Journal Articles

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://mro.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/7915

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    Living Through Food Rations: A Culture-Centered Study With Rohingya Refugees
    (USC Annenberg Press, 2025-07-07) Rahman MM; Dutta MJ; Elers P
    The Rohingya people, an Indo-Aryan Muslim ethnic group from Myanmar, have faced decades of discrimination and repression, rendering them the world’s largest stateless community. Grounded in the culture-centered approach, a critical methodology that positions culture, structure, and agency in dialectical relationships, this study explores the issue of food scarcity among Rohingya people residing in refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Drawing from ethnographic research and 41 in-depth interviews with Rohingya refugees within these camps, 3 key themes were identified: Inadequate access to food, monotonous and culturally inappropriate food, and resorting to selling food. These findings depict how food scarcity is a direct contributor to poor health and works to inhibit agency in the pursuit of health and well-being in the refugee camps, informing a discussion about the interplay of communicative and material inequalities.
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    Anticolonialism and qualitative methods for culture-centered interventions
    (Oxford University Press, 2025-08) Dutta MJ; Basu A; Kaur-Gill S; Dutta D; Pal M; Basnyat I; Metuamate S; Pokaia V; Elers P; Mandal I; Mandi R; Baskey P; Mookerjee D; Sastry S; Robb J; Carter A
    In this essay, we a collective of Indigenous, Black, and migrant Global South scholars engaged in experiments with the culture-centered approach (CCA) draw on our lived experiences amidst struggles against land grab, neoliberal extractivism, and capitalist exploitation to outline a framework for qualitative methods as anticolonial politics. We begin by exploring the interplays of colonialism, imperialism, and racial capitalism that have shaped the origins and uses of qualitative methods toward serving extractive agendas of global capital. This critique serves as the basis for outlining the key principles of the CCA, turning to voice, storytelling, and embodied action as the basis for situating qualitative methods amidst anticolonial struggles that resist settler colonialism and extractive neoliberal neocolonialism. Through our review of diverse culture-centered interventions, we explore the roles of voice infrastructures in anticolonial resistance, outlining the contribution made by the CCA to decolonizing research methods by offering a theoretical-methodological framework for communication interventions for social justice.
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    Preventing Violence in the Disability Margins: A Culture-Centered Study in Aotearoa
    (y Oxford University Press on behalf of International Communication Association, 2025-07-13) Dutta MJ; Elers P; Zorn A; Brey S; Metuamate S; Pokaia V; Jayan P; Rahman M; Hashim S; Liu J; Nematollahi N; Sharif ASBM; Teikmata-Tito C; Whittfield F; Holdaway S; Jackson D; Kerr B; Raharuhi I
    Disabled people are overrepresented as victims of sexual violence and family violence, but are often excluded from research and the development of communication campaigns, laws, and interventions. Grounded in the culture-centered approach, we undertook 77 qualitative interviews with predominantly Māori (Indigenous) and low-income disabled individuals to identify primary prevention needs for reducing family and sexual violence. Participants articulated disability as being structural, intersectional, and layered with erasure, contributing to conditions that perpetuate violence. Erasure and the resulting loss of agency were pervasive across diverse disabilities and participant groups, with Māori bearing a disproportionate burden. Emergent in the participants’ narratives were strategies around addressing communication inequalities and grounding prevention resources within local community contexts, set against structural determinants of violence perpetuated by the settler colonial State. This study challenges the hegemonic approach to addressing sexual violence and family violence, revealing a relationship between communicative and material forms of violence.
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    Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE): organizing to transform the social determinants of health
    (Taylor and Francis Group on behalf of the National Communication Association, 2025-04-04) Dutta M; Pokaia V; Metuamate S; Mandal I; Baskey P; Mandi R; Elers P; Rahman M; Jayan P; Pattanaik S
    This essay outlines the organizing work of the Center for Culture-Centred Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE) in mobilizing for social justice. Conceptualizing health in relationship to justice, the academic-activist-community partnerships built by CARE explore the organizing processes through which communities at the margins own voice infrastructures in seeking structural transformation.
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    'Barely keeping the wheels on the trolley': A qualitative study of the New Zealand COVID Tracer App
    (Elsevier Ltd., 2024-09-01) Elers P; Derrett S; Emery T; Chambers T
    Digital contact tracing apps were developed to help control the spread of COVID-19 but research exploring these apps has underrepresented both 'at-risk' communities and contact tracers. Our study examines perspectives of the New Zealand COVID Tracer app among 53 participants, comprising policy advisors, contact tracers, and Māori, Pacific, and disability stakeholders, underpinned by the theory of social construction of which positions technology within the social context in which it evolves, operates, and is negotiated. Although community stakeholders believed the app helped safeguard communities from COVID-19, the health officials' views on the app's usefulness in contact tracing varied. Participants who oversaw the app's technical development generally perceived it as being more useful, particularly regarding Bluetooth proximity detection, in contrast with contact tracers' perceptions. The findings highlight a disconnection between public sentiment and operational reality in the use of the app and the need for improved collaboration and consultation in future contact tracing responses.
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    An evaluation of the population uptake and contact tracer utilisation of the Covid-19 Bluetooth Exposure Notification Framework in New Zealand
    (Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Public Health Association of Australia, 2024-11-05) Chambers T; Anglemyer A; Chen A; Atkinson J; Elers P; Baker MG
    Objective: Our primary research objective was to assess the population uptake and contact tracer utilisation of the Bluetooth function of the New Zealand Covid Tracer App (NZCTA) throughout the pandemic. Methods: We adopted a retrospective cohort study design using all diagnosed COVID-19 community cases from December 12, 2020 to February 16, 2022. Results: At its height, more than 60 % of the eligible population had the Bluetooth function of NZCTA activated. However, only an estimated 2.2 % of the population was able to fully participate. Cases managed by the national case investigation service were 17 times (aRR 17.54, 95%CI: 13.02-23.90) and 9 times (aRR 9.27, 95%CI: 6.91, 12.76) more likely to generate a Bluetooth token than cases managed by local public health units during the Delta and Omicron periods, respectively. Conclusions: The Bluetooth functionality of the NZCTA likely had a low impact on the pandemic response in NZ despite its exceptionally high levels of public uptake. The primary reason for the lack of impact was the low utilisation by contact tracers. Implications for public health: The results highlight the need for greater consultation and collaboration with the public health sector during the development and implementation of digital contact tracing tools.
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    Does student sampling impact our understanding of argumentativeness and verbal aggressiveness?
    (Taylor and Francis Group on behalf of the American Forensic Association, 2024-08-17) Croucher SM; Kelly S; Elers P; Jackson K; Nguyen T
    Student samples are regularly used in research. While student samples are convenient and easy to access, the use of such samples has been criticized for exposing theories and research to internal validity threats, as students are not representative of the general population. Using argumentativeness and verbal aggressiveness as contexts for analysis, this study explores the extent to which student and non-student samples differ in published empirical research. We found that in the case of the original verbal aggression and argumentativeness measures, sample type did not moderate the means among argumentativeness and verbal aggressiveness studies. We discuss the implications of these findings in terms of student vs. non-student samples.
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    Culturally Centering the Voices of Transgender Sex Workers in Singapore: Health, Materiality and Violence.
    (Taylor and Francis Group, 2024-06-25) Dutta MJ; Mahtani R; Ho V; Sherqueshaa S; Thomas S; Jalleh-Hosey AA; Pitaloka D; Zapata D; Elers P
    The transgender sex worker experience of health in Singapore is multidimensional, working at the intersections of culture, social class, and gendered marginalization. Drawing on in-depth interviews with transgender sex workers in the context of Singapore's extreme neoliberalism and located within a larger culture-centered intervention that emerged through an academic-activist-community partnership, this study foregrounds the everyday meanings of health among transgender sex workers who are marginalized. We offer a discursive register for theorizing violence as disruption of health. Participants narrate health as the negotiation of stigmas coded into their everyday lives, the forms of material violence they experience, and the struggles with accessing secure housing. The theorizing of violence as threat to health by transgender sex workers shapes the health advocacy and health activism that takes the form of a 360 degrees campaign. This essay pushes the literature on the culture-centered approach (CCA) by centering voice as the basis for structurally transformative articulations amidst neoliberal authoritarianism.
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    Barriers to adopting digital contact tracing for COVID-19: Experiences in New Zealand
    (John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2024-04-01) Elers P; Emery T; Derrett S; Chambers T
    Background Digital contact tracing (DCT) was a central component of the global response to containing COVID-19. Research has raised concerns that DCT could exacerbate inequities, yet the experiences of diverse communities at greater risk from COVID-19 are typically underrepresented. Methods The present study aimed to understand the perceived barriers to the adoption of the app amongst Māori, Pasifika, and disabled people. Focus groups and interviews were undertaken with Māori, Pasifika, and disability sector stakeholders and community participants. Results Participants (n = 34) generally expressed willingness to utilise DCT and support its adoption within the communities. Simultaneously, participants revealed how the app could marginalise community members who struggled with the usability and those distrusting of the government's COVID-19 interventions. Conclusions The findings highlight how addressing communication inequality can assist in the development of contact-tracing responses that are both effective and equitable. The study provides insights about the role of information and communication technologies as health resources. Patient or Public Contribution Consulting with members of the target communities was central throughout the present study, including recommendations for potential participants, participation in interviews and sharing early findings for feedback. This study reports on focus groups and interviews with individuals from Māori and disability sectors.
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    Situating Health Experiences: A Culture-Centered Interrogation
    (Taylor and Francis Group, 2023-12-22) Elers P; Dutta MJ
    Culture-centered studies of health communication de-center the theorization of health as an individual behavior and reveal the structural conditions that shape inequalities in health outcomes. The present study examines the ways in which space and housing shape experiences of health in a low-income site in Auckland undergoing radical redevelopment. We draw from a culture-centered project undertaken in 2018-2021 predominantly among Māori and Pasifika peoples involving 60 initial in-depth interviews, seven focus groups, a series of filmed interviews, and 32 additional in-depth interviews conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic. The residents' narratives foregrounded the detrimental health impact of inadequate housing, financial constraints, transience, and displacement that severs ties to place and community. These findings reveal the relationship between housing challenges, economic marginalization, and neoliberal capitalism, highlighting the need for policy interventions to address housing as a fundamental determinant of health disparities among marginalized communities.