Using Facebook as a Space for Storytelling in Geographical Research

Geographers have long been alert to the ways space matters to knowledge production and the stories participants choose to share. Despite such understandings, however, geographers remain surprisingly absent from discussions regarding the ways these concerns play out across online spaces. This article reflects on the employment of one online space, Facebook, as a site for storytelling in research exploring return journeys to two Australian festivals – the Big Day Out and Mardi Gras Parade. This article argues that insight over longer temporalities and shifting spatialities afforded through Facebook facilitates heightened understandings of the nuances, repetitions, differences and paradoxes of identities, encounters, and politics. Facebook, therefore, has the potential to allow for different ways of knowing that cannot be ascertained in more orthodox research spaces. Moreover, the slipperiness of conceptualisations of privacy and consent in this space draws attention to the necessity of understanding consent as fluid and ongoing, rather than antecedent to fieldwork commencement. Crucially, however, reconceptualisations of privacy and consent in this space expose potential obstacles university ethics committees may meet in responding to research moving online.     

The external effects of inner-city shopping centers: Evidence from the Netherlands

Shopping center redevelopment is inevitable to remain attractive for consumers. In this paper, we investigate the external effects of shopping center redevelopment on nearby residential property prices. Using a difference-in-difference empirical framework, we find the redevelopment has positive external effects on nearby property prices. We find the price of a property located next to a redeveloped shopping center increases by 1.43% on average just after redevelopment. Our results indicate that these positive external effects wear off rather rapidly across space and over time. This suggests that shopping center redevelopment plays a substantial, but limited, role in combating neighborhood deprivation.     

The potential for university collaboration and online learning to internationalise geography education

International partnerships between universities, facilitated by online pedagogies, have great potential to bring together students and teachers from widely differing backgrounds, cultures and locations to combine global perspectives and local relevance in the widely interdisciplinary subject area of geography. However, collaboration between universities is difficult and often fails due to a lack of a shared vision, poor administrative support and difficulties with funding arrangements, and, while online teaching is rapidly expanding, its use at the graduate level is not widely utilized. We reveal the pitfalls associated with international university collaboration founded on the worry that universities are tying themselves to a long-lasting, rigid relationship that may conflict with other activities. Those universities that have surmounted these barriers to collaboration find solutions through establishing incentive structures that encourage shared teaching, apportioning finances and time to support the initiative, and agreeing set conditions for future partners to join or leave the agreement.     

国内外旅游购物研究进展

自20世纪80年代以来国外旅游购物研究逐渐受到关注,研究进展快,主要内容包括:旅游购物作用及评估、旅游购物者类型划分、动机和行为研究、购物者体验评估、纪念品研究、购物区的空间布局规律探究以及旅游购物经典案例分析等;而国内的相关研究相当匮乏。分析认为,在新形势下旅游购物基础理论、方法、旅游购物模式以及区域差异等亟待深入研究,为国内旅游购物发展提供理论指导。最后探讨了国外旅游购物研究对国内的启示,并展望了未来研究的方向。     

大城市中产阶层化与商娱场所的空间结构

自上个世纪70年代随着发达国家"后工业社会"转型以来,中产阶层化现象成为西方发达国家城市问题与空间规划方向的重要研究方面之一,发展至今日,中产阶层化成为了一种全球化的社会与空间现象(Bell,1999)。娱乐作为一种文化现象,可以反映国家生产力水平的高低,是与每个人的生存质量息息相关的领域。因而有关文化休闲娱乐场所的微区位研究也逐渐引起了中外地理学界和社会学界有关学者的极大兴趣。从城市社会空间结构的角度探讨中产阶层生活方式及其消费(娱乐消费)与娱乐场所形成的中产阶层化现象等的社会空间结构。     

Deterritorialising the nation? Internet and the politics of the Greek‐American diaspora

In this article, analysis focuses on the websites of Greek‐American diaspora organisations. The aim is to study these media outlets on two levels: (1) with regard to their communication function(s), in order to understand the spectrum of usages they offer to their visitors; and (2) with regard to the way they signify identity specificity at the crossroads of a parallel ethnic or national adherence. The low interactivity constitutes one of the general features of the media analysed. The persistence of the nation as the framework to apprehend collective belonging and the interaction with the ‘other’ is another recurrent and important element. The ‘identity specificity’ of the Greek diaspora community is not presented in articulation to the host society, but in terms of a continuous attachment to a ‘mother‐nation’, as a historic and cultural entity. The nationhood claimed and promoted in this manner is ethnic and cultural, and it espouses the form of an ecumenical and transcendent Hellenism.     

旅游交易网站消费者评价维度研究——以携程网为例

随着信息通信技术尤其是互联网的迅速发展,网站及网络消费者行为研究成为学界探讨的热点.本文以携程网为例,通过从携程网上搜集旅游消费者评价信息,运用扎根理论的方法构建了旅游交易网站消费者评价维度模型.研究结果表明：旅游交易网站评价的主体维度包括旅游网站评价及网站交易产品评价;影响评价的主客观因素及特殊事件处理构成了旅游交易网站评价的调节维度;旅游消费者购后行为意图（重购与致谢、分享与推荐以及建议与期望）是网站评价的互动维度,实质反映的正是旅游网站本体与旅游网站消费者客体之间的互动.最后,本文对如何利用这些评价信息做了进一步的扩展讨论.     

Socio-cultural proximity,daily life and shopping tourism in the Dutch–German border region

ABSTRACT

This paper analyses feelings of socio-cultural proximity and distance with a specific focus on the tourist experience in cross-border shopping and everyday life practices in border regions. We examined shopping practices of Dutch border crossers who visit the German town Kleve in the Dutch–German border region. This particular border context has allowed us not only to reflect on a multidimensional approach towards socio-cultural proximity and distance, but also to examine how these different dimensions express themselves in the tourist experience when it comes to people and places that are geographically ‘close’ but assumingly socially and culturally ‘distant’ from home. Although some differences prompted feelings of discomfort, in particular, differences in social engagement, feelings of comfort stand out in our analysis of cross-border shopping tourism. Furthermore, our study shows that shopping tourism and exoticism, on the one hand, and everyday routines and the mundane, on the other hand, are closely intertwined in the lives of people living in a border region, resulting in a fluid interpretation of the exotic and the mundane in the cross-border context.     

Looking With Both Eyes

Private metal detecting is frequently suggested as a favourable recipe for saving objects that would otherwise perish in agricultural fields in Norway. Metal detector communities portray themselves as heritage rescuers. For this they receive considerable praise from sympathetic archaeologists and museum staff. By contrast, finders who keep objects for themselves are portrayed as so-called nighthawks. However, accounts from informants who collect, trade or search for archaeological objects reflect more ambivalent attitudes than the idealized image of heritage rescuers and the hostile image of nighthawks indicate. In this article, the issue of private metal detecting is approached through recorded interviews, official correspondence in public archives and informal accounts in online forums.

Norwegian cultural heritage law forms a background to the analysis, while certain legal concepts are employed more actively. The relation between museums and detectorists is deconstructed and explored through the legal provisions on receiving and laundering the proceeds of criminal acts in Norway’s General Civil Penal Code. It is argued here that, while it might seem practical from the point-of-view of museums to assume that finds that are handed in according to law also have been legally procured, such acceptance might also be understood as unlawful legitimation.     

Investigating student use and value of e-learning resources to develop academic writing within the discipline of environmental science

The use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in higher education to support student learning is expanding. However, student usage has been low and the value of e-learning resources has been under investigation. We reflect on best practices for pedagogical design of e-learning resources to support academic writing in environmental science. A case study demonstrates that where resources are embedded into the curriculum they are highly valued by students with on average 83% of the class accessing files. Students were confident at writing tasks indicating that the resources effectively met their needs and expectations and enabled them to further develop discipline-specific writing skills. Scaffolded e-learning resources, designed around the identified threshold concepts of writing within the discipline, incorporating a knowledge narrative of explicit instruction and a strong teacher presence, delivered in a sequential manner and embedded into the curriculum, are valued and highly used by students in academic writing tasks.