HELPING PEOPLE'S

By Farida Vis , University of Sheffield and NSMNSS member Last summer the World Economic Forum (WEF) invited its 1,500 council members to identify top trends facing the world, including what should be done about them. The WEF consists of 80 councils covering a wide range of issues including social media . Members come from academia, industry, government, international organisations and wider civil society. The top three issues highlighted for 2014 concerned rising societal tensions in the Middle East and North Africa; widening income disparities, and persistent structural unemployment. Perhaps surprisingly, in tenth place was a concern over the rapid spread of misinformation online , specifically social media’s role in this. At a value of 3.35 this was seen as somewhat to very significant. World Economic Forum         False information and the news Within a number of professions, journalism being an obvious one, the spread and potential for rep...

The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) is working in partnership with ESRC, EPSRC, Dstl and CPNI, to commission new research to develop a greater understanding of how empathy and trust are developed, maintained, transformed and lost in social media interactions. A five–day intensive workshop will be held on 6-10 January 2014 at Cranage Hall in Cheshire, and they are currently inviting expressions of interest for people to attend.  To find further information about this event visit the AHRC website at the following link: http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/Funding- Opportunities/Pages/Empathy- and-Trust-In-Communicating- Online-(EMoTICON)-Sandpit.aspx