Narratives in Research and Interventions on Cyberbullying among Young People, 2019
Narratives are an important part of how people make sense of their lives and how they find meanin... more Narratives are an important part of how people make sense of their lives and how they find meaning in their world. Given this, increasing attention is being paid to all aspects of narratives in everyday life and to the prominence of narrative research. Areas of narrative research that currently attract attention include: collecting the narratives that people share with each other; analysis of what makes a compelling narrative; and evaluation of how to construct a good basic narrative and then make it more enticing and compelling for the target audience. All of these areas are addressed in this chapter, with most attention being paid to the kinds of narrative research methods of particular relevance to the investigation of digital technology use in everyday life. Narrative research is a qualitative methodology with a particular focus on individuals’ stories. It is focused upon uncovering the meanings that people assign to objects, events and behaviours. In this chapter, an overview w...
The Hand Up Linkage project focuses on the family as a communication context through which to exp... more The Hand Up Linkage project focuses on the family as a communication context through which to explore the dynamics of intergenerational welfare dependency. It is concerned with how persistent barriers to escaping welfare dependency are perceived and how attitudes to change are constructed through communication within the family. Interviews are conducted with families reliant on welfare support with the view of identifying ‘emotionally compelling experiences and realizations’ (King et al., 2003, p.184) through which families construct meaning about their place in the world. These interviews give voice to people experiencing the challenges and consolations of reliance on welfare, encouraging them to be active contributors to perceptions of people in need. This article explores the way one mother from a disadvantaged family is rebuilding her life despite the disadvantages of poverty, domestic violence and drug dependency. It examines her determined emotional commitment to change as she...
This paper presents the contextual background and early findings from a new research project fund... more This paper presents the contextual background and early findings from a new research project funded by the Australian Research Council titled Using community engagement and enhanced visual information to promote FireWatch satellite communications as a support for collaborative decision-making. FireWatch (provided by Landgate in Western Australia) is an internet-based public information service based on near real time satellite data showing timely information relevant to bushfire safety within Australia. However, it has been developed in a highly technical environment and is currently used chiefly by experts. This project aims to redesign FireWatch for ordinary users and to engage a remote community in Northern Australia in this process, leading to improved decision making surrounding bushfire risk.
This paper addresses the experiences of five parents from three families in a group of older game... more This paper addresses the experiences of five parents from three families in a group of older gamers. It is unusual because the gamers are aged 16-17, and the parents recognise that their mediation role will soon be redundant. The gamers concerned have all played in the same gamer teams for a number of years and there are a range of indications from the parents’ accounts that each of them is mindful of the circumstances under which the other team members are allowed to game. Indeed, it could be that the favoured game they all play, DOTA 2, was chosen because one gamer’s family would not allow him access to 18+ games such as Call of Duty. The paper provides examples of where parents and children have each moderated their behaviour with the needs of the other in mind. It suggests that, as they reach the end of their active parenting role with their child moving into legal adulthood, parents become more willing to trust their own evidence of the impacts of their decision and are more li...
Netflix’s Sex Education both represents sex education and educates viewers about sex. From the op... more Netflix’s Sex Education both represents sex education and educates viewers about sex. From the opening scene of the first episode, viewers are positioned to see this series as one that is not afraid to represent explicitly the details of a range of sexual experiences. The series’ frank depiction of sexual relationships between characters, and its exploration of characters’ hopes, fears, and choices regarding ways to express their sexual desire is, arguably, ground-breaking. This paper focuses upon the ways in which the series represents young people as producers and consumers of pornographic/erotic narratives, harnessing the communication options within their social settings to develop understandings of, and share, information that is often structured as ‘inappropriate’ for under-18 year-olds. Sex Education sits at the intersection of information (seeking), communication, and society, as young people explore issues of crucial interest and importance to them, which have been all but ...
Introduction Children are beginning to use digital technologies at younger and younger ages. The ... more Introduction Children are beginning to use digital technologies at younger and younger ages. The emerging trend of very young children (babies, toddlers and pre-schoolers) using Internet connected devices, especially touch screen tablets and smartphones, has elicited polarising opinions from early childhood experts. At present there is little actual research about the risks or benefits of tablet and smartphone use by very young children. Current usage recommendations, based on research into passive television watching which claims that screen time is detrimental, is in conflict with advice from education experts and app developers who commend interactive screen time as engaging and educational. Guidelines from the health professions typically advise strict time limits on very young children’s screen-time. Based for the most part on policy developed by the American Academy of Paediatrics, it is usually recommended that children under two have no screen time at all (Brown), and childr...
Affect theory is generally associated with the lifetime’s work of Silvan S. Tomkins, whose four v... more Affect theory is generally associated with the lifetime’s work of Silvan S. Tomkins, whose four volume work, Affect, Imagery, Consciousness, was published between 1962-92. The volumes argue that humans are subject to a range of innate affects: two positive (interest/excitement; enjoyment/joy), one neutral (surprise/startle) and six negative (distress/anguish; fear/terror; anger/rage; shame/humiliation; dissmell [reaction to a bad smell]; disgust). In a crude “advanced search” using Google, affect is related to emotion in 3,620,000 Web references; to intellect in 1,530,000 instances; and to both intellect and emotion in 1,670,000 cases (Google). Affect may consequently be constructed as a common but complicated response which cannot be simply elided with either emotion or intellect but which involves the integration of both. In particular, affect is generally constructed as a human response to a precipitating stimulus (be it an idea, a physical event, etc). If this is accepted, then ...
On 23 August 2005, John Howard, then Prime Minister, called together Muslim ‘representatives’ fro... more On 23 August 2005, John Howard, then Prime Minister, called together Muslim ‘representatives’ from around the nation for a Muslim Summit in response to the London bombings in July of that year. One of the outcomes of the two hour summit was a Statement of Principles committing Muslim communities in Australia to resist radicalisation and pursue a ‘moderate’ Islam. Since then the ill-defined term ‘moderate Muslim’ has been used in both the political and media discourse to refer to a preferred form of Islamic practice that does not challenge the hegemony of the nation state and that is coherent with the principles of secularism. Akbarzadeh and Smith conclude that the terms ‘moderate’ and ‘mainstream’ are used to describe Muslims whom Australians should not fear in contrast to ‘extremists’. Ironically, the policy direction towards regulating the practice of Islam in Australia in favour of a state defined ‘moderate’ Islam signals an attempt by the state to mediate the practice of religio...
In the contemporary urban environment of mass transit, it falls to a small group of public office... more In the contemporary urban environment of mass transit, it falls to a small group of public officers to keep large number of travellers safe. The small size of their force and the often limited powers they exert mean that these public safety ‘transit officers’ must project more authority and control than they really have. It is this ambience of authority and control which, in most situations they encounter and seek to influence, is enough to keep the public safe. This paper examines the ambience of a group of transit officers working on the railway lines of an Australian capital city. We seek to show how transit officers are both influenced by, and seek to influence, the ambience of their workplace and the public spaces they inhabit whilst on duty, and here we take ambience to apply to the surrounding atmosphere, the aura, and the emotional environment of a place or situation: the setting, tone, or mood. For these transit officers to keep the public safe, they must themselves remain ...
Background “The sense of taste,” write Nelson and colleagues in a 2002 issue of Nature, “provides... more Background “The sense of taste,” write Nelson and colleagues in a 2002 issue of Nature, “provides animals with valuable information about the nature and quality of food. Mammals can recognize and respond to a diverse repertoire of chemical entities, including sugars, salts, acids and a wide range of toxic substances” (199). The authors go on to argue that several amino acids—the building blocks of proteins—taste delicious to humans and that “having a taste pathway dedicated to their detection probably had significant evolutionary implications”. They imply, but do not specify, that the evolutionary implications are positive. This may be the case with some amino acids, but contemporary tastes, and changes in them, are far from universally beneficial. Indeed, this article argues that modern food production shapes and distorts human taste with significant implications for health and wellbeing. Take the western taste for fried chipped potatoes, for example. According to Schlosser in Fast...
Introduction This paper is based upon an investigation into the life of a street market in the ci... more Introduction This paper is based upon an investigation into the life of a street market in the city of Ha Noi in Vietnam, and experience of the street food served on Ha Noi’s pavements. It draws upon interviews with itinerant food vendors conducted by the researchers and upon accounts of their daily lives from a Vietnamese film subtitled in English and French, sourced from the Vietnamese Women’s Museum (Jensen). The research considers the lives of the people making and selling street food against the distilled versions of cultural experience accessible through the pages of two recent English language cookbooks focussing upon this cuisine. The data from the fieldwork is used as a point for critical comparison (Fram) with recipes and descriptions from Hanoi Street Food (Vandenberghe and Thys) and Vietnamese Street Food (Lister and Pohl), two recent relevant English language cookbooks. The research question addressed is “How are the everyday lives of Vietnamese street market cooks (mis...
IllegitimacyBack in 1987, Gregory Bateson argued that:Kurt Vonnegut gives us wary advice – that w... more IllegitimacyBack in 1987, Gregory Bateson argued that:Kurt Vonnegut gives us wary advice – that we should be careful what we pretend because we become what we pretend. And something like that, some sort of self-fulfilment, occurs in all organisations and human cultures. What people presume to be ‘human’ is what they will build in as premises of their social arrangements, and what they build in is sure to be learned, is sure to become a part of the character of those who participate. (178)The human capacity to marginalise and discriminate against others on the basis of innate and constructed characteristics is evident from the long history of discrimination against people whose existence is ‘illegitimate’, defined as being outside the law. What is inside or outside the law depends upon the context under consideration. For example, in societies such as ancient Greece and the antebellum United States, where slavery was legal, people who were constructed as ‘slaves’ could legitimately b...
IntroductionBushfires have taken numerous lives and destroyed communities throughout Australia ov... more IntroductionBushfires have taken numerous lives and destroyed communities throughout Australia over many years. Catastrophic fire weather alerts have occurred during the Australian summer of 2012–13, and long-term forecasts predict increased bushfire events throughout several areas of Australia. This article highlights how organisational and individual responses to bushfire in Australia often entail creative responses—either improvised responses at the time of bushfire emergencies or innovative (organisational, strategic, or technological) changes which help protect the community from, or mitigate against, future bushfire catastrophes. These improvised or innovative responses include emergency communications systems, practices, and devices. This article reports on findings from a research project funded by the Australian Research Council titled Using Community Engagement and Enhanced Visual Information to Promote FireWatch Satellite Communications as a Support for Collaborative De...
The ProjectThe Hand Up Linkage project focuses on the family as a communication context through w... more The ProjectThe Hand Up Linkage project focuses on the family as a communication context through which to explore the dynamics of intergenerational welfare dependency. In particular, it explores ways that creative life-course interventions might allow children in welfare dependent families to construct alternative realities for themselves and alternative views of their future. Formed through an alliance between a key Western Australian social welfare not-for-profit organisation, St Vincent de Paul WA (SVDPWA and also, in the context of volunteers, ‘Vinnies’), and Edith Cowan University, the project aims to address the organisation’s vision to provide “a hand up” (St Vincent 1) rather than ‘a hand out’, so that people can move forward with their lives without becoming dependent upon welfare. Prior to the start of the research, SVDPWA already had a whole of family focus in its outreach to poverty-impacted families including offering homework clubs and school holiday children’s camps ru...
Over the past quarter-century 'the self' has been transformed from a relatively esoteric ... more Over the past quarter-century 'the self' has been transformed from a relatively esoteric concept of principal interest to philosophers and psychologists to a mainstay of popular culture and critical reflection. This paper addresses some of the themes linking this transition and suggests that the driving impetus behind it is the commodification of ideas as a strategy of coping with change (as well as the packaging and consumption of goods and services which bridge the gap between the less-than-perfect present and the shining future just around the corner). I start with a vivid recollection of some weeks in my undergraduate years worrying about the issue 'Is self-deception possible?' The problem to be solved for a tutorial presentation was, 'If the self is deceived by the self, which part of the self is doing the deceiving?' This conundrum could be handily addressed by reference to the various models of the divided self: the mind/brain model; or the conscious/s...
Narratives in Research and Interventions on Cyberbullying among Young People, 2019
Narratives are an important part of how people make sense of their lives and how they find meanin... more Narratives are an important part of how people make sense of their lives and how they find meaning in their world. Given this, increasing attention is being paid to all aspects of narratives in everyday life and to the prominence of narrative research. Areas of narrative research that currently attract attention include: collecting the narratives that people share with each other; analysis of what makes a compelling narrative; and evaluation of how to construct a good basic narrative and then make it more enticing and compelling for the target audience. All of these areas are addressed in this chapter, with most attention being paid to the kinds of narrative research methods of particular relevance to the investigation of digital technology use in everyday life. Narrative research is a qualitative methodology with a particular focus on individuals’ stories. It is focused upon uncovering the meanings that people assign to objects, events and behaviours. In this chapter, an overview w...
The Hand Up Linkage project focuses on the family as a communication context through which to exp... more The Hand Up Linkage project focuses on the family as a communication context through which to explore the dynamics of intergenerational welfare dependency. It is concerned with how persistent barriers to escaping welfare dependency are perceived and how attitudes to change are constructed through communication within the family. Interviews are conducted with families reliant on welfare support with the view of identifying ‘emotionally compelling experiences and realizations’ (King et al., 2003, p.184) through which families construct meaning about their place in the world. These interviews give voice to people experiencing the challenges and consolations of reliance on welfare, encouraging them to be active contributors to perceptions of people in need. This article explores the way one mother from a disadvantaged family is rebuilding her life despite the disadvantages of poverty, domestic violence and drug dependency. It examines her determined emotional commitment to change as she...
This paper presents the contextual background and early findings from a new research project fund... more This paper presents the contextual background and early findings from a new research project funded by the Australian Research Council titled Using community engagement and enhanced visual information to promote FireWatch satellite communications as a support for collaborative decision-making. FireWatch (provided by Landgate in Western Australia) is an internet-based public information service based on near real time satellite data showing timely information relevant to bushfire safety within Australia. However, it has been developed in a highly technical environment and is currently used chiefly by experts. This project aims to redesign FireWatch for ordinary users and to engage a remote community in Northern Australia in this process, leading to improved decision making surrounding bushfire risk.
This paper addresses the experiences of five parents from three families in a group of older game... more This paper addresses the experiences of five parents from three families in a group of older gamers. It is unusual because the gamers are aged 16-17, and the parents recognise that their mediation role will soon be redundant. The gamers concerned have all played in the same gamer teams for a number of years and there are a range of indications from the parents’ accounts that each of them is mindful of the circumstances under which the other team members are allowed to game. Indeed, it could be that the favoured game they all play, DOTA 2, was chosen because one gamer’s family would not allow him access to 18+ games such as Call of Duty. The paper provides examples of where parents and children have each moderated their behaviour with the needs of the other in mind. It suggests that, as they reach the end of their active parenting role with their child moving into legal adulthood, parents become more willing to trust their own evidence of the impacts of their decision and are more li...
Netflix’s Sex Education both represents sex education and educates viewers about sex. From the op... more Netflix’s Sex Education both represents sex education and educates viewers about sex. From the opening scene of the first episode, viewers are positioned to see this series as one that is not afraid to represent explicitly the details of a range of sexual experiences. The series’ frank depiction of sexual relationships between characters, and its exploration of characters’ hopes, fears, and choices regarding ways to express their sexual desire is, arguably, ground-breaking. This paper focuses upon the ways in which the series represents young people as producers and consumers of pornographic/erotic narratives, harnessing the communication options within their social settings to develop understandings of, and share, information that is often structured as ‘inappropriate’ for under-18 year-olds. Sex Education sits at the intersection of information (seeking), communication, and society, as young people explore issues of crucial interest and importance to them, which have been all but ...
Introduction Children are beginning to use digital technologies at younger and younger ages. The ... more Introduction Children are beginning to use digital technologies at younger and younger ages. The emerging trend of very young children (babies, toddlers and pre-schoolers) using Internet connected devices, especially touch screen tablets and smartphones, has elicited polarising opinions from early childhood experts. At present there is little actual research about the risks or benefits of tablet and smartphone use by very young children. Current usage recommendations, based on research into passive television watching which claims that screen time is detrimental, is in conflict with advice from education experts and app developers who commend interactive screen time as engaging and educational. Guidelines from the health professions typically advise strict time limits on very young children’s screen-time. Based for the most part on policy developed by the American Academy of Paediatrics, it is usually recommended that children under two have no screen time at all (Brown), and childr...
Affect theory is generally associated with the lifetime’s work of Silvan S. Tomkins, whose four v... more Affect theory is generally associated with the lifetime’s work of Silvan S. Tomkins, whose four volume work, Affect, Imagery, Consciousness, was published between 1962-92. The volumes argue that humans are subject to a range of innate affects: two positive (interest/excitement; enjoyment/joy), one neutral (surprise/startle) and six negative (distress/anguish; fear/terror; anger/rage; shame/humiliation; dissmell [reaction to a bad smell]; disgust). In a crude “advanced search” using Google, affect is related to emotion in 3,620,000 Web references; to intellect in 1,530,000 instances; and to both intellect and emotion in 1,670,000 cases (Google). Affect may consequently be constructed as a common but complicated response which cannot be simply elided with either emotion or intellect but which involves the integration of both. In particular, affect is generally constructed as a human response to a precipitating stimulus (be it an idea, a physical event, etc). If this is accepted, then ...
On 23 August 2005, John Howard, then Prime Minister, called together Muslim ‘representatives’ fro... more On 23 August 2005, John Howard, then Prime Minister, called together Muslim ‘representatives’ from around the nation for a Muslim Summit in response to the London bombings in July of that year. One of the outcomes of the two hour summit was a Statement of Principles committing Muslim communities in Australia to resist radicalisation and pursue a ‘moderate’ Islam. Since then the ill-defined term ‘moderate Muslim’ has been used in both the political and media discourse to refer to a preferred form of Islamic practice that does not challenge the hegemony of the nation state and that is coherent with the principles of secularism. Akbarzadeh and Smith conclude that the terms ‘moderate’ and ‘mainstream’ are used to describe Muslims whom Australians should not fear in contrast to ‘extremists’. Ironically, the policy direction towards regulating the practice of Islam in Australia in favour of a state defined ‘moderate’ Islam signals an attempt by the state to mediate the practice of religio...
In the contemporary urban environment of mass transit, it falls to a small group of public office... more In the contemporary urban environment of mass transit, it falls to a small group of public officers to keep large number of travellers safe. The small size of their force and the often limited powers they exert mean that these public safety ‘transit officers’ must project more authority and control than they really have. It is this ambience of authority and control which, in most situations they encounter and seek to influence, is enough to keep the public safe. This paper examines the ambience of a group of transit officers working on the railway lines of an Australian capital city. We seek to show how transit officers are both influenced by, and seek to influence, the ambience of their workplace and the public spaces they inhabit whilst on duty, and here we take ambience to apply to the surrounding atmosphere, the aura, and the emotional environment of a place or situation: the setting, tone, or mood. For these transit officers to keep the public safe, they must themselves remain ...
Background “The sense of taste,” write Nelson and colleagues in a 2002 issue of Nature, “provides... more Background “The sense of taste,” write Nelson and colleagues in a 2002 issue of Nature, “provides animals with valuable information about the nature and quality of food. Mammals can recognize and respond to a diverse repertoire of chemical entities, including sugars, salts, acids and a wide range of toxic substances” (199). The authors go on to argue that several amino acids—the building blocks of proteins—taste delicious to humans and that “having a taste pathway dedicated to their detection probably had significant evolutionary implications”. They imply, but do not specify, that the evolutionary implications are positive. This may be the case with some amino acids, but contemporary tastes, and changes in them, are far from universally beneficial. Indeed, this article argues that modern food production shapes and distorts human taste with significant implications for health and wellbeing. Take the western taste for fried chipped potatoes, for example. According to Schlosser in Fast...
Introduction This paper is based upon an investigation into the life of a street market in the ci... more Introduction This paper is based upon an investigation into the life of a street market in the city of Ha Noi in Vietnam, and experience of the street food served on Ha Noi’s pavements. It draws upon interviews with itinerant food vendors conducted by the researchers and upon accounts of their daily lives from a Vietnamese film subtitled in English and French, sourced from the Vietnamese Women’s Museum (Jensen). The research considers the lives of the people making and selling street food against the distilled versions of cultural experience accessible through the pages of two recent English language cookbooks focussing upon this cuisine. The data from the fieldwork is used as a point for critical comparison (Fram) with recipes and descriptions from Hanoi Street Food (Vandenberghe and Thys) and Vietnamese Street Food (Lister and Pohl), two recent relevant English language cookbooks. The research question addressed is “How are the everyday lives of Vietnamese street market cooks (mis...
IllegitimacyBack in 1987, Gregory Bateson argued that:Kurt Vonnegut gives us wary advice – that w... more IllegitimacyBack in 1987, Gregory Bateson argued that:Kurt Vonnegut gives us wary advice – that we should be careful what we pretend because we become what we pretend. And something like that, some sort of self-fulfilment, occurs in all organisations and human cultures. What people presume to be ‘human’ is what they will build in as premises of their social arrangements, and what they build in is sure to be learned, is sure to become a part of the character of those who participate. (178)The human capacity to marginalise and discriminate against others on the basis of innate and constructed characteristics is evident from the long history of discrimination against people whose existence is ‘illegitimate’, defined as being outside the law. What is inside or outside the law depends upon the context under consideration. For example, in societies such as ancient Greece and the antebellum United States, where slavery was legal, people who were constructed as ‘slaves’ could legitimately b...
IntroductionBushfires have taken numerous lives and destroyed communities throughout Australia ov... more IntroductionBushfires have taken numerous lives and destroyed communities throughout Australia over many years. Catastrophic fire weather alerts have occurred during the Australian summer of 2012–13, and long-term forecasts predict increased bushfire events throughout several areas of Australia. This article highlights how organisational and individual responses to bushfire in Australia often entail creative responses—either improvised responses at the time of bushfire emergencies or innovative (organisational, strategic, or technological) changes which help protect the community from, or mitigate against, future bushfire catastrophes. These improvised or innovative responses include emergency communications systems, practices, and devices. This article reports on findings from a research project funded by the Australian Research Council titled Using Community Engagement and Enhanced Visual Information to Promote FireWatch Satellite Communications as a Support for Collaborative De...
The ProjectThe Hand Up Linkage project focuses on the family as a communication context through w... more The ProjectThe Hand Up Linkage project focuses on the family as a communication context through which to explore the dynamics of intergenerational welfare dependency. In particular, it explores ways that creative life-course interventions might allow children in welfare dependent families to construct alternative realities for themselves and alternative views of their future. Formed through an alliance between a key Western Australian social welfare not-for-profit organisation, St Vincent de Paul WA (SVDPWA and also, in the context of volunteers, ‘Vinnies’), and Edith Cowan University, the project aims to address the organisation’s vision to provide “a hand up” (St Vincent 1) rather than ‘a hand out’, so that people can move forward with their lives without becoming dependent upon welfare. Prior to the start of the research, SVDPWA already had a whole of family focus in its outreach to poverty-impacted families including offering homework clubs and school holiday children’s camps ru...
Over the past quarter-century 'the self' has been transformed from a relatively esoteric ... more Over the past quarter-century 'the self' has been transformed from a relatively esoteric concept of principal interest to philosophers and psychologists to a mainstay of popular culture and critical reflection. This paper addresses some of the themes linking this transition and suggests that the driving impetus behind it is the commodification of ideas as a strategy of coping with change (as well as the packaging and consumption of goods and services which bridge the gap between the less-than-perfect present and the shining future just around the corner). I start with a vivid recollection of some weeks in my undergraduate years worrying about the issue 'Is self-deception possible?' The problem to be solved for a tutorial presentation was, 'If the self is deceived by the self, which part of the self is doing the deceiving?' This conundrum could be handily addressed by reference to the various models of the divided self: the mind/brain model; or the conscious/s...
The term “excessive Internet use” is often associated with determining pathological extensive Int... more The term “excessive Internet use” is often associated with determining pathological extensive Internet usage, which could be also called “online addiction”. Such excessive presence online is usually defined by the following components used for determining other addictive behaviours: salience, mood change, conflicts, tolerance, relapse, reinstatement and withdrawal symptoms. The described behaviour may lead to a social, mental and also physical impairment of children and youth. In this chapter, we introduce and show the prevalence of five dimensions of excessive Internet use among European children. We also analyse its relation to other psychosocial variables, such as self-efficacy, peer problems, and other kinds of risky behaviour offline and online, i.e. cyberbullying and meeting strangers online.
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Papers by Lelia Green