Category: health and wellbeing

Social Media, Digital Video and Health Promotion

My new refereed journal article has been published online by Health Promotion International. It identifies opportunities and challenges when using social media and digital video for health promotion with communities from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds in Australia, including migrants and refugees.

The piece focuses on:

  • the concept of ‘participation’
  • the relationship between ‘old school’ forms of community driven digital video production and the online, re-mixed world of YouTube
  • the ways in which language, literacy, educational level, age, gender and other factors shape experiences with the internet
  • how social media risk becoming exclusive forms of heath and wellbeing communication.

From this perspective, it provides evidence-based recommendations for practice and future research.

What I like most about this article is the sense of history it creates. It proposes integrating ‘online’ modes of communication with previous ‘offline’ techniques for encouraging participation.

The abstract is available or if you’d like to know more feel free to contact me. Other relevant work:

Digital Technology, Diabetes and Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Communities: A Case Study with Elderly Women from the Vietnamese Community

Sending the Right Message

NBN and Refugee, Migrant Health and Wellbeing

Since Julia Gillard managed to get the Labour government back in power (kind of), there has been much debate concerning the National Broadband Network (NBN) in Australia. My research has found that the rollout of the NBN, or other improved broadband infrastructure, has implications for health communication with refugee and migrant communities. Expensive internet access means that many people are excluded from health, education, finance and other essential information.

Crikey published my new story that looks at the NBN in relation to refugee and migrant health communication, and in particular how Sudanese and Vietnamese communities in country regions of Victoria engage with digital technology.

Crikey is an excellent publication. I recommend you subscribe to read mine and many other great pieces! However, the story was re-published and is also available at the Cultural Diversity Institute.

Outside the Net

Australian Catholics Magazine invited me to contribute a personal story to their current issue which focuses on technology and social justice. This was a chance to reflect on my experiences working with the Sudanese, Vietnamese and Samoan communities in Melbourne’s west, and some of the discoveries I made about the way they interact with digital technology. I enjoy writing short, sharp pieces. It’s only five hundred words, but canvases some of the issues I address through my Post Doctoral research at Victoria University.

Site by Efront