Alternative futures of globalisation a socio-ecological study of the world social forum process

Inspired by the initial World Social Forum in Porto Alegre Brazil, over the past decade over 200 local and regional social forums have been held, on five continents. This study has examined the nature of this broader social forum process, in particular as an aspect of the movement for 'another globalisation'. I discuss both the discourses for 'another world', as well as the development of an Alternative Globalisation Movement. As an action research study, the research took place within a variety of groups and networks. The thesis provides six accounts of groups and people striving and struggling for 'another world'. I provide a macro account of the invention and innovation of the World Social Forum. A grassroots film-makers collective provides a window into media. A local social forum opens up the radical diversity of actors. An activist exchange circle sheds light on strategic aspects of alternative globalisation. An educational initiative provides a window into transformations in pedagogy. And a situational account (of the G20 meeting in Melbourne in 2006) provides an overview of the variety of metanetworks that converge to voice demands for global justice and sustainability. In particular, this study has sought to shed light on how, within this process, groups and communities develop 'agency', a capacity to respond to the global challenges they / we face. And as part of this question, I have also explored how alternatives futures are developed and conceived, with a re-cognition of the importance of histories and geo-political (or 'eco-political') structures as contexts. I argue the World Social Forum Process is prefigurative, as an interactional process where many social alternatives are conceived, supported, developed and innovated into the world. And I argue this innovation process is meta-formative, where convergences of diverse actors comprise ‘social ecologies of alternatives’ which lead to opportunities for dynamic collaboration and partnership.

Reading places

In this chapter I explore how a critical approach to reading pedagogy has evolved over time in South Australia. I start with a brief review of the groundbreaking work of Jennifer O’Brien in the early 1990s in which she adapted feminist post-structuralist approaches for early childhood classrooms. O’Brien showed that young children can and do take an analytical position with respect to reading when tasks are framed in ways that draw their attention to representation and relationships in texts. Then, drawing from a range of empirical research projects, I discuss how a semiotic approach to reading can be productive for thinking about critical and inclusive literacies. I touch briefly upon how and why we incorporated children’s reading of environmental print into the 100 children go to school project. I then outline the ways in which we have capitalised on the notion of reading places in several projects to work with primary school children and their teachers.

Similarity metrics within a point of view

In vector space based approaches to natural language processing, similarity is commonly measured by taking the angle between two vectors representing words or documents in a semantic space. This is natural from a mathematical point of view, as the angle between unit vectors is, up to constant scaling, the only unitarily invariant metric on the unit sphere. However, similarity judgement tasks reveal that human subjects fail to produce data which satisfies the symmetry and triangle inequality requirements for a metric space. A possible conclusion, reached in particular by Tversky et al., is that some of the most basic assumptions of geometric models are unwarranted in the case of psychological similarity, a result which would impose strong limits on the validity and applicability vector space based (and hence also quantum inspired) approaches to the modelling of cognitive processes. This paper proposes a resolution to this fundamental criticism of of the applicability of vector space models of cognition. We argue that pairs of words imply a context which in turn induces a point of view, allowing a subject to estimate semantic similarity. Context is here introduced as a point of view vector (POVV) and the expected similarity is derived as a measure over the POVV's. Different pairs of words will invoke different contexts and different POVV's. Hence the triangle inequality ceases to be a valid constraint on the angles. We test the proposal on a few triples of words and outline further research.

The link between belongingness and depressive symptoms: An exploration in the workplace interpersonal context

Interpersonal factors are crucial to a deepened understanding of depression. Belongingness, also referred to as connectedness, has been established as a strong risk/protective factor for depressive symptoms. To elucidate this link it may be beneficial to investigate the relative importance of specific psychosocial contexts as belongingness foci. Here we investigate the construct of workplace belongingness. Employees at a disability services organisation (N = 125) completed measures of depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, workplace belongingness and organisational commitment. Psychometric analyses, including Horn's parallel analyses, indicate that workplace belongingness is a unitary, robust and measurable construct. Correlational data indicate a substantial relationship with depressive symptoms (r = −.54) and anxiety symptoms (r = −.39). The difference between these correlations was statistically significant, supporting the particular importance of belongingness cognitions to the etiology of depression. Multiple regression analyses support the hypothesis that workplace belongingness mediates the relationship between affective organisational commitment and depressive symptoms. It is likely that workplaces have the potential to foster environments that are intrinsically less depressogenic by facilitating workplace belongingness. From a clinical perspective, cognitions regarding the workplace psychosocial context appear to be highly salient to individual psychological health, and hence warrant substantial attention.

An analysis of schema change intervention

Successful organizational transformation relies on being able to achieve paradigm or collective schema change, and more particularly, the ability to manage the interplay between pre-existing schemas and alternative schemas required for new environments. This conceptual paper presents an analysis and critique of collective schema change dynamics. Two schema change pathways are reflected in the literature: frame-juxtapose-transition and frame-disengage-learning. Research findings in each pathway are limited and/or contradictory. Moreover, research on schema change focuses primarily on social dynamics and less on the relationship between social schema change dynamics and individual schema change dynamics. One implication of this lack of focus on individual schema change dynamics is the masking of the high level of cognitive processing and cognitive effort required by individuals to effect schema change. The capacity to achieve organizational transformation requires that more attention is given to managing these dynamics, which, in turn, requires significant investment in developing the change leadership capabilities of managers and the organizations they manage.

Visceral hedonic rhetoric : exploring the design of interactive products

Blurb: This empirical study analysed consumer emotional responses towards interactive products, specifically looking at properties that persuasively induce the pursuit of pleasure at an instinctual level of cognition, now known as ‘visceral hedonic rhetoric'. By analysing three different types of interactive products results found hierarchical and inter-relatable attributes with the potential to provide a positive consumer-product relationship that is more meaningful, less disposable and more sustainable in the future.

Visceral hedonic rhetoric

Emotional responses can incite and entice consumers to select a particular product from a row of similar items and thus have a considerable impact on purchase decisions. Consequently, more and more companies are challenging designers to address the emotional impact of their work and to design for emotion and consumerproduct relationships. Furthermore, the creation of emotional attachment to one’s possessions is one way of approaching a sustainable consumer-product relationship. The aim of this research is to gain a deeper understanding of the instantaneous emotional attachment that consumers form with products and its subsequent implications for product development. The foci of the study are visceral design, consumer hedonics and product rhetoric. Studied in a conglomerate they become an area of new investigation: visceral hedonic rhetoric. In this context, the term “visceral hedonic rhetoric” is defined as the properties of a product that persuasively elicit the pursuit of pleasure at an instinctual level of cognition. This study explores visceral hedonic rhetoric evident in the design of interactive products and resides within the context of emotional design research. It employs an empirical approach to understand how consumers respond hedonically on a visceral level to rhetoric in products. Specifically, it examines visceral hedonic responses given by thirty participants to the stimuli of six mobile telephones, six Mp3 players and six USB memory flash drives. The study findings demonstrate a hierarchy of visceral hedonic rhetoric evident in interactive products. This hierarchy of visceral hedonic attributes include: colour, size, shape, intrigue, material, perceived usability, portability, perceived function, novelty, analogy, brand, quality, texture and gender. However, it is the interrelationships between these visceral hedonic attributes that are the most significant findings of this research. Certain associations were revealed between product attribute combinations and consumer perception. The most predominant of these were: gender bias associated with colour selection; the creation of intrigue through a vibrant attention-grabbing colour; perceived ease of use and function; product confidence as a result of brand familiarity and perceived usability; analogous association through familiarity with similar objects and shapes; and the association of longevity with quality, novelty or recent technology. A significant outcome of the research is the distillation of visceral hedonic rhetoric design principles, and a tool to assist designers in harnessing the full potential of visceral hedonic rhetoric. This study contributes to the identification of the emerging research field of visceral hedonic rhetoric. Application of this study’s findings has the potential to provide a hedonic consumer-product relationship that is more meaningful, less disposable and more sustainable. This theory of visceral hedonic rhetoric is not only a significant contribution to design knowledge but is also generally transferable to other research domains, as later suggested in future research avenues.

Political information choices in a media saturated environment : credibility or convenience?

This thesis examines the ways in which citizens find out about socio-political issues. The project set out to discover how audience characteristics such as scepticism towards the media, gratifications sought, need for cognition and political interest influence information selection. While most previous information choice studies have focused on how individuals select from a narrow range of media types, this thesis considered a much wider sweep of the information landscape. This approach was taken to obtain an understanding of information choices in a more authentic context - in everyday life, people are not simply restricted to one or two news sources. Rather, they may obtain political information from a vast range of information sources, including media sources (e.g. radio, television, newspapers) and sources from beyond the media (eg. interpersonal sources, public speaking events, social networking websites). Thus, the study included both media and non-news media information sources. Data collection for the project consisted of a written, postal survey. The survey was administered to a probability sample in the greater Brisbane region, which is the third largest city in Australia. Data was collected during March and April 2008, approximately four months after the 2007 Australian Federal Election. Hence, the study was conducted in a non-election context. 585 usable surveys were obtained. In addition to measuring the attitudinal characteristics listed above, respondents were surveyed as to which information sources (eg. television shows, radio stations, websites and festivals) they usually use to find out about socio-political issues. Multiple linear regression analysis was conducted to explore patterns of influence between the audience characteristics and information consumption patterns. The results of this analysis indicated an apparent difference between the way citizens use news media sources and the way they use information sources from beyond the news media. In essence, it appears that non-news media information sources are used very deliberately to seek socio-political information, while media sources are used in a less purposeful way. If media use in a non-election context, such as that of the present study, is not primarily concerned with deliberate information seeking, media use must instead have other primary purposes, with political information acquisition as either a secondary driver, or a by-product of that primary purpose. It appears, then, that political information consumption in a media-saturated society is more about routine ‘practices’ than it is about ‘information seeking’. The suggestion that media use is no longer primarily concerned with information seeking, but rather, is simply a behaviour which occurs within the broader set of everyday practices reflects Couldry’s (2004) media as practice paradigm. These findings highlight the need for more authentic and holistic contexts for media research. It is insufficient to consider information choices in isolation, or even from a wider range of information sources, such as that incorporated in the present study. Future media research must take greater account of the broader social contexts and practices in which media-oriented behaviours occur. The findings also call into question the previously assumed centrality of trust to information selection decisions. Citizens regularly use media they do not trust to find out about politics. If people are willing to use information sources they do not trust for democratically important topics such as politics, it is important that citizens possess the media literacy skills to effectively understand and evaluate the information they are presented with. Without the application of such media literacy skills, a steady diet of ‘fast food’ media may result in uninformed or misinformed voting decisions, which have implications for the effectiveness of democratic processes. This research has emphasized the need for further holistic and authentically contextualised media use research, to better understand how citizens use information sources to find out about important topics such as politics.

A review of dashboards in performance management : implications for design and research

Dashboards are expected to improve decision making by amplifying cognition and capitalizing on human perceptual capabilities. Hence, interest in dashboards has increased recently, which is also evident from the proliferation of dashboard solution providers in the market. Despite dashboards' popularity, little is known about the extent of their effectiveness, i.e. what types of dashboards work best for different users or tasks. In this paper, we conduct a comprehensive multidisciplinary literature review with an aim to identify the critical issues organizations might need to consider when implementing dashboards. Dashboards are likely to succeed and solve the problems of presentation format and information load when certain visualization principles and features are present (e.g. high data-ink ratio and drill down features).Werecommend that dashboards come with some level of flexibility, i.e. allowing users to switch between alternative presentation formats. Also some theory driven guidance through popups and warnings can help users to select an appropriate presentation format. Given the dearth of research on dashboards, we conclude the paper with a research agenda that could guide future studies in this area.

The use of semantic priming as a paradigm for the detection of faking on self-report psychological tests

It is recognised that individuals do not always respond honestly when completing psychological tests. One of the foremost issues for research in this area is the inability to detect individuals attempting to fake. While a number of strategies have been identified in faking, a commonality of these strategies is the latent role of long term memory. Seven studies were conducted in order to examine whether it is possible to detect the activation of faking related cognitions using a lexical decision task. Study 1 found that engagement with experiential processing styles predicted the ability to fake successfully, confirming the role of associative processing styles in faking. After identifying appropriate stimuli for the lexical decision task (Studies 2A and 2B), Studies 3 to 5 examined whether a cognitive state of faking could be primed and subsequently identified, using a lexical decision task. Throughout the course of these studies, the experimental methodology was increasingly refined in an attempt to successfully identify the relevant priming mechanisms. The results were consistent and robust throughout the three priming studies: faking good on a personality test primed positive faking related words in the lexical decision tasks. Faking bad, however, did not result in reliable priming of negative faking related cognitions. To more completely address potential issues with the stimuli and the possible role of affective priming, two additional studies were conducted. Studies 6A and 6B revealed that negative faking related words were more arousing than positive faking related words, and that positive faking related words were more abstract than negative faking related words and neutral words. Study 7 examined whether the priming effects evident in the lexical decision tasks occurred as a result of an unintentional mood induction while faking the psychological tests. Results were equivocal in this regard. This program of research aligned the fields of psychological assessment and cognition to inform the preliminary development and validation of a new tool to detect faking. Consequently, an implicit technique to identify attempts to fake good on a psychological test has been identified, using long established and robust cognitive theories in a novel and innovative way. This approach represents a new paradigm for the detection of individuals responding strategically to psychological testing. With continuing development and validation, this technique may have immense utility in the field of psychological assessment.

‘Expected satiety’ changes hunger and fullness in the inter-meal interval

Previously, we have shown that foods differ markedly in the satiety that they are expected to confer (compared calorie-for-calorie). In the present study we tested the hypothesis that ‘expected satiety’ plays a causal role in the satiety that is experienced after a food has been consumed. Before lunch, participants (N = 32) were shown the ingredients of a fruit smoothie. Half were shown a small portion of fruit and half were shown a large portion. Participants then assessed the expected satiety of the smoothie and provided appetite ratings, before, and for three hours after its consumption. As anticipated, expected satiety was significantly higher in the ‘large portion’ condition. Moreover, and consistent with our hypothesis, participants reported significantly less hunger and significantly greater fullness in the large portion condition. Importantly, this effect endured throughout the test period (for three hours). Together, these findings confirm previous reports indicating that beliefs and expectations can have marked effects on satiety and they show that this effect can persist well into the inter-meal interval. Potential explanations are discussed, including the prospect that satiety is moderated by memories of expected satiety that are encoded around the time that a meal is consumed.

‘I could eat a horse’! : meal planning determines meal size

Evidence that our food environment can affect meal size is often taken to indicate a failure of ‘conscious control’. By contrast, our research suggests that ‘expected satiation’ (fullness that a food is expected to confer) predicts self-selected meal size. However, the role of meal planning as a determinant of actual meal size remains unresolved, as does the extent to which meal planning is commonplace outside the laboratory. Here, we quantified meal planning and its relation to meal size in a large-cohort study. Participants (N= 764; 25.6 yrs, 78% female) completed a questionnaire containing items relating to their last meal. The majority (91%) of meals were consumed in their entirety. Furthermore, in 92% of these cases the participants decided to consume the whole meal, even before it began. A second major objective was to explore the prospect that meal plans are revised based on within-meal experience (e.g., development of satiation). Only 8% of participants reported ‘unexpected’ satiation that caused them to consume less than anticipated. Moreover, at the end of the meal 57% indicated that they were not fully satiated, and 29% continued eating beyond comfortable satiation (often to avoid wasting food). This pattern was neither moderated by BMI nor dieting status, and was observed across meal types. Together, these data indicate that meals are often planned and that planning corresponds closely with amount consumed. By contrast, we find limited evidence for within-meal modification of these plans, suggesting that ‘pre-meal cognition’ is an important determinant of meal size in humans.

The contribution of leadership attributes to large scale, complex project success

Mismanagement of large-scale, complex projects has resulted in spectacular failures, cost overruns, time blowouts, and stakeholder dissatisfaction. We focus discussion on the interaction of key management and leadership attributes which facilitate leaders’ adaptive behaviors. These behaviors should in turn influence adaptive team member behavior, stakeholder engagement and successful project outcomes, outputs and impacts. An understanding of this type of management will benefit from a perspective based in managerial and organizational cognition. The research question we explore is whether successful leaders of large-scale complex projects have an internal process leading to a display of administrative, adaptive, and enabling behaviors that foster adaptive processes and enabling behaviors within their teams and with external stakeholders. At the core of the model we propose interactions of key attributes, namely cognitive flexibility, affect, and emotional intelligence. The result of these cognitive-affective attribute interactions is leadership leading to enhanced likelihood of complex project success.