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The aim of this research was to identify the importance of trust as a determinant of participants’ behaviour and the weight of different motivational factors that enhance the amount and the quality of contribution.

Quantitative research methods (online survey of 450 respondents and content analysis of 250 reviews) were applied on a Romanian crowdsourcing platform founded in 2008, with the mission to help potential tourists to take the most informed decision in their travel choices.

The data collected showed that the majority of the active members have a positive outlook over their experience within the community, admitting its trustworthy characteristics. The findings show that most of the top-rated members of the community were not motivated by material rewards such as money or prizes, but rather by socially related factors or by individual factors (positive feedback through comments or acquiring knowledge).

The findings cannot be generalised to other crowdsourcing models, which are subject to different task designs, outcomes, local contexts and even functionalities.

The results of this research can contribute to the design and implementation of customer-centred platforms, which might represent a way of development of organisational communication in the future.

The research posits that individuals’ experience within colloraborative crowdsourcing communities needs to be meaningful, as participants act based on a reciprocity norm, of giving something back to the community which is useful for fulfilling their own information-seeking purposes.

Climate change is a global issue with far-reaching environmental, social and economic consequences. As more people become aware of these consequences, pressure is mounting on governments and businesses to implement ambitious and required climate mitigation and adaptation plans to reduce and finally stop making the climate crisis worse. One of these strategies is just transition, which is defined as the call for climate transformation that prioritises the social and environmental needs of workers and vulnerable groups, especially in the context of transitioning away from fossil fuels, while leaving no one behind. This chapter first provides an overview of just transition through a review of the literature and bibliometric analysis. Then, it discusses just transition in policymaking, comprising reactive, proactive and transformational just transition approaches. This is followed by a discussion on barriers to just transition. Finally, the chapter offers a practical example of transformational just transition approach by reporting some preliminary findings from a case study in the coal mining town of Collie on Wilman Boodja, Western Australia.

Since the demise of Delivering Race Equality strategy in 2010 under the last Labour government and with the Coalition (2010–2015), and now the Conservative government at times have adopted a “color blind” approach to race and health. This raises the fundamental question why is race equality off the political agenda and how black mental health issues can be part of a future strategy. The 2015 Care Quality Commission (CQC) annual monitoring report of the Mental Health Act (MHA; which has also incorporated the learning since the inception of the Act in 1985) further highlighted the overrepresentation of African and Caribbean men and women who are sectioned in secure wards or on Community Treatment Order (CTO) in the psychiatric system over the last 30 years. The CQC have revised the code of practice which recognizes issues around race equality as part of wider perspectives and principles of human rights.

In October 2017, the government established an independent review of the 2007 MHA as a way of providing more safeguards for patients and service users. The review, under the leadership of Sir Simon Wessely which is reported in 2018, provided an opportunity for an informed public debate on the historical and contemporary roles of psychiatry and the experiences of mental health in Britain’s African and Caribbean communities. The review did examine community anxieties about the proportionally larger numbers of black ethnic minorities receiving inpatient care and CTOs, or in the criminal justice system. However, after 30 years of Black History Month in the UK, we still need to ask the question: Are those of African descent overrepresented in these systems? If so, is serious mental illness over diagnosed among these groups due to the persistence of stereotypes rooted in the experiences of slavery, or do they in fact experience distinctive patterns of mental health and illness, perhaps due to the wider fallout of historical enslavem

For much of its 43-year history, the community college sector in Jamaica has been plagued by perceptions of inferior status and mediocre tertiary education offerings. The Jamaican colleges have responded to the criticisms by aggressively pursuing quality assurance initiatives such as program accreditation, expanded course offerings, and ongoing curriculum review. This chapter traces the birth and development of the community college movement in Jamaica and the Caribbean and acknowledges the significant achievement of the Jamaican colleges in increasing access to tertiary education. The chapter also examines threats to the open access policy that may have serious implications for education equity and quality. These include inadequate funding, limited infrastructure to support the curriculum, low enrolment of specialized groups, and unsatisfactory completion and graduation rates. Recommendations for policy and practice are proposed.

Proponents of community engagement to promote social change advocate bringing together researchers, practitioners, politicians, business leaders, advocates and other relevant stakeholders to identify and solve community problems and issues. This chapter will describe the need for academic and community partnerships, how academic institutions can develop priorities, governance and financial structures that facilitate stronger, more effective community relationships and make contributions to the resolution of social ills. The current literature on community engagement, community-based participatory research, community action research, community-engaged scholarship and service-learning are reviewed. The principles and tenets of engaged scholarship are reviewed, barriers to implementation are discussed and examples provided. Academic institutions can play an important role in social change if they are willing to embrace community engagement. A key to success is building trust, sharing power, fostering co-learning, enhancing strengths and resources, building capacity, and addressing community-identified needs. Academic participation requires institutional and faculty commitment to engagement principles, flexible and inclusive governance structures and strategies to educate community members. The development of the relationships and structures required for successful community engagement can be inhibited by imbalances in power and knowledge that often exist among practitioners, researchers, and community members. This review may assist academic institutions to examine implementation of tenure and promotion policies, oversight strategies and structures that assure community development and benefit, as well as opportunities for faculty, staff and student training on principles and best practices of community-engaged research.

Adults in the United States have low health literacy skills which puts them at high risk for serious health consequences. Libraries have traditionally provided programming on a variety of topics for patrons but barriers such as technology and transportation access may prevent potential patrons from attending. Librarians can help increase the health literacy skills of community members by providing health outreach programming to the communities they serve. This chapter examines strategies and specific examples that library managers can implement to facilitate technology and health literacy skills through programming in communities.

This chapter explores distributed leadership in volunteer multistakeholder groups tackling complex problems, focusing on community organizing practices to bridge the gap between health and health care in Columbia, South Carolina. Columbia faces increasing chronic disease, high rates of uninsured, unequal access to healthcare services, and rising costs. Regional leaders periodically tackled these problems together but faced challenges common to multistakeholder groups. In 2010, leaders from Columbia partnered with the authors in a learning enterprise to find new, more sustainable ways to address these challenges. Together we adapted a community organizing approach to develop distributed leadership skills necessary to overcome the challenges of volunteer multistakeholder groups and transform the health system in a local area. In the first year, teams provided health screenings to over 1,000 residents; over 3,000 residents exercised leadership to improve community health; over 5,000 residents pledged to improve their health. Clinic hours were extended; new health coaches focused on primary care and wellness programs. Providers and payers committed to reinvesting a share of savings in the community, which has a voice in their use. We show that developing distributed leadership via community organizing offers an approach to solving seemingly intractable community problems.

Brand pages are a very popular tool for companies to communicate with consumers in SNSs. Although brand pages could be considered virtual brand communities, they differ in several aspects. Thus, this chapter reviews the literature on brand pages attending to the main differences with other virtual communities, the motivations to join brand pages and its consequences for consumers and brands.

The studies reviewed have allowed us to identify the main characteristics of brand pages as a communication tool, as well as the definition of an important research agenda for this topic.

We have identified the main unique aspects that characterize brand pages as a virtual brand community. The motivations to become members of brand pages are analyzed as well as the positive consequences of these pages on the marketing variables. We also identified the research needs on brand pages.

This chapter can be useful to both, marketers, by showing them how brand pages work and what motivate consumers to join it; and researchers, by showing them the main gaps on brand pages that should be addressed in future studies.

This chapter highlights the role of brand pages as a communication tool. It constitutes an attempt to review the literature and organize knowledge on brand pages. The characteristics of brand pages and virtual brand communities, the motivations to participate, the consequences for the brand and an important research agenda are developed.

This qualitative case study explored the information literacy acquisition of 23 students enrolled in a learning community consisting of an advanced English as a Second Language (ESL) writing class and a one-unit class introducing students to research at a suburban community college library in California. As there are no other known learning communities that link an ESL course to a library course, this site afforded a unique opportunity to understand the ways in which ESL students learn to conduct library research. Students encountered difficulties finding, evaluating, and using information for their ESL assignments. Strategies that the students, their ESL instructor, and their instructional librarian crafted in response were enabled by the learning community structure. These strategies included integration of the two courses’ curricula, contextualized learning activities, and dialogue. ESL students in this study simultaneously discovered new language forms, new texts, new ideas, and new research practices, in large part because of the relationships that developed over time among the students, instructor, and instructional librarian. Given the increasing number of ESL students in higher education and the growing concern about their academic success, this study attempts to fill a gap in the research literature on ESL students’ information literacy acquisition.