Social media as online information grounds : a preliminary conceptual framework

Researchers are increasingly grappling with ways of theorizing social media and its use. This review essay proposes that the theory of Information Grounds (IG) may provide a valuable lens for understanding how social media fosters collaboration and social engagement among information professionals. The paper presents literature that helps us understand how social media can be seen as IG, and maps the characteristics of social media to the seven propositions of IG theory. This work is part of a wider study investigating the ways in which Information Technology (IT) professionals experience social media.

Entrepreneurship education in non-business schools : best practice for Australian contexts of knowledge and innovation communities (Final Report)

In the current era of global economic instability, business and industry have already identified a widening gap between graduate skills and employability. An important element of this is the lack of entrepreneurial skills in graduates. This Teaching Fellowship investigated two sides of a story about entrepreneurial skills and their teaching. Senior players in the innovation commercialisation industry, a high profile entrepreneurial sector, were surveyed to gauge their needs and experiences of graduates they employ. International contexts of entrepreneurship education were investigated to explore how their teaching programs impart the skills of entrepreneurship. Such knowledge is an essential for the design of education programs that can deliver the entrepreneurial skills deemed important by industry for future sustainability. Two programs of entrepreneurship education are being implemented at QUT that draw on the best practice exemplars investigated during this Fellowship. The QUT Innovation Space (QIS) focuses on capturing the innovation and creativity of students, staff and others. The QIS is a physical and virtual meeting and networking space; a connected community enhancing the engagement of participants. The Q_Hatchery is still embryonic; but it is intended to be an innovation community that brings together nascent entrepreneurial businesses to collaborate, train and support each other. There is a niche between concept product and business incubator where an experiential learning environment for otherwise isolated ‘garage-at-home’ businesses could improve success rates. The QIS and the Q_Hatchery serve as living research laboratories to trial the concepts emerging from the skills survey. The survey of skills requirements of the innovation commercialisation industry has produced a large and high quality data set still being explored. Work experience as an employability factor has already emerged as an industry requirement that provides employee maturity. Exploratory factor analysis of the skills topics surveyed has led to a process-based conceptual model for teaching and learning higher-order entrepreneurial skills. Two foundational skills domains (Knowledge, Awareness) are proposed as prerequisites which allow individuals with a suite of early stage entrepreneurial and behavioural skills (Pre-leadership) to further leverage their careers into a leadership role in industry with development of skills around higher order elements of entrepreneurship, management in new business ventures and progressing winning technologies to market. The next stage of the analysis is to test the proposed model through structured equation modelling. Another factor that emerged quickly from the survey analysis broadens the generic concept of team skills currently voiced in Australian policy documents discussing the employability agenda. While there was recognition of the role of sharing, creating and using knowledge in a team-based interdisciplinary context, the adoption and adaptation of behaviours and attitudes of other team members of different disciplinary backgrounds (interprofessionalism) featured as an issue. Most undergraduates are taught and undertake teamwork in silos and, thus, seldom experience a true real-world interdisciplinary environment. Enhancing the entrepreneurial capacity of Australian industry is essential for the economic health of the country and can only be achieved by addressing the lack of entrepreneurial skills in graduates from the higher education system. This Fellowship has attempted to address this deficiency by identifying the skills requirements and providing frameworks for their teaching.

Investigating online recognition for blood donor retention : an experiential donor value approach

Recognising that charitable behaviour can be motivated by public recognition and emotional satisfaction, not-for-profit organisations have developed strategies that leverage self-interest over altruism by facilitating individuals to donate conspicuously. Initially developed as novel marketing programs to increase donation income, such conspicuous tokens of recognition are being recognised as important value propositions to nurture donor relationships. Despite this, there is little empirical evidence that identifies when donations can be increased through conspicuous recognition. Furthermore, social media’s growing popularity for self-expression, as well as the increasing use of technology in donor relationship management strategies, makes an examination of virtual conspicuous tokens of recognition in relation to what value donors seek particularly insightful. Therefore, this research examined the impact of experiential donor value and virtual conspicuous tokens of recognition on blood donor intentions. Using online survey data from 186 Australian blood donors, results show that in fact emotional value is a stronger predictor of intentions to donate blood than altruistic value, while social value is the strongest predictor of intentions if provided with recognition. Clear linkages between dimensions of donor value (altruistic, emotional and social) and conspicuous donation behaviour (CDB) were identified. The findings provide valuable insights into the use of conspicuous donation tokens of recognition on social media, and contribute to our understanding into the under-researched areas of donor value and CDB.

Study Protocol - Alcohol Management Plans (AMPs) in remote indigenous communities in Queensland: their impacts on injury, violence, health and social indicators and their cost-effectiveness

Background In 2002/03 the Queensland Government responded to high rates of alcohol-related harm in discrete Indigenous communities by implementing alcohol management plans (AMPs), designed to include supply and harm reduction and treatment measures. Tighter alcohol supply and carriage restrictions followed in 2008 following indications of reductions in violence and injury. Despite the plans being in place for over a decade, no comprehensive independent review has assessed to what level the designed aims were achieved and what effect the plans have had on Indigenous community residents and service providers. This study will describe the long-term impacts on important health, economic and social outcomes of Queensland’s AMPs. Methods/Design The project has two main studies, 1) outcome evaluation using de-identified epidemiological data on injury, violence and other health and social indicators for across Queensland, including de-identified databases compiled from relevant routinely-available administrative data sets, and 2) a process evaluation to map the nature, timing and content of intervention components targeting alcohol. Process evaluation will also be used to assess the fidelity with which the designed intervention components have been implemented, their uptake and community responses to them and their perceived impacts on alcohol supply and consumption, injury, violence and community health. Interviews and focus groups with Indigenous residents and service providers will be used. The study will be conducted in all 24 of Queensland’s Indigenous communities affected by alcohol management plans. Discussion This evaluation will report on the impacts of the original aims for AMPs, what impact they have had on Indigenous residents and service providers. A central outcome will be the establishment of relevant databases describing the parameters of the changes seen. This will permit comprehensive and rigorous surveillance systems to be put in place and provided to communities empowering them with the best credible evidence to judge future policy and program requirements for themselves. The project will inform impending alcohol policy and program adjustments in Queensland and other Australian jurisdictions. The project has been approved by the James Cook University Human Research Ethics Committee (approval number H4967 & H5241).

Conceptualising, evaluating and reporting social resilience in vulnerable regional and remote communities facing climate change in tropical Queensland : marine and tropical sciences research facility transition project final report

Regional and remote communities in tropical Queensland are among Australia’s most vulnerable in the face of climate change. At the same time, these socially and economically vulnerable regions house some of Australia’s most significant biodiversity values. Past approaches to terrestrial biodiversity management have focused on tackling biophysical interventions through the use of biophysical knowledge. An equally important focus should be placed on building regional-scale community resilience if some of the worst biodiversity impacts of climate change are to be avoided or mitigated. Despite its critical need, more systemic or holistic approaches to natural resource management have been rarely trialed and tested in a structured way. Currently, most strategic interventions in improving regional community resilience are ad hoc, not theory-based and short term. Past planning approaches have not been durable, nor have they been well informed by clear indicators. Research into indicators for community resilience has been poorly integrated within adaptive planning and management cycles. This project has aimed to resolve this problem by: * Reviewing the community and social resilience and adaptive planning literature to reconceptualise an improved framework for applying community resilience concepts; * Harvesting and extending work undertaken in MTSRF Phase 1 to identifying the learnings emerging from past MTSRF research; * Distilling these findings to identify new theoretical and practical approaches to the application of community resilience in natural resource use and management; * Reconsidering the potential interplay between a region’s biophysical and social planning processes, with a focus on exploring spatial tools to communicate climate change risk and its consequent environmental, economic and social impacts, and; * Trialling new approaches to indicator development and adaptive planning to improve community resilience, using a sub-regional pilot in the Wet Tropics. In doing so, we also looked at ways to improve the use and application of relevant spatial information. Our theoretical review drew upon the community development, psychology and emergency management literature to better frame the concept of community resilience relative to aligned concepts of social resilience, vulnerability and adaptive capacity. Firstly, we consider community resilience as a concept that can be considered at a range of scales (e.g. regional, locality, communities of interest, etc.). We also consider that overall resilience at higher scales will be influenced by resilience levels at lesser scales (inclusive of the resilience of constituent institutions, families and individuals). We illustrate that, at any scale, resilience and vulnerability are not necessarily polar opposites, and that some understanding of vulnerability is important in determining resilience. We position social resilience (a concept focused on the social characteristics of communities and individuals) as an important attribute of community resilience, but one that needs to be considered alongside economic, natural resource, capacity-based and governance attributes. The findings from the review of theory and MTSRF Phase 1 projects were synthesized and refined by the wider project team. Five predominant themes were distilled from this literature, research review and an expert analysis. They include the findings that: 1. Indicators have most value within an integrated and adaptive planning context, requiring an active co-research relationship between community resilience planners, managers and researchers if real change is to be secured; 2. Indicators of community resilience form the basis for planning for social assets and the resilience of social assets is directly related the longer term resilience of natural assets. This encourages and indeed requires the explicit development and integration of social planning within a broader natural resource planning and management framework; 3. Past indicator research and application has not provided a broad picture of the key attributes of community resilience and there have been many attempts to elicit lists of “perfect” indicators that may never be useful within the time and resource limitations of real world regional planning and management. We consider that modeling resilience for proactive planning and prediction purposes requires the consideration of simple but integrated clusters of attributes; 4. Depending on time and resources available for planning and management, the combined use of well suited indicators and/or other lesser “lines of evidence” is more flexible than the pursuit of perfect indicators, and that; 5. Index-based, collaborative and participatory approaches need to be applied to the development, refinement and reporting of indicators over longer time frames. We trialed the practical application of these concepts via the establishment of a collaborative regional alliance of planners and managers involved in the development of climate change adaptation strategies across tropical Queensland (the Gulf, Wet Tropics, Cape York and Torres Strait sub-regions). A focus on the Wet Tropics as a pilot sub-region enabled other Far North Queensland sub-region’s to participate and explore the potential extension of this approach. The pilot activities included: * Further exploring ways to innovatively communicate the region’s likely climate change scenarios and possible environmental, economic and social impacts. We particularly looked at using spatial tools to overlay climate change risks to geographic communities and social vulnerabilities within those communities; * Developing a cohesive first pass of a State of the Region-style approach to reporting community resilience, inclusive of regional economic viability, community vitality, capacitybased and governance attributes. This framework integrated a literature review, expert (academic and community) and alliance-based contributions; and * Early consideration of critical strategies that need to be included in unfolding regional planning activities with Far North Queensland. The pilot assessment finds that rural, indigenous and some urban populations in the Wet Tropics are highly vulnerable and sensitive to climate change and may require substantial support to adapt and become more resilient. This assessment finds that under current conditions (i.e. if significant adaptation actions are not taken) the Wet Tropics as a whole may be seriously impacted by the most significant features of climate change and extreme climatic events. Without early and substantive action, this could result in declining social and economic wellbeing and natural resource health. Of the four attributes we consider important to understanding community resilience, the Wet Tropics region is particularly vulnerable in two areas; specifically its economic vitality and knowledge, aspirations and capacity. The third and fourth attributes, community vitality and institutional governance are relatively resilient but are vulnerable in some key respects. In regard to all four of these attributes, however, there is some emerging capacity to manage the possible shocks that may be associated with the impacts of climate change and extreme climatic events. This capacity needs to be carefully fostered and further developed to achieve broader community resilience outcomes. There is an immediate need to build individual, household, community and sectoral resilience across all four attribute groups to enable populations and communities in the Wet Tropics region to adapt in the face of climate change. Preliminary strategies of importance to improve regional community resilience have been identified. These emerging strategies also have been integrated into the emerging Regional Development Australia Roadmap, and this will ensure that effective implementation will be progressed and coordinated. They will also inform emerging strategy development to secure implementation of the FNQ 2031 Regional Plan. Of most significance in our view, this project has taken a co-research approach from the outset with explicit and direct importance and influence within the region’s formal planning and management arrangements. As such, the research: * Now forms the foundations of the first attempt at “Social Asset” planning within the Wet Tropics Regional NRM Plan review; * Is assisting Local government at regional scale to consider aspects of climate change adaptation in emerging planning scheme/community planning processes; * Has partnered the State government (via the Department of Infrastructure and Planning and Regional Managers Coordination Network Chair) in progressing the Climate Change adaptation agenda set down within the FNQ 2031 Regional Plan; * Is informing new approaches to report on community resilience within the GBRMPA Outlook reporting framework; and * Now forms the foundation for the region’s wider climate change adaptation priorities in the Regional Roadmap developed by Regional Development Australia. Through the auspices of Regional Development Australia, the outcomes of the research will now inform emerging negotiations concerning a wider package of climate change adaptation priorities with State and Federal governments. Next stage research priorities are also being developed to enable an ongoing alliance between researchers and the region’s climate change response.

Unlocking the "reminder" potential when viewers pause programs : results from a laboratory test of a new online medium

The branded pause advertisement is a recently developed online television-advertising format that displays a full-screen still-image banner ad whenever a viewer pauses a streaming-video program. This study used a controlled lab experiment to compare the effectiveness of branded pause advertisements with normal online television advertisements. The results demonstrate that branded pause advertisements are effective but only when combined with a long-exposure advertisement for the same brand. Despite their short exposure time, pause advertisements function as effective reminders, building awareness through repeat exposure. The findings of the current study were similar regardless of whether pause advertisements were activated as a result of viewers’ pausing at a time of their own choosing or whether viewers were interrupted.

The extended context of career : families negotiating education and career decisions

In families, decisions about parents’ and children’s education and career require an ongoing negotiation to reconcile the goals of all family members. This paper describes a project which investigates these decisions within families experiencing whole family relocation based on one adult’s work. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with professional workers with school-aged children living in six Australian rural and remote communities. The interview sample included four doctors, 10 teachers, four nurses and nine police. This qualitative phase informed the development of an online survey of a larger sample (n¼278) of the same professional groups, which constituted a second quantitative phase of the research. This paper reports on only one aspect of the survey, that is, the participants’ recording of two previous career location moves they had undertaken and the reasons for these. The data emphasise the family project evident in this decision-making process as the respondents deal with a large range of complex individual, family and broader systems’ influences in reconciling their own careers and their children’s educational opportunities.

1000 voices : an online public collection of life stories

1000 voices is an international web-based platform for gathering and displaying more than 1000 life stories about the lived experience of people with disability. The site contains life stories told by people with disability that are presented in multiple media and formats, including text, audio, video, graphics and visual art...

Neoliberal social inclusion? The agenda of the Australian Universities Community Engagement Alliance

University–community engagement (UCE) represents a hybrid discourse and a set of practices within contemporary higher education. As a modality of research and teaching, ‘engagement’ denotes the process of universities forming partnerships with external communities for the promised generation of mutually beneficial and socially responsive knowledge, leading to enhanced economic, social and cultural developments. A critical discourse analysis (Fairclough 2003. Analysing Discourse: Textual analysis for social research. London: Routledge) of the Australian Universities Community Engagement Alliance’s (AUCEA) ‘Position Paper’(2008 Universities and community engagement (Position paper 2008–2010)), as reported in this article, suggests that its uneasy synthesis of neoliberal, social inclusion and civic engagement discourses into a hybrid UCE discourse semantically privileges neoliberal forms of engagement. Perhaps, as a result, the AUCEA seems to have missed an opportunity to influence the Australian ‘widening participation’ debate on securing access and opportunity for marginalised students at universities and building social and cultural capital within their communities of origin.

Relationship between expectation management and client retention in online Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

Background Engaging clients from the outset of psychotherapy is important for therapeutic success. However, there is little research evaluating therapists’ initial attempts to engage clients. This article reports retrospective analysis of data from a trial of online Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) for depression. Qualitative and quantitative methods were used to evaluate how therapists manage clients’ expectations at the outset of therapy and its relationship with client retention in the therapeutic intervention. Aims To develop a system to codify expectation management in initial sessions of online CBT and evaluate its relationship with retention. Method Initial qualitative research using conversation analysis identified three different communication practices used by therapists at the start of first sessions: no expectation management, some expectation management, and comprehensive expectation management. These findings were developed into a coding scheme that enabled substantial inter-rater agreement (weighted Kappa = 0.78; 95% CI: 0.52 to 0.94) and was applied to all trial data. Results Adjusting for a range of client variables, primary analysis of data from 147 clients found comprehensive expectation management was associated with clients remaining in therapy for 1.4 sessions longer than those who received no expectation management (95% CI: -0.2 to 3.0). This finding was supported by a sensitivity analysis including an additional 21 clients (1.6 sessions, 95% CI: 0.2 to 3.1). Conclusions Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, this study suggests a relationship between expectation management and client retention in online CBT for depression, which has implications for professional practice. A larger prospective study would enable a more precise estimate of retention.

Managing clients’ expectations at the outset of online Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) for depression

Background Engaging clients in psychotherapy by managing their expectations is important for therapeutic success. Initial moments in first sessions of therapy are thought to afford an opportunity to establish a shared understanding of how therapy will proceed. However there is little evidence from analysis of actual sessions of therapy to support this. Objective This study utilised recordings to examine how therapists manage clients’ expectations during the first two sessions of online Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). Methods Expectation management was investigated through conversation analysis of sessions from 176 client-therapist dyads involved in online CBT. The primary focus of analysis was expectation management during the initial moments of first sessions, with a secondary focus on expectations at subsequent points. Analysis Clients’ expectations for therapy were most commonly managed during the initial moments of first sessions of therapy. At this point, most therapists either outlined the tasks of the first and subsequent sessions (n=36), or the first session only (n=108). On other occasions (n = 32), no attempt was made to manage clients’ expectations by outlining what would happen in therapy. Observations of the interactional consequences of such an absence suggest clients may struggle to engage with the therapeutic process in the absence of appropriate expectation management by therapists. Conclusion Clients may more readily engage from the outset of therapy when provided with an explanation that manages their expectation of what is involved. Therapists can accomplish this by projecting how therapy will proceed, particularly beyond the initial session.

Online video in education : acquisition, value & ROI

The session explores the potential for “Patron Driven Acquisition” (PDA) as a model for the acquisition of online video. Today, PDA has become a standard model of acquisition in the eBook market, more effectively aligning spend with use and increased return on investment (ROI). PDA is an unexplored model for acquisition of video, for which library collection development is complicated by higher storage and delivery costs, labor overheads for content selection and acquisition, and a dynamic film industry in which media and the technology that supports it is changing daily. Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and La Trobe University in Australia launched a research project in collaboration with Kanopy to explore the opportunity for PDA of video. The study relied on three data sources: (1) national surveys to compare the video purchasing and use practices of colleges, (2) on-campus pilot projects of PDA models to assess user engagement and behavior, and (3) testing of various user applications and features to support the model. The study incorporates usage statistics and survey data and builds upon a peer-reviewed research paper presented at the VALA 2014 conference in Melbourne, Australia. This session will be conducted by the researchers and will graphically present the results from the study. It will map out a future for video PDA, and how libraries can more cost-effectively acquire and maximize the discoverability of online video. The presenters will also solicit input and welcome questions from audience members.

Locating the community in restorative justice for young people in Australia

The concept of the community is a key component of restorative justice theory and practice. In restorative justice scholarship, the community is constructed, alongside the victim and offender, as having a crucial role to play in responding to crimes in a restorative way. Indeed, it is often claimed that the perceived need for the community to be involved in responding to crime was a key rationale for the emergence of restorative practices around the world. Taking the emergence of youth justice conferencing – the most commonly-utilised restorative practice in Australia – as a case study, this article argues, however, that the idea of the community was peripheral to the emergence of restorative justice in Australia. The documentary analysis from which this article stems also found that while Indigenous young people are represented as belonging to communities, non-Indigenous young people are not – at least, not beyond their ‘community of care’. As such, this article raises concerns about the disproportionate responsibilisation of Indigenous young people, families and communities.

Sense of home, sense of place : a morpho-typological comparative study of Florida and Queensland

Cities in the 21st century have become layered and complex systems not only in terms of physical form, but also social and cultural structure. Consolidated tools to analyze the urban environment have today to be improved including a strong interdisciplinary perspective in order to understand and manage the unprecedented complexity our cities are facing. Redevelopments, new estates, internal and external migrations are all dynamics which are deeply modifying the built environment directly or indirectly also affecting local identity, culture and social structure. This paper investigates the relationship between urban form and social behaviors, with particular attention to the perception of the built environment and its use by long term residents, recent migrants as well as tourists. A comparative study is suggested between South East Queensland and Florida; this two regions share common features such as subtropical climate, similar lifestyle, leisure cities and canal estates. Neighborhoods on the Gold and Sunshine Coasts have been designed using the communities of Florida, such as Celebration or Seaside, as models. These regions share also significant migration processes, similar social problems and high crime rates, which directly affect the local economies. Comparing Florida and SEQ could provide an understanding of different strategies adopted and how urban development and lifestyle can be managed maintaining social equity and security. This study, investigates people’s perception of built form and how this affects the use of public space. The relationship between built environment and social behaviour has been previously investigated, for example by environmental psychology; the innovation proposed by this research is to study the perception of place in leisure cities at multiple levels. Locals, migrants and tourists have different understanding of the built form in the same location; this understanding affects the use of space and the attitude to visit or avoid some precincts. The research methodology integrates traditional morpho-typological investigations with qualitative methods; data are collected in the first phase through online surveys about perception of urban forms. Findings guide then the selection of neighbourhoods to be investigated in detail through questionnaires and Nolli maps, specifying morphological regions as well as recurrent building typologies. A final phase includes interviews with selected stakeholders. Major urban projects are discussed addressing how they are used and perceived by locals, migrants or tourists; the comparison between SEQ and Florida allows the identification of strategies to address migration issues in both regions with particular attention to urban form and placemaking dynamics.

Development and evaluation of the Ontrack Diabetes Program : an automated, web-based type 2 diabetes self-management and dysphoria intervention

This research was conducted in the area of Clinical and Health Psychology. The study involved the development and evaluation of a novel, web-based program aimed to improve Type 2 diabetes self-management and mood. The program was developed as an original technological intervention aimed to improve access to support for rural and remote communities, and is currently being trialled across Australia with a larger sample size. The researcher aims to continue research into the field of clinical psychology, and in particular is interested in working on further interventions to support those with comorbid physical and mental health conditions.