Theorising the ‘Security Influencer’ : speaking security, terror and Muslims on social media during the Manchester bombings

Security studies literature neglects social media’s potential for lay actors to become influential within security debates. This article develops the concept of ‘security influencers’, bringing literature from marketing into the security debate to understand how social media enables individuals to ‘speak’ and contest security and how lay actors exert influence. Methodologically, this article applies a multi-methods approach to 27,367 tweets to identify and analyse the top four most influential actors in 48 hours following the 2017 bombings by keywords ‘Manchester’ and ‘Muslims’. This article builds a typology of security influencers nuancing definitions of the passive ‘security broadcaster’ and the active ‘security engager’, both of which emerge from obscurity or influence within non-security domains. Furthermore, a dichotomy emerges within influential messages and contestation; messages discussing Muslims in banal terms as diverse individuals register high levels of agreement, whereas those discussing Islam as a world religion receive more hostility and contestation

Business IT strategy in action : case study of #PUPRU

Predicted key business IT trends through to 2020 acknowledge there will be increased adoption of disruptive technologies that will impact within business contexts (Gartner (1), 2015). These include moves to small-screen marketing, rising value of big data intelligence and increased use of social systems. However, IT penetration and literacy gaps between advanced and emerging economies, as well as social and organisational issues associated with technological implementation of business strategy, provide challenges to adoption of these trends. Strategy As Practice (SAP) presents a potential solution. It is concerned with the practice of strategising, including both the formulation of strategy and implementation that delivers strategic renewal and change. Through the “doing of strategy”, organisations not only gain an insight into strategic management from a theoretical level, but also can focus on micro-level social activities, process and practices that characterise both organisational strategy and strategising. In this paper, the Pop-Up Research Unit (#PUPRU), a newly-established mobile research centre in the Salford Business School (SBS) will be discussed. It aims to adopt a SAP approach to inform business strategy. Three disruptive technologies - Beacon, Raspberry Pi and 3D printer - available as part of #PUPRU will be examined. Future experiments in various business scenarios and live projects evaluating how these digital disrupters can be employed will also be considered

Social media conversations about high engagement sports team brands

This study conducts an analysis of social media discussions related to high engagement sports brands. More specifically, our study examined the English Premier League (EPL). Our study sought to retrieve data systematically over the same day, weekly, for a period of 5-months. After this process we had built twenty datasets and NodeXL was utilised to analyse the data. After we had this data we were able to use qualitative observations to identify key users and conversations that formed around the EPL as well as the connections between the conversations that arose from the brand’s posts and people involved in them. We also analysed the quantitative data underpinning our network visualisations to provide further insights. The most obvious initial finding was that when the EPL tweets, this prompted a large volume of conversations directly related to these tweets. However, we also noted that EPL tweets also help instigate further, sometimes unrelated tweets and conversations. More specifically, we identified that the visualised network of conversations was of a broadcast form, which is characterised by messages being generated by a central account (the EPL) and shared by a number of decentralised users. Based on our analysis we propose the SCISM framework that is likely to be of interest to brands that wish to promote, sustain, and benefit from their instigation of social media conversations

Redefining undergraduate nurse teaching during the coronavirus pandemic : use of digital technologies

During the current coronavirus pandemic, undergraduate nurse teaching is facing many challenges. Universities have had to close their campuses, which means that academics are working from home and may be coping with unfamiliar technology to deliver the theoretical part of the undergraduate nursing curriculum. Emergency standards from the Nursing and Midwifery Council have allowed theoretical instruction to be replaced with distance learning, requiring nursing academics to adapt to providing a completely virtual approach to their teaching. This article provides examples of tools that can be used to deliver the theoretical component of the undergraduate nursing curriculum and ways of supporting students and colleagues in these unprecedented time

Protein Folding Activity of the Ribosome is involved in Yeast Prion Propagation.

6AP and GA are potent inhibitors of yeast and mammalian prions and also specific inhibitors of PFAR, the protein-folding activity borne by domain V of the large rRNA of the large subunit of the ribosome. We therefore explored the link between PFAR and yeast prion [PSI(+)] using both PFAR-enriched mutants and site-directed methylation. We demonstrate that PFAR is involved in propagation and de novo formation of [PSI(+)]. PFAR and the yeast heat-shock protein Hsp104 partially compensate each other for [PSI(+)] propagation. Our data also provide insight into new functions for the ribosome in basal thermotolerance and heat-shocked protein refolding. PFAR is thus an evolutionarily conserved cell component implicated in the prion life cycle, and we propose that it could be a potential therapeutic target for human protein misfolding diseases

Tweeting Grenfell : discourse and networks in critical constructions of British Muslim social boundaries on social media

The Grenfell fire has yet to be analysed to understand the event’s implications in relation to construction of social boundaries for British Muslims. In this current research, two methodological approaches are applied to gain understandings of social boundary construction on twitter: thematic analysis of the content of tweets and social network analysis (SNA) of how messages are diffused and contested. Twitter is shown to be an important platform in spreading positive narratives about Muslims during the fire, enabling individuals to spontaneously contest fake news and hate narratives. Social media acts counter to established knowledge, demonstrating that it is not, per se, a conduit for fake news and hate speech. Furthermore, it demonstrates how twitter offers Muslims an international space to voice and articulate themselves where they can be influential in debates that effect Muslim diasporas in other national contexts