CMC Media School Lecturer and CEMP Fellow, Dr. Anna Feigenbaum, was awarded a Wellcome Trust Small Grant in Medical Humanities for her project ‘Communicating Medical Knowledge in the History of Tear Gas’. Aiming to inform new medical knowledge about tear gas, as well as provide resources for policy-makers and key stakeholders, this research project examines changing and contested notions around the health effects of tear gases for law enforcement purposes. Using a case study approach and archival methods, the project explores how medical experts have communicated medical knowledge around tear gas, shaping policies and legislation, from the Geneva Convention to the European Union ban on trade in instruments of torture. Outputs for this project include a contracted book with Verso and an open access website of tools and resources. Dr. Feigenbaum’s work on tear gas has been quoted in the Guardian, The Financial Times, New Internationalist and Vice magazine, as well as in international publications in Brazil, the Philippines, Turkey and Italy. Dr. Feigenbaum is always interested in building new interdisciplinary collaborations. If you are interested in this area of research, be in touch! afeigenbaum@bournemouth.ac.uk
Category / Media Studies
BU Citizen Journalism Project Featured on BBC
Kelvin Trevett, Access Dorset citizen journalist (photo: Access Dorset)
Pioneering citizen journalism project, ADTV, involving The Media School’s Einar Thorsen, Dan Jackson and Ann Luce has recently been featured on BBC radio and BBC’s The Politics Show, for a full 8 minutes!
In a nutshell, ADTV is about empowering older people, disabled people and carers to gain a public voice through citizen journalism. Thanks to Fusion funding, we have been able to work with local charity, Access Dorset, who represents these groups locally. They have put together a fantastic video about ADTV on their website.
The project is now in its second phase. From November 2013 to January 2014, Ann Luce – together with BA (Hons) Multimedia Journalism student, Nicolas Williams – led a five-week intensive training course for twelve Access Dorset volunteers on foundation principles of video journalism. This gave them the skills and confidence to develop a citizen journalism website alongside their other advice and support functions.
Since then, the volunteers (who now actively self-identify as citizen journalists) have thrown themselves into the project and pursued a range of different stories. They have made videos about living with cancer, anorexia, emergency medical treatment for older people, inaccessible footpaths for disabled people, and overcoming attitudinal barriers to disability to name a few.
One of the most high profile reports has been in support of their campaign to make Pokesdown railway station accessible for disabled people. The funny, playful yet powerful video they made shows Bournemouth resident and Access Dorset citizen journalist, Kelvin Trevett, being repeatedly told there is no way for him to access the station platform in his wheelchair. The film pretends to be shot over several decades, with creative use of a newspaper stand marking various landmarks in the development of disabled people’s rights since 1960.
The video and campaign has made local headlines, gained the support of local politicians, and has even been discussed in Parliament.
We are now working with Access Dorset and their citizen journalists on research interviews and ongoing evaluation of the project. The findings of these will be presented at the IAMCR annual conference in Hyderabad this July, and ECREA annual conference in Lisbon, November. Publications are also lined up to disseminate these research findings in books and journals. Building on the Fusion funded project, we are now pursuing external grants: to ensure the sustainability of the project and advance this model of citizen journalism beyond Dorset, and to explore new ways for marginalised groups to get their voices heard – both within grassroots initiatives and national media.
For further information, please contact:
Einar Thorsen: ethorsen@bournemouth.ac.uk
Dan Jackson: jacksond@bournemouth.ac.uk
Ann Luce: aluce@bournemouth.ac.uk
IHPRC celebrates 5th birthday
The International History of Public Relations Conference (IHPRC) celebrated its fifth birthday on the first day of the 2014 conference on Wednesday, July 2.
The conference chair, Prof Tom Watson, was joined in cutting the celebration cake by Prof Don Wright (BostonUniversity), Associate Professor Meg Lamme (UniversityofAlabama) and Associate Professor Natalia Rodriguez Salcedo (UniversityofNavarra), who were members of an advisory panel consulted on the establishment of the conference in 2009.
The conference, which was opened by the Dean of The Media School, Stephen Jukes, has been attended by delegates from more than 12 countries. Some 33 papers and a Keynote Panel have been presented.
More than 150 papers have been offered by delegates from 30 countries in the past five years. The conference has established the field of PR history and spurred a big growth in journal and book publishing, with two more books launched at the 2014 conference.
Planning is already beginning for the 2015 conference to be held on July 7-8.
(L-R) Prof Don Wright, Prof Tom Watson, Assoc Prof Meg Lamme & Assoc Prof Natalia Rodriguez Salcedo
Dr. Inventor – next generation “Google” search for researchers
Are you eager to have innovative ideas? Are you keen to find an effective method to solve your research problems? Do you want to speed up your research information collection? Cooperated among eight universities and companies around Europe, we are developing a virtual personal research assistant in our new European Commission funded project “Dr. Inventor – Promoting Scientific Creativity by Utilising Web-based Research Objects”.
Dr Inventor aims to develop an intelligent software system utilising machine-empowered search and computation to bring researchers extended perspectives for scientific innovation. By informing researchers of a broad spectrum of relevant research concepts and approaches, this system will help assess the novelty of research ideas and offer suggestions of new concepts and workflows for new scientific discovery. Dr Inventor will be the first web-based system that supports the exploration of scientific creativity via a computational approach, which will overcome a lot of human limitations.
If you would like our system to work the way you envisage to do, please join our user requirement study by finishing a short survey (taking about 5 minutes) at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/drinventor. You can tell us how you perform your research tasks, what is the most difficult part in your research, what you wish our system to do to help you. Your feedback will guide our design; your suggestions may steer the way how people undertake research in the next few decades.
Jian J Zhang & Xiaosong Yang
National Centre for Computer Animation, The Media School, Bournemouth University
‘Intelligences’ theme of PR conference
Dr David MacQueen and Prof Tom Watson of The Media School both chaired panels and presented papers at the PR Meeting #4 conference in Barcelona last week.
The conference, which features research on critical approaches to public relations and strategic communication, had a focus on ‘intelligences’ this year.
Dr McQueen chaired a session which included fellow speakers from the the US, Spain and New Zealand. His paper, jointly authored with Graeme Baxter of Robert Gordon University, considered community resistance to corporate power in Scotland and Ireland.
Prof Watson presented a critical review of repetitive research issues in PR, in a session which also included speakers from Australia and Sweden. On the final afternoon of the conference he was a panel speaker on academic writing and publishing.
“This conference is a top event as it has broad international participation and always pushes into new research territory,” said Prof Watson. “This year, it was built around Howard Gardners’s work on intelligences, which brought forward aspects such as competitive, professional, spiritual, digital, emotional, dialogic, wicked and feminist intelligences.”
(L-R) PR Meeting # organisers Prof Jordi Xifra (Pompeu Fabra) and Prof David McKie (Wakato) with Prof Tom Watson
Successful BU Festival of Learning debate of media and fear in childbirth!
Yesterday saw the lively debate organised by Prof. Vanora Hundley on the motion: ‘The media is responsible for creating fear in childbirth.’
Elizabeth Duff from the NCT and HSC Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen affiliated with the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health and against the motion argued Joanne Dewberry (http://joannedewberry.co.uk/about-joanne/ ), independent blogger, journalist and successful business woman and Dr. Ann Luce from BU’s Journalism and Communication Academic Group.
The debate was part of BU’s Festival of Learning event to explore the role of the mass media in shaping such beliefs and identify whether media portrayals are responsible for rising rates of intervention. The audience voted in favour of the motion, but the media team managed to get some people to reconsider their views on the impact of the mass media on women’s view of childbirth.
Professors Vanora Hundley and Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH
CEMP awarded UKLA role
Julian McDougall’s application to convene a new special interest group in Media Literacy for the United Kingdom Literacy Association has been successful.
The collaboration between CEMP and the UKLA will create a rich dialogue between media education researchers and literacy practitioners and locate CEMP at the forefront of media literacy research in the UK. The UKLA are an influential group in terms of policy development and this new affiliation, combined with recent work at Unesco and with the EU / EC, has the potential to lead to exciting research impact and outreach.
More information will follow once the SIG is up and running, but please contact Julian for more detail in the meantime.
Delphi comes to Leipzig via BU
Delphi method is an unsung qualitative research technique used for investigating complex issues. It was the subject of one of The Media School’s Prof Tom Watson’s teaching actions during his Erasmus visit to Leipzig University in Germany last week.
He was hosted by Prof Gunter Bentele and Prof Ansgar Zerfass of the university’s Communication Management Research Institute (Instituts KMW), who are also co-researchers with him.
“Delphi method has been little used in PR and Communication Management research. So this was an opportunity to present it to a group of Early Career Researchers and PhD students,” said Prof Watson who used it for an international study of PR research priorities in 2007/08.
He is hopeful that Delphi method, which draws its name from the oracle of Delphi as it is used for forecasting and policy creation, will be more widely used at both universities. “It gets very rich results amongst practitioners and from international experts.”
Other actions during Prof Watson’s Erasmus visit, supported by the British Council and a FIF SMN selection, were two seminars to Masters students on PR history and PR measurement as well as mentoring meetings with PhD students.
Leipzig University has been an Erasmus partner of BU for the past four years. It has one of Europe’s leading communication management and PR research teams, with an international reputation. Professors Bentele and Zerfass have both visited BU under the Erasmus banner. Students have also come from Leipzig to BU for six months’ study on the MA Public Relations.
“As well as being where J.S. Bach composed his music in the Thomaskirche (St Thomas’s Church) in the 18th century, the venue of the annual World Goth Festival and a charming city centre , Leipzig is a top university which started in 1409”, said Prof Watson. “There is great potential to further develop our relationship with it and its very welcoming staff.”
Thomaskirche, Leipzig, where J.S. Bach composed most of his music
Media and Information Literacy
BU’s Dr Julian McDougall is the author of one of a series of influential reports on the state of media education in Europe, being released today at UNESCO at the First European Forum on Media and Information Literacy.
The 29 independent reports provide valuable insight into the state of media education.
Dr McDougall said: “The UK report presents a paradox. Whilst the UK still leads the way in the media education curriculum, with established courses from secondary to higher education, we are trailing our European neighbours in policy mandate, political support, teacher training and funding for the broader project of providing media and information literacy as an entitlement for all citizens, as described in the UNESCO declaration.”
External assessments are key to improving Media and Information Literacy in Europe as the rapidity of digital transformations requires radical policy changes. The reports focus on the policy frameworks, the action plans for capacity building and the role of engaged stakeholders. The main findings will be disclosed at UNESCO together with a set of recommendations and a Declaration on “Augmented MIL in the Digital Era”.
The First European Forum on Media and Information Literacy is a joint effort with UNESCO and the European Commission.
The complete list of experts and their national reports can be accessed and downloaded at www.translit.fr
3rd edition of ‘Evaluating Public Relations’ published
The third edition of the enduring public relations text, Evaluating Public Relations, has been published by Kogan Page. Much revised by authors Professor Tom Watson (Media School) and former lecturer Paul Noble, the book has greater emphasis on the measurement of social media and concepts of value created by that communication.
“When the first edition of Evaluating Public Relations came out in 2005, it mostly dealt with the measurement of media relations activity”, Professor Watson said. “In it, we included a chapter on how to measure PR-influenced coverage on a no- or low-cost basis. An updated version is included in the latest edition.
“But the world of PR practice has moved on and so the book includes the measurement and evaluation of social media, more focus on outcomes rather than outputs, and advice to meet increasing demands that PR/communication delivers value to the organisation.”
Professor Watson said that the new edition calls for PR/communication practitioners to take “a big step forward in the planning and strategy-setting processes.”
“Not only should communication objectives align with organisational objectives, but practitioners must ensure that communication is part of the organisation or client’s own objectives.”
The third edition includes new and revised chapters based on Professor Watson’s research into the history of PR measurement and his work, with Professor Ansgar Zerfass of Leipzig University, on methods of performance management in PR/communications.
Wordcamp UK coming to Bournemouth this July
Wordcamp 2014 Bournemouth
Saturday 12 – Sunday 13 July
Executive Business Centre, 89 Holdenhurst Road, Bournemouth BH8 8EB, United Kingdom.
Fancy yourself a WordPress enthusiast? This two day, participant driven, conference is this year being hosted by Bournemouth University and Silicon South in its first official trip to the South West. One of the key aspects of this event is that the agenda is built online by participant proposed sessions as part of a multi-track agenda, so if you’ve got some nifty WordPress tricks up your sleeve you can propose a session share these with other experts.
Now is your chance to get involved, click on the links to find out more about proposing a session (50 or 25 minutes) or a 5 minute lightning talk or just to register yourself for a £10 early bird ticket. This conference is a chance to build on your WordPress skills and meet community of developers.
If you’re planning to get involved in this event we’d love to hear about it so please do send us an email at siliconsouth@bournemouth.ac.uk
Media School Academics Join EU CyberPark Project
The EU COST funded CyberPark project brings together participants from 21 countries to explore how ICT can help attract more users to engage with public spaces more efficiently, enhancing their health and wellbeing. With the emergence of social media, wearable technologies and devices such as Google Glass, a future where technology is embedded in the environment and where landscapes respond to the people who pass through them may no longer be just science fiction fantasy. The CyberPark project will explore how nature and the digital can be brought closer together, drawing on the expertise of urban planners, architects, anthropologists and researchers from the arts and humanities.
Bronwen Thomas, Sue Thomas and Sam Goodman from the Media School’s Centre for the Study of Journalism, Culture and Community will all be contributing to the four-year project from May 2014. Bronwen Thomas is Director of the Centre and an Associate Professor in the Media School. She has published widely on new media narratives and organized the Location-based Storytelling symposium here at BU in 2012. Sue Thomas is a Visiting Fellow in the Media School, and recently published a book on Technobiophilia (Bloomsbury, 2013) exploring the relationship between nature and cyberspace. She is currently developing ideas around digital well-being. Sam Goodman is Lecturer in Linguistics in the Media School, with research interests in Medical Humanities and literary representations of space, place and landscape.
You can read more about the project on Sue Thomas’s new Wired Well-being column for The Conversation at https://theconversation.com/cyberparks-will-be-intelligent-spaces-embedded-with-sensors-and-computers-26837
Full details of the COST action can be found at
http://www.cost.eu/domains_actions/tud/Actions/TU1306
Latest CEMP Research Bulletin
Here is the updated CEMP Research / Innovation bulletin for May / June 2014. CEMP bulletin May June 2014
Please contact Julian or Richard in CEMP if you are interested in any of the funding opportunities here, or have other ideas for collaborative projects with CEMP.
Latest PR research presented in Sydney
Research on the measurement and evaluation of public relations campaigns was presented by Professor Tom Watson (Media School) at an industry event in Sydney on Tuesday.
Prof Watson was the lead speaker at the Measurement & Evaluation Briefing organised by the Public Relations Institute of Australia (PRIA) in Sydney. He focused on the latest models of communication performance management and other developments that are reported in the soon-to-be published third edition of Evaluating Public Relations which he has co-authored with Paul Noble.
“There was a full house at the PRIA Briefing and it was a great opportunity to discuss practice-led research and brief delegates about Bournemouth University, which is seen as a world player in PR research,” he said. The audience were mainly practitioners from agencies and in-house operations.
Also speaking were Prof Jim Macnamara of University of Technology Sydney and John Croll, CEO of iSentia, the largest communications analysis firm in the Asia Pacific region. It was hosted by Mike Watson, the PRIA national chair who had flown in from Melbourne especially for the briefing.
In the previous week, Prof Watson gave a public lecture at Macquarie University in Sydney on the CSR checklist which he has developed. It was attended academics and students from three universities. This was the Australian launch of the CSR checklist, which has been developed from research undertaken in the Public Relations Research Group.
(L-R) Prof Tom Watson, Mike Watson, Prof Jim Macnamara, John Croll
CEMP Success: Three BU Colleagues approved as Higher Education Academy Associates
Last week colleagues from BU’s Centre for Excellence in Media Practice (CEMP) and Centre for Excellence in Learning (CEL) won appointments to the newly approved Higher Education Academy (HEA) Associates programme. CEMP’s Director Julian McDougall, Head of CEMP’s Postgraduate Research Richard Berger, and CEMP Fellow Anna Feigenbaum from the Media School’s CMC will join the re-developed Academic Associates community. As Associates they will take part in research projects, event programming and developing the HEA’s UK and International consultancy. The HEA is the UK’s main provider of resources, events and workshops relating to learning and teaching in higher education, servicing 28 different disciplines. In addition to running its professional recognition Fellowship programme–that many BU staff are a part of–the Higher Education Academy also offers a robust funding scheme for education research and practice. Through their Academic Associate roles, Julian, Richard and Anna look forward to strengthening CEL and BU’s relationship with the HEA. Continuing CEMP’s track record of internationally recognised higher education research, this role will enhance the centre’s engagement in media education research consultancy, shaping innovative teaching practice and influencing HE policy.
CSR checklist proposed at Dubai conference
A critical analysis of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) theory and practices was given by Professor Tom Watson of the Media School in his keynote speech at the 4th Middle East Public Relations Symposium in Dubai.
The symposium, held on March 19-20 at Zayed University, brought together academics from the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Lebanon and Qatar with leading practitioners from the UAE’s semi-governmental bodies and regional and international PR agencies.
In his address, Prof Watson launched a CSR checklist developed from research and recent literature.
“CSR is increasingly part of the language and practices of business and communicators, but it has been moving away from the moral philosophies and attitudes that formed it,” he said. “Often ‘CSR’ is seen as a method for gaining business advantage rather than participation in society. The checklist has been written to assist managers and communicators develop meaningful and effective CSR strategies and actions.”
Research into employee engagement with CSR that Prof Watson is conducting with Dr Tasos Theofilou and Dr Georgiana Grigore of the Media School strongly influenced the checklist’s preparation. Their research is supported by the Arthur W. Page Center at Penn State University and the Public Relations Research Group.
Platform for future research
“A relationship between BU and Zayed University has developed over the past four years. It offers a platform for future collaborative research into CSR and other communication issues,” Prof Watson said.
During his visit, he met Zayed’s Dean of the College of Communication and Media Sciences, Prof Marilyn Robinson, and Associate Dean, Dr Gaelle Duthler, and staff at its Abu Dhabi and Dubai campuses. His visit was sponsored by Zayed University as host of the MEPRA Symposium.
Prof Watson also chaired a Symposium panel on crisis communication in which experts discussed communication management of the missing MH370 aircraft crisis.
Prof Tom Watson addressing the MEPRA Symposium
Fusion funding supports Brussels trip to find out what EU does for you
As a result of a successful Fusion fund bid, 34 students drawn from across Bournemouth University’s Media and Business Schools will go on a five-day fact finding trip to Brussels between 17th-21st March. The trip is part of a project around engaging the public in the 2014 European Parliamentary Elections. The students, who will be accompanied by Dr. David McQueen and Dr. Dan Jackson (Media School), will be gathering data and producing a range of media reports (interviews, features, blogs, photographs, profiles and backgrounders) which will feed into Media School coverage of EU election night on 22nd May. The itinerary includes a meeting with MEPs Ashley Fox and Julie Girling organised by Douglas Tham (Politics Society President and Politics and Media second-year student), tours of the Council of the EU, the Parlamentarium, the European Commission and the Palais de Justice.
The Fusion project links to the research theme Communities, Cultures and Conflicts. In particular, it links into work within the Media School on governance and exploring ways of deepening democracy through developments in political communication and in the production and consumption of news. Research outputs will include qualitative data on young people’s attitudes to the EU elections in Britain, but also in other EU nations. Students will be reflecting on opportunities and barriers to engaging young people in EU political affairs and considering the particular challenges media professionals face in covering the election against a backdrop of political disengagement, the rise of UKIP and increasing euro-scepticism. As a recent Eurobarometer survey (2012) demonstrated only 27% of Britons were very or fairly attached to the EU, last by a significant margin out of all member states. The survey also revealed Britons to be amongst the most uninformed citizens of all member states about EU matters, thus raising democratic concerns about the public’s potential for manipulation, and the democratic legitimacy of elected representatives with turnout at the last EU Parliamentary Elections in the UK at just 34.7%.
This multidisciplinary project will embrace staff-student co-creation to produce research and media outputs that will inform and engage students and the local public in the 2014 EU Parliamentary Elections. Alongside the many benefits for participating BU students and staff, the project will strengthen links between Bournemouth University and local and regional political parties, media organisations, as well as EU political and educational institutions in Brussels and beyond.
The students who will attend represent programmes across the Media School including Politics and Media, TV Production, Journalism, Radio Production, Animation, Post Production Editing the Business School’s Law degree,
More details on the Brussels trip and the election night coverage will follow in future posts.
David McQueen
(Programme Leader: BA Politics and Media)
CEMP Bulletin for March / April
Here is the updated CEMP Research / Innovation bulletin for March / April 2014. CEMP bulletin March | April 2014
Please contact Julian or Richard in CEMP if you are interested in any of the funding opportunities here, or have other ideas for collaborative projects with CEMP.
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