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The term telemedicine is broadly defined as the use of information and communication technology to deliver health care at a distance. However, the concept of ‘telemedicine’ still lacks consensus both in the literature and in practice. Generation of telemedicine knowledge and evidence for clinical practice is still controversial within the telemedicine scholarship and among decision-makers as telemedicine objectives remain ill-defined and outcomes vary in time. In Ontario, despite the fast pace of information and communication technology change and the increased interest in its health applications, telemedicine is not a mainstream model of care delivery within the medical system. This study empirically investigates the social construction of telemedicine technologies to understand how telemedicine expectations shaped telemedicine in Ontario (Canada) from 1993 to 2017. Drawing from the Social Construction of Technologies framework (SCOT) and historical narrative analytical techniques, it identifies the shared understandings of what telemedicine is (and is not) and what role telemedicine plays in the health care system. I used grounded theory methodology to develop a narrative theory of how the future of telemedicine in Ontario has been constructed over the last 24 years from national newspaper articles, stakeholder documents, service provider websites, and semi-structured interviews with relevant telemedicine stakeholders. Findings show that the development of telemedicine narratives in Ontario is a multi-storied process of conflicting and overlapping visions and expectations among stakeholders and interests. Telemedicine expectations focus mostly on the process of innovation, the provideroriented approach to telemedicine, and the advantages and risks of adopting consumercontrolled telemedicine in a publicly insured health care system. The telemedicine visions result fragmented among different stakeholders and practices, overall inhibiting telemedicine’s future agenda. These findings intend to help researchers, policy makers, private vendors, and health care providers to create a vision of telemedicine that accommodates competing expectations among the clinical, technical, political, and commercial worlds. / Thesis / Doctor of Science (PhD) / Telemedicine delivers health care at a distance by letting doctors talk to patients or other doctors via video, email, or text messages. However, as simple as this idea is, researchers, physicians, policy-makers, and entrepreneurs have speculative, overlapping, and conflicting views about what it should be. These differing views create ambiguity and often confuse the aims of health policy decision-makers and end-users limiting telemedicine’s development. I intend to clarify telemedicine’s shared and diverging understandings of what telemedicine should be by analyzing how stakeholders in Ontario have told and tell stories about telemedicine’s future over the last three decades. I view stories of the technology’s future as persuasive policy arguments that stakeholders adopt to shape and use telemedicine according to their visions and goals. These findings will help researchers, policy-makers, doctors, and businesspeople understand what telemedicine is (and is not) to help them define policies and guidelines for its adoption and implementation.

Disordered eating in men is said to be uncommon with men forming less than ten per cent of reported cases. Yet it has been suggested that the number of males with eating disorders is beginning to increase, affecting more men than ever before. This presents problems for healthcare services that have created previous models of support around women. Current research offers pathological and epidemiological data, including information about testing men for eating disorders using male-centred instruments. However, understanding is aetiolated due to a focus on medical accounts of male disordered eating, rather than focusing on the stories that men themselves have to tell. This exploratory qualitative study addresses this problem by focusing on men’s stories of disordered eating. Four men share their accounts of living with an eating disorder and these are analysed using a hermeneutic approach, in order to glean insights into their experiences with food, body and self. These insights include an examination of the meaning of fat male bodies, analysis of the phenomenon of gender ambivalence that prevails in men with disordered eating and the fragmented and colonised nature of the male eating disordered self. These represent an original contribution to understanding as they have not been considered elsewhere in the literature to date. Additionally, an extensive analysis of the male eating disorder literature, use of a hermeneutic methodology and the positioning of male eating disorders within the context of masculinities studies further add to the novel value of this research.

This comparative case study examining epidemiological practices in Vietnam and the US revealed three pandemic influenza paradoxes: The paradox of attribution which asserts that pandemic influenza comes exclusively from Asia even though historical evidence points to the contrary; the paradox of prevention which encourages industrial methods (i.e., factory farming) for combating influenza even though there is conflicting evidence for any superiority of this method in terms of means of production or disease prevention; and the paradox of action where epidemiologists act in ways not consistent with prevailing epidemiological recommendations.  The existence of these paradoxes may, in fact, impede efforts at stopping and preventing pandemic influenza.  In order to find the root causes of these paradoxes, this study examined indigenous media and historical and contemporary research reports on pandemic influenza.  This archival information was juxtaposed to viewpoints garnered from ethnographic interviews with epidemiologists who have worked in Vietnam, the United States, or in both countries.  This study found that these paradoxes endure because of the dual nature of science " the known and the unknown elements of current knowledge " and assumptions made between the two.  The dual nature of science describes both the information that has been codified and information that has not been codified and the implications between the two. In other words, in between the spaces of known information, there are attempts to fill in the gaps in knowledge, which results in paradoxes. Of particular importance in this gap-filling process are the three "C's" of collaboration, conflict, and competition.  Collaboration is integral to the successful prevention of influenza pandemics; however, it is this same collaboration wherein which epidemiologists are trained to be so highly specialized that they often depend on unvetted external expert information.  Conflict and competition occur from the geopolitical level all they way down to the level of the individual epidemiologist and are influenced by the political and scientific economy along with social and cultural factors. / Ph. D.

The goal of this research project is to tell the story of acquisition expertise development within the DOD using the evolution of the Defense Acquisition University as its backdrop. It is a story about the persistent frame that claims expertise leads to acquisition success. It is about 40 plus years of competing perspectives of how best to acquire that expertise and their shaping effects. It is about technology choices amidst cultural and political conflict. It is about how budget, users, infrastructure, existing and emerging technologies, identity and geography all interrelate as elements within the technology of expertise development. Finally, it is about how at various times in the evolution of the Defense Acquisition University the technologies of tacit knowledge transfer have been elevated or diminished. / Ph. D.

Environmental quality is a construct that has currency at the interface between science and policy—it is used both to describe current conditions as well as prescribe desired future conditions. However, environmental quality has a multiplicity of definitions, owing to: a) the fact that there are a number of terms (or "sub constructs") taken to be synonymous with environmental quality (i.e. environmental health, sustainability, biodiversity, integrity, and the like), and b) the fact that each of these sub constructs, in turn, have multiple meanings. Many in the field of natural sciences have been working on this problem of ambiguity—attempting to develop precise and powerful definitions. Still others argue that environmental quality is a concept open to societal negotiation (in addition to scientific discovery). In this thesis, I argue that environmental quality can be understood and discussed by examining understandings of Nature and evaluations for Nature that seem to contribute to the ambiguity of meanings and outcomes for environmental quality. To reach these conclusions, I interviewed 24 stakeholders who represented a broad range of concerns about and interests in environmental quality on private forest land in Southwest Virginia. I reviewed nearly 300 pages of interview text, looking for emerging themes and structures from their hour-long (on average) discussions of environmental quality. I found that among these 24 stakeholders, there were indeed, many ways of defining environmental quality (i.e. health, biodiversity, site productivity, et cetera). Additionally, I found that these different definitions for environmental quality seem to correlate with different understandings of Nature (what is Nature like?) and different values for Nature (how should Nature be used?) I conclude by discussing these implications, using examples from forestry outreach and extension. / Master of Science

The cultural paradigm shift from modernism to postmodernism offers challenges and opportunities to the church to develop pastoral practises that address the changing needs of members of congregations. In my research I follow a contextual approach to the study of theology. I describe the context of postmodernism and how the church manages its pastoral practises in this context. The social construction discourse and narrative epistemology offer new perspectives on how appropriate pastoral practises can be established within this context. I research the possible ways in which the social construction discourse and narrative epistemology can contribute to three key areas of congregational pastoral practices, namely preaching, group work and pastoral visiting. My research highlights the important contribution that members of a congregation can make in the process of constructing narrative pastoral practises that will assist them to story their lives in the context of the Great Story of God. The fusion of the life stories of the faithful with the Great Story of God inspires them to describe their life stories in rich and more fulfilling ways. In the process of this research, I endeavoured to make audible the input of as many of those that contributed to the construction of new narratiewe pastoral practises. I have accordingly included their contribution more comprehensively than would normally be done. / Practical Theology / D.Th. (Practical Theology - specialising in Pastoral Therapy)

The cultural paradigm shift from modernism to postmodernism offers challenges and opportunities to the church to develop pastoral practises that address the changing needs of members of congregations. In my research I follow a contextual approach to the study of theology. I describe the context of postmodernism and how the church manages its pastoral practises in this context. The social construction discourse and narrative epistemology offer new perspectives on how appropriate pastoral practises can be established within this context. I research the possible ways in which the social construction discourse and narrative epistemology can contribute to three key areas of congregational pastoral practices, namely preaching, group work and pastoral visiting. My research highlights the important contribution that members of a congregation can make in the process of constructing narrative pastoral practises that will assist them to story their lives in the context of the Great Story of God. The fusion of the life stories of the faithful with the Great Story of God inspires them to describe their life stories in rich and more fulfilling ways. In the process of this research, I endeavoured to make audible the input of as many of those that contributed to the construction of new narratiewe pastoral practises. I have accordingly included their contribution more comprehensively than would normally be done. / Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology / D.Th. (Practical Theology - specialising in Pastoral Therapy)

Migration is a phenomenon which has strong impact on the Czech Republic. The Czech Republic is currently under transformation from transit country to immigration country. At the present time the situation is even more complicated because of the migrant crises which impact all of us. I suppose that the Members of Parliament will create social constructions or narratives about migrants during the sitting of parliament. I aim to identify social constructions of migrants that are created by the Czech political parties represented in the Chamber of Deputies since the 2013 election. I will divide social construction into two main groups. Ones belong to migrants and the other ones to refugees. I would like to find out if there are more positive or negative social constructions and how are benefits and punishments distributed to these groups. I would like to discover key narratives of particular political negotiation as well. Theoretical background of this thesis is the social construction of target population theory of Anne Schneider and Helen Ingram. In the manner of Lina Newton's article "It is not a question of being anti-immigrant: Categories of deservedness in immigration policy making", I will use a combination of discursive and narrative analysis as the main method. I will analyse statements and...

This studies aim was to understand and analyze how social workers in family law constructs risk assessments. Furthermore the study aimed to describe social workers in family laws perspective on the construction of risk assessment. To achieve the goals of this study qualitative interviews was used. In total six social workers was interviewed which all worked with family law in social services. To understand how the social workers constructed the risk assessments a theory from social constructivism was used, namely the institutional theory by Berger and Luckmann. The results show that the procedure of how the risk assessment was similarly executed, the social workers gathered information and then they weighted the information. Though there was a difference in how they gathered the information and how they weighted the information. The main discovery of this study is however that according to the informants the construction of a risk assessment is influenced by seven factors, and these factors could be located on three levels from individual to workplace and to the law and Socialstyrelse. Depending on which level the factor was located it made a difference on how the factor was incorporated to the construction of the risk assessment.