I’m currently managing three large research projects, plus our media. I’ve had two big weeks preparing for our public health trial, planning an ethics application, delivering a workshop, finalising results of a project that’s been scaled across the state, and managing our public communications under less than ideal timing.
Continue reading “Juggling Research”
Not-for-profit organisations still have a tendency to be reticent to fully embrace social media. For some it’s due to lack of funds, time or resources, for others it’s lack of confidence about technology. As not-for-profits are sometimes staffed by volunteers, social media duties may be handed to junior staff who aren’t adequately trained, or it’s otherwise done ad hoc by personnel who are looking after social media in additional to their main job.
Continue reading “Twitter Tips for Not-for-Profits”
I had Friday off. I ran around doing errands and I spent the day in Newtown. It was lovely! The rest of the weekend was pretty relaxed, though I also worked a little on my personal research. I hope to be able to tell you about that soon. In addition, there was a big technical hiccup to attend to.
Continue reading “Website Woes”
A lunchtime seminar on Aboriginal queer people at work, revising data from our randomised control trial to improve outcomes for students, public communications, and personal research.
Continue reading “Racial Justice at Work”
I’ve been away a long time and I wanted to restart my series on A Day in Applied Sociology, to shed light on what it’s like to be an applied sociologist. First, I wanted to show you how I manage my public sociology with my paid work. Second, I wanted to reflect on what it’s like learning website and graphic design for business, research and social policy audiences.
Continue reading “Website and Graphic Design in Applied Research”
Research doesn’t just involve collecting and analysising data, or writing reports. It involves endless admin and negotiation. I returned to work on a data request, accessibility, public communications, plus equity and diversity planning.
Continue reading “Research Admin”
When you get a PhD, no one tells you how much of your research career will be spent doing admin, planning, and meetings! Today was a day filled with an abundance of these auxiliary tasks that keep research projects running on time and within allocated resourcing. From ethics, to stakeholder meetings about our research, to public communications, and getting ready for our intern, it was a packed day.
Continue reading “Planning Research”
Social science offers sophisticated methods for governments to better understand social media. Social scientists are using established research techniques to improve meaningful collection of social data via social media.
Continue reading “Improving Management of Social Media”How do we better support “click farm” workers of the online economy? Click farm workers are paid to generate clicks and “likes” on webpages and they otherwise drive traffic to particular websites or social media posts. They are currently located in impoverished areas, especially in developing regions. Their pay is very low and the conditions under which they work are exploitative.
Economics Professor Yann Moulier Boutang argues we should draw on the concept of cognitive capital when thinking about the importance of these workers to the new digital economy. This term refers to the collective knowledge and income drawn from click worker’s online cooperation.
In mid-2015, I was featured on the University College London Researchers about my time running my consultancy. Read more below about my career transition and how I use social science when working with not-for-profit organisations and businesses. By S Donaldson, … Continue reading Turning social science into a business
Social Science Insights 