Footprints of emergence

It is ironic that the management of education has become more closed while learning has become more open, particularly over the past 10-20 years. The curriculum has become more instrumental, predictive, standardized, and micro-managed in the belief that this supports employability as well as the management of educational processes, resources, and value. Meanwhile, people have embraced interactive, participatory, collaborative, and innovative networks for living and learning. To respond to these challenges, we need to develop practical tools to help us describe these new forms of learning which are multivariate, self-organised, complex, adaptive, and unpredictable. We draw on complexity theory and our experience as researchers, designers, and participants in open and interactive learning to go beyond conventional approaches. We develop a 3D model of landscapes of learning for exploring the relationship between prescribed and emergent learning in any given curriculum. We do this by repeatedly testing our descriptive landscapes (or footprints) against theory, research, and practice across a range of case studies. By doing this, we have not only come up with a practical tool which can be used by curriculum designers, but also realised that the curriculum itself can usefully be treated as emergent, depending on the dynamicsbetween prescribed and emergent learning and how the learning landscape is curated

To reciprocate or not to reciprocate: Exploring temporal qualities in reciprocal exchanges in networks

In this article, we sought to draw theoretical explanations of reciprocal exchanges in networks and how reciprocity is seen as the building block of network sustainability through employing a temporal perspective. The article’s main contribution was to provide fresh insights into how temporality, drawn upon Bergson’s philosophy, advanced the way we look at reciprocity and consequently provided three perspectives of time, namely; emergent networks, discursive practices, and possible times. The practical implications of such perspectives inform organisation on how to select networks and predict their benefits. The research method included 28 interviews and casual observation of network sessions

Can Big Media do "Big Society"?: A Critical Case Study of Commercial, Convergent Hyperlocal News

The UK Government is committed to helping ‘nurture a new generation of local media companies’. Changes to local media ownership rules allowing companies to follow their customers from platform to platform are supposed to assist in this by encouraging economies of scale. This paper provides a timely case study examining a UK-based commercial local news network owned by Daily Mail & General Trust that leverages economies of scale: Northcliffe Media’s network of 154 Local People websites. The study evaluates the level of audience engagement with the Local People sites through a user survey, and by looking at the numbers of active users, their contributions and their connections with other users. Interviews with ten of the ‘community publishers’ who oversee each site on the ground were conducted, along with a content survey. Although the study reveals a demand for community content, particularly of a practical nature, the results question the extent to which this type of ‘big media’ local news website can succeed as a local social network, reinvigorate political engagement, or encourage citizen reporting. The Government hopes that communities, especially rural ones, will increasingly use the Internet to access local news and information, thereby supporting new, profitable local media companies, who will nurture a sense of local identity and hold locally-elected politicians to account. This case study highlights the difficulties inherent in achieving such outcomes, even using the Government’s preferred convergent, commercial model

The Casual Dress of the 1950s Woman and the Casual Dress of Today\u27s Woman

The casual dress of American women has changed dramatically from the 1950s to the present. In the 1950s, the style was undeniably feminine, with fitted waists and full skirts ending below the knee. The style of young women today has become significantly more casual and androgynous, with pants and leggings taking prevalence in casual wear. The style of dresses has also changed significantly, as has the standard of modesty. This work will discuss and evaluate the changes in casual dress from the 1950s to the present, including the influences on style in both time periods. The change from only wearing dresses to wearing mainly pants, the changes in dress designs, and the shift in the standard of modesty among young American women will be discussed

Soft power and its audiences: Tweeting the Olympics from London 2012 to Sochi 2014

The ‘Tweeting the Olympics’ project (the subject of this special section of Participations) must be understood in the context of efforts by host states, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and other actors involved in the Games to cultivate and communicate a set of meanings to audiences about both the Olympics events and the nations taking part. Olympic Games are not only sporting competitions; they are also exercises in the management of relations between states and publics, at home and overseas, in order to augment the attractiveness and influence or the soft power of the states involved. Soft power is most successful when it goes unnoticed according to its chief proponent Joseph Nye. If so, how can we possibly know whether soft power works? This article reviews the state of the field in thinking about public diplomacy, cultural diplomacy and soft power in the period of this project (2012-14), focusing particularly on how the audiences of soft power projects, like the London and Sochi Games, were conceived and addressed. One of the key questions this project addresses is whether international broadcasters such as the BBCWS and RT used social media during the Games to promote a cosmopolitan dialogue with global audiences and/or merely to integrate social media so as to project and shape national soft power. We argue first that the contested nature of the Olympic Games calls into question received theories of soft power, public and cultural diplomacy. Second, strategic national narratives during the Olympics faced additional challenges, particularly due to the tensions between the national and the international character of the Games. Third, the new media ecology and shift to a network paradigm further threatens the asymmetric power relations of the broadcasting paradigm forcing broadcasters to reassess their engagement with what was formerly known as ‘the audience’ and the targets of soft power

The Machine Starts: Computers as Collaborators in Writing

The penetration of digital technologies into the process of creating and disseminating narratives is no longer a new phenomenon, but perhaps what does still seem strange and far-fetched is the suggestion that machines are collaborators and authors in their own right. This paper examines an example of a computer-mediated narrative and suggests that not only does the machine exert its own agency in the process of writing, but this process has a long provenance from the ancient world, through the 20th century avant garde, and into contemporary technological futurism

The development of competitive advantage through sustainable event management

Purpose: Whilst the debate rages between progressive and destructive considerations of economic development, this paper aims to develop thinking around the sustainable event and its contribution to competitive advantage. Design/methodology/approach: The paper defines the sustainable event and considers different position that might be adopted by private and public sector organisations when addressing the triple bottom line of sustainable development. Findings: Cost leadership strategies are unlikely to work and the event organiser must address competitive advantage via differentiation and focus strategies. Practical implications: Event managers must gain a better understanding of the motivations of their audience in relation to sustainability and work towards clearer means to demonstrate that their event meets these sustainable development needs. Originality/value: The intention being that if event organisers can see a competitive advantage in the sustainable event, their contribution to sustainable development will be increased. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Our side of the mirror : the (re)-construction of 1970s’ masculinity in David Peace’s Red Riding

David Peace and the late Gordon Burn are two British novelists who have used a mixture of fact and fiction in their works to explore the nature of fame, celebrity and the media representations of individuals caught up in events, including investigations into notorious murders. Both Peace and Burn have analysed the case of Peter Sutcliffe, who was found guilty in 1981 of the brutal murders of thirteen women in the North of England. Peace’s novels filmed as the Red Riding Trilogy are an excoriating portrayal of the failings of misogynist and corrupt police officers, which allowed Sutcliffe to escape arrest. Burn’s somebody’s Husband Somebody’ Son is a detailed factual portrait of the community where Sutcliffe spent his life. Peace’s technique combines reportage, stream of consciousness and changing points of views including the police and the victims to produce an episodic non linear narrative. The result has been termed Yorkshire noir. The overall effect is to render the paranoia and fear these crimes created against a backdrop of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Peace has termed his novels as “fictions of the facts”. This paper will examine the way that Peace uses his account of Sutcliffe’s crimes and the huge police manhunt to catch the killer to explore the society that produced the perpetrator, victims and the police. The police officers represent a form of “hegemonic masculinity” but one that is challenged by the extreme misogyny, brutality, misery and degradation that surround them. This deconstruction of the 1970s male police officer is contrasted with the enormously popular figure of Gene Hunt from the BBC TV series Life on Mars