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Public libraries are incubators for collective action in the knowledge economy. As three case studies from the United States and Singapore demonstrate, public libraries can serve as influential champions that garner financial resources, communicate an urgent need for change, and respond to the unmet information and economic needs of marginalized individuals and communities. In the Raise Up Radio (RUR) case, public librarians engaged schools, museums, youth, and families in rural communities to develop and deliver STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) content over local radio stations. In collaboration with organizational partners, RUR librarians created a model for library-community-radio projects for the rural United States. In the What Health Looks Like (WHLL) case, public librarians engaged senior citizens in discussions of health and the creation of health comics. In partnership with an interdisciplinary health research team, WHLL librarians developed a pilot for library-community-public health projects aimed at information dissemination and health narrative generation. In the Singapore shopping mall libraries case, the National Library Board (NLB) created public libraries in commercial spaces serving working families, senior citizens, and the Chinese community. The NLB developed an exportable model for locating information centers in convenient, popular, and useful business spaces. These case studies demonstrate how libraries are nodes in the knowledge economy, providing vital services such as preservation of cultural heritage, technology education, community outreach, information access, and services to working families, small- and medium-size businesses, and other patrons. In the years to come, public libraries will be called upon to respond to shifting social norms, inequitable opportunities, emergencies and disasters, and information asymmetries. As the cases of RUR, WHLL, and the shopping mall libraries show, public librarians have the vision and capacities to serve as influential champions for collective action to solve complex problems and foster sustainable development and equitable participation in the knowledge economy.

Women working in public relations (PR) in the 1990s developed the power of metamodern pragmatism to avoid being constrained in this decade of contradictions.

This was a time of promise for female empowerment and careers. The PR industry in Britain had quadrupled in size, yet increased feminisation and professionalisation did not resolve gender inequity. Indeed, alongside the existence of ‘old boys clubs’ and hedonistic macho agencies in the industry, the 1990s offered a lad's mag culture and an AbFab image of PR.

An original collaborative historical ‘Café Delphi’ method was developed using three themes (sex, sexuality and sexism) to explore women's careers and contributions in the expanding and increasingly powerful field of PR in the United Kingdom during the 1990s. It built on feminist critique of the industry and paradoxical portrayals of women resulting from significant changes in media, popular culture and a pluralistic marketplace.

Individual and collective experiences of women working in PR at the time reveal the power of attitudes to affect their ability to achieve equality and empowerment. Women navigated tensions between the benefits of accelerated pluralism and the patriarchal resistance in the workplace through performative choices and a deep sense of pragmatism.

This paper aims to examine the use of coproduction to create a film “Do You See Me?”, to amplify the voices of a “hard to reach” group: older lesbian, gay, bisexual (LGB) victim-survivors of domestic abuse (DA).

Qualitative methods were used as part of the co-production, which included two practitioner focus groups and 14 narrative interviews with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning persons or the community (LGBTQ+) victim-survivors.

Despite differences in gender, sexualities, roles and “lived experiences” across stakeholders, there was a shared aim to ensure victim-survivors had a sense of ownership in this endeavour. Consequently, a positive reciprocity existed that helped to foster effective communication, allow for capacity building and subsequent knowledge exchange. The collaboration produced a nuanced meta-narrative making visible the “lived experiences” of LGB victim-survivors’ perceptions of perpetrator behaviours.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is original in two ways, firstly, providing insights into the “lived experiences” of an invisible group; older LGBTQ+ victim-survivors, and secondly, in involving them in the co-production of a film. The paper aims to reveal how interdependencies that developed between stakeholders helped to disrupt understandings, develop new ways of knowing and build levels of trust. Group interactions helped to dismantle hierarchies, so those with experiential knowledge: the survivors, had greater control throughout the research process. The paper is significant in providing a critical reflection on the ethical, methodological and resource challenges involved in co-production. It also makes recommendations for researchers and funders about the value of using co-production as a method to engage with hard-to-reach groups.

This study aims to investigate how the open discussion of infertility-related topics on public social media platforms contributes to the well-being of individuals affected by infertility.

For this study, the authors used a netnographic approach to analyze 69 YouTube videos (>21 h of raw data) produced by infertility vloggers and more than 40,000 user comments.

The authors identify two ways in which infertility patients benefit from public discussions of the topic on social media: through watching videos and engaging in discussions, patients satisfy their infertility-related needs (i.e. the need for information, emotional support and experience sharing); and through reaching people who are not affected by infertility, vloggers help to de-taboo the issue as well as sensitize and educate society.

To providers of tabooed services, this study’s findings emphasize the potential of incorporating social media in the consumer support strategy.

This research highlights the value of the public discussion of infertility-related topics on social media platforms for consumers affected by the issue.

In this study, the public discussion of infertility-related topics through video blogs is presented as a valuable tool to enhance the well-being of individuals confronted with infertility as these vlogs satisfy related needs of the consumers and contribute to de-tabooing.

This paper aims to explore the role of family members in human trafficking and how their roles impact and are perceived by their children and wards.

This paper uses data collected through a longitudinal, cross-country study. The study was conducted among 31 female, Nigerian victims of trafficking in Italy.

The authors argue that family members play important, howbeit diverse roles across space and time, in the different stages of the trafficking process, echoing a relational approach of their geographies.

This paper discusses the under-researched role of how family members may (wilfully or unknowingly) facilitate and aid the trafficking of their dependents and the consequences of their involvement on their children and wards.

The PRCA December 2020 census tells us that, in the United Kingdom, the public relations (PR) industry continues to be predominantly female, with 68% of respondents ticking that box. It also highlights a ‘gender pay gap’ of 21%, an increase of 7% from March 2020 and states that ‘this can be explained by the fact that the respondents … are largely in senior roles which tend to be more male dominated’ (PRCA, 2020), thus demonstrating a leadership gap as well as a pay one. Both of the leading PR professional membership bodies in the United Kingdom – the PRCA and CIPR – acknowledge the gender pay and leadership gaps, made starker in an industry dominated by women, and have committed to tackle the disparity.

In this chapter, I build on Liz Yeomans' (2020) work, in which she suggests ‘new avenues for researching neoliberalism and postfeminism in PR’ (p. 44) to examine the ‘apparently progressive moves’ (Yeomans', 2020) by women's networking organisations. I analyse website texts from two women-only PR networking organisations – Women in PR and Global Women in PR – to explore the ways in which they construct their function, purpose and role, and to examine their position vis-à-vis the contemporary postfeminist media culture (Gill, 2007). The research takes a feminist, discourse analytic approach and sheds light on the reality of women in PR as constructed by organisations whose stated goal is to: ‘improve equality and diversity across the industry by increasing the number and diversity of women in leadership roles’ (Women in PR, 2022).

This study investigates the relationship between mental well-being (MWB) and social support (SS) whilst addressing the paucity of research on students' support for emergency contact schemes (ECSs) and their views on how and when such schemes should be implemented.

In total, 113 students recruited via opportunistic sampling completed an online survey including the Interpersonal Support Evaluation List - shortened version (Cohen et al. 1985), Warwick–Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (Tennant et al. 2007) and questions about ECS. A correlational design used the Pearson product-moment correlation to explore the relationship between MWB and SS. A between-subjects design using independent measures t-test investigated differences in SS and MWB between those with and without a “trusted person” (TP).

The preferred name was “Named Trusted Person Scheme” (NTPS), the preferred TP was parent/guardian or partner, and the preferred means of contact was Personal Tutor to mobile phone. Most students (96%) supported the use of an NTPS when serious concerns were raised about mental or physical health, personal safety or student engagement. Those opposed were concerned about a loss of agency, identifying a TP or the TP worsening the situation. MWB was positively correlated with SS, and those with a TP had higher levels of MWB and SS than those without.

This study addresses the under-explored area of students' support for ECS, whilst enhancing our understanding of the relationship between MWB and SS especially amongst those without a person they can trust. This research provides valuable insights for universities looking to implement or refine such schemes, with the potential to improve students' MWB, academic achievement and retention by enhancing support.

While exploring the information experience within multispecies families, the subjective nature of humans and non-human entities, living beings and non-living objects becomes evident. This paper aims to reveal the underlying significance of information within socio-physical living environments shared among humans, cats and dogs as companions.

Gaining inspiration from the information experience approach and posthumanism, this is a phenomenological paper. Empirical material related to lived experiences of participating families were gathered through multispecies ethnography methods, followed by phenomenological reflections. The paper has been written based on excerpt-commentary-units and the inclusion of videos and images as an approach to convey the richness of the lived experiences and multiple perspectives.

Findings are organised into three main sections, each capturing lived experiences of information and its utilization from various frames. The paper shows how living beings, both human and animal, use their physical, sensual and moving bodies to acquire and convey information to and from each other. Moving beyond the living beings, the study discusses how non-living objects in the physical environment of a multispecies family also shape information. Material objects, spatial locations and even plants became sources of information for the family members. Lastly, the paper delves into the social environment of the family, where all members, human and animal, are actively shaped by information within their social interactions and companionship.

Considering information distributed across species and material objects in a shared, more-than-human environment, the article suggests implications for an information experience approach. It emphasizes how information shapes the in-between humans, animals and their environment, highlighting their reliance on each other for understanding and living a good shared life. There is a need for future research to explore the information experience within the internal subjective minds of members of multispecies families, bridging the gap in the understanding of these external information and their internal information processes.

This paper aims to provide reflective practice insights on the use of the participatory approaches of World Café and Forum Theatre as crime prevention education and research tools with young people and young adults through a social learning theory lens.

Four independent case-studies showcase World Café and Forum Theatre methodology. World Café events investigated new psychoactive substances (NPS) awareness with young hostel users and college pupils (N = 22) and race hate crime with school and college pupils (N = 57). Forum Theatre events explored loan shark crime with college and university students (N = 46) and domestic abuse crime with young hostel users and college and university students (N = 28). Anonymous survey data produced qualitative and descriptive statistical data.

Learning impacts from participatory crime prevention education and research events were evidenced. Participatory approaches were perceived positively, although large group discussion-based methodologies may not suit all young people or all criminological topics.

Participatory approaches of World Café and Forum Theatre are vehicles for social learning and crime prevention with young people and young adults; eliciting crime victimisation data; and generating personal solutions alongside wider policy and practice improvement suggestions. Whilst World Café elicited greater lived experience accounts providing peer-level social learning, Forum Theatre provided crucial visual role modelling for communicating safeguarding messages.