Content Analysis of the Portrayal of White Characters in Black Films Across Two Decades

Race and media research in the United States emphasizes the representations of ethnic minorities in mainstream media. These sometimes-poor representations of minority groups have implications for social attitudes. However, social groups are defined in relation to one another, and race specifically is a hierarchical category with Whites positioned above. Some scholars suggest that whiteness has meaningful implications for Whites’ racial identity formation. Yet little empirical attention has been given to the portrayals of Whites in racially targeted or ethnic-oriented media, where whiteness is most conspicuous. This study uses social identity theory and critical race theories to examine the portrayals of Whites in Black films. We conduct a content analysis of 32 Black-oriented films spanning two decades. We argue that such investigations (a) position race-oriented films as necessary sites for understanding racial discourse and (b) shed insight into how ethnic media creators may use film as a platform to accept or resist dominant ideologies.     

Ensuring the academic library's relevance to stakeholders: The role of the Library Director

This paper presents a substantive grounded theory about how the Library Director can ensure the library's relevance to university and external stakeholders in the face of rapid changes in technology and higher education. A constructivist grounded theory research approach involved 14 semi-structured interviews with 12 Library Directors of publicly funded university libraries in Australia and the United States. The substantive theory and the conceptual model presented in this paper suggest that the Library Director responds to the problem of rapid change by enacting the following strategies: aligning strategic vision with the university; continuously reinventing the library; engaging with stakeholders; building an agile and engaged culture; and demonstrating value to the university. The strategies interact with each other in a cyclical pattern. This is an original theory that emphasizes the important role of the Library Director as the agent and model for library strategy and culture. The theory requires library leaders to be strategic thinkers and to be engaged in strategic planning processes that aim for continuous improvements that make the library agile and engaged with stakeholders. The theory also has a significant impact upon the behaviours required for all library staff members.     

How do parents acquire information to support their child with a disability and navigate individualised funding schemes?

With the international trend towards individualised funding packages that allocate funds to individuals to spend on disability support needs, the challenge of ensuring parents can readily access useful information to make decisions becomes paramount. The present research used a two stage, mixed method sequential approach (with 291 parents surveyed and 56 parents participating in focus groups) to determine how parents acquire information to enhance their understanding of their child's disability and determine how to use an individualised funding scheme to benefit their child and family. Parents attested to the importance of person‐to‐person communication and valued information that originated from other parents of a child with a disability, and from professionals who knew their child. Parents also spoke about the limitations of the internet, noting that reliance on the internet could cause confusion as the validity of information could not be assured. Early childhood intervention services emerged as a key instrument in developing the capacity of families to make informed choices. Understanding families'’ perspectives on the utility of information sources is critical and timely as policy‐makers and service providers within the disability sector shift practice to meet the rise of individualised funding internationally.     

Spaces of inclusion: investigating place,positioning and perspective in educational settings through photo-elicitation

This paper presents findings from a collaborative research study which sought to explore perspectives and understandings of the concept of inclusion, as played out in schools and colleges in northwest England, via the use of images. The research had two parts: in the first part, children and young people took photographs in their school setting that they felt represented inclusion or exclusion, offering an explanation for their choice. Some of these photographs and the accompanying comments were anonymised and formed the second part of the research that sought the viewpoints and perspectives of student-teachers, serving teachers, teaching assistants and academics via seminars and workshops. It is the responses received in the seminars and workshops that form the focus of this paper. Four images and a range of responses to them have been selected for discussion and are framed within three key inter-related themes of place, positioning and perspective. Such an analysis is made to consider how self-positioning might inform diverse interpretations of the cultural construction and visual representation of inclusion and exclusion.     

Digital play: a new classification

Abstract

This paper draws on an ESRC-funded study of play and creativity in preschool-aged children’s use of apps in the UK. The main objectives of the study were to collect information about access to and use of apps in the home, establish the most popular apps and identify the features of those apps that are successful in promoting play and creativity. A mixed-method approach was used to collect data, including video filming of children using the most popular apps. In identifying play types that emerged in the analysis of data, the team utilised an established taxonomy, which outlines sixteen play types. This taxonomy was reviewed and adapted to analyse data from the project relating to digital play. Through this process, an additional type of play, transgressive play, was identified and added to the taxonomy. The paper outlines the implications of the revised taxonomy for future studies of play.     

Assistance that fades in improves learning better than assistance that fades out

Instructional Science - When students are solving problems they often turn to examples when they need assistance. Examples are helpful because they illustrate how a problem can be solved. However,...     

The Role of Civility and Metacommunication in Facebook Discussions

Social media’s potential for political and social discussion provides great promise since deliberation is key for democracy. Unfortunately, there is a problematic presence of incivility in conversations on digital platforms. We conducted an experiment to examine the effects of this phenomenon, driven by the elaboration likelihood model. Each of our four conditions showed a media outlet’s Facebook post with a story about genetically modified organisms and a comment section beneath with one of the following: a civil discussion, an uncivil discussion, an uncivil conversation with metacommunication encouraging civility, and a control group. Results revealed a mediated relationship of exposure to civil and metacommunicative comments on willingness to engage in a discussion through mental elaboration. We also found evidence of modeling behavior for civility and metacommunication.     

A General 3-Step Maximum Likelihood Approach to Estimate the Effects of Multiple Latent Categorical Variables on a Distal Outcome

The 3-step approach has been recently advocated over the simultaneous 1-step approach to model a distal outcome predicted by a latent categorical variable. We generalize the 3-step approach to situations where the distal outcome is predicted by multiple and possibly associated latent categorical variables. Although the simultaneous 1-step approach has been criticized, simulation studies have found that the performance of the two approaches is similar in most situations (Bakk & Vermunt, 2016). This is consistent with our findings for a 2-LV extension when all model assumptions are satisfied. Results also indicate that under various degrees of violation of the normality and conditional independence assumption for the distal outcome and indicators, both approaches are subject to bias but the 3-step approach is less sensitive. The differences in estimates using the two approaches are illustrated in an analysis of the effects of various childhood socioeconomic circumstances on body mass index at age 50.