Being-Together: Thinking through Technologically Mediated Sociality and Community

Our sociality is increasingly enacted through technology. This essay argues that the relationship between the technological mediation of social relations and the ways in which these practices are understood conceptually needs to be critiqued, rethought, and extended. Current approaches tend to accentuate the individual to the detriment of the social and often to understand technology instrumentally. Jean-Luc Nancy's notion of being singular plural and his understanding of the relations between singular beings and of ecotechnics are discussed briefly to illustrate an alternate direction for considering ways of being-together in Western techno-society.     

The Presence of Academic Health Sciences Libraries on Facebook: The Relationship Between Content and Library Popularity

Social networks such as Facebook allow libraries to be proactive in reaching their users. While some libraries have popular Facebook pages, it remains unclear what attracts users to these pages. This study evaluates relationships between libraries’ Facebook page content and popularity. An analysis of 72 academic health sciences libraries’ Facebook pages showed positive correlations between number of library fans and number of tabs, photos, events, and wall posts on Facebook. Libraries posting videos had significantly more fans than libraries without them. This study contributes to an understanding of correlations between content and popularity on Facebook, with implications for library outreach.     

Factors Influencing Schoolchildren's Responses to a Questionnaire in Wildlife Conservation Education

Questionnaires are important tools for assessing attitudes regarding conservation issues. However, they are not easily comparable and their reliability has been insufficiently assessed. We examined factors influencing responses to open- and closed-ended questions about animal conservation to more than 600 schoolchildren (9 years old on average). We analysed the level of understanding, controllable (e.g. sample size) and less controllable factors (e.g. affectivity). Most children responded appropriately to the questions, but subtle changes in the phrasing influenced the answers. Affectivity towards endearing species and spontaneity also influenced the responses whereas small sample sizes (～50 children) provided relatively stable patterns. Overall, we suggest that standardization of questionnaires administered over large spatial and time scales is needed to accurately assess children's attitudes towards conservation issues.     

The Media as Educators,Educational Research,and Autonomous Deliberation

This article explores the connections between the media's responsibility to educate the public, politically and morally contested education policy debates, and public information and deliberation. The author argues that it is crucial for education policy researchers to clarify the competing perspectives on policy disputes by providing theory and research-based information to the public. This requires researchers to understand not only the nuances of the policy issue but also how the media serve as educators and how to find ways of disseminating research to journalists and members of the public.     

‘Thou shalt not plagiarise’: from self-reported views to recognition and avoidance of plagiarism

Throughout much of the literature on plagiarism in higher education, there is an implicit assumption that students who understand plagiarism, who have high ethical views and declare not to engage in plagiaristic behaviour are able to recognise it and avoid it in practice. Challenging this supposition, this paper contrasts students’ self-reported data with their ability to recognise and avoid plagiarism in a proposed case scenario. A questionnaire was adapted from previous literature and administered to a sample of undergraduate first- and second-year students in an Irish university. Results show that self-reported measures are not a powerful predictor of the students’ ability to recognise the practical case as an academic breach, nor to avoid the breach through referencing. This suggests that students’ understanding and awareness of academic breaches would benefit from experiential learning and that higher education institutions should not merely rely on providing statements and definitions of academic misconduct. Also, the results highlight the potential unsuitability of using self-reported measures to study plagiarism, despite their widespread use.