Social Justice Documentary: Designing for Impact

Explores current methodologies for assessing social issue documentary films by combining strategic design and evaluation of multiplatform outreach and impact, including documentaries' role in network- and field-building. Includes six case studies

Quality of Information in Mobile Crowdsensing: Survey and Research Challenges

Smartphones have become the most pervasive devices in people's lives, and are clearly transforming the way we live and perceive technology. Today's smartphones benefit from almost ubiquitous Internet connectivity and come equipped with a plethora of inexpensive yet powerful embedded sensors, such as accelerometer, gyroscope, microphone, and camera. This unique combination has enabled revolutionary applications based on the mobile crowdsensing paradigm, such as real-time road traffic monitoring, air and noise pollution, crime control, and wildlife monitoring, just to name a few. Differently from prior sensing paradigms, humans are now the primary actors of the sensing process, since they become fundamental in retrieving reliable and up-to-date information about the event being monitored. As humans may behave unreliably or maliciously, assessing and guaranteeing Quality of Information (QoI) becomes more important than ever. In this paper, we provide a new framework for defining and enforcing the QoI in mobile crowdsensing, and analyze in depth the current state-of-the-art on the topic. We also outline novel research challenges, along with possible directions of future work.Comment: To appear in ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks (TOSN

Network Neutrality: A Research Guide

The conclusion in a research handbook should emphasise the complexity of the problem than trying to claim a one-size-fits-all solution. I have categorised net neutrality into positive and negative (content discrimination) net neutrality indicating the latter as potentially harmful. Blocking content without informing customers appropriately is wrong: if it says ‘Internet service’, it should offer an open Internet (alongside walled gardens if that is expressly advertised as such). The issue of uncontrolled Internet flows versus engineered solutions is central to the question of a ‘free’ versus regulated Internet. A consumer- and citizen-orientated intervention depends on passing regulations to prevent unregulated nontransparent controls exerted over traffic via DPI equipment, whether imposed by ISPs for financial advantage or by governments eager to use this new technology to filter, censor and enforce copyright against their citizens. Unraveling the previous ISP limited liability regime risks removing the efficiency of that approach in permitting the free flow of information for economic and social advantage. These conclusions support a light-touch regulatory regime involving reporting requirements and co-regulation with, as far as is possible, market-based solutions. Solutions may be international as well as local, and international coordination of best practice and knowledge will enable national regulators to keep up with the technology ‘arms race’

“Reel”ing it in:The Indian film industry’s survival and growth in the post-pandemic era

Business-to-business (B2B) firms are expected to work collectively to overcome the sector's challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic was a ‘rare’ event that triggered failures across many business sectors. With limited financial resources, governments in emerging economies could not assist businesses and the B2B firms relied on their networks for survival. In this study, we explored the B2B firms' response to the pandemic and whether their long-established networks and relationships with each other aided or hindered their ability to operate through the disruption and rebound in the post-pandemic recovery period. We studied the operations of the Indian film industry through the pandemic and collected interview data from key informants from the sector. Using stakeholder and institutional theory lenses, we highlighted the changes in the sector, including the weakening of B2B firm networks and firms moving away from organizational collaboration to prioritizing individual interests. The nature of the business model has changed, with increased use of digital platforms for movie releases. These findings have implications for theory and practice as international government agencies were providing incentives for Indian filmmakers to produce movies in their country, which needed to be countered by the Indian government

Maritime data integration and analysis: Recent progress and research challenges

The correlated exploitation of heterogeneous data sources offering very large historical as well as streaming data is important to increasing the accuracy of computations when analysing and predicting future states of moving entities. This is particularly critical in the maritime domain, where online tracking, early recognition of events, and real-time forecast of anticipated trajectories of vessels are crucial to safety and operations at sea. The objective of this paper is to review current research challenges and trends tied to the integration, management, analysis, and visualization of objects moving at sea as well as a few suggestions for a successful development of maritime forecasting and decision-support systems

From Serendipity to Sustainability: Exploring the Content Creation and Sharing Experiences of Local Travel Influencers in China

The study explored content creation and sharing experiences of local travel influencers in Meishan City, China. A qualitative phenomenological methodology was used to conduct in-depth interviews with 15 local travel influencers based on social exchange theory and its reciprocal principles. Thematic content analysis was used to analyse data. Study findings showed that being a local travel influencer was an emerging occupation requiring comprehensive competence in specific contextual and cultural backgrounds. Although travel influencers’ initial rise to popularity was often serendipitous, supportive policies from the local tourism community could assist travel influencers in achieving sustainable tourism. Local travel influencers face several challenges including staying authentic, monetizing content, dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, avoiding homogenous content, and managing work load. Local travel influencers could serve as a significant liaison between tourists and the local tourism community by collaborating with local tourism stakeholders, building a local multi-layer media matrix, co-creating promotional content, and live-streaming e-commerce. Study findings have theoretical and practical implications for tourism stakeholders in integrating regional tourism community development with local influencer networks

CREATe 2012-2016: Impact on society, industry and policy through research excellence and knowledge exchange

On the eve of the CREATe Festival May 2016, the Centre published this legacy report (edited by Kerry Patterson & Sukhpreet Singh with contributions from consortium researchers)