Introduction : L'aphasie, un trouble de la communication dû à des lésions cérébrales, entraîne des limitations dans la vie quotidienne et un isolement social. Même après une réadaptation orthophonique, de nombreuses personnes continuent de rencontrer des difficultés, affectant aussi leurs proches. Des organisations communautaires proposant des activités artistiques, comme le théâtre, visent à améliorer la réadaptation et la réintégration sociale des personnes vivant avec une aphasie (PVA). Le Théâtre Aphasique (TA) au Québec est un exemple intéressant à étudier pour élargir nos connaissances sur ce sujet. Objectifs: L’objectif principal de notre étude est d’explorer les retombées d’activités communautaires de nature théâtrale pour les PVA ainsi que leurs proches en utilisant le TA comme étude de cas. Nous cherchons également à identifier les éléments clés qui contribuent au succès de cet organisme. Méthodologie : L'étude a adopté une méthodologie de recherche qualitative basée sur un paradigme interprétatif. Elle a impliqué la réalisation de deux tables rondes ainsi que six entretiens individuels avec des PVA et un entretien de groupe avec des proches. Au total, dix PVA, six proches et quatre intervenants ont participé à notre étude. Les transcriptions des entretiens ont été soumises à une analyse qualitative inductive du contenu. Résultats : L’analyse nous a permis de développer 49 codes qui ont été regroupés en 12 sous- thèmes, à savoir les recommandations par le personnel de la santé, l’espoir, le lieu artistique, le lieu de socialisation inclusif, les caractéristiques des personnes, l'apprentissage, la valorisation, le plaisir, la complicité entre les participants, l'engagement, les effets thérapeutiques (espérés et attendus), et l'amélioration de la participation sociale. Ces sous-thèmes ont été ensuite regroupés en 4 thèmes finaux : leviers, composantes et caractéristiques, mécanismes et retombées. Enfin, ces thèmes ont été interconnectés pour former un modèle logique du TA. Conclusion : Le Théâtre Aphasique semble être plus qu’une simple activité de loisirs. Il semble répondre à des besoins des PVA et de leurs proches et génère des résultats positifs. / Introduction: Aphasia, a communication disorder resulting from brain injuries, leads to limitations in daily life and social isolation. Even after speech therapy rehabilitation, many individuals continue to face challenges, affecting also their relatives. Community organizations offering artistic activities, such as theater, aim to enhance the rehabilitation and social reintegration of people with aphasia (PWA). Le Théâtre Aphasique (TA) in Quebec serves as an interesting case study to expand our knowledge on this topic. Objectives: The primary goal of our study is to explore the impact of community-based theatrical activities on PWA and their families, using TA as a case study. We also aim to identify key elements contributing to the organization's success. Methodology: The study employed a qualitative research methodology based on an interpretive paradigm. It involved conducting two focus group discussions as well as six individual interviews with PWA and one group interview with their family members. In total, ten PWA, six family members, and four caregivers participated in our study. Transcripts of the interviews underwent inductive qualitative content analysis. Results: Our analysis allowed us to develop 49 codes grouped into 12 subthemes, including recommendations by healthcare personnel, hope, artistic space, inclusive socialization space, individuals’ characteristics, learning, valorization, enjoyment, complicity between participants, engagement, therapeutic effects (hoped and expected), and improved social participation. These subthemes were then grouped into four final themes: levers, components and features, mechanisms, and outcomes. These themes are interconnected to form a logical model of TA. Conclusion: The Théâtre Aphasique seems to go beyond a mere leisure activity, addressing some needs of PWA and their families, resulting in positive outcomes.

The evolution of the Internet has connected people worldwide through various social media applications (i.e. Facebook, Instagram). One of which is the trending and controversial social media platform known for its short-form content, TikTok. Additionally, social capital theory pertains to a person's capacity to acquire benefits and valuable goods through meaningful social relationships and group affiliations. This quantitative study explores how the emergence of TikTok impacts social capital theory among young adults. The respondents were 18 to 25-year-olds who use TikTok (N = 490). The findings demonstrate that TikTok cultivates trust in content creators' authenticity and credibility, fostering meaningful interactions and communication dynamics among users. Interactions on TikTok, including likes, comments, and shares, serve as expressions of social support. Users engage actively by creating and sharing short videos, participating in trends and challenges, and directly interacting with content creators. This research contributes to our understanding of digital social interactions and highlights the importance of tailored engagement strategies to enhance social capital in online environments.

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.