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As people are living longer, their needs for health and social care at the end of life (EoL) are increasing. People are encouraged to make choices about their EoL, but doing so is a complex process, and there is currently little research into how—and if—people engage with this. Our study investigated older people’s EoL choice making, through twenty interviews with people age 70 plus. We found that storytelling enabled people to make sense of and reflect on previous EoL experiences, and form, elaborate on, and justify their own EoL preferences. Stories also brought to the fore the inherent conflicts in making EoL choices, and emphasized that in reality choices for many are limited.

A significant body of critical scholarship exists problematizing the dominant behavioural-individualist approaches to public health policy and intervention, and practice theories have been noted for their potential in providing an alternative. Children’s physical activity in primary school settings continues to be a major area of attention in public health, yet no critical examination of a practice theory approach exists in this context. This paper addresses this gap by applying the prevalent three-elements model of practices to the case of children’s school-based physical activity. Drawing on focus group, interview and observation data from pupils, staff and parents at one primary school setting in England, our analysis highlights; first, how the configurations of (a) physical resources (e.g. playground space and equipment), (b) practical know-how (e.g. a skilled understanding of performing the activity), and (c) the socio-cultural significance of practices (e.g. the values and meanings of the activity) impact how, and whether children’s physical activity happens, and is sustained or interrupted; and second, by showing how physically active practices are contingent on being simultaneously in harmony or conflict with other routinized practices of the school day. We conclude that the three-elements model offers a helpful framework for understanding school physical activity which de-centres the individual, but that there are challenges in using this analysis to support primary schools as they attempt to enable physically active practices more effectively. Further research is required to develop and evaluate a practice theory approach to promoting children’s physical activity.

Mental health problems (MHPs) amongst university students are increasing in the UK and internationally. Academic staff have a potentially important role in supporting students with MHPs, but the literature indicates that most lack the knowledge and skills to do so. Studies on academics’ experiences of working with students with MHPs have generally focused on one or two institutions/faculties, meaning there is a lack of understanding of any differences across the wider higher education sector. In order to address this gap, a mixed methods study involving a survey (N = 130) and semi-structured interviews (N = 11) was undertaken with academics in 27 institutions across the UK, divided into Russell Group, other pre-1992, and post-1992 universities, across 5 broad subject areas. Nearly all respondents had encountered student MHPs, but although awareness of student MHPs was high, preparedness to support these students was low. These findings were consistent across all types of institution and subject areas, and we therefore recommend that all academic staff should have compulsory basic training in mental health. Although the response rate does not allow us to generalise the findings to all UK universities, the findings indicate that all types of university and subject area face the same issues around student mental health. Our research also builds on studies of academics’ experiences of student MHPs in the US, Canada, and Australia, and offers insight for the higher education sector internationally. Overall, this study emphasises that academic staff should be an integral part of any institution’s strategy for enhancing student mental health.

From the early days of hippie counter-culture, music festivals have been an important part of the British summer. Today they are commercialised offerings without the counter-cultural discourse of earlier times. Drawing on participant observation, interviews and focus groups conducted at a rock festival and a smaller boutique festival, the paper examines how their design, organisation and management are co-created with participants to produce authentic experiences. The paper contributes to research on authenticity in tourism by examining how authenticity emerges and is experienced in such co-created commercial settings. It presents the importance that the socio-spatial plays in authenticity experiences and how socio-spatial experience and engagement can also be recognised as a form of aura.

In this article, we explore the notion of freedom as a form of governance within contemporary consumer culture in a sphere where ‘freedom’ appears as a key component: outdoor music-based leisure events, notably music festivals and free parties. ‘Freedom’ is commodified as central to the marketing of many music festivals, which now form a highly commercialised sector of the UK leisure industry, subject to various regulatory restrictions. Free parties, in contrast, are unlicensed, mostly illegal and far less commercialised leisure spaces. We present data from two related studies to investigate how participants at three major British outdoor music festivals and a small rural free party scene draw on discourses of freedom, escape and regulation. We argue that major music festivals operate as temporary bounded spheres of ‘licensed transgression’, in which an apparent lack of regulation operates as a form of governance. In contrast, free parties appear to ‘achieve the impossible’ by creating alternative (and illegal) spaces in which both freedom and regulation are constituted in different ways compared to music festival settings.

Background\ud On social media, images such as thinspiration, fitspiration, and bonespiration, are shared to inspire certain body ideals. Previous research has demonstrated that exposure to these groups of content is associated with increased body dissatisfaction and decreased self-esteem. It is therefore important that the bodies featured within these groups of content are more fully understood so that effective interventions and preventative measures can be informed, developed, and implemented.\ud \ud Method\ud A content analysis was conducted on a sample of body-focussed images with the hashtags thinspiration, fitspiration, and bonespiration from three social media platforms.\ud \ud Results\ud The analyses showed that thinspiration and bonespiration content contained more thin and objectified bodies, compared to fitspiration which featured a greater prevalence of muscles and muscular bodies. In addition, bonespiration content contained more bone protrusions and fewer muscles than thinspiration content.\ud \ud Conclusions\ud The findings suggest fitspiration may be a less unhealthy type of content; however, a subgroup of imagery was identified which idealised the extremely thin body type and as such this content should also be approached with caution. Future research should utilise qualitative methods to further develop understandings of the body ideals that are constructed within these groups of content and the motivations behind posting this content.

Purpose This paper aims to introduce key concepts from practice theory (PT) to the social change agenda and draw on the unique contributions of the social marketing field. PT has underpinned a growing stream of research in pro-environmental studies seeking to reduce impacts of particular behaviours, but it remains theoretical. By drawing on social marketing’s applied roots, this paper introduces a practice-theoretical intervention planning process (P-TIPP) which frames the unique contribution of social marketing in behaviour change and foregrounds practice- not individual-level change. Design/methodology/approach The P-TIPP draws on the total process planning model, introducing the concept of “practice as entity” and “practice as performance” to frame intervention planning tasks. The process locates the contribution of social marketing within a transdisciplinary framework which emphasises transforming collective conventions. Findings This is a conceptual paper, but the possibility for PT to make a significant contribution to the world of social marketing is outlined. Research limitations/implications P-TIPP is untested. Also, practices can be difficult to identify and somewhat abstract. Finally, it can be challenging to introduce the approach to policy, funding and practitioner procedures. Practical implications The implications of P-TIPP are that social change interventions are devised, underpinned and planned using insights from PT, such as the way behavioural patterns fit into broader understandings of practice. The subsequent social change agenda will be inherently transdisciplinary, sustainable and reduce focus on individual power to change. Originality/value This paper is a first attempt at exploring what PT, and social marketing can learn from each other for the future effectiveness of social change activity.

One of the dangers of writing about innovative digital research is that, by definition, the field is subject to ongoing transformations. The pace of technological change is such that both digital social life and digital tools will have developed since the research reported in this collection was conducted. As noted in the introduction to Part III, this is further complicated when we consider some of the debates concerning exactly what is meant by ‘methodological innovation’. Wiles et al. (2013, p. 19) note that while some authors reserve the term for new methodologies, others such as Taylor and Coffey (2008) also consider extensions to existing methods as innovative. Moreover, questions arise as to whether these developments are innovative if they remain on the margins, or whether this occurs only when they have been more widely adopted (Wiles et al., 2013, p. 19). We have taken a broad approach to innovation by considering how the ‘mainstream’ — by which we mean established social science research — is being supplemented and extended by digital methods. As such, this collection has focused on two core points of innovation: the existing social science methodological repertoire and the conceptual mainstream or established social science issues and concerns.

This book explores exciting innovations in the field of digital social research. The growing significance of ‘the digital’ for contemporary social life is undeniable; nevertheless digital methods have yet to be fully accepted into mainstream social science. By presenting a range of work by social scientists from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, it is our aim to highlight digital methods as a valuable and increasingly integral part of the social research toolkit. They offer the chance to access, generate and analyse new kinds of data on the social world in novel ways and address new research questions, as well as providing different approaches to long-standing questions. In this collection, we define digital methods as the use of online and digital technologies to collect and analyse research data. Our concern is not only with research that explores online phenomena, but also with a broader interest in utilizing digital methods to engage with all aspects of contemporary social life.

This article argues that youth cultural leisure and consumption practices have the potential to be sites for alternative political participation, an ‘everyday politics’ that involves a personalizing of politics and an ‘aloof ’ stance regarding official institutions. Drawing on the work of Harris (2001) and Maffesoli (1996), the article outlines the lenses that make up ‘everyday politics’, namely ‘sociality and proxemics’, ‘solidarity and belonging’, ‘hedonism’, ‘vitality and puissance’, and ‘sovereignty over one’s own existence’; empirically examining these lenses using qualitative data from a project on participating in electronic dance culture (clubbing, raving, partying). The article suggests that everyday politics is a useful concept in understanding alternative forms of political activism and calls for broader definitions of political participation, including those that do not have a social change agenda. The need for future work in theorizing and empirically examining how everyday and traditional political activities interact is highlighted.

In this article, we explore the potential for leisure as a site for new forms of political participation. Using electronic dance music culture (EDMC) as an example, we locate our analysis within theories of neo-liberalism and neo-tribalism, both of which suggest that political participation may be occurring at an informal level through consumption. Interview and focus group data on participation in EDMC in the southwest of England were analyzed, producing the themes of ‘community, sociality and belonging’, ‘hedonism’, ‘multiplicity and flux’ and ‘Sovereignty’. These themes provided evidence for EDMC as a site for neo-tribal social and political participation, in which people created local and informal spaces of au-tonomy characterized by a celebration of community, sociality and hedonism. However, participants also drew on neo-liberal discourses of individualism, rights and responsibilities to make sense of their participation in EDMC, producing a move from economic and consumer citizen subjects to the ‘pleasure’ citizen.

This article examines the multiple and contradictory understandings that participants of a free party (rave) scene in the South West of England drew upon when talking about ketamine, and the role of these understandings in identity and consumption practices. The data is drawn from 19 semi-structured interviews and one focus group conducted in two phases over a period of 17 months with participants associated with a particular sound system. The data was analysed using discourse analysis, identifying three interpretative repertoires namely ‘communality and sociality’; ‘ketamine as alien invader’; and ‘rights and pleasures of extreme intoxication’. Different understandings of ketamine were used to articulate a contradictory set of values about the free party scene, and drawn upon to negotiate the heterogeneity of this scene. This also entailed the negotiation of wider neo-liberal discourses around individual rights and freedoms to consume, and individual regulation and responsibility for these freedoms.

At the time of writing, the BBC's radio station aimed at young people – Radio 1 – featured an advice programme in which a doctor discussed how a ‘dangerous’ drug called ketamine is ‘sweeping the na...

Product placement involves the introduction of a identifiable branded product into the content or background of media broadcasting formats. Placements take place in traditional media as well as newer formats such as games and social media sites. A distinguishing feature of product placement is that – unlike traditional advertising – it takes place within the context of entertainment and is shaped or scaffolded by an immersive narrative (Cowley and Barron, 2008) thus making it difficult to avoid and often difficult to detect (La Ferle and Edwards, 2006).

This chapter explores some of the ethical challenges posed by digital ethnography as an innovative methodology for conducting online research. Digital ethnography shares many of the principles of traditional (offline) ethnography, including an ethnographic commitment to understanding participants’ lives and experiences through observation and active participation (Hine, 2000). One of a number of virtual ethnographic approaches, digital ethnography can be distinguished from other approaches by its focus on the intersection of digital technologies with the Internet. Ease of access to a ready and rich body of data, and an active understanding of the meanings of everyday digital practices for research participants, are some of the key advantages of digital ethnography. However, as we will demonstrate, this convenience also acts as a disadvantage as it entails the negotiation of a number of complex ethical issues. While debates about the ethical aspects of conducting research online have taken place since the development of the first Internet browsers in the mid-90s (Naughton, 2000), a significant shift has occurred in the online practices of Internet users, and the ways in which the Internet itself has shaped these practices in the last decade. In particular, the advent of Web 2.0 has further muddied existing ethical concerns about overt and covert observation, blurred distinctions between the public and the private, complicated the question of informed consent and data protection, and thrown open questions about the authorship and ownership of data (Snee, 2008).