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The aim of this paper is to present qualitative research with higher education games design students to explore situated understandings of work and the negotiation of “work” and “non‐work” boundaries.

Situated understandings of work are examined through interviews and focus groups with games design students in the UK and contextualised with interviews with games industry professionals and attendance at industry careers events. The theoretical approach of “occupational devotion” is used to explore work practices and motivations, and “technological action” is then used to draw out the significance of relations with games technologies in this negotiation.

The main finding concerns the continued significance of a fixed field of “work” for students intending to progress from education into “work”. The importance of “work” was identified in how students positioned themselves (occupational devotion) and engaged with games technologies (technological action). This is contrasted with the emphasis on co‐creative relations and broadbrush assertions of blurring boundaries between work and non‐work.

A larger sample of students that ranged across different digital gaming disciplines within higher education (programming; art) would add breadth and further perspectives. Further research would connect student perceptions of the games industry, from attending events such as careers fairs, and the industry promotional discourses and representational strategies. A longitudinal study would be valuable for tracing changes in recruitment strategies and industry and education intersections.

The paper provides insights into how higher education students engage with the games industry and articulates their personal development and employability attributes.

This paper makes a case for research with students as a means to explore boundaries of “work” and “non‐work”. It questions the blurring of “work” and “non‐work”, and provides conceptual pointers, combined with empirical research, that indicate the continued purchase of fixed notions of “work” for workers‐in‐the‐making. This is relevant for scholarly research into the sociology of work, higher education pedagogy, and industry‐education relations.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how Bangladeshi farmers interact with mobile telephony and how they negotiate the resulting difficulties. In doing so, the paper seeks to identify how farmers integrate mobile telephony into their daily lives, and what factors facilitate and limit their use of mobile telephony.

The research was based on ethnographic observation, interviews and focus group discussions, collected through four months of fieldwork, conducted in two remote areas of Bangladesh.

It was found that Bangladeshi farmers' use of mobile telephony is inhibited due to language barriers, a lack of literacy, unfamiliar English terminologies, inappropriate translation to local language (Bengali) and financial constraints. However, the social, occupational and psychological benefits from mobile telephony motivate them to use and appropriate it through inventive use and adaptation.

The findings suggest that current understanding of usability needs to be interwoven with that about the appropriation of technology in order to develop a better understanding of the use and consequent integration of a technology in daily lives.

The paper adds to the argument for a bottom‐up approach for ICT‐enabled intervention in development activities and for the mobile telephony manufacturers and network providers it contributes to understanding of the rural consumer market of a developing country.

The paper presents an original conceptual diagram that combines the concept of usability and appropriation.

Social networking sites (SNS) are changing the methods of social connectivity – and what it means to be public. Existing literature hints at competing perspectives on how the public nature of these sites impacts users. The question of how the perceived publicness of SNSs influences users' self‐disclosure intentions is debated in the literature, and the aim of this paper is to answer this debate.

This paper theorizes competing perspectives on the role of publicness on self‐disclosure. Competing perspectives are tested using data collected via an online survey.

The study finds support for the perceived publicness of a SNS negatively influencing users' self‐disclosure intentions. Additionally, exploratory analysis of self‐disclosure items ubiquitous to most SNSs found that perceived publicness negatively influences users' intention to self‐disclose items related to users' likes and affiliations.

Variables of the study were self‐reported and, as such, are subject to the typical limitations of cross‐sectional, survey‐based research. Future research should seek to examine how perceived publicness and other variables impact self‐disclosure in SNSs over time.

Business models utilizing social networking technologies rely on users' willingness to engage in self‐disclosure. This research provides a theoretical link between the public nature of a social networking environment and users' willingness to self‐disclose. Highlighting perceived publicness as an important aspect of an environment could be one way to address the need to elicit and manage users' self‐disclosure.

The paper utilizes a unique, but established, method of competing hypotheses to understand the role of the public nature of SNSs.

This paper aims to define and articulate the concept of digital protestainment, to address how technologies have enabled boundaries to become more permeable, and in which this permeability leads to the engendering of new cultures.

Two case studies, within Second Life and EVE Online, are examined to see how digital protestainment, through the lens of cultural borderlands, creates a hybridized culture. Recorded interviews and textual analysis of web sites are used to illustrate the concepts of play, work, and blended activities.

Within virtual environments the process of hybridization is not only increased in size, scope, form, and function. The borderlands process draws in cultural elements through a complex interchange between the online and the offline, in which hybridized cultural bits are carried out into other spaces.

The success of the cases does not represent all digital protest examples and so this study is limited in its ability to generalize to the population of virtual protests. This study limits the realm of digital protestainment to virtual worlds but the concept could be applied to any form of virtual community.

Companies that host these worlds will need to become aware not only of what their audience is but also how that audience will mobilize and the likely outcomes of their mobilization. Virtual worlds offer organizational leaders a new resource for training, support, and recruitment.

The theoretical concept of cultural borderlands is expanded to the digital environment and introduced as a potentially new and useful tool to internet researchers.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight and reflect on the increased use of social media in the museums sector in the UK and beyond. It seeks to explore the challenges of utilising such media for institutions steeped in discourses of authority, authenticity and materiality.

Arguments are illustrated using examples of practice and policy from across the museums sector, and are informed by critical theory. In particular, Erving Goffman's frame analysis is used as a means for understanding and articulating the current use of social media by museums.

There is currently a gulf between the possibilities presented by social media, and their use by many museums. This leads to forms of frame misalignment, which can be intensely problematic. It is crucial that museums increase their understanding of the frames within which such activity is being encouraged and experienced.

The paper does not offer a comprehensive mapping of social media use by museums at the current time. Rather, it uses notable examples to foreground a number of concerns for exploration through further research.

The paper calls into question the naturalised discourse surrounding social media use in the museums sector. It calls for a re‐appraisal and re‐framing of such activity so that it might more genuinely and satisfactorily match the claims that are being made for and about it.

This paper examines the career progression of women auditors working in auditing firms in Tanzania and the strategies employed by women auditors to cope with the masculine nature of audit firms.

Data were collected through semi-structured, in-depth interviews with current and former female and male auditors in two auditing firms. A thematic approach to the analysis is adopted.

The study reveals that career progression of women auditors studied is constrained by gender-related barriers such as motherhood, pregnancy, maternity leave and limited coaching and networking, as well as household and caring responsibilities. These barriers are facilitated by the patriarchal system, which regards women as wives and mothers rather than professional workers. As a result, women auditors balanced work and family responsibilities by employing various coping strategies including establishing informal network organization, hiring nannies, living with family members, enrolling children to boarding schools and lobbying in the allocation of audit assignments. Despite employing these strategies, very few women reach top positions in audit firms in Tanzania.

The findings reveal a need for wider engagement on the role of women and men in society, particularly to address the gender-related barriers faced by women in the accountancy profession.

Most previous studies of gender in the accountancy profession have focused on Western contexts. This is one of few to examine the phenomenon in an African context.

The concept of a paradigm and the dimensions of a paradigm shift are used to analyze the transition that is currently taking place in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Detailed attention is given to the case of Albania This relatively unknown country has overcome the paradigm effect problem and has gone back to zero. We describe the past and present situation in Albania and offer some specific recommendations for its future. The study of this country as it undergoes a paradigm shift can provide some important lessons for its bigger CEE neighbors that are making a slower transition to a market economy.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate and illustrate the potential relationships between doctoral students’ life histories and educational experiences and their methodological understanding and assumptions.

The qualitative research design consisted of life-history interviews with nine doctoral researchers in the UK in disciplines relating to the social sciences.

The study indicated that the students’ methodological assumptions may be understood as a socially constructed product of their life histories and academic experiences. Experiences of postgraduate research training were presented as having the potential to unlock the methodological consciousness required to re-frame these experiences, improve understanding and resolve methodological conflict.

This paper provides an insight into the complex nature of the development of methodological understanding and a provocation for considering methodological becoming through the lens of socialisation. This may have utility for both doctoral students and educators.

This site will conduct research in response to e‐mail questions concerning President Abraham Lincoln's life and accomplishments.