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Munchausen by Internet

BU research, Featured

Online health forums offer much needed support, advice and friendship for people suffering with illnesses. But within this supportive atmosphere, unwelcome visitors sometimes lurk; a breed of malicious, hurtful Internet trolls masquerading as real group members.

Munchausen by Internet (MBI) sees people faking illnesses and fabricating serious health conditions in online support groups, building relationships with genuine sufferers and generating sympathy for their invented condition.

In one case documented in 2011, a brother and sister posed as relations of a multiple sclerosis sufferer on a social networking website and created an elaborate narrative, which included diagnosis of terminal cancer and Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a baby miscarriage, pneumonia and the death of a loved one through a heart attack. They trapped their victim – a genuine MS sufferer called Elizabeth – into providing half a year of time-consuming and emotionally draining interaction with themselves and their fake personas.[i]

Events such as these can have devastating effects on online health communities, destroying trust when the hoax is exposed and sometimes damaging the communities beyond repair. But what can be done to manage this more effectively?

Andy Pulman and Dr Jacqui Taylor from Bournemouth University are the authors of a recent article on MBI and its motivation, opportunity, detection, effects and consequences. They suggest that MBI trolling should be formally acknowledged: “This will help patients, caregivers and practitioners to more effectively identify cases of MBI and minimise the growth of this behaviour as more and more people seek reassurance and support about their health in an online environment,” they explain.

Pulman and Taylor also suggest that more research is required in order to provide victims of suspected MBI trolls with the right advice and for facilitators of discussion groups to effectively manage interactions. “There is a clear, compelling need to recognise that in addition to MBI being classed as a condition in its own right, there is a subsection of people currently tagged as MBI sufferers who are MBI trolls intentionally harming well intentioned support groups and abusing members for their own pleasure or enjoyment. It is this area which needs urgent attention and action either by group users or the creators of the software that host them.”

‘Munchausen by Internet (MBI): Current research and future directions’ is published by the Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR). Read it online here.

[i] Case documented in Cunningham JM, Feldman MD. Munchausen by Internet: current perspectives and three new cases. Psychosomatics 2011 Apr;52(2):185-189.

BU’s ECOSAL Team visiting Northern Ireland to investigate the coastal salt working site at Ballycastle, Co Antrim

BU research, Featured, Featured academics

BU’s ECOSAL Team recently visited Northern Ireland to investigate the coastal salt working site at Ballycastle, Co Antrim. ECOSAL is a multi-national EU-funded project that is recording the archaeological evidence for salt working around the Atlantic Coast of the UK, France, Spain and Portugal. It is also recording the ecology and biodiversity of these sites, many of them located in fragile environments such as lagoons. Key sites will be included on a European Salt Route, linking sites from all four countries while telling the story of salt production, the uses of salt, its economic history, etc.

The photo shows that it’s not all sunshine and celebrity media events, but on this occasion we found some excellent evidence for the 17th to 19th century salt-workings at Ballycastle, a once thriving industry now completely gone.

From left to right in the photo: David Cranstone, Wes Forsythe, Mark Brisbane, Michael Fradley and Danny McGill.

You can find out more about ECOSAL at our BU website: http://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/applied-sciences/research/ecosal-atlantis/index.html

School of Tourism’s Dr. Debbie Sadd undertaking an ethnographic study of volunteering at the Olympics

BU research, Featured, Featured academics

Dr. Debbie Sadd, from School of Tourism, had the fantastic opportunity to work as a volunteer with the world’s photographers and journalists covering the basketball at the London Olympic Games. Her duties varied from day to day but involved sitting court side with the photographers making sure they don’t stray from their allotted areas to working ‘backstage’ ensuring all the required technical material is available for them to transmit their stories/photos back to their respective editors. Some days the sports specialists rang through whilst the transmissions were live on US television asking for facts and figures, which have to be available immediately for broadcast in the US. Debbie’s group had their own system called info+ which contained all the necessary information and they were required to be proficient in its use pretty quickly.

In Debbie’s own words, the experience was “quite stressful and tiring but gosh have I seen some exciting games and met some wonderful people and I even got to see my hero Kobe Bryant!”

School of Tourism’s Ivana Rihova gets ‘stuck in’ with her research fieldwork at this year’s summer festivals!

BU research, Featured, Featured academics

School of Tourism’s Ivana Rihova – a PhD Student at the John Kent Institute in Tourism – certainly experienced what ‘getting stuck in’ with fieldwork can feel like at this year’s summer festivals. As part of her research project entitled “Consumers as producers: customer-to-customer co-creation in the context of festival experiences” Ivana is visiting five multi-day outdoor festivals in England and Wales this summer. Through participant observation and interviews with festival goers she aims to explore how value is co-created in the context of festival participants’ social practices and experiences. Ivana’s research, supervised by Prof. Dimitrios Buhalis, Dr. Miguel Moital and Dr. Mary Beth Gouthro (all based at the School of Tourism), highlights various issues related to customer co-creation in socially dense festival contexts. The findings will not only contribute theoretically to our understanding of how people co-create value with each other, but could also help turn event and festival experiences from the ordinary to the extraordinary.

BU internal peer-review scheme for your research proposal

BU research, Featured, Funding opportunities, Guidance

Why is the internal peer review of research proposals important?

  • The competition for research funds is high and is likely to increase.  Research Council funding presents a particular challenge – with the ESRC having one of the lowest success rates.
  • In recent years funders have expressed their growing concern over the number of poor quality research proposals they receive, with the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) taking the action to implement a ban on submissions from unsuccessful candidates who fail repeatedly and requesting evidence on steps institutions take to improve academic skills in producing research proposals.
  • Internal peer review has been credited with producing higher quality research proposals and increased success rates and is a process encouraged by the Research Councils.

Who reviews the applications?

  • The Peer Reviewers are a selection of BU academics who have a considerable track record in successfully gaining research funding, who sit on funding panels and who review research proposals for funders.
  • We select two reviewers to review your proposal.

Who can apply to the RPRS?

  • The service is open to anyone at BU and for any type of research funding.

What kind of feedback can I expect?

  • Peer reviewers will provide feedback on the proposed research in terms of topic selection, novel value, clarity of ideas proposed and advise on how the proposal can be further strengthened. They may also provide the names of potential collaborators where applicable.
  • Feedback will be delivered within 3 weeks of submission – often before.

Will the RPRS help with unsuccessful applications?

  • Yes, if you have a unsuccesful proposal, the RPRS will provide feedback on your submission on how you could potentially improve the style of the proposal, advise on other possible funders and provide other useful information.   The system works as for as yet unsubmitted drafts.

How do I submit an application?

  • Contact RKEO Funding Development Team to obtain a rough costing for your proposal. RKEO FDT will guide you through the process
  • Send in a Word or PDF version of your electronic submission draft (such as Je-S) and submit to Jo Garrad and Dianne Goodman/Giles Ashton.
  • The RKEO FDT will undertake review of the proposal and forward to 2 experts
  • You will receive feedback within 2-3 weeks

Remember

  • Please allow sufficient time in your proposal development to allow for the  mandatory internal deadline of five working days for the submission of Research Council bids via the Je-S system. This internal deadline also applies to applications made via the E-Gap2 and Leverhulme Online e-submissions systems (affecting applications made to the British Academy, the Royal Society and the Leverhulme Trust).

Who can I ask for further help?

  • Jo Garrad and Dianne Goodman/Giles Ashton  in the Research and Knowledge Exchange Development team look after the RPRS and will answer any questions you have.