Involving service users and carers in mental health education: mental health students' perspectives of the impact of direct involvement on their learning and practice.

Service user involvement (SUI) in healthcare and education is an established element of government policy. Emerging research demonstrates that SUI in education can positively impact on mental health students' learning. However, limited empirical attention has been paid to the impact on practice in this area. Moreover, no research has investigated whether impact on practice is sustained. Section B describes a qualitative study exploring qualified clinical psychologists' (CPs) experiences of a placement-based service user and carer involvement (SUCI) scheme during their training. The study focused on understanding their perception of the scheme's impact on their learning and practice and whether the impact on practice was sustained. Seven CPs were interviewed, predominantly 32-33 months post-scheme. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was used to analyse the data. Four super-ordinate themes were identified: “Contextual and relational factors underpinning learning”; “Learning: Personal and professional development”; “The enduring impact on practice”; and “Personal reflections and meaning-making”. The findings are discussed in relation to existing literature and relevant theory, including adult learning theories and social positioning theory. The findings suggest that SUCI in placement-based learning during training can support CPs' personal and professional development and a partnership approach to practice. Two participants' experiences highlight factors raising questions regarding for whom and when SUCI may be beneficial to learning. Methodological limitations, implications for SUCI in clinical psychology training and directions for future research are presented

Making the news: the media and the movement against the Iraq war

What follows is an investigation of unusual media behaviour. The 2003 Iraq War precipitated a series of demonstrations of unprecedented scale in a cause that often had majority support and challenged the authority of the government. The media’s well documented tendency to marginalise or ignore protest was at least partly suspended as newspapers cleared their front pages to report on demonstrations and the BBC sent senior journalists to interview marchers. For once, protesters were making the news. My research has revealed a very different pattern of reportage to that anticipated by the widely used ‘protest paradigm’ that predicts the marginalisation and even criminalisation of protest. Although the record shows great unevenness across different media outlets, the coverage of some of the anti-Iraq War protests appears more comprehensive, even-handed and at times sympathetic, than any equivalent example in the literature. The central task was to investigate the nature of the divergence and find ways of explaining it. In the process, this exceptional moment could be used to probe the media’s role in modern democracy and its attitudes to dissent at times of mass mobilisation and social stress. A combined textual and quantitative analysis of my research raised some interesting conclusions. Though important, structural or technological developments cannot explain the changes to the way protest was handled, as some of the literature argues. The evidence suggests that a contingent complex of social, ideological and political factors created a perfect storm that scrambled normal lines of communication. Interviews with participants and research into the context of the protests allowed me to fill out these suggestions and draw out more definite conclusions. At the same time, the analysis provided a test of theoretical models of media function, including versions of the ‘propaganda model’, broadly post-structuralist approaches, and more recent work suggesting a greater openness to dissent. Analysis of various theoretical approaches suggests, however, the importance of a model that can combine emphasis on the hegemonic role of the media, with sensitivity to contradictions that emerge between the moments of ‘maintaining consent’

Georg Lukács as a Communications Scholar: Cultural and Digital Labour in the Context of Lukács’ Ontology of Social Being

The task of this work is to apply thoughts from Georg Lukács’ final book, the Ontology of Social Being, for the theoretical analysis of cultural and digital labour. It discusses Lukács’ concepts of work and communication and relates them to the analysis of cultural and digital work. It also analyses his conception of the relation of labour and ideology and points out how we can make use of it for critically understanding social media ideologies. Lukács opposes the dualist separation of the realms of work and ideas. He introduces in this context the notion of teleological positing that allows us to better understand cultural and digital labour as well as associated ideologies, such as the engaging/connecting/sharing-ideology, today. The analysis shows that Lukács’ Ontology is in the age of Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter still a very relevant book, although it has thus far not received the attention that it deserves. This article also introduces the Ontology’s main ideas on work and culture, which is important because large parts of the book have not been translated from the German original into English. Lukács’ notion of teleological positing is crucial for understanding the common features of the economy and culture