Journal articles: 'Online, vivienda' – Grafiati (2024)

Abstract:

Modern collective housing generated an urban-architectural design paradigm, which incorporated spaces whose design promoted, following modern architects, health and hygiene through the circulation of clean air, natural lighting and ventilation inside dwellings, as well as in the shared spaces and those where people move around, characteristic of this housing typology. These design elements seem to be useful to reduce the spread of the SarsCov2 virus, that is currently affecting the entire world. Field and online work was carried out with the inhabitants of the CUPA, a housing complex representative of modern architecture in Mexico City, to verify this assumption. Using volumetric reconstructions and online questionnaires, the design elements that embody modern ideals, aimed at ensuring healthy indoor and outdoor spaces, were analysed. The usefulness of the collective facilities, public spaces and the design of the four housing typologies found within the, were assessed. The results of the study and the absence of COVID-19 cases in CUPA help to prove the validity that modern architecture has regained during the global pandemic, as well as the importance of the lessons from the past to integrate new design paradigms for a post-Covid architecture.

Abstract:

En este artículo realizamos un análisis socio-demográfico y bibliométrico de Revista INVI, publicación periódica del Instituto de la Vivienda de la Universidad de Chile, basándonos en métodos propios y en la literatura disponible, con el propósito de identificar los niveles de productividad, citación e internacionalización de la revista, entre otros. El período seleccionado va entre los años 2009 y 2016, que corresponde al de su ingreso y permanencia en el índice SciELO, (Scientific electronic library online) que desde ya nos asegura indicadores internacionales de los grandes consorcios. El análisis pormenorizado de sus artículos originales, en base a indicadores de actividad, características de sus autores, referencias bibliográficas y algunos indicadores de impacto, entrega información valiosa para apreciar la evolución y el desarrollo específico de la producción científica en la Revista.

Abstract:

The prolonged social distancing caused by the Covid-19 pandemic represents an unprecedented condition that has severely impacted on the different aspects of public and private life in Mexico. One of the most affected areas is the role of housing and its habitability. In a very short time, homes have become a place of work, a school, and sometimes a medical care facility. This article exposes the importance of the inhabitant's bond with their home and the habitability that is reconfigured in the social conditions imposed by the current health crisis. We believe that preventive isolation can contribute to containing contagions if the living conditions encourage to the collaboration of citizens. The methodology consists of a case study carried out in Culiacán, one of the Mexican cities most affected by the pandemic. The analysis is derived from the statistical processing of an online survey, applied in two times to the target population. In the first, 231 questionnaires were processed as a filter and in the second 50, which contained the most significant topics on the subject.

Abstract:

La afectación y adaptación al cambio climático es un fenómeno que agudiza los problemas sociales ya existentes. Por ello en el presente estudio se analizó e identifico la percepción de la susceptibilidad social ante el cambio climático en el cantón Portoviejo de la provincia de Manabí, Ecuador. La evaluación de la percepción se analizó a través de componentes sociales, económicos y ecológicos. Se realizó un estudio cuantitativo, descriptivo y analítico basado en encuestas vía online para recabar información sobre la susceptibilidad por servicios básicos, susceptibilidad por ingresos económicos y susceptibilidad por vivienda. Los resultados arrojaron que la susceptibilidad dio como consecuencia que la población en general se verá afectada por este fenómeno y que el mayor impacto recaerá sobre las familias que son de escasos recursos económicos por la poca capacidad de adaptación y de conocimiento hacia este fenómeno.

Abstract:

Cada sociedad tiene su cultura específica, aquí inciden varios aspectos como el medio circulante, la forma de apropiarse de los recursos, etc. En definitiva, lo que permite que haya una cultura particular para cada sociedad, es el hecho de que cada pueblo tiene su historia a lo largo de la cual se conforma su cultura con rasgos propios. En todos los lugares los hombres tienen que satisfacer ciertas necesidades básicas para subsistir como el alimento, el abrigo, la vivienda, pero estas necesidades no se pueden satisfacer de manera individual sino en grupo. Esto implica el organizarse, el relacionarse con otra persona, otra de las necesidades comunes a todos los grupos es la educación de los niños. Todos los aspectos comunes en todas las culturas en diversas manifestaciones, se hallan interrelacionados y son coherentes entre sí. Toda cultura tiene un cierto grado de integración y forma un todo. El Marketing Digital, llamado mercadotecnia online, es el uso de Internet y las redes sociales con el objetivo de mejorar la comercialización de un producto o servicio. Es importante anotar que el marketing digital es un complemento del marketing tradicional no un sustituto. Hoy el marketing online se está moviendo cada vez más hacia la personalización, es decir, entregando el mensaje correcto a la persona adecuada en el momento adecuado.

Abstract:

ABSTRACT Objective: bringing to pass an integrative review of the literature on Therapeutic Residential Services (SRT) in Brazil. Method: the research was performed on the Latin American and Caribbean of Health Sciences Information System (LILACS) and Scientific Electronic Library On-line (SCIELO) database, from 2002 to 2009 period, using the descriptors Assisted Living Facilities, Mental Health Services and Desinstitutionalization, 13 articles having been included. Results: the highlights were publications in nursing journals, inferring nursing concern with the subject. Two thematic currents were developed: Therapeutic Residential Services - factors that interfere with their deployment and operation; the SRT and the influence of its actors. Conclusion: the establishment, implementation and experiences of SRT in the national setting meet the peculiarities of each region by the psychiatric reform process experienced. The break up with the old asylum model care represents a difficult task, not happening at the same time and similarly in all regions, because it involves socioeconomic and, especially, cultural issues. Descriptors: assisted living facilities; mental health; mental health services; deinstitutionalization; health care.RESUMOObjetivo: realizar uma revisão integrativa da literatura sobre os Serviços Residenciais Terapêuticos (SRT) no Brasil. Método: a busca foi realizada na base de dados Literatura Latino-Americana e do Caribe em Ciências da Saúde (LILACS) e Scientific Electronic Library Online (SCIELO), período 2002 a 2009, a partir dos descritores Moradias Assistidas, Serviços de Saúde Mental e Desinstitucionalização, sendo incluídos 13 artigos. Resultados: destacaram-se as publicações em periódicos de enfermagem, inferindo preocupação da enfermagem com a temática. Foram construídos dois eixos temáticos: Serviços Residenciais Terapêuticos - fatores que interferem em sua implantação e funcionamento; O SRT e a influência de seus atores. Conclusão: a implantação, a implementação e as experiências dos SRT no cenário nacional obedecem a peculiaridades de cada região, mediante o processo de Reforma Psiquiátrica vivenciado. O rompimento com o antigo modelo manicomial representa uma difícil tarefa, não acontece ao mesmo tempo e de forma semelhante em todas as regiões, pois envolve questões socioeconômicas, e, principalmente, culturais. Descritores: moradias assistidas; saúde mental; serviços de saúde mental; desinstitucionalização; atenção à saúde. RESUMENObjetivo: realizar una revisión integradora de la literatura sobre Servicios Residenciales Terapéuticos (SRT) en Brasil. Método: se realizó una búsqueda en la base de datos Sistema Latinoamericano y del Caribe de Información en Ciencias de la Salud (LILACS) y Scientific Electronic Library Online (SCIELO), desde 2002 hasta 2009, con los descriptores vivienda asistida, Servicios de Salud Mental y la desinstitucionalización, e incluía 13 artículos. Resultados: los destaques fueron las publicaciones en revistas de enfermería, infiriendo preocupación de enfermería con el tema. Se construyó dos temas: los servicios residenciales terapéuticos - factores que interfieren con su implementación y explotación; el SRT y la influencia de sus actores. Conclusión: La creación, implementación y experiencias de los SRT en el panorama nacional obedecen las peculiaridades de cada región por el proceso de reforma psiquiátrica experimentado. La ruptura con el antiguo modelo manicomial representa una tarea difícil, no ocurre al mismo tiempo y de manera similar en todas las regiones, ya que involucra cuestiones socioeconómicas y, sobre todo, culturales. Descriptores: instituciones de vida asistida; salud mental; servicios de salud mental; desinstitucionalización; atención a la salud.

Abstract:

O enfermeiro desempenha um papel desafiador no tratamento da mulher soropositiva, pois contribui no combate desta patologia através de sua capacitação e ao apoio emocional à mulher diagnosticada. Este estudo tem como objetivo descrever a assistência do enfermeiro e visão que o enfermeiro tem sobre o cuidado à puérpera soropositiva e a implementação das ações de prevenção da transmissão vertical do HIV no alojamento conjunto. Foi realizada uma Revisão de literatura de artigos científicos, no período de 2007 a 2017. Os artigos foram obtidos através das bases de dados: como Scielo (Scientific Eletrônic Library Online) e LILACS e Ministério da Saúde (MS), utilizando-se os seguintes descritores: Assistência, Gestante, HIV. De acordo com os critérios de inclusão e exclusão, 24 publicações foram relacionadas no estudo. A partir desta revisão integrativa da literatura será possível propiciar aos profissionais da saúde uma melhor compreensão a respeito do enfermeiro na assistência à puérpera com HIV no alojamento conjunto.Descritores: Assistência, Gestante, HIV. Nursing assistants obstetric to puerpera with HIV in joint accommodationAbstract: Nurses play a challenging role in the treatment of HIV-positive women, as it contributes to combating this pathology through their training and emotional support to the diagnosed woman. This study aims to describe the nurse's care and vision that the nurse has about the care of the HIV-positive puerpera and the implementation of actions to prevent vertical transmission of HIV in the housing. A literature review of scientific articles was carried out from 2007 to 2017. The articles were obtained through databases such as Scielo (Scientific Electronic Library Online) and LILACS, Ministry of Health (MS), using the following descriptors: Assistance, Pregnant Woman, HIV. According to the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 24 publications were included in the study. From this integrative review of the literature, it will be possible to provide health professionals with a better understanding of the role of nurses the puerperal patient with AIDS in the joint accommodation.Descriptors: Assistance, Pregnant Woman, HIV. La asistencia de enfermeras observa a puerpera con vih en alojamiento conjuntoResumen: Las enfermeras desempeñan un papel difícil en el tratamiento de las mujeres seropositivas, ya que contribuye a la lucha contra esta patología a través de su formación y apoyo emocional a las mujeres diagnosticadas. Este estudio tiene como objetivo describir la atención de la enfermera y la visión de la enfermera de la atención posparto serpositiva y la implementación de acciones para prevenir la transmisión vertical del VIH en la vivienda conjunta. De 2007 a 2017 se llevó a cabo una revisión de la literatura de artículos científicos. Los artículos se obtuvieron a través de las bases de datos: como Scielo (Biblioteca Científica Eletr'nic en línea) y LILACS y Ministerio de Salud (MS), utilizando los siguientes descriptores: Atención, Mujeres Embarazadas, VIH. De acuerdo con los criterios de inclusión y exclusión, 24 publicaciones se relataron en el estudio. A partir de esta revisión integradora de la literatura será posible proporcionar a los profesionales de la salud una mejor comprensión de las enfermeras en la atención posparto con VIH en alojamiento conjunto.Descriptores: Asistencia, Mujeres Embarazadas, VIH.

Abstract:

El objetivo fue diagnosticar el comportamiento de la población en el Perú sobre el consumo de bolsas de plástico de un solo uso. Para la encuesta se utilizó un cuestionario semiestructurado de 26 preguntas, compuesto de cuatro dimensiones: información primaria, estilos de consumo, conocimiento ambiental y tendencia al cambio. La muestra fue de 1400 personas en forma presencial y virtual durante el 2019. En relación a la información primaria, viven de tres a cinco individuos por vivienda, prevalecen personas con grado universitario y sin instrucción, compuesta por trabajadores independientes, siendo el sexo femenino el dominante, con edad de 20 a 40 años. Sobre los estilos de consumo, los encuestados realizan sus compras en mercados minoristas y en supermercados, acudiendo de una a dos veces por semana, no llevan ningún material para almacenar sus compras y reciben bolsas de plástico de estos establecimientos. Referente al conocimiento ambiental, prefieren bolsas de plástico para trasladar sus compras por no tener costo. Referente al impacto ambiental, mencionan que sí conocen, pero no cuentan con otra opción, recibiendo de seis a 10 bolsas por compra que son dispuestas para la eliminación de la basura. Finalmente, para la tendencia al cambio, prefieren que los establecimientos dejen de facilitar gratuitamente las bolsas, para no contaminar, prefiriendo que se entreguen bolsas reutilizables, y están dispuestos a pagar hasta cinco céntimos de sol por bolsa. Finalmente, se requieren políticas para orientar a los consumidores a l uso de bolsas de plástico de un solo uso. ABSTRACT The objective was to diagnose the behavior of the population in Peru regarding the consumption of single-use plastic bags. For the survey, a 26-question semi-structured questionnaire was used, made up of four dimensions: primary information, consumption styles, environmental knowledge and tendency to change. The sample was 1,400 people in person and online during 2019. In relation to primary information, 3 to 5 individuals live per home; people with a university degree and without instruction prevail, made up of independent workers, the female sex being the dominant, aged 20 to 40 years. Regarding consumption styles, respondents make their purchases in retail markets and supermarkets, coming from one to two times a week, they do not carry any materials to store their purchases and they receive plastic bags from these establishments. Regarding environmental knowledge, they prefer plastic bags to carry their purchases because they have no cost. Regarding the environmental impact, they mention that they do know, but have no other option, receiving 6 to 10 bags per purchase that are disposed of for the disposal of garbage. Finally, for the tendency to change, they prefer that the establishments stop providing the bags free of charge, so as not to contaminate, preferring that reusable bags be delivered, and they are willing to pay up to 5 cents per bag. Finally, policies are required to guide consumers to the use of single-use plastic bags. Keywords: Awareness, bags, environment, plastic, pollution, reduce, reuse.

Abstract:

La presente investigación se desarrolló con el objetivo de dar a conocer el uso de las plataformas para el estudio virtual en tiempo de emergencia sanitaria esto atribuye tener sabiduría sobre el funcionamiento que brinda. La importancia de esta investigación es que hoy en día es uno de recursos indispensable para los docente y estudiantes esto permite enriquecer el proceso de aprendizaje-enseñanza, además de brindar y facilitar el intercambio de conocimientos, contenidos de información teniendo más contacto con el estudiante ya se por medio el chat, videollamadas, esto favorece a fomentar el autoaprendizaje como una forma de preparación para que la educación fluya en nuestra vida diaria. Se utilizaron métodos de la investigación científica los cuales se destacaron método histórico-lógico, inducción – deducción y análisis – síntesis y métodos empíricos, los mismo que permitieron el desarrollo de esta investigación, estudiar cada una de las características también se toma como solución al problema que se está viviendo en los actuales momentos. Dentro de los resultados de la investigación se logró realizar un análisis general de las diferentes técnicas que se pueden implementar para el manejo de las herramientas online ayudando así al mejoramiento de los estudiantes en el proceso formativo. Se concluyó que el uso de las plataformas virtuales es importante porque es un medio donde se usa como recurso para la educación esto favorece a la optimización el espacio y mejora la calidad de la información que se está impartiendo.

Abstract:

La pandemia ocasionada por el coronavirus ha provocado una crisis sin precedentes en todos los ámbitos nacionales. El sistema educativo se ha visto envuelto en un cambio nunca antes visto que ha obligado a una transformación digital acelerada, suponiendo una modificación en el modelo de enseñanza-aprendizaje al que estábamos acostumbrados. Sin embargo, en paralelo a esta transformación una gran parte del estudiantado se ha visto afectada por la enfermedad provocada por el SARS-CoV-2 e incluso han sufrido el fallecimiento de algún familiar o persona cercana.En este trabajo se pretende realizar un acercamiento a la situación real que están viviendo los estudiantes de la Escuela Técnica Superior de Edificación durante la crisis sanitaria. Para ello, con ayuda de la técnica de la encuesta online, se ha consultado al alumnado acerca de su estado emocional actual y sus emociones ante el gran número de fallecimientos que cada día se retrasmiten en los medios de comunicación. Los resultados muestran como un elevado número de participantes, el 25.5%, ha sufrido el fallecimiento de algún familiar o allegado durante este tiempo de pandemia. Esto nos hace reflexionar sobre cómo está sobrellevando el sistema educativo universitario estas difíciles situaciones, si realmente se conocen y si se deberían poner más medios para mejorar el bienestar emocional del estudiantado.AbstractThe pandemic caused by the coronavirus has caused an unprecedented crisis at all national levels. The education system has been involved in a change never seen before that has forced an accelerated digital transformation, assuming a modification in the teaching-learning model to which we were used. However, in parallel to this transformation, a large part of the student body has been affected by the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2 and has even suffered the death of a relative or close person.This work aims to make an approach to the real situation that students of the Higher Technical Building School are experiencing during the health crisis. To do this, with the help of the online survey technique, the students were consulted about their current emotional state and their emotions in the face of the large number of deaths that are broadcast in the media every day. The results show how a high number of participants, 25.5%, have suffered the death of a relative or close friend during this time of the pandemic. This makes us reflect on how the university educational system is coping with these difficult situations, if they are really known and if more means should be put in place to improve the emotional well-being of the student body

Abstract:

<p>Con ocasión del análisis del recientemente aprobado Decreto andaluz sobre viviendas particulares de uso turístico se van a poner de manifiesto las cuestiones más relevantes y polémicas de su régimen jurídico, haciendo una comparativa con aspectos destacados de otras regulaciones autonómicas en la materia, poniendo de relieve las principales novedades pero también las ausencias más destacadas de la norma andaluza, y todo ello interpretado conforme a la también recientemente aprobada “Agenda europea para la economía colaborativa”, documento esencial para conocer la opinión de la Unión Europea sobre estas actividades y, fundamentalmente, sobre los nuevos mecanismos de intermediación online en el sector turístico.</p>

Abstract:

Las plataformas online de alquiler de viviendas turísticas han experimentado un crecimiento destacado en España durante el último lustro, al igual que alrededor del mundo. Ello ha modificado en buena medida las pautas de consumo alojativo turístico y, en adaptación a ello, la normativa de aplicación. En el presente trabajo realizamos una aproximación cualitativa y descriptiva a la expansión de Airbnb en España, especialmente en los dos modelos de desarrollo turísticos predominantes en España (cultural en centros urbanos de grandes ciudades y residencial de «sol y playa»), al análisis de la literatura que evalúa sus efectos y a los cambios regulatorios aplicados en cada Comunidad Autónoma. Finalmente, se propone una metodología de second-best que podría reducir los efectos adversos que la regulación actual está generando.

Abstract:

A cibercultura é uma realidade que cada dia mais faz parte da nossa sociedade transformando-a constante e rapidamente. Sendo assim, a inserção das tecnologias digitais no fazer pedagógico e no ambiente escolar se faz necessária de maneira que permita ao aluno a construção do conhecimento baseado em práticas colaborativas. O presente texto tem o objetivo de apresentar uma breve análise em torno das diretrizes constante na Base Nacional Curricular Comum, doravante BNCC, no tocante ao uso das tecnologias digitais na sala de aula, focalizando a produção textual no ensino médio. De cunho qualitativo, este trabalho caracteriza-se na perspectiva da pesquisa documental e de estudos teóricos à luz de autores como Alves (1998), Bohn (2013), Lévy (2010) e Marcuschi, (2004). Os resultados nos indicam que a BNCC preconiza que as tecnologias digitais sejam assumidas como um elemento relevante para elaboração de novas práticas pedagógicas. ALVES, Lynn Rosalina Gama. 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São Paulo: Parábola Editorial, 2006. p. 139-161.CURY, Carlos Roberto Jamil; REIS, Magali; ZANARDI, Teodoro Adriano Costa. Base Nacional Comum Curricular: dilemas e perspectivas. São Paulo: Cortez, 2018.DUDENEY, Gavin; HOCKLY, Nicky; PEGRUM, Mark. Letramentos digitais. Trad. Marcos Marcionilo. São Paulo: Parábola Editorial, 2016.ELIAS, Vanda Maria. Escrita e práticas comunicativas na internet. In: ELIAS, Vanda Maria (Org.). Ensino de Língua Portuguesa: oralidade, escrita e leitura. São Paulo: Contexto, 2011. p. 159-166.EMEDIATO, Wander. Aspectos lógicos, críticos e Linguísticos do ensino da leitura e escrita. In: CAMPOS, Lucas; MEIRA, Vivian (Org.). Teorias Linguísticas e aulas de português. Salvador: EDUNEB, 2016. p. 143-176.FREIRE, Paulo. Pedagogia do oprimido. 17. ed. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1987.HETKOWSKI, Tania Maria; MENEZES, Catia Neri. Prática de multiletramentos e tecnologias digitais: múltiplas aprendizagens potencializadas pelas tecnologias digitais. 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Redes sociais e educação: o que quer a geração alt+tab nas ruas? Liinc em Revista, v. 10, n.1, 2014. Disponível em: http://revista.ibict.br/liinc/article/view/3498. Acesso em: 10 maio 2019.RIBEIRO, Ana Elisa. Textos multimodais: leitura e produção. 1. ed. São Paulo: Parábola Editorial, 2016.SANTAELLA, L. A aprendizagem ubíqua na educação aberta. Revista Tempos e Espaços em Educação, São Cristóvão, v. 7, n. 14, p. 15-22, set./dez. 2014. Disponível em: https://seer.ufs.br/index.php/revtee/article/view/3446/3010. Acesso em: 20 set. 2017SANTOS, Fernanda Maria Almeida dos. Multiletramentos e ensino de língua portuguesa na educação básica: uma proposta didática para o trabalho com (hiper)gêneros multimodais. Signo, Santa Cruz do Sul, v. 43, n. 76, p. 55-65, jan. 2018. ISSN 1982-2014. Disponível em: https://online.unisc.br/seer/index.php/signo/article/view/10671. Acesso em: 10 maio 2019.SILVA, Mônica Ribeiro da. A BNCC da reforma do ensino médio: o resgate de um empoeirado discurso. 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Abstract:

IntroductionAccounts of mentoring relationships inevitably draw attention to hierarchies of expertise, knowledge and learning. While public concerns about both the risks and benefits for young people of social media, little attention has been given to the nature of the mentoring role that parents and families play alongside of schools. This conceptual paper explores models of mentorship in the context of family dynamics as they are affected by social media use. This is a context that explicitly disrupts hierarchical structures of mentoring in that new media, and particularly social media use, tends to be driven by youth cultural practices, identity formation, experimentation and autonomy-seeking practices (see for example: Robards; boyd; Campos-Holland et al.; Hodkinson). A growing body of research supports the notion that young people are more skilled in navigating social media platforms than their parents (FOSI; Campos-Holland et al.). This research establishes that uncertainty and tension derived from parents’ impression that their children know more about social media they do (FOSI; Sorbring) has brought about a market for advice and educational programs. In the content of this paper it is notable that when family dynamics and young people’s social media use are addressed through notions of digital citizenship or cyber safety programs, a hierarchical mentorship is assumed, but also problematised; thus the expertise hierarchy is inverted. This paper argues that use of social media platforms, networks, and digital devices challenges traditional hierarchies of expertise in family environments. Family members, parents and children in particular, are involved in ongoing, complex conversations and negotiations about expertise in relation to technology and social media use. These negotiations open up an alternative space for mentorship, challenging traditional roles and suggesting the need for cooperative processes. And this, in turn, can inspire new ways of relating with and through social media and mobile technologies within the family.Inverting Expertise: Social Media, Family and MentoringSocial media are deeply embedded in everyday routines for the vast majority of the population. The emergence of the ‘networked society’, characterised by increasing and pervasive digital and social connectivity, has the potential to create new forms of social interactions within and across networks (Rainie and Wellman), but also to reconfigure intergenerational and family relations. In this way, social media introduces new power asymmetries that affect family dynamics and in particular relationships between young people and their parents. This relatively new mediated environment, by default, exposes young people to social contexts well beyond family and immediate peers making their lived experiences individual, situational and contextual (Swist et al.). The perceived risks this introduces can provoke tensions within families looking to manage those uncertain social contexts, in the process problematising traditional structures of mentorship. Mentoring is a practice predominantly understood within educational and professional workplace settings (Ambrosetti and Dekkers). Although different definitions can be found across disciplines, most models position a mentor as a more experienced knowledge holder, implying a hierarchical relationship between a mentor and mentee (Ambrosetti and Dekkers). Stereotypically, a mentor is understood to be older, wiser and more experienced, while a mentee is, in turn, younger and in need of guidance – a protégé. Alternative models of mentorship see mentoring as a reciprocal process (Eby, Rhodes and Allen; Naweed and Ambrosetti).This “reciprocal” perspective on mentorship recognises the opportunity both sides in the process have to contribute and benefit from the relationship. However, in situations where one party in the relationship does not have the expected knowledge, skills or confidence, this reciprocity becomes more difficult. Thus, as an alternative, asymmetrical or cooperative mentorship lies between the hierarchical and reciprocal (Naweed and Ambrosetti). It suggests that the more experienced side (whichever it is) takes a lead while mentoring is negotiated in a way that meets both sides’ needs. The parent-child relationship is generally understood in hierarchical terms. Traditionally, parents are considered to be mentors for their children, particularly in acquiring new skills and facilitating transitions towards adult life. Such perspectives on parent-child relationships are based on a “deficit” approach to youth, “whereby young people are situated as citizens-in-the-making” (Collin). Social media further problematises the hierarchical dynamic with the role of knowledge holder varying between and within the family members. In many contemporary mediated households, across developed and wealthy nations, technologically savvy children are actively tailoring their own childhoods. This is a context that requires a reconceptualisation of traditional mentoring models within the family context and recognition of each stakeholder’s expertise, knowledge and agency – a position that is markedly at odds with traditional deficit models. Negotiating Social Media Use within the FamilyIn the early stages of the internet and social media research, a generational gap was often at the centre of debates. Although highly contested, Prensky’s metaphor of digital natives and digital immigrants persists in both the popular media and academic literature. This paradigm portrays young people as tech savvy in contrast with their parents. However, such assumptions are rarely grounded in empirical evidence (Hargittai). Nonetheless, while parents are active users of social media, they find it difficult to negotiate social media use with their children (Sorbring). Some studies suggest that parental concerns arise from impressions that their children know more about social media than they do (FOSI; Wang, Bianchi and Raley). Additionally, parental concern with a child’s social media use is positively correlated with the child’s age; parents of older children are less confident in their skills and believe that their child is more digitally skillful (FOSI). However, it may be more productive to understand social media expertise within the family as shared: intermittently fluctuating between parents and children. In developed and wealthy countries, children are already using digital media by the age of five and throughout their pre-teen years predominantly for play and learning, and as teenagers they are almost universally avid social media users (Nansen; Nansen et al.; Swist et al.). Smartphone ownership has increased significantly among young people in Australia, reaching almost 80% in 2015, a proportion nearly identical to the adult population (Australian Communications and Media Authority). In addition, most young people are using multiple devices switching between them according to where, when and with whom they connect (Australian Communications and Media Authority). The locations of internet use have also diversified. While the home remains the most common site, young people make use of mobile devices to access the internet at school, friend’s homes, and via public Wi-Fi hotspots (Australian Communications and Media Authority). As a result, social media access and engagement has become more frequent and personalised and tied to processes of socialisation and well-being (Sorbring; Swist et al.). These developments have been rapid, introducing asymmetry into the parent-child mentoring dynamic along with family tensions about rules, norms and behaviours of media use. Negotiating an appropriate balance between emerging autonomy and parental oversight has always featured as a primary parenting challenge and social media seem to have introduced a new dimension in this context. A 2016 Pew report on parents, teens, and digital monitoring reveals that social media use has become central to the establishment of family rules and disciplinary practices, with over two thirds of parents reporting the use of “digital grounding” as punishment (Pew). As well as restricting social media use, the majority of parents report limiting the amount of time and times of day their children can be online. Interestingly, while parents engage in a variety of hands-on approaches to monitoring and regulating children’s social media use, they are less likely to use monitoring software, blocking/filtering online content, tracking locations and the like (Pew). These findings suggest that parents may lack confidence in technology-based restrictions or prefer pro-active, family based approaches involving discussion about appropriate social media use. This presents an opportunity to explore how social media produces new forms of parent-child relationships that might be best understood through the lens of cooperative models of mentorship. Digital Parenting: Technological and Pedagogical Interventions Parents along with educators and policy makers are looking for technological solutions to the knowledge gap, whether perceived or real, associated with concerns regarding young people’s social media use. Likewise, technology and social media companies are rushing to develop and sell advice, safety filters and resources of all kinds to meet such parental needs (Clark; McCosker). This relatively under-researched field requires further exploration and dissociation from the discourse of risk and fear (Livingstone). Furthermore, in order to develop opportunities modelled on concepts of cooperative mentoring, such programs and interventions need to move away from hierarchical assumptions about the nature of expertise within family contexts. As Collin and Swist point out, online campaigns aimed at addressing young people and children’s safety and wellbeing “are often still designed by adult ‘experts’” (Collin and Swist). A cooperative mentoring approach within family contexts would align with recent use of co-design or participatory design within social and health research and policy (Collin and Swist). In order to think through the potential of cooperative mentorship approaches in relation to social media use within the family, we examine some of the digital resources available to parents.Prominent US cyber safety and digital citizenship program Cyberwise is a commercial website founded by Diana Graber and Cynthia Lieberman, with connections to Verizon Wireless, Google and iKeepSafe among many other partnerships. In addition to learning resources around topics like “Being a Responsible Citizen of the Digital World”, Cyberwise offers online and face to face workshops on “cyber civics” in California, emphasising critical thinking, ethical discussion and decision making about digital media issues. The organisation aims to educate and support parents and teachers in their endeavor to guide young people in civil and safe social media use. CyberWise’s slogan “No grown up left behind!”, and its program of support and education is underpinned by and maintains the notion of adults as lacking expertise and lagging behind young people in digital literacy and social media skills. In the process, it introduces an additional level of expertise in the cyber safety expert and software-based interventions. Through a number of software partners, CyberWise provides a suite of tools that offer parents some control in preventing cyberbullying and establishing norms for cyber safety. For example, Frienedy is a dedicated social media platform that fosters a more private mode of networking for closed groups of mutually known people. It enables users to control completely what they share and with whom they share it. The tool does not introduce any explicit parental monitoring mechanisms, but seeks to impose an exclusive online environment divested of broader social influences and risks – an environment in which parents can “introduce kids to social media on their terms when they are ready”. Although Frienedy does not explicitly present itself as a monitoring tool, it does perpetuate hierarchical forms of mentorship and control for parents. On the other hand, PocketGuardian is a parental monitoring service for tracking children’s social media use, with an explicit emphasis on parental control: “Parents receive notification when cyberbullying or sexting is detected, plus resources to start a conversation with their child without intruding child’s privacy” (the software notifies parents when it detects an issue but without disclosing the content). The tool promotes its ability to step in on behalf of parents, removing “the task of manually inspecting your child's device and accounts”. The software claims that it analyses the content rather than merely catching “keywords” in its detection algorithms. Obviously, tools such as PocketGuardian reflect a hierarchical mentorship model (and recognise the expertise asymmetry) by imposing technological controls. The software, in a way, fosters a fear of expertise deficiency, while enabling technological controls to reassert the parent-child hierarchy. A different approach is exemplified by the Australian based Young and Well Cooperative Research Centre, a “living lab” experiment – this is an overt attempt to reverse deliberate asymmetry. This pedagogical intervention, initially taking the form of an research project, involved four young people designing and delivering a three-hour workshop on social networking and cyber safety for adult participants (Third et al.). The central aim was to disrupt the traditional way adults and young people relate to each other in relation to social media and technology use and attempted to support learning by reversing traditional roles of adult teacher and young student. In this way ‘a non-hierarchical space of intergenerational learning’ was created (Third et al.). The result was to create a setting where intergenerational conversation helped to demystify social media and technology, generate familiarity with sites, improve adult’s understanding of when they should assist young people, and deliver agency and self-efficacy for the young people involved (7-8). In this way, young people’s expertise was acknowledged as a reflection of a cooperative or asymmetrical mentoring relationship in which adult’s guidance and support could also play a part. These lessons have been applied and developed further through a participatory design approach to producing apps and tools such as Appreciate-a-mate (Collin and Swist). In that project “the inclusion of young people’s contexts became a way of activating and sustaining attachments in regard to the campaign’s future use”(313).In stark contrast to the CyberWise tools, the cooperative mentoring (or participatory design) approach, exemplified in this second example, has multiple positive outcomes: first it demystifies social media use and increases understanding of the role it plays in young people’s (and adults’) lives. Second, it increases adults’ familiarity and comfort in navigating their children’s social media use. Finally, for the young people involved, it supports a sense of achievement and acknowledges their expertise and agency. To build sustainability into these processes, we would argue that it is important to look at the family context and cooperative mentorship as an additional point of intervention. Understood in this sense, cooperative and asymmetrical mentoring between a parent and child echoes an authoritative parenting style which is proven to have the best outcome for children (Baumrind), but in a way that accommodates young people’s technology expertise.Both programs analysed target adults (parents) as less skilful than young people (their children) in relation to social media use. However, while first case study, the technology based interventions endorses hierarchical model, the Living Lab example (a pedagogical intervention) attempts to create an environment without hierarchical obstacles to learning and knowledge exchange. Although the parent-child relationship is indubitably characterised by the hierarchy to some extent, it also assumes continuous negotiation and role fluctuation. A continuous process, negotiation intensifies as children age and transition to more independent media use. In the current digital environment, this negotiation is often facilitated (or even led) by social media platforms as additional agents in the process. Unarguably, digital parenting might implicate both technological and pedagogical interventions; however, there should be a dialogue between the two. Without presumed expertise roles, non-hierarchical, cooperative environment for negotiating social media use can be developed. Cooperative mentorship, as a concept, offers an opportunity to connect research and practice through participatory design and it deserves further consideration.ConclusionsPrevailing approaches to cyber safety education tend to focus on risk management and in doing so, they maintain hierarchical forms of parental control. Adhering to such methods fails to acknowledge young people’s expertise and further deepens generational misunderstanding over social media use. Rather than insisting on hierarchical and traditional roles, there is a need to recognise and leverage asymmetrical expertise within the family in regards to social media.Cooperative and asymmetrical mentorship happens naturally in the family and can be facilitated by and through social media. The inverted hierarchy of expertise we have described here puts both parents and children, in a position of constant negotiation over social media use. This negotiation is complex, relational, unpredictable, open toward emergent possibilities and often intensive. Unquestionably, it is clear that social media provides opportunities for negotiation over, and inversion of, traditional family roles. Whether this inversion of expertise is real or only perceived, however, deserves further investigation. This article formulates some of the conceptual groundwork for an empirical study of family dynamics in relation to social media use and rulemaking. The study aims to continue to probe the positive potential of cooperative and asymmetrical mentorship and participatory design concepts and practices. The idea of cooperative mentorship does not necessarily provide a universal solution to how families negotiate social media use, but it does provide a new lens through which this dynamic can be observed. Clearly family dynamics, and the parent-child relationship, in particular, can play a vital part in supporting effective digital citizenship and wellbeing processes. Learning about this spontaneous and natural process of family negotiations might equip us with tools to inform policy and practices that can help parents and children to collaboratively create ‘a networked world in which they all want to live’ (boyd). ReferencesAmbrosetti, Angelina, and John Dekkers. "The Interconnectedness of the Roles of Mentors and Mentees in Pre-Service Teacher Education Mentoring Relationships." Australian Journal of Teacher Education 35.6 (2010): 42-55. Naweed, Anjum, and Ambrosetti Angelina. "Mentoring in the Rail Context: The Influence of Training, Style, and Practicenull." Journal of Workplace Learning 27.1 (2015): 3-18.Australian Communications and Media Authority, Office of the Childrens eSafety Commissioner. Aussie Teens and Kids Online. Australian Communications and Media Authority, 2016. Baumrind, Diana. "Effects of Authoritative Parental Control on Child Behavior." Child Development 37.4 (1966): 887. boyd, danah. It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014. Campos-Holland, Ana, Brooke Dinsmore, Gina Pol, Kevin Zevalios. "Keep Calm: Youth Navigating Adult Authority across Networked Publics." Technology and Youth: Growing Up in a Digital World. Eds. Sampson Lee Blair, Patricia Neff Claster, and Samuel M. Claster. 2015. 163-211. Clark, Lynn Schofield. The Parent App: Understanding Families in the Digital Age. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Collin, Philippa. Young Citizens and Political Participation in a Digital Society: Addressing the Democratic Disconnect. Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Collin, Philippa, and Teresa Swist. "From Products to Publics? The Potential of Participatory Design for Research on Youth, Safety and Well-Being." Journal of Youth Studies 19.3 (2016): 305-18. Eby, Lillian T., Jean E. Rhodes, and Tammy D. Allen. "Definition and Evolution of Mentoring." The Blackwell Handbook of Mentoring: A Multiple Perspectives Approach. Eds. Tammy D. Allen and Lillian T. Eby. Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. 7-20.FOSI. Parents, Privacy & Technology Use. Washington: Family Online Safety Institute, 2015. Hargittai, Eszter. "Digital Na(t)ives? Variation in Internet Skills and Uses among Members of the 'Net Generation'." Sociological Inquiry 80.1 (2010): 92-113.Hodkinson, Paul. "Bedrooms and Beyond: Youth, Identity and Privacy on Social Network Sites." New Media & Society (2015). Livingstone, Sonia. "More Online Risks for Parents to Worry About, Says New Safer Internet Day Research." Parenting for a Digital Future 2016.McCosker, Anthony. "Managing Digital Citizenship: Cyber Safety as Three Layers of Contro." Negotiating Digital Citizenship: Control, Contest and Culture. Eds. A. McCosker, S. Vivienne, and A. Johns. London: Rowman & Littlefield, forthcoming 2016. Nansen, Bjorn. "Accidental, Assisted, Automated: An Emerging Repertoire of Infant Mobile Media Techniques." M/C Journal 18.5 (2015). Nansen, Bjorn, et al. "Children and Digital Wellbeing in Australia: Online Regulation, Conduct and Competence." Journal of Children and Media 6.2 (2012): 237-54. Pew, Research Center. Parents, Teens and Digital Monitoring: Pew Research Center, 2016. Prensky, Marc. "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants Part 1." On the Horizon 9.5 (2001): 1-6. Rainie, Harrison, and Barry Wellman. Networked: The New Social Operating System. Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2012. Robards, Brady. "Leaving Myspace, Joining Facebook: ‘Growing up’ on Social Network Sites." Continuum 26.3 (2012): 385-98. Sorbring, Emma. "Parents’ Concerns about Their Teenage Children’s Internet Use." Journal of Family Issues 35.1 (2014): 75-96.Swist, Teresa, et al. Social Media and Wellbeing of Children and Young People: A Literature Review. Perth, WA: Prepared for the Commissioner for Children and Young People, Western Australia, 2015. Third, Amanda, et al. Intergenerational Attitudes towards Social Networking and Cybersafety: A Living Lab. Melbourne: Cooperative Research Centre for Young People, Technology and Wellbeing, 2011.Wang, Rong, Suzanne M. Bianchi, and Sara B. Raley. "Teenagers’ Internet Use and Family Rules: A Research Note." Journal of Marriage and Family 67.5 (2005): 1249-58.

Abstract:

Introduction Children are beginning to use digital technologies at younger and younger ages. The emerging trend of very young children (babies, toddlers and pre-schoolers) using Internet connected devices, especially touch screen tablets and smartphones, has elicited polarising opinions from early childhood experts. At present there is little actual research about the risks or benefits of tablet and smartphone use by very young children. Current usage recommendations, based on research into passive television watching which claims that screen time is detrimental, is in conflict with advice from education experts and app developers who commend interactive screen time as engaging and educational. Guidelines from the health professions typically advise strict time limits on very young children’s screen-time. Based for the most part on policy developed by the American Academy of Paediatrics, it is usually recommended that children under two have no screen time at all (Brown), and children over this age have no more than two hours a day (Strasburger, et al.). On the other hand, early childhood education guidelines promote the development of digital literacy skills (Department of Education). Further, education-based research indicates that access to computers and the Internet in the preschool years is associated with overall educational achievement (Bittman et al.; Cavanaugh et al; Judge et al; Neumann). The US based National Association for Education of Young Children’s position statement on technology for zero to eight year-olds declares that “when used intentionally and appropriately, technology and interactive media are effective tools to support learning and development” (NAEYC). This article discusses the notion of Digitods—a name for those children born since the introduction of the iPhone in 2007 who have ready access to touchscreen technologies since birth. It reports on the limited availability of evidence-based research about these children’s ICT use concluding that current research and recommendations are not grounded in the everyday life of very young children and their families. The article then reports on the beginnings of a research project funded by the Australian Research Council entitled Toddlers and Tablets: exploring the risks and benefits 0-5s face online. This research project recognises that at this stage it is parents who “are the real experts in their toddlers’ use of screen technologies. Accordingly, the project’s methodological approach draws on parents, pre-schoolers and their families as communities of practice in the construction of social meaning around toddlers’ use of touch screen technology. Digitods In 2000 Bill Gates introduced the notion of Generation I to describe the first cohort of children raised with the Internet as a reality in their lives. They are those born after the 1990s and will, in most cases; have no memory of life without the Net. [...] Generation I will be able to conceive of the Internet’s possibilities far more profoundly than we can today. This new generation will become agents of change as the limits of the Internet expand to include educational, scientific, and business applications that we cannot even imagine. (Gates)Digitods, on the other hand, is a term that has been used in education literature (Leathers et al.) to describe those children born after the introduction of the iPhone in 2007. These children often begin their lives with ready access to the Internet via easily usable touch screen devices, which could have been designed with toddlers’ touch and swipe movements in mind. Not only are they the youngest group of children to actively engage with the Internet they are the first group to grow up with a range of mobile Internet devices (Leathers et al.). The difference between Digitods and Gates’s Generation I is that Digitods are the first pre-verbal, non-ambulant infants to have ready access to digital technologies. Somewhere around the age of 10 months to fourteen months a baby learns to point with his or her forefinger. At this stage the child is ready to swipe and tap a touch screen (Leathers et al.). This is in contrast to laptops and PCs given that very young children often need assistance to use a mouse or keyboard. The mobility of touch screen devices allows very young children to play at the kitchen table, in the bedroom or on a car trip. These mobile devices have, of course, a myriad of mobile apps to go with them. These apps create an immediacy of access for infants and pre-schoolers who do not need to open a web browser to find their favourite sites. In the lives of these children it seems that it has always been possible to touch and swipe their way into games, books and creative and communicative experiences (Holloway et al. 149). The interactivity of most pre-school apps, as opposed to more passive screen activities such as watching television shows or videos (both offline or online), requires toddlers and pre-schoolers to pay careful attention, think about things and act purposefully (Leathers et al.). It is this interactivity which is the main point of difference, one which holds the potential to engage and educate our youngest children. It should be noted within this discussion about Digitods that, while the trope Digital Natives tends to hom*ogenise an entire generation, the authors do not assume that all children born today are Digitods by default. Many children do not have the same privileged opportunities as others, or the (parental) cultural capital, to enable access, ease of use and digital skill development. In addition to this it is not implied that Digitods will be more tech savvy than their older siblings. The term is used more to describe and distinguish those children who have digital access almost since birth—in order to differentiate or tease out everyday family practices around these children’s ICT use and the possible risks and benefits this access affords babies, toddlers and pre-schoolers. While the term Digital Native has also been criticised as being a white middle class phenomenon this is not necessarily the case with Digitods. In the Southeast Asia and the Pacific region developed countries like Japan, Korea, New Zealand and Singapore have extremely high rates of touchscreen use by very young children (Child Sciences; Jie; Goh; Unantenne). Other countries such as the Philippines and Indonesia have moved to a high smart phone usage by very young children while at the same time have only nascent ICT access and instruction within their education systems (Unantenne). The Digitod Parent Parents of Digitods are usually experienced Internet users themselves, and many are comfortable with their children using these child-friendly touch screen devices (Findahl). Digital technologies are integral to their everyday lives, often making daily life easier and improving communication with family and friends, even during the high pressure parenting years of raising toddlers and pre-schoolers. Even though many parents and caregivers are enabling very young children’s use of touch screen technologies, they are also concerned about the changes they are making. This is because very young children’s use of touch screen devices “has become another area where they fear possible criticism and in which their parental practices risk negative evaluation by others” (Holloway et al). The tensions between expert advice regarding young children’s screen-time and parents’ and caregivers’ own judgments are also being played out online. Parenting blogs, online magazines and discussion groups are all joining in the debate: On the one hand, parents want their children to swim expertly in the digital stream that they will have to navigate all their lives; on the other hand, they fear that too much digital media, too early, will sink them. Parents end up treating tablets like precision surgical instruments, gadgets that might perform miracles for their child’s IQ and help him win some nifty robotics competition—but only if they are used just so. (Rosin)Thus, with over 80 000 children’s apps marketed as educational in the Apple App Store alone, parents can find it difficult to choose apps that are worth purchasing (Yelland). Nonetheless, recent research regarding Australian children shows that three to five year olds who access touch screen devices will typically have five or more specific apps to choose from (5.23 on average) (Neumann). With little credible evidence or considered debate, parents have been left to make their own choices about the pros and cons of their young children’s access to touch screens. Nonetheless, one immediate benefit that comes to mind is toddlers and pre-schoolers video chatting with dispersed family member—due to increased globalisation, guest worker arrangements, FIFO (fly-in fly-out) workforces and family separation or divorce. Such clear benefits around sociability and youngsters’ connection with significant others make previous screen-related guidelines out of date and no longer contextually relevant. Little Research Attention Family ownership of tablet devices as well as touch screen phones has risen dramatically in the last five years. With very young children being loaned these technologies by mum or dad, and a tendency in Australia to rely on market-orientated research regarding ownership and usage, there is very little knowledge about touch screen usage rates for very young Australian children. UK and US usage figures indicate that over the last few years there has been a five-fold increase in tablet uptake by zero to eight year olds (Ofcom; Rideout). Although large scale, comparative Australian data is not available, previous research regarding older children indicates that Australia is similar to high use countries like some Scandinavian nations and the UK (Green et al.). In addition to this, two small research projects in Australia, with under 160 participant families each, indicate that two thirds of these children (0-5) use touchscreen devices (Neumann; Coenenna et. al.). Beyond usage figures, there is also very limited evidence-based research about very young children’s app use. Interactive technologies available via touch screen technologies have been available domestically for a very short time. Consequently, “valid scientific research has not been completed and replicated due to [the lack of] available time” (Leathers el al. 129) and longitudinal studies which rely on an intervention group (in this case exposure to children’s apps) and a control group (no exposure) are even fewer and more time-consuming. Interestingly, researchers have revisited the issue of passive screen viewing. A recent 2015 review of previous 2007 research, which linked babies watching videos with poor language development, has found that there was statistical and methodological issues with the 2007 study and that there are no strong inferences to be drawn between media exposure and language development (Ferguson and Donellan). Thus, there seems to be no conclusive evidence-based research on which to inform parents and educators about the possible downside or benefits of touch screen use. Nonetheless, early childhood experts have been quick to weigh in on the possible effects of screen usage, some providing restrictive guidelines and recommendations, with others advocating the use of interactive apps for very young children for their educational value. This knowledge-gap disguises what is actually happening in the lives of real Australian families. Due to the lack of local data, as well as worldwide research, it is essential that Australian researchers obtain a comprehensive understanding about actual behaviour around touch screen use in the lives of children aged between zero and five and their families. Beginning Research While research into very young children’s touch screen use is beginning to take place, few results have been published. When researching two to three year olds’ learning from interactive versus non-interactive videos Kirkorian, Choi and Pempek found that “toddlers may learn more from interactive media than from non-interactive video” (Kirkorian et al). This means that the use of interactive apps on touch screen devices may hold a greater potential for learning than passive video or television viewing for children in this age range. Another study considered the degree to which the young children could navigate to and use apps on touch screen devices by observing and analysing YouTube videos of infants and young children using touch screens (Hourcade et al.). It was found that between the ages of 12 months and 17 months the children filmed seemed to begin to “make meaningful use of the tablets [and] more than 90 per cent of children aged two [had] reached this level of ability” (1923). The kind of research mentioned above, usually the preserve of psychologists, paediatricians and some educators, does not, however, ground very young children’s use in their domestic context—in the spaces and with those people with whom most touch screen usage takes place. With funding from the Australian Research Council Australian, Irish and UK researchers are about to adopt a media studies (domestication) approach to comprehensively investigate digital media use in the everyday lives of very young children. This Australian-based research project positions very young children’s touch screen use within the family and will help provide an understanding of the everyday knowledge and strategies that this cohort of technology users (very young children and their parents) have already developed—in the knowledge vacuum left by the swift appropriation and incorporation of these new media technologies into the lives of families with very young children. Whilst using a conventional social constructionist perspective, the project will also adopt a co-creation of knowledge approach. The co-creation of knowledge approach (Fong) has links with the communities of practice literature (Wegner) and recognises that parents, care-givers and the children themselves are the current experts in this field in terms of the everyday uses of these technologies by very young children. Families’ everyday discourse and practices regarding their children’s touch screen use do not necessarily work through obvious power hierarchies (via expert opinions), but rather through a process of meaning making where they shape their own understandings and attitudes through experience and shared talk within their own everyday family communities of practice. This Toddlers and Tablets research is innovative in many ways. It seeks to capture the enthusiasm of young children’s digital interactions and to pioneer new ways of ‘beginnings’ researching with very young children, as well as with their parents. The researchers will work with parents and children in their broad domestic contexts (including in and out-of-home activities, and grandparental and wider-family involvement) to co-create knowledge about young children’s digital technologies and the social contexts in which these technologies are used. Aspects of these interactions, such as interviews and observations of everyday digital interactions will be recorded (audio and video respectively). In addition to this, data collected from media commentary, policy debates, research publications and learned articles from other disciplinary traditions will be interrogated to see if there are correlations, contrasts, trends or synergies between parents’ construction of meaning, public commentary and current research. Critical discourse tools and methods (Chouliaraki and Fairclough) will be used to analyse verbatim transcripts, video, and all written materials. Conclusion Very young children are uniquely dependent upon others for the basic necessities of life and for the tools they need, and will need to develop, to claim their place in the world. Given the ubiquitous role played by digital media in the lives of their parents and other caregivers it would be a distortion of everyday life for children to be excluded from the technologies that are routinely used to connect with other people and with information. In the same way that adults use digital media to renew and strengthen social and emotional bonds across distance, so young children delight in ‘Facetime’ and other technologies that connect them audio-visually with friends and family members who are not physically co-present. Similarly, a very short time spent in the company of toddlers using touch screens is sufficient to demonstrate the sheer delight that these young infants have in developing their sense of agency and autonomy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXV-yaFmQNk). Media, communications and cultural studies are beginning to claim a space for evidence based policy drawn from everyday activities in real life contexts. Research into the beginnings of digital life, with families who are beginning to find a way to introduce these technologies to the youngest generation, integrating them within social and emotional repertoires, may prove to be the start of new understandings into the communication skills of the preverbal and preliterate young people whose technology preferences will drive future development – with their parents likely trying to keep pace. Acknowledgment This research is supported under Australia Research Council’s Discovery Projects funding scheme (project number DP150104734). References Bittman, Michael, et al. "Digital Natives? New and Old Media and Children's Outcomes." Australian Journal of Education 55.2 (2011): 161-75. Brown, Ari. "Media Use by Children Younger than 2 Years." Pediatrics 128.5 (2011): 1040-45. Burr, Vivien. Social Constructionism. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2003. Cavanaugh, Cathy, et al. "The Effects of Distance Education on K–12 Student Outcomes: A Meta-Analysis." Naperville, Ill.: Learning Point Associates, 2004. 5 Mar. 2009 ‹http://www.ncrel.org/tech/distance/index.html›. Child Sciences and Parenting Research Office. Survey of Media Use by Children and Parents (Summary). Tokyo: Benesse Educational Research and Development Institute, 2014. Coenena, Pieter, Erin Howiea, Amity Campbella, and Leon Strakera. Mobile Touch Screen Device Use among Young Australian Children–First Results from a National Survey. Proceedings 19th Triennial Congress of the IEA. 2015. Chouliaraki, Lilie and Norman Fairclough. Discourse in Late Modernity: Rethinking Critical Discourse Analysis. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1999. Department of Education. "Belonging, Being and Becoming: The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia." Australian Government, 2009. Ferguson, Christopher J., and M. Brent Donnellan. "Is the Association between Children’s Baby Video Viewing and Poor Language Development Robust? A Reanalysis of Zimmerman, Christakis, and Meltzoff (2007)." Developmental Psychology 50.1 (2014): 129. Findahl, Olle. Swedes and the Internet 2013. Stockholm: The Internet Infrastructure Foundation, 2013. Fong, Patrick S.W. "Co-Creation of Knowledge by Multidisciplinary Project Teams." Management of Knowledge in Project Environments. Eds. E. Love, P. Fong, and Z. Irani. Burlington, MA: Elsevier, 2005. 41-56. Gates, Bill. "Enter 'Generation I': The Responsibility to Provide Access for All to the Most Incredible Learning Tool Ever Created." Instructor 109.6 (2000): 98. Goh, Wendy W.L., Susanna Bay, and Vivian Hsueh-Hua Chen. "Young School Children’s Use of Digital Devices and Parental Rules." Telematics and Informatics 32.4 (2015): 787-95. Green, Lelia, et al. "Risks and Safety for Australian Children on the Internet: Full Findings from the AU Kids Online Survey of 9-16 Year Olds and Their Parents." Cultural Science Journal 4.1 (2011): 1-73. Holloway, Donell, Lelia Green, and Carlie Love. "'It's All about the Apps': Parental Mediation of Pre-Schoolers' Digital Lives." Media International Australia 153 (2014): 148-56. Hourcade, Juan Pablo, Sarah Mascher, David Wu, and Luiza Pantoja. Look, My Baby Is Using an iPad! An Analysis of YouTube Videos of Infants and Toddlers Using Tablets. Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 2015. Jie S.H. "ICT Use Statistics of Households and Individuals in Korea." 10th World Telecommunication/ICT Indicators Meeting (WTIM-12). Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA), 25-7 Sep. 2012.Judge, Sharon, Kathleen Puckett, and Sherry Mee Bell. "Closing the Digital Divide: Update from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study." The Journal of Educational Research 100.1 (2006): 52-60. Kirkorian, H., K. Choi, and Pempek. "Toddlers' Word Learning from Contingent and Non-Contingent Video on Touchscreens." Child Development (in press). Leathers, Heather, Patti Summers, and Desollar. Toddlers on Technology: A Parents' Guide. Illinois: AuthorHouse, 2013. NAEYC. Technology and Interactive Media as Tools in Early Childhood Programs Serving Children from Birth through Age 8 [Position Statement]. Washington: National Association for the Education of Young Children, the Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children’s Media at Saint Vincent College, 2012. Neumann, Michelle M. "An Examination of Touch Screen Tablets and Emergent Literacy in Australian Pre-School Children." Australian Journal of Education 58.2 (2014): 109-22. Ofcom. Children and Parents: Media Use and Attitudes Report. London, 2013. Rideout, Victoria. Zero to Eight: Children’s Media Use in America 2013. San Francisco: Common Sense Media, 2013. Rosin, Hanna. "The Touch-Screen Generation." The Atlantic, 20 Apr. 2013. Strasburger, Victor C., et al. "Children, Adolescents, and the Media." Pediatrics 132.5 (2013): 958-61. Unantenne, Nalika. Mobile Device Usage among Young Kids: A Southeast Asia Study. Singapore: The Asian Parent and Samsung Kids Time, 2014. Wenger, Etienne. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Wenger, Etienne. "Communities of Practice and Social Learning Systems." Organization 7.2 (2000): 225-46. Yelland, Nicola. "Which Apps Are Educational and Why? It’s in the Eye of the Beholder." The Conversation 13 July 2015. 16 Aug. 2015 ‹http://theconversation.com/which-apps-are-educational-and-why-its-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder-37968›.

Abstract:

“What's the brief?” is an everyday question within the graphic design process. Moreover, the concept and importance of a design brief is overtly understood well beyond design practice itself—especially among stakeholders who work with designers and clients who commission design services. Indeed, a design brief is often an assumed and expected physical or metaphoric artefact for guiding the creative process. When a brief is lacking, incomplete or unclear, it can render an already ambiguous graphic design process and discipline even more fraught with misinterpretation. Nevertheless, even in wider design discourse, there appears to be little research on design briefs and the briefing process (Jones and Askland; Paton and Dorst). It seems astonishing that, even in Peter Phillips’s 2014 edition of Creating the Perfect Design Brief, he feels compelled to comment that “there are still no books available about design briefs” and that the topic is only “vaguely” covered within design education (21). While Phillips’s assertion is debatable if one draws purely from online vernacular sources or professional guides, it is supported by the lack of scholarly attention paid to the design brief. Graphic design briefs are often mentioned within design books, journals, and online sources. However, this article argues that the format, function and use of such briefs are largely assumed and rarely identified and studied. Even within the broader field of design research, the tendency appears to be to default to “the design brief” as an assumed shorthand, supporting Phillips’s argument about the nebulous nature of the topic. As this article contextualises, this is further problematised by insufficient attention cast on graphic design itself as a specific discipline. This article emerges from a wider, multi-stage creative practice study into graphic design practice, that used experimental performative design research methods to investigate graphic designers’ professional relationships with stakeholders (Meron, Strangely). The article engages with specific outcomes from that study that relate to the design brief. The article also explores existing literature and research and argues for academics, the design industry, and educationalists, to focus closer attention on the design brief. It concludes by suggesting that experimental and collaborative design methods offers potential for future research into the design brief. Contextualising the Design Brief It is critical to differentiate the graphic design brief from the operational briefs of architectural design (Blyth and Worthington; Khan) or those used in technical practices such as software development or IT systems design, which have extensive industry-formalised briefing practices and models such as the waterfall system (Petersen et al.) or more modern processes such as Agile (Martin). Software development and other technical design briefs are necessarily more formulaically structured than graphic design briefs. Their requirements are generally empirically and mechanistically located, and often mission-critical. In contrast, the conceptual nature of creative briefs in graphic design creates the potential for them to be arbitrarily interpreted. Even in wider design discourse, there appears to be little consistency about the form that a brief takes. Some sources indicate that a brief only requires one page (Elebute; Nov and Jones) or even a single line of text (Jones and Askland). At other times briefs are described as complex, high-level documents embedded within processes which designers respond to with the aim of producing end products to satisfy clients’ requirements (Ambrose; Patterson and Saville). Ashby and Johnson (40) refer to the design brief as a “solution neutral” statement, the aim being to avoid preconceptions or the narrowing of the creative possibilities of a project. Others describe a consultative (Walsh), collaborative and stakeholder-inclusive process (Phillips). The Scholarly Brief Within scholarly design research, briefs inevitably manifest as an assumed artefact or process within each project; but the reason for their use or antecedents for chosen formats are rarely addressed. For example, in “Creativity in the Design Process” (Dorst and Cross) some elements of the design brief are described. The authors also describe at what stage of the investigation the brief is introduced and present a partial example of the brief. However, there is no explanation of the form of the brief or the reasons behind it. They simply describe it as being typical for the design medium, adding that its use was considered a critical part of addressing the design problem. In a separate study within advertising (Johar et al.), researchers even admit that the omission of crucial elements from the brief—normally present in professional practice—had a detrimental effect on their results. Such examples indicate the importance of briefs for the design process, yet further illustrating the omission of direct engagement with the brief within the research design, methodology, and methods. One exception comes from a study amongst business students (Sadowska and Laffy) that used the design brief as a pedagogical tool and indicates that interaction with, and changes to, elements of a design brief impact the overall learning process of participants, with the brief functioning as a trigger for that process. Such acknowledgement of the agency of a design brief affirms its importance for professional designers (Koslow et al.; Phillips). This use of a brief as a research device informed my use of it as a reflective and motivational conduit when studying graphic designers’ perceptions of stakeholders, and this will be discussed shortly. The Professional Brief Professionally, the brief is a key method of communication between designers and stakeholders, serving numerous functions including: outlining creative requirements, audience, and project scope; confirming project requirements; and assigning and documenting roles, procedures, methods, and approval processes. The format of design briefs varies from complex multi-page procedural documents (Patterson and Saville; Ambrose) produced by marketing departments and sent to graphic design agencies, to simple statements (Jones and Askland; Elebute) from small to medium-sized businesses. These can be described as the initial proposition of the design brief, with the following interactions comprising the ongoing briefing process. However, research points to many concerns about the lack of adequate briefing information (Koslow, Sasser and Riordan). It has been noted (Murray) that, despite its centrality to graphic design, the briefing process rarely lives up to designers’ expectations or requirements, with the approach itself often haphazard. This reinforces the necessarily adaptive, flexible, and compromise-requiring nature of professional graphic design practice, referred to by design researchers (Cross; Paton and Dorst). However, rather than lauding these adaptive and flexible designer abilities as design attributes, such traits are often perceived by professional practitioners as unequal (Benson and Dresdow), having evolved by the imposition by stakeholders, rather than being embraced by graphic designers as positive designer skill-sets. The Indeterminate Brief With insufficient attention cast on graphic design as a specific scholarly discipline (Walker; Jacobs; Heller, Education), there is even less research on the briefing process within graphic design practice (Cumming). Literature from professional practice on the creation and function of graphic design briefs is often formulaic (Phillips) and fractured. It spans professional design bodies, to templates from mass-market printers (Kwik Kopy), to marketing-driven and brand-development approaches, in-house style guides, and instructional YouTube videos (David). A particularly clear summary comes from Britain’s Design Council. This example describes the importance of a good design brief, its requirements, and carries a broad checklist that includes the company background, project aims, and target audience. It even includes stylistic tips such as “don’t be afraid to use emotive language in a brief if you think it will generate a shared passion about the project” (Design Council). From a subjective perspective, these sources appear to contain sensible professional advice. However, with little scholarly research on the topic, how can we know that, for example, using emotive language best informs the design process? Why might this be helpful and desirable (or otherwise) for designers? These varied approaches highlight the indeterminate treatment of the design brief. Nevertheless, the very existence of such diverse methods communicates a pattern of acknowledgement of the criticality of the brief, as well as the desire, by professional bodies, commentators, and suppliers, to ensure that both designers and stakeholders engage effectively with the briefing process. Thus, with such a pedagogic gap in graphic design discourse, scholarly research into the design brief has the potential to inform vernacular and formal educational resources. Researching the Design Brief The research study from which this article emerges (Meron, Strangely) yielded outcomes from face-to-face interviews with eleven (deidentified) graphic designers about their perceptions of design practice, with particular regard to their professional relationships with other creative stakeholders. The study also surveyed online discussions from graphic design forums and blog posts. This first stage of research uncovered feelings of lacking organisational gravitas, creative ownership, professional confidence, and design legitimacy among the designers in relation to stakeholders. A significant causal factor pointed to practitioners’ perceptions of lacking direct access to and involvement with key sources of creative inspiration and information; one specific area being the design brief. It was a discovery that was reproduced thematically during the second stage of the research. This stage repurposed performative design research methods to intervene in graphic designers’ resistance to research (Roberts, et al), with the goal of bypassing practitioners’ tendency to portray their everyday practices using formulaic professionalised answers (Dorland, View). In aiming to understand graphic designers’ underlying motivations, this method replaced the graphic designer participants with trained actors, who re-performed narratives from the online discussions and designer interviews during a series of performance workshops. Performative methodologies were used as design thinking methods to defamiliarise the graphic design process, thereby enabling previously unacknowledged aspects of the design process to be unveiled, identified and analysed. Such defamiliarisation repurposes methods used in creative practice, including design thinking (Bell, Blythe, and Sengers), with performative elements drawing on ethnography (Eisner) and experimental design (Seago and Dunne). Binding these two stages of research study together was a Performative Design Brief—a physical document combining narratives from the online discussions and the designer interviews. For the second stage, this brief was given to a professional theatre director to use as material for a “script” to motivate the actors. In addition to identifying unequal access to the creative process as a potential point of friction, this study yielded outcomes suggesting that designers were especially frustrated when the design brief was unclear, insufficiently detailed, or even missing completely. The performative methodology enabled a refractive approach, using performative metaphor and theatre to defamiliarise graphic design practice, portraying the process through a third-party theatrical prism. This intervened in graphic designers’ habitual communication patterns (Dorland, The View). Thus, combining traditional design research methods with experimental interdisciplinary ones, enabled outcomes that might not otherwise have emerged. It is an example of engaging with the fluid, hybrid (Heller, Teaching), and often elusive practices (van der Waarde) of graphic design. Format, Function, and Use A study (Paton and Dorst) among professional graphic designers attempts to dissect practitioners’ perceptions of different aspects of briefing as a process of ‘framing’. Building on the broader theories of design researchers such as Nigel Cross, Bryan Lawson, and Donald Schön, Paton and Dorst suggest that most of the designers preferred a collaborative briefing process where both they and client stakeholders were directly involved, without intermediaries. This concurs with the desire, from many graphic designers that I interviewed, for unobstructed engagement with the brief. Moreover, narratives from the online discussions that I investigated suggest that the lack of clear frameworks for graphic design briefs is a hotly debated topic, as are perceptions of stakeholder belligerence or misunderstanding. For example, in a discussion from Graphic Design Forums designer experiences range from only ever receiving informal verbal instructions—“basically, we’ve been handed design work and they tell us ‘We need this by EOD’” (VFernandes)—to feeling obliged to pressure stakeholders to provide a brief—“put the burden on them to flesh out the details of a real brief and provide comprehensive material input” (HotButton) —to resignation to an apparent futility of gaining adequate design briefs from stakeholders because— “they will most likely never change” (KitchWitch). Such negative assumptions support Koslow et al.’s assertion that the absence of a comprehensive brief is the most “terrifying” thing for practitioners (9). Thus, practitioners’ frustrations with stakeholders can become unproductive when there is an inadequate design brief, or if the creative requirements of a brief are otherwise removed from the direct orbit of graphic designers. This further informs a narrative of graphic designers perceiving some stakeholders as gatekeepers of the design brief. For example, one interviewed designer believed that stakeholders ‘don’t really understand the process’ (Patricia). Another interviewee suggested that disorganised briefs could be avoided by involving designers early in the process, ensuring that practitioners had direct access to the client as a creative source, rather than having to circumnavigate stakeholders (Marcus). Such perceptions appeared to reinforce beliefs among these practitioners that they lack design capital within the creative process. These perceptions of gatekeeping of the design brief support suggestions of designers responding negatively when stakeholders approach the design process from a different perspective (Wall and Callister), if stakeholders assume a managerial position (Jacobs) and, in particular, if stakeholders are inexperienced in working with designers (Banks et al.; Holzmann and Golan). With such little clarity in the design briefing process, future research may consider comparisons with industries with more formalised briefing processes, established professional statuses, or more linear histories. Indeed, the uneven historical development of graphic design (Frascara; Julier and Narotzky) may influence the inconsistency of its briefing process. Inconsistency as Research Opportunity The inconsistent state of the graphic design brief is reflective of the broader profession that it resides within. Graphic design as a profession remains fluid and inconsistent (Dorland, Tell Me; Jacobs), with even its own practitioners unable to agree on its parameters or even what to call the practice (Meron, Terminology). Pedagogically, graphic design is still emerging as an independent discipline (Cabianca; Davis), struggling to gain capital outside of existing and broader creative practices (Poynor; Triggs). The inherent interdisciplinarity (Harland) and intangibility of graphic design also impact the difficulty of engaging with the briefing process. Indeed, graphic design’s practices have been described as “somewhere between science and superstition (or fact and anecdote)” (Heller, Teaching par. 3). With such obstacles rendering the discipline fractured (Ambrose et al.), it is understandable that stakeholders might find engaging productively with graphic design briefs challenging. This can become problematic, with inadequate stakeholder affinity or understanding of design issues potentially leading to creative discord (Banks et al.; Holzmann and Golan). Identifying potentially problematic and haphazard aspects of the design brief and process also presents opportunities to add value to research into broader relationships between graphic designers and stakeholders. It suggests a practical area of study with which scholarly research on collaborative design approaches might intersect with professional graphic design practice. Indeed, recent research suggests that collaborative approaches offer both process and educational advantages, particularly in the area of persona development, having the ability to discover the “real” brief (Taffe 394). Thus, framing the brief as a collaborative, educative, and negotiative process may allow creative professionals to elucidate and manage the disparate parts of a design process, such as timeframes, stakeholders, and task responsibilities, as well as the cost implications of stakeholder actions such as unscheduled amendments. It can encourage the formalisation of incomplete vernacular briefs, as well as allow for the influence of diverse briefing methods, such as the one-page creative brief of advertising agencies, or more formal project management practices while allowing for some of the fluidity of more agile approaches: acknowledging that changes may be required while keeping all parties informed and involved. In turn, collaborative approaches may contribute towards enabling the value of contributions from both graphic designers and stakeholders and it seems beneficial to look towards design research methodologies that promote collaborative pathways. Mark Steen, for example, argues for co-design as a form of design thinking for enabling stakeholders to combine knowledge with negotiation to implement change (27). Collaborative design methods have also been advocated for use between designers and users, with stakeholders on shared projects, and with external collaborators (Binder and Brandt). Others have argued that co-design methods facilitate stakeholder collaboration “across and within institutional structures” while challenging existing power relations, albeit leaving structural changes largely unaffected (Farr 637). The challenge for collaborative design research is to seek opportunities and methodologies to conduct design brief research within a graphic design process that often appears amorphous, while also manifesting complex designer–stakeholder dynamics. Doubly so, when the research focus—the graphic design brief—often appears as nebulous an entity as the practice it emerges from. Conclusion The research discussed in this article suggests that graphic designers distrust a creative process that itself symbolises an inconsistent, reactive, and often accidental historical development of their profession and pedagogy. Reflecting this, the graphic design brief emerges almost as a metaphor for this process. The lack of overt discussion about the format, scope, and process of the brief feeds into the wider framework of graphic design’s struggle to become an independent scholarly discipline. This, in turn, potentially undermines the professional authority of graphic design practice that some of its practitioners believe is deficient. Ultimately, the brief and its processes must become research-informed parts of graphic design pedagogy. Embracing the brief as a pedagogical, generative, and inseparable part of the design process can inform the discourse within education, adding scholarly value to practice and potentially resulting in increased agency for practitioners. The chameleon-like nature of graphic design’s constant adaptation to ever-changing industry requirements makes research into the role and influences of its briefing process challenging. 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Abstract:

Introduction Negative stereotyping of alternative diets such as veganism and other plant-based diets has been common in Australia, conventionally a meat-eating culture (OECD qtd. in Ting). Indeed, meat consumption in Australia is sanctioned by the ubiquity of advertising linking meat-eating to health, vitality and nation-building, and public challenges to such plant-based diets as veganism. In addition, state, commercial enterprises, and various community groups overtly resist challenges to Australian meat-eating norms and to the intensive animal husbandry practices that underpin it. Hence activists, who may contest not simply this norm but many of the customary industry practices that comprise Australia’s meat production, have been accused of promoting a vegan agenda and even of undermining the “Australian way of life”.If veganism meansa philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of humans, animals and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals. (Vegan Society)then our interest in this article lies in how a stereotyped label of veganism (and other associated attributes) is being used across Australian public spheres to challenge the work of animal activists as they call out factory farming for entrenched animal cruelty. This is carried out in three main parts. First, following an outline of our research approach, we examine the processes of stereotyping and the key dimensions of vegan stereotyping. Second, in the main part of the article, we reveal how opponents to such animal activist organisations as Animals Australia attempt to undermine activist calls for change by framing them as promoting an un-Australian vegan agenda. Finally, we consider how, despite such framing, that organisation is generating productive public debate around animal welfare, and, further, facilitating the creation of new activist identifications and identities.Research ApproachData collection involved searching for articles where Animals Australia and animal activism were yoked with veg*n (vegan and vegetarian), across the period May 2011 to 2016 (discussion peaked between May and June 2013). This period was of interest because it exposed a flare point with public discord being expressed between communities—namely between rural and urban consumers, farmers and animal activists, Coles Supermarkets (identified by The Australian Government the Treasury as one of two major supermarkets holding over 65% share of Australian food retail market) and their producers—and a consequent voicing of disquiet around Australian identity. We used purposive sampling (Waller, Farquharson, and Dempsey 67) to identify relevant materials as we knew in advance the case was “information-rich” (Patton 181) and would provide insightful information about a “troublesome” phenomenon (Emmel 6). Materials were collected from online news articles (30) and readers’ comments (167), online magazines (2) and websites (2) and readers’ comments (3), news items (Factiva 13), Australian Broadcasting Commission television (1) and radio (1), public blogs (2), and Facebook pages from involved organisations, specifically Australia’s National Farmers’ Federation (NFF, 155 posts) and Coles Supermarkets (29 posts). Many of these materials were explicitly responsive to a) Animals Australia’s Make It Possible campaign against Australian factory farming (launched and highly debated during this period), and b) Coles Supermarket’s short-lived partnership with Animals Australia in 2013. We utilised content analysis so as to make visible the most prominent and consistent stereotypes utilised in these various materials during the identified period. The approach allowed us to code and categorise materials so as to determine trends and patterns of words used, their relationships, and key structures and ways of speaking (Weerakkody). In addition, discourse analysis (Gee) was used in order to identify and track “language-in-use” so as to make visible the stereotyping deployed during the public reception of both the campaign and Animals Australia’s associated partnership with Coles. These methods enabled a “nuanced approach” (Coleman and Moss 12) with which to spot putdowns, innuendos, and stereotypical attitudes.Vegan StereotypingStereotypes creep into everyday language and are circulated and amplified through mainstream media, speeches by public figures, and social media. Stereotypes maintain their force through being reused and repurposed, making them difficult to eradicate due to their “cumulative effects” and influence (Harris and Sanborn 38; Inzlicht, Tullett, Legault, and Kang; Pickering). Over time stereotypes can become the lens through which we view “the world and social reality” (Harris and Sanborn 38; Inzlicht et al.). In summation, stereotyping:reduces identity categories to particular sets of deeds, attributes and attitudes (Whitley and Kite);informs individuals’ “cognitive investments” (Blum 267) by associating certain characteristics with particular groups;comprises symbolic and connotative codes that carry sets of traits, deeds, or beliefs (Cover; Rosello), and;becomes increasingly persuasive through regulating language and image use as well as identity categories (Cover; Pickering; Rosello).Not only is the “iterative force” (Rosello 35) of such associative stereotyping compounded due to its dissemination across digital media sites such as Facebook, YouTube, websites, and online news, but attempts to denounce it tend to increase its “persuasive power” (29). Indeed, stereotypes seem to refuse “to die” (23), remaining rooted in social and cultural memory (Whitley and Kite 10).As such, despite the fact that there is increasing interest in Australia and elsewhere in new food norms and plant-based diets (see, e.g., KPMG), as well as in vegan lifestyle options (Wright), studies still show that vegans remain a negatively stereotyped group. Previous studies have suggested that vegans mark a “symbolic threat” to Western, conventionally meat-eating cultures (MacInnis and Hodson 722; Stephens Griffin; Cole and Morgan). One key UK study of national newspapers, for instance, showed vegans continuing to be discredited in multiple ways as: 1) “self-evidently ridiculous”; 2) “ascetics”; 3) having a lifestyle difficult and impossible to maintain; 4) “faddist”; 5) “oversensitive”; and 6) “hostile extremists” (Cole and Morgan 140–47).For many Australians, veganism also appears anathema to their preferred culture and lifestyle of meat-eating. For instance, the NFF, Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA), and other farming bodies continue to frame veganism as marking an extreme form of lifestyle, as anti-farming and un-Australian. Such perspectives are also circulated through online rural news and readers’ comments, as will be discussed later in the article. Such representations are further exemplified by the MLA’s (Lamb, Australia Day, Celebrate Australia) Australia Day lamb advertising campaigns (Bembridge; Canning). For multiple consecutive years, the campaign presented vegans (and vegetarians) as being self-evidently ridiculous and faddish, representing them as mentally unhinged and fringe dwellers. Such stereotyping not only invokes “affective reactions” (Whitley and Kite 8)—including feelings of disgust towards individuals living such lifestyles or holding such values—but operates as “political baits” (Rosello 18) to shore-up or challenge certain social or political positions.Although such advertisem*nts are arguably satirical, their repeated screening towards and on Australia Day highlights deeply held views about the normalcy of animal agriculture and meat-eating, “hom*ogenizing” (Blum 276; Pickering) both meat-eaters and non-meat-eaters alike. Cultural stereotyping of this kind amplifies “social” as well as political schisms (Blum 276), and arguably discourages consumers—whether meat-eaters or non-meat-eaters—from advocating together around shared goals such as animal welfare and food safety. Additionally, given the rise of new food practices in Australia—including flexitarian, reducetarian, pescatarian, kangatarian (a niche form of ethical eating), vegivores, semi-vegetarian, vegetarian, veganism—alongside broader commitments to ethical consumption, such stereotyping suggests that consumers’ actual values and preferences are being disregarded in order to shore-up the normalcy of meat-eating.Animals Australia and the (So-Called) Vegan Agenda of Animal ActivismGiven these points, it is no surprise that there is a tacit belief in Australia that anyone labelled an animal activist must also be vegan. Within this context, we have chosen to primarily focus on the attitudes towards the campaigning work of Animals Australia—a not-for-profit organisation representing some 30 member groups and over 2 million individual supporters (Animals Australia, “Who Is”)—as this organisation has been charged as promoting a vegan agenda. Along with the RSPCA and Voiceless, Animals Australia represents one of the largest animal protection organisations within Australia (Chen). Its mission is to:Investigate, expose and raise community awareness of animal cruelty;Provide animals with the strongest representation possible to Government and other decision-makers;Educate, inspire, empower and enlist the support of the community to prevent and prohibit animal cruelty;Strengthen the animal protection movement. (Animals Australia, “Who Is”)In delivery of this mission, the organisation curates public rallies and protests, makes government and industry submissions, and utilises corporate outreach. Campaigning engages the Web, multiple forms of print and broadcast media, and social media.With regards to Animals Australia’s campaigns regarding factory farming—including the Make It Possible campaign (see fig. 1), launched in 2013 and key to the period we are investigating—the main message is that: the animals kept in these barren and constrictive conditions are “no different to our pets at home”; they are “highly intelligent creatures who feel pain, and who will respond to kindness and affection – if given the chance”; they are “someone, not something” (see the Make It Possible transcript). Campaigns deliberately strive to engender feelings of empathy and produce affect in viewers (see, e.g., van Gurp). Specifically they strive to produce mainstream recognition of the cruelties entrenched in factory farming practices and build community outrage against these practices so as to initiate industry change. Campaigns thus expressly challenge Australians to no longer support factory farmed animal products, and to identify with what we have elsewhere called everyday activist positions (Rodan and Mummery, “Animal Welfare”; “Make It Possible”). They do not, however, explicitly endorse a vegan position. Figure 1: Make It Possible (Animals Australia, campaign poster)Nonetheless, as has been noted, a common counter-tactic used within Australia by the industries targeted by such campaigns, has been to use well-known negative stereotypes to discredit not only the charges of systemic animal cruelty but the associated organisations. In our analysis, we found four prominent interconnected stereotypes utilised in both digital and print media to discredit the animal welfare objectives of Animals Australia. Together these cast the organisation as: 1) anti-meat-eating; 2) anti-farming; 3) promoting a vegan agenda; and 4) hostile extremists. These stereotypes are examined below.Anti-Meat-EatingThe most common stereotype attributed to Animals Australia from its campaigning is of being anti-meat-eating. This charge, with its associations with veganism, is clearly problematic for industries that facilitate meat-eating and within a culture that normalises meat-eating, as the following example expresses:They’re [Animals Australia] all about stopping things. They want to stop factory farming – whatever factory farming is – or they want to stop live exports. And in fact they’re not necessarily about: how do I improve animal welfare in the pig industry? Or how do I improve animal welfare in the live export industry? Because ultimately they are about a meat-free future world and we’re about a meat producing industry, so there’s not a lot of overlap, really between what we’re doing. (Andrew Spencer, Australian Pork Ltd., qtd. in Clark)Respondents engaging this stereotype also express their “outrage at Coles” (McCarthy) and Animals Australia for “pedalling [sic]” a pro-vegan agenda (Nash), their sense that Animals Australia is operating with ulterior motives (Flint) and criminal intent (Brown). They see cultural refocus as unnecessary and “an exercise in futility” (Harris).Anti-FarmingTo be anti-farming in Australia is generally considered to be un-Australian, with Glasgow suggesting that any criticism of “farming practices” in Australian society can be “interpreted as an attack on the moral integrity of farmers, amounting to cultural blasphemy” (200). Given its objectives, it is unsurprising that Animals Australia has been stereotyped as being “anti-farming”, a phrase additionally often used in conjunction with the charge of veganism. Although this comprises a misreading of veganism—given its focus on challenging animal exploitation in farming rather than entailing opposition to all farming—the NFF accused Animals Australia of being “blatantly anti-farming and proveganism” (Linegar qtd. in Nason) and as wanting “to see animal agriculture phased out” (National Farmers’ Federation). As expressed in more detail:One of the main factors for VFF and other farmers being offended is because of AA’s opinion and stand on ALL farming. AA wants all farming banned and us all become vegans. Is it any wonder a lot of people were upset? Add to that the proceeds going to AA which may have been used for their next criminal activity washed against the grain. If people want to stand against factory farming they have the opportunity not to purchase them. Surely not buying a product will have a far greater impact on factory farmed produce. Maybe the money could have been given to farmers? (Hunter)Such stereotyping reveals how strongly normalised animal agriculture is in Australia, as well as a tendency on the part of respondents to reframe the challenge of animal cruelty in some farming practices into a position supposedly challenging all farming practices.Promoting a Vegan AgendaAs is already clear, Animals Australia is often reproached for promoting a vegan agenda, which, it is further suggested, it keeps hidden from the Australian public. This viewpoint was evident in two key examples: a) the Australian public and organisations such as the NFF are presented as being “defenceless” against the “myopic vitriol of the vegan abolitionists” (Jonas); and b) Animals Australia is accused of accepting “loans from liberation groups” and being “supported by an army of animal rights lawyers” to promote a “hard core” veganism message (Bourke).Nobody likes to see any animals hurt, but pushing a vegan agenda and pushing bad attitudes by group members is not helping any animals and just serves to slow any progress both sides are trying to resolve. (V.c. Deb Ford)Along with undermining farmers’ “legitimate business” (Jooste), veganism was also considered to undermine Australia’s rural communities (Park qtd. in Malone).Hostile ExtremistsThe final stereotype linking veganism with Animals Australia was of hostile extremism (cf. Cole and Morgan). This means, for users, being inimical to Australian national values but, also, being akin to terrorists who engage in criminal activities antagonistic to Australia’s democratic society and economic livelihood (see, e.g., Greer; ABC News). It is the broad symbolic threat that “extremism” invokes that makes this stereotype particularly “infectious” (Rosello 19).The latest tag team attacks on our pork industry saw AL giving crash courses in how to become a career criminal for the severely impressionable, after attacks on the RSPCA against the teachings of Peter Singer and trying to bully the RSPCA into vegan functions menu. (Cattle Advocate)The “extremists” want that extended to dairy products, as well. The fact that this will cause the total annihilation of practically all animals, wild and domestic, doesn’t bother them in the least. (Brown)What is interesting about these last two dimensions of stereotyping is their displacement of violence. That is, rather than responding to the charge of animal cruelty, violence and extremism is attributed to those making the charge.Stereotypes and Symbolic Boundary ShiftingWhat is evident throughout these instances is how stereotyping as a “cognitive mechanism” is being used to build boundaries (Cherry 460): in the first instance, between “us” (the meat-eating majority) and “them” (the vegan minority aka animal activists); and secondly between human interest and livestock. This point is that animals may hold instrumental value and receive some protection through such, but any more stringent arguments for their protection at the expense of perceived human interests tend to be seen as wrong-headed (Sorenson; Munro).These boundaries are deeply entrenched in Western culture (Wimmer). They are also deeply problematic in the context of animal activism because they fragment publics, promote restrictive identities, and close down public debate (Lamont and Molnár). Boundary entrenching is clearly evident in the stereotyping work carried out by industry stakeholders where meat-eating and practices of industrialised animal agriculture are valorised and normalised. Challenging Australia’s meat production practices—irrespective of the reason given—is framed and belittled as entailing a vegan agenda, and further as contributing to the demise of farming and rural communities in Australia.More broadly, industry stakeholders are explicitly targeting the activist work by such organisations as Animals Australia as undermining the ‘Australian way of life’. In their reading, there is an irreconcilable boundary between human and animal interests and between an activist minority which is vegan, unreasonable, extremist and hostile to farming and the meat-eating majority which is representative of the Australian community and sustains the Australian economy. As discussed so far, such stereotyping and boundary making—even in their inaccuracies—can be pernicious in the way they entrench identities and divisions, and close the possibility for public debate.Rather than directly contesting the presuppositions and inaccuracies of such stereotyping, however, Animals Australia can be read as cultivating a process of symbolic boundary shifting. That is, rather than responding by simply underlining its own moderate position of challenging only intensive animal agriculture for systemic animal cruelty, Animals Australia uses its campaigns to develop “boundary blurring and crossing” tactics (Cherry 451, 459), specifically to dismantle and shift the symbolic boundaries conventionally in place between humans and non-human animals in the first instance, and between those non-human animals used for companionship and those used for food in the second (see fig. 2). Figure 2: That Ain’t No Way to Treat a Lady (Animals Australia, campaign image on back of taxi)Indeed, the symbolic boundaries between humans and animals left unquestioned in the preceding stereotyping are being profoundly shaken by Animals Australia with campaigns such as Make It Possible making morally relevant likenesses between humans and animals highly visible to mainstream Australians. Namely, the organisation works to interpellate viewers to exercise their own capacities for emotional identification and moral imagination, to identify with animals’ experiences and lives, and to act upon that identification to demand change.So, rather than reactively striving to refute the aforementioned stereotypes, organisations such as Animals Australia are modelling and facilitating symbolic boundary shifting by building broad, emotionally motivated, pathways through which Australians are being encouraged to refocus their own assumptions, practices and identities regarding animal experience, welfare and animal-human relations. Indeed the organisation has explicitly framed itself as speaking on behalf of not only animals but all caring Australians, suggesting thereby the possibility of a reframing of Australian national identity. Although such a tactic does not directly contest this negative stereotyping—direct contestation being, as noted, ineffective given the perniciousness of stereotyping—such work nonetheless dismantles the oppositional charge of such stereotyping in calling for all Australians to proudly be a little bit anti-meat-eating (when that meat is from factory farmed animals), a little bit anti-factory farming, a little bit pro-veg*n, and a little bit proud to consider themselves as caring about animal welfare.For Animals Australia, in other words, appealing to Australians to care about animal welfare and to act in support of that care, not only defuses the stereotypes targeting them but encourages the work of symbolic boundary shifting that is really at the heart of this dispute. 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Abstract:

“I realised some time ago that I am a showgirl. When I perform it is to show the girl, whereas some performers take the approach of caricaturing or ‘burlesquing’ the girl.” (Lola the Vamp) “Perhaps the most surprising idea of contemporary feminism is that women are female impersonators” (Tyler, 1) In recent years, femininity has been the subject of much debate in mainstream culture, as well as in feminist theory. The recent moral panic over “size zero” bodies is only the latest example of the anxieties and tensions generated by a culture in which every part of the female body is subject to endless surveillance and control. The backlash against the women’s movement of the late 20th century has seen the mainstreaming of high femininity on an unprecedented scale. The range of practices now expected of middle-class women, including cosmetic surgery, dieting, fake tanning, manicures, pedicures, and waxing (including pubic waxing) is staggering. Little wonder, then, that femininity has often been imagined as oppressive labour, as work. If women were to attempt to produce the ideal femininities promoted by women’s magazines in the UK, USA and Australia, there would be little time in the day—let alone money—for anything else. The work of femininity hence becomes the work of adapting oneself to a current set of social norms, a work of adaptation and adjustment that must remain invisible. The goal is to look natural while constantly labouring away in private to maintain the façade. Alongside this feminine ideal, a subculture has grown up that also promotes the production of an elaborately feminine identity, but in very different ways. The new burlesque is a subculture that began in club nights in London and New York, has since extended to a network of performers and fans, and has become a highly active community on the Internet as well as in offline cultural spaces. In these spaces, performers and audiences alike reproduce striptease performances, as well as vintage dress and styles. Performers draw on their own knowledge of the history of burlesque to create acts that may invoke late 19th-century vaudeville, the supper clubs of pre-war Germany, or 1950s pinups. However the audience for these performances is as likely to consist of women and gay men as the heterosexual men who comprise the traditional audience for such shows. The striptease star Dita von Teese, with her trademark jet-black hair, pale skin, red lips and tiny 16-inch corseted waist, has become the most visible symbol of the new burlesque community. However, the new burlesque “look” can be seen across a web of media sites: in film, beginning with Moulin Rouge (Baz Luhrmann, 2001), and more recently in The Notorious Bettie Paige (Mary Harron, 2005), as well as in mainstream movies like Mrs Henderson Presents (Stephen Frears, 2005); in novels (such as Louise Welsh’s The Bullet Trick); in popular music, such as the iconography of Kylie Minogue’s Showgirl tour and the stage persona of Alison Goldfrapp; and in high fashion through the work of Vivienne Westwood and Roland Mouret. Since the debut in the late 1990’s of von Teese’s most famous act, in which she dances in a giant martini glass, the new burlesque has arisen in popular culture as a counterpoint to the thin, bronzed, blonde ideal of femininity that has otherwise dominated popular culture in the West. The OED defines burlesque as “a comically exaggerated imitation, especially in a literary or dramatic work; a parody.” In this article, I want to think about the new burlesque in precisely this way: as a parody of feminine identity that, by making visible the work involved in producing feminine identity, precisely resists mainstream notions of feminine beauty. As Lola the Vamp points out in the quotation that opens this article, new burlesque is about “caricaturing or burlesquing the girl”, but also about “showing the girl”, not only in the literal sense of revealing the body at the end of the striptease performance, but in dramatising and making visible an attachment to feminine identity. For members of the new burlesque community, I want to suggest, femininity is experienced as an identity position that is lived as authentic. This makes new burlesque a potentially fruitful site in which to think through the questions of whether femininity can be adapted, and what challenges such adaptations might pose, not only for mainstream culture, but for feminist theory. As I have stated, feminist responses to mainstream femininity have emphasised that femininity is work; that is, that feminine identities do not emerge naturally from certain bodies, but rather have to be made. This is necessary in order to resist the powerful cultural discourses through which gender identities are normalised. This model sees femininity as additive, as something that is superimposed on some mystical “authentic” self which cries out to be liberated from the artificially imposed constraints of high heels, makeup and restrictive clothing. This model of femininity is summed up by Naomi Wolf’s famous statement, in The Beauty Myth, that “femininity is code for femaleness plus whatever society happens to be selling” (Wolf, 177; emphasis added). However, a potential problem with such a view of gender identity is that it tends to reproduce essentialist notions of identity. The focus on femininity as a process through which bodies are adapted to social norms suggests that there is an unmarked self that precedes adaptation. Sabina Sawhney provides a summary and critique of this position: Feminism seems to be relying on the notion that the authentic identity of woman would be revealed once the drag is removed. That is to say, when her various “clothes”—racial, ethnic, hetero/hom*osexual, class textured—are removed, the real, genuine woman would appear whose identity would pose no puzzles. But surely that is a dangerous assumption, for it not only prioritises certain forms of identity formation over others, but also essentialises a sexual or gendered identity as already known in advance. (5) As Sawhney suggests here, to see femininity only in terms of oppressive labour is implicitly essentialist, since it suggests the existence of a primary, authentic “femaleness”. Femininity consists of consumer “stuff” which is superimposed onto unproblematically female bodies. Sawhney is right, here, to compare femininity to drag: however, female and male femininities are read very differently in this account. Drag and cross-dressing are decried as deliberate (male) parodies of “women” (and it is interesting to note that parodies of femininity are inevitably misread as parodies of women, as though the two were the same). However, those women who engage in feminine identity practices are to be pitied, not blamed, or at least not explicitly. Femininity, the compulsion to adapt oneself to incorporate “whatever society is selling”, is articulated in terms of “social pressure”, as a miserable duty over which women have no control. As Samantha Holland argues, the danger is that women become positioned as “mindless consumers, in thrall to the power of media images” (10). Resisting the adaptations demanded by femininity thus becomes a way of resisting mindlessness, particularly through resisting excessive consumption. This anxiety about female excess is echoed in some of the press coverage of the burlesque scene. For example, an article in the British Sunday paper The Observer takes a sceptical position on some performers’ claims that their work is feminist, wondering whether the “fairy dust of irony really strips burlesque of any political dubiousness” (O’Connell, 4), while an article on a feminist Website argues that the movement “can still be interpreted as a form of exploitation of women’s bodies,” (DiNardo, 1), which rather suggests that it is the purpose of feminism to try and interpret all manifestations of femininity in this way: as if the writer is suggesting that feminism itself were a system for curbing feminine excess. This is not to deny that the new burlesque, like more mainstream forms of femininity, involves work. Indeed, a reading of online burlesque communities suggests that it is precisely the labour of femininity that is a source of pleasure. Many books and Websites associated with this movement offer lessons in stage performance; however, these real and virtual classes are not limited to those who wish to perform. In this subculture, much of the pleasure derives from a sense of community between performer and audience, a sense which derives mainly from the adaptation of a specific retro or vintage feminine identity. Miss Indigo Blue’s Academy offers courses in the more theatrical aspects of burlesque, such as stripping techniques, but also in subjects such as “makeup and wig tricks” and “walking in heels” (Miss Indigo Blue’s Academy of Burlesque). Burlesque, like cross-dressing suggests that femininity needs to be learnt: and learning femininity, in this sense, also involves unlearning whatever “one [usually restrictive] size fits all” forms of femininity are currently being sold by the fashion and beauty industries. In contrast to this normative model, the online accounts of burlesque fans and performers reveal an intense pleasure in creating and adapting new feminine identities within a subculture, through a “DIY” approach to femininity. This insistence on doing it yourself is important, since it is through the process of reclaiming vintage styles of clothing, hair and makeup that real adaptation takes place. Whereas mainstream femininity is positioned as empty consumption, and as a source of anxiety, burlesque is aligned with recycling, thrift shopping and the revival of traditional crafts such as knitting and weaving. This is most visible in magazines and Websites such as Bust magazine. This magazine, which launched in the early 1990s, was an early forerunner of the burlesque revival with its use of visual imagery taken from 1950s women’s magazines alongside pinups of the same era. The Website has been selling Bettie Page merchandise for some time alongside its popular Stitch n’ Bitch knitting books, and also hosts discussions on feminism, craft and “kitsch and make-up” (Bust). In the accounts cited above, femininity is clearly not imagined through an imperative to conform to social norms: instead, the practice of recovering and re-creating vintage looks is constructed as a pleasurable leisure activity that brings with it a sense of achievement and of engagement with a wider community. The appeal of burlesque, therefore, is not limited to a fetishistic preference for the trappings of burlesque or retro femininity: it is also defined by what it is not. Online discussions reveal a sense of dissatisfaction with more culturally visible forms of femininity promoted by celebrity culture and women’s magazines. Particular irritants include the low-maintenance look, skinniness, lip gloss, highlighted and layered hair, fake tan and, perhaps unexpectedly, jeans. These are seen as emblematic of precisely stereotypical and hom*ogenising notions of feminine identity, as one post points out: “Dita VT particularly stands out in this day and age where it seems that the mysterious Blondifier and her evil twin, the Creosoter, get to every female celeb at some point.” (Bust Lounge, posted on Oct 17 2006, 3.32 am) Another reason for the appeal of New Burlesque is that it does not privilege slenderness: as another post says “i think i like that the women have natural bodies in some way” (Bust Lounge, posted on Oct 8 2006, 7:34 pm), and it is clear that the labour associated with this form of femininity consists of adorning the body for display in a way that opposes the dominant model of constructing “natural” beauty through invisible forms of labour. Burlesque performers might therefore be seen as feminist theorists, whose construction of a feminine image against normative forms of femininity dramatises precisely those issues of embodiment and identity that concern feminist theory. This open display and celebration of feminine identity practices, for example, makes visible Elizabeth Grosz’s argument, in Volatile Bodies, that all bodies are inscribed with culture, even when they are naked. A good example of this is the British performer Immodesty Blaize, who has been celebrated in the British press for presenting an ideal of beauty that challenges the cultural predominance of size zero bodies: a press cutting on her Website shows her appearance on the cover of the Sunday Times Style magazine for 23 April 2006, under the heading “More Is More: One Girl’s Sexy Journey as a Size 18” (Immodesty Blaize). However, this is not to suggest that her version of femininity is simply concerned with rejecting practices such as diet and exercise: alongside the press images of Immodesty in ornate stage costumes, there is also an account of the rigorous training her act involves. In other words, the practices involved in constructing this version of femininity entail bringing together accounts of multiple identity practices, often in surprising ways that resist conforming to any single ideal of femininity: while both the athletic body and the sexualised size 18 body may both be seen as sites of resistance to the culturally dominant slender body, it is unusual for one performer’s image to draw on both simultaneously as Blaize does. This dramatisation of the work involved in shaping the body can also be seen in the use of corsets by performers like von Teese, whose extremely tiny waist is a key aspect of her image. Although this may be read on one hand as a performance of conformity to feminine ideals of slimness, the public flaunting of the corset (which is after all a garment originally designed to be concealed beneath clothing) again makes visible the practices and technologies through which femininity is constructed. The DIY approach to femininity is central to the imperative to resist incorporation by mainstream culture. Dita von Teese makes this point in a press interview, in which she stresses the impossibility of working with stylists: “the one time I hired a stylist, they picked up a pair of my 1940’s shoes and said, these would look really cute with jeans. I immediately said, you’re out of here” (West, 10). With its constant dramatisation and adaptation of femininity, then, I would argue that burlesque precisely carries out the work which Grosz says is imperative for feminist theory, of problematising the notion of the body as a “blank, passive page” (156). If some feminist readings of femininity have failed to account for the multiplicity and diversity of feminine identity performances, it is perhaps surprising that this is also true of feminist research that has engaged with queer theory, especially theories of drag. As Carol-Ann Tyler notes, feminist critiques of drag performances have tended to read drag performances as a hostile parody of women themselves (60). I would argue that this view of drag as a parody of women is problematic, in that it reproduces an essentialist model in which women and femininity are one and the same. What I want to suggest is that it is possible to read drag in continuum with other performances, such as burlesque, as an often affectionate parody of femininity; one which allows female as well as male performers to think through the complex and often contradictory pleasures and anxieties that are at stake in performing feminine identities. In practice, some accounts of burlesque do see burlesque as a kind of drag performance, but they reveal that anxiety is not alleviated but heightened when the drag performer is biologically female. While drag is performed by male bodies, and hence potentially from a position of power, a female performer is held to be both complicit with patriarchal power, and herself powerless: the performance thus emanates from a doubly powerless position. Because femininity is imagined as a property of “women”, to parody femininity is to parody oneself and is hence open to being read as a performance of self-hatred. At best, the performer is herself held to occupy a position of middle class privilege, and hence to have access to what O’Connell, in the Observer article, calls “the fairy dust of irony” (4). For O’Connell however the performer uses this privilege to celebrate a normative, “politically dubious” form of femininity. In this reading, which positions itself as feminist, any potential for irony is lost, and burlesque is seen as unproblematically reproducing an oppressive model of feminine identities and roles. The Websites I have cited are aware of the potential power of burlesque as parody, but as a parody of femininity which attempts to work with the tensions inherent in feminine identity: its pleasures as well as its constraints and absurdities. Such a thinking-through of femininity is not the sole preserve of the male drag performer. Indeed, my current research on drag is engaged with the work of self-proclaimed female drag queens, also known as “bio queens” or “faux queens”: recently, Ana Matronic of the Scissor Sisters has spoken of her early experiences as a performer in a San Francisco drag show, where there is an annual faux-queen beauty pageant (Barber, 1). I would argue that there is a continuity between these performers and participants in the burlesque scene who may be conflicted about their relationship to “feminism” but are highly aware of the possibilities offered by this sense of parody, which is often articulated through an invocation of queer politics. Queer politics is often explicitly on the agenda in burlesque performance spaces; however the term “queer” is used not only to refer to performances that take place in queer spaces or for a lesbian audience, but to the more general way in which the very idea of women parodying femininity works to queer both feminist and popular notions of femininity that equate it with passivity, with false consciousness. While burlesque does celebrate extreme femininities, it does so in a highly self-aware and parodic manner which works to critique and denaturalise more normalised forms of femininity. It does so partly by engaging with a queer agenda (for example Miss Indigo’s Academy of Burlesque hosts lectures on queer politics and feminism alongside makeup classes and stripping lessons). New Burlesque stage performers use 19th- and 20th-century ideals of femininity to parody contemporary feminine ideals, and this satirical element is carried through in the audience and in the wider community. In burlesque, femininity is reclaimed as an identity precisely through aligning an excessive form of femininity with feminism and queer theory. This model of burlesque as queer parody of femininity draws out the connections as well as the discontinuities between male and female “alternative” femininities, a potentially powerful connectivity that is suggested by Judith Butler’s work and that disrupts the notion that femininity is always imposed on women through consumer culture. It is possible, then, to open up Butler’s writing on drag in order to make explicit this continuity between male and female parodies of femininity. Writing of the need to distinguish between truly subversive parody, and that which is likely to be incorporated, Butler explains: Parody by itself is not subversive, and there must be a way to understand what makes certain kinds of parodic repetitions effectively disruptive, truly troubling, and which repetitions become domesticated and recirculated as instruments of cultural hegemony (Gender Trouble, 177). The problem with this is that femininity, as performed by biologically female subjects, is still positioned as other, as that which presents itself as natural, but is destabilised by more subversive gender performances, such as male drag, that reveal it as performative. The moment of judgment, when we as queer theorists decide which performances are truly subversive and which are not, is divisive: having drawn out the continuity between male and female performances of femininity, it reinstates the dualistic order in which women are positioned as lacking agency. If a practice is ultimately incorporated by consumer culture, this does not necessarily mean that it is not troubling or politically interesting. Such a reductive and pessimistic reading produces “the popular” as a bad object in a way that reproduces precisely the hegemonic discourse it is trying to disrupt. In this model, very few practices, including drag, could be held to be subversive at all. What is missing from Butler’s account is an awareness of the complex and multiple forms of pleasure and desire that characterise women’s attachment to feminine identities. I would argue that she opens up a potentially exhilarating possibility that has significant implications for feminist understandings of feminine identity in that it allows for an understanding of the ways in which female performers actively construct, rework and critique feminine identity, but that this possibility is closed down through the implication that only male drag performances are “truly troubling” (Gender Trouble, 177). By allowing female performers to ”parody the girl”, I am suggesting that burlesque potentially allows for an understanding in which female performances of femininity may, like drag, also be “truly troubling” (Butler, Gender Trouble, 177). Like drag, they require the audience both to reflect on the ways in which femininity is performatively constructed within the constraints of a normative, gendered culture, but also do justice to the extent to which feminine identity may be experienced as a source of pleasure. Striptease, in which feminine identity is constructed precisely through painstakingly creating a look whose layers are then stripped away in a stylised performance of feminine gesture, powerfully dramatises the historic tension between feminism and femininity. Indeed, the labour involved in burlesque performances can be adapted and adopted as feminist theoretical performances that speak back to hegemonic ideals of beauty, to feminism, and to queer theory. References Barber, Lynn. “Life’s a Drag”. The Guardian 26 Nov. 2006, 10. Bust Lounge. 8 Mar. 2007 http://www.bust.com/>. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London and New York: Routledge, 1990. ———. Undoing Gender. London and New York: Routledge, 2004 DiNardo, Kelly. “Burlesque Comeback Tries to Dance with Feminism.” Women’s E-News 2004. 1 Mar. 2007 http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/2099>. Dita von Teese. 8 Mar. 2007 http://www.dita.net>. Grosz, Elizabeth. 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Abstract:

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Abstract:

In “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning,” urban planners Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber outline what they term “wicked problems.” According to Rittel and Webber, wicked problems are unavoidably “ill-defined,” that is, unlike “problems in the natural sciences, which are definable and separable and may have solutions that are findable…[wicked problems] are never solved. At best they are only re-solved—over and over again” (160). Rittel and Webber were thinking specifically of the challenges involved in making decisions within immensely complex social circ*mstances—building highways through cities and designing low income housing projects, for example—but public policy-making and urban design are not the only fields rife with wicked problems. Indeed, the nub of Rittel and Webber’s articulation of wicked problems concerns a phenomenon common to many disciplines: interdisciplinary collaboration. As anyone who has collaborated with people outside her area of expertise will acknowledge, interdisciplinary collaboration itself is among the wickedest problems of all. By way of introduction, we direct the Learning Games Initiative (LGI), a transdisciplinary, inter-institutional research group that studies, teaches with, and builds computer games. In the seven years since LGI was inaugurated, we have undertaken many productive and well-received collaborations, including: 1) leading workshops at national and international conferences; 2) presenting numerous academic talks; 3) editing academic journals; 4) writing books, book chapters, journal articles, and other scholarly materials; 5) exhibiting creative and archival work in museums, galleries, and libraries; and 6) building one of the largest academic research archives of computer games, systems, paraphernalia, and print-, video-, and audio-scholarship in the world. We thus have a fair bit of experience with the wicked problem of collaboration. The purpose of this article is to share some of that experience with readers and to describe candidly some of the challenges we have faced—and sometimes overcome—working collaboratively across disciplinary, institutional, and even international boundaries. Collaborative Circle? Michael Farrell, whose illuminating analysis of “collaborative circles” has lent much to scholars’ understandings of group dynamics within creative contexts, succinctly describes how many such groups form: “A collaborative circle is a set of peers in the same discipline who, through open exchange of support, ideas, and criticism develop into an interdependent group with a common vision that guides their creative work” (266). Farrell’s model, while applicable to several of the smaller projects LGI has nurtured over the years, does not capture the idiosyncratic organizational method that has evolved more broadly within our collective. Rather, LGI has always tended to function according to a model more akin to that found in used car dealerships, one where “no reasonable offer will be refused.” LGI is open to anyone willing to think hard and get their hands dirty, which of course has molded the organization and its projects in remarkable ways. Unlike Farrell’s collaborative circles, for example, LGI’s collaborative model actually decentralizes the group’s study and production of culture. Any member from anywhere—not just “peers in the same discipline”—can initiate or join a project provided she or he is willing to trade in the coin of the realm: sweat equity. Much like the programmers of the open source software movement, LGI’s members work only on what excites them, and with other similarly motivated people. The “buy-in,” simply, is interest and a readiness to assume some level of responsibility for the successes and failures of a given project. In addition to decentralizing the group, LGI’s collaborative model has emerged such that it naturally encourages diversity, swelling our ranks with all kinds of interesting folks, from fine artists to clergy members to librarians. In large part this is because our members view “peers” in the most expansive way possible; sure, optical scientists can help us understand how virtual cameras simulate the real properties of lenses and research linguists can help us design more effective language-in-context tools for our games. However, in an organization that always tries to understand the layers of meaning-making that constitute computer games, such technical expertise is only one stratum. For a game about the cultural politics of ancient Greece that LGI has been working on for the past year, our members invited a musical instrument maker, a potter, and a school teacher to join the development team. These new additions—all experts and peers as far as LGI is concerned—were not merely consultants but became part of the development team, often working in areas of the project completely outside their own specialties. While some outsiders have criticized this project—currently known as “Aristotle’s Assassins”—for being too slow in development, the learning taking place as it moves forward is thrilling to those on the inside, where everyone is learning from everyone else. One common consequence of this dynamic is, as Farrell points out, that the work of the individual members is transformed: “Those who are merely good at their discipline become masters, and, working together, very ordinary people make extraordinary advances in their field” (2). Additionally, the diversity that gives LGI its true interdisciplinarity also makes for praxical as well as innovative projects. The varying social and intellectual concerns of the LGI’s membership means that every collaboration is also an exploration of ethics, responsibility, epistemology, and ideology. This is part of what makes LGI so special: there are multiple levels of learning that underpin every project every day. In LGI we are fond of saying that games teach multiple things in multiple ways. So too, in fact, does collaborating on one of LGI’s projects because members are constantly forced to reevaluate their ways of seeing in order to work with one another. This has been particularly rewarding in our international projects, such as our recently initiated project investigating the relationships among the mass media, new media, and cultural resource management practices. This project, which is building collaborative relationships among a team of archaeologists, game designers, media historians, folklorists, and grave repatriation experts from Cambodia, the Philippines, Australia, and the U.S., is flourishing, not because its members are of the same discipline nor because they share the same ideology. Rather, the team is maturing as a collaborative and productive entity because the focus of its work raises an extraordinary number of questions that have yet to be addressed by national and international researchers. In LGI, much of the sweat equity we contribute involves trying to answer questions like these in ways that are meaningful for our international research teams. In our experience, it is in the process of investigating such questions that effective collaborative relationships are cemented and within which investigators end up learning about more than just the subject matter at hand. They also learn about the micro-cultures, histories, and economies that provide the usually invisible rhetorical infrastructures that ground the subject matter and to which each team member is differently attuned. It is precisely because of this sometimes slow, sometimes tense learning/teaching dynamic—a dynamic too often invoked in both academic and industry settings to discourage collaboration—that François Chesnais calls attention to the fact that collaborative projects frequently yield more benefits than the sum of their parts suggests possible. This fact, says Chesnais, should lead institutions to value collaborative projects more highly as “resource-creating, value-creating and surplus-creating potentialities” (22). Such work is always risky, of course, and Jitendra Mohan, a scholar specializing in cross-cultural collaborations within the field of psychology, writes that international collaboration “raises methodological problems in terms of the selection of culturally-coloured items and their historical as well as semantic meaning…” (314). Mohan means this as a warning and it is heeded as such by LGI members; at the same time, however, it is precisely the identification and sorting out of such methodological problems that seems to excite our best collaborations and most innovative work. Given such promise, it is easy to see why LGI is quite happy to adopt the used car dealer’s slogan “no reasonable offer refused.” In fact, in LGI we see our open-door policy for projects as mirroring our primary object of study: games. This is another factor that we believe contributes to the success of our members’ collaborations. Commercial computer game development is a notoriously interdisciplinary and collaborative endeavor. By collaborating in a fashion similar to professional game developers, LGI members are constantly fashioning more complex understandings of the kinds of production practices and social interactions involved in game development; these practices and interactions are crucial to game studies precisely because they shape what games consist of, how they mean, and the ways in which they are consumed. For this reason, we think it foolish to refuse any reasonable offer to help us explore and understand these meaning-making processes. Wicked Problem Backlash Among the striking points that Rittel and Webber make about wicked problems is that solutions to them are usually created with great care and planning, and yet inevitably suffer severe criticism (at least) or utter annihilation (at worst). Far from being indicative of a bad solution, this backlash against a wicked problem’s solution is an integral element of what we call the “wicked problem dialectic.” The backlash against attempts to establish and nurture transdisciplinary collaboration is easy to document at multiple levels. For example, although our used car dealership model has created a rich research environment, it has also made the quotidian work of doing projects difficult. For one thing, organizing something as simple as a project meeting can take Herculean efforts. The wage earners are on a different schedule than the academics, who are on a different schedule from the artists, who are on a different schedule from the librarians. Getting everyone together in the same room at the same time (even virtually) is like herding cats. As co-directors of LGI, we have done our best to provide the membership with both synchronous and asynchronous resources to facilitate communication (e.g., conference-call enabled phones, online forums, chat clients, file-sharing software, and so on), but nothing beats face-to-face meetings, especially when projects grow complex or deadlines impend mercilessly. Nonetheless, our members routinely fight the meeting scheduling battle, despite the various communication options we have made available through our group’s website and in our physical offices. Most recently we have found that an organizational wiki makes the process of collecting and sharing notes, drawings, videos, segments of code, and drafts of writing decidedly easier than it had been, especially when the projects involve people who do not live a short distance (or a cheap phone call) away from each other. Similarly, not every member has the same amount of time to devote to LGI and its projects despite their considerable and demonstrated interest in them. Some folks are simply busier than others, and cannot contribute to projects as much as they might like. This can be a real problem when a project requires a particular skill set, and the owner of those skills is busy doing other things like working at a paying job or spending time with family. LGI’s projects are always done in addition to members’ regular workload, and it is understandable when that workload has to take precedence. Like regular exercise and eating right, the organization’s projects are the first things to go when life’s demands intrude. Different projects handle this challenge in a variety of ways, but the solutions always tend to reflect the general structure of the project itself. In projects that follow what Andrea Lunsford and Lisa Ede refer to as “hierarchical collaborations”—projects that are clearly structured, goal-oriented, and define clear roles for its participants—milestones and deadlines are set at the beginning of the project and are often tied to professional rewards that stand-in for a paycheck: recommendation letters, all-expenses-paid conference trips, guest speaking invitations, and so forth (133). Less organized projects—what Lunsford and Ede call “dialogic collaborations”—deal with time scheduling challenges differently. Inherently, dialogic collaborations such as these tend to be less hampered by time because they are loosely structured, accept and often encourage members to shift roles, and often value the process of working toward the project’s goals as highly as actually attaining them (134). The most common adaptive strategy used in these cases is simply for the most experienced members of the team to keep the project in motion. As long as something is happening, dialogic collaborations can be kept fruitful for a very long time, even when collaborators are only able to contribute once or twice a month. In our experience, as long as each project’s collaborators understand its operative expectations—which can, by the way, be a combination of hierarchical and dialogical modes—their work proceeds smoothly. Finally, there is the matter of expenses. As an institutionally unaffiliated collective, the LGI has no established revenue stream, which means project funding is either grant-based or comes out of the membership’s pockets. As anyone who has ever applied for a grant knows, it is one thing to write a grant, and another thing entirely to get it. Things are especially tough when grant monies are scarce, as they have been (at least on this side of the pond) since the U.S. economy started its downward spiral several years ago. Tapping the membership’s pockets is not really a viable funding option either. Even modest projects can be expensive, and most folks do not have a lot of spare cash to throw around. What this means, ultimately, is that even though our group’s members have carte blanche to do as they will, they must do so in a resource-starved environment. While it is sometimes disappointing that we are not able to fund certain projects despite their artistic and scholarly merit, LGI members learned long ago that such hardships rarely foreclose all opportunities. As Anne O’Meara and Nancy MacKenzie pointed out several years ago, many “seemingly extraneous features” of collaborative projects—not only financial limitations, but also such innocuous phenomena as where collaborators meet, the dance of their work and play patterns, their conflicting responsibilities, geographic separations, and the ways they talk to each other—emerge as influential factors in all collaborations (210). Thus, we understand in LGI that while our intermittent funding has influenced the dimension and direction of our group, it has also led to some outcomes that in hindsight we are glad we were led to. For example, while LGI originally began studying games in order to discover where production-side innovations might be possible, a series of funding shortfalls and serendipitous academic conversations led us to favor scholarly writing, which has now taken precedence over other kinds of projects. At the most practical level, this works out well because writing costs nothing but time, plus there is a rather desperate shortage of good game scholarship. Moreover, we have discovered that as LGI members have refined their scholarship and begun turning out books, chapters, and articles on a consistent basis, both they and the organization accrue publicity and credibility. Add to this the fact that for many of the group’s academics, traditional print-based work is more valued in the tenure and promotion economy than is, say, an educational game, an online teachers’ resource, or a workshop for a local parent-teacher association, and you have a pretty clear research path blazed by what Kathleen Clark and Rhunette Diggs have called “dialectical collaboration,” that is, collaboration marked by “struggle and opposition, where tension can be creative, productive, clarifying, as well as difficult” (10). Conclusion In sketching out our experience directing a highly collaborative digital media research collective, we hope we have given readers a sense of why collaboration is almost always a “wicked problem.” Collaborators negotiate different schedules, work demands, and ways of seeing, as well as resource pinches that hinder the process by which innovative digital media collaborations come to fruition. And yet, it is precisely because collaboration can be so wicked that it is so valuable. In constantly requiring collaborators to assess and reassess their rationales, artistic visions, and project objectives, collaboration makes for reflexive, complex, and innovative projects, which (at least to us) are the most satisfying and useful of all. References Chesnais, François. “Technological Agreements, Networks and Selected Issues in Economic Theory.” In Technological Collaboration: The Dynamics of Cooperation in Industrial Innovation. Rod Coombs, Albert Richards, Vivien Walsh, and Pier Paolo Saviotti, eds. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 1996. 18-33. Clark, Kathleen D., and Rhunette C. Diggs. “Connected or Separated?: Toward a Dialectical View of Interethnic Relationships.” In Building Diverse Communities: Applications of Communication Research. McDonald, Trevy A., Mark P. Orbe, and Trevellya Ford-Ahmed, eds. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2002. 3-25. Farrell, Michael P. Collaborative Circles: Friendship Dynamics & Creative Work. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2001. Lunsford, Andrea, and Lisa Ede. Singular Texts/Plural Authors: Perspectives on Collaborative Writing. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1990. Mohan, Jitendra. “Cross-Cultural Experience of Collaboration in Personality Research.” Personality across Cultures: Recent Developments and Debates. Jitendra Mohan, ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000. 313-335. O’Meara, Anne, and Nancy R. MacKenzie. “Reflections on Scholarly Collaboration.” In Common Ground: Feminist Collaboration in the Academy. Elizabeth G. Peck and JoAnna Stephens Mink, eds. Albany: State U of New York P, 1998. 209-26. Rittel, Horst W. J., and Melvin M. Weber. “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning.” Policy Sciences 4 (1973): 155-69. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Ruggill, Judd, and Ken McAllister. "The Wicked Problem of Collaboration." M/C Journal 9.2 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0605/07-ruggillmcallister.php>. APA Style Ruggill, J., and K. McAllister. (May 2006) "The Wicked Problem of Collaboration," M/C Journal, 9(2). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0605/07-ruggillmcallister.php>.

Abstract:

IntroductionIn March 2015, I visited the Lambing Flat Folk Museum (established 1967) in the “cherry capital of Australia”, the town of Young, New South Wales, in preparation for a student excursion. Like other Australian folk museums, this museum focuses on the ordinary and the everyday of rural life, and is heavily reliant on local history, local historians, volunteers, and donated objects for the collection. It may not sound as though the Lambing Flat Folk Museum (LFFM) holds much potential for a fashion curator, as fashion exhibitions have become high points of innovation in exhibition design. It is quite a jolt to return to old style folk museums, when travelling shows such as Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty (Metropolitan Museum of Art 2011 – V&A Museum 2015) or The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier (V&A Museum 2011­ – NGV 2014) are popping up around the globe. The contrast stimulated this author to think on the role and the power of curators. This paper will show that the potential for fashion as a vehicle for demonstrating ideas other than through rubrics of design or history has been growing. We all wear dress. We express identity, politics, status, age, gender, social values, and mental state through the way we dress each and every day. These key issues are also explored in many museum exhibitions.Small museums often have an abundance of clothing. For them, it is a case of not only managing and caring for growing collections but also curating objects in a way that communicates regional and often national identity, as well as narrating stories in meaningful ways to audiences. This paper argues that the way in which dress is curated can greatly enhance temporary and permanent exhibitions. Fashion curation is on the rise (Riegels Melchior). This paper looks at why this is so, the potential for this specialisation in curation, the research required, and the sensitivity needed in communicating ideas in exhibitions. It also suggests how fashion curation skills may facilitate an increasing demand.Caring for the AudienceThe paper draws on a case study of how Chinese people at the LFFM are portrayed. The Chinese came to the Young district during the 1860s gold rush. While many people often think the Chinese were sojourners (Rolls), that is, they found gold and returned to China, many actually settled in regional Australia (McGowan; Couchman; Frost). At Young there were riots against the Chinese miners, and this narrative is illustrated at the museum.In examining the LFFM, this paper points to the importance of caring for the audience as well as objects, knowing and acknowledging the current and potential audiences. Caring for how the objects are received and perceived is vital to the work of curators. At this museum, the stereotypic portrayal of Chinese people, through a “coolie” hat, a fan, and two dolls dressed in costume, reminds us of the increased professionalisation of the museum sector in the last 20 years. It also reminds us of the need for good communication through both the objects and texts. Audiences have become more sophisticated, and their expectations have increased. Displays and accompanying texts that do not reflect in depth research, knowledge, and sensitivities can result in viewers losing interest quickly. Not long into my visit I began thinking of the potential reaction by the Chinese graduate students. In a tripartite model called the “museum experience”, Falk and Dierking argue that the social context, personal context, and physical context affect the visitor’s experience (5). The social context of who we visit with influences enjoyment. Placing myself in the students’ shoes sharpened reactions to some of the displays. Curators need to be mindful of a wide range of audiences. The excursion was to be not so much a history learning activity, but a way for students to develop a personal interest in museology and to learn the role museums can play in society in general, as well as in small communities. In this case the personal context was also a professional context. What message would they get?Communication in MuseumsStudies by Falk et al. indicate that museum visitors only view an exhibition for 30 minutes before “museum fatigue” sets in (249–257). The physicality of being in a museum can affect the museum experience. Hence, many institutions responded to these studies by placing the key information and objects in the introductory areas of an exhibition, before the visitor gets bored. As Stephen Bitgood argues, this can become self-fulfilling, as the reaction by the exhibition designers can then be to place all the most interesting material early in the path of the audience, leaving the remainder as mundane displays (196). Bitgood argues there is no museum fatigue. He suggests that there are other things at play which curators need to heed, such as giving visitors choice and opportunities for interaction, and avoiding overloading the audience with information and designing poorly laid-out exhibitions that have no breaks or resting points. All these factors contribute to viewers becoming both mentally and physically tired. Rather than placing the onus on the visitor, he contends there are controllable factors the museum can attend to. One of his recommendations is to be provocative in communication. Stimulating exhibitions are more likely to engage the visitor, minimising boredom and tiredness (197). Xerxes Mazda recommends treating an exhibition like a good story, with a beginning, a dark moment, a climax, and an ending. The LFFM certainly has those elements, but they are not translated into curation that gives a compelling narration that holds the visitors’ attention. Object labels give only rudimentary information, such as: “Wooden Horse collar/very rare/donated by Mr Allan Gordon.” Without accompanying context and engaging language, many visitors could find it difficult to relate to, and actively reflect on, the social narrative that the museum’s objects could reflect.Text plays an important role in museums, particularly this museum. Communication skills of the label writers are vital to enhancing the museum visit. Louise Ravelli, in writing on museum texts, states that “communication needs to be more explicit and more reflexive—to bring implicit assumptions to the surface” (3). This is particularly so for the LFFM. Posing questions and using an active voice can provoke the viewer. The power of text can be seen in one particular museum object. In the first gallery is a banner that contains blatant racist text. Bringing racism to the surface through reflexive labelling can be powerful. So for this museum communication needs to be sensitive and informative, as well as pragmatic. It is not just a case of being reminded that Australia has a long history of racism towards non-Anglo Saxon migrants. A sensitive approach in label-writing could ask visitors to reflect on Australia’s long and continued history of racism and relate it to the contemporary migration debate, thereby connecting the present day to dark historical events. A question such as, “How does Australia deal with racism towards migrants today?” brings issues to the surface. Or, more provocatively, “How would I deal with such racism?” takes the issue to a personal level, rather than using language to distance the issue of racism to a national issue. Museums are more than repositories of objects. Even a small underfunded museum can have great impact on the viewer through the language they use to make meaning of their display. The Lambing Flat Roll-up Banner at the LFFMThe “destination” object of the museum in Young is the Lambing Flat Roll-up Banner. Those with a keen interest in Australian history and politics come to view this large sheet of canvas that elicits part of the narrative of the Lambing Flat Riots, which are claimed to be germane to the White Australia Policy (one of the very first pieces of legislation after the Federation of Australia was The Immigration Restriction Act 1901).On 30 June 1861 a violent anti-Chinese riot occurred on the goldfields of Lambing Flat (now known as Young). It was the culmination of eight months of growing conflict between European and Chinese miners. Between 1,500 and 2,000 Europeans lived and worked in these goldfields, with little government authority overseeing the mining regulations. Earlier, in November 1860, a group of disgruntled European miners marched behind a German brass band, chasing off 500 Chinese from the field and destroying their tents. Tensions rose and fell until the following June, when the large banner was painted and paraded to gather up supporters: “…two of their leaders carrying in advance a magnificent flag, on which was written in gold letters – NO CHINESE! ROLL UP! ROLL UP! ...” (qtd. in Coates 40). Terrified, over 1,270 Chinese took refuge 20 kilometres away on James Roberts’s property, “Currawong”. The National Museum of Australia commissioned an animation of the event, The Harvest of Endurance. It may seem obvious, but the animators indicated the difference between the Chinese and the Europeans through dress, regardless that the Chinese wore western dress on the goldfields once the clothing they brought with them wore out (McGregor and McGregor 32). Nonetheless, Chinese expressions of masculinity differed. Their pigtails, their shoes, and their hats were used as shorthand in cartoons of the day to express the anxiety felt by many European settlers. A more active demonstration was reported in The Argus: “ … one man … returned with eight pigtails attached to a flag, glorifying in the work that had been done” (6). We can only imagine this trophy and the de-masculinisation it caused.The 1,200 x 1,200 mm banner now lays flat in a purpose-built display unit. Viewers can see that it was not a hastily constructed work. The careful drafting of original pencil marks can be seen around the circus styled font: red and blue, with the now yellow shadowing. The banner was tied with red and green ribbon of which small remnants remain attached.The McCarthy family had held the banner for 100 years, from the riots until it was loaned to the Royal Australian Historical Society in November 1961. It was given to the LFFM when it opened six years later. The banner is given key positioning in the museum, indicating its importance to the community and its place in the region’s memory. Just whose memory is narrated becomes apparent in the displays. The voice of the Chinese is missing.Memory and Museums Museums are interested in memory. When visitors come to museums, the work they do is to claim, discover, and sometimes rekindle memory (Smith; Crane; Williams)—-and even to reshape memory (Davidson). Fashion constantly plays with memory: styles, themes, textiles, and colours are repeated and recycled. “Cutting and pasting” presents a new context from one season to the next. What better avenue to arouse memory in museums than fashion curation? This paper argues that fashion exhibitions fit within the museum as a “theatre of memory”, where social memory, commemoration, heritage, myth, fantasy, and desire are played out (Samuels). In the past, institutions and fashion curators often had to construct academic frameworks of “history” or “design” in order to legitimise fashion exhibitions as a serious pursuit. Exhibitions such as Fashion and Politics (New York 2009), Fashion India: Spectacular Capitalism (Oslo 2014) and Fashion as Social Energy (Milan 2015) show that fashion can explore deeper social concerns and political issues.The Rise of Fashion CuratorsThe fashion curator is a relative newcomer. What would become the modern fashion curator made inroads into museums through ethnographic and anthropological collections early in the 20th century. Fashion as “history” soon followed into history and social museums. Until the 1990s, the fashion curator in a museum was seen as, and closely associated with, the fashion historian or craft curator. It could be said that James Laver (1899–1975) or Stella Mary Newton (1901–2001) were the earliest modern fashion curators in museums. They were also fashion historians. However, the role of fashion curator as we now know it came into its own right in the 1970s. Nadia Buick asserts that the first fashion exhibition, Fashion: An Anthology by Cecil Beaton, was held at the Victoria and Albert Museum, curated by the famous fashion photographer Cecil Beaton. He was not a museum employee, a trained curator, or even a historian (15). The museum did not even collect contemporary fashion—it was a new idea put forward by Beaton. He amassed hundreds of pieces of fashion items from his friends of elite society to complement his work.Radical changes in museums since the 1970s have been driven by social change, new expectations and new technologies. Political and economic pressures have forced museum professionals to shift their attention from their collections towards their visitors. There has been not only a growing number of diverse museums but also a wider range of exhibitions, fashion exhibitions included. However, as museums and the exhibitions they mount have become more socially inclusive, this has been somewhat slow to filter through to the fashion exhibitions. I assert that the shift in fashion exhibitions came as an outcome of new writing on fashion as a social and political entity through Jennifer Craik’s The Face of Fashion. This book has had an influence, beyond academic fashion theorists, on the way in which fashion exhibitions are curated. Since 1997, Judith Clark has curated landmark exhibitions, such as Malign Muses: When Fashion Turns Back (Antwerp 2004), which examine the idea of what fashion is rather than documenting fashion’s historical evolution. Dress is recognised as a vehicle for complex issues. It is even used to communicate a city’s cultural capital and its metropolitan modernity as “fashion capitals” (Breward and Gilbert). Hence the reluctant but growing willingness for dress to be used in museums to critically interrogate, beyond the celebratory designer retrospectives. Fashion CurationFashion curators need to be “brilliant scavengers” (Peoples). Curators such as Clark pick over what others consider as remains—the neglected, the dissonant—bringing to the fore what is forgotten, where items retrieved from all kinds of spheres are used to fashion exhibitions that reflect the complex mix of the tangible and intangible that is present in fashion. Allowing the brilliant scavengers to pick over the flotsam and jetsam of everyday life can make for exciting exhibitions. Clothing of the everyday can be used to narrate complex stories. We only need think of the black layette worn by Baby Azaria Chamberlain—or the shoe left on the tarmac at Darwin Airport, having fallen off the foot of Mrs Petrov, wife of the Russian diplomat, as she was forced onto a plane. The ordinary remnants of the Chinese miners do not appear to have been kept. Often, objects can be transformed by subsequent significant events.Museums can be sites of transformation for its audiences. Since the late 1980s, through the concept of the New Museum (Vergo), fashion as an exhibition theme has been used to draw in wider museum audiences and to increase visitor numbers. The clothing of Vivienne Westwood, (34 Years in Fashion 2005, NGA) Kylie Minogue (Kylie: An Exhibition 2004­–2005, Powerhouse Museum), or Princess Grace (Princess Grace: Style Icon 2012, Bendigo Art Gallery) drew in the crowds, quantifying the relevance of museums to funding bodies. As Marie Riegels Melchior notes, fashion is fashionable in museums. What is interesting is that the New Museum’s refrain of social inclusion (Sandell) has yet to be wholly embraced by art museums. There is tension between the fashion and museum worlds: a “collision of the fashion and art worlds” (Batersby). Exhibitions of elite designer clothing worn by celebrities have been seen as very commercial operations, tainting the intellectual and academic reputations of cultural institutions. What does fashion curation have to do with the banner mentioned previously? It would be miraculous for authentic clothing worn by Chinese miners to surface now. In revising the history of Lambing Flat, fashion curators need to employ methodologies of absence. As Clynk and Peoples have shown, by examining archives, newspaper advertisem*nts, merchants’ account books, and other material that incidentally describes the business of clothing, absence can become present. While the later technology of photography often shows “Sunday best” fashions, it also illustrates the ordinary and everyday dress of Chinese men carrying out business transactions (MacGowan; Couchman). The images of these men bring to mind the question: were these the children of men, or indeed the men themselves, who had their pigtails violently cut off years earlier? The banner was also used to show that there are quite detailed accounts of events from local and national newspapers of the day. These are accessible online. Accounts of the Chinese experience may have been written up in Chinese newspapers of the day. Access to these would be limited, if they still exist. Historian Karen Schamberger reminds us of the truism: “history is written by the victors” in her observations of a re-enactment of the riots at the Lambing Flat Festival in 2014. The Chinese actors did not have speaking parts. She notes: The brutal actions of the European miners were not explained which made it easier for audience members to distance themselves from [the Chinese] and be comforted by the actions of a ‘white hero’ James Roberts who… sheltered the Chinese miners at the end of the re-enactment. (9)Elsewhere, just out of town at the Chinese Tribute Garden (created in 1996), there is evidence of presence. Plaques indicating donors to the garden carry names such as Judy Chan, Mrs King Chou, and Mr and Mrs King Lam. The musically illustrious five siblings of the Wong family, who live near Young, were photographed in the Discover Central NSW tourist newspaper in 2015 as a drawcard for the Lambing Flat Festival. There is “endurance”, as the title of NMA animation scroll highlights. Conclusion Absence can be turned around to indicate presence. The “presence of absence” (Meyer and Woodthorpe) can be a powerful tool. Seeing is the pre-eminent sense used in museums, and objects are given priority; there are ways of representing evidence and narratives, and describing relationships, other than fashion presence. This is why I argue that dress has an important role to play in museums. Dress is so specific to time and location. It marks specific occasions, particularly at times of social transitions: christening gowns, bar mitzvah shawls, graduation gowns, wedding dresses, funerary shrouds. Dress can also demonstrate the physicality of a specific body: in the extreme, jeans show the physicality of presence when the body is removed. The fashion displays in the museum tell part of the region’s history, but the distraction of the poor display of the dressed mannequins in the LFFM gets in the way of a “good story”.While rioting against the Chinese miners may cause shame and embarrassment, in Australia we need to accept that this was not an isolated event. More formal, less violent, and regulated mechanisms of entry to Australia were put in place, and continue to this day. It may be that a fashion curator, a brilliant scavenger, may unpick the prey for viewers, placing and spacing objects and the visitor, designing in a way to enchant or horrify the audience, and keeping interest alive throughout the exhibition, allowing spaces for thinking and memories. Drawing in those who have not been the audience, working on the absence through participatory modes of activities, can be powerful for a community. Fashion curators—working with the body, stimulating ethical and conscious behaviours, and constructing dialogues—can undoubtedly act as a vehicle for dynamism, for both the museum and its audiences. As the number of museums grow, so should the number of fashion curators.ReferencesArgus. 10 July 1861. 20 June 2015 ‹http://trove.nla.gov.au/›.Batersby, Selena. “Icons of Fashion.” 2014. 6 June 2015 ‹http://adelaidereview.com.au/features/icons-of-fashion/›.Bitgood, Stephen. “When Is 'Museum Fatigue' Not Fatigue?” Curator: The Museum Journal 2009. 12 Apr. 2015 ‹http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2151-6952.2009.tb00344.x/abstract›. Breward, Christopher, and David Gilbert, eds. Fashion’s World Cities. Oxford: Berg Publications, 2006.Buick, Nadia. “Up Close and Personal: Art and Fashion in the Museum.” Art Monthly Australia Aug. (2011): 242.Clynk, J., and S. Peoples. “All Out in the Wash.” Developing Dress History: New Directions in Method and Practice. Eds. Annabella Pollen and Charlotte Nicklas C. London: Bloomsbury, forthcoming Sep. 2015. Couchman, Sophia. “Making the ‘Last Chinaman’: Photography and Chinese as a ‘Vanishing’ People in Australia’s Rural Local Histories.” Australian Historical Studies 42.1 (2011): 78–91.Coates, Ian. “The Lambing Flat Riots.” Gold and Civilisation. Canberra: The National Museum of Australia, 2011.Clark, Judith. Spectres: When Fashion Turns Back. London: V&A Publications, 2006.Craik, Jennifer. The Face of Fashion. Oxon: Routledge, 1994.Crane, Susan. “The Distortion of Memory.” History and Theory 36.4 (1997): 44–63.Davidson, Patricia. “Museums and the Shaping of Memory.” Heritage Museum and Galleries: An Introductory Reader. Ed. Gerard Corsane. Oxon: Routledge, 2005.Discover Central NSW. Milthorpe: BMCW, Mar. 2015.Dethridge, Anna. Fashion as Social Energy Milan: Connecting Cultures, 2005.Falk, John, and Lyn Dierking. The Museum Experience. Washington: Whaleback Books, 1992.———, John Koran, Lyn Dierking, and Lewis Dreblow. “Predicting Visitor Behaviour.” Curator: The Museum Journal 28.4 (1985): 249–57.Fashion and Politics. 13 July 2015 ‹http://www.fitnyc.edu/5103.asp›.Fashion India: Spectacular Capitalism. 13 July 2015 ‹http://www.tereza-kuldova.com/#!Fashion-India-Spectacular-Capitalism-Exhibition/cd23/85BBF50C-6CB9-4EE5-94BC-DAFDE56ADA96›.Frost, Warwick. “Making an Edgier Interpretation of the Gold Rushes: Contrasting Perspectives from Australia and New Zealand.” International Journal of Heritage Studies 11.3 (2005): 235-250.Mansel, Philip. Dressed to Rule: Royal and Court Costumes from Louis XIV to Elizabeth II. New Haven: Yale UP, 2005.Mazda, Xerxes. “Exhibitions and the Power of Narrative.” Museums Australia National Conference. Sydney, Australia. 23 May 2015. Opening speech.McGowan, Barry. Tracking the Dragon: A History of the Chinese in the Riverina. Wagga Wagga: Museum of the Riverina, 2010.Meyer, Morgan, and Kate Woodthorpe. “The Material Presence of Absence: A Dialogue between Museums and Cemeteries.” Sociological Research Online (2008). 6 July 2015 ‹http://www.socresonline.org.uk/13/5/1.html›.National Museum of Australia. “Harvest of Endurance.” 20 July 2015 ‹http://www.nma.gov.au/collections/collection_interactives/endurance_scroll/harvest_of_endurance_html_version/home›. Peoples, Sharon. “Cinderella and the Brilliant Scavengers.” Paper presented at the Fashion Tales 2015 Conference, Milan, June 2015. Ravelli, Louise. Museum Texts: Communication Frameworks. Oxon: Routledge, 2006.Riegels Melchior, Marie. “Fashion Museology: Identifying and Contesting Fashion in Museums.” Paper presented at Exploring Critical Issues, Mansfield College, Oxford, 22–25 Sep. 2011. Rolls, Eric. Sojourners: The Epic Story of China's Centuries-Old Relationship with Australia. St Lucia: U of Queensland P, 1992.Samuels, Raphael. Theatres of Memory. London: Verso, 2012.Sandell, Richard. “Social Inclusion, the Museum and the Dynamics of Sectorial Change.” Museum and Society 1.1 (2003): 45–62.Schamberger, Karen. “An Inconvenient Myth—the Lambing Flat Riots and Birth of a Nation.” Paper presented at Foundational Histories Australian Historical Conference, University of Sydney, 6–10 July 2015. Smith, Laurajane. The Users of Heritage. Oxon: Routledge, 2006.Vergo, Peter. New Museology. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1989.Williams, Paul. Memorial Museums: The Global Rush to Commemorate Atrocities. Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2007.

Abstract:

Editorial<p>La Organización Mundial de la Salud (OMS, 1948) define la salud como un estado de bienestar físico, social y mental, constructo que refleja la interacción de factores sociales, políticos, económicos, culturales y científicos.(Alcántara, 2008), aspecto que hoy se encuentra amenazada por la aparición del Coronavirus 2019 (Covid 19) que produce el Síndrome Respiratorio Agudo Severo(SARSCoV-2), (García-Iglesias et al, 2020;Del Rio y Malani, 2019; Lai et al, 2020) y que está poniendo en evidencia los factores señalados. Desde el marco político se indica que se está viviendo una tragedia griega en las relaciones entre Estados Unidos y China, con repercusiones para el mundo. Ambos gobiernos se han hecho señalamientos y acusaciones, desaprovechando una gran oportunidad de cooperación, sobre todo para generar vacunas, por lo que se hace necesario reducir tensiones entre las potencias y apoyar a las naciones pobres a luchar contra el virus(Christensen, 2020). Desde el marco socio-económico se ha señalado que la pandemia es una prueba de estrés para los gobiernos y de liderazgos para los presidentes, poniendo en evidencia la crisis en los servicios públicos, sobre todo los vinculados a salud y educación. (Malamud y Nuñez, 2020). La crisis ha afectado ampliamente la economía y el mercado laboral, tanto en la oferta, producción de bienes y servicios; como en la demanda relacionado al consumo e inversión (Organización Internacional del trabajo, 2020). Desde el plano científico, ha permitido establecer propuestas como fondos concursables, rediseñar incentivos a la carrera científica y actualizar practicas científicas en las universidades, así como mejorar la trasparencia y eficiencia del gasto público en ciencia y tecnología, además de proponer aspectos colaborativo entre países para secuenciación genética del virus, además de propiciar prácticas de ciencia abierta, formar investigadores en bioinformática y ciencia de datos; además de fortalecer las políticas de ciencia, tecnología e innovación (Banco Interamericano del Desarrollo, 2020) Considerando la salud con sus tres componentes, es evidente como la salud física está comprometida frente al Covid-19, sobre todo en las personas que disponen factores de riesgo llegando a ser mortal. Díaz Castrillón y Toro- Montoya(2020) señalan que las tasas de mortalidad se estiman entre 1% y 3%, afectando principalmente a los adultos mayores y a las personas con comorbilidades, como hipertensión, diabetes, enfermedad cardiovascular y cáncer, a la cual también podemos agregar la obesidad (Petrova et al, 2020). Señalan. García-Iglesias, et al (2020) que muchas personas infectadas son asintomáticas; quienes expulsan grandes cantidades de virus, siendo un gran reto su control para detener la propagación de la infección. Establecen que la vigilancia epidemiológica es muy importante para controlar la propagación del virus, y el aislamiento es el medio más efectivo para bloquear la transmisión. Debido a este panorama la OMS anunció el 30 de enero del 2020 la situación de emergencia de la salud pública a nivel mundial y el 11 de marzo fue considerada como pandemia, ya que afectaba a más de un continente y donde los casos de cada país se daban por transmisión comunitaria. Amela, Cortes y Sierra (2010) indican que el aislamiento y la cuarentena son dos estrategias de salud pública no farmacológicas, que se utilizan para prevenir la propagación de una enfermedad altamente contagiosa, definiendo tres conceptos importantes: Aislamiento: separación y restricción de movimientos de las personas enfermas (casos confirmados y/o sospechosos) con el fin de prevenir la transmisión de la infección a personas susceptibles. Cuarentena: restricción de movimientos de las personas sanas que hayan estado en contacto con personas enfermas durante su periodo infeccioso. Es una medida de precaución para prevenir la posible transmisión de la infección a otras personas. Medidas de distanciamiento social: incluyen medidas en la comunidad para reducir el contacto entre la población como pueden ser: la recomendación de restringir viajes, medidas en el entorno escolar, laboral y comunitario. (p.499). En el Perú al día 24 de Agosto del 2020 se reportaron 600,438 casos positivos por covid-19 y 27,813 fallecidos por este virus, con una tasa de letalidad de 4.63%,(https://covid19.minsa.gob.pe/sala_situacional.asp). Según la Universidad de John Hopkins ocupa el sexto lugar de casos en el mundo (https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html). Esta epidemia no solo está reflejando la situación de la salud pública, sino como señala Cueto (2000), citando a McNeill “las epidemias son el factor oculto y verdadero de la Historia que explica el desenlace de muchos acontecimientos”(p.17), o citando a Durey “Una epidemia magnifica la relación entre los sistemas económicos y las condiciones de existencia; ilumina dimensiones poco conocidas de las mentalidades, ideologías y creencias religiosas, e ilustra los esfuerzos y las carencias por cuidar la salud pública(p.18)”. Entonces el Covid-19 está reflejando nuestra personalidad básica, nuestras creencias, nuestra identidad cultural y aspectos psicosociales que pueden estar reflejadas en la “cultura Combi”o el “achoramiento”. A nivel regional América Latina está considerada como el epicentro de la enfermedad (https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-51705060). Este problema de salud pública suscito que el Gobierno del Perú declarara el día 15 de marzo el estado de emergencia nacional y aislamiento social obligatorio, el mismo que se fue extendiendo en varias oportunidades, hasta llegar a más de 100 días. Asimismo, Llerena y Sánchez (2020), señalan que la pandemia ha puesto en evidencia una serie de problemas en el país, desde poca capacidad de gestión de gobiernos regionales, corrupción en el gasto público, violencia de género, situación vulnerable de los migrantes no sólo extranjeros sino también nacionales, así como situación critica de las industrias y emprendimientos culturales. A este panorama Maguiña (2020) expresa: “Esta nueva enfermedad (COVID-19), ha desnudado de manera cruda y real, la terrible situación sanitaria del Perú: hospitales viejos, falta de materiales, laboratorios especializados, camas, ventiladores, especialistas, y una población geriátrica abandonada, médicos mal remunerados, sin seguro médico, y como nunca, falta de equipos de bioseguridad para combatir a este nuevo flagelo.” (p.8). No cabe duda que las pandemias perturban nuestro sentido de la realidad y el orden, lo que lleva a un cambio en la forma de almacenar y metabolizar recuerdos y experiencias (Khan y Huremović, 2020). La situación descrita está generando reacciones psicológicas, como lo expresa Brooks et al., (2000): temor a la infección por virus y enfermedades, expresión de sentimientos de frustración y aburrimiento, debido a no poder satisfacer las necesidades básicas y no disponer de información y recomendaciones de actuación claras. Esta pandemia también activa nuestras actitudes hacia la muerte, revive nuestra angustia existencial, pone en juego la fortaleza física y psicológica de los equipos de salud y enfrenta a los familiares ante el duelo por haber perdido seres queridos. Así como respuestas al aislamiento social, desde uso del tiempo libre hasta la convivencia, poniendo en juego nuestra salud mental y especialmente nuestra resiliencia. Desde el ámbito de la psicología positiva podemos decir que la pandemia está poniendo en evaluación nuestras fortalezas trascendentales, las mismas que generan emociones positivas y permiten el funcionamiento óptimo del ser humano (Fredrickson, 2001), entendiéndose como virtudes y fortalezas, consideradas como rasgos positivos de personalidad, las cuales están conformadas por: sabiduría, coraje, humanidad, justicia, templanza y trascendencia (Martínez, 2006). Casali, Feraco, Ghisi y Meneghetti (2020) investigaron el papel protector de las fortalezas del carácter para mantener la salud mental y la autoeficacia durante el aislamiento social, recopilando datos de 944 encuestados italianos, mediante una encuesta en línea que investigaba las fortalezas del carácter, la angustia psicológica y la autoeficacia relacionada con Covid-19 un mes después de que comenzara el aislamiento. Los resultados pusieron en evidencia cuatro factores de fortaleza: trascendencia, interpersonal, apertura y moderación. Las fortalezas de la trascendencia establecieron una asociación inversa con la angustia psicológica y una asociación positiva con la autoeficacia, evidenciando la importancia de las fortalezas del carácter para apoyar la salud mental(menores niveles de estrés, ansiedad y depresión) y una mayor autoeficacia como una mejor forma de abordar la situación provocada por la pandemia, por tanto el eslogan italiano de Covid-19”todo va estar bien”, difundido por los medios de comunicación ayuda a tener una actitud positiva para poder manejar mejor el confinamiento y el aislamiento social, generando pensamientos esperanzadores y mejor manejo de los eventos estresantes. Se ha considerado que la salud mental es la fuerza energética más importante para el desarrollo de un país, constituyendo: “… la actitud psicológica, espiritual y social del ser humano frente a la vida, así mismo y a los demás,… ” (Perales, 1989, p.106), habiendo expresado la OMS (2013) “no hay salud sin salud mental”.(p.6). Respecto a la salud mental del personal de salud, una revisión sistematizó 13 estudios, indicándose que la salud psicológica de los profesionales sanitarios que trabajan directamente con pacientes covid 19, presentan niveles medioaltos de ansiedad, depresión, preocupación e insomnio, y en menor medida estrés. Estas reacciones psicológicas son producto de la carga y jornada laboral, unido a las restricciones de materiales de protección, sufrir aislamiento o cuarentena, ver morir a sus pacientes, y estar expuestos de forma más directa a la infección, generando miedo de contagiar a sus familiares, (García - Iglesias, et al. 2020). Lai et al (2020) efectuaron una investigación de encuestas sobre 1257 trabajadores de salud de 34 hospitales de China equipados para pacientes con COVID-19, recogiendo información desde el 29 de enero de 2020 hasta el 3 de febrero de 2020, reportándose: síntomas de depresión en 50,4%, ansiedad en 44,6%, insomnio en 34,0% y angustia 71,5%. Los trabajadores que brindaban una atención más directa, efectuando el diagnóstico, el tratamiento y el cuidado de los pacientes con COVID-19 se asociaron con un mayor riesgo de síntomas de depresión, ansiedad, insomnio y angustia. En relación a la salud mental de la población general, Becerra-García, Giménez, Sánchez-Gutiérrez, Barbeito y Calvo (2020) realizaron una investigación en una muestra de 151 personas, cuyas edades oscilaban entre los 18 y los 76 años, en el que se utilizó de forma online la versión española del Cuestionario de evaluación de síntomas-45, con la finalidad de medir síntomas psicopatológicos. Los participantes más jóvenes (18-35 años) presentaron niveles más altos de hostilidad, depresión, ansiedad y sensibilidad interpersonal que los participantes mayores (36-76 años). Los encuestados con mayor actividad o con empleo presentaron puntajes más bajos en depresión que las personas desempleadas. Los participantes que utilizaban menos de 30 minutos a informarse sobre el COVID-19 tuvieron puntuaciones más altas en hostilidad y sensibilidad interpersonal que los participantes que refirieron dedicar al menos 30 minutos. Los encuestados que practicaban deporte diariamente informaron un menor nivel de síntomas de somatización que las personas que no tenían actividad deportiva. Aquellos que tenían familiares, conocidos, con COVID-19 expresaron niveles más altos de ansiedad que aquellos que no tenían a personas cercanas infectadas. Por otro lado los participantes que vivían solos mostraron un mayor nivel de psicoticismo en comparación con aquellos que vivían con más de dos personas. Estos resultados reflejan la importancia de ciertos factores en la protección de la salud mental: tener empleo, obtener información, hacer deporte y una familia con varios miembros. Lozano (2020) describe diversos estudios efectuados en China, relacionados a la salud mental en la población general donde se identificó que el 53,8% presentaba impacto psicológico de moderado a severo. Respecto a síntomas específicos un 16,5% tenían indicadores de síntomas depresivos, el 28,8% síntomas ansiosos y un 8,1% refirió estrés. Los factores asociados con alto impacto psicológico y niveles elevados de estrés, así como síntomas de ansiedad y depresión fueron sexo femenino, ser estudiante, tener síntomas físicos específicos y una percepción pobre de la propia salud. (Wang et al.,2020). Otra investigación en el mismo país estableció que la población general presentaba un 35% de angustia, donde las mujeres presentaron mayores niveles que los varones, al igual que los grupos etarios de 18 30 años y los mayores de 60 años. (Qiu et al., 2020). Una población significativa son los estudiantes universitarios, según la UNESCO (2020) 23,4 millones de estudiantes de educación superior y a 1,4 millones de docentes en América Latina y el Caribe, han sido afectado por el Covid-19 al cerrarse los centros de educación superior. Una evaluación de los aspecto psicológicos en estudiantes universitarios de México, que estuvieron confinados por la pandemia de Covid-19, reporto síntomas de moderados a severos de estrés, problemas psicosomáticos, problemas para dormir, disfunción social en la actividad diaria y síntomas depresivos, especialmente en el grupo de las mujeres y en los estudiantes más jóvenes (18-25 años). (González Jaimes, Tejeda- Alcántara, Espinosa-Méndez y Ontiveros-Hernández, 2020). Una evaluación del impacto emocional en 3960 estudiantes universitarios de una universidad pública de Lima durante el aislamiento social identificó que las emociones positivas que predominan son: alerta, interesado en las cosas, atento, optimista y fuerte; y las emociones negativas que destacan: asustado, tenso, miedoso, nervioso y disgustado, sobresaliendo las emociones positivas a las negativas, no existiendo diferencia por sexo (Livia, Aguirre, Rondon y Lara, 2020). Huarcaya (2020) establece que en la pandemia de COVID-19 la atención se ha focalizado en los pacientes infectados y en el personal de salud, descuidándose a las poblaciones marginadas por la sociedad, como es el caso de aquellos que presentan trastornos mentales, quienes debido a su condición tienen mayor riesgo de infectarse, como resultado de su deterioro cognitivo, poca conciencia del riesgo y mínimos esfuerzos de protección personal. Si la pandemia por COVID-19 afecta a la población general de manera significativa, generándose sín¬tomas como estrés, depresión y ansiedad; esto sería mayor en las personas con problemas psicológicos, pudiendo agravar su estado. Respecto del aislamiento social Huremovic (2019) indica que las personas que están aisladas socialmente, con movilidad restringida y pobre contacto con los demás son vulnerables a presentar reacciones psicopatológicas (insomnio, ansiedad, depresión y trastorno por estrés postraumático), que van desde síntomas aislados hasta el desarrollo de un trastorno mental. Se ha establecido que la cuarentena, practicada para el control de infecciones, así como el distanciamiento social, han recibido poca atención de la psiquiatría, siendo necesario sus aportes para manejar preocupaciones, miedos y creencias irracionales sobre la enfermedad. Este aislamiento social conduce a la soledad crónica y aburrimiento, que si es lo suficientemente largo puede tener efectos perjudiciales sobre el bienestar físico y mental (Banerjee y Rai, 2020). Bezerra, Silva, Soares y Silva (2020) presentan resultados de una investigación realizada en Brasil sobre la percepción del aislamiento social durante la pandemia de COVID-19. Diseñaron un cuestionario elaborado en Google Forms, distribuido por redes sociales, aplicándole a una muestra de 16.440 sujetos. La convivencia social fue el aspecto más afectado entre las personas con mayor escolaridad e ingresos, para las personas de bajos ingresos y escolaridad lo problemas financieros provocaron el mayor impacto. Los que practican actividad física revelaron menores niveles de estrés y mayor normalidad en el sueño. Se concluye que la percepción sobre el aislamiento social varía según los ingresos, educación, edad y género. Sin embargo, la mayoría cree que es la medida de control más adecuada y están dispuestos a esperar el tiempo que sea necesario para contribuir a la lucha contra el COVID-19. La Alianza para la Protección de la Infancia en la Acción Humanitaria (2020) señala: “Enfermedades infecciosas como el COVID-19 pueden alterar los entornos donde niños, niñas y adolescentes crecen y se desarrollan. Cambios que desestabilizan a la familia, las amistades, la rutina diaria y la comunidad en general o pueden tener consecuencias negativas en el bienestar, el desarrollo y la protección de la niñez y adolescencia” (p.1), por ello el Gobierno del Perú considero a los niños, niñas y adolescentes en grupo de riesgo, restringiendo su desplazamiento fuera del domicilio de los mismos, pero no cabe duda del impacto que está generando en su salud mental, entendida como el bienestar psicológico que incluye el bienestar personal, expresado en pensamientos positivos, bienestar interpersonal, que involucra la relaciones con los demás y la capacidad de aprender (UNICEF,2020), debiendo indicarse que este impacto en la salud mental no está estudiado, considerándose la evidencia disponible como anecdótica y estudios con limitaciones en sus conclusiones(García y Cuellar –Flores, 2020). Este panorama plantea la necesidad de proteger la salud mental del personal de salud tanto como la de la población general y sujetos en riesgo, con la finalidad de garantizar el bienestar, para lo cual se hace necesario evaluar las creencias en salud, vale decir, la percepción de la susceptibilidad de sufrir una determinada enfermedad, que tal vez podríamos reflejarla como tener conciencia de poder enfermarse; la percepción que la persona es vulnerable al problema; así como la creencia que el comportamiento a adoptar, producirá un beneficio y un costo personal aceptable, aspecto que puede complementarse con lo expresado por Concha, Urrutia y Riquelme, (2012): “ … si esta explicación la llevamos al plano de la salud, las personas actuarán alineadas a sus creencias, aprendidas en un contexto cultural determinado y descartando cualquier otra alternativa de cuidado en salud que no coincida con dichas creencias.” (p.89). Otro aspecto que ha generado dificultades en la adaptación a este nuevo escenario, es el teletrabajo, el mismo que ha permitido en alguna medida, cumplir con el aislamiento social, y seguir laborando, pero puede generar dificultades en el equilibrio psicológico del trabajador. Torres (2020) describe la tensión y ansiedad causada por la emergencia sanitaria, señalando el agotamiento físico ocasionado por la combinación del aumento de la carga laboral unido con las labores domésticas, y finalmente el agotamiento visual provocado por la interacción persona-computador para la realización del teletrabajo o trabajo remoto. Es probable que existan mayores sentimientos de frustración y conductas de riesgo en grupos vulnerables, como los trabajadores informales, migrantes y trabajadoras domésticas, dadas sus condiciones laborales. Finalmente se debe evaluar el impacto del Covid 19 en la enseñanza remota, el mismo que ha puesto en evidencia el desarrollo de las competencias digitales en diversas poblaciones, sobre todo los involucrados en el ámbito educativo. Es probable que algunos estudiantes hayan incrementado sus dificultades de aprendizaje y otros lo estén desarrollando, e incrementándose comportamientos disruptivos, lo que seguramente generará deserción y bajo rendimiento académico, unido a los diversos problemas de usabilidad de los recursos tecnológicos. El Banco Mundial (2020) ha expresado que el aprendizaje se reducirá y aumentarán las deserciones escolares, en particular, entre las personas más desfavorecidas. “También puede sufrir la salud mental de los estudiantes debido al aislamiento que deben mantener durante el período de distanciamiento social y los efectos traumáticos de la crisis sobre las familias. Además, es posible que los jóvenes que no van a la escuela tengan comportamientos más peligrosos y que aumente la fertilidad adolescente” (p. 6). Se ha indicado que el impacto en la educación superior del coronavirus está vinculado a un alto índice de disminución de matrículas, y aproximadamente el 15% de estudiantes dejaron sus carreras durante la pandemia, proyectándose que en el siguiente semestre llegaría al 35% (Pérez, 2020). Harari (2018) establece que los seres humanos han estado formulándose preguntas como ¿Quién soy? ¿Qué debo hacer en la vida? ¿Cuál es el sentido de la vida?, donde cada generación necesita una respuesta nueva; este escenario descrito y condicionado por un coronavirus invita a preguntarnos: ¿Cuál es la mejor respuesta en la actualidad? Park, Peterson y Sun (2013), señalan que la razón final de la vida no es sobrevivir a la adversidad, sino florecer y crecer, que todos merecemos una vida feliz, saludable y plena, pero es necesario cuidarla, controlando las conductas de riesgo, buscando el equilibrio entre el principio del placer y la realidad. Queda en nuestra capacidad cognitiva y emocional no autodestruirnos.</p>