The healthy child citizen: biopedagogies and web-based health promotion

The health of children in affluent economies has become closely tied to the ideal of a normative body weight achieved by monitoring and balancing diet and physical activity. As a result, the education of young people on how to avoid becoming fat begins at an early age through the language and practices of families, the messages embedded in children’s media, and through formal schooling. In this paper we use the concept of biopedagogies to investigate how discourses that connect food, the body and health come together on Internet websites to instruct children on how they should come to know and act on themselves in order to be(come) healthy bio-citizens.

Book review : Citizen voices: performing public participation in science and environment communication

In Citizen Voices Phillips, Carvalho and Doyle present a collection of articles exploring the meaning of “citizens” and their role as initiators of communication on science and as actors in formal public engagement exercises involved in science governance. Focusing on the dialogic process, the articles provide empirical insight into the effect of citizen voices on participatory decision-making and a range of related theories and methodologies.

e-Citizen Core : uma plataforma de participação eletrónica para apoio nas tomadas de decisões políticas

A proposta apresentada oferece uma abordagem interdisciplinar com uma forte integração entre as áreas de Gestão do Conhecimento e de Media, Marketing, Ciências Sociais e Engenharia Informática para desenvolver e aplicar a proposto de projeto final do Mestrado em Comércio Eletrónico do Instituto Superior de Engenharia de Coimbra - ISEC. Este trabalho tenta enriquecer o conhecimento nessas áreas através de suas contribuições teóricas e técnicas por apresentar, passo a passo, a sugestão de um projeto de comunicação institucional, tomada de decisão política, democracia direta digital e participação eletrónica em uma instituição pública para a promoção da cidadania digital. Dentro deste contexto, faz-se exercer por meio da democratização do acesso às TIC’s, prerrogativa da inclusão digital e social, a sugestão da criação de um conceito de uma plataforma digital que venha a auxiliar, como uma ferramenta, para que em conjunto com a sociedade e decisores políticos possam ser criados canais diretos de comunicação para possibilitar a participação da sociedade nas tomadas de decisões políticas em instituições públicas. Além do conceito de protótipo de uma plataforma digital que integre várias tipologias de democracia ainda foram criados dois modelos conceptuais, um modelo de adoção de tecnologia e, outro sobre tomada de decisão interativa, ambos com o objetivo de auxiliar e aprofundar o estudo na utilização e adoção de governo eletrónico pelos cidadãos. No âmbito de aplicabilidade e na eficácia do desenvolvimento deste trabalho, foi-se sugerido como câmara municipal portuguesa padrão a Câmara Municipal de Coimbra, em Portugal, a fim de estabelecer uma condição próxima da realidade nos processos e etapas da tomada de decisão política e participação da população na nossa proposta. Dessa forma, o presente estudo disponibiliza todos os conceitos e fundamentos para a implementação de uma plataforma de governo eletrónico proporcionado pelo uso de medias digitais, sendo assim, mais uma alternativa à democratização em massa, e a ênfase da importância dos desafios e oportunidades que determinam a adoção do uso de plataformas de governo eletrónico e da importância da e-participação no cenário atual das TIC’s e para os governos e a sociedade. Assim, ainda vale ressaltar a contribuição teórica da pesquisa elaborada sobre modelos de adoção de tecnologia e de tomada de decisão e, sobretudo, acerca do e-governo, eparticipação e tomada de decisão política, além de servir como apoio de ponto de partida para outros projetos de desenvolvimento de plataforma de participação eletrónica.

A seismic shift? An evaluation of the impact of new media on perceptions of freedom of expression and privacy

New media platforms have changed the media landscape forever, as they have altered our perceptions of the limits of communication, and reception of information. Platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp enable individuals to circumvent the traditional mass media, converging audience and producer to create millions of ‘citizen journalists’. This new breed of journalist uses these platforms as a way of, not only receiving news, but of instantaneously, and often spontaneously, expressing opinions and venting and sharing emotions, thoughts and feelings. They are liberated from cultural and physical restraints, such as time, space and location, and they are not constrained by factors that impact upon the traditional media, such as editorial control, owner or political bias or the pressures of generating commercial revenue. A consequence of the way in which these platforms have become ingrained within our social culture is that habits, conventions and social norms, that were once informal and transitory manifestations of social life, are now infused within their use. What were casual and ephemeral actions and/or acts of expression, such as conversing with friends or colleagues or swapping/displaying pictures, or exchanging thoughts that were once kept private, or maybe shared with a select few, have now become formalised and potentially permanent, on view for the world to see. Incidentally, ‘traditional’ journalists and media outlets are also utilising new media, as it allows them to react, and disseminate news, instantaneously, within a hyper-competitive marketplace. However, in a world where we are saturated, not only by citizen journalists, but by traditional media outlets, offering access to news and opinion twenty-four hours a day, via multiple new media platforms, there is increased pressure to ‘break’ news fast and first. This paper will argue that new media, and the culture and environment it has created, for citizen journalists, traditional journalists and the media generally, has altered our perceptions of the limits and boundaries of freedom of expression dramatically, and that the corollary to this seismic shift is the impact on the notion of privacy and private life. Consequently, this paper will examine what a reasonable expectation of privacy may now mean, in a new media world.

Digitally Mediated Political Participation: Understanding the Democratic Impact of Internet Diffusion in the Asian Media Systems

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-08

Evaluating Promotional Approaches for Citizen Science Biological Recording: Bumblebees as a Group Versus Harmonia axyridis as a Flagship for Ladybirds

Over the past decade, the number of biological records submitted by members of the public have increased dramatically. However, this may result in reduced record quality, depending on how species are promoted in the media. Here we examined the two main promotional approaches for citizen science recording schemes: flagship-species, using one charismatic species as an umbrella for the entire group (here, Harmonia axyridis (Pallas) for Coleoptera: Coccinellidae), and general-group, where the group is promoted as a whole and no particular prominence is given to any one species (here, bumblebees, genus Bombus (Hymenoptera: Apidae)). Of the two approaches, the general-group approach produced data that was not biased towards any one species, but far fewer records per year overall. In contrast, the flagship-species approach generated a much larger annual dataset, but heavily biased towards the flagship itself. Therefore, we recommend that the approach for species promotion is fitted to the result desired.

Gift players or playbourers? Who is playing citizen science games?

Paper presented at the 1st International Joint Conference of DiGRA and FDG Dundee, August 1-6, 2016.

How valuable is web 2.0 to music criticism? An investigation into the role of web 2.0 and social media in the reception of Benjamin Britten's operas

The internet is deeply integrated with many people's day to day lives, including that of musicians and musicologists. In this thesis, the impact of the internet on classical music criticism in the Web 2.0 age is examined. Using the examples of Britten's operas, Gloriana and Peter Grimes, an overview of their critical reception is examined, using printed reviews found in The Times since their premières, internet based reviews of two specific performances, and the reactions to these performances on Twitter. Theories of media behaviour including de Mul's view of the 'ludic self' are used in order to explain the content found in reviews in conjunction with citizen journalism, of which blogging is an extension. While there are some consistencies between the print reviews and those online, there are stylistic differences, and wider repercussions for the world of criticism in the wake of the democratisation of culture, as critics find their previously regarded authority obsolete to some. Music criticism is no longer the reserve of the musicologists

A second order control-volume finite-element least-squares strategy for simulating diffusion in strongly anisotropic media

An unstructured mesh �nite volume discretisation method for simulating di�usion in anisotropic media in two-dimensional space is discussed. This technique is considered as an extension of the fully implicit hybrid control-volume �nite-element method and it retains the local continuity of the ux at the control volume faces. A least squares function recon- struction technique together with a new ux decomposition strategy is used to obtain an accurate ux approximation at the control volume face, ensuring that the overall accuracy of the spatial discretisation maintains second order. This paper highlights that the new technique coincides with the traditional shape function technique when the correction term is neglected and that it signi�cantly increases the accuracy of the previous linear scheme on coarse meshes when applied to media that exhibit very strong to extreme anisotropy ratios. It is concluded that the method can be used on both regular and irregular meshes, and appears independent of the mesh quality.