(Against a) Theory of Audience Engagement with News

Audience engagement has become a key concept in contemporary discussions on how news companies relate to the public and create sustainable business models. These discussions are irrevocably tied to practices of monitoring, harvesting and analyzing audience behaviours with metrics, which is increasingly becoming the new currency of the media economy. This article argues this growing tendency to equate engagement to behavioural analytics, and study it primarily through quantifiable data, is limiting. In response, we develop a heuristic theory of audience engagement with news comprising four dimensions—the technical-behavioural, emotional, normative and spatiotemporal—and explicate these in terms of different relations of engagement between human-to-self, human-to-human, human-to-content, human-to-machine, and machine-to-machine. Paradoxically, this model comprises a specific theory of audience engagement while simultaneously making visible that constructing a theory of audience engagement is an impossible task. The article concludes by articulating methodological premises, which future empirical research on audience engagement should consider

Filtering informal learning in everyday life: invoking ordinariness and moving to civic engagement

This article explores the role of informal learning from television as it is anchored within the ordinariness of daily life. It examines the consequences for pedagogy and civic engagement, questioning how informal learning from television can enhance civic engagement. For many, this learning was localized through personalized and interpersonal relations of everyday life. Learning was not viewed as a distant institutional force, but as an embedded part of an ordinary life. The invoking of ordinariness rendered the relationship between learning and civic engagement unproblematic. Learning was localized in subjective terms for self-identity and interpersonal relations rather than critically reflecting on the power structures of everyday life

Understanding micro-processes of community building and mutual learning on Twitter: a ‘small data’ approach

This article contributes to an emerging field of ‘small data’ research on Twitter by presenting a case study of how teachers and students at a sixth-form college in the north of England used this social media platform to help construct a ‘community of practice’ that enabled micro-processes of recognition and mutual learning. Conducted as part of a broader action research project that focused on the ‘digital story circle’ as a site of, and for, narrative exchange and knowledge production, this study takes the form of a detailed analysis of a departmental Twitter account, combining basic quantitative metrics, close reading of selected Twitter data and qualitative interviews with teachers and students. Working with (and sometimes against) Twitter's platform architecture, teachers and students constructed, through distinct patterns of use, a shared space for dialogue that facilitated community building within the department. On the whole, they were able to overcome justified anxieties about professionalism and privacy; this was achieved by building on high levels of pre-existing trust among staff and by performing that mutual trust online through personal modes of communication. Through micro-processes of recognition and a breaking down of conventional hierarchies that affirmed students' agency as knowledge producers, the departmental Twitter account enabled mutual learning beyond curriculum and classroom. The significance of such micro-processes could only have been uncovered through the detailed scrutiny that a ‘small data’ approach to Twitter, in supplement to some obvious virtues of Big Data approaches, is particularly well placed to provide

A narrative inquiry into the identity formation of Chinese doctoral students in relation to study abroad

The present study explores a topic which has been under-studied to date, namely the identity formation of Chinese PhD students in relation to study abroad. Underpinned by Giddens' (1991) "reflexive project of the self", which privileges agency and reflexivity, and using a narrative inquiry approach, it presents four students' 'stories' collected through semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions in the form of a trajectory of development fro past to future. In building a picture of theways in which students' self-identity is shaped by and shapes their experience of study abroad, the stories illustrate individual agency, motivation, self-determination and reflexivity. In doing so, they challenge the essentialised view of Chinese students as a homogeneous and sometimes problematic group and point to implications for action by the host institutions

Mediated Class-ifications: Representations of Class and Culture in Contemporary British Television

This article takes, as its point of departure, recent debates about the representation of working-class life, especially the lives of the 'feckless poor', on reality television in the UK. These issues are contextualized by reference to a set of wider-ranging historical debates about: a) the category of class as a mode of social determination (and as an explanatory model); b) the relations of language, class and culture in educational sociology and in community publishing; and, c) in relation to classical Marxism's theorization of both the 'respectable' working class and the lumpen proletariat. The article concludes with a consideration of debates about the representation of the working class in the contemporary British TV drama series Shameless

“We now have a patient and not a criminal” : An exploratory study of judges and lawyers’ views on suicide attempters and the law in Ghana

This study explored the views of judges and lawyers of the superior courts of Ghana on the law criminalizing attempted suicide. Qualitative data were collected from 12 experienced legal practitioners of the superior courts (five judges and seven lawyers) using a semi-structured interview schedule. Thematic analysis of the data yielded three main perspectives: In defence of the Law, Advocating a Repeal, and Pro-Health Orientation. Although exploratory, the findings of this study offer cues for stepping up suicide literacy and advocacy programmes toward either a repeal of the law or a reform

The participation myth

Policy rhetoric around strategies to and the value of increasing participation in the arts has been well documented internationally over more than a decade. But in the UK, which is the focus for this article, targets to increase participation have been consistently missed and there remains a direct correlation between those taking part in cultural activity and their socio-economic status. The starting point for this article is to examine the barriers to increasing participation in the arts and question the way that such policy has been implemented within the English context, which may have relevance for policy making in other countries. What is demonstrated is that policy implementation is influenced by vested interest of those in receipt of funding and that a narrow range of voices, from a powerful cultural elite, are involved in the decision making in the arts. The article makes a case for widening the range of voices heard in decision making in order to support both artistic practice and public engagement

Consultocracy and its discontents : A critical typology and a call for a research agenda

Peer reviewe

Ambicultural blending between Eastern and Western paradigms : fresh perspectives for international management research

East and Southeast Asian worldviews are distinctly different from those of the West. Westerners and Asians construct their environments differently, not least because they construct the notion of \u27self\u27 very differently. This paper describes and exemplifies distinctions in cognitive and linguistic styles between the East and the West and outlines the implications of these styles for environmental perspectives and research paradigms. Examples from Thailand illustrate the philosophical roots and practical implications of an indigenous Eastern perspective for local business interactions. We explore the privilege afforded in Western, Cartesian paradigms in (Asian) management research and stimulate debate on the benefits of promoting alternative Asian indigenous perspectives for both management research and management practice. We support the idea that Asian management discourse needs more self-confidence and deserves a more prominent place in international research, not least because international management research will greatly benefit from freshly \u27blended\u27 perspectives that incorporate Eastern and Western perspectives