Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media

Traditionally, consumers used the Internet to simply expend content: they read it, they watched it, and they used it to buy products and services. Increasingly, however, consumers are utilizing platforms—such as content sharing sites, blogs, social networking, and wikis—to create, modify, share, and discuss Internet content. This represents the social media phenomenon, which can now significantly impact a firm's reputation, sales, and even survival. Yet, many executives eschew or ignore this form of media because they don’t understand what it is, the various forms it can take, and how to engage with it and learn. In response, we present a framework that defines social media by using seven functional building blocks: identity, conversations, sharing, presence, relationships, reputation, and groups. As different social media activities are defined by the extent to which they focus on some or all of these blocks, we explain the implications that each block can have for how firms should engage with social media. To conclude, we present a number of recommendations regarding how firms should develop strategies for monitoring, understanding, and responding to different social media activities.     

Poverty in Edwardian Britain

This article introduces a newly discovered household budget data set for 1904. We use these data to estimate urban poverty among working families in the British Isles. Applying Bowley's poverty line, we estimate that at least 23 per cent of people in urban working households and 18 per cent of working households had income insufficient to meet minimum needs. This is well above Rowntree's estimate of primary poverty for York in 1899 and high in the range that Bowley found in northern towns in 1912–13. The skill gradient of poverty is steep; for instance, among labourers' households, the poverty rates are close to 50 per cent. Measures of the depth of poverty are relatively low in the data, suggesting that most poor male-headed working households were close to meeting Bowley's new standard.     

The challenge of articulating human rights at an LGBT ‘mega-event’: a personal reflection on Sao Paulo Pride 2017

Abstract

This paper brings together Critical Event Studies (CES) and a reflexive/narrative autoethnographic approach in order to stimulate a debate around the commodification of public space, and the management of mega-events of dissent. This is achieved using the example of the researcher’s participation in the 2017 Sao Paulo Pride. Sao Paulo Pride is one of the largest LGBT demonstrations in the world. However, corporate interests in the event have commodified dissent in order to commercialise ‘otherness’, and the city has absorbed the demonstration into its cultural offer as a global brand. The confluence of these factors produces a pattern of place dressing and erasure that depoliticise the event and undermines its capacity to effectively articulate human rights. Currently Brazil has some of the most liberal LGBT laws of any South American state, yet recently Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT)/Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) human rights have been threatened by a rapid rise in hate crime and the emergence of an evangelical Christian right in state and regional assemblies. Within such a context the need to revive the roots of Pride as an articulation of otherness that demands recognition, and as a robust defence of human rights for the LGBT/SOGI community, is more pressing than ever.     

Awareness as a foundation for developing effective spatial data infrastructures

The development of an effective spatial data infrastructure (SDI) often occurs in a fragmented organizational environment requiring a high level of inter-organizational collaboration. Different organizations from various jurisdictions need to work together closely when agreeing on how they will jointly register, store, use and share data and how they will make their data available to the wider society. However, this collaboration is generally regarded as very difficult. For example people often resist data sharing across organizational boundaries due to loss of control, power and independency. Organizational issues are thus considered one of the fundamental constraints to inter-organizational sharing of spatial data.     

The impact of seasonality on tourism and hospitality operations in the alpine region of New South Wales,Australia

Despite the recognized importance of seasonality for tourism businesses, there has been a distinct lack of studies undertaken in the past that discuss the impact of seasonality on alpine accommodation resorts, and more specifically that focus on an Australian location. The main purpose of this study was to examine whether or not the Australian alpine accommodation providers and ski operations have been significantly impacted by the issue of seasonality and to determine more specifically, had there been industry pressure placed on them to become all season operations? For this study, a total of 15 semi-structured interviews were conducted with managers of hospitality businesses located in the sub-alpine region of Jindabyne, and nearby alpine areas of Perisher and Thredbo in New South Wales, Australia. Study results indicated that the majority of managers acknowledged the fact that there has been an increase in the number of summer visitors each year which has pressured them to make changes to their operations. They conceded that such activity has served to reinforce a ‘stand alone’ mindset which was still prevalent amongst the majority of the managers in the region.     

Further participatory adaptation is required for community leaders to champion conservation agriculture in Africa

There is a recognized need for the participation of local communities in designing and implementing agricultural interventions for the sustainable intensification in smallholder systems. This study examines the perspectives of local community leaders towards the widely promoted, but not widely adopted, practice of Conservation Agriculture (CA) in African smallholder systems. Perceptions from 47 community leaders (both from traditional local authorities and farmer organizations) across six African countries are documented regarding how CA matches the wants, needs and capabilities of farmers in their communities. While community leaders generally perceived CA as potentially beneficial, they also indicated that CA is not currently perceived as feasible within their communities and hence has limited relevance. Three key themes were identified that limit both CA use and sustainable intensification more generally: [1] a perceived reluctance of farmers to engage with the community platform as part of a higher input, market-oriented production system; [2] informational constraints due to non-functional exchange mechanisms; and [3] a lack of local adaptation of CA underscored by the persistence of top-down, linear research and extension approaches. Through greater understanding of local perspectives, a clearer picture emerges of the need for greater participatory engagement and local adaptation if sustainable intensification of African smallholder agricultural systems is to be achieved.     

Evaluating the London 2012 Games’ impact on sport participation in a non-hosting region: a practical application of realist evaluation

In the literature on Olympic legacies and impacts, there is a dearth of materials that specifically address the issue of Olympic impact for non-hosting regions. The literature tends to deal with impacts at a national level, or at a hosting-city region level, neglecting in large part the degree to which benefits can be leveraged by non-hosting regions. A further limitation identified in the literature is a failure to engage in detailed formal evaluation of policy implementation where assertions of potential policy impact are based on untested assumptions. This study is intended to address both of these concerns. It presents an empirical, ‘bottom-up’ application of a Realist Evaluation framework to assess the impact of a policy initiative – Workplace Challenge – aimed at leveraging enhanced sports participation in a non-hosting region – Leicestershire – in the period leading up to the 2012 Games. In doing so, it seeks to identify which causal mechanisms worked within this particular context to produce the observed outcomes. The evaluation results demonstrate that the programme represented a positive approach to fostering regular engagement with sport and physical activities for some groups in some types of organisations, and that awareness and motivational factors associated with the London 2012 Games are, in this case, linked (albeit weakly) to an increase in sport and physical activity participation for specific groups taking part in the programme in particular organisational contexts.     

ON PASLNETTI'S ‘G’ MATRIX

Pasinetti's vertically integrated H matrix has been much used in economic theory but his other vertically integrated matrix, G — which is of a quite different nature — has been little noticed. This paper considers the nature of the G matrix, its relationship to H, and varous issues — concerning consumption and growth, value added, sales revenue and differential growth or profit rates — for the analysis of which G is a very useful analytical tool.