Rethinking Models of Evaluation: Sustainability as the Goal of International Cultural Organisations

The purpose and conduct of organisational evaluation is variously defined and understood. With the shift to the ‘new managerialism’ and the steady advance of audit culture in the public sector, evaluation models have proliferated but they are often narrowed to crude measures of impact and performance. They subject people to unhelpful, top-down forms of appraisal and accountability in the interests of transparency and economic efficiency with little respect afforded to the multiple perspectives and divergent goals of the actors involved. There is often a lack of clarity about what is being evaluated and from whose perspective. This paper traces the development of the Cultural Value Model (CVM). It was developed as part of UK-wide research programme aimed at rethinking how we assess the value of cultural activities. The primary objective of the CVM is to provide an analytical and methodological framework for re-conceiving models of evaluation. In particular, it shifts the frame of analysis away from impact to value. Our project aimed to deliver a robust, evidence-based understanding of the changing cultural value of the British Council (BC) and BBC World Service (BBCWS). These publically funded international organisations are an integral part of the UK’s diplomatic infrastructure and subject to stringent accountability measures to satisfy diverse stakeholders. They are experiencing rapid and convulsive change in response to financial, technological and geopolitical forces and their purpose and value is being questioned. In the paper we argue that the CVM, in fostering a more engaged, participatory approach to performance evaluation challenged and even subverted existing practices but with mixed results. In the case of the BC, it generated a high degree of interest and engagement to the extent that it is currently being adopted and integrated into organisational practices. In contrast, the BBCWS were more resistant to innovation believing that their audience ratings and internal reviews suffice. The flexible adaptability of the CVM presents an opportunity for other organisations to move from away from top-down performance and impact assessment towards a more inclusive, reflective and sustainable model of value. However we need to get a better understanding the organisational constraints that obstruct innovation if more participatory models of learning, monitoring and evaluation are to intervene in social and organisational processes and achieve sustainable models of good practice

TV talk in a London Punjabi peer culture

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.This thesis examines how 16-18 year-olds in a London Punjabi peer culture talk about television. Based upon two years' ethnographic fieldwork in Southall, west London, it is argued, firstly, that shared experiences of television inform and shape the content and, in some cases, the form of everyday communicative interactions among young people; secondly, that TV is a resource which is mined selectively and used creatively to provide shared but differentiated ways of talking about self, others and their positions in the world; thirdly, that 'TV talk' involves the negotiation of relations within and between parental and peer cultures, the articulation of cultural differences and the expression of aspirations toward cultural change. The analysis is organised around four TV genres. in the peer culture studied, the ability to discuss TV news is perceived as a function of emergent adulthood. In talking about TV advertisements young people establish, critique and endorse hierarchies of taste and style, for example, in what they drink, eat and wear. TV comedy talk, examined in the wider context of the social functions of humour, brings into the realm of speech that which is seen as 'absurd', 'subversive' and 'unspeakable'. It bears, perhaps, the most impressive witness to the role of TV as an enabler of talk. Finally, in their everyday discussions of the soap opera 'Neighbours', young people draw parallels between gossip and rumour in their local neighbourhood and in the soap. The essential argument of the thesis is that TV talk, as an integral; part of everyday talk, binds people together, contributes to their; shared culture and to patterns of sociability, and generates social and collective processes of interpretation and reception beyond the domestic context of viewing. The social reception of TV through shared talk is both a creative act and a manipulated one. It can reflect what is real already; create what is as yet unknown; enable discussion of taboo subjects and make it possible to say what is absurd or unthinkable

Public problems: private solutions? Short-term contracting of inpatient hospital care

Executive summary Public patients are routinely being treated in Australian private hospitals. Some jurisdictions have large-scale, planned programs where private or not-for-profit hospitals are contracted by the public sector to treat public inpatients (for example, Queensland’s Surgery Connect program). Often, however, ‘contracting’ is done on an ad hoc or short-term basis where private hospitals are asked, at relatively short notice, to treat public patients in order to relieve pressure on public hospitals. The findings from this project stem from interviews with 24 senior health executives across Australia. Interviewees were public and private hospital executives and government bureaucrats. All had experience in hospital contracting. The focus of the interviews was their experiences with contracting: why and how contracting arrangements were developed, what worked, what didn’t, and what changes to policy and practice were made over time. Interviewees were also asked about their views on the merits of contracting, whether it should be done more often, and if so, what needed to be done to make sure it worked well. While the views of these senior health executives on this topic were diverse, several clear messages emerged that are pertinent to policymakers working in this area. They are: The way we are doing contracting currently in Australia tends to be ad hoc, and this is enormously frustrating to hospital executives in both the public and private sectors. Without greater certainty about the type and volume of patients to be treated, and how long contract arrangements will remain in place, it is unlikely that the full benefits of contracting (such as more timely access to care for public patients, and the more efficient use of resources) will be realised. Some private hospital executives are unconvinced of the merits of contracting because they believe it reduces the value of private health insurance and the incentives to develop other private sources of revenue. Their views on contracting raise broader policy questions about the relative roles of public and private hospitals in Australia. These questions need to be addressed if governments intend to expand to use of contracting in the hospital sector. State and territory governments (referred to as states) need to develop clear and consistent policies on contracting in the hospital sector. This includes developing fee schedules for different types of services and processes for establishing and negotiating contracts with the private sector. At the same time state-level policies need to be flexible enough to allow local (or regional) health services to make decisions about when, where and how contracting is done in their area. Without significant local level involvement in decision-making, it is difficult to ensure that contracting arrangements between local public and private hospitals (which tend to be more convenient for patients) will work in the longer-term. Hospital executives have suggested numerous options for reform that have the potential to improve the way we do contracting in Australia. They range from small-scale reforms, such as contracting over longer time-periods and setting up brokers to facilitate contracting, to larger-scale ones such as establishing contestable funding pools; co-location of public and private hospitals; public-private partnerships; and implementing new hospital financing models (such as Medicare Select). These options, and more, need to be given serious consideration by policymakers if they are to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our hospital systems

Web templates: Unifying the Web presence of California State University San Bernardino

The internet is a major communication channel for universities. It makes sense to insure that a Web presence of a university is representative of the university\u27s brand and is consistent throughout all Web sites within the university. This project researches and develops Web design tools that can provice standarized resources to Web designers, specifically for California State University, San Bernardino (CSUSB)

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

Globalization and the Mediatization of Religion: From Scandinavia to the World

Scholarship on mediatization has focused on the interactions between the institutions of the media and the realms of society that have been historically separate from those institutions, seeking to develop an empirical record that allows us to better understand the role of media in sociocultural change. The chapters in this book have sought to contribute to this field by asking: what role have the various media industries, platforms, and practices played in the unfolding of conflict, and, in turn, how have these dynamics shaped and continue to shape religion? And although mediatization research has now taken place all over the world, this book has provided a rich set of theoretically informed, empirical case studies on the role of media in exacerbating and/or assuaging conflicts around religion in contemporary Scandinavian societies, recognizing that northern Europe is the context in which much of the theoretical work on mediatization had its origins and has continued to develop. The purpose of this chapter, then, is to discuss the relevance of mediatization theory for scholars interested in the comparative analysis of the often turbulent relationship between media, religion, and conflict in national contexts outside of Scandinavia. In this chapter we examine three underlying points of connection between Scandinavian and other national contexts to explain the general salience of this book for scholars. First, we examine the significance of national myths and their relationship to an imagined homogenous community in public responses to immigration. Second, we explore processes of globalization: the worldwide realities of migration, and displacement, and the complex entanglements of religion with alterity in national contexts of secular governance. Finally, with reference specifically to current challenges to public service media, we argue that the book provides a valuable framework for further analyses of the changing ways in which media condition public engagement with religion, thus contributing to our understandings of the mediatization of religion

The cultural politics of commemoration: Media and remembrance of the Russian revolutions of 1917

The year 2017 marked the centenary of the revolutions of February and October 1917 which led to the collapse of the Russian Empire. These events (and their accompanying mythologies) proved pivotal in creating a uniquely politicised approach to remembrances of revolution across and beyond the post-Soviet space. This special section uses the revolutions’ centenary as an entry point for reassessing the cultural politics of commemoration. In particular, it draws attention to the transformations in memory work brought about by an increasingly integrated global media environment, in which interactions between multiple cultural actors influence the formation of (and exclusion from) cultural memory. These diffuse memory-making processes influence contemporary political and social developments within and beyond the societies in question. The articles presented in this special section interrogate how Russian and international media represented the revolutions, both for their domestic and international audiences. Together, they address questions about what regime-sponsored narratives of the Russian revolutions of 1917 can tell us about contemporary neo-authoritarian politics of identity, history and memory; the cultural significance of real-time, interactive media events for ‘memory work’, and for the participatory re-creation of revolutionary ideas and passions; the ways in which TV audiences and social media users of different generations and political persuasions respond to and interact with representations of revolution; and the nature of the relationship between cultural politics, memory and newsmaking. In bringing into dialogue work from a variety of disciplines and with a range of methodological approaches, the articles in this special section interrogate the fundamentals of the relationship between culture, media and politics in today’s globalised real-time media ecology

In vivo investigation of hyperpolarized [1,3-13C2]acetoacetate as a metabolic probe in normal brain and in glioma.

Dysregulation in NAD+/NADH levels is associated with increased cell division and elevated levels of reactive oxygen species in rapidly proliferating cancer cells. Conversion of the ketone body acetoacetate (AcAc) to β-hydroxybutyrate (β-HB) by the mitochondrial enzyme β-hydroxybutyrate dehydrogenase (BDH) depends upon NADH availability. The β-HB-to-AcAc ratio is therefore expected to reflect mitochondrial redox. Previous studies reported the potential of hyperpolarized 13C-AcAc to monitor mitochondrial redox in cells, perfused organs and in vivo. However, the ability of hyperpolarized 13C-AcAc to cross the blood brain barrier (BBB) and its potential to monitor brain metabolism remained unknown. Our goal was to assess the value of hyperpolarized [1,3-13C2]AcAc in healthy and tumor-bearing mice in vivo. Following hyperpolarized [1,3-13C2]AcAc injection, production of [1,3-13C2]β-HB was detected in normal and tumor-bearing mice. Significantly higher levels of [1-13C]AcAc and lower [1-13C]β-HB-to-[1-13C]AcAc ratios were observed in tumor-bearing mice. These results were consistent with decreased BDH activity in tumors and associated with increased total cellular NAD+/NADH. Our study confirmed that AcAc crosses the BBB and can be used for monitoring metabolism in the brain. It highlights the potential of AcAc for future clinical translation and its potential utility for monitoring metabolic changes associated with glioma, and other neurological disorders