A series of programmes on BBC looked into the huge rise in diagnoses of autism in the UK [1]. The programmes gave space for various academics (as well as other professionals) to explain this ‘autism curve’ and speculate as to its consequences. All spoke in a balanced and open manner and you ended up feeling you… Continue reading The Autism Curve
Category: media
‘The Lives of Others’
[While other blogs deal more with technology and education, this post reviews a film] Apparently, taking an interest in East Germany or the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR) as was (1949-1990) is now ‘cool’ [1], at least in UK. We are getting a wave of books and films and some of them are offering a more balanced,… Continue reading ‘The Lives of Others’
Reporting Atrocity (2)
Discussion of the reporting of the war in Ukraine takes me back to a much more serious case of misinformation / disinformation in UK some years back. This concerned a libel of UK television reporters Penny Marshall and Ian Williams in an article published way back in February 1997. The bare facts are that ‘Living… Continue reading Reporting Atrocity (2)
Reporting Atrocity 1
The other day BBC Radio carried a programme on academics who had tweeted or retweeted posts that cast doubt on atrocities carried out by Russian soldiers during the Ukraine war. (There is at the time of writing access to both the programme, 'File on Four: Ukraine: The disinformation war', and transcript of the broadcast at https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0017thr)… Continue reading Reporting Atrocity 1
Graffiti and comment forums: An essentially social act gone wrong?
When I find myself disappointed by the tone of online comment forums my mind goes back to toilet graffiti. I am no expert, but there was, I think, a spike in interest in researching toilet (or what Americans might call ‘restroom’) graffiti in the 1970s and 1980s. It is not difficult to see why. Graffiti… Continue reading Graffiti and comment forums: An essentially social act gone wrong?
Post-truth and a good argument
The term post-truth was, according to Oxford Dictionaries, the Word of the Year 2016. It was defined as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/word-of-the-year/word-of-the-year-2016 In USA of course the term became widely used in the context of… Continue reading Post-truth and a good argument
Photography and social research
I have often felt in doing research that I have missed out on using photographs, but when it comes to it I am not sure what an image tells us. Or rather my suspicion is, to borrow a phrase from Ryle [1], that an image gives you a ‘thin’ description’, it shows you what is… Continue reading Photography and social research
in praise of praise
As I come to later, I was taken back a little by a Sutton Trust report on ‘what makes great teaching’ . [The Sutton Trust is linked here [http://www.suttontrust.com] and the report itself is at http://www.suttontrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/What-makes-great-teaching-FINAL-4.11.14.pdf%5D . The report says many sensible things about support for learning and the critical importance of feedback. However tucked… Continue reading in praise of praise
Michael Hammond 
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