Digital Commons Network^™

Be Media Smart: A National Media Literacy Campaign For Ireland, Philip Russell

Articles

‘Be Media Smart’ is an Irish public awareness campaign calling on people of all ages to ‘Be Media Smart’ and ‘Stop, Think, and Check’ that information they see, read or hear across any media platform is accurate and reliable. This national media literacy campaign was aimed at enhancing people’s understanding of, and engagement with, media, while also empowering them with the skills to evaluate content across all platforms.

My Palate Hung With Starlight: A Gastrocritical Reading Of Seamus Heaney’S Poetry, Anke Klitzing

Articles

Nobel-prize winning poet Seamus Heaney is celebrated for his rich verses recalling his home in the Northern Irish countryside of County Derry. Yet while the imaginative links to nature in his poetry have already been critically explored, little attention has been paid so far to his rendering of local food and foodways. From ploughing, digging potatoes and butter-churning to picking blackberries, Heaney sketches not only the everyday activities of mid-20th century rural Ireland, but also the social dynamics of community and identity and the socio-cultural symbiosis embedded in those practices. Larger questions of love, life and death also infiltrate the …

Jewish Time Jump: New York, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

Jewish Time Jump: New York (Gottlieb & Ash, 2013) is a place-based mobile augmented reality game and simulation that takes the form of a situated documentary. Players take on the role of time traveling reporters tracking down a story “lost to time” to bring back to their editor at the Jewish Time Jump Gazette. The game is played in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village, New York City. Players’ iPhones become their time traveling device and companion. Based on the player’s GPS location, players receive digital images from their location from over a hundred years in the past as well …

Have You Asked For It?: An Exploratory Study About Maltese Adolescents’ Use Of Ask. Fm, Lorleen Farrugia, Mary Ann Lauri, Joseph Borg, Brian O'Neill

Articles

This article focuses on adolescents’ use of anonymous social networking sites (SNSs). Their perceptions and attitudes toward one such platform, Ask.fm, are discussed using the framework of uses and gratifications theory to explore motivations for using it. Four focus groups and four interviews were carried out with 22 Maltese adolescents (10 female and 12 male) aged 11 to 16 years. Thematic analysis of data collected was undertaken to identify and develop themes relevant to Ask.fm use. Findings indicate that the platform is a space where adolescents interact with others as part of their identity exploration. The role of anonymity was …

Size Matters: The Impact Of Training Size In Taxonomically-Enriched Word Embeddings, Alfredo Maldonado, Filip Klubicka, John D. Kelleher

Articles

Word embeddings trained on natural corpora (e.g., newspaper collections, Wikipedia or the Web) excel in capturing thematic similarity (“topical relatedness”) on word pairs such as ‘coffee’ and ‘cup’ or ’bus’ and ‘road’. However, they are less successful on pairs showing taxonomic similarity, like ‘cup’ and ‘mug’ (near synonyms) or ‘bus’ and ‘train’ (types of public transport). Moreover, purely taxonomy-based embeddings (e.g. those trained on a random-walk of WordNet’s structure) outperform natural-corpus embeddings in taxonomic similarity but underperform them in thematic similarity. Previous work suggests that performance gains in both types of similarity can be achieved by enriching natural-corpus embeddings with …

Media Literacy Ireland And The Be Media Smart Campaign, Philip Russell

Articles

‘Be Media Smart’ is an Irish public awareness campaign calling on people of all ages to ‘Be Media Smart’ and ‘Stop, Think, and Check’ that information they see, read or hear across any media platform is accurate and reliable. This national media literacy campaign was aimed at enhancing people’s understanding of, and engagement with, media, while also empowering them with the skills to evaluate content across all platforms.

Social Media Influencers And The Issue Of Full Disclosure, Margaret-Anne Lawlor

Articles

No abstract provided.

Financing The World Health Organization: What Lessons For Multilateralism?, Kristina Daugirdas, Gian Luca Burci

Articles

When it comes to financing the work of international organizations, voluntary contributions from both state and nonstate actors are growing in size and importance. The World Health Organization (WHO) is an extreme case from this perspective, with voluntary contributions - mostly earmarked for particular purposes - comprising more than 80 percent of its funds. Moreover, nonstate actors are by now supplying almost half of WHO’s funds, with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation ranking as the second-highest contributor after the United States. A number of public-health and international relations scholars have expressed alarm over these trends, arguing that heavy reliance …

The Impact Of A Training Intervention With Spatial Occlusion Goggles On Controlling And Passing A Football, Alan Dunton, Edward K. Coughlan Phd, Cian O' Neill Phd

Articles

Introduction: The current study analysed the impact of spatial occlusion training on control and pass accuracy in football. Occlusion was achieved using goggles that removed the sight of the lower limbs and football as it was projected towards the participants.

Methods: Fifteen skilled male football players were randomly assigned to one of three groups; Occlusion, Practice and Control. Participants were required to control a projected football, before passing it to one of two designated targets, while concurrently identifying a series of randomly generated numbers. Pass direction was determined by a directional arrow that accompanied each number, which coincided with the …

Whistleblowing In The Irish Military: The Cost Of Exposing Bullying And Sexual Harassment, John Hogan, Sharon Feeney, Grace Flynn

Articles

Whistleblowing has gained increasing media attention over the past 40 years, as incidents of abuse and wrongdoing associated with businesses, religious institutions, the media and politics have come to light. In this article, we investigate the consequences of a military whistleblower’s actions for both himself and the military institution that he was a part of. The case concerns former army officer Dr. Tom Clonan and his findings concerning the bullying and sexual harassment of female personnel in the Irish Defence Forces at the turn of the century. As these revelations came to light over 17 years ago we are able …

International Law And Political Philosophy: Uncovering New Linkages, Steven R. Ratner

Articles

The legal regime regulating cross-border investment gives key rights to foreign investors and places significant duties on states hosting that investment. It also raises distinctive moral questions due to its potential to constrain a state’s ability to manage its economy and protect its people. Yet international investment law remains virtually untouched as a subject of philosophical inquiry. The questions of international political morality surrounding investment rules can be mapped through the lens of two critiques of the law – that it systemically takes advantage of the global South and that it constrains the policy choices of states hosting investment. Each …

The Security Field: Forming And Expanding A Bourdieusian Criminology, Matt Bowden

Articles

Recent scholarly contributions have sought to integrate Bourdieusian sociology with criminology, centring for example, on the ‘street’ field as a symbolic and narrative space occupied by players within criminal justice. This article complements this broad objective by focusing on the changes in contemporary police and security governance that are pointing towards an emerging security field. Such a change can be read from the literature on plural policing and crime control, and involves the morphology of policing into nodes or assemblages of security producers. While there has been some attention to the formation of security networks, further empirical work is required …

The Impact Of Spatial Occlusion Goggles On The Basketball Crossover Dribble, Alan Dunton, Cian O' Neill Phd, Edward K. Coughlan Phd

Articles

Spatial occlusion involves removing specific sources of visual information such as an object, limb or other information from the visuomotor workspace. In the sports context, limiting an athlete’s visual system to sub-optimal conditions during complex motor skills such as the basketball dribble may be detrimental to performance. However, when normal visual conditions are returned performance may rise above its previous threshold, as athletes then rely less on visual information. In this study, we randomly assigned skilled basketball players into three groups; spatial occlusion (SPO), practice (PRA) and control (CON) and asked participants to execute a basketball crossover dribble task in …

Sustainable Energy Governance In South Tyrol (Italy): A Probabilistic Bipartite Network Model, Jessica Belest, Laura Secco, Elena Pisani, Alberto Caimo

Articles

At the national scale, almost all of the European countries have already achieved energy transition targets, while at the regional and local scales, there is still some potential to further push sustainable energy transitions. Regions and localities have the support of political, social, and economic actors who make decisions for meeting existing social, environmental and economic needs recognising local specificities.

These actors compose the sustainable energy governance that is fundamental to effectively plan and manage energy resources. In collaborative relationships, these actors share, save, and protect several kinds of resources, thereby making energy transitions deeper and more effective.

This research …

Using Cognitive Mapping To Longitudinally Examine Political Brand Associations, Ewan Macdonald, Roger Sherlock, John Hogan

Articles

This paper uses cognitive mapping techniques to understand how brand associations, an important aspect of political brand equity are formed, differ, and change, from the perspective of citizens, across the four largest Irish political parties between 2013 and 2016. The paper focuses in particular upon the strength, favourability and uniqueness of these brand associations. The results constitute a first attempt to longitudinally explore changing political brand associations through cognitive mapping techniques, using data generated with the participation of hundreds of citizens. Our findings suggest that this approach can contribute to our understanding of how and why political brand associations change …

The Critical Juncture Concept’S Evolving Capacity To Explain Policy Change, John Hogan

Articles

This article examines the evolution of our understanding of the critical junctures concept. The concept finds its origins in historical intuitionalism, being employed in the context of path dependence to account for sudden and jarring institutional or policy changes. We argue that the concept and the literature surrounding it—now incorporating ideas, discourse, and agency—have gradually become more comprehensive and nuanced as historical institutionalism was followed by ideational historical institutionalism and constructivist and discursive institutionalism. The prime position of contingency has been supplanted by the role of ideas and agency in explaining critical junctures and other instances of less than transformative …

Insight From Insiders: A Phenomenological Study For Exploring Food Tourism Policy In Ireland 2009-2019, Ketty Quigley, Margaret Connolly, Elaine Mahon, Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire

Articles

This paper focuses on how the phenomenon of food tourism developed in Ireland between 2009 and 2019. Employing a phenomenological epistemology, a qualitative methodology was adopted to explore key stakeholder’s lived experience of the Irish government’s approach to food tourism, identifying the primary drivers and key moments during the ten-year period. Extant literature was reviewed and critically evaluated. Using purposive sampling, and employing an emic posture, ten semi-structured interviews were conducted with senior governmental and tourism industry figures until saturation occurred. The findings highlight the influence that key policy makers, the formation of networks, clusters, and the role social entrepreneurs …

Men And The Drug Buzz: Masculinity And Men’S Motivations For Illicit Recreational Drug Use, Clay Darcy

Articles

The purpose of this article is to explore the motivations behind some men’s recreational use of illicit drugs from a gender standpoint. The rationale for this analysis stems from men’s predominance as illicit drug users and their likelihood of experiencing problem drug use and becoming a part of an over-represented population in drug treatment services. Explanations for men’s problematic/addicted patterns of drug use often point to marginalisation, disadvantage, and/or men’s tendency towards problematic health behaviours. This article argues that men’s illicit recreational drug use is often glossed over as a gendered activity and receives less scrutiny than problematic/addicted patterns of …

Childminding In Ireland: Attitudes Towards Professionalisation, Miriam O'Regan, Ann Marie Halpenny, Noirin Hayes

Articles

In light of rapid changes in the early years sector in Ireland since 2000, questions arise about the professionalism of childminders (family day carers), the vast majority of whom are exempt from regulation. Fewer than 0.1% (<120) of childminders are registered with Tusla, the national regulator, despite the National Childminding Initiative, (NCMI) which has promoted professional, high quality childminding. To investigate current attitudes to NCMI’s process of professionalisation (Brannen and Moss [2003]), among childminders and parents, a cross-sectional study was designed using a mixed-method approach. Specifically an anonymous online survey was conducted with 325 participants, followed by a qualitative World Café forum for 40 members of Childminding Ireland, the national childminding body. Findings from both phases of research revealed many of these childminders were well-qualified and engaged, with a sense of professional identity, seeking a distinctive approach to support childminding. Moreover, both childminder and parent participants value the distinctive characteristics of childminding – close relationships, a nurturing pedagogy, a rich, home environment – to a greater extent than markers of professionalism. These findings call for an innovative approach to childminding in Ireland, one that facilitates an organic development of agentic, professional childminding as part of a competent ECEC system.

Social Care Graduates’ Judgements Of Their Readiness And Preparedness For Practice, Fiona Mcsweeney, David Williams

Articles

While research has been conducted on social work graduates’ views of their readiness and preparedness for practice, the views of social care workers have not been specifically researched. This paper reports on the views of social care graduates in Ireland of how ready they are to join the workforce and how their educational programme has prepared them. Two semi-structured interviews were conducted with the same participants. The first was at the end of their final year in college and the second between 9 and 12 months later when they were in employment. Findings indicate that participants, while apprehensive, felt ready …

A New Era For Reuse Social Enterprises In Ireland? The Capacities Required For Achieving Sustainability, Gerard Doyle

Articles

The conventional linear relationship between production and consumption is no longer sustainable. A key component of the transition towards a more sustainable society is the continuation in use of products for longer and the development of a repair and reuse culture. Reuse social enterprises contribute to addressing a range of environmental, economic and social issues facing urban areas. This paper is concerned with, firstly, the motivations for citizens to establish reuse social enterprises in Ireland. Secondly, the paper examines the factors that contribute to reuse social enterprises in Ireland becoming sustainable.

The research points to the necessity of reuse social …

A New Era For Reuse Social Enterprises In Ireland? The Capacities Required For Achieving Sustainability, Gerard Doyle

Articles

The conventional linear relationship between production and consumption is no longer sustainable. A key component of the transition towards a more sustainable society is the continuation in use of products for longer and the development of a repair and reuse culture. Reuse social enterprises contribute to addressing a range of environmental, economic and social issues facing urban areas. This paper is concerned with, firstly, the motivations for citizens to establish reuse social enterprises in Ireland. Secondly, the paper examines the factors that contribute to reuse social enterprises in Ireland becoming sustainable.

The research points to the necessity of reuse social …

Re-Assessing The Place Of The “Silent Period” In The Development Of English As An Additional Language Among Children In Early Years Settings, Ruth Harris

Articles

This paper explores the acceptance of a “silent period” as a stage in second language development for children acquiring English as an Additional Language in Early Years settings. Current views suggest that it is normal for children to very quickly stop using their mother tongue and enter a period of silence. A positive perspective on this is that children may be using this time to observe and grow in understanding of the second language. However, there may also be negative effects, as children may become withdrawn and miss out on opportunities to develop relationships and language. It is the argument …

Philanthropy-Supported Journalism, Harry Browne

Articles

There is a widespread perception that the market is failing to ensure the provision of high quality, impactful journalism, especially investigative work and in‐depth coverage of governmental and international affairs. One answer to that market failing has been the development of philanthropy‐supported journalism. Some writers see this as a potentially important, if partial, solution to journalism's problems, strengthening the editorial focus on creating social and policy impacts. Others have expressed concern that philanthropic support draws journalists toward elite orientations, with both funders themselves and their desired audiences representing the socioeconomic upper tiers.

The Effects Of Mixed Membership In A Deliberative Forum: The Irish Constitutional Convention Of 2012–2014, David Farrell, Jane Suiter, Clodagh Harris, Kevin Cunningham

Articles

The Constitutional Convention was established by the Irish government in 2012. It was tasked with making recommendations on a number of constitutional reform proposals. As a mini-public, its membership was a mix of 66 citizens (randomly selected) and 33 politicians (self-selected). Its recommendations were debated on the floor of the Irish parliament with three of them leading to constitutional referendums; other recommendations are in the process of being implemented. This article uses data gathered during and after the operation of the Convention to examine this real-world example of a mixed-membership mini-public. The focus is on how the inclusion of politicians …

Parental Mediation And The Internet: Findings Of Net Children Go Mobile For Parents' Mediation Strategies In Ireland: Mediazione Dei Genitori E Internet: Risultati Di Net Children Go Mobile Per Le Strategie Di Mediazione Di Genitori In Irlanda., Thuy Dinh, Brian O'Neill

Articles

Based on data collected from the Net Children Go Mobile project, a cross- national study of children aged 9-16 in seven European countries with a focus on the Irish context, this article examines parental mediation of children’ online ac- tivities. The relationship between children’s digital skills (including internet and smartphone use) and parental mediation is also examined and factors influenc- ing parent mediation are highlighted. Parents implement a range of strategies, favouring strict mediation and rules over active mediation on internet safety, but these were associated with reduced children’s online activities and digital skills. These findings challenge researchers to identify …

Towards A Learning System For University Campuses As Living Labs For Sustainability, L.A. Verhoef, M. Bossert, J. Newman, Filipa Ferraz, Z.P. Robinson, Y. Agarwala, P. Wolff, P. Jiranek, C. Hellinga

Articles

Universities, due to their sizeable estates and populations of staff and students, as well as their connections with, and impact within, their local and wider communities, have significant environmental, social and economic impacts. There is a strong movement for universities to become leaders in driving society towards a more sustainable future, through improving the sustainability of the built environment and the universities’ practices and operations, and through their educational, research and wider community engagement missions. Around the globe the concept of ‘Living Labs’ has emerged as an instrument to integrate these different aspects to deliver sustainability improvements, through engaging multiple …

French Place Names In Clark County, Arkansas, Joe Jeffers

Articles

French place names are common in Arkansas, especially in south Arkansas, where after the French explorers left, French trappers and settlers from Canada moved in. Some of those names remain unchanged from the original French. General usage and English speaking settlers modified others. Clark County was one of five counties established in the Arkansas Territory. Its boundaries changed five times before reaching its present form in 1877. This article explores French place names in today’s Clark County and in the original Clark County formed in 1818.

100 Years Ago: Front-Page Stories From Arkadelphia's Southern Standard, Lisa K. Speer

Articles

The following news items were extracted from the front pages of Arkadelphia's Southern Standard weekly newspaper of 1919. The articles illustrate the variety of news published by the paper and offer glimpses into life in early 20th-century Clark County. The return to normalcy following the end of a world war; agricultural and economic development of the county; and moonshining were just a few of the themes that ran through the news that made the front pages of 1919.

Using Drawings To Understand Perceptions Of Civic Engagement Across Disciplines: ‘Seeing Is Understanding’, Sharon Feeney, John Hogan

Articles

In this article, we wish to investigate if disciplinary differences exist among students when considering the topic of civic engagement. We use freehand drawing to create a learning environment in the classroom wherein students can seek to develop meaningful associations with civic engagement. The drawings examined here, produced by three different class groups, provide insights into how young adults perceive their society and their place in it, and thus communicate their understanding of civic engagement. Freehand drawing, in bypassing cognitive verbal processing routes, leads students to produce clearer and more holistic images. It allows them to put into visuals a …