Applying user analytics to uses and effects of social media in China

ABSTRACT

We introduce what user analytics can do in the first half of the paper and then illustrate how to do user analytics in the second half. In the current context, user analytics refers to a set of diverse communication research methods on uses and effects of social media. User analytics has evolved from TV ratings research to online user research. The history illustrates what data sources, measures, and analyses can be used for what types of research questions under user analytics. We discuss the similarities of and differences between user analytics and other methods of computational communication research (e.g. content mining and online experiments), and compare the strengths and weaknesses of user analytics with traditional quantitative methods (e.g. survey). Finally, we present an application study of Chinese bloggers to demonstrate how to employ user analytics methods to study the production, consumption, and effects of user-generated content.     

Developing participation opportunities for young people with disabilities? Policy enactment and social inclusion in Australian junior sport

Abstract

Interventions aimed at increasing the participation of young people with disabilities in recreational sport have had mixed success. The authors draw on in-depth interviews with representatives from State Sporting Associations, local government officers and volunteers within community sports clubs in Victoria, Australia, to examine why some sports clubs are unable or unwilling to translate policy ambitions into practice. The findings indicate how by framing disability provision as ‘too difficult’, ‘not core business’ and antithetical to competitive success, community sports clubs are able to resist policy ambitions to modify existing structures and develop more inclusive practice. Greater priority needs to be given to transformational inclusion objectives and challenging ableism if clubs are to structurally progress the development of participation opportunities for young people with disabilities.     

Conviviality as a politics of endurance: the refugee emergency and the consolations of artistic intervention

ABSTRACT

Against the impasse of despair in the public response to the refugee emergency, artistic interventions emerge to offer fleeting significant opportunities for restorative and reparative action. This article takes up conviviality as a conceptual tool to understand artistic interventions to the forced migration and asylum issues that variably aim for healing, empathy, and reflexivity. Drawing on comparative research consisting of interviews of artists in France, the United Kingdom, and the United States and textual analyses of their performances, we discuss specific motivations and diverse representational practices that aim to enact togetherness-in-difference. We discuss the potentials and risks of convivial artistic productions, which we argue produce a politics of endurance that, as Feldman has said, helps “people live better with circumstances they cannot change.”     

Closing the gap: supporting literacy through a computer-assisted-reading-intervention

Schools in England are expected to ‘close the gap’ for a range of vulnerable pupils who are achieving below the levels seen amongst their same-aged peers. They are also highly accountable for additional funding that is provided to support this goal. The project reported here involved collating and analysing a range of data in order to evaluate the impact of a widely used computer-assisted-reading-intervention (CARI). Sixteen primary school pupils, all of whom were identified by their school as underachieving in literacy, used the CARI daily over a five-week period. The post-intervention data showed some clear gains in reading and spelling skills for all bar one of the children. The findings are discussed in relation to the wider literatures on CARIs. The research concludes that the CARI under investigation offers a useful and cost-effective adjunct to whole-class and group reading instruction and may be particularly beneficial for supporting the learning of pupils who are struggling to consolidate the knowledge and skills covered in their regular classroom reading instruction.     

Mediating a compromised solidarity

ABSTRACT

This article explores popular media as resources for judgment in how settled migrants in Europe imagine solidarities toward newer arrivals seeking entry into the region. It discusses the news and entertainment consumption of Filipino nurses in London and how this figures in their imaginary of social and political bonds with refugees. Drawing on ethnographic interviews, I argue that these Filipino migrants can only articulate a compromised solidarity: one fractured between empathy with refugees and concern about what these newer arrivals might mean for settled migrants in the city. I then explain how the media contribute to this fracturing. One way is that the xenophobia in popular media content on social media leads the Filipinos to assert their difference with other migrants, including refugees. A second is that the Filipinos deploy popular media content, especially on British television, to assert that they belong to UK society more than other migrants, again including refugees.