Our very own John Hudson, PhD student under the supervision of Dr Ashley Weinberg has won the poster competition at the Annual Conference of the BPS!
His poster looked at factors connected to job-related stress in the public sector. You can find his poster here.
Congratulations John!
Follow John on Twitter: @brucierooster
by Stephanie Szeto (@StepSzeto)
The high penetration of the new mobile technology and social media enables some Hongkongers, who don’t have much prior knowledge of computer, to access internet media and enjoy spontaneous mobile mass communication, such as Whatsapp, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. In past few decades, only few TV media existed in Hong Kong. Television Broadcasts (TVB) is completely monopolising the media market as Asia Television (ATV) produces limited domestic programmes and is facing major financial problem that has to terminate some news broadcasts. People are now used to read news from wide variety sources for having different perspectives, for example independent press, rather than from the traditional mass media, such as the two existing free-to-air terrestrial television stations, (TVB) and (ATV). Young people are more accessible and develop critical views to various news angles and discover nested interests of different media stakeholders may affect the political stands or economic positions of various commentaries or social media blogs.
In last October 2013, tens of thousands of protesters marched to the government headquarters of the Hong Kong SAR claiming the violated Hong Kong’s core values of freedom as the monopolisation of existing TV public media eventually led to rejection from the government in issuing an additional free-to-air TV licence to the Hong Kong Television Networks (HKTV). The march originated from a social action organised with the help of a Facebook page claiming to gather ten thousand of HKTV supporters and simultaneously gained nearly five hundred thousand LIKES. Facebook has become a powerful social media to magnify the tearful speeches of HKTV staff and celebrities that were spreading quickly on the web which explained the underlying nested interests of politicians in rejecting the license application. Protesters claiming that, despite a 85% of respondents in a public survey conducted by The University of Hong Kong indicated more free-to-air TV choices, the government turned down HKTV’s application as a result of politically decision. Mr. Ricky Wong Wai-kay, the boss of HKTV, presented that he would create a station that will truly belong to Hongkongers by giving alternative choice, such as ‘dark’ comedy and drama, which allows different political satire may capture the popular sentiment. Therefore, Hongkongers believed that the government was crushing the city’s core values of freedom and vowed to have social movement against the media monopolisation. Wong questioned whether Hong Kong was still governed by the rule of law and the HKTV, in the end, resorted to broadcast by over-the-top online platform.
With more easy access to online platforms, Hongkongers are now relying less on traditional TV news as they believe it offers more pro-government perspective to the audience. On the other hand, posts of independent press and internet radio have acquired a higher share of media influence. This situation is confirmed by the findings of crisis communication research that some people give higher level of credibility to new media than to traditional media in terms of having different perspective of the crisis (Jin, Liu, & Austin, 2014). One would see the new media has become a real battle ground for people to exert their political influence and gaining publicity through the emerging mobile technology.
One of our psychology lecturers, Michael Richards, was awarded a public engagement grant from the British Psychological Society in 2013. In collaboration with All FM radio station and Manchester Metropolitan University, Michael will use this grant to produce 8 radio shows that embrace different psychologies including forensic, health and clinical psychology. Michael will collaborate with a group of men labelled with learning difficulties from Manchester, to help connect the community with psychology. The shows will bring psychology to a wider audience in an accessible and fun way. The shows will contain music, interviews and discussions about the main issues, positives and negatives that accompany the range of psychologies we learn on BPS courses. Below are the dates of the shows, which will take place every two weeks at 2pm and will be broadcast on All FM.
29.01.14 – 2pm – Show 1 – What is Psychology?
12.02.14 – 2pm – Show 2 – Neuropsychology
26.02.14 – 2pm – Show 3 – Clinical Psychology and Counselling Psychology
12.03.14 – 2pm – Show 4 – Health Psychology and Sport/Exercise Psychology
26.03.14 – 2pm – Show 5 – Forensic Psychology
09.04.14 – 2pm – Show 6 – Developmental Psychology
23.04.14 – 2pm – Show 7 – Community and Critical Psychology
07.05.14 – 2pm – Show 8 – The way forward for psychology – the Big Society and learning difficulties
You can contact Michael if you want to know more on M.Richards2@salford.ac.uk or via Twitter @mikepsychology or if have any ideas or views that might contribute towards the shows.
By Jenna Condie
CARISMA is a local charity based in inner south Manchester and is one of the three charities officially supported by the University of Salford. CARISMA do amazing work in their aim to create life chances for young people in their communities. Some projects that you might already be familiar with are the radio station Peace FM and the Guns into Goods project (in collaboration with the University of Salford).
CARISMA are developing an educational initiative called FACT: Fathers and Children Together. They would like input from Salford psychology students in the designing of appropriate educational content and social activities for fathers and their children to do together. The aim is to strengthen father-child relationships. The content will be available digitally via the FACT website. How social media can be utilised to build supportive social networks that empower fathers to have a positive impact on their children’s lives will also be explored.
You will work in a creative team supervised by Jenna Condie and Sarah Norgate. The main communication channel for this project will be a Facebook group to support flexible and distance working. Project communication via Facebook also enables CARISMA representatives to consult on the development of the educational content and social activities in ‘real time’.
Are you ready to apply your psychological knowledge to a ‘real-world’ project that really matters? If so, we would love to have you on board. Working on FACT is a great opportunity for those of you considering developmental, educational, and teaching careers pathways. There may also be potential here for the development of suitable topics for your dissertation research.
Dennis Philips from CARISMA will be visiting us on Wednesday 17th April 2013 at 1.30pm to introduce the FACT initiative and invite you to join the team. If you would like to attend, please get in touch with Jenna Condie (Email: j.m.condie@salford.ac.uk) who will provide you with the necessary details.
Last week we launched our collaborative Twitter account @salfordpsych. Every week, a different person tweets for the department – students, lecturers and researchers. Sophie Coulson, a second year BSc (Hons) Psychology undergraduate, was first up as @salfordpsych and had the account off to a flying start. Below she reflects on her week and what she hopes @salfordpsych can do for the psychology community at Salford and beyond. An archive of Sophie’s week as @salfordpsych can be viewed here.
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Q. How did you find your week curating the @salfordpsych account?
A. At first I was a bit intimidated but after the first few hours I absolutely loved my week of tweeting as @salfordpsych. There was so much support and enthusiasm from everyone involved and it was such a buzz to see people retweeting or favouriting something that I had posted.
Q. What motivated you to be a part of the initiative?
A. Encouragement from our lecturer, Jenna Condie, but also my belief that we need to communicate more within the university and with others in the world of psychology. The idea of having someone different tweeting each week is a fantastic one. It brings so many perspectives and promotes input from those who might not usually have a wide or diverse audience.
Q. What did you enjoy about it?
A. The part I most enjoyed was researching online to find articles or links that might be interesting to others. I came across such a lot of fascinating information that I wouldn’t usually make the effort to find.
Q. Was there anything you didn’t enjoy?
A. I should probably lie about this to avoid sounding incredibly sad but I got a bit addicted, so the least enjoyable times were those when I couldn’t get online.
Q. Favourite twitter moment(s) of the week?
A. Every time someone retweeted something I had posted I felt irrationally pleased! Knowing that someone out there liked or valued the information was very rewarding.
Q. Least favourite twitter moment of the week?
A. I followed a few people who I thought would like to be involved but they didn’t follow back. That was a bit disheartening.
Q. How can social media play a role in learning?
A. I believe social media opens up so many possibilities. It’s a way of discovering things that may not have even occurred to you before. Questions can be asked and immediate responses received from people who never would have been accessible before social media. It removes or at least lowers the boundaries of location, education, class and age.
Q. Why do you use Twitter?
A. I haven’t personally tweeted much because, to be honest, I don’t feel anyone would be interested. However, in my part time work with the university’s Student Life service, I tweet a lot, mainly to provide others with information. I suppose I see it as a more professional than sociable way of communicating.
Q. Would you recommend being a curator to other students?
A. Definitely!! Apart from the obvious benefit of social media management looking good on your CV, it’s fun! It’s also a bit of a self-confidence boost and is a great way of discovering aspects of psychology that you may not usually give priority to.
Q. Any tips for future curators?
A. I know it’s a cliché but just be yourself. That’s the whole idea. Different personalities, perspectives, styles and interests are what this is about. I’m really looking forward to reading tweets of all future curators.
Q. What would you like to see @salfordpsych do next?
A. I would love to see @salfordpsych grow and inspire other university groups to create similar accounts. I particularly like the idea of researchers, lecturers and students working and communicating together. Often they are so remote from each other and divided by position. I think @salfordpsych could also be used to build more links with the Salford community, creating opportunities for students, staff and residents.
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Thank you Sophie for an excellent first week on Twitter. Sophie passed the tweet-baton to Hannah Smith, who is currently tweeting as @salfordpsych about what it is like to be the final year of her BSc (Hons) Psychology and Counselling. Check it out here.
If you would like to curate the @salfordpsych account, please get in touch with Jenna Condie on j.m.condie@salford.ac.uk. A rota of upcoming weeks is available here. Also, there is more information about our Twitter collaboration on the ‘we are all @salfordpsych’ page.