Common Purpose

The relationship between performance and curation has shift ed. A new attitude of fluid and pragmatic alliance has evolved as the sense of an essential antagonism between performance and curation recedes and the two fields discover a shared focus on aspects of social engagement and agency. This article considers an Australian socially engaged art project, the Kandos School of Cultural Adaptation (KSCA), which meshes curatorial and artistic practices in its efforts to reimagine and reanimate the future of a small country town. Employing a wide range of strategies, KSCA works closely with the local community to facilitate collective memory, reflection and social and environmental transformation. Deliberately avoiding traditional lines of artistic and institutional tension, KSCA employs an impure and inclusive approach that is emblematic of emerging forms of activist contemporary art.

Improvisational Movement to Improve Quality of Life in Older Adults With Early-Stage Dementia: A Pilot Study

Alzheimer's disease has profound effects on quality of life, affecting not only cognition, but mobility and opportunities for social engagement. Dance is a form of movement that may be uniquely suited to help maintain quality of life for older adults, including those with dementia, because it inherently incorporates movement, social engagement, and cognitive stimulation. Here, we describe the methods and results of the pilot study for the IMOVE trial (NCT03333837, www.clinicaltrials.gov), a clinical trial designed to use improvisational dance classes to test the effects of movement and social engagement in people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or early-stage dementia. The pilot study was an 8-week investigation into the feasibility and potential effects of an improvisational dance intervention on people with MCI or early-stage dementia (PWD/MCI) and their caregivers (CG). The pilot aimed to assess changes in quality of life, balance, mood, and functional brain networks in PWD/MCI and their CG. Participants were recruited as dyads (pairs) that included one PWD/MCI and one CG. Ten total dyads were enrolled in the pilot study with five dyads assigned to the usual care control group and five dyads participating in the dance intervention. The intervention arm met twice weekly for 60 min for 8 weeks. Attendance and quality of life assessed with the Quality of Life in Alzheimer's disease (QoL-AD) questionnaire were the primary outcomes. Secondary outcomes included balance, mood and brain network connectivity assessed through graph theory analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Class attendance was 96% and qualitative feedback reflected participants felt socially connected to the group. Increases in quality of life and balance were observed, but not mood. Brain imaging analysis showed increases in multiple brain network characteristics, including global efficiency and modularity. Further investigation into the positive effects of this dance intervention on both imaging and non-imaging metrics will be carried out on the full clinical trial data. Results from the trial are expected in the summer of 2022.

An Integrative Framework to Guide Social Engagement Interventions and Technology Design for Persons With Mild Cognitive Impairment

Social isolation and loneliness in older adults are associated with poor health outcomes and have been linked to an increased risk of cognitive impairment and incident dementia. Social engagement has been identified as a key factor in promoting positive health behaviors and quality of life and preventing social isolation and loneliness. Studies involving cognitively healthy older adults have shown the protective effects of both in-person and technology-based social engagement. However, the benefits of social engagement for people who are already at-risk of developing dementia, namely those with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), have yet to be elucidated. We present a narrative review of the literature, summarizing the research on social engagement in MCI. First, we identified social networks (quality, size, frequency, and closeness) and social activities (frequency, format, purpose, type, and content) as two overarching dimensions of an integrative framework for social engagement derived from literature examining typical cognitive aging. We then used this framework as a lens to examine studies of social engagement in MCI to explore (i) the relationship between in-person and technology-based social engagement and cognitive, emotional, and physical health, and (ii) interventions that target social engagement including technology-based approaches. Overall, we found that persons with MCI (PwMCI) may have different levels of social engagement than those experiencing typical cognitive aging. Moreover, in-person social engagement can have a positive impact on cognitive, emotional, and physical health for PwMCI. With respect to activity and network dimensions in our framework, we found that cognitive health has been more widely examined in PwMCI relative to physical and emotional health. Very few intervention studies have targeted social engagement, but both in-person and technology-based interventions appear to have promising health and well-being outcomes. Our multidimensional framework of social engagement provides guidance for research on characterizing the protective benefits of social engagement for PwMCI and informs the development of novel interventions including technology-based approaches.

Bridging Community, History, and Culture in Personal Informatics Tools

A healthy diet and increased physical activity are essential for reducing the prevalence of cardiovascular disease and related deaths, a worldwide public health concern that disproportionately affects Black American communities. Still, Black Americans can face unique challenges meeting dietary and physical activity requirements due to inequities in access and quality of care, environmental and local factors, and difficulties in changing individual health behaviors. Personal informatics and self-tracking tools are one way of increasing awareness of health behaviors to motivate behavior change. However, there are still gaps in knowledge about what encourages different users to engage with personal informatics tools over time, particularly when used in collaborative, community-health settings. This paper contributes a nuanced understanding of fifteen participants' reasons for engaging in an existing community-based health education and behavior change program that combines collaborative self-tracking with culturally relevant content and social engagement to motivate heart-healthy behaviors. We illustrate participants' positive and negative experiences engaging in self-tracking and collaborative tasks during the program. We also discuss how participants envision that integrating technology might support or hinder participant engagement and the work of deploying community-based public health interventions. Finally, we discuss design implications for culturally informed, community-based personal informatics tools that engage Black American's in heart-healthy activities.

“Retweet for More”: The Serialization of Porn on the Twitter Alter Community

This article examines the notion of seriality in the context of the Filipino alter community, a network of Twitter users producing, distributing, and consuming pornographic images. The alter community is prominent among Filipino gay men who satisfy their need for sexual arousal, collective identity, and validation of their sexuality in the alter community. Seriality is influenced by technological features and affordances of a media platform. In the case of Twitter, the platform’s short form formats and real-time content generation fosters a particular kind of seriality. This essay analyzes data from online observations, content analysis of tweets and profiles, and interviews and is informed by theories on seriality, gay sexuality, and Internet studies. In situating seriality within the context of gay amateur porn economy, this article argues that serial pornography is instrumental in satisfying both present and long-standing affective, sexual, and social needs of gay men. These needs, this essay claims, stem from long history of minoritization of homosexuality. As Twitter renders older tweets ephemeral and quantifies social engagement, seriality enables gay men to satisfy the aforementioned needs longer. Furthermore, this essay proposes that serial porn on Twitter brings new insights to how seriality is conceived. Serial porn images are strategically and carefully constructed narratives of sexual encounters aimed at garnering higher social engagement and validation. Thus, serial narratives can resolve present and urgent affective tensions and needs that unravel within an ongoing life narrative rather than working toward supporting a plausible ending, as seen in other serial forms. This article contributes to an understanding of how pornographic images and serial narratives fit into consumerist culture and how platforms exploit long-standing affective needs of sexual minorities to ensure extended production and consumption of contents.

The COVID-19 vaccination campaign in Bhutan: strategy and enablers

Bhutan has reported a total of 2596 COVID-19 cases and three deaths as of September 15, 2021. With support from India, the United States, Denmark, the People’s Republic of China, Croatia and other countries, Bhutan was able to conduct two rounds of nationwide vaccination campaign. While many countries struggle to overcome vaccine refusal or hesitancy due to complacency, a lack of trust, inconvenience and fear, escalated in some countries by anti-vaccine groups, Bhutan managed to inoculate more than 95% of its eligible populations in two rounds of vaccination campaign. Enabling factors of this successful vaccination campaign were strong national leadership, a well-coordinated national preparedness plan, and high acceptability of vaccine due to effective mass communication and social engagement led by religious figures, volunteers and local leaders. In this short report, we described the national strategic plan and enabling factors that led to the success of this historical vaccination campaign.

Model of Communication Effectiveness in the Mentoring Process

In this paper the authors analyse the conditions of effective communication in the mentoring process. In the literature on the subject effective business communication is considered as a key to planning, leading, organizing and controlling the resources of organizations to achieve their objectives. Still, communication models in the mentoring network have not been of interest to researchers yet. The aim of this study was to identify the factors that influence the effectiveness of communication in the mentoring process. The authors created a theoretical model of communication in the mentoring process which became a basis for primary research conducted among 103 mentors and 119 mentees in Poland. It occurred that the factors influencing the effectiveness of communication in the mentoring process are similar in both groups. Next, the authors incorporated the Exploratory Factor Analysis and Cronbach’s alpha reliability test of different factors influencing the effectiveness of communication in the mentoring process. The results proved that all the developed scales demonstrated reliability above the recommended threshold. The final stage involved developing a regression model which allowed to identify the factors influencing the effectiveness of communication in the mentoring process. Those factors are: non-verbal channels and tools of communication, written and oral channels and tools of communication as well as social engagement in the mentoring process.