[chisigmail] IDG Seminar: Shawn Ashkanasy, Characterising distributed support ecologies: A case for young adults with chronic illness

[Mitchell Owen Harrop]

You are cordially invited to an IDG Seminar.

PRESENTER:    Shawn Ashkanasy
                             Interaction Design Group
TITLE:                Characterising distributed support ecologies: A case for young adults with chronic illness
VENUE:              University of Melbourne, IDEA Lab, Level 4, 111 Barry Street, Carlton

DATE and TIME:  Friday 20 August 2010, 3.00 - 4.00 pm


ABSTRACT:
Online [peer support] sites (OPSS) provide important ways for adults and adolescents (AYA) with chronic illnesses to access and develop ongoing and supportive (and sometimes non-supportive) relationships with similar others over temporary or sustained periods of illness, treatment and sequela. With the prolific increase in the use of new social networking technologies and other sociable media the current work provides a timely review of the types of online support spaces available to this cohort of young people. However, tacit to this, is the assumption that a number of OPSS utilize, not only, different types of sociable media, but they afford a unique range of different modalities with varying degrees of interactivity. Whilst this remains uncertain and unaccounted for in studies of OPSS, sociable technologies are often used in combination, with other modes of communication, both simultaneously and or over intermittent periods of time, within specific social contexts and relationships. This might be conceptualized as a distributed support ecology.
 
Shawn's talk will present findings from a current study of these types of online environments, focusing on their ecological arrangement and interactive properties. This provides a basis to explore ways in which AYAs develop supportive relationships through sociable media and aspects of these environments that affect their success or failure. 
 
Shawn Ashkanasy is a PhD candidate with the Interaction Design Group.



Please forward to others if interested. All are Welcome.
http://www.dis.unimelb.edu.au/research/groups/interactiondesign/seminars.html


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Mitchell Harrop
Interaction Design Group Seminar Coordinator

Interaction Design Group
Department of Information Systems
The University of Melbourne
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