More than just audiences : Developing communitas and social inclusion through theatre participation for young people

In a Facebook conversation about theatre going by young people in Brisbane playwright Valerie Foley noted, “theatre in and of itself may not have the cultural value it once had”. This chapter explores how three Australian live theatre/performance events – World Theatre Festival (Brisbane 2011 and 2012), Backbone’s annual 2High Festival (Brisbane 2012) and Next Wave Festival (Melbourne 2012) - repositioned the value of live performing arts to develop social cohesion and wellbeing for young people. The chapter draws out how these performance events developed communitas (Turner 2012) for young audiences.

Women's perceptions of communication in pregnancy and childbirth: Influences on participation and satisfaction with care

In this study, 3531 Queensland women, who had recently given birth, completed a questionnaire that included questions about their participation in decision making during pregnancy, their ratings of client centred care and perceived quality of care. These data tested a version of Street’s (2001) linguistic model of patient participation in care (LMOPPC), adapted to the maternity context. We investigated how age and education influenced women’s perceptions of their participation and quality of care. Hierarchical multiple regressions revealed that women’s perceived ability to make decisions, and the extent of client-centred communication with maternity care providers were the most influential predictors of participation and perceived quality of care. Participation in care predicted perceived quality of care, but the influence of client-centred communication by a care provider and a woman’s confidence in decision making were stronger predictors of perceived quality of care. Age and education level were not important predictors. These findings extend and support the use of LMOPPC in the maternity context.

Active aging: Exploration into self-ratings of "being active," out-of-home physical activity, and participation among older Australian adults living in four different settings

We examined whether self-ratings of “being active” among older people living in four different settings (major city high and lower density suburbs, a regional city, and a rural area) were associated with out-of-home participation and outdoor physical activity. A mixed-methods approach (survey, travel diary, and GPS tracking over a one-week period) was used to gather data from 48 individuals aged over 55 years. Self-ratings of “being active” were found to be positively correlated with the number of days older people spent time away from home but unrelated to time traveled by active means (walking and biking). No significant differences in active travel were found between the four study locations, despite differences in their respective built environments.The findings suggest that additional strategies to the creation of “age-friendly” environments are needed if older people are to increase their levels of outdoor physical activity. “Active aging” promotion campaigns may need to explicitly identify the benefits of walking outdoors to ambulatory older people as a means of maintaining their overall health, functional ability, and participation within society in the long-term and also encourage the development of community-based programs in order to facilitate regular walking for this group.

Exploring the Potential to Educate “Good Citizens” through the Australian Civics and Citizenship Curriculum.

This chapter examines the ways in which notions of ‘a good citizen’ and ‘civic virtue’ have been conceptualized in the new Civics and Citizenship Curriculum for students in Years 3 – 10 in Australia. It argues that whilst Civics and Citizenship Education (CCE) has, over time and in various ways, been recognized as a significant aspect of Australian education, only recently has attention been given to the relational and multidimensional conceptions of citizenship. Considerations of ‘morality’, ‘a good citizen’ and ‘civic virtue’ offer possibilities to engage with multidimensional notions of citizenship, which acknowledge that citizenship perspectives can be affected by personal, social, spatial and temporary situations (Cogan & Derricott, 2000). In the current statement on national goals for schooling in Australia, which informed the development of CCE, the Melbourne Declaration (MCEETYA, 2008) called for young Australians to be educated to “act with moral and ethical integrity” and be “committed to national values of democracy, equity and justice, and participate in Australia’s civic life” (MCEETYA, 2008, pp. 8–9). The chapter claims that this maximal emphasis (McLaughlin, 1992), based on active, values based and interpretive approaches to democratic citizenship which encourage debate and participation in civil society, was evident in the new Civics and Citizenship Curriculum. However, it contends that the recommendations of the recent Review of the Australian Curriculum: Final report (Australian Government, 2014a & b), will now limit CCE’s potential to deliver the sort of active and informed citizenship heralded by the Melbourne Declaration. This is because the Review advocates for a content-focused minimal (McLaughlin, 1992) emphasis on civic knowledge, with diminished attention to citizenship participation and processes. In doing so, the Review foregrounds conceptions of the ‘good citizen’ in more limited terms of responsibility, obligations and compliance with the status quo.

Democratic and participatory citizenship: Youth action for sustainability in Australia

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical analysis of recent examples of action competence among young people engaged in democratic participatory action in sustainability programs in Australia. It explores examples of priorities identified for citizen action, the forms this action takes and the ways that democratic participation can achieve positive outcomes for future sustainability. It suggests multiple ways for developing action competence that provides further opportunities for authentic and engaging citizen action for youth connected to school- and community-based learning, in new and powerful ways. Design/methodology/approach – This conceptual paper examines international literature on the theory of “action competence,” its significance for education for sustainability (EfS) and the ways it can inform education for young people’s democratic participatory citizenship and civic engagement. It analyses examples of the development of action competency among young people in Australia, including the problems and priorities identified for citizen action, the forms this action takes and how it can achieve positive outcomes for sustainability. Following this analysis, the paper suggests multiple ways for developing action competence in EfS in schools and communities in new and powerful ways. Findings – Developing EfS to increase democratic and participatory action among young citizens is now widely regarded as an urgent education priority. There are growing exemplars of school and community organizations’ involvement in developing EfS learning and teaching to increase participatory citizenship. Young people are being empowered to develop a greater sense of agency through involvement in programs that develop action competence with a focus on sustainability in and out of school. New forms of participation include student action teams and peer collaboration among youth who are marshaling social media and direction action to achieve change. Originality/value – It contributes to the literature on multiple ways for developing action competence in EfS.

Working the story : News curation in social media as a second save of citizen journalism

For the first decade of its existence, the concept of citizen journalism has described an approach which was seen as a broadening of the participant base in journalistic processes, but still involved only a comparatively small subset of overall society – for the most part, citizen journalists were news enthusiasts and “political junkies” (Coleman, 2006) who, as some exasperated professional journalists put it, “wouldn’t get a job at a real newspaper” (The Australian, 2007), but nonetheless followed many of the same journalistic principles. The investment – if not of money, then at least of time and effort – involved in setting up a blog or participating in a citizen journalism Website remained substantial enough to prevent the majority of Internet users from engaging in citizen journalist activities to any significant extent; what emerged in the form of news blogs and citizen journalism sites was a new online elite which for some time challenged the hegemony of the existing journalistic elite, but gradually also merged with it. The mass adoption of next-generation social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, however, has led to the emergence of a new wave of quasi-journalistic user activities which now much more closely resemble the “random acts of journalism” which JD Lasica envisaged in 2003. Social media are not exclusively or even predominantly used for citizen journalism; instead, citizen journalism is now simply a by-product of user communities engaging in exchanges about the topics which interest them, or tracking emerging stories and events as they happen. Such platforms – and especially Twitter with its system of ad hoc hashtags that enable the rapid exchange of information about issues of interest – provide spaces for users to come together to “work the story” through a process of collaborative gatewatching (Bruns, 2005), content curation, and information evaluation which takes place in real time and brings together everyday users, domain experts, journalists, and potentially even the subjects of the story themselves. Compared to the spaces of news blogs and citizen journalism sites, but also of conventional online news Websites, which are controlled by their respective operators and inherently position user engagement as a secondary activity to content publication, these social media spaces are centred around user interaction, providing a third-party space in which everyday as well as institutional users, laypeople as well as experts converge without being able to control the exchange. Drawing on a number of recent examples, this article will argue that this results in a new dynamic of interaction and enables the emergence of a more broadly-based, decentralised, second wave of citizen engagement in journalistic processes.

Remixing Canadian copyright law: A review essay on'An Emerging Intellectual Property Paradigm','Canadian Copyright: A Citizen's Guide'; and'RiP!: A Remix Manifesto', Prometheus, Vol. 27 (3), p. 297-305

In her album, Hymns of the 49th Parallel, the chanteuse K.D. Lang pays tribute to a series of great Canadian songwriters—such as Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell and Jane Siberry. In a similar spirit of celebration, this review essay pays homage to a number of recent texts and films dealing with Canadian intellectual property. First, it considers Ysolde Gendreau’s collection, An Emerging Intellectual Property Paradigm: Perspectives from Canada. Second, this essay looks at Laura Murray and Samuel Trosow’s manual, Canadian Copyright: A Citizen’s Guide. Finally, this review evaluates Brett Gaylor’s documentary, RiP! A Remix Manifesto. The three works share certain affinities—a spirit of scepticism about the legitimacy and the efficacy of existing networks of law, policy and bureaucracy; a populist interest in the impact of intellectual property on the everyday lives of citizens, creators and consumers; a passion for human rights; and a melioristic desire for sensible law reform of copyright law and related regimes of intellectual property.

Urban informatics beyond data: Media architecture, placemaking, and citizen action

Since 2006, we have been conducting urban informatics research that we define as “the study, design, and practice of urban experiences across different urban contexts that are created by new opportunities of real-time, ubiquitous technology and the augmentation that mediates the physical and digital layers of people networks and urban infrastructures” [1]. Various new research initiatives under the label “urban informatics” have been started since then by universities (e.g., NYU’s Center for Urban Science and Progress) and industry (e.g., Arup, McKinsey) worldwide. Yet, many of these new initiatives are limited to what Townsend calls, “data-driven approaches to urban improvement” [2]. One of the key challenges is that any quantity of aggregated data does not easily translate directly into quality insights to better understand cities. In this talk, I will raise questions about the purpose of urban informatics research beyond data, and show examples of media architecture, participatory city making, and citizen activism. I argue for (1) broadening the disciplinary foundations that urban science approaches draw on; (2) maintaining a hybrid perspective that considers both the bird’s eye view as well as the citizen’s view, and; (3) employing design research to not be limited to just understanding, but to bring about actionable knowledge that will drive change for good.

Community participation in post-disaster reconstruction

When a community already torn by a prolonged war is subsequently subjected to being hit by a natural disaster, the combined impact of such disasters can be extremely devastating. Affected communities often face enormous challenges during the long-term reconstruction, mainly due to the lack of a viable community involvement process. In post-war settings, affected communities are often conceived as being disabled and are hardly ever consulted when reconstruction projects are instigated. This lack of community involvement often leads to poor project planning, decreased community support and an unsustainable completed project. The impact of war, coupled with the tensions created by the poor housing provisions, often hinder the affected residents from integrating permanently into their home communities. This paper identifies a number of fundamental factors that act as barriers to community participation in reconstruction projects. The paper is based on a statistical analysis of a questionnaire survey administered in 2012 in Afghanistan.

Who Rules Japan? Popular Participation in the Japanese Legal Process

"The dramatic growth of the Japanese economy in the postwar period, and its meltdown in the 1990s, has attracted sustained interest in the power dynamics underlying the management of Japan’s administrative state. Scholars and commentators have long debated over who wields power in Japan, asking the fundamental question: who really governs Japan? This important volume revisits this question by turning its attention to the regulation and design of the Japanese legal system. With essays covering the new lay-judge system in Japanese criminal trials, labour dispute resolution panels, prison policy, gendered justice, government lawyers, welfare administration and administrative transparency, this comprehensive book explores the players and processes in Japan’s administration of justice."--publisher website

Popular participation in labour law: The new labour dispute resolution tribunal

The Labour Tribunal Law (No. 45 of 2004) ushered in a new court-annexed dispute resolution system for industrial relations disputes in Japan (outlined generally in Sugeno, 2004). Similar to the lay judge system for criminal trials (Johnson and Shinomiya, Chapter 2), the new tribunal adopts an adjudicative model that blends professional and lay expertise with decisions heard by a tripartite panel comprising a professional judge and two lay judges recommended by management and labour unions respectively. The new tribunal system came into operation on 1 April 2006.

Posters versus lurkers: Improving participation in enterprise social networks through promotional messages

Enterprise social networks (ESNs) often fail if there are few or no contributors of content. Promotional messages are among the common interventions used to improve participation. While most users only read others’ content (i.e. lurk), contributors who create content (i.e. post) account for only 1% of the users. Research on interventions to improve participation across dissimilar groups is scarce especially in work settings. We develop a model that examines four key motivations of posting and lurking. We employ the elaboration likelihood model to understand how promotional messages influence lurkers’ and posters’ beliefs and participation. We test our model with data collected from 366 members in two corporate Google⁺ communities in a large Australian retail organization. We find that posters and lurkers are motivated and hindered by different factors. Promotional messages do not – always – yield the hoped-for results among lurkers; however, they do make posters more enthusiastic to participate.

Collaborative data exploration interfaces - From participatory sensing to participatory sensemaking

As technological capabilities for capturing, aggregating, and processing large quantities of data continue to improve, the question becomes how to effectively utilise these resources. Whenever automatic methods fail, it is necessary to rely on human background knowledge, intuition, and deliberation. This creates demand for data exploration interfaces that support the analytical process, allowing users to absorb and derive knowledge from data. Such interfaces have historically been designed for experts. However, existing research has shown promise in involving a broader range of users that act as citizen scientists, placing high demands in terms of usability. Visualisation is one of the most effective analytical tools for humans to process abstract information. Our research focuses on the development of interfaces to support collaborative, community-led inquiry into data, which we refer to as Participatory Data Analytics. The development of data exploration interfaces to support independent investigations by local communities around topics of their interest presents a unique set of challenges, which we discuss in this paper. We present our preliminary work towards suitable high-level abstractions and interaction concepts to allow users to construct and tailor visualisations to their own needs.

Predictors of physical activity in colorectal cancer survivors after participation in a telephone-delivered multiple health behavior change intervention

Purpose: Physical activity improves the health outcomes of colorectal cancer (CRC) survivors, yet few are exercising at levels known to yield health benefits. Baseline demographic, clinical, behavioral, and psychosocial predictors of physical activity at 12 months were investigated in CRC survivors. Methods: Participants were CRC survivors (n = 410) who completed a 12-month multiple health behavior change intervention trial (CanChange). The outcome variable was 12 month sufficient physical activity (≥150 min of moderate–vigorous physical activity/week). Baseline predictors included demographics and clinical variables, health behaviors, and psychosocial variables. Results: Multivariate linear regression revealed that baseline sufficient physical activity (p < 0.001), unemployment (p = 0.004), private health insurance (p = 0.040), higher cancer-specific quality of life (p = 0.031) and higher post-traumatic growth (p = 0.008) were independent predictors of sufficient physical activity at 12 months. The model explained 28.6 % of the variance. Conclusions: Assessment of demographics, health behaviors, and psychosocial functioning following a diagnosis of CRC may help to develop effective physical activity programs.

From users to citizens: Some thoughts on designing for polity and civics

This paper presents an essay aimed at prompting broad discussion crucial in keeping the interaction design discourse fresh, critical, and in motion. We trace the changing role of people who have advanced from consumers to producers, from stationary office workers to mobile urban nomads, from passive members of the plebs to active instigators of change. Yet, interaction designers often still refer to them only as ‘users.’ We follow some of the historic developments from the information superhighway to the smart city in order to provide the backdrop in front of which we critically analyse three core areas. First, the issue of echo chambers and filter bubbles in social media results in a political polarisation that jeopardises the formation of a functioning public sphere. Second, pretty lights and colourful façades in media architecture are increasingly making way for situated installations and interventions fostering community engagement. And third, civic activism is often reduced to forms of slacktivism. We synthesise our discussion to propose ‘citizen-ability’ as an alternative goal for interaction designers to aspire to in order to create new polities and civics for a better quality of life.