Youth and Digital Media: From Credibility to Information Quality

Building upon a process-and context-oriented information quality framework, this paper seeks to map and explore what we know about the ways in which young users of age 18 and under search for information online, how they evaluate information, and how their related practices of content creation, levels of new literacies, general digital media usage, and social patterns affect these activities. A review of selected literature at the intersection of digital media, youth, and information quality -- primarily works from library and information science, sociology, education, and selected ethnographic studies -- reveals patterns in youth's information-seeking behavior, but also highlights the importance of contextual and demographic factors both for search and evaluation. Looking at the phenomenon from an information-learning and educational perspective, the literature shows that youth develop competencies for personal goals that sometimes do not transfer to school, and are sometimes not appropriate for school. Thus far, educational initiatives to educate youth about search, evaluation, or creation have depended greatly on the local circumstances for their success or failure

An Investigation Into The Blogging Practices Of Academics And Researchers

This research project investigated the experiences of academics and researchers using blogs to support their practice. The three research questions were: to identify the academics' and researchers' motivations for beginning and maintaining a blog, the contribution of blogging to their learning in the profession, and the challenges experienced. The research questions were investigated using several methods. Five datasets were collected from 26 participants. A questionnaire was first administered to collect background information about the bloggers, and was analysed quantitatively. Then, an initial unstructured interview of one open-ended question was conducted by email. The unstructured interview was analysed using descriptive phenomenology. A follow-on semi-structured interview was conducted and analysed by applying thematic analysis. Blog content was collected in parallel: textual extracts were analysed using discourse analysis and visual extracts by applying thematic/saliency analysis. Results revealed varied reasons for beginning a blog. For example, the blog can be used as a repository of 'half-baked' ideas. Blogging contributed to the academics' and researchers' learning in the profession in multiple ways. Academic bloggers, for example, can quickly reach a wider audience compared to other forms of academic publishing. Among the challenges, there were concerns over managing confidential information in public, and intellectual property issues. Regarding the methodological contribution of the research, suggestions on strategies for mixing and matching different research methods for data collection and analysis have been provided. An empirically-grounded framework of blog use in academia and research has been derived based on research findings and scholarship models in the literature. The framework describes how characteristics of digital scholarship such as openness and sharing, are manifested through blogging. The framework can be used to guide academics and researchers who are interested in taking up blogging as a scholarly practice. Finally, empirically-grounded guidelines on using blogs in academia and research have been derived. The guidelines were evaluated by four practitioners. Future work includes recruiting more practitioners to evaluate the guidelines

Journal of Applied Communications vol. 99 (4) Full Issue

Journal of Applied Communications vol. 99 (4) - Full Issu

Networked Publics, Networked Politics: Resisting Gender-Based Violent Speech in Digital Media

This dissertation is a qualitative study of digital media that identifies and analyzes feminist responses to violent speech in networked environments across Canada and the United States between 2011 and 2015. Exploring how verbal violence is constitutive of and constituted by power relations in the feminist blogosphere, I ask the following set of research questions: How do feminist bloggers politicize and problematize instances of violent speech on digital media? In what ways are their networked interactions and self-representations reconfigured as a result of having to face hostile audiences? What modes of agency appear within feminist blogging cultures? This work engages with feminist theory (hooks, 2014; McRobbie, 2009; Stringer 2014), media studies (boyd, 2014; Lovink, 2011; Marwick 2013) and their intersections in the field of feminist media studies (Jane 2014; Keller, 2012). Drawing on interviews with the key players in the feminist blogosphere and providing a discursive reading of selected digital texts, I identify networked resistive strategies including digital archiving, public shaming, strategic silence and institutional transformations. I argue that feminist responses to violent speech are varied and reflect not only long-standing concerns with community building and womens voices in public context, but also emerging anxieties around self-branding, professional identity and a control over one's digital presence. This research underscores the importance of transformative capacities of networked feminist politics and contextualizes agentic modes of participation in response to problematic communication

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

Brooking no excuses: university staff and students are encouraged to develop their engagement

Brooking no excuses: university staff and students are encouraged to develop their engagement This paper will explore the internal and external factors that have prompted the University of East Anglia's decision to give Public Engagement into a more central role within the Universities Corporate Plan. It will illustrate how the SEARCH Action Learning Programme facilitated the design, implementation and delivery of new Staff and Student Development Programmes that aim to provide the confidence, skills and mentorship that will encourage staff to develop their engagement activities. We will use a SWOT analysis to discuss the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the Public Engagement Practitioner. As part of this, we will explore how many of the issues we face as Science communicators with the public are similar to issues encountered by Communicators within the Arts and Humanities disciplines. Finally we will outline and detail our future plans, opportunities and vision that will enable us to move this agenda forward

Women blogging in Québec, Canada: surfing between ideals and constraints

This thesis explores online practices of women in Québec, a culturally and historically distinct province in Canada that is undergoing rapid social and technological transformations, and analyses the discourses that emerge. It zeroes in on blogging, as a facilitator for exploring, constructing and challenging gendered identities. It draws on and contributes to a growing body of literature that investigates and legitimises women’s online writings, an area that remains under analysed. This online ethnography was accomplished through face-to-face interviews with 23 Frenchspeaking women bloggers, home visits and an analysis of their blogs. Using feminist critical discourse analysis, the thesis analyses how informants locate themselves inside and outside traditional and mainstream discourses of femininities. It first explores how participants discuss their blogs using domestic metaphors, thereby linking their online expressions to ideas and ideals of the home. Second, it reveals how bloggers share a common concern with putting forward a favourable self, emphasising personal qualities such as education, respect, affability, and impressive online networks. Third, it analyses self-improvement narratives in participants’ interviews and blog entries, examining recurring discussions of personality, values and views; body size and image; emotional and mental health; and professional and homemaking skills. The last chapter underlines how blogging provides women with opportunities for networking, a place to discuss challenges and with a means to claim time for themselves. The thesis draws out the complex engagements in an activity they find pleasurable despite working within mainstream gender role constraints and still facing a digital divide. In both discourse and practice, participants seem at ease with blogging but remain highly influenced by traditional discourses. This gives rise to a sense of contradiction where they feel like they exist, have a public life and make a contribution but also exhibit a sense of compulsion and regulation. They break out of the limits of normative femininities perhaps – at the same time creating new 'women's worlds' – even as the use of blogging reinstates and produces conservative forms of self-management

Affective Power of Social Media - Engagements with Networked Parenting Culture

ABSTRACT Social media have changed the ways in which we connect and experience the world around us. The article dissertation explores the affective, ambiguous power of social media parenting culture in contemporary Finland. The study asks how motherhood is lived, experienced, and felt through social media. The study demonstrates how networked media engages mothers affectively and produces new knowledge about parenting and the growing impact of social media. The dissertation is a qualitative, multimethod study built around cultural theory, affect inquiry, feminist media studies, and internet research. The dissertation contains an introduction and four different case studies. The methodological body of the study is developed around an analytically selective ethnographic approach named ‘reparative flow’. Reparative flow is an experimental, ethnographic approach that brings together two methodological principles, namely the concept of ‘flow’ as a contextually situated means of moving through, and understanding digitally saturated lived experiences, and ‘reparative reading’ that opens up a space for surprise and positive affect. The four case studies presented in the form of research articles focus on social media-specific phenomena in the Finnish context, including the figure of a bad mother in mommy blogs, the affective dynamics of social media breastfeeding discussions, affective practices of influencer mothers in social media work, and the affective everyday encounters with parenting content. In first two articles, the research material consists of different kinds of online content, specifically blogs, discussion forum comments, and Instagram posts. The final two articles move the methodological focus into the level of experience, particularly in-depth interviews and diaries of social media use. Through four individual case studies, the dissertation argues that it is the diverse, complex, and ambiguous affective intensities of social media, saturated by cultural norms of motherhood, that make networked parenting culture engaging. By researching the traces, signs, and interpretations of these lingering intensities, it is possible to better understand the experiences of mothers living in contemporary datafied culture. Moreover, the findings of the study indicate that while the social media influencers and mommy bloggers engage their followers through different affective tactics, the affective appeal of platforms is key to the dynamics that guide our attention and connect users together. The study further argues that the multilayered affective experiences, rhythms, and intensities of networked parenting culture addressed in this dissertation speak of something more than social media motherhood. They communicate the ways social media shape our ways of feeling. By focusing on lived experience and affects, my study challenges the macrostructural accounts concerning networked lives and point to the need to focus on qualitative methodological granularity, which provides deep, rich, and contextual insights into the dynamics and impacts of social media. Understanding how affects are circulating in networked media also furthers our understanding of how affect works and what it does in our encounters with the world. By analysing the ambiguous stories of everyday networked engagements, the study offers insight into one method of investigating the affective appeal of social media. KEYWORDS: social media, affect, motherhood, digital cultureTIIVISTELMÄ Sosiaalinen media on muuttanut tapojamme kommunikoida ja muokannut kokemustamme maailmasta. Artikkeliväitöskirjassa tarkastellaan sosiaalisen median ambivalenttia, affektiivista voimaa vanhemmuuskulttuurin näkökulmasta nyky-Suomessa. Tutkimuksessa kysytään, miten äitiyttä eletään, miten äitiys koetaan ja miltä se tuntuu sosiaalisessa mediassa. Tutkimuksessa selviää, kuinka sosiaalinen media sitouttaa äitejä affektiivisesti, ja se tuottaa uutta tietoa nykyajan vanhemmuudesta sekä sosiaalisen median kasvavista vaikutuksista. Monimenetelmällinen, laadullinen tutkimus nojautuu erityisesti kulttuurintutkimukseen, affektitutkimukseen, feministiseen mediatutkimukseen sekä Internet-tutkimukseen. Väitöskirja sisältää johdannon sekä neljä itsenäistä tutkimusartikkelia. Tutkimuksen metodologisessa osassa esitellään etnografinen, analyyttisesti valikoiva lukemisen tapa, jota kutsutaan reparatiiviseksi flow’ksi. ‘Flow’ viittaa paikantuneeseen tapaan tutkia digitaalisen aikakauden kokemuksia. Reparatiivisessa lukemisessa keskeistä on puolestaan avoimuus positiivisille affekteille ja yllätyksille. Tutkimusartikkelit keskittyvät sosiaalisen median ilmiöihin, mukaan lukien huonon äidin figuuri äitiysblogeissa, sosiaalisen median imetyskeskustelujen dynamiikka, vaikuttajaäitien affektiiviset käytännöt sometyössä sekä affektiiviset kohtaamiset sosiaalisen median vanhemmuussisältöjen kanssa. Kaksi ensimmäistä artikkelia painottuvat verkkosisältöihin, kuten blogeihin, keskustelufoorumien kommentteihin ja Instagram-julkaisuihin. Kaksi viimeistä artikkelia siirtävät painopisteen kokemuksen tasolle: syvähaastatteluihin ja havaintopäiväkirjoihin sosiaalisen median käytöstä. Tapaustutkimusten pohjalta tutkimus väittää, että sosiaalisen median affektiivisten intensiteettien monipuolisuus, monimerkityksellisyys ja ristiriitaisuus yhdessä äitiyden kulttuuristen normien kanssa sitouttavat äitejä verkon vanhemmuuskulttuureihin. Tutkimalla näiden viipyvien intensiteettien jälkiä, merkkejä ja tulkintoja voidaan paremmin ymmärtää dataistuneessa nykykulttuurissa elävien äitien kokemuksia. Tutkimuksen tulokset osoittavat, että vaikka vaikuttajat ja äitibloggaajat sitouttavat seuraajansa erilaisilla affektiivisilla taktiikoilla, sosiaalisen median alustojen affektiivinen vetovoima on avain dynamiikkaan, joka tuo käyttäjät yhteen, mutta voi myös ajaa heidät erilleen. Väitöstutkimus osoittaa, että digitaalisen vanhemmuuskulttuurin monikerroksiset affektiiviset kokemukset, rytmit ja intensiteetit kertovat muustakin kuin äitiydestä: ne heijastavat tapoja, joilla sosiaalinen media muovaa tunnekokemuksiamme. Väitöskirja haastaa makrotason suuret kertomukset datakulttuurista tutkimalla kokemuksia ja affekteja. Tutkimus keskittyy mikrotason monimerkityksellisiin tuntemuksiin ja painottaa laadullista metodologista tarkkuutta. Lähestymistapa tarjoaa syvällistä ja kontekstoitua tietoa sosiaalisen median dynamiikasta ja vaikutuksista. Affektien kiertoa sosiaalisessa mediassa tutkimalla väitöskirja selventää, miten affektit toimivat ja mitä ne tekevät kohtaamisissamme maailman kanssa. Tutkimuksessa monimerkitykselliset digitaalisen arjen tarinat tarjoavat ikkunan, jonka kautta voi tarkastella sosiaalisen median affektiivista vetovoimaa. AVAINSANAT: sosiaalinen media, affekti, äitiys, digitaalinen kulttuur

How people share information about food: Insights from tweets regarding two Italian Regions

Sharing information about food through Twitter contributes to the evolution of food cultures, accelerating the exchange of information and knowledge about food. The aim of this study is to describe the type of information regarding food shared on Twitter and what kind of network is established between Twitter users in those cases when the #food in question is associated to a geographical area (#Tuscany or #Sicily). Using two different methodological approaches, combining quantitative tools with Network Analysis, the study highlights the fact that there are differences between the two networks surveyed, both with regard to the actors involved and to the way in which they share information on Twitter