Category / REF Subjects

Consumer behaviour in virtual worlds

A prestigious journal has awarded two Bournemouth University (BU) academics the ‘Best Paper’ accolade for their work in the largely unstudied domain of consumer behaviour in digital virtual spaces, including video games, virtual communities and the web.

‘Concepts and practices of digital virtual consumption’, by BU’s Dr Janice Denegri-Knottand Dr Mike Molesworth, was among the most downloaded work published by Consumption Markets and Culture last year.

The paper examines digital virtual consumption (such as owning luxury cars in a video game), the relationship it has within the real material world and the appeal of consumption that is deprived of a material, physically tangible form.

Flying planes in a computer gameDenegri-Knott and Molesworth think of consumption on spaces like eBay, Amazon and World of Warcraft as somewhere between the consumers’ imagination and material consumption, and believe it is charged with transformative potential for its users.

Consumers can fulfil all sorts of daydreams, such as finding a designer dress on eBay, or performing the fantasy of being a powerful wizard. They don’t just look and ask ‘what might it be like’, but may ‘try on’ being an entrepreneur, someone with wealth, a collector, a trader, an advertiser, a criminal, a hero, a warrior, or many other ways of being.

Their roles are enhanced as the scripts available to them expand and can be tested within relatively small timescales. The digital virtual individual may be an avid collector one year, a warrior hero the next, and a successful entrepreneur the year after that. The video game player may be a successful criminal one week and a racing driver the next.

Denegri-Knott and Molesworth believe more emphasis is needed on the relationship between the virtual realm and the real-world and, as digital virtual consumption is largely unstudied, they propose an integrative view for further research.

“The paper was written in the spirit of mapping out potential avenues for research, and also to give us some kind of conceptual frame to make sense of consumption in emerging digital virtual spaces,” said Dr Denegri-Knott.  “We now have a body of work that looks at the way in which users consume through eBay, from which we have been able to draw some insights on the acceleration of consumer desire and the problems this creates. We now would like to develop the theme of transformative potential in digital virtual consumption; that is to see how consumers make sense of their experiences and how they integrate these into their everyday lives.”

The pair are also now researching the experience of owning digital virtual goods, in particular the ways in which consumers become attached to certain goods, and how they maintain their preferential stature.

Dr Denegri-Knott concluded: “We were both delighted and surprised to hear that our paper was so well received by the readers of the journal and by the judging panel.  This is a real achievement for the Emerging Consumer Cultures Group (ECCG).”

Find out how BU research is helping councils improve the delivery of the Olympics and Paralympics

Watch this excellent short video from BU’s Dr Richard Shipway who discusses the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games and how his research has been used by local councils to improve the delivery of the games in the area.

To see other BU videos on YouTube go to the BU YouTube page!

 

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uy_B4Nbzvv4

Funding with a Media Flavour – UK

Funding opportunities, Guidance

At a recent Media School meeting attendees asked us to outline some of the common funders, so here is a general overview of those funders with a Media flavour both domestic and further a field.  Part One concentrates on the key UK funders and in the next few days we’ll post information on potential EU funders and schemes.

 

Research Councils

The two primary research councils for media-focused research are the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC) which are responsible for funding the vast majority of arts and humanities in the UK. The success rates for the AHRC are the highest of all RC’s (see the recent blog article) and it offers standard grants,  networking grants, collaborative doctoral awards and early career research grants.

The RCs also focus on particular initiatives to address issues of intellectual and wider cultural, social or economic urgency, these schemes tend to have higher success rates than the standard grants so are always worth consideration. Information on AHRC initiatives can be found here.

An overview  – AHRC Early Career Research Grants:

Early Career Research Grants are intended to assist new researchers at the start of their careers in gaining experience of managing and leading research projects. They look to support well-defined research projects enabling individual researchers to collaborate with, and bring benefits to, other individuals and organisations through the conduct of research.

They also enjoy higher success rates than standard grants, there are no set submission dates, projects can last up to 60 months and should cost between £20,000 and £200,000 fEC.

To be eligible as an early career researcher you must be within eight years of the award of your PhD or equivalent professional training or within six years of your first academic appointment.

Further information on all opportunities can be found here – AHRC ESRCs

British Academy

The British Academy supports excellent ideas, individuals and intellectual resources in the humanities and social sciences.  In particular, the Academy enables UK researchers to work with scholars and resources in other countries, sustain a British research presence in various parts of the world and help to attract overseas scholars to the UK.

An overview  – International Partnership and Mobility Scheme:

Aims to support the development of partnerships between the UK and other areas of the world where research excellence would be strengthened by new, innovative initiatives and links. Awards are for research partnerships between scholars in the UK and scholars in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Middle East, South Asia, or East Asia.

Partnerships might include a range of related activities, and mobility should form an integral part of proposals. Workshops and seminars should form an integral part of the programme. The main purpose of the funding is to cover travel and maintenance costs, although costs related to other eligible activities will be considered. Partnerships including a training element and involving scholars in the early stages in their career will be looked on favourably.

Grants are offered up to a maximum of £10,000 per year for a period of one year or three years. The submission deadline is 8th February 2012.

Further information can be found here – British Academy International Partnerships

In addition to these big UK funders, there are also some smaller more focused funders which may appeal to the interests of specific research groups within the school. For instance conference grants offered by the The Modern Humanities Research Association (MHRA) could be of interest to the Narrative Research Group – information can be found here MHRA.

 

Ground-breaking report published by BU research centre

A new report that will serve as a blueprint for effective leadership in social work and social care has just been published by the Centre for Post-Qualifying Social Work at BournemouthUniversity.

Entitled ‘Leadership and Management Development for Social Work and Social Care: Creating Leadership Pathways of Progression’, the ground-breaking report is co-authored by Professor Keith Brown, Director of the Centre, and Jane Holroyd MBE on behalf of Learn to Care, the body which represents workforce development managers from all local authorities in England.

Leadership & Management Development for Social Work & Social CareThe report provides the UK’s first framework for establishing an effective Leadership and Management pathway in social work and social care.  It addresses the major concerns and recommendations identified following the Peter Connelly case by the Social Work Reform Board (2009) and the Munro Review of Child Protection Services (2011) in terms of the call for a clear leadership and management strategy for front line social work managers.

This new framework has been developed over the past 18 months and has involved rigorous testing and piloting. A new underpinning theory and approach, Self-Leadership, which critically emphasises the quality of thinking and developing the abilities to manage self as part of improving personal and organisational performance, has been developed by Professor Brown and Jane Holroyd. Holroyd suggests this model is applicable to all professions, whatever their managerial position, as all professionals will be leaders within their own sphere of influence.

The report also highlights the critical role of assessment and evaluation to demonstrate that individuals have reached the required levels of competence and that a return on the investment is evidenced.

Conor Burns, MP for Bournemouth West, has hailed the framework as enormously important for the future of long term care in the UK.

“Reputationally for Bournemouth University, this is an incredibly important breakthrough. What we are currently doing with social work and social care training is teaching without testing and training without measuring the impact,” he said.

“As a state, we are spending millions and millions and not questioning the effectiveness of that spend”.

The Centre for Post Qualifying Social Work at Bournemouth University is at the leading edge of post qualifying social work education in the UK. It works with over one third of all local authorities in England and over 70 major employers, including training social workers within the armed forces.

The Centre’s portfolio of courses are designed to raise standards in social work practice and help those in social work and social care demonstrate their competence to work within complex situations with the most vulnerable in our society.

Of particular note, this leadership framework has been developed to meet the requirements of the NHS Leadership Qualities Framework and it is anticipated that this will be of real value, especially as we see increasing integration between the NHS and Local Authority community services in the coming months.

You can order a copy of the publication by emailing kbrown@bournemouth.ac.uk

Using computational intelligence to develop predictive modelling that benefits organisations

Watch this excellent short video from BU’s Professor Bodgan Gabrys on the Computer Intelligence EU grant (INFER project) used to develop predictive modelling that’s applicable to multiple industries.

To see other BU videos on YouTube go to the BU YouTube page!

 

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r5zGqCtVSc

Mass graves in Libya

Bournemouth University’s Senior Lecturer in Forensic Archaeology, Ian Hanson, has featured in a New Scientist article about mass graves in Libya.

New Scientist journalist Andy Coghlan visited BU's mass graves simulation exercise in July

An estimated 5000 people went missing during Gaddafi’s dictatorship and, following his death last week, the country’s transitional government is preparing to exhume and identify bodies in mass graves.

Speaking to New Scientist journalist Andy Coghlan, Ian said: “Each site should be treated as if it’s a crime scene, and you must presume there might be criminal investigations in the future.” 

Ian has advised on protocol and procedures for mass graves excavations following the Balkan and Iraq conflicts.

Since April 2009 he has spent a great deal of time in Iraq, developing further programmes that introduce new trainees to investigations, the law and science involved in recovering evidence from the many mass graves that remain in the country, and to establish competency and protocol for global scientific and legal standards.

Read the New Scientist article for more information.

Bournemouth University research into prosopagnosia (face blindness)

Prosopagnosia – or ‘face blindness’ – is a little known condition affecting 1 in 50 people. As Bournemouth University psychology lecturer Dr Sarah Bate explains, it is ‘literally a loss of memory for faces’.

Speaking to BBC Inside Out’s Jon Cuthill, Dr Bate said: “Prosopagnosia sufferers know what a face is. They know the basic configuration of a face, but they absolutely fail to indentify individuals, no matter how close those people are to them.”

Dr Bate and her team at Bournemouth University have developed a brand new test to identify how good people are at face recognition. It works by processing patterns in eye movement whilst looking at a face.

The findings show that in control trials, participants scan the face in a triangular pattern, looking at the eyes, nose and mouth. In contrast, prosopagnosia sufferers compensate for their lack of recognition by looking at external features of the face, such as the ears and hair.

You can find out more about BournemouthUniversity’s research into the condition by watching Dr Bate’s recent interview on BBC Inside Out. The feature is 11 minutes in.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0160zzv/Inside_Out_South_17_10_2011/

You can test yourself for prosopagnosia at Sarah’s website: www.prosopagnosiaresearch.org.

 

Dr Sarah Bate’s research will feature on BBC One tonight!

A couple of months ago we ran a blog post about the amazing research into prosopagnosia (face blindness) being undertaken at Bournemouth University by Dr Sarah Bate (‘Find out about Dr Sarah Bate’s research into prosopagnosia‘).

Sarah will feature on tonight’s Inside Out – South show, at 7:30pm, discussing the condition with presenter Jon Cuthill and people diagnosed with prosopagnosia.

You can see a quick peek at Sarah’s research on tonight’s show here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-15290378

You can test yourself for prosopagnosia at Sarah’s website: www.prosopagnosiaresearch.org.

Find out about Dr Sarah Bate’s research into prosopagnosia

Prosopagnosia, or face blindness, refers to a severe deficit in recognizing familiar people from their face. The condition affects people in different ways with some experiencing difficulties in the recognition of faces and others experiencing problems recognising other things, such as objects, cars, or animals, as well as faces. Many of those people diagnosed with prosopagnosia report difficulties in other aspects of face processing, such as judging age or gender, and the majority report navigational difficulties. Dr Sarah Bate is a neuropsychologist working in BU’s Psychology Research Group and has been researching the condition for a number of years.

The condition might be more common than previously thought with one study suggesting that as many as 2.5% of the population might have developmental prosopagnosia.

Working with Dr Brad Duchaine (Dartmouth College), Sarah is developing and testing some intervention programmes that might improve face processing in prosopagnosia. Sarah has set up a website (www.prosopagnosiaresearch.org) to raise awareness of prosopagnia and to recruit candidates for her research. Sarah has devised an online test of face recognition ability which can be taken via the website. I took the test last night and highly recommend that others have a go. To date almost 4,000 people worldwide have taken the test. At the end of the test you will be given the option to register your details to visit Sarah at BU for a more formal assessment. During formal assessments Sarah makes use of BU’s eye-tracking technology to assess how prosopagnosics visually read faces.

Sarah is also interested in whether face blindness is hereditary and physiological rather than psychological. She is colaborating with genetics researchers to test families of prosopagnosics and examine any links. The research is ongoing, but initial findings suggest prosopagnia is hereditry, but not always. Sarah’s research aims to identify the sub-types and various causes of prosopagnia, and to improve public understanding of the condition, as well as increasing the early diagnosis of the condition in children.

The Psychology Research Group are always looking for volunteers to take part in their research (example projects include navigation and ageing, children’s language and literature development, and poor sleep in school children). To find out more, visit the psychology volunteers section on the Group’s website.

Sarah’s research has recently been featured in the Guardian. You can read the full story here: Researchers explore problems of ‘face blindness’

You can test yourself for prosopagnosia at Sarah’s website: www.prosopagnosiaresearch.org

High flying publication for BU academic!

Dr Scott Cohen in the School of Tourism has had a paper published in the latest issue of the Annals of Tourism Research, one of the most prominent journals in the field of tourism.

The paper explores the concept of what has been termed ‘binge mobility’ or ‘binge flying’ – the notion that excessive tourism could constitute a new behavioural addition. Scott co-authored the paper with James Higham and Christina Cavaliere from the University of Otago, New Zealand.

The Annals of Tourism Research is rated a 4* journal in the Association on Business Schools‘ journal ranking list –  the ABS Journal Quality Guide – and has a Web of Science impact factor of 1.95.

In addition the paper was one of only five papers featured in Elsevier’s July 2011 Flash Alert, Elsevier’s monthly round up of the top stories in the science, health and medical journals.

You can read a copy of the paper on our institutional repository BURO.

Congratulations Scott! 😀

Dave Parham and Paola Palma – Swash Channel wreck

Dave Parham and Paola Palma (School of Applied Sciences) have been researching the Swash Channel Wreck which lies in approximately 7m of water in the Swash Channel in the approaches to Poole Harbour. The site was discovered as a side-scan sonar anomaly as a result of a geophysical survey conducted by Wessex Archaeology on behalf of Poole Harbour Commissioners and Poole Borough Council. The site has since been designated as a Historic Wreck.

The ship is the subject of a major excavation by BU, supported by English Heritage. It has been dated to around 1630 and includes the earliest ship carvings ever found in the UK, including a mysterious wooden merman, and much of the evidence found on the wreck suggest that it would have been a relatively high status ship for its period.

The wreck has been featured on the One Show (6 April 2011) where presenter Dan Snow took part in a dive on the wreck in the mouth of Poole Bay alongside a team of BU Marine Archaeologists, led by Dave.

Dave will also feature in the fourth episode of Britain’s Secret Seas, The Bustling South, on 29 May at 8pm on BBC2.

After conservation, finds from the Wreck and all the information from the excavation will be passed on to Poole Museum Service to be displayed to the community.