Summarising the points made in online political debates

Online communities host growing numbers of discussions amongst large groups of participants on all manner of topics. This user-generated content contains millions of statements of opinions and ideas. We propose an abstractive approach to summarize such argumentative discussions, making key content accessible through ‘point’ extraction, where a point is a verb and its syntactic arguments. Our approach uses both dependency parse information and verb case frames to identify and extract valid points, and generates an abstractive summary that discusses the key points being made in the debate. We performed a human evaluation of our approach using a corpus of online political debates and report significant improvements over a high-performing extractive summarizer

Making space for embedded knowledge in global mental health: a role for social work

The ‘Global Mental Health’ (GMH) movement, an influential driver of transnational knowledge transfer in the field of mental health, advocates evidence-based strategies to ‘scale up’ services in low- and middle-income countries. As with debates on global and local frameworks for social work, there are concerns about marginalisation of knowledge that does not neatly fit the GMH discourse. This article analyses the professional and disciplinary structures that shape knowledge transfer in GMH and the implications for social work's engagement with the movement. Analysis of key documents and secondary literature identifies three key issues for GMH: its potentially negative impact on ‘local’ knowledge production; the challenges of accounting for culture and context; and the selective forms of evidence that are ‘allowed’ to contribute to GMH. Finding ways to encompass more ‘situated’ perspectives could reshape GMH in accord with its aspirations for participation by a wider range of stakeholders. Social work's values-based commitment to rights and empowerment, emphasis on embedded knowledge emerging from close links with practice, and theoretical engagement with social, cultural and political context, enable the profession to contribute significantly to this task. Such engagement would bring improvements in care for those suffering from mental health disorders, their families and communities

Unionists as 'court sceptics': exploring elite-level unionist discourses about a Northern Ireland Bill of Rights

One of the most significant characteristics of the peace process in Northern Ireland has been the profound importance attached by a range of academic, political and non-governmental actors to the concept of human rights. However, unionists, more so than other elite-level political actors in Northern Ireland, have expressed scepticism about proposals from the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (NIHRC) for a Northern Ireland Bill of Rights. This article explores how unionists relied on a ‘court sceptic' narrative to argue against the Bill of Rights proposals. It argues that at one level unionist reliance on ‘court sceptic' arguments can be conceived of as instrumental in the sense that it was a mere tactical response to, as unionists argue, the inflation by the NIHRC of their mandate contained in the Good Friday Agreement to devise a Bill of Rights. However, at another level unionists reliance on ‘court sceptic' arguments can also be traced to their constitutional experience within the British polity

A report on the ULTRLAB's development of online components in NCSL programmes

This report is one of two produced by ULTRALAB forthe National College of School Leadership (NCSL). Here we discuss the research and development of online components of two NCSL programmes. The other report looks at the Talking Heads project, an online community for Headteachers in England. This report considers our work on two NCSL programmes. The new model National Qualification for Headship (NPQH) had its first cohort of learners in March 2001. ULTRALAB was involved in consultancy with the DfES, the writers of the programme materials and the ten regional training providers, in setting up the online elements from September 2000. The online community aspects of NPQH were established using think.com software, with the name Virtual Heads chosen for the overarching national community. The pilot for the Certificate of School Business Management started in February 2002. Our involvement here was to develop the online community and support the tutors in its use.The online community aspects were established using think.com software, with the name Bursars’ Count chosen for the overarching national community

Online engagement from the grassroots: Reflecting on over a decade of ePetitioning experience in Europe and the UK

The official published verison of this chapter can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2012 SpringerExtensive debate on Internet and formal politics has concentrated on whether authorities should focus their efforts on high-volume activities such petitioning or crowdsourcing. Those engagement tools seem to be consistent with the ambition of many networked citizens to influence policy making through ad hoc and mostly single-issue movements. Therefore, certain interesting questions emerge: can authorities organise their engagement activities to respond and act upon this call? Can citizens in-deed influence policy making in a few clicks? This chapter draws together material from different uses of ePetitioning tools in Europe, mainly focusing on the integrated UK experience at national and local level. The analysis suggests that those initiatives can provide valuable feedback to authorities and be effectively complemented by other forms of deeper engagement. Yet, political organisations should pay close attention on how the public views such exercises and be prepared to support partici-pants in different ways and on a regular basis

Democratic dawn? : Civil society and elections in Myanmar 2010 – 2012

While the general elections in Myanmar in November 2010 were widely condemned, both national and international actors approached the by-elections of April 2012 as a political rite-de-passage to improve relations between the government and the opposition inside, and between the former pariah state and the international community outside the country. An undercurrent to the government-led transition process from an authoritarian to a formally more democratic regime was the development of a politically oriented civil society that found ways to engage in the electoral process. This article describes the emerging spaces of election-related civil society activism in the forms of civic and voter education, national election observation, and election-related agency in the media. Noting that, in particular, election observation offers connections for civil society to regional and international debates, the paper draws preliminary conclusions about further developments ahead of the general elections in Myanmar expected for 2015

Addressing ethnicity in social care research

This article surveys recent developments in relation to the dimensions of ethnicity and ethnicdisadvantage in social policy research and practice, with a focus on social care. While therehas been limited increase in attention to ethnicity within general policy discussion andincreasing sophistication within specialist debates, advances in theory and methodology havelargely failed to penetrate the research mainstream, let alone policy or practice. This is along-standing problem. We advocate more focussed consideration of ethnicity and ethnicdisadvantage at all levels. Failure to do so creates the risk of social policy research being leftbehind in understanding rapid changes in ethnic minority demographics and patterns of migration, with increasing disadvantage to minorities

Facilitating professional engagement with planning research

The context for this project is the limited connectivity between applied planning research and professional planning practice. The planning profession, by its very nature, is continually developing plans, policies and strategies to guide place-based management and development. An assumption guiding the research is that sound evidence is useful if not essential to inform good planning practice. This assumption does not hold for all planning practice - statutory planning and other policy implementation activities are, for example, largely informed by existing policy frameworks. However, in most strategic planning or policy development contexts (including statutory reform), an argument for the relevance of an evidence base can be made. While not all research aims to directly inform practice – such as research of a conceptual or theoretical nature – there is a significant amount of applied urban research produced that has discernible implications for policy and practice. Unfortunately, much of the research base that could inform and improve professional planning practice is difficult to access. There are also other barriers to knowledge exchange, including limited professional engagement with research outputs; and limited or poorly tailored research outputs for a professional audience. This project aims to provide recommendations on how to better connect Australian urban planning practice to the evidence base within urban planning research outputs. To do so the project explores barriers to, and opportunities for, better connecting professional planning practice with applied planning research