Social media and its impact on crisis communication: Case studies of Twitter use in emergency management in Australia and New Zealand

There is a growing awareness worldwide of the significance of social media to communication in times of both natural and human-created disasters and crises. While the media have long been used as a means of broadcasting messages to communities in times of crisis – bushfires, floods, earthquakes etc. – the significance of social media in enabling many-to-many communication through ubiquitous networked computing and mobile media devices is becoming increasingly important in the fields of disaster and emergency management. This paper undertakes an analysis of the uses made of social media during two recent natural disasters: the January 2011 floods in Brisbane and South-East Queensland in Australia, and the February 2011 earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand. It is part of a wider project being undertaken by a research team based at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, that is working with the Queensland Department of Community Safety (DCS) and the EIDOS Institute, and funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC) through its Linkages program. The project combines large-scale, quantitative social media tracking and analysis techniques with qualitative cultural analysis of communication efforts by citizens and officials, to enable both emergency management authorities and news media organisations to develop, implement, and evaluate new social media strategies for emergency communication.

ADMRG @ MediaEval 2013 Social Event Detection

This paper elaborates the approach used by the Applied Data Mining Research Group (ADMRG) for the Social Event Detection (SED) Tasks of the 2013 MediaEval Benchmark. We extended the constrained clustering algorithm to apply to the first semi-supervised clustering task, and we compared several classifiers with Latent Dirichlet Allocation as feature selector in the second event classification task. The proposed approach focuses on scalability and efficient memory allocation when applied to a high dimensional data with large clusters. Results of the first task show the effectiveness of the proposed method. Results from task 2 indicate that attention on the imbalance categories distributions is needed.

Social enterprises and regional development : opportunities and constraints in Australia

This thesis examines the role of social enterprises in regional development and is based on comparative case studies of two regions in NSW. With a specific focus on 10 social enterprises, including both Indigenous and non-Indigenous organisations, 63 interviews were conducted with a wide range of community stakeholders. Utilising a decolonising methodological approach, the study examined the social and financial needs of these organisations, as well as their contributions as regional development actors.

Of dogs, fish, birds and turds : the social construction of sewage pollution by recreational boaters

Animals are often used as ‘evidence’ of marine pollution. Take for instance the ubiquitous images of miserable oil-soaked marine birds following high profile oil spills such as the Exxon Valdez, Pacific Adventurer and Deepwater Horizon incidents or the images of bloated floating fish carcasses which are used to signal the presence of toxic pollutants. In recent years waste discharges from vessels have come under increased public and regulatory scrutiny both in Australia and around the world. International, regional, national and local restrictions are becoming more stringent for high profile marine pollutants such as oil as well as previously overlooked vessel-sourced pollutants such as sewage. Drawing upon media reports and recreational boater responses to government attempts to regulate the discharge of sewage from recreational vessels, this paper considers the important role played by animals in constructions of marine pollution by sewage and attributions of blame for this pollution. Specifically, this study found that recreational boat owners disputed claims their sewage management practices posed an environmental threat arguing that the sewage discharged was readily and eagerly consumed by fish in the receiving environment. Boat owners also argued that increased levels of bacteria which indicate the presence of faeces within the marine environment could be directly attributed to the excrement of marine mammals and birds or were the result of dog faeces being washed through municipal storm water systems rather than the result of vessel discharges. By contrast the contamination of oysters was provided as evidence of sewage pollution by other stakeholders.

Are the offences in the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) legitimate and effective? : an analysis based in harm and social norms theory

This thesis examines the effectiveness of offences in the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) in the online environment. The application of social norm theories suggests that the offences will be ineffective in creating an effective deterrent to non-commercial copyright infringement.

Fresh ideas : services thinking for social marketing

Purpose The social marketing literature tends to focus on upstream marketing (policy) and downstream (individual behaviour change) and has a limited view on midstream (working with partners and community groups) social marketing. The paper proposes midstream social marketing should also include an understanding of how services and service employees influence and support individual behaviour change goals. The paper presents four key services marketing principles - derived from services theory and thinking - which the paper believes to be essential for implementing effective midstream social marketing. Design/methodology/approach This is a conceptual paper that uses service theory and case-examples to show how service thinking can be used as a midstream social marketing approach. Findings For effective uptake and impact of social marketing services amongst people and populations, social marketers need to design programs that consider the service experience, the service employee, service quality/customer value and the active role of the customer in value creation. Research limitations/implications Services marketing is a well-established sub-discipline of marketing which, until recently, has not interacted with social marketing. The extension and application of services theory for social marketing can enrich and propel the social marketing discipline forward. Further research is recommended to evaluate how service principles can be applied in practice. Social implications Given that social marketing services tend not to be accessed in sufficient numbers by the people who most need them, social marketers need to think beyond the technical, cognitive, and organisational-focused goals when designing social services. Originality/value This paper identifies key service theories that social marketers should understand and use and is thus a source of fresh ideas for theory and practice.

The value of health and wellbeing : an empirical model of value creation in social marketing

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of multiple actors in the value creation process for a preventative health service, and observe the subsequent impact on key service outcomes of satisfaction and customer behaviour intentions to use a preventative health service again in the future. Design/methodology/approach An online self-completion survey of Australian women (n=797) was conducted to test the proposed framework in the context of a free, government-provided breastscreening service. Data were analysed using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). Findings The findings indicate that functional and emotional value are created from organisational and customer resources. These findings indicate that health service providers and customers are jointly responsible for the successful creation of value, leading to desirable outcomes for all stakeholders. Practical implications The results highlight to health professionals the aspects of service that can be managed in order to create value with target audiences. The findings also indicate the importance of the resources provided by users in the creation of value, signifying the importance of customer education and management. Originality/value This study provides a significant contribution to social marketing through the provision of an empirically validated model of value creation in a preventative health service. The model demonstrates how the creation and provision of value can lead to the achievement of desirable social behaviours - a key aim of social marketing.

A social matching system : using implicit and explicit information for personalized recommendation in online dating service

Online dating websites enable a specific form of social networking and their efficiency can be increased by supporting proactive recommendations based on participants' preferences with the use of data mining. This research develops two-way recommendation methods for people-to-people recommendation for large online social networks such as online dating networks. This research discovers the characteristics of the online dating networks and utilises these characteristics in developing efficient people-to-people recommendation methods. Methods developed support improved recommendation accuracy, can handle data sparsity that often comes with large data sets and are scalable for handling online networks with a large number of users.

The impact of a social-cognitive teaching strategy on students with learning difficulties

This study examined the impact of a social-cognitive teaching strategy, the community of inquiry, on the functioning of six Year 4 students with learning difficulties. Results indicated that the students became more self-regulated in their learning and developed greater academic self-efficacy and stronger reading comprehension skills. Although the degree of development varied across the group, the results indicated that all six students (in addition to their class peers) benefited from actively engaging in scaffolded opportunities for intellectual and social exchange in a whole class setting. Accordingly, the findings of this study have implications for approaches to supporting the development and learning of students with learning difficulties.

The relationship of entrepreneurial orientation, Vincentian values and economic and social performance in social enterprise

This study focuses on the managerial question “should social enterprises become more entrepreneurial?” It adapts the Covin and Slevin (1989) entrepreneurial orientation scale to measure the adoption of entrepreneurship by a social enterprise, and develops a scale that combines a Vincentian based focus to serve the poor with a propensity to take a more entrepreneurial approach toward business as a measure of a social value orientation (SVO).

Social enterprise versus social entrepreneurship : an examination of the ‘why’ and ‘how’ in pursuing social change

This article critically considers distinctions between, social enterprise and social entrepreneurship from a theoretical perspective. Using case study analysis of 10 non-governmental organisations the paper explores these concepts empirically. Findings on social enterprise reveal a focus on the purpose of social businesses, while findings on social entrepreneurship reveal an emphasis on the processes underlying innovative and entrepreneurial activity for social purposes. Discussion of these findings indicates important developments relevant to informing the growing area of social enterprise and social entrepreneurship research. Implications extend to understanding the need for action to achieve social change, and an acceptance of risk when existing actions fail to achieve their intended outcomes.

Measurement as legitimacy versus legitimacy of measures : Performance evaluation of social enterprise

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to review the growing emphasis on quantifiable performance measures such as social return on investment (SROI) in third sector organisations – specifically, social enterprise – through a legitimacy theory lens. It then examines what social enterprises value (i.e. consider important) in terms of performance evaluation, using a case study approach. Design/methodology/approach Case studies involving interviews, documentary analysis, and observation, of three social enterprises at different life-cycle stages with different funding structures, were constructed to consider “what measures matter” from a practitioner's perspective. Findings Findings highlight a priority on quality outcomes and impacts in primarily qualitative terms to evaluate performance. Further, there is a noticeable lack of emphasis on financial measures other than basic access to financial resources to continue pursuing social goals. Social implications The practical challenges faced by social enterprises – many of which are small to medium sized – in evaluating performance and by implication organisational legitimacy are contrasted with measures such as SROI which are resource intensive and have inherent methodological limitations. Hence, findings suggest the limited and valuable resources of social enterprises would be better allocated towards documenting the actual outcomes and impacts as a first step, in order to evaluate social and financial performance in terms appropriate to each objective, in order to demonstrate organisational legitimacy. Originality/value Findings distinguish between processes which may hold symbolic legitimacy for select stakeholder groups, and processes which hold substantive, cognitive legitimacy for stakeholders more broadly, in the under-researched context of social enterprise.

Moderating teen drinking : combining social marketing and education

Purpose This paper outlines a pilot study that was undertaken in Australia in 2011 that combined social marketing with education. An intervention targeting 14-16 year olds to influence attitudes and behavioural intentions towards moderate drinking was developed and tested. Game On:Know alcohol (GO:KA) is a six-module intervention that is delivered to a year level cohort in an auditorium. GO:KA combines a series of online and offline experiential activities to engage (with) students. Design/methodology Following social marketing benchmark criteria, formative research and competitive analysis were undertaken to create, implement and evaluate an intervention. The intervention was delivered in one all boys' and one all girls' school in April and June 2011, respectively. A total of 223 Year 10 students participated in GO:KA with the majority completing both pre- and post-surveys. Paired samples t-tests and descriptive analysis were used to assess attitudinal and behavioural intention change. Findings Attitudinal change was observed in both schools while behavioural intentions changed for girls and not boys according to paired samples t-testing. Post hoc testing indicated gender differences. Research limitations The lack of a control group is a key limitation of the current research that can be overcome in the 20 school main study to be conducted in 2013-2015. Originality/value The current study provides evidence to suggest that a combined social marketing and education intervention can change teenage attitudes towards moderate drinking whilst only changing behavioural intentions for female teenagers. Analysis of the intervention provides insight into gender differences and highlights the need for a segmented approach.

Food and Brisbane households : dietary, social and health consequences of food insecurity

Background & Aims: Access to sufficient amounts of safe and culturally-acceptable foods is a fundamental human right. Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. Food insecurity therefore occurs when the availability or access to sufficient amounts of nutritionally-adequate, culturally-appropriate and safe foods, or, the ability to acquire such foods in socially-acceptable ways, is limited. Food insecurity may result in significant adverse effects for the individual and these outcomes may vary between adults and children. Among adults, food insecurity may be associated with overweight or obesity, poorer self-rated general health, depression, increased health-care utilisation and dietary intakes less consistent with national recommendations. Among children, food insecurity may result in poorer self or parent-reported general health, behavioural problems, lower levels of academic achievement and poor social outcomes. The majority of research investigating the potential correlates of food insecurity has been undertaken in the United States (US), where regular national screening for food insecurity is undertaken using a comprehensive multi-item measurement. In Australia, screening for food insecurity takes place on a three yearly basis via the use of a crude, single-item included in the National Health Survey (NHS). This measure has been shown to underestimate the prevalence of food insecurity by 5%. From 1995 – 2004, the prevalence of food insecurity among the Australian population remained stable at 5%. Due to the perceived low prevalence of this issue, screening for food insecurity was not undertaken in the most recent NHS. Furthermore, there are few Australian studies investigating the potential determinants of food insecurity and none investigating potential outcomes among adults and children. This study aimed to examine these issues by a) investigating the prevalence of food insecurity among households residing in disadvantaged urban areas and comparing prevalence rates estimated by the more comprehensive 18-item and 6-item United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Food Security Survey Module (FSSM) to those estimated by the current single-item measure used for surveillance in Australia and b) investigating the potential determinants and outcomes of food insecurity, Methods: A comprehensive literature review was undertaken to investigate the potential determinants and consequences of food insecurity among developed countries. This was followed by a cross-sectional study in which 1000 households from the most disadvantaged 5% of Brisbane areas were sampled and data collected via mail-based survey (final response rate = 53%, n = 505). Data were collected for food security status, sociodemographic characteristics (household income, education, age, gender, employment status, housing tenure and living arrangements), fruit and vegetable intakes, meat and take-away consumption, presence of depressive symptoms, presence of chronic disease and body mass index (BMI) among adults. Among children, data pertaining to BMI, parent-reported general health, days away from school and activities and behavioural problems were collected. Rasch analysis was used to investigate the psychometric properties of the 18-, 10- and 6-item adaptations of the USDA-FSSM, and McNemar's test was used to investigate the difference in the prevalence of food insecurity as measured by these three adaptations compared to the current single-item measure used in Australia. Chi square and logistic regression were used to investigate the differences in dietary and health outcomes among adults and health and behavioural outcomes among children. Results were adjusted for equivalised household income and, where necessary, for indigenous status, education and family type. Results: Overall, 25% of households in these urbanised-disadvantaged areas reported experiencing food insecurity; this increased to 34% when only households with children were analysed. The current reliance on a single-item measure to screen for food insecurity may underestimate the true burden among the Australian population, as this measure was shown to significantly underestimate the prevalence of food insecurity by five percentage points. Internationally, major potential determinants of food insecurity included poverty and indicators of poverty, such as low-income, unemployment and lower levels of education. Ethnicity, age, transportation and cooking and financial skills were also found to be potential determinants of food insecurity. Among Australian adults in disadvantaged urban areas, food insecurity was associated with a three-fold increase in experiencing poorer self-rated general health and a two-to-five-fold increase in the risk of depression. Furthermore, adults from food insecure households were twoto- three times more likely to have seen a general practitioner and/or been admitted to hospital within the previous six months, compared to their food secure counterparts. Weight status and intakes of fruits, vegetables and meat were not associated with food insecurity. Among Australian households with children, those in the lowest tertile were over 16 times more likely to experience food insecurity compared to those in the highest tertile for income. After adjustment for equivalised household income, children from food insecure households were three times more likely to have missed days away from school or other activities. Furthermore, children from food insecure households displayed a two-fold increase in atypical emotions and behavioural difficulties. Conclusions: Food insecurity is an important public health issue and may contribute to the burden on the health care system through its associations with depression and increased health care utilisation among adults and behavioural and emotional problems among children. Current efforts to monitor food insecurity in Australia do not occur frequently and use a tool that may underestimate the prevalence of food insecurity. Efforts should be made to improve the regularity of screening for food insecurity via the use of a more accurate screening measure. Most of the current strategies that aim to alleviate food insecurity do not sufficiently address the issue of insufficient financial resources for acquiring food; a factor which is an important determinant of food insecurity. Programs to address this issue should be developed in collaboration with groups at higher risk of developing food insecurity and should incorporate strategies to address the issue of low income as a barrier to food acquisition.

The social meaning of Brisbane City Hall

Three major periods of Brisbane's history were selected for examination of the social meaning of Brisbane City Hall: 1908 to 1920 – during which many debates about a 'new town hall' occurred, 1921 to 1930 – the construction phase, and the 1930s – City Hall's first decade of public use. This study shows that Brisbane City Hall is a central place where multiple social meanings have been made by residents and visitors. A broad range of views about City Hall existed during the periods studied; views and meanings that are not captured by its epithets or covered adequately by the existing literature. This thesis is an introductory study of the social meaning of Brisbane City Hall – what was said about it, how it was used and its significance to Brisbane's residents and visitors.