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

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

Enabling organisational change: co-creation, co-production and co-consumption

The collaborative combination of co-creation, co-production and co-consumption provide mechanisms for a data-driven, people-focused organisation to engage with customers and supply chains in ways that increase levels of trust and build lasting social capital. With greater transparency and engagement, the opportunities to build trust with customers and clients also increases. In traditional organisational innovation paradigms, an organisation identifies user needs, developing products and services at private expense and profiting through their protection and sales. That said, more and more organisations are increasingly engaging in collaborative mechanisms and network structures. Co-creational organisations require an enabling platform as driver no matter whether interactions are formal or informal, online or offline. Co-production has become a buzzword in public service provision, where Co-production means delivering public services in an equal and reciprocal relationship between professionals, people using services, their families and their neighbours. Where activities are co-produced in this way, both services and neighbourhoods become far more effective agents of change

​Tweeting terrorism: Vernacular conceptions of Muslims and terror in the wake of the Manchester Bombing on Twitter

Both vernacular security studies and critical terrorism studies (CTS) offer constructivist analyses of security couched in understandings of security speak. However, neither adequately take account of the ways in which social media presents important opportunities for greater insight into how terrorism is constructed. This study analyses tweets posted after the 2017 Manchester bombing, exploring how jihadist terror attacks are constructed on social media. To do this, we combine social network analysis, as a sampling method, with discourse analysis. The study finds that Twitter provides a platform for diverse terrorism discourses to be expressed and contested. This indicates a literate lay audience within post-attack narratives, self-aware of dominant social constructions of “Muslim terrorism”. Indeed, it suggests an audience that, on Twitter, is hardly only audience but seeks to speak security itself. Insights are gleaned with respect to depicting, defending, and critiquing Muslims, constructing what it means to be a terrorist, portrayals of victimhood, and how terror events feed into broader critiques of “political correctness” and “liberal” politics. Therefore, the analysis also provides further insights into the portrayal and (self-)positioning of Muslims in the wake of a jihadist attack and nuances accounts of Muslims’ securitisation qua terror

Tweeting terrorism: Vernacular conceptions of Muslims and terror in the wake of the Manchester Bombing on Twitter

Both vernacular security studies and critical terrorism studies (CTS) offer constructivist analyses of security couched in understandings of security speak. However, neither adequately take account of the ways in which social media presents important opportunities for greater insight into how terrorism is constructed. This study analyses tweets posted after the 2017 Manchester bombing, exploring how jihadist terror attacks are constructed on social media. To do this, we combine social network analysis, as a sampling method, with discourse analysis. The study finds that Twitter provides a platform for diverse terrorism discourses to be expressed and contested. This indicates a literate lay audience within post-attack narratives, self-aware of dominant social constructions of “Muslim terrorism”. Indeed, it suggests an audience that, on Twitter, is hardly only audience but seeks to speak security itself. Insights are gleaned with respect to depicting, defending, and critiquing Muslims, constructing what it means to be a terrorist, portrayals of victimhood, and how terror events feed into broader critiques of “political correctness” and “liberal” politics. Therefore, the analysis also provides further insights into the portrayal and (self-)positioning of Muslims in the wake of a jihadist attack and nuances accounts of Muslims’ securitisation qua terror

The single silo university

In 2015, the University of Salford committed to a new five-year institutional strategy. A hallmark of this strategy was the focus on the undeviating single priority of industrial collaboration. The clarity and simplicity of this approach was challenging for many. Over the duration of the strategy’s intended lifespan and in an institution more comfortable with annual revisions to its strategy the unusual persistence of this challenge continued to confront colleagues. The comparative longevity of the strategy also brought positive change by converging perspectives and breaking down traditional demarcations of research, enterprise and, teaching and learning. A nascent realisation that all of these normally discrete activities were some form of knowledge exchange began to find traction across academic units and professional service departments. Our role within this industrial collaboration focused strategy was to understand and evaluate the partnerships being developed as a result of the singular strategic focus. Through our shared systems-thinking perspective and drawing heavily on the literature relating to relationship management we were able to recognise the many individual parameters of a high quality partnership and how they did (or did not) manifest within individual relationships. The chapter concludes with some reflections on the success and the ongoing legacy of the strategy

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); it sought to retrieve data systematically over the same day, weekly, for a period of five months. After this process, we had built 20 datasets and NodeXL was utilized 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 the people involved in them. We also analyzed the quantitative data underpinning our network visualisations to provide further insights. The most obvious initial finding was that when the EPL tweets, it prompts 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 visualized network of conversations was of a broadcast form, which is characterized by messages being generated by a central account (the EPL) and shared by a number of decentralized users. Based on our analysis, we propose guidance around (S)ocial media presence, (C)rafting the message, Planned (i)ntervention, (S)pontaneous follow-up, and (M)essage mortality to form the SCISM framework. This framework is likely to be of interest to brands that wish to promote, sustain and benefit from their instigation of social media

Targeted next generation sequencing as a tool for precision medicine

Background: Targeted next-generation sequencing (NGS) enables rapid identification of common and rare genetic variation. The detection of variants contributing to therapeutic drug response or adverse effects is essential for implementation of individualized pharmacotherapy. Successful application of short-read based NGS to pharmacogenes with high sequence homology, nearby pseudogenes and complex structure has been previously shown despite anticipated technical challenges. However, little is known regarding the utility of such panels to detect copy number variation (CNV) in the highly polymorphic cytochrome P450 (CYP) 2D6 gene, or to identify the promoter (TA)7 TAA repeat polymorphism UDP glucuronosyltransferase (UGT) 1A1∗28. Here we developed and validated PGxSeq, a targeted exome panel for pharmacogenes pertinent to drug disposition and/or response. Methods: A panel of capture probes was generated to assess 422 kb of total coding region in 100 pharmacogenes. NGS was carried out in 235 subjects, and sequencing performance and accuracy of variant discovery validated in clinically relevant pharmacogenes. CYP2D6 CNV was determined using the bioinformatics tool CNV caller (VarSeq). Identified SNVs were assessed in terms of population allele frequency and predicted functional effects through in silico algorithms. Results: Adequate performance of the PGxSeq panel was demonstrated with a depth-of-coverage (DOC) ≥ 20× for at least 94% of the target sequence. We showed accurate detection of 39 clinically relevant gene variants compared to standard genotyping techniques (99.9% concordance), including CYP2D6 CNV and UGT1A1∗28. Allele frequency of rare or novel variants and predicted function in 235 subjects mirrored findings from large genomic datasets. A large proportion of patients (78%, 183 out of 235) were identified as homozygous carriers of at least one variant necessitating altered pharmacotherapy. Conclusions: PGxSeq can serve as a comprehensive, rapid, and reliable approach for the detection of common and novel SNVs in pharmacogenes benefiting the emerging field of precision medicine

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 times

What to plan and when to make decisions with data

Existing organisations are often burdened with the legacy of out-of-date business models – an aspect of their existing complexity that prohibits obtaining the maximum benefit from being data-driven. Transformation is a continuous process of refinement and self-reflection as organisations navigate the Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous world. Measurement can only produce data. Having immediate access to the ‘right’ combinations of data is the key to becoming a data-driven organisation. What is done to turn that data into information and insight is the key to becoming a people-focused organisation. While some decisions can be driven directly by the ‘right’ data inputs, other decision-making processes may require ‘gut reaction’ or emotion. A business model describes how an organisation creates and delivers its value proposition to consumers and customers. A business model also explains the mechanisms by which the organisation itself extracts value from the delivery of that value proposition