Yes / This case outlines the rationale and methods used when carrying out ethnographic fieldwork in a care home environment with research participants who were living with a dementia diagnosis. Although concerns had been raised at ethics approval about the use of such methods – visual ethnography in particular – we found that there were ethical benefits for the participants whose capacity for research participation, and for social participation generally, was, in every case, higher than anticipated at the outset. By comparison we found that formal methods for assessing ability to give informed consent often appeared to create excess disability, and to exacerbate ill-being for people with dementia. The case draws on specific examples to show how issues related to methods and to ethical conduct of research are frequently intertwined, and should be considered together rather than in isolation.

Yes / A community-based occupational therapy intervention for people with mild to moderate dementia and their family carers (Community Occupational Therapy in Dementia (COTiD)) was found clinically and cost effective in the Netherlands but not in Germany. This highlights the need to adapt and implement complex interventions to specific national contexts. The current trial aims to evaluate the United Kingdom-adapted occupational therapy intervention for people with mild to moderate dementia and their family carers living in the community (COTiD-UK) compared with treatment as usual. Methods/Design This study is a multi-centre, parallel-group, pragmatic randomised trial with internal pilot. We aim to allocate 480 pairs, with each pair comprising a person with mild to moderate dementia and a family carer, who provides at least 4 hours of practical support per week, at random between COTiD-UK and treatment as usual. We shall assess participants at baseline, 12 and 26 weeks, and by telephone at 52 and 78 weeks (first 40 % of recruits only) after randomisation. The primary outcome measure is the Bristol Activities of Daily Living Scale (BADLS) at 26 weeks. Secondary outcome measures will include quality of life, mood, and resource use. To assess intervention delivery, and client experience, we shall collect qualitative data via audio recordings of COTiD-UK sessions and conduct semi-structured interviews with pairs and occupational therapists. Discussion COTiD-UK is an evidence-based person-centred intervention that reflects the current priority to enable people with dementia to remain in their own homes by improving their capabilities whilst reducing carer burden. If COTiD-UK is clinically and cost effective, this has major implications for the future delivery of dementia services across the UK. / This is independent research funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) under its Programme Grants for Applied Research scheme (RP-PG-0610-10108). The VALID research team acknowledges the support of the National Institute of Health Research Clinical Research Network. This research is sponsored by North East London NHS Foundation Trust (NELFT).

This dissertation explores how social media engagement can shape political content on social media by shaping incentives, stimulating content creation, and steering algorithmic curation. Across three papers, I reconcile interdisciplinary findings with the unique attributes of political content. My first paper presents an analytical framework for understanding how consumer interests and algorithmic sorting influence the types of content produced on social media platforms. Building off of a Downsian framework, I model two producers who adjust the content they create in order to maximize their reach, given the production point of their competitor. Unlike typical Downsian models, social media engagement can come both from preferences being very close to content, or very far, what I term concordant and discordant engagement, respectively. I show that polarization of content production can occur with a sufficient prevalence of discordant engagement, even without polarization in the population or producer preferences. I support this finding through interviews with content creators, including media staffers for Members of Congress. In my second paper, I investigate how engagement signals affect the production of comments and original posts, in both political and non-political subreddits. I conduct a series of field experiments on Reddit, contrasting both commenting and posting behaviors. I find that Reddit Awards seem to incentivize increased comments for new users, but do little to move veteran Redditors. I find weak evidence for a relationship in the opposite direction for individuals who post, rather than comment. These results suggest that engagement can affect certain types of original content production, including political content. However, posting and commenting are different behaviors that appear to have distinct relationships with engagement and user tenure. My third paper presents two TikTok experiments designed to highlight how algorithms respond to engagement signals. Again, my aim is to highlight how political content is treated. I conduct an algorithmic audit to show how engagement signals can alter initial recommendations. I find that effect sizes are conditional on the topic of interest, noting that engagement with political content appears to trigger relatively high rate of related recommendations. I support these audit results with a lab experiment, examining how initial engagement signals persist over time. I observe algorithmic behavior over 40 minutes of browsing by treatment-blind users. I find that political recommendations persist for treated accounts, even after significant browsing time. I also present preliminary results for algorithmic effects on user attitudes and experiences.

published_or_final_version / Social Work / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Thesis (MPAM.) -- University of Limpopo, 2022 / The study presents findings that examined the nature and extent of community participation in the Integrated Development Planning (IDP) processes as a means of improving local governance at the Polokwane Local Municipality. The study argues for a need to empower communities with knowledge on the available mechanism as a way of fulfilling the dream of a culture of participation. This is to increase unified perception about the value of community participation in improving local governance. However, local governance accountability can be gauged by the extent to which they practise community participation in decision-making in facing up to the challenges of the day. This is done by putting or encouraging community participation in the processes that would help face up to the challenges of the day, including the IDP processes. The study applied a mixed-methods design and a combination of thematic data analysis and Microsoft Excel (spreadsheet) to analyse data gathered. Structured questionnaires were distributed to respective community members in the selected communities: two villages of Potse and Mahlohlokwe; two townships Mankweng Unit D and Mankweng Zone 1; two suburbs - Flora Park and Ivy Park. Furthermore, faceto- face interviews were conducted with the Polokwane municipal officials responsible for IDP, municipal manager, IDP manager and councillors of selected communities. Findings of the study showed that community participation in the IDP processes was viewed as one of the ways of enabling interaction between local government and citizens. However, citizens faced challenges in the process of community participation and that impacted on the level of community participation. It should, therefore, be borne in mind that to improve local governance, it is necessary to look at the extent to which communities are engaged in the processes of improving local governance. Participation of communities in the development planning of their communities can thus help improve local governance. Therefore, community participation should be widely applied in the local government field to enable good governance and sustainable development.

Master of Science / Department of Human Ecology / Bronwyn Fees / With obesity on the rise in young children, the need to examine interventions to increase activity levels, a factor in obesity, in childhood is apparent. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between toddlers wearing a costume prop and their type and intensity of movement as well as their level of social participation. It was hypothesized that intensity of movement and types of movement would increase when the child wore a cape compared to no cape. A total of fifty-four subjects between the ages of 24 and 36 months participated in the study, structured into an intervention group (n = 27) and a control group (n = 27). Toddlers in the control group were observed for 20 minutes during free play inside the classroom wearing a specifically designed data collection garment (which looked like a “vest”) to record movement and sound. Participants in the intervention group were observed with the same data collection garment and the costume prop “cape” for 20 minutes during morning free-play period inside. The toddlers‟ behaviors were coded as outlined by Brown, Pfeiffer, McIver, Dowda, Joao, Almeida, and Pate‟s (2006) Observational System for Recording Physical Activity in Children-Preschool (OSRAC-P), modified to capture the unique movements of toddlers for the present study. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and a Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) were utilized to examine the effect of a costume prop on intensity of activity, types of gross motor movement, and forms of social play. Results revealed the intervention group exhibited significantly greater engagement in onlooker, solitary, and parallel play (p < .001) than the control group. No significant differences in the levels of intensity or types of activity exhibited between the two groups. Implications for further research on physical activity and stimulating physical activity in the classroom are discussed

M.Tech. / This study is based on the premise that awareness of active citizenship among South African citizens should be encouraged and can be developed through specific educational and skills interventions embedded in Visual Art learning programmes. South Africa‟s developing democracy requires active citizens with the capacity to disseminate values of equality, dignity, liberty and social justice, amongst other constitutional rights. Our country‟s history in the struggle for liberation encompasses a legacy of resistance, and screen-printed protest posters played an important role in communicating dissent towards the apartheid state (Seidmann 2009, Peffer 2009). My research examines the role of screen-printing as a particular graphic medium which is an organising tool to create awareness and communication. The project uses co-operative enquiry as a participatory action research method to facilitate the application of hand-made fine art screen-printed artworks and posters that support skills development, an understanding of self-identity and a sharing of skills that contribute to active citizenship. I present three visual art screen-printing projects that I facilitated from 2010 to 2011 at Artist Proof Studio (APS), an art centre in Johannesburg, whose mission is to inculcate aspects of active citizenship among the participating learners. I contend that the combination of all three screen-print projects presented to the group of students, leads to skills-development, awareness of personal identity and participation in community engagement projects which may enhance their ability to participate as active citizens and which in turn supports the mission statement of the education unit at APS. Such an intervention serves as a learning model that can further contribute to social, educational and economic redress among the participants at APS.

O Estado de São Paulo passou por um longo processo de degradação e fragmentação, fruto de um modelo de desenvolvimento que baseou sua ampliação agrícola e urbana na derrubada de ecossistemas florestais nativos. A necessidade de aumento na cobertura florestal do estado é reconhecida há muito tempo, principalmente em razão da relação intrínseca entre água e matas, especialmente no caso das matas ciliares. Essa questão gerou ao logo dos anos o aprimoramento do conhecimento técnico na área de restauração, mas este avanço não foi acompanhado de reflexões a respeito de questões sociais, econômicas e políticas. As diversas políticas públicas e instrumentos agrícolas e florestais vigentes não trazem em seu escopo a preocupação com a realidade socioeconômica ou com o desenvolvimento rural. O presente trabalho procurou analisar, através do estudo de caso em duas microbacias hidrográficas do estado de São Paulo, Ribeirão Campestre no município de Saltinho e Córrego Santo Antônio em Jaú, o desenvolvimento áreas de mata ciliar implantadas por quatro instrumentos e políticas públicas de restauração ecológica de matas ciliares em pequenas e médias propriedades. Buscou-se compreender o contexto em que os diferentes instrumentos e políticas de restauração de matas ciliares ocorreram procurando correlacionar indicadores ecológicos de desenvolvimento de áreas de mata ciliar em restauração, com a percepção e o envolvimento dos proprietários rurais nos diversos processos de restauração de matas ciliares estudados. Desta maneira, a partir dos resultados, foi possível demonstrar que conhecer o perfil e a percepção dos proprietários rurais envolvidos em políticas públicas de restauração de matas ciliares é essencial para a para produção de conhecimentos relacionados à restauração de matas ciliares e de políticas públicas relacionadas. / The State of São Paulo has gone through a long process of deterioration and fragmentation, due to the model of development of agricultural and urban expansion based on the destruction of native forest ecosystem. The need to increase the forest covering in the state has been clear for quite some time, especially due to the intrinsic relationship between water and forests, most notably in riparian forests. With time, this issue gave rise to the refinement of technical knowledge in the area of restoration. However, this progress was not accompanied by discussions on social, economic and political issues. The various public policies, laws and regulations in the agricultural and forest area now in place fail to express any concern with socioeconomic reality or with rural development. This text represents an attempt to analyze a case study in two micro-river basins in the State of São Paulo, Brazil, namely, Ribeirão Campestre, in the municipality of Saltinho and Córrego Santo Antônio, in the municipality of Jaú. Specifically, the development of riparian forest areas implemented by four legal instruments and public policies of ecological restoration of riparian forests in small and medium-sized landholdings were investigated. Searched was made to understand the context in which different legal instruments and policies for restoring riparian forests occurred, and ecological indicators of the development of riparian forest areas in restoration were correlated with the perception and involvement of rural landowners in several different processes of restoration of riparian forests. Thus, based on the results, it was possible to demonstrate that understand the profile and perception of landowners involved in riparian forests restoration public policy is essential to the production of knowledge related to riparian forests restoration of and related public policies.

O tema da participação social revela diversos desafios perante a necessidade de envolvimento dos sujeitos nas práticas políticas e decisórias no sistema público de saúde brasileiro. É imprescindível entender que a construção histórica e o contexto sócio-político influenciam a expressão e organização de grupos que almejam participar de processos decisórios, bem como o papel que estes ocupam na estrutura das políticas sociais de saúde. Da mesma maneira não se pode desconsiderar elementos como construção da cidadania, solidariedade e interdependência social que são fundamentais para formação do senso de pertencimento. Se por um lado temos alguns mecanismos de participação já institucionalizados e de fato algumas pessoas já participam, por outro ainda é frequente o distanciamento da maioria da população de assuntos políticos. Assim, apesar de estudos afirmarem o declínio da vida cívica e da existência de uma crise da democracia participativa, este projeto buscou identificar desafios e potencialidades que grupos sociais que não se percebem ligados à luta pela saúde, poderiam desenvolver para fortalecer o sistema universal, para produção do comum e para se incorporarem na luta pelo direito à saúde. Para tanto foi realizado um estudo qualitativo, transversal, por meio de narrativas de vivências pessoais e familiares sobre a participação em coletivos, o processo-saúde doença, busca de cuidado, prevenção de doenças e promoção da saúde. As entrevistas foram realizadas com três participantes de cada um dos seguintes grupos: religioso, de voluntários de uma Organização Não Governamental (ONG), de prática esportiva e relacionado à luta por moradia. O estudo revelou que apesar da vocalização de uma visão ampla de saúde e qualidade de vida, a saúde representada como uma somatória de decisões individuais. Existe uma percepção de que as políticas neoliberais além de comprometerem a qualidade e o investimento no sistema público de saúde afetam as relações sociais - evidenciadas pelo individualismo e pelo papel encolhido do Estado como provedor de bem-estar social. Contraditoriamente a saúde é vista como um direito e como uma responsabilidade do poder público e a participação nos grupos como mecanismo produtor de cooperação, respeito, transformação individual e coletiva, compromisso, pertencimento e como multiplicadora de princípios. As contradições de uma cidadania colocada em prática neste contexto reafirmam a necessidade de uma redefinição do controle social frente a multiplicidade de crenças e de (des) associação social. / The social participation theme reveals several challenges faced by the need of the subjects\' involvement in political and decision making practices in the Brazilian public health system. It is essential to understand that historical construction and the socio-political context influence the expression and organization of groups that seek to participate in decision-making processes, as well as the role they occupy in the structure of social health policies. Likewise, elements such as citizenship building, solidarity and social interdependence that are fundamental to the formation of a sense of belonging can not be disregarded. If on the one hand we have some mechanisms of participation already institutionalized and in fact some people already participate, on the other hand it is still frequent the detachment of the majority of the population of political subjects. Thus, although studies affirm the decline of civic life and the existence of a crisis of participatory democracy, this project sought to identify challenges and potentialities that social groups that do not perceive themselves as linked to the struggle for health rights could develop to strengthen the universal system, to produce it as a common and to join the claim for the right to health. For that, a qualitative, cross-sectional study was carried out through narratives of personal and family experiences about the participation in collectives, the disease-health process, the search for care, the prevention of diseases and the promotion of health. The interviews were made with three participants from each of the following groups: religious, volunteers from a non-governmental organization (NGO), sports practice and related to the claim for housing. The study revealed that despite the vocalization of a broad view of health and life quality, health is still strongly represented by the sum of individual decisions. There is a perception that neoliberal policies besides compromising quality and investment in the public health system affect social relations - evidenced by individualism and the shrinking role of the state as a provider of social welfare. Contradictory health is seen as a right and as a responsibility of the government and participation in groups as a mechanism for cooperation, respect, individual and collective transformation, commitment, belonging and as a multiplier of principles. The contradictions of a citizenship put into practice in this context reaffirm the need for a reorientation of the social control to the multiplicity of beliefs and social (dis) association.

Este trabalho se inscreve no campo da saúde pública em sua perspectiva interdisciplinar, pois mobiliza conhecimentos oriundos da epidemiologia, do planejamento e das ciências humanas e sociais. Nosso objetivo central foi analisar a viabilidade política do planejamento participativo na Terra Indígena Tirecatinga, DSEI Cuiabá, Estado de Mato Grosso, Brasil. A fundamentação teórica utilizada foi a Teoria do Jogo Social de Carlos Matus que visita e amplia duas outras teorias formuladas pelo autor: a Teoria das Situações e a Teoria da Produção Social. A estratégia metodológica escolhida foi o Estudo de Caso tendo em vista que a formulação de um plano local por meio do planejamento estratégico situacional tratou-se de um caso não significando que o processo e os resultados obtidos poderão ser generalizados para as demais comunidades indígenas do território nacional. Os depoimentos foram submetidos à Análise do Discurso segundo hipóteses de Dominique Mainguenau. Esperamos que o exercício do planejamento em território indígena amplie a compreensão da situação de saúde dos índios que vivem na Terra Indígena Tirecatinga, território adstrito ao DSEI Cuiabá; estenda a compreensão sobre as lógicas de ação que permeiam as práticas dos sujeitos nos espaços de participação social; que o planejamento seja um instrumento de reflexão e mudança para a organização fornecendo subsídios para a institucionalização do mesmo tendo em vista as necessidades dos sujeitos e, sobretudo, promova a reflexividade e a atividade crítica na comunidade indígena participante / This work falls within the field of public health from an interdisciplinary perspective as it mobilizes knowledge from epidemiology, planning and human and social sciences. Our main objective was to analyze the political viability of participatory planning within Tirecatinga Indigenous Territory, DSEI Cuiaba, Mato Grosso, Brazil. The theoretical framework used was the Theory of Social Game by Carlos Matus, created by visiting and extending two other theories formulated by the same author: the Theory of Situations and the Theory of Social Production. The selected methodological strategy was a case study with a view to formulate a local level situational strategic planning used to treat a case. Therefore the process and the results cannot be generalised to other indigenous communities within the national territory. All reports were submitted to Discourse Analysis according to Dominique Mainguenaus hypothesis. We hope that the exercise of planning within indigenous territories can expand the understanding of the health status of Indians living within Tirecatinga Indigenous Territorry, a territory attached to the DSEI Cuiabá; extend the understanding of the logic of action that permeates the practices of the subjects in the spaces of social participation; that planning can be used as a reflection tool and promote changes to the organization providing support for the institutionalization from a perspective which recognizes the needs of individuals and, above all, promote reflexivity and critical activity within the participating indigenous community