Social media, data analytics and videogames development : Halfbrick case study

Social media platforms are of interest to interactive entertainment companies for a number of reasons. They can operate as a platform for deploying games, as a tool for communicating with customers and potential customers, and can provide analytics on how players utilize the; game providing immediate feedback on design decisions and changes. However, as ongoing research with Australian developer Halfbrick, creators of $2 , demonstrates, the use of these platforms is not universally seen as a positive. The incorporation of Big Data into already innovative development practices has the potential to cause tension between designers, whilst the platform also challenges the traditional business model, relying on micro-transactions rather than an up-front payment and a substantial shift in design philosophy to take advantage of the social aspects of platforms such as Facebook.

2010–2011 Queensland floods : using Haddon's Matrix to define and categorise public safety strategies

Objective The 2010–2011 Queensland floods resulted in the most deaths from a single flood event in Australia since 1916. This article analyses the information on these deaths for comparison with those from previous floods in modern Australia in an attempt to identify factors that have contributed to those deaths. Haddon's Matrix, originally designed for prevention of road trauma, offers a framework for understanding the interplay between contributing factors and helps facilitate a clearer understanding of the varied strategies required to ensure people's safety for particular flood types. Methods Public reports and flood relevant literature were searched using key words ‘flood’, ‘fatality’, ‘mortality’, ‘death’, ‘injury’ and ‘victim’ through Google Scholar, PubMed, ProQuest and EBSCO. Data relating to reported deaths during the 2010–2011 Queensland floods, and relevant data of previous Australian flood fatality (1997–2009) were collected from these available sources. These sources were also used to identify contributing factors. Results There were 33 deaths directly attributed to the event, of which 54.5% were swept away in a flash flood on 10 January 2011. A further 15.1% of fatalities were caused by inappropriate behaviours. This is different to floods in modern Australia where over 90% of deaths are related to the choices made by individuals. There is no single reason why people drown in floods, but rather a complex interplay of factors. Conclusions The present study and its integration of research findings and conceptual frameworks might assist governments and communities to develop policies and strategies to prevent flood injury and fatalities.

A multi-touch notice board fostering social interaction

We report on an alternative OCGM interface for a bulletin board, where a user can pin a note or a drawing, and actually shares contents. Exploiting direct and continuous manipulations, opposite to discrete gestures, to explore containers, the proposed interface supports a more natural and immediate interaction. It manages also the presence of different simultaneous users, allowing for the creation of local multimedia contents, the connection to social networks, providing a suitable working environment for cooperative and collaborative tasks in a multi-touch setup, such as touch-tables, interactive walls or multimedia boards

Tablets (iPad) for M-Learning in the context of social constructivism to institute an effective learning environment

With the proliferation of mobile devices, educational institutions have experimented with various mobile devices to implement mobile learning (M-Learning). Mobile devices have been used to facilitate, support, and enhance and extend the reach of teaching and learning. Although there are very few empirically evaluated studies on M-Learning projects, these studies reported that mobile devices brought a transformation to the educational process. To be able to view M-Learning as a rich, collaborative and conversational experience, whether in the classroom or outside we need good mobile applications. Studies have revealed that effective learning happens when teachers and learners are actively participating in the knowledge building process. Therefore, there is a need for applications that create effective learning environments which are learner-centred, knowledge-centred, assessment-centred and community-centred.

My Kitchen Rules pair are all the rage on social media – for now

The launch of the current series of My Kitchen Rules has undoubtedly been successful, both in terms of television ratings and in capturing a social media audience, clearly winning the battle for the Twitter audience on premiere night, and maintaining a lead over both The Block and The Biggest Loser since then. But it is the controversy surrounding Perth contestants Kelly Ramsay and Chloe James that has dominated media coverage today, detailing the abuse to which they have been subjected on social media.

Social event detection at MediaEval 2013 : challenges, datasets and evaluation

In this paper, we provide an overview of the Social Event Detection (SED) task that is part of the MediaEval Bench mark for Multimedia Evaluation 2013. This task requires participants to discover social events and organize the re- lated media items in event-specific clusters within a collection of Web multimedia. Social events are events that are planned by people, attended by people and for which the social multimedia are also captured by people. We describe the challenges, datasets, and the evaluation methodology.

'Haunts of the street bully' : social reform and the Queensland children's playground movement

This article is about the Queensland children's playground movement and its development in Brisbane. It pays particular attention to three Brisbane playgrounds: Neal Macrossan Playground (formerly Paddington Playground); Bedford Playground (formerly Spring Hill Playground); and the Valley Playground, which has since been replaced by a building. The paper pays especial attention to the work of the local children's playground protagonist Mary Josephine Bedford, which will be seen within the context of the international movement.

Can SNOMED CT as implemented in New South Wales, Australia be used for road trauma injury surveillance in emergency departments?

The introduction of Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine - Clinical Terms (Snomed CT) for diagnosis coding in emergency departments (EDs) in New South Wales (NSW) has implications for injury surveillance abilities. This study aimed to assess the consequences of its introduction, as implemented as part of the ED information system in NSW, for identifying road trauma-related injuries in EDs. It involved a retrospective analysis of road trauma-related injuries identified in linked police, ED and mortality records during March 2007 to December 2009. Between 53.7% to 78.4% of all Snomed CT classifications in the principal provisional diagnosis field referred to the type of injury or symptom experienced by the individual. Of the road users identified by police, 3.2% of vehicle occupants, 6% of motorcyclists, 10.0% of pedal cyclists and 5.2% of pedestrians were identified using Snomed CT classifications in the principal provisional diagnosis field. The introduction of Snomed CT may provide flexible terminologies for clinicians. However, unless carefully implemented in information systems, its flexibility can lead to mismatches between the intention and actual use of defined data fields. Choices available in Snomed CT to indicate either symptoms, diagnoses, or injury mechanisms need to be controlled and these three concepts need to be retained in separate data fields to ensure a clear distinction between their classification in the ED.

Social media

In the space of the past decade, the technologies, business models, everyday uses and public understandings of social media have co-evolved rapidly. In the early to mid 2000s, websites like MySpace, Facebook or Twitter were garnering interest in both the press and academia as places for amateur creativity, political subversion or trivial time-wasting on the behalf of subcultures of geeks or ‘digital natives’, but such websites were not seen as legitimate, mainstream media organisations, nor were they generally understood as respectable places for professionals (other than new media professionals) to conduct business. By late 2011, online marketing company Comscore was reporting that social networking was “the most popular online activity worldwide accounting for nearly 1 in every 5 minutes spent online”, reaching 82 percent of the world’s Internet population, or 1.2 billion users (Comscore, 2011). Today, social media is firmly established as an industry sector in its own right, and is deeply entangled with and embedded in the practices and everyday lives of media professionals, celebrities and ordinary users. We might now think of it as an embedded communications infrastructure extending across culture, society and the economy – ranging from local government Facebook pages alerting us to kerbside collection, to Tumblr blogs providing humorous cultural commentary by curating animated .gifs, to Telstra Twitter accounts responding to user requests for tech help, and to Yelp reviews helping us find somewhere to grab dinner in a strange town. As well as at least appearing to be near-ubiquitous, social media is increasingly seen as highly significant by scholars researching issues as diverse as journalistic practice (Hermida, 2012), the coordination of government and community responses to natural disasters (Bruns & Burgess, 2012), and the activities of global social and political protest movements (Howard & Hussain, 2013)...

From ‘broadcast yourself’ to ‘follow your interests’ : making over social media

In this article I briefly trace the complex and incremental but significant ways that social media platforms have been transformed since the ‘Web 2.0’ moment of the early 2000s, identifying some common trajectories across several platforms, and discussing their consequences for how users – and their capacity for creative agency – are positioned. I argue that the maintenance of balanced tensions between accessibility and openness is important to the ongoing prospects of social and cultural innovation in social media.

Cumulative and comparative social media analytics for crisis communication

This paper draws on comparative analyses of Twitter data sets – over time and across different kinds of natural disasters and different national contexts – to demonstrate the value of shared, cumulative approaches to social media analytics in the context of crisis communication.

Prevention of Alcohol-Related Crime and Trauma (PACT) : brief interventions in routine care pathway – a study protocol

Background Globally, alcohol-related injuries cause millions of deaths and huge economic loss each year . The incidence of facial (jawbone) fractures in the Northern Territory of Australia is second only to Greenland, due to a strong involvement of alcohol in its aetiology, and high levels of alcohol consumption. The highest incidences of alcohol-related trauma in the Territory are observed amongst patients in the Maxillofacial Surgery Unit of the Royal Darwin Hospital. Accordingly, this project aims to introduce screening and brief interventions into this unit, with the aims of changing health service provider practice, improving access to care, and improving patient outcomes. Methods Establishment of Project Governance: The project governance team includes a project manager, project leader, an Indigenous Reference Group (IRG) and an Expert Reference Group (ERG). Development of a best practice pathway: PACT project researchers collaborate with clinical staff to develop a best practice pathway suited to the setting of the surgical unit. The pathway provides clear guidelines for screening, assessment, intervention and referral. Implementation: The developed pathway is introduced to the unit through staff training workshops and associate resources and adapted in response to staff feedback. Evaluation: File audits, post workshop questionnaires and semi-structured interviews are administered. Discussion This project allows direct transfer of research findings into clinical practice and can inform future hospital-based injury prevention strategies.

ESD starts where STEM stops : integrating the social sciences into STEM

The Earth and its peoples are facing great challenges. As a species, humans are over-consuming the Earth’s resources and compromising the capacity of both natural and social systems to function in healthy and sustainable ways. Education at all levels and in all contexts, has a key role in helping societies move to more sustainable ways of living. Two areas in need of catch-up in relation to Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) are early childhood education and teacher education. Another area of challenge for ESD is the way it is currently oriented. To date, a great deal of emphasis has been placed on scientific and technological solutions to sustainability issues. This has led to an emphasis on STEM education as education’s main way of addressing sustainability. However, in this paper it is argued that sustainably is primarily a social issue that requires interdisciplinary education approaches. STEM approaches to ESD - emphasising knowledge construction and problem-solving - cannot, on their own, deal effectively with attitudes, values and actions towards more sustainable ways of living. In China and Australia, there are already policies, frameworks, guidelines and initiatives, such as Green Schools and Sustainable Schools that support such forms of ESD. STEM educators need to reach out to social scientists and social educators in order to more fully engage with activist and collaborative educational responses that equip learners with the knowledge, dispositions and capacities to ‘make a difference’.

Self-efficacy partially mediates between social support and health-related quality of life in family caregivers for dementia patients in Shanghai

Background: There is a paucity of research assessing health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and self-efficacy in caregivers of relatives with dementia in mainland China. Aims: To compare the level of HRQoL between caregivers and the general population in mainland China and to assess the role of caregiver self-efficacy in the relationship between caregiver social support and HRQoL. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in Shanghai, China. The caregivers were recruited from the outpatient department of a teaching hospital. A total of 195 participants were interviewed, using a survey package including the Chinese version of the 36-Item Short-Form Health Survey (SF-36), demographic data, the variables associated with the impairments of care recipients, perceived social support and caregiver self-efficacy. The caregivers' SF-36 scores were compared with those of the general population in China. Results: The results indicated that the HRQoL of the caregivers was poorer compared with that of the general population when matched for age and gender. Multiple regression analyses revealed that caregiver self-efficacy is a partial mediator between social support and HRQoL, and a partial mediator between behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD) and caregiver mental health. Conclusion: Assisting with managing BPSD and enhancing caregiver self-efficacy can be considered integral parts of interventions to improve caregiver HRQoL.

A multilevel investigation into the effects of the philosophical community of inquiry on 6th grade students' reading comprehension, interest in maths, self-esteem, pro-social behaviours and emotional well-being

This investigation measured the effects of a one year participation in an Australian Philosophical Community of Inquiry program on 280 sixth grade students' reading comprehension, interest in maths, self-esteem, social behaviours, and emotional well-being. A multilevel model for change was used to detect differences in the response variables, between a quasi-experimental group and comparison group. Results showed that, for participants, reading comprehension significantly increased while interest in maths decreased. No differences between the groups were found for pro-social behaviour and emotional well-being. Self esteem, however, declined for participants while nonparticipants' self esteem increased.