Social clubs and social capital : the effect of electronic gaming machines in disadvantaged regions on the creation or destruction of community resilience

The role of particular third sector organisations, Social Clubs, in supporting gambling through the use of EGMs in venues presents as a difficult social issue. Social Clubs gain revenue from gambling activities; but also contribute to social well-being through the provision of services to communities. The revenues derived from gambling in specific geographic locales has been seen by government as a way to increase economic development particularly in deprived areas. However there are also concerns about accessibility of low-income citizens to Electronic Gaming Machines (EGMS) and the high level of gambling overall in these deprived areas. We argue that social capital can be viewed as a guard against deleterious effects of unconstrained use of EGM gambling in communities. However, it is contended that social capital may also be destroyed by gambling activity if commercial business actors are able to use EGMs without community obligations to service provision. This paper examines access to gambling through EGMs and its relationship to social capital and the consequent effect on community resilience, via an Australian case study. The results highlight the potential two-way relationship between gambling and volunteering, such that volunteering (and social capital more generally) may help protect against problems of gambling, but also that volunteering as an activity may be damaged by increased gambling activity. This suggests that, regardless of the direction of causation, it is necessary to build up social capital via volunteering and other social capital activities in areas where EGMS are concentrated. The study concludes that Social Clubs using EGMs to derive funds are uniquely positioned within the community to develop programs that foster social capital creation and build community resilience in deprived areas.

Designing for participation in local social ridesharing networks : grass roots prototyping of IT systems

This abstract explores the possibility of a grass roots approach to engaging people in community change initiatives by designing simple interactive exploratory prototypes for use by communities over time that support shared action. The prototype is gradually evolved in response to community use, fragments of data gathered through the prototype, and participant feedback with the goal of building participation in community change initiatives. A case study of a system to support ridesharing is discussed. The approach is compared and contrasted to a traditional IT systems procurement approach.

Mapping social enterprise in Australia : conceptual debates and their operational implications

In the last ten years, there has been growing interest in social enterprise by governments, the not for profit sector and philanthropy in Australia The drivers of this interest have been variously understood to be: increasing demands for innovative responses to social and environmental problems; pressures on non-profit organisations to diversify their income sources; and increasing emphases by government on the role of civil society actors in partnering around social policy agendas. Whatever its genesis, very little is known about the scale and scope of the emerging social enterprise sector. In order to research the scope of the sector, an important first step involves understanding just what social enterprise is, and how it may be operationalised. This paper presents the findings from the first stage of a national research project conducted by the authors in conjunction with a new social enterprise development company. The purpose of the project was to provide a comprehensive snapshot of the social enterprise sector in Australia. In this paper, we focus on the definitional debates arising from our workshop discussions, what these mean for understanding contemporary discourses of social enterprise, and their implications for research, policy and practice.

Proactive communication management beats hostile media exposure : training for multi-cultural community leaders in living with mass media

Proactive communication management instead of mortification in the glare of hostile media attention became the theme of a four-day training program for multi-cultural community leaders, the object of this research. The program in Brisbane from December 2009 through to February this year was conducted under auspices of a Community Media Link grant program shared by Griffith University and the Queensland Ethnic Communities Council, together with Journalism academics from the Queensland University of Technology. Twenty-eight participants from 23 organisations took part, with a team of nine facilitators from the host organisations, and guest presenters from the news media. This paper reviews the process, taking into account: its objectives, to empower participants by showing how Australian media operate and introducing participants to journalists; pedagogical thrust, where overview talks, with role play seminars with guest presenters from the media, were combined with practice in interviews and writing for media; and outcomes, assessed on the basis of participants’ responses. The research methodology is qualitative, in that the study is based on discussions to review the planning and experience of sessions, and anonymous, informal feed-back questionnaires distributed to the participants. Background literature on multiculturalism and community media was referred to in the study. The findings indicate positive outcomes for participants from this approach to protection of persons unversed in living in the Australian “mediatised” environment. Most affirmed that the “production side” perspective of the exercise had informed and motivated them effectively, such that henceforth they would venture far more into media management, in their community leadership roles.

David Hicks and Cathie Holden (eds.) (2007). Teaching The Global Dimension. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 212 pages.

Teaching The Global Dimension (2007) is intended for primary and secondary teachers, pre-service teachers and educators interested in fostering global concerns in the education system. It aims at linking theory and practice and is structured as follows. Part 1, the global dimension, proposes an educational framework for understanding global concerns. Individual chapters in this section deal with some educational responses to global issues and the ways in which young people might become, in Hick’s terms, more “world-minded”. In the first two chapters, Hicks presents first, some educational responses to global issues that have emerged in recent decades, and second, an outline of the evolution of global education as a specific field. As with all the chapters in this book, most of the examples are drawn from the United Kingdom. Young people’s concerns, student teachers’ views and the teaching of controversial issues, comprise the other chapters in this section. Taken collectively, the chapters in Part 2 articulate the conceptual framework for developing, teaching and evaluating a global dimension across the curriculum. Individual chapters in this section, written by a range of authors, explore eight key concepts considered necessary to underpin appropriate learning experiences in the classroom. These are conflict, social justice, values and perceptions, sustainability, interdependence, human rights, diversity and citizenship. These chapters are engaging and well structured. Their common format consists of a succinct introduction, reference to positive action for change, and examples of recent effective classroom practice. Two chapters comprise the final section of this book and suggest different ways in which the global dimension can be achieved in the primary and the secondary classroom.

Researching professionals and online social networking : toward a professional doctorate

The professional doctorate is a degree that is specifically designed for professionals investigating real world problems and relevant issues for a profession, industry and/ or the community. The study on which this paper is based sought to track the scholarly skill development of a cohort of professional doctoral students who commenced their course in January 2008 at an Australian University. Via an initial survey and two focus groups held six months apart, the study aimed to determine if there had been any qualitative shifts in students’ understandings, expectations and perceptions regarding this developing knowledge and skills. Three key findings has emerged from this study were: (i) the appropriateness of using a blended learning approach for this doctoral cohort; (ii) the challenges of using wikis as an online technology of creating communities of practice: and (iii) that the transition from student to scholar is a process that is unlikely to be achieved in a short time frame.

The citizen's voice : Albert Hirschman's Exit, Voice and Loyalty and its contribution to media citizenship debates

This paper analyses Albert Hirschman's Exit, Voice and Loyalty (Hirschman 1970) as a basis for understanding the relationship between media and citizenship. It considers the significance of Hirschman's concept of voice in relation to media policy, media participation through user-created content, and the rise of 'citizen media' and 'citizen journalism'. It associates these developments with a 'de-centering' of both media practice and media studies, as considered by Couldry (2006a, 2006b). It concludes by suggesting that voice and participation, rather than citizenship, may constitute a more suitable foundation for understanding new digital media initiatives.

Journalism as social networking : the Australian youdecide project and the 2007 federal election

The increasing prevalence of new media technologies and the rise of citizen journalism has coincided with a crisis in industrial journalism –as the figure of the "journalist as hero" is fading, new media forms have facilitated the production of news content "from below" by citizens and "pro-am" journalists. Participation in an action-research project run during the 2007 Australian Federal Election, youdecide 2007, allowed the authors to gain first-hand insights into the progress of citizen-led news media in Australia, but also allowed us to develop an account of what the work of facilitating citizen journalism involves. These insights are important to understanding the future of professional journalism and journalism education, as more mainstream media organizations move to accommodate and harness user-created content. The paper considers the relevance of citizen journalism projects as forms of R&D for understanding news production and distribution in participatory media cultures, and the importance of grounded case studies for moving beyond normative debates about new media and the future of journalism.

From e-Government to online deliberative democracy

This brief presentation considered the possibilities and limitations of strategies to promote electronic democracy pursued so far. In particular it indicated that the problems encountered have only been in part due to technological limitations or even a lack of political will. The stronger set of issues concerns the question of 'why participate?', and how to best facilitate this. The capacity to extent the principals of deliberative democracy through online media is briefly canvassed in the presentation.

Effect of group formation on performance, task management and social loafing

Engineering graduates of today are required to adapt to a rapidly changing work environment. In particular, they are expected to demonstrate enhanced capabilities in both mono-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary teamwork environments. Engineering education needs, as a result, to further focus on developing group work capabilities amongst engineering graduates. Over the last two years, the authors trialed various group work strategies across two engineering disciplines. In particular, the effect of group formation on students' performance, task management, and social loafing was analyzed. A recently developed online teamwork management tool, Teamworker, was used to collect students' experience of the group work. Analysis showed that students who were allowed to freely allocate to any group were less likely to report loafing from other team members, than students who were pre-allocated to a group. It also showed that performance was more affected by the presence or absence of a leader in pre-allocated rather than free-allocated groups.

Avoidance of advertising on social networking sites : the teenage perspective

Technology has provided consumers with the means to control and edit the information that they receive and share effectively, especially in the online environment. Although previous studies have investigated advertising avoidance in traditional media and on the Internet, there has been little investigation of advertising on social networking sites. This exploratory study examines the antecedents of advertising avoidance on online social networking sites, leading to the development of a model. The model suggests that advertising in the online social networking environment is more likely to be avoided if the user has expectations of a negative experience, the advertising is not relevant to the user, the user is skeptical toward the advertising message, or the consumer is skeptical toward the advertising medium.

Evolving citizenship : "the right to protest and the right to dance"

Citizenship is a term of association among strangers. Access to it involves contested identities and symbolic meanings, differing power relations and strategies of inclusion, exclusion and action, and unequal room for maneuver or productivity in the uses of citizenship for any given group or individual. In the context of "rethinking communication," strenuous action is neede to associate such different life chances in a common enterprise at a national level or, more modestly, simply to claim equivalence for all such groups under the rule of one law.

Queensland Aborigines, multiple realities and the social sources of suffering. Part 2: Suicide, spirits and symbolism

This is the second part of a paper that explores a range of magico-religious experiences such as immaterial voices and visions, in terms of local cultural, moral and socio-political circumstances in an Aboriginal town in rural Queensland. This part of the paper explores the political and cultural symbolism and meaning of suicide. It charts the saliency of suicide amongst two groups of kin and cohorts and the social meaningfulness and problematic of the voices and visions in relation to suicide, to identity and family forms and to funerals and a heavily drinking lifestyle. I argue that voices and visions are used to reinterpret social experience and to establish meaning and that tragically suicide evokes connectivity rather than anomie and here cannot be understood merely as an individualistic act or evidence of individual pathology. Rather it is about transformation and crossing a threshold to join an enduring domain of Aboriginality. In this life world, where family is the highest social value and where a relational view of persons holds sway, the individualistic practice of psychiatric and other helping professions, is a considerable problem.

Doing social media : some fundamental principles

Facebook has clocked up some 400 million registered users worldwide; Twitter has just reached the 100 million mark. Within these communities, Australians appear to be particularly active: we lead the world by spending nearly eight hours per month using social media. These figures highlight the fact that for most businesses, social media are now important for engaging with customers.

A comparative study of marketing student engagement in online social networks and virtual worlds : Facebook versus second life

The study evaluated two student online contemporary learning environments; Second Life and Facebook, student learning experiences and student knowledge outcomes. A case study methodology was used to gain rich exploratory knowledge of student learning when integrating online social networks (OSN) and virtual worlds (VW) platforms. Findings indicated students must perceive relevance in the activities when using such platforms, even though online environments create an interesting learning space for students and educators, the novelty can diminish quickly and these online environments dilute traditional authority boundaries.