Newly published: ‘The social impact of digital youth work: what are we looking for?’

Posted on June 16, 2019 by Hazel Hall

Amongst the articles just published in the latest issue of Media and Communication is a paper that that I co-authored with my Centre for Social Informatics colleagues Alicja Pawluczuk, Dr Gemma Webster, and Dr Colin Smith. The article is one of the outputs of Alicja’s doctoral study.

In ‘The social impact of digital youth work: what are we looking for?‘ we explore the ways in which digital youth workers perceive and evaluate the social impact of their work. The analysis draws on data collected in twenty semi-structured interviews with digital youth workers in Scotland in 2017. Continue reading →

Contributions from the Centre for Social Informatics to #ISIC2018

Posted on October 7, 2018 by Hazel Hall

Information Seeking in Context (ISIC) 2018 takes place in Kraków, Poland, this coming week from 9th to 11th October 2018. Representing Edinburgh Napier University’s Centre for Social Informatics at the conference will be third year PhD students Alicja Pawluczuk and Lyndsey Middleton (née Jenkins). Continue reading →

Successful submissions to #isic2018 for the Centre for Social Informatics

Posted on May 22, 2018 by Hazel Hall

Congratulations to Alicja Pawluczuk and Lyndsey Middleton (née Jenkins) on the recent news that the conference submissions that they made in March this year to Information Seeking in Context (ISIC) 2018 have been accepted. The conference takes place in Kraków, Poland, 9-11 October 2018. Continue reading →

Measuring the social impact of digital youth participation: new paper available on OnlineFirst

Posted on May 20, 2018 by Hazel Hall

The seventh (and final) article that I recently co-authored for publication in the Journal of Librarianship and Information Science (JoLIS) has now been published as an OnlineFirst paper. Entitled ‘Youth digital participation: measuring social impact‘, the content of the article concerns scholarly debate around digital participatory youth projects, and approaches to their evaluation. My co-authors Alicja Pawluczuk, Colin F Smith, Gemma Webster and I reveal (1) an over-reliance on traditional evaluation techniques for such initiatives, and (2) a scarcity of models for the assessment of the social impact of digital participatory youth projects. Continue reading →

Alicja Pawluczuk presents at Transmedia Literacy International 2018 #Transliteracy2018

Posted on March 23, 2018 by Hazel Hall

Alicja Pawluczuk presents her slides (Photo credit Angélica Elisa)

Transmedia Literacy International 2018 is currently taking place in Barcelona, Spain. This afternoon at the conference, Centre for Social Informatics PhD student Alicja Pawluczuk presented a paper (co-authored with her supervisors Dr Colin Smith, Dr Gemma Webster and Professor Hazel Hall) on perceptions of social impact held by youth workers, and processes for the evaluation of digital youth projects. Continue reading →

Social impact evaluations of digital youth work: paper acceptance at Transmedia Literacy International #TransmediaLiteracy

Posted on February 17, 2018 by Hazel Hall

Congratulations to Centre for Social Informatics PhD student Alicja Pawluczuk on the acceptance of the paper that she recently submitted to Transmedia Literacy International 2018. This conference takes place in Barcelona, Spain next month between 22nd and 24th March.

The paper, which Alicja co-authored with her PhD supervisors Dr Colin Smith, Dr Gemma Webster and Professor Hazel Hall, is entitled ‘Social impact evaluations of digital youth work: tensions between vision and reality‘. Its content is concerned with the perceptions of social impact held by youth workers, and processes for the evaluation of digital youth projects. The conference programme shows that Alicja will present this work in the ‘Methodologies and interventions’ session on Friday 23rd March between 14:00 and 16:00 Spanish time. Continue reading →

Centre for Social Informatics at the ‘Ways of being in a digital age’ review conference

Posted on October 10, 2017 by Hazel Hall

The Ways of being in a digital age review conference is currently underway at the University of Liverpool. The conference closes the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) project Ways of being in a digital age. The project was commissioned by the ESRC in 2016 to help identify and prioritise future areas and methods for research on the social, economic, political, psychological and cultural impacts of digital media and technologies.

Amongst the delegates at the conference is Centre for Social Informatics PhD student Alicja Pawluczuk. At the conference Alicja is presenting a paper that she has co-authored with the members of her supervision team: Dr Gemma Webster, Dr Colin Smith and myself. The paper is entitled ‘Digital culture co-creation: capturing the social impact of small-scale community projects’. The slides are available on SlideShare and below.

Continue reading →