Using social media to facilitate knowledge transfer in complex engineering environments : a primer for educators

While highly cohesive groups are potentially advantageous they are also often correlated with the emergence of knowledge and information silos based around those same functional or occupational clusters. Consequently, an essential challenge for engineering organisations wishing to overcome informational silos is to implement mechanisms that facilitate, encourage and sustain interactions between otherwise disconnected groups. This paper acts as a primer for those seeking to gain an understanding of the design, functionality and utility of a suite of software tools generically termed social media technologies in the context of optimising the management of tacit engineering knowledge. Underpinned by knowledge management theory and using detailed case examples, this paper explores how social media technologies achieve such goals, allowing for the transfer of knowledge by tapping into the tacit and explicit knowledge of disparate groups in complex engineering environments.

Talking of many things : using topical networks to study discussions in social media

This paper outlines a method for studying online activity using both qualitative and quantitative methods: topical network analysis. A topical network refers to "the collection of sites commenting on a particular event or issue, and the links between them" (Highfield, Kirchhoff, & Nicolai, 2011, p. 341). The approach is a complement for the analysis of large datasets enabling the examination and comparison of different discussions as a means of improving our understanding of the uses of social media and other forms of online communication. Developed for an analysis of political blogging, the method also has wider applications for other social media websites such as Twitter.

News media representations of homelessness : do economic news production pressures prevent journalists from adequately reporting complex social issues

This study used both content and frame analyses to test news-media representations of homelessness in The Courier-Mail newspaper for evidence of restricted journalism practice. Specifically, it sought signs of either direct manipulation of issue representation based on ideological grounds, and also evidence of news organisations prioritising low-cost news production over Public Sphere journalistic news values. The study found that news stories from the earlier parts of the longitudinal study showed stereotypical misrepresentations of homelessness for public deliberation which might be attributed to either, or both of the nominated restricting factors. However news stories from the latter part of the study saw a distinct change in the way the issue was represented, indicating a journalistic capacity to thoughtfully and sensitively represent a complex social issue to the public. Further study is recommended to ascertain how and why this change occurred, so that journalistic practice might be further improved.

Interactive conference voting

We describe and analyze opinion polling results from interactive voting procedures undertaken before and after presentations during the Outcome Measures in Rheumatoid Arthritis Clinical Trials Conference (OMERACT II) in Ottawa, Canada, June 30-July 2, 1994. The scoring procedure was a matched voting design; when a participant used the same keypad at the beginning and end of voting, change within a participant could be estimated. Participants, experienced in the rheumatic diseases included clinicians, researchers, methodologists, regulators, and representatives of the pharmaceutical industry. Patients under consideration were those with any rheumatic diseases. Questions were constructed to evaluate the change in voting behavior expected from the content of the presentation. Statistically significant and substantively important changes were evident in most questions.

From homepages to network profiles : balancing personal and social identity

The World Wide Web constitutes one of the most important inventions of the late 20th century: it has changed culture, society, business, communication, politics, and many other fields of human endeavour, not least also by providing a more user-friendly pathway of access to its major underlying technology, the Internet itself. Key phases in its development can be charted, especially by how it has been used to present and share information – and here, the personal or professional, private or official homepage stands in as a useful representation of wider Web trends overall. From hand-coded beginnings through several successive stages of experimentation and standardisation, to the shifting balance between personal sites and social networks, the homepage demonstrates how the Web itself, and its place in our lives, have changed.

Making a case for social impact assessment in urban development : social impacts and legal disputes in Queensland, Australia

Urban land use planning and policy decisions are often contested, with the multiple stakeholders (business, developers, residents, policymakers and the wider community) frequently holding opposing viewpoints about the issues and best solution. In recent years, however, the participatory process of social impact assessment (SIA) has received significant attention as a way to mitigate conflict, facilitating negotiation and conflict resolution. This paper examines how social impacts have informed development appeals in Australia, focussing on ten cases from the Queensland Planning and Environment Court (QPEC). Half are appeals from community members (typically neighbours) wanting to oppose approvals and half from organisations appealing against City Councils’ decisions to deny their development applications. While legal challenges do not necessarily reflect attitudes and practices, they provide a means to begin to assess how social impacts (although not often explicitly defined as such) inform development related disputes. Based on the nature and outcomes of 10 QPEC cases, we argue that many legal cases could have been avoided if SIA had been undertaken appropriately. First, the issues in each case are clearly social, incorporating impacts on amenity, the character of an area, the needs of different social groups, perceptions of risk and a range of other social issues. Second, the outcomes and recommendations from each case, such as negotiating agreements, modifying plans and accommodating community concerns would have been equally served thorough SIA. Our argument is that engagement at an early stage, utilising SIA, could have likely achieved the same result in a less adversarial and much less expensive and time-consuming environment than a legal case.

Educational accountability tests, social and legal inclusion approaches to discrimination for students with disability : a national case study from Australia

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability (CRPD) promotes equal and full participation by children in education. Equity of educational access for all students, including students with disability, free from discrimination, is the first stated national goal of Australian education (MCEETYA 2008). Australian federal disability discrimination law, the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (DDA), follows the Convention, with the federal Disability Standards for Education 2005 (DSE) enacting specific requirements for education. This article discusses equity of processes for inclusion of students with disability in Australian educational accountability testing, including international tests in which many countries participate. The conclusion drawn is that equitable inclusion of students with disability in current Australian educational accountability testing in not occurring from a social perspective and is not in principle compliant with law. However, given the reluctance of courts to intervene in education matters and the uncertainty of an outcome in any court consideration, the discussion shows that equitable inclusion in accountability systems is available through policy change rather than expensive, and possibly unsuccessful, legal challenges.

Designing locative and social media technologies for community collaboration and social benefit : PetSearch

The convergence of locative and social media with collaborative interfaces and data visualisation has expanded the potential of online information provision. Offering new ways for communities to share contextually specific information, it presents the opportunity to expand social media’s current focus on micro self-publishing with applications that support communities to actively address areas of local need. This paper details the design and development of a prototype application that illustrates this potential. Entitled PetSearch, it was designed in collaboration with the Animal Welfare League of Queensland to support communities to map and locate lost, found and injured pets, and to build community engagement in animal welfare issues. We argue that, while established approaches to social and locative media provide a useful foundation for designing applications to harness social capital, they must be re-envisaged if they are to effectively facilitate community collaboration. We conclude by arguing that the principles of user engagement and co-operation employed in this project can be extrapolated to other online approaches that aim to facilitate co-operative problem solving for social benefit.

Using scenarios to explore the social aspects of design led innovations

Emerging technologies have redefined the way people go about everyday life. An increasing array of online and on-the-go solutions supporting remote work, entertainment on demand, information sharing, social communication, telehealth and beyond, are now available at the touch of a screen. This paper discusses concept of scenarios as a design tool that can be successfully employed by organisations as an innovative design led approach to: (i) understand people’s everyday practices in current social contexts in order to identify opportunities and emerging markets, and (ii) reveal stakeholder relationships existing in the provision of services within current everyday practices. To illustrate this approach, two case studies will be presented: the first focusing on a real industry project exploring opportunities for the development of future health care services, the second focusing on people’s access to services as part of a transport journey experience. This paper aims to demonstrate the use of scenarios as part of a design led innovation approach to understand the social aspects and their complexities of new designs in an increasing everyday technological driven context.

Twitter as a technology for audiencing and fandom : the #Eurovision phenomenon

Amongst the most prominent uses of Twitter at present is its role in the discussion of widely televised events: Twitter’s own statistics for 2011, for example, list major entertainment spectacles (the MTV Music Awards, the BET Awards) and sports matches (the UEFA Champions League final, the FIFA Women’s World Cup final) amongst the events generating the most tweets per second during the year (Twitter, 2011). User activities during such televised events constitute a specific, unique category of Twitter use, which differs clearly from the other major events which generate a high rate of tweets per second (such as crises and breaking news, from the Japanese earthquake and tsunami to the death of Steve Jobs), as preliminary research has shown. During such major media events, by contrast, Twitter is used most predominantly as a technology of fandom instead: it serves in the first place as a backchannel to television and other streaming audiovisual media, enabling users offer their own running commentary on the universally shared media text of the event broadcast as it unfolds live. Centrally, this communion of fans around the shared text is facilitated by the use of Twitter hashtags – unifying textual markers which are now often promoted to prospective audiences by the broadcasters well in advance of the live event itself. This paper examines the use of Twitter as a technology for the expression of shared fandom in the context of a major, internationally televised annual media event: the Eurovision Song Contest. It constitutes a highly publicised, highly choreographed media spectacle whose eventual outcomes are unknown ahead of time and attracts a diverse international audience. Our analysis draws on comprehensive datasets for the ‘official’ event hashtags, #eurovision, #esc, and #sbseurovision. Using innovative methods which combine qualitative and quantitative approaches to the analysis of Twitter datasets containing several hundreds of thousands, we examine overall patterns of participation to discover how audiences express their fandom throughout the event. Minute-by-minute tracking of Twitter activity during the live broadcasts enables us to identify the most resonant moments during each event; we also examine the networks of interaction between participants to detect thematically or geographically determined clusters of interaction, and to identify the most visible and influential participants in each network. Such analysis is able to provide a unique insight into the use of Twitter as a technology for fandom and for what in cultural studies research is called ‘audiencing’: the public performance of belonging to the distributed audience for a shared media event. Our work thus contributes to the examination of fandom practices led by Henry Jenkins (2006) and other scholars, and points to Twitter as an important new medium facilitating the connection and communion of such fans.

Traffic harmony in China? Investigating driver perceptions of traffic law enforcement and social responsibility for harmonious road use.

Social harmony can manifest in many ways. In rapidly motorizing countries like China, a growing area of potential disharmony is road use. The increased ability to purchase a car for the first time and a subsequent increase in new drivers has seen several Chinese cities take unprecedented measures to manage congestion. There is a corresponding need to ensure effective traffic law enforcement in promoting a safe environment for all road users. This paper reports qualitative research conducted with Beijing car drivers to investigate perceptions of unsafe road use, penalties for traffic violations, and improvements for the current system. Overall, the findings suggest awareness among drivers of many of the key risk factors. A perceived lack of clarity in how penalties are determined was identified and drivers in-dicated a desire to know how revenue from traffic fines is used. Several suggestions for improving the current system included school/community education about road risks and traffic law. The rise of private car ownership in China may contribute to a more harmonious personal life, but at the same time, may contribute to a decrease in societal harmony. A major challenge for authorities in any country is to promote the idea of a collective responsibility for road safety (traffic harmony), especially to those who perceive that traffic rules do not apply to them. This is a potentially greater challenge for China as it strives to balance harmony on the road and harmony in the broader society.

An analytical method for assessing stage-specific drug activity in Plasmodium vivax malaria : implications for ex vivo drug susceptibility testing

The emergence of highly chloroquine (CQ) resistant P. vivax in Southeast Asia has created an urgent need for an improved understanding of the mechanisms of drug resistance in these parasites, the development of robust tools for defining the spread of resistance, and the discovery of new antimalarial agents. The ex vivo Schizont Maturation Test (SMT), originally developed for the study of P. falciparum, has been modified for P. vivax. We retrospectively analysed the results from 760 parasite isolates assessed by the modified SMT to investigate the relationship between parasite growth dynamics and parasite susceptibility to antimalarial drugs. Previous observations of the stage-specific activity of CQ against P. vivax were confirmed, and shown to have profound consequences for interpretation of the assay. Using a nonlinear model we show increased duration of the assay and a higher proportion of ring stages in the initial blood sample were associated with decreased effective concentration (EC50) values of CQ, and identify a threshold where these associations no longer hold. Thus, starting composition of parasites in the SMT and duration of the assay can have a profound effect on the calculated EC50 for CQ. Our findings indicate that EC50 values from assays with a duration less than 34 hours do not truly reflect the sensitivity of the parasite to CQ, nor an assay where the proportion of ring stage parasites at the start of the assay does not exceed 66%. Application of this threshold modelling approach suggests that similar issues may occur for susceptibility testing of amodiaquine and mefloquine. The statistical methodology which has been developed also provides a novel means of detecting stage-specific drug activity for new antimalarials.

Social cognitive mediators of the effect of the MobileMums intervention on physical activity

Objective To explore whether improvements in physical activity following the MobileMums intervention were mediated by changes in Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) constructs targeted in the intervention (barrier self efficacy, goal setting skills, outcome expectancy, social support, and perceived environmental opportunity for exercise). This paper also examined if the mediating constructs differed between initial (baseline to 6 weeks) and overall (baseline to 13 weeks) changes in physical activity. Methods Secondary analysis of data from a randomized controlled trial involving 88 postnatal women (<12 months postpartum). Participants were randomized to receive either the 12-week MobileMums intervention or a minimal-contact control condition. Physical activity and proposed mediators were assessed by self-report at baseline, 6 weeks, and 13 weeks. Walking for Exercise frequency was assessed using the Australian Women's Activity Survey and frequency of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) was assessed using a single-item question. Results Initial improvements in goal-setting skills mediated the relationship between experimental condition and initial changes in MVPA, αβ (95% CI) = 0.23(0.01, 0.59), and Walking for Exercise, αβ (95% CI) = 0.34(0.06, 0.73). Initial improvements in barrier self efficacy mediated the relationship between experimental condition and initial change in MVPA, αβ (95% CI) = 0.36(0.12, 0.65), but not Walking for Exercise. None of the SCT outcomes significantly mediated the relationship between experimental condition and overall (baseline to 13 weeks) change in frequency of MVPA or Walking for Exercise. Conclusion Future interventions with postnatal women using SCT should target barrier self-efficacy and goal setting skills in order to increase physical activity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

Getting beyond 'heroic agency' in conceptualising social workers as policy actors in the Twenty-First Century

The professional project of social work assumes a particular orientation to human agency on the part of social workers. Specifically, the social work educational literature focusing on the nature of the profession suggests that social workers exert considerable control over the means and ends of their practice. In this paper we ask whether this assumption is warranted. While we conceptualise this issue as relevant to the entire spectrum of professional social work practice, here we discuss our claim in relation to social workers adopting policy activist roles. We suggest that the actual engagement of social workers in policy practice and political change in liberal democracies is muted and we canvas a number of reasons that help explain why this is the case. We canvas the impact of naive conceptualisations of what we call the ‘heroic agency’ of social work identity as employed in texts used in pre-service social work education. Specifically we pose the thesis that new social work graduates, when immersed into the organisational rationalities of reconfigured ‘welfare states’, may experience a considerable mismatch between the promise of being a social change agent and their experience as a beginning practitioner, making it difficult for them to confidently articulate their political identity and purpose.

Does the social inclusion discourse add value?

The election of a national Labor Government in 2007 saw ‘social inclusion’ emerge as Australia’s overarching social policy agenda. Being ‘included’ has since been defined as being able to ‘have the resources, opportunities and capabilities needed to learn, work, engage and have a voice’. Various researchers have adopted the social inclusion concept to construct a multi-dimensional framework for measuring disadvantage, beyond poverty alleviation. This research program has enabled various forms of statistical modelling based on some agreement about what it means to be ‘included’ in society. At the same time it is acknowledged that social inclusion remains open and contestable and can be used in the name of both progressive and more punitive programs and policies. This ambiguity raises questions about whether the social inclusion framework, as it is presently defined, has the potential to be a progressive and transformative discourse. In this paper we examine whether the Australian social inclusion agenda has the capacity to address social inequality in a meaningful way, concluding with a discussion about the need to understand social inequality and social disadvantage in relational terms.