You should aim for approximately 250 words under each heading (but you may wish to align your word count with the marks allocated to each heading).
Here are some suggested questions to guide your writing. Do not simply cut and paste them and write your answers. That would be just going through the motions and would not show that you have independently thought about the assignment.
Preparation (30 marks)
What was the purpose of tutorial 1?
What was the scope of the required preparation?
What research/readings did you choose to focus on and why?
Participation (20 marks)
What learning exercises were covered in tutorials?
What was discussed in your group/s and what good ideas were generated?
What and how did you contribute to the group/class discussions (based on your preparation and in- class activities)?
Reflection (40 marks)
Note: this is reflection your on your learning (not other students’ learning).
What do you know now that you didn’t know before this tutorial?
How did ‘active learning’ contribute to your understanding of social research methods (so far)?
Did you learn anything about how you learn (related to social research methods)?
How to you put your learning in context – where you are now and what you would like to learn / will be learning in the coming weeks?
Was what you learned /are learning in about social research methods as you expected? What has surprised you?
1 Using texts to prevent deliberate self-harm and suicide – Western Sydney’s SMS SOS Project A trial of SMS text messages to prevent suicide and deliberate self-harm in Western Sydney Could something as simple as a text message prevent people from harming themselves and save lives? Every day, around eight Australians take their own lives and a further 74 will be hospitalised after deliberately harming themselves.1 For many who attempt suicide, a visit to the emergency department will be an important door to crucial mental health care. The SMS SOS study will be conducted in the emergency departments of Westmead, Blacktown/Mt Druitt, and Nepean hospitals. Half of the patients who present after harming themselves will receive specialised care and treatment plus regular personalised supportive text messages. Each text will contain words of support and contact numbers to counselling support services. The study, conducted by researchers from the University of Wollongong, Western Sydney University, The University of Sydney, and Newcastle University, in association with NSW Health, builds on the findings of a previous study conducted a decade ago in Newcastle. 2 That study showed that sending simple postcards through the mail to people who came to an emergency department after harming themselves reduced the likelihood of future self-harm. Most people have a mobile phone in Australia, so SMS text messaging provides a tool for almost instant communication. For some teenagers and young adults, SMS is the preferred means of communication. Text messaging has also been found to be beneficial in changing other health behaviours related to Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. 3 The study will examine the number and timing of re-presentations for deliberate self-harm among individuals receiving standard care compared to those who receive standard care plus supportive SMS messages every 1–2 months for one year, following their discharge from hospital. The SMS SOS Project will build on existing post-hospital care where staff work with the person, their family, carers and other services to provide coordinated support. Researchers expect that people who receive texts will have fewer re-presentations. SMS text messages may provide an effective, practical, low-cost, easily delivered form of follow-up that will assist in our efforts to prevent deliberate self-harm and suicide. The research is funded by, and receives operational support from, both Western Sydney Local Health District (LHD) and Nepean Blue Mountains LHD. For more information contact: Dr Manish Anand, Senior Staff Specialist in Psychiatry, Westmead Hospital, [preferred contact], Trent Hammond, Research Officer 0431 931 448, or Garry Stevens, Project Advisor [contact no.] 11 Mindframe, citing Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) 2015 Causes of Death data: http://www.mindframe-media.info/for- media/reporting-suicide/facts-and-stats . 2 Carter GL, Clover K, Whyte IM, Dawson AH, D'Este C. Postcards from the EDge: 24-month outcomes of a randomised controlled trial for hospital-treated self-poisoning. British Journal of Psychiatry 2007; 191: 548-553. 3 Chow CK, Redfern J, Hillis GS, Thakkar J, Santo K, Hackett ML, Jan S, Graves N, de Keizer L, Barry T, Bompoint S, Stepien S, Whittaker R, Rodgers A, Thiagalingam A. Effect of Lifestyle-Focused Text Messaging on Risk Factor Modification in Patients With Coronary Heart Disease. A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA. 2015;314(12):1255–1263. http://www.mindframe-media.info/for-media/reporting-suicide/facts-and-stats http://www.mindframe-media.info/for-media/reporting-suicide/facts-and-stats Privates in the online public: Sex(ting) and reputation on social media new media & society 2016, Vol. 18(11) 2723 –2739 © The Author(s) 2015 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1461444815604133 nms.sagepub.com Privates in the online public: Sex(ting) and reputation on social media Michael Salter Western Sydney University, Australia Abstract Drawing on focus group research, this article examines the impact of norms of publicity and privacy on young people as they negotiate technologically mediated intimate and peer relations. This article argues that digital images of bodies circulate online in manner that reinforces gender inequalities, as the public feminine body is conflated with pornography in contrast to the range of meanings that can append to the public masculine body. While the exposed female body was subject to pejorative ascriptions of sexual promiscuity, the exposed masculine body could serve a range of purposes, including its deployment in sexual harassment. Young people tended to ignore male perpetration and hold girls and women responsible for managing the risks of online abuse. The article underscores the need for a ‘critical pedagogy’ of online abuse, but it also argues that social media is rendering the homosociality and misogynist strains of online publics visible and therefore contestable. Keywords Abuse, femininities, gender, harassment, masculinities, pornography, reputation, sexting, social media, youth Introduction Social media is the first mass media platform in history where girls and women partici- pate at equal or greater levels than boys and men as content producers, distributers and consumers (Ahn, 2011). This has enabled girls and women to access alternative forms of Corresponding author: Michael Salter, School of Social Sciences and Psychology, Western Sydney University, Locked Bag 1797, Penrith, NSW, 2751, Australia. Email:
[email protected] 604133 NMS0010.1177/1461444815604133new media & societySalter research-article2015 Article http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1177%2F1461444815604133&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2015-09-07 2724 new media & society 18(11) social support, develop new modes and forms of communication and become critically engaged with issues that concern them (Hasinoff, 2013). However, the widespread pres- ence of girls and women on social media has sparked concern over their vulnerability to harm and abuse online. Threats and warnings of sexual violence have historically demar- cated the public sphere as unsuitable for girls and women, effectively privatising femi- ninity by constructing the private and domestic sphere as the safest and most appropriate place for girls and women (Gordon and Riger, 1989). This pattern continues in the age of social media with frequent warnings to female users not to be too public or immodest online in order to reduce the risk of sexual harm or reputational damage (Albury and Crawford, 2012). Questions of gender, privacy and publicity are therefore deeply impli- cated in debates over girls’ and women’s online safety and their participation in the unfolding publics generated by new media technologies. Drawing on focus groups with young people aged 18–20 years, this article examines the impact of norms of publicity and privacy on young people as they negotiate techno- logically mediated intimate and peer relations. The article describes how digital images of bodies circulate online in a manner that reinforces gender inequalities, as the public feminine body is narrowly conflated with pornography in contrast to the range of mean- ings that can append to the public masculine body. The exposed feminine body online thus becomes the focal point for pejorative ascriptions of sexual promiscuity and aberra- tion, while the exposed masculine body serves a range of purposes, including its deploy- ment in sexual harassment and intimidation. While these gender differentials were frequently identified by focus group participants, young people struggled to account for them through their preferred vocabulary of gender neutrality and individual choice and tended to hold girls and women responsible for managing the risks of online abuse. The article underscores the need for a ‘critical pedagogy’ of online abuse (Ringrose, 2011), but it also argues that social media is rendering the misogynist strains of online publics visible and therefore contestable. Publicity, privacy and gender on social media Feminist scholarship has generally located the ‘private sphere’ in the family and home, defining the realm of politics, economic exchange and civil society as ‘public’ (Davidoff, 2003). For Davidoff (2003), this reflects key historical trends into the 20th century that resulted in the gender-polarised domains of family and work in Anglo European coun- tries. While the resultant public/private divide was a regulatory ideal rather than a strictly enforced principle, it resulted in the marginalisation of women from the terrain of social and political debate in liberal democracies otherwise known as the ‘public sphere’ (Habermas, 1989). An ‘overriding element in modern masculinity at every social level has been the expected and legitimate connection’ with the public sphere (Davidoff, 2003: 17), but women and children have historically been characterised as the natural denizens of the private sphere and unsuited to the rigours of public life (Pateman, 1988). Hence, respectable femininity has been associated with privacy, while masculinity has been attributed to both public and private aspects, granting boys and men an ease of move- ment from private into public spaces and dialogue that is not shared by girls and women (Davidoff, 2003: 19). Salter 2725 Feminine sexuality has been a point of focus within the gendered ideology of the public/private divide. In the Anglo European countries of the 18th and 19th centuries, the partitioning of the ‘good’ chaste woman in the private sphere was juxtaposed to the sup- posed amorality and promiscuity of the ‘public’ woman (Landes, 1998). The very phrase ‘public woman’ in Western culture has historically been an ‘epithet for one who was seen as the dregs of society, vile, unclean’ and associated with prostitution (Matthews, 1992: 4). While the women’s movement has advanced a sophisticated critique of the gendered ideology of the public/private divide, populist responses to feminist activism have com- plicated but not displaced these simplistic dichotomies (McRobbie, 2008). The mass media is now host to highly sexualised depictions of public femininities as evidence of female advancement that, nonetheless, retain older and more pejorative associations with promiscuity and sexual availability (Gill, 2012). This reflects the incompatible demand that girls and young women should not be ‘sluts’ (i.e. too public about their sexuality and desires) but should also not be ‘prudes’ (or too private about their sexuality and desires) (Tolman, 2002: 119–120). These contradictions are evident on social media, where cultural constructions of (hetero)sexualised femininities provide particularly salient modes of self-display for girls and young women online (Renold and Ringrose, 2011), against the persistent view