Making Exhibitions, Brokering Meaning: Designing new connections across communities of practice

New media museum exhibits often see designers representing the research of expert content providers. Despite perceptions that such exhibits provide museum visitors with a greater depth and range of experience, differences in knowledge and practice between designers and content providers can see content development become an unruly, competitive process in which audience experience, digital mediation, visualisation techniques and meaning become contested territory. Drawing on Etienne Wenger’s theory of “communities of practice”, this paper argues that designers’ advocacy for audiences and distance from exhibition content well positions them to broker interdisciplinary goal setting so that exhibitions observe the representational objectives of content providers and meet the needs and preferences of museum visitors. A wide range of design literature already discusses the pragmatic benefits and ethical importance of user-centered design, while the literature on co-design suggests that designed outcomes are more successful if the design process considers the interests of all stakeholders. These discussions can be compelling, but the inherent challenges in engaging others’ perspectives and knowledge in the design process are less acknowledged, Wenger’s ideas on the social dynamics of group enterprise offering designers valuable insights into the actuality of negotiating designed outcomes with non-designer stakeholders. The paper has two main aspects. The first outlines the theory of communities of practice, focusing on the brokering of knowledge and practice between disciplines. This discussion frames an analysis of the design process for two museum exhibitions. Representing an original application of Wenger’s ideas, the discussion recognises the unique role of the designed artifact in brokering information visualization processes, transcending the actions and intentions of individual stakeholders. While accepting there are successful examples of interdisciplinary exchange in various areas of design, the interpretation of examples via Wenger contributes useful principles to the theorisation of co-design with non-designer stakeholders. Keywords: Information visualization; New media museum exhibits; Multidisciplinary projects; Communities of Practice; Brokering; User-centered design; Co-Design; Etienne Wenger</p

Group privacy management strategies and challenges in Facebook : a focus group study among Flemish youth organizations

A large body of research has studied young people’s privacy practices and needs in Facebook. Less is known about group privacy. In this study 12 focus groups were organized with a total of 78 adolescents and young adults of local Flemish youth organizations to discuss their privacy practices. Findings describe how different strategies are used to coordinate the group information flow. The study also shows how online group privacy management can be challenging because ‘implicit’ privacy rules need to be made ‘explicit’, personal boundaries may conflict with those of the group one belongs to and privacy turbulence is difficult to define

Electronic doctoral theses in the UK: a sector-wide survey into policies, practice and barriers to Open Access

Sharing knowledge and research outputs is critical to the progress of science and human development, and a central tenet of academia. The Internet itself is a product of the academic community, and opening access to that community’s most important body of research, doctoral theses, is both a logical and an inevitable development. Progress toward open access to electronic theses has been slow in the UK. Much has been written on the perceived barriers and practical/infrastructural considerations that might explain this, but a comprehensive picture of that progress, and obstacles to it, was lacking. In 2010, a survey of policy and practice in UK HEIs was conducted by UCL (University College London) Library Services (commissioned by the Joint Information Systems Committee, JISC) to address this very issue. Incorporating inputs from 144 institutions currently awarding doctoral degrees, the work provides the first clear and detailed picture of the status of open access to doctoral research in the UK. The mission of the UK Council for Graduate Education (UKCGE) is to promote and support the interests of graduate education, and this it does through dissemination of best practice and intelligence on emergent trends; helping to shape policy and practice for the benefit of the UK HEI sector. This report contributes to that mission by bringing to the membership’s attention the results of this important work by UCL Library Services; a collaboration between UKCGE and the authors of the original work, it sets out the policies and practices that emerged from the survey and also considers what has been learned about the perceived barriers to the implementation of open access to electronic theses. The 2010 survey has enabled, for the first time, a differentiation to be made between barriers that are “real” and those which are unfounded and/or yet to be properly validated. At the same time, the work highlights the progress made in certain critical areas, as well as those that require our greater attention. A positive picture emerges for the UK on the adoption of the electronic thesis, with the majority of HEIs surveyed expected to be providing open access to their theses in five years’ time. A more detailed picture also emerges regarding the primary reasons for requests to restrict access to theses, some of which, notably, apply only to electronic (not print) theses. This has necessarily given rise to new policy developments. There is positive evidence also of collaboration among HEIs to provide an efficient and robust service for accessing electronic theses; pooling their resources and expertise either in the development of their institutional repositories or in operating a joint service. The key driver of open access to electronic theses is the opportunity for UK HEIs to “showcase” their research outputs to the widest possible audience and enhance their impact. There are no reliable means as yet to measure this impact, but there are encouraging early indications that electronic doctoral theses attract significant attention when made openly accessible. Open access to electronic theses may therefore indeed accelerate the sharing of knowledge and the progress of scientific discovery and human development

Dynamics of the Corruption Eradication in Indonesia

The paper discusses an important aspect of the complexity of corruption eradication in Indonesia. Corruption eradication is practically not merely about law enforcement, but also related to social, economic, and political aspects of the nation. By extracting the data from national news media and implement models describing the sentiment relations among political actors, the connection between balance of the sentiment among political elites and the critical levels of the investigation and law enforcement is apparently demonstrated. The focus group discussions among experts, practitioners, and social activists confirm the model

Nomadism as a way of being of the immigrants and internally displaced persons

The article presents the innovatory understanding of the nomadic strategy of human being in the transitional condition. The aim of the article is to determine the role of the nomadic being way in the social group of internal migrants. It is substantiated, that aims and actions of a nomad are directed on creating new ways of realization and conceptualization of variants of nomadic being. It is explained, that a nomad doesn’t go by the way, offered by traditional types of activity, but searches innovatory ways of realization, doesn’t stop on deciphering of traditionally existing being senses, but produces them him/herself. A subject, living in a space of “boundaries” is deprived of the settled comfort, he/she searches for a possibility of balance and harmony, social recognition and improvement of own life conditions in the movement and change. The culture of choice, formed by the logic of the modern market, gives a nomad resources for regulating the own freedom degree. Nomadic instruments correspond to the migrants’ way of life. Digital nomadism creates stimuli for the active life and adaptation to new conditions of different groups of migrants