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Monthly Archives: December 2017

Finding out about Blogging for Impact

Posted on 6 December, 2017 by Eve
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Lucille Valentine from Newcastle Business School attended a recent joint ESRC IAA event held in Durham University with Professor Colin Talbot on Blogging for Impact. Here she tells us the main messages from the afternoon.

Colin Talbot’s message is clear: blogging is a long-term project and ultimately the impact depends on the followers and the reach of those followers. There is no quick hit to be had. So, when his blog, like that of other researchers, is used to discuss parts of his research findings because smaller research slices can be released by blog, the impact depends on how many and of what sorts of people get to read it and what they do in response to reading. And it takes a while to build a following.
In his case he has been building blog readers and Twitter followers, LinkedIn connections and Facebook followers for at least ten years.

The blog needs to be read by influencers in your field and by interested people beyond your immediate circle. He himself actively promotes new blogs through all his connected social media channels and he recommends asking influential connections to promote / retweet a few important blogs a year. Of course, material is not just research, he also discusses other people’s work, he links to his publications in other places, he does book reviews and, well, I guess that it is easy enough to check the range yourself. He is easy enough to find.

The blog is not the source of the impact, rather it can be the start point. It sometimes leads to invitations to share the longer work behind the blog, to write for newspapers and present to policymakers. Further to this it has happened to himself and to colleagues that a short blog – possibly on a topical issue but based on research – is picked up by someone in the news and amplified. In this way, what started as a blog has led to a request for a longer response and has, in a short space of time, led to requests to present to government select committees and the world bank.

Should the whole world be your goal? No. If you work in a narrow field but everyone in that field follows you then you have 100% impact,  so the blog should appeal to them.

Can blogging be controversial? Yes. Academics may try and bite into your material. But you should be aware of the audience of the blog and this can mean that the material is not academically written and does not cover all the angles. In a recent example, he wrote a blog to explain, in plain English, what is missing from the budget. When he was lambasted by another academic he could cope and tell them to “read my book on the topic” and let it rest there because he knows what the purpose of the blog was.

You can find Colin’s blog here and many thanks to Lucille for contributing to ours!

Posted in ESRC Impact Acceleration Account, Events, Uncategorized | Tagged blogging, Impact, writing | Leave a reply

Helping to bridge the generational gap

Posted on 1 December, 2017 by Eve
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Dr Tony Young tells us about how a new app ‘Ticket to Talk’ developed through funding from the ESRC IAA, is helping young carers communicate to people living with dementia

Earlier research I’d done found that young people – especially teenagers with care responsibilities for older relatives – would benefit greatly from access to resources, information and tools that enable them to increase their confidence and skills for communicating with people living with dementia. It also found that the content and resources available in DemTalk, an existing advice package, provides a useful starting point however it also identified a number of barriers to using the resource for this age group for example that the primary mode of accessing the internet for teenage participants was via smartphones. The advice offered did not always map fully onto younger people’s experiences of, and needs related to, dementia care and so Ticket to Talk was born.

The team worked with a local charity Youth Focus North East (YFNE) to co-design and co-develop a new app that enables young people – especially young carers – to access the resources and information in DemTalk, contributing their own perspectives and experiences to the content and to privately share their experiences with other DemTalk users. During this process we also engaged other groups to get their feedback too. We have spoken to carer services from Northumberland Council to publicise the work done so far. We also talked at a North East Dementia Alliance event in order to raise awareness of the work. Ideas informing DemTalk in general, and the App in particular also featured in the recent Newcastle University Massive Open Online Course ‘staying connected and living well with dementia’ where possible we want to generate conversations about dementia and help all those affected by it.

Workshop co-designing the ticket to talk app with Youth Focus North East

Ticket to Talk hopes to encourage conversation between younger people and grandparents, friends or people they care for who are experiencing dementia. The app is designed to help collect and curate digital media (”tickets”) to be used to prompt and stimulate talk, conversation and reminiscence between younger people and those they are close to with dementia.

After a tremendous amount of hard work from everyone involved we are delighted that the new app, available for Apple and Android platforms is now available for free. The underlying source code is also available, so it can be downloaded by as many people as possible. Starting conversations can be hard for anyone caring for those living with dementia, we hope this app is a way of making that process a bit easier.

Find out more about the app here and the latest work of Youth Focus North East here

Posted in ESRC Impact Acceleration Account | Tagged app, carers, communities, dementia, ESRC IAA, Impact, ticket to talk, young people, youth forcus north east | Leave a reply

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