Capability in the digital: institutional media management and its dis/contents

This paper explores how social media spaces are occupied, utilized and negotiated by the British Military in relation to the Ministry of Defence’s concerns and conceptualizations of risk. It draws on data from the DUN Project to investigate the content and form of social media about defence through the lens of ‘capability’, a term that captures and describes the meaning behind multiple representations of the military institution. But ‘capability’ is also a term that we hijack and extend here, not only in relation to the dominant presence of ‘capability’ as a representational trope and the extent to which it is revealing of a particular management of social media spaces, but also in relation to what our research reveals for the wider digital media landscape and ‘capable’ digital methods. What emerges from our analysis is the existence of powerful, successful and critically long-standing media and reputation management strategies occurring within the techno-economic online structures where the exercising of ‘control’ over the individual – as opposed to the technology – is highly effective. These findings raise critical questions regarding the extent to which ‘control’ and management of social media – both within and beyond the defence sector – may be determined as much by cultural, social, institutional and political influence and infrastructure as the technological economies. At a key moment in social media analysis, then, when attention is turning to the affordances, criticisms and possibilities of data, our research is a pertinent reminder that we should not forget the active management of content that is being similarly, if not equally, effective

Understanding and explaining the marginalization of part time British Army Reservists

Recent changes in the British Army mean part time Reservists and full time Regulars need to become better integrated. However, there has been a long history of workplace tensions between the full time and part time elements in the British Army. This mirrors those found in many civilian workplaces. Focus group data with 105 full time Regular British Army soldiers confirmed that time and emotional commitment are strongly linked in a full time professional workplace that has strong, definite and enduring boundaries. This, alongside demands for conformity and stratification by rank explained the high risk of marginalization of part time Reservists. The legitimacy of part time Reservists, especially in the combat arms, was often challenged. Using this explanatory framework some implications and practical ways that tensions may be reduced between full time and part time members of the British Army, and other Armed Forces facing similar tensions, were highlighted

Securing the data economy:translating privacy and enacting security in the development of DataSHIELD

Murtagh, M J Demir, I Jenkings, K N Wallace, S E Murtagh, B Boniol, M Bota, M Laflamme, P Boffetta, P Ferretti, V Burton, P R eng Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't Switzerland 2012/06/23 06:00 Public Health Genomics. 2012;15(5):243-53. doi: 10.1159/000336673. Epub 2012 Jun 20.International audienceContemporary bioscience is seeing the emergence of a new data economy: with data as its fundamental unit of exchange. While sharing data within this new 'economy' provides many potential advantages, the sharing of individual data raises important social and ethical concerns. We examine ongoing development of one technology, DataSHIELD, which appears to elide privacy concerns about sharing data by enabling shared analysis while not actually sharing any individual-level data. We combine presentation of the development of DataSHIELD with presentation of an ethnographic study of a workshop to test the technology. DataSHIELD produced an application of the norm of privacy that was practical, flexible and operationalizable in researchers' everyday activities, and one which fulfilled the requirements of ethics committees. We demonstrated that an analysis run via DataSHIELD could precisely replicate results produced by a standard analysis where all data are physically pooled and analyzed together. In developing DataSHIELD, the ethical concept of privacy was transformed into an issue of security. Development of DataSHIELD was based on social practices as well as scientific and ethical motivations. Therefore, the 'success' of DataSHIELD would, likewise, be dependent on more than just the mathematics and the security of the technology

On the relation between 'visual research methods' and contemporary visual culture

One of the most striking developments across the social sciences in the past decade has been the growth of research methods using visual materials. It is often suggested that this growth is somehow related to the increasing importance of visual images in contemporary social and cultural practice. However, the form of the relationship between 'visual research methods' and 'contemporary visual culture' has not yet been interrogated. This paper conducts such an interrogation, exploring the relation between 'visual research methods' – as they are constituted in quite particular ways by a growing number of handbooks, reviews, conference and journals – and contemporary visual culture – as characterised by discussions of 'convergence culture'. The paper adopts a performative approach to 'visual research methods'. It suggests that when they are used, 'visual research methods' create neither a 'social' articulated through culturally-mediated images, nor a 'research participant' competency in using such images. Instead, the paper argues that the intersection of visual culture and 'visual research methods' should be located in their shared way of using images, since in both, images tend to be deployed much more as communicational tools than as representational texts. The paper concludes by placing this argument in the context of recent discussions about the production of sociological knowledge in the wider social field