The Impact of Digital Media for the development of political culture in Creating Public Awareness: A Study between Entries and Models

The researcher seeks to evaluate and understand digital media in raising awareness of community issues among the public. The research aims to identify theoretical approaches to the impact of digital media on public awareness, and to clarify models of the impact of digital media on public awareness. The research used the descriptive and analytical approach, which attempts to analyze and describe the impact of digital media on social awareness among the public, as the research reached the most important results that the reality imposed itself in the form of digital media through its various means played an important and effective role in the movements and revolutions that the countries witnessed in the movements and revolutions of the democratic spring. Some people described it as "Vmsbouquet revolutions" in relation to the important role that Facebook played in communication between the demonstrators, which prompted some to say that virtual or digital media has replaced political organizations in playing their role aimed at political upbringing in what some have called "" Bringing up the internet.

Legacy of Jon Tennant, “Open science is just good science”

This work is a transcribed and edited collection of the message delivered by Jon Tennant in his talk “Open science is just good science”, May 21st, 2018. In readable form with many links, this paper provides a primer on open science and the open science movement. It details the problems with closed access science as it is still practiced today, and how big publishing as an industry is largely responsible. It talks about the ethics behind open science practices. It provides many statistics and links to information about paywalls, movements such as Project DEAL, workflows, and personal and community issues such as fear and cultural inertia that may prevent us from adopting better science practices.

Multimodality as a Communicative Tool for Social Engagement and Reform

This article acknowledges the viability of multimodal projects in first-year college-level writing courses in accordance with the evolution of composition pedagogy over the past forty years. Since the 1982 publication of Hairston’s article “The Winds of Change” forecasting the end of the then-ubiquitous current-traditional approach, composition pedagogy has undergone paradigm shifts from process to post-process theory and from textual to digital modes of composition. Inspired by Goodwin’s (2020) research on students’ multimodal responses to local community issues, I developed a public media project for my first-year writing course for which students created media texts addressing local, regional, national, and global issues of their choosing. The project synthesizes the public and interpretative dimensions of writing identified by post-process scholars with elements of multimodality and civic engagement to help students understand how public media texts raise social awareness of current issues and mobilize community efforts toward unified resolution of such issues.

Enhancing the benefits of group involvement in research

Research can facilitate mutual learning, allow participants’ voices to be heard, increase practical usefulness of studies and foster empowerment. This paper discusses ways that groups can take part in research, outlines advantages and limits of each and explores strategies for enhancing benefits. This content is illustrated with brief examples from recent research publications and from two longer case studies. Groups and members can be involved as participants or co-producers of research. As participants, they either act as research subjects by contributing data, or as collaborators who are consulted at various times to help keep a study relevant to community issues. Being a subject offers an opportunity to reflect and share views, while collaborators and researchers can learn from working together. Though collaborators can exert influence, they have little control over decisions around focus, design, methods or dissemination of a study. Co-producing knowledge offers community groups more power, learning and empowerment but requires high levels of mutual trust, commitment and persistence. Potential gains and risks increase as involvement intensifies. However, researchers can enhance benefits at any level, by keeping this goal in mind when planning studies.

Reflections on Teaching and Learning Chemistry Through Youth Participatory Science

This chapter captures a panel discussion from the 2019 conference of Science Educators for Equity, Diversity, and Social Justice (SEEDS, http://seedsweb.org) in Norfolk, Virginia. The panel included two high school students, three high school chemistry teachers, a community organizer, an administrator for a large urban school district, and a university-based science educator. These panelists, the authors of this chapter, had been collaborating on an initiative to support youth participatory science (YPS) projects in high school chemistry classes. We share this lightly edited transcript of our conversation as a way to communicate perspectives about the opportunities and challenges of YPS from viewpoints across these constituency groups. Our conversation is organized around three questions for reflection: (1) What are some of the challenges and possibilities when it comes to engaging with YPS in science classes? (2) How has engaging in YPS exposed both insights and oversights of scientific ways of knowing? (3) In YPS, what are the relationships between learning science and engaging in political and community issues?

Corporate Social Responsibility in Cameroon: Practices and Environmental Impact

The purpose of this study is to examine how CSR is practiced by local businesses and their influence on environmental protection and sustainable growth in Cameroon. Grounded on the stakeholder theory, a multi-method data collection tool was used to collect data for qualitative analysis. A thematic content analysis was approached was used in this study to examine the CSR practices of 20 local businesses in Cameroon. Findings from the study revealed that the concept of corporate social responsibility is relatively new and local corporations are not fully equipped to address the needs of their stakeholders. Also, environmental concerns and community issues were not areas of concern to companies when adopting CSR strategies. Additionally, government intervention to enforce existing laws and regulations on environmental and social issues was lacking. The study implies that by neglecting environmental concerns local businesses are endangering the environment and failing to plan for sustainable growth. Besides expanding knowledge about the level of CSR awareness and practice in Cameroon by exposing the limitations of local companies in adopting CSR and the laxity of the government in enforcing the relevant laws and legislation. It is recommended, that to plan for sustainable development and environmental protection, the government should be more proactive in upholding laws and regulations related to environmental protection and businesses, being more ethical in their daily practices. CSR policies should also be codified to encourage and compel businesses on the need for environmental protection by requesting businesses produce mandatory CSR disclosures.

Online Communities, Gen Y and Civic Engagement: An Investigation of Youth Leadership Development Potential in the Context of Social and Democratic Issues

<p>Leadership is an extensively discussed and researched concept in scholarship. A vast amount of literature focuses on adult leadership, especially in a political and organizational context. Adult leadership places emphasis on the role of individual leaders, whilst youth leadership takes a participatory approach. Leadership scholars indicate that this participatory approach to youth leadership, involves young people addressing community concerns and at a civic level, engaging in planning and decision-making. Social participation traits and civic identity are developed during adolescence yet very little research has been undertaken in this area since the 1960s. This suggests that youth leadership is an overlooked research stream. Current studies on Gen Y indicate that this demographic are technologically proficient especially with regard to Web 2.0 tools, but also disengaged from their community. This research project examines the use of online communities to influence the leadership skills of a Gen Y cohort in the context of social participation and civic engagement. In this study a focus group and an online wiki were used to investigate how Gen Y teenagers in Wellington, New Zealand used online communities to develop and exercise their leadership skills through civic and social action endeavours. Results from the study indicate that youth leadership, in an online context, centres on the role of organisers who foster civic participation through online community networks. Thus youth leadership is strengthened through participation in civic and community issues using online communities. Adult perceptions of youth and the low credibility of online communities, as perceived by youth, were found to act as barriers to online youth leadership. The findings highlight the importance of adults acknowledging youth in social participation and civic endeavours. This study extends research in the youth leadership stream and enhances our understanding of Gen Y and their use of online communities.</p>

The role of social entrepreneurship in socio-economic development: a meta-analysis of the nascent field

Purpose This study aims to present the first meta-analysis of the research on social entrepreneurship and socio-economic development (SESED). Nation-states, researchers and organizations realized the pivotal role of social entrepreneurship in socio-economic development in the recent two decades. The body of knowledge in this domain witnessed consistent research growth, but it still lacks a critical review to map the scholarly literature and to guide future researchers. Design/methodology/approach This study used meta-analysis that combines bibliometric and content analyzes of 83 most relevant articles from 910 initially retrieved articles from the Web of Science, published in 75 different journals and 45 countries during 2005 and 2020. The analysis was performed using Histcite, VOSviewer and Biblioshiny software to identify the most influential aspects and to conduct citation and content analyze of selected publications. Findings The findings showed an overall consistent growth in research publications during the past 16 years with “Social Entrepreneurship and Enterprise: International and Innovation Perspectives” as the most influential article, “Entrepreneurship and Regional Development” as the most influential journal, and the USA and the UK as the most productive countries. The keyword co-occurrence analysis exposed five thematic clusters and content analysis revealed five streams within the selected publications. Practical implications This study provides 10 research questions that urge future researchers to conduct a thorough investigation on how social entrepreneurship while solving social, cultural, environmental and community issues, contributes to socio-economic development. Originality/value This study identifies prominent trends, intellectual structure, leading research streams and specific future research directions in the field of SESED.

Online Communities, Gen Y and Civic Engagement: An Investigation of Youth Leadership Development Potential in the Context of Social and Democratic Issues

<p>Leadership is an extensively discussed and researched concept in scholarship. A vast amount of literature focuses on adult leadership, especially in a political and organizational context. Adult leadership places emphasis on the role of individual leaders, whilst youth leadership takes a participatory approach. Leadership scholars indicate that this participatory approach to youth leadership, involves young people addressing community concerns and at a civic level, engaging in planning and decision-making. Social participation traits and civic identity are developed during adolescence yet very little research has been undertaken in this area since the 1960s. This suggests that youth leadership is an overlooked research stream. Current studies on Gen Y indicate that this demographic are technologically proficient especially with regard to Web 2.0 tools, but also disengaged from their community. This research project examines the use of online communities to influence the leadership skills of a Gen Y cohort in the context of social participation and civic engagement. In this study a focus group and an online wiki were used to investigate how Gen Y teenagers in Wellington, New Zealand used online communities to develop and exercise their leadership skills through civic and social action endeavours. Results from the study indicate that youth leadership, in an online context, centres on the role of organisers who foster civic participation through online community networks. Thus youth leadership is strengthened through participation in civic and community issues using online communities. Adult perceptions of youth and the low credibility of online communities, as perceived by youth, were found to act as barriers to online youth leadership. The findings highlight the importance of adults acknowledging youth in social participation and civic endeavours. This study extends research in the youth leadership stream and enhances our understanding of Gen Y and their use of online communities.</p>