Evaluating Impact: Transliteracy and Creative Business Innovation via Social Media

Dr Souvik Mukherjee and Professor Sue ThomasDepartment of Media, Film and Journalism, Faculty of Humanities

Transliteracy

Structural holes

Amplification

The Research The Three Elements

TransliteracyThe ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks (Thomas et al. 2007).

Concept developed by Professor Sue Thomas and colleagues at the IOCT, DMU

The structural hole is ‘a buffer, like an insulator in an electric circuit. As a result of the hole between them, the two contacts provide network benefits that are in some degree additive rather than overlapping’ (Burt, 1992: 18).

Concept: Ronald Burt (1995) Structural Holes: The Social Structure of Competition

Transliteracy in the network

Amplified Individuals

Are highly social. They use tagging software, wikis, social networks, and other human intelligence aggregators to supplement their individual knowledge and to understand what their individual contributions mean in the context of the organization, giving meaning to even the most menial tasks.

Are also highly collective, taking advantage of online collaboration software, mobile communications tools, and immersive virtual environments to engage globally distributed team members with highly specialized and complementary capacities.

Are highly improvisational, capable of banding together to form effective networks and infrastructures, both social and professional.

Are highly augmented. They employ visualization tools, attention filters, e-displays, and ambient presence systems to enhance their cognitive abilities and coordination skills, thus enabling them to quickly access and process massive amounts of information.

Concept developed at the Institute for the Future, Palo Alto

• NLab Creative Network 2005-11

• CreativeCoffee Club 2007 >

• Amplified Leicester 2009-10

• Vision2020 2009 >

The Projects

Transliteracy

Structural holes

Amplification

The Research Mapping the Process

• Do new communication frameworks in social media benefit business practices in Leicester?

• What are the roles of transliteracy and amplification in this context?

The research questions:Impact The Research Questions

• The Research Excellence Framework (REF) defines ‘impact’ as ‘all kinds of social, economic

and cultural benefits and impacts beyond academia’(HEFCE 2011) or ‘any identifiable

benefit to or positive influence on the economy, society, public policy or services, culture, the

environment or quality of life’ (HEFCE 2011).

• Reach and Significance are the two recommended criteria for assessing impact. Reach has

been defined as ‘how widely the impact was felt’ (HEFCE 2011) and Significance as ‘how

much difference it made to the beneficiaries’, ‘incremental improvements that are wide-

ranging but have been demonstrated’ and ‘major value with wide-ranging relevance’

(HEFCE 2011). Further clarifications might be available in the panel documents to be released

by HEFCE in July 2011.

Impact REF Definitions and Criteria

• Gathered data from the project archive (2005 to 2010): online and printed documents, website statistics, attendance databases, previous surveys, interviews and reports .

• Carried out spot interviews (20 approx) and longer interviews of participants (5) in different events.

• Coded and analysed the interviews and other documents using a qualitative data analysis package (MAXQDA).

• Established a set of indicators under the REF categories of reach and significance as well as the emergent category of transliteracy.

• Ran an online survey (surveymonkey.com) for all the listed participants at the events since 2006 (73 people responded out of 734)

• Analysed the survey results using a statistical software package (SPSS) and using queries designed in Microsoft SQL.

Methodology

Project findings: Reach Networking and Influence

78% reported an increase in networking 60% were able to influence non-participants

Statistical evidence shows that those who increased their networking were also able to influence non-participants. The relation was networking dependent.

Impact: High impact on networking; consequential high impact on increasing influence in the business community.

78%

12%

60%40%

Project findings: Reach High Increase in Collaboration

“Building trust relationships allows people to take risks, express ideas, be a bit more honest “that is rubbish”. In some places, you just wouldn’t say that. Can see extreme collaborations, but sometimes haven't got time to accommodate within a normal business model.” - Vijay Riyait, CEO, iQubed

“As a result of this collaboration and cross-networking amongst otherwise very disparate organisations, I am much closer to DMU, the City Council, LCB ...” - Sue Tilley, Head of Inward Investment, Prospect Leicestershire

“There is a 'trust' at the events and I think this helps easy and effective collaboration.” - Sujata Bhalla, CEO, Giving World

Project findings: Reach Sectors and Demographics

Project findings: Reach Summary

• People benefited through an increase in the number of networks they connected

to.

• This was matched by an increase in collaborative practice.

• The project reached individuals from a wide range of subgroups in business and

creative industries.

• The projects also spanned a wide demographic range in terms of gender, age and

sectors of work.

• A high percentage of participants said they were able to influence non-

participants.

Project findings: Significance Innovation, Promotion and Business Opportunities

87 % of the respondents to the survey were able to generate innovative ideas and solutions after attending these events.

42 % of the respondents to the survey saw an increase in business opportunities.

50% of the respondents agreed that they had been able to promote their business better

Innovation Business opportunities Business promotion

62.5%

25%

9%3.1%

34.5%

46.6%

10.3%8.6%

44.1%40.7%

8.5% 6.8%

“Social media can enable everyone to express themselves and connect creatively with others in their locality to enrich their own lives and improve their community” – survey respondent.

One social media tool: 56.8%, Two to three tools: 28.4% and four or more tools: 13.5%.

Twitter (50.8%), LinkedIn (25.7%), Facebook (23% ) and blogs (23%).

Innovation and influence increased with the number of social media platforms used.

The survey responses show that people who feel more aware of transliteracy use more types of social media.

There is a moderately positive correlation between transliteracy and networking, business opportunity and innovation.

Project findings: Significance Social Media Usage and Transliteracy

Project findings: Significance Topics where we made a contribution

3%

20%

3%

6%

5%

21%

5%

25%

12%

Areas of major contribution(2011 survey)

Finance

Arts / Media

Retail

Green space

Religion

Community

Governance

Social media

Creative Commons

Topics where we made a significant contribution (as per survey respondents)

Project findings: Significance Summary

• These events, especially at the outset, helped people to articulate their expectations of social media and to understand its challenges.

• A very high percentage of the respondents claimed that they were able to generate innovative ideas and solutions at their workplace.

• The increase in networking and influence contributed to bettering business promotion and opportunities.

• Social media was seen as playing an important role in people’s business practices, particularly in networking, innovation and influence.

• Social media, community, the arts and creative commons emerged as the areas where people felt the main impact of the events.

Inspector Bill Knopp (@InspBillKnopp), of the Leicestershire

Constabulary and a participant in the Amplified Leicester

programme used Twitter ‘to reduce the impact [of rumours]

and dispel fears’ among the Leicester populace when the

English Defence League demonstration threatened to get out of

control. As he says, ‘our tweets were getting sent on and on

and on’ and that they reached 50,000 people.

Amplified Individuals Stories of Impact

Joy Marsden, Training and development consultant, has been able

to gain confidence in using social media and effectively promote her

business by building a brand new and sophisticated web portal.

Marsden’s website now features videos and links to social media

such as Facebook and LinkedIn. As she informs us, the events have

‘increased her confidence levels in using social media’ and helped

change the way in which she works by showing her how ‘to

challenge the status quo’ and making her more visible to her

networks.

1. Collaboration was implicit in many accounts of networking. Further studies should be undertaken to

examine how high quality collaboration takes place between different types of creative businesses

and across networks.

2. Networking within a field of interest saw more types of social media being used than for networking

between fields. We recommend a study of the roles played by both transliteracy and amplification

within structural holes, with specific reference to ways in which they may enhance creative innovation

and the development of a strategy and toolset to investigate this.

3. Transdisciplinarity was not explicitly identified as a key theme in the projects discussed here but it is

likely that transdisciplinary practice underpins much of the networking we observed. More research

should be conducted with groups such as these to examine the role of transdisciplinarity in business

networks and collaborations.

Selected Recommendations Going Forward

Revisiting Impact

Revisiting Impact

1. Reach and Significance need to be qualified in more detail. On the other hand, the impact indicators need

to be made more flexible and inclusive, especially for transdisciplinary projects. HEFCE’s expectation that

‘there will be particular issues and challenges for assessing impact in a number of other disciplines not

covered by the pilot’ still needs to be addressed.

2. While it is possible to identify ground-breaking impact from public feedback as happens in this project,

often the success measures identified for business improvement (such as ‘increased turnover’ or ‘spin-off

companies’) are inadequate to represent impact.

3. Often the impact is latent or only perceivable after a long period. Safeguards should be included in the

analytical process so as not to ignore such impact. In this project, the impact of transliteracy in facilitating

improved networking across media and consequent innovation and business improvement, would have

gone largely unnoticed if the researcher restricted himself only to the initial survey figures.

Revisiting Impact

• Plot a clear line between your research and your practice-based work as soon as possible

• Plot the connections between your work and the REF indicators BUT be aware that they could change

• Think about ways to translate between the terminology of your research, your practice, and the impact agenda so that they all match up. This includes the design of any publicity material, surveys, and research questions.

Advice to colleagues

• Amplified Resilient Community (Dir. Thilo Boeck)• Developing pilot teaching sessions• Extending this research further in terms of

transdisciplinary networks of collaboration inside and outside DMU

Future developments

• Do new communication frameworks in social media benefit business practices in Leicester?

Social media has been demonstrated to have a far-reaching and significant impact in promoting networking, innovation and business opportunities in Leicester.

• What are the roles of transliteracy and amplification in this context?

The ‘reach’ and the ‘significance’ evidenced as a result of the events would not have been possible without the ‘hidden hand of transliteracy’ informing how people work across different social media, both digital and otherwise. The notion of the ‘Amplified Individual’, especially when combined with transliteracy, proved to be a powerful attractant to introduce businesses to a set of new concepts and ideas.

The research questions:Impact The Research Questions

Thilo Boeck , Health and Life Sciences

Jayne Childs, CreativeCoffee Club

Bev Lambie, Research and Development Office

Dr Beth Lunt, Research and Development Office

Toby Moores, SleepyDog

Professor Sue Thomas, Film, Media and Journalism

The HEFCE Helpdesk

All the participants of Nlab. CreativeCoffee Club, Amplified Leicester whom I interviewed and who responded to

the survey.

A big thank you to …

Thank you for your time.

• HEFCE (2011) ‘Decisions on Assessing Research Impact – Ref 01.2011’ (Bristol: HEFCE) http://www.hefce.ac.uk/research/ref/pubs/2011/01_11/

• Burt, R (1995), Structural Holes: The Social Structure of Competition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard)• Transliteracy Research Group http://www.transliteracy.com• Thomas, S., Joseph, C., Laccetti, J., Mason, B., Mills, S., Perril, S., et al. (2007). Transliteracy: Crossing Divides First Monday,

Volume 12 Number 12 - 3 December 2007 http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/2060/1908

• Thomas, S. Diagramming Transliterate Spaces, Transliteracy Research Group blog, 29 September 2007 http://nlabnetworks.typepad.com/transliteracy/2007/09/diagramming-transliterate-spaces.html

• Thomas, S., Joseph,C., Laccetti,J., Mason,B., Perril,S., and Pullinger,K. (2008) Transliteracy as a Unifying Perspective in The Handbook of Research on Social Software and Developing Community Ontologies, eds. Hatzipanagos.S. and Warburton,S. London: IGI Global ISBN: 978-1-60566-208-4

• Brown, R. & Chant, M., 2009. Getting in Getting on: The Essential Higher Education Guide for Advisers 7th ed., Gloucester: University & College Admissions Service, pp. 26-7

• Institute for the Future http://www.iftf.org• NLab Networks http://www.nlabnetworks.com/• CreativeCoffee Club http://www.creativecoffeeleicester.com• Original Amplified Leicester http://amplifiedcity.typepad.com/leicester/• Current Amplified Leicester http://www.amplifiedleicester.com• Boeck, T.G. and Thomas. S. Amplified Leicester: Impact on Social Capital and Cohesion, NESTA, July 2010

http://www.nesta.org.uk/publications/assets/features/amplified_leicester_impact_on_social_capital_and_cohesion• Vision2020 http://www.vision2020.org.uk • DMU Institute of Creative Technologies http://www.ioct.dmu.ac.uk• DMU Centre for Social Cohesion http://www.dmu.ac.uk/dmucsa• Prof Sue Thomas http://www.suethomas.net• Dr Souvik Mukherjee – http://dmu.academia.edu/SouvikMukherjee

Revisiting Impact References