings and experiences of educators related to surveillance; especially the 'vertical' surveillance 'from below' students themselves direct towards educators both inside and outside of the classroom (referred to as 'sousveillance'). We also explore the prudential 'intrapersonal' and reflexive surveillance undertake…
Through the Social Problems Looking Glass
We’re both here to do a job and that’s all that matters’
Reflecting on new trans prisoner placement policies within Canadian federal prisons, in light of recent changes instigated under the Canadian Liberal Trudeau government, we provide knowledge from cisgender correctional officer (CO) recruits regarding these policy changes and underscore their views of working with officers who identify as transgender. Canada’s new policies recognize the presence of trans prisoners and create new protocols accordin…
Youth Responses to the Surveillance School
The recent rise of so-called ‘surveillance schools’ is often justified given the need to engender a safe and secure educational environment for students—a fusion of pedagogical and security motives. This article contributes knowledge regarding the attitudes and lived experiences of teenagers in response to school-based surveillance. Focus groups centre discussions on two areas: the effectiveness of policies regarding technology in the classroom a…
Interpretive Sociology
Interpretive sociology, at heart, embraces the principle that social life is subjective and that those who systematically study social life should attend to how people make sense and interpret their social world, actions, and identities. Inspired by Max Weber, it has influenced the emergence of symbolic interactionism and ethnomethodology, among other hermeneutically focused sociological paradigms. Interpretive sociologists often employ ethnograp…
The Lens of Victim Contests and Youth Crime Stat Wars
In this article I examine Canadian youth crime debates as a way to explore the connection between 'victim contests' and 'stat wars.' I address how constructing young offenders as either victims or victimizers generates 'victim contests,' which in turn serve as interpretive anchoring points shaping how youth crime statistics are interpreted. The numbers themselves do not matter, as underlying assumptions about young offender identity and culpabili…
Unveiling the cloak of competence
The Lens of Victim Contests and Youth Crime Stat Wars
In this article I examine Canadian youth crime debates as a way to explore the connection between 'victim contests' and 'stat wars.' I address how constructing young offenders as either victims or victimizers generates 'victim contests,' which in turn serve as interpretive anchoring points shaping how youth crime statistics are interpreted. The numbers themselves do not matter, as underlying assumptions about young offender identity and culpabili…
Emotions Contests and Reflexivity in the News
The author explores how three Canadian newspapers address appropriate reactions to youth crime during the 1990s. While recent scholarship has emphasized the ways in which moral panics have become more complexly represented within mass media, the author pays attention to how such representational tactics are played out, drawing particular attention to emotional reactions to youth crime. Comparing and contrasting regional and national, as well as t…
Making sense of Going Straight
While most research on desistance targets Western contexts, we offer a point of comparison through an examination of the experiences of a selected group of male ex-offenders upon their discharge from prison in Hong Kong. To achieve this aim, this qualitative study gives a detailed account of Hong Kong ex-prisoners’ accounts of desistance. Semi-structured interviews focusing on prisoner re-entry were conducted with 23 Hong Kong Chinese ex-prisoner…
Igniting Constructionist Imaginations
Stockholm Syndrome as Vernacular Resource
First coined in 1973 to describe a pathological response on the part of individuals involved in kidnapping or hostage-taking situations, the label “Stockholm syndrome” has since been used in a much broader range of contexts including reference to wife battering and human trafficking, and in debates about gender and race politics as well as international relations. Tracing the domain expansion of Stockholm syndrome since the 1970s, we examine how …
Colonial responses to youth crime in Hong Kong
This article examines colonial responses to youth crime in Hong Kong, focusing on the 1960s, when riots involving large numbers of youth drew concern among officials over spillover from the Cultural Revolution in Mainland China; and on the 1970s, when the Government initiated a program of state building focused on instilling citizen identification with Hong Kong, youth in particular. Elite reaction is examined through a series of Legislative Coun…
Responding to Youth Crime in Hong Kong
A society’s response to youth crime reveals much about its broader cultural values, social circumstances, and political affairs. This book examines reactions and policy responses to youth delinquency and crime in Hong Kong during its colonial and post-colonial periods, and in doing so, underscores the history of Hong Kong itself and its present-day circumstances. Exploring how officials have responded to youth crime in Hong Kong over time, this b…
Resinicization and Digital Citizenship in Hong Kong
Under the “one country, two systems” model fashioned after its handover to China in 1997, Hong Kong, a Special Administrative Region of China, is to retain its rule of law, capitalist system, and accompanying political and ideological independence. However, tensions remain centered on concerns held by many Hong Kong citizens over the “resinicization” of Hong Kong, related to anxieties regarding the putative erosion of political and ideological fr…
From Total Institution to Status Bloodbath
Erving Goff man has not only had a huge impact upon his home discipline of sociology but may be its most cited, as well as best known member ever. Nevertheless, Goff man continues to be heavily criticized by his fellow sociologists for his allegedly undecipherable and sloppy methods for conducting empirical research and constructing and accumulating general theory. We demonstrate here that while some of his specific practices were intuitive and u…
Engaging with Ethics in International Criminological Research
Fandom and coercive empowerment
This article examines how the relationship between consumers and producers of cultural products is shaped by the proprietary nature of digital platforms. Drawing on 4 years of online observation and analysis, we examine the relationship between the producers of online Chinese fiction, amateur writers, and their consumers, that is, the fan communities of readers who respond to their work. Enabled by Chinese literary websites, readers act like spon…
Interpretive Sociology
Interpretive sociology, at heart, embraces the principle that social life is subjective and that those who systematically study social life should attend to how people make sense and interpret their social world, actions, and identities. Inspired by Max Weber, it has influenced the emergence of symbolic interactionism and ethnomethodology, among other hermeneutically focused sociological paradigms. Interpretive sociologists often employ ethnograp…
From knowledge to action? The Youth Criminal Justice Act and use of extrajudicial measures in youth policing
Since its implementation, several studies have asserted that the Youth Criminal Justice Act [YCJA] (2003) has been successful in lessening the number of Canadian youth sent to court and later incarcerated. However, earlier work has not addressed the limitations of the YCJA in provinces where its provisions have only been partially implemented due to limited resources. Analyses of quantitative data derived from a survey of police officers in an At…
Youth perceptions of police in rural Atlantic Canada
Canadian research on public perceptions of police is limited, especially studies examining rural youth. Most research examining youth perceptions and experiences of police, both within and outside of Canada, has been conducted in urban areas. In this article, we highlight findings from a case study of rural youth that explores how youth in remote, rural areas perceive the police and the factors that shape their perceptions. We examine the influen…
A New Privacy Paradox? Youth Agentic Practices of Privacy Management Despite “Nothing to Hide” Online
Focus groups conducted with Canadian teenagers examining their perceptions and experiences with cyber risk, center on various privacy strategies geared for impression management across popular social network sites (SNS). We highlight privacy concerns as a primary reason for a gravitation away from Facebook toward newer, more popular sites such as Instagram and Snapchat, as well as debates about the permeability of privacy on Snapchat in particula…
Youth Responses to the Surveillance School
The recent rise of so-called ‘surveillance schools’ is often justified given the need to engender a safe and secure educational environment for students—a fusion of pedagogical and security motives. This article contributes knowledge regarding the attitudes and lived experiences of teenagers in response to school-based surveillance. Focus groups centre discussions on two areas: the effectiveness of policies regarding technology in the classroom a…
A Special Issue on the Sociology of Childhood and Youth in Canada
This is the introduction to a special issue, focusing on the sociology of chilhdhood and youth in Canada
Social Constructionism Now More Than Ever
If a girl's photo gets sent around, that's a way bigger deal than if a guy's photo gets sent around
Youth, particularly female teens, are encouraged to self-monitor and be responsible for their actions online in order to avoid harm from cyberbullying, ‘sexting,’ and other forms of cyber-risk. Highlighting findings from 35 focus groups with Canadian teens regarding sexting, we show the continued saliency of a gendered double standard applied to the online distribution of nudes. Our sample of male and female teens (n = 115) from urban and rural r…
Agnostic Interactionism and Sensitizing Concepts in the 21st Century
In this paper, we reflect upon our experiences taking a graduate qualitative methodology course with Dr. William (Billy) Shaffir. We highlight Billy’s approach to ethnographic research and his declaration to “just do it.” Rather than just absorbing theoretical knowledge from the literature, Billy taught us to be wary of the dangers of a prior theorization and how it can distort rather than shed light on empirical investigations. Despite his bel…
Bert Spector, Constructing Crisis
Smartphone and social media addiction
Addiction" to internet-connected technology continues to dominate media discourses of young people. Researchers have identified negative outcomes, including decreased mental health, resulting from anxieties related to technology, e.g., a fear of missing out and social connectivity related to online technologies. Not enough is known, however, regarding young people's own responses to these ideas. This paper highlights discussions with teenagers ar…
The rise and ongoing legacy of localism as collective identity in Hong Kong
China’s new National Security Law, enacted in Hong Kong on 30 June 2020, has amplified widespread concerns among the city’s population regarding the implications of this law. These concerns have at root anxieties related to Hong Kong’s resinicisation, referring to anxieties over Hong Kong's political and economic dependence on mainland China, including loyalty and patriotism towards the motherland. This paper explores these developments in relati…
Synoptic Prudentialism
This paper examines police officer perceptions of risk when using (often official police) social media sites. We argue that for police it is not the ‘few observing the many’ model of panoptic surveillance that matters most; rather, it is the synoptic gaze of the ‘many observing the few’ that matters most. We propose a new concept, that of synoptic prudentialism, which we argue involves an individual’s or organization’s reflexive actions and adjus…
Sociology (31 works) · Political science (23 works) · Psychology (18 works) · Law (14 works) · Criminology (13 works) · Social science (12 works) · Social Psychology (11 works) · Law (10 works) · Epistemology (9 works) · Public relations (9 works)