Blogs, Twitter feeds and even Facebook pages are increasingly featuring in the arsenal of PR strategies employed by large corporations and public institutions. This is not an idle choice: corporate blogs at both Google and Apple have at times, been the locus of intense media attention at times when new products have been announced or [...]

The outcome of political careers and even campaigns is increasingly dependent on the successful mastery of new communication tools including social media. Many MPs and members of Congress are embracing the use of social networking tools to keep in touch with their constituents, whilst Facebook, YouTube and even Twitter have potentially changed the nature of [...]

Journals and peer-reviewed publications are still the most widely used channels through which research is disseminated within the scientific community and to a broader audience. However, social media is increasingly challenging the supremacy of editors, reviewers and science communicators. Blogging about science has become a new way of engaging “the public” directly with researchers whilst [...]

Theorists such as Yochai Benkler have suggested that the accessibility and inherently social nature of Web 2.0 tools such as blogs, social networking and wikis mean that we might expect them to enhance our democratic freedoms through the opening of new channels for debate and collaboration. Academic research suggests that such new opportunities have not [...]

Among the traditional media, blogs and other contributions to citizen journalism have for a long time been regarded as posing a significant threat to ‘quality’ news reporting, whilst the global recession has shown that the threatened failure of high quality local and regional media outlets was not a groundless fear. Whilst some of the most [...]

The concept of the “entrepreneurial university” first emerged in the US around the year 2000 and spread quickly to the UK and the rest of Europe. Today this idea has attained an almost mantra-like status

In the popular mind, science is often represented as a profoundly cold and impersonal affair, strictly governed by method, reason and impartiality. It is carried by the notion that the scientific endeavour is propelled by the anonymous knowledge-worker who carries out experiments under strictly controlled conditions behind closed doors.  Steven Shapin, eminent historian and sociologist [...]

Twitter could not buy this publicity! Current events in Iran show how widely the use of social media tools, such as Twitter, Facebook, Blogs & Co, have revolutionised politics and indeed political dissent. Unquestionably, corporations, newspapers and even governments are increasingly embracing blogs and Twitter feeds as key-elements in their communication strategies. Yet, research shows [...]

Today’s entrepreneurs are truly striking, particularly the Silicon Valley brand,  stylizing themselves as romantic cowboys –  roguish yet righteous and idealistic, riding into the sunset with a fist-full of dollars and a great idea.
Yet, anyone who knows anything about “how the West was won” and how fortunes were made and lost at “The Frontier” also [...]