IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jscscx/v7y2018i7p114-d157929.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Children’s Personal Data: Discursive Legitimation Strategies of Private Residential Care Institutions on the Kenyan Coast

Author

Listed:
  • Njeri Chege

    (Institute of Education, Johannes Gutenberg University, 55099 Mainz, Germany)

Abstract

This article looks at how charity organizations running private residential child care institutions on the Kenyan coast make use of the personal data of children in their care, as a means of securing and maintaining the support of donors from the global North. The strategy involves the online showcasing of children’s profiles—individual children’s photos, accompanied by their names, birth dates, annual development, and their emotion-inducing personal and/or family histories are posted on the respective organizations’ websites, making them accessible to the global public. I analyze and problematize this practice, positing that while it explicitly serves fund-raising purposes and is motivated by the search for cost-effective fund-raising-oriented communication, at a more implicit level, it is equally a strategy used to discursively legitimize the organizations and their child ‘rescue’ activities, within the contemporary climate of deinstitutionalization. This strategy results in a violation of children’s rights; has ethical implications; and is not without consequences for the concerned children’s well-being.

Suggested Citation

  • Njeri Chege, 2018. "Children’s Personal Data: Discursive Legitimation Strategies of Private Residential Care Institutions on the Kenyan Coast," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 7(7), pages 1-19, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:7:y:2018:i:7:p:114-:d:157929
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/7/7/114/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/7/7/114/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Daniel Västfjäll & Paul Slovic & Marcus Mayorga & Ellen Peters, 2014. "Compassion Fade: Affect and Charity Are Greatest for a Single Child in Need," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(6), pages 1-10, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Njeri Chege & Stephen Ucembe, 2020. "Kenya’s Over-Reliance on Institutionalization as a Child Care and Child Protection Model: A Root-Cause Approach," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 9(4), pages 1-17, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sudeep Bhatia & Lukasz Walasek & Paul Slovic & Howard Kunreuther, 2021. "The More Who Die, the Less We Care: Evidence from Natural Language Analysis of Online News Articles and Social Media Posts," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 41(1), pages 179-203, January.
    2. Heizler, Odelia & Israeli, Osnat, 2021. "The identifiable victim effect and public opinion toward immigration; a natural experiment study," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 93(C).
    3. Barrafrem, Kinga & Västfjäll, Daniel & Tinghög, Gustav, 2021. "The arithmetic of outcome editing in financial and social domains," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    4. Emil Persson & David Andersson & Lovisa Back & Thomas Davidson & Emma Johannisson & Gustav Tinghög, 2018. "Discrepancy between Health Care Rationing at the Bedside and Policy Level," Medical Decision Making, , vol. 38(7), pages 881-887, October.
    5. Arvid Erlandsson, 2021. "Seven (weak and strong) helping effects systematically tested in separate evaluation, joint evaluation and forced choice," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 16(5), pages 1113-1154, September.
    6. Erlandsson, Arvid & Västfjäll, Daniel & Sundfelt, Oskar & Slovic, Paul, 2016. "Argument-inconsistency in charity appeals: Statistical information about the scope of the problem decrease helping toward a single identified victim but not helping toward many non-identified victims ," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 126-140.
    7. Branden B. Johnson & Adam M. Finkel, 2023. "Sensitivity to scope in estimating the social benefits of prolonging lives for regulatory decisions using national stated preference tradeoffs," Environment Systems and Decisions, Springer, vol. 43(3), pages 509-528, September.
    8. Butts, Marcus M. & Lunt, Devin C. & Freling, Traci L. & Gabriel, Allison S., 2019. "Helping one or helping many? A theoretical integration and meta-analytic review of the compassion fade literature," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 16-33.
    9. Stephan Dickert & Janet Kleber & Daniel Västfjäll & Paul Slovic, 2016. "Mental Imagery, Impact, and Affect: A Mediation Model for Charitable Giving," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(2), pages 1-15, February.
    10. repec:cup:judgdm:v:16:y:2021:i:5:p:1113-1154 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Jonathan B. Wiener, 2020. "Learning to Manage the Multirisk World," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 40(S1), pages 2137-2143, November.
    12. Pellegrin, Claire & Grolleau, Gilles & Mzoughi, Naoufel & Napoleone, Claude, 2018. "Does the Identifiable Victim Effect Matter for Plants? Results From a Quasi-experimental Survey of French Farmers," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 106-113.
    13. Hajdi Moche & Tom Gordon-Hecker & Tehila Kogut & Daniel Västfjäll, 2022. "Thinking, good and bad? Deliberative thinking and the singularity effect in charitable giving," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 17(1), pages 14-30, January.
    14. Shreedhar, Ganga & Mourato, Susana, 2019. "Experimental Evidence on the Impact of Biodiversity Conservation Videos on Charitable Donations," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 158(C), pages 180-193.
    15. Jan Schmitz, 2021. "Is Charitable Giving a Zero-Sum Game? The Effect of Competition Between Charities on Giving Behavior," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(10), pages 6333-6349, October.
    16. Andrews, Mary E. & Mattan, Bradley D. & Richards, Keana & Moore-Berg, Samantha L. & Falk, Emily B., 2022. "Using first-person narratives about healthcare workers and people who are incarcerated to motivate helping behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 299(C).
    17. Paul Slovic, 2020. "Risk Perception and Risk Analysis in a Hyperpartisan and Virtuously Violent World," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 40(S1), pages 2231-2239, November.
    18. Abhishek Bhati & Ruth K. Hansen, 2020. "A literature review of experimental studies in fundraising," Journal of Behavioral Public Administration, Center for Experimental and Behavioral Public Administration, vol. 3(1).
    19. repec:cup:judgdm:v:14:y:2019:i:2:p:187-198 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. repec:cup:judgdm:v:17:y:2022:i:1:p:14-30 is not listed on IDEAS
    21. Yossi Hasson & Einat Amir & Danit Sobol-Sarag & Maya Tamir & Eran Halperin, 2022. "Using performance art to promote intergroup prosociality by cultivating the belief that empathy is unlimited," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-15, December.
    22. Marek Jenöffy-Lochau, 2023. "The Impact of a Photo on Decisions," Working Papers hal-04136560, HAL.
    23. Kim, Minseong & Koo, Dong-Woo, 2020. "Visitors’ pro-environmental behavior and the underlying motivations for natural environment: Merging dual concern theory and attachment theory," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 56(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:7:y:2018:i:7:p:114-:d:157929. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.