Impact Agenda Research Articles

Does Humor Matter? An Analysis of How Hard News versus Comedy News Impact the Agenda-Setting Effects

Although hundreds of studies have investigated public opinion formation through agenda-setting research, many scholars have not examined how atypical news programs, such as comedy news, might impact the transfer of issue salience from the media’s agenda to the public’s agenda. With the increasingly popularity of these programs, scholars need to examine if comedy news, such as The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report with Stephen Colbert, impact agenda setting effects, and how that might compare to typical hard news programs, such as those seen on CNN, MSNBC, or Fox News. In an experiment, this study tested how individuals who received the same information only presented differently, namely either hard news or comedy news, reacted to the different presentation styles; and how those different presentation styles impacted individuals’ acceptance of the media’s agenda, taking into account their existing attitudes. Results indicated that when individuals agreed with the information presented in the news story, the hard news was more successful in the transfer of issue salience than the comedy news; however, when individuals disagreed with the information, the comedy news was more successful in the transfer of issue salience than the hard news. Overall, the results indicate typical hard news does not have a monopoly on the agenda-setting process because comedy news can set the agenda of audience members under certain conditions.

Where Have All the Scientific and Academic Freedoms Gone? And What Is ‘Adequate for Science’? The Right to Enjoy the Benefits of Scientific Progress and Its Applications

Article 15(1)(b) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights protects the right of everyone to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications (REBSPA). While the interpretation of this provision has not really been a focus of attention in the past, this is changing. A danger lies in construing this provision as entitling states to comprehensively regulate the field of science, at the expense of scientific and academic freedom. Scientific or academic freedom, rather than state regulation, guarantees creativity and innovation in the field of science for the benefit of society at large. This article raises four caveats to guide all those tasked with interpreting Article 15(1)(b) – specifically, the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, right now preparing a General Comment on Article 15(1)(b). Firstly, it is crucial to have conceptual clarity of, and understand the differences between, the REBSPA, freedom of science, academic freedom, freedom of expression, and the right to education. Secondly, science, by its very nature, is not susceptible to being managed. An ‘adequate’ framework for science should limit state intervention and empower the scientific fraternity. Thirdly, regulation has lately often entailed the adoption of a corporatist approach to science in universities and research institutions. This damages science. Fourthly and finally, UNESCO's recent Recommendation on Science and Scientific Researchers of 2017 constitutes only an imperfect blueprint to guide interpretation of the REBSPA. It fails to address various threats (impact agenda science, peer review, ethical regulation, entrepreneurialisation, accountability excess, absence of rights of participation in governance, and so on) to scientific and academic freedom. Relying throughout on the notion that a science system must be ‘adequate for science’, the article concludes with a set of 22 recommendations on how the REBSPA should be construed so as to duly respect scientific and academic freedom. The current science regime needs to be fundamentally rethought in the light of such freedom. Otherwise – and many experts concur – we shall soon witness the fatal collapse and disintegration of modern science. Freedom as a pillar of science, and of the REBSPA, is in danger of being lost.

Reflections on law and impact in the light of Brexit

ABSTRACTThe impact agenda in academic research affords rich opportunities – to inform the media, policymakers and the general public; to co-produce research with third sector organisations. In the context of Brexit, the prevailing ignorance of politicians and other stakeholders has been so profound, and the falsehoods that have had popular purchase so baseless, as to make the need for impact and public engagement all the more acute. This is not simply about fact-checking, but about making the case for the very worth of expertise, and reasserting the basic, core scientific values that drive academic work – values that have been trashed by the precepts of a postmodern nihilism, in which all positions are equally (in)valid and only your own gut can be trusted. But challenging these precepts in public arenas has personal and professional costs: significant workload implications, the acquisition of new skills and often a torrent of abuse. As such, this work needs institutional support. Departments need to value it appropriately, to promote equal access to impact opportunities and to confront the discriminatory barriers to (and consequences of) taking up the impact gauntlet. Throughout the Brexit process, expertise and experts have been dismissed and denigrated. The task now is to restore public faith in the value of the pursuit of truth.

Autoethnography and the doctorate in business administration: Personal, practical and scholarly impacts

Using the Researcher Development Framework (RDF), we analyse autoethnographies in impact statements by doctorate in business administration (DBA) students to understand outcomes for self-reflexivity, management practices, and scholarship. We also use comparative data to content-analyse keywords on UK business school DBA web sites to explore institutional expectations. As a terminal applied research degree, the DBA is designed to generate contextualised ‘mode 2’ knowledge driven by solving organisational problems within students' own practices. While our paper shows that DBA students value the impact of the DBA journey on themselves as reflective practitioners, only a few web sites expect DBA students to publish. Consequently, we call for greater emphasis on DBA students' potential contributions to academic publications and the growing research impact agenda. We argue that business schools should raise the ambitions of these experienced scholar-practitioners to be more fully integrated into the academy, creating greater synergies between personal impacts, practice and management scholarship in their research. Furthermore, we highlight the value of autoethnography (AE) as a useful method to incorporate self-reflexivity and to map the socialisation of DBA students within the academy. Finally, we recommend collaborative AE for DBA students and their supervisors to evidence personal, practical, and scholarly published impacts.

The Violence of Impact: Unpacking Relations Between Gender, Media and Politics

Engaging in public discussion and debate are crucial aspects of the impact agenda, but what are the politics of this engagement? What happens when female academics engage with, or are reported by, media in disseminating their research? Does negative impact ‘count’ as impact? Adopting a poststructuralist intersectional feminist analysis, this article uses the REF policy agenda as a case study in order to explore these questions. Drawing on extensive qualitative interview data, I operationalize the concept ‘cultural sexism’ as a mechanism to connect micro and macro analysis, using cumulative individual experiences to render visible wider social and political power structures. This article argues that while women may seek to actively build impact and public engagement in to their research agendas, we need to be cognizant that the site of interaction between media and academia is gendered and raced. I argue that we therefore need to reflect upon the ethics of pursuing a policy which (1) disproportionately exposes a diversity of women to structural and symbolic violence (2) has the potential to silence women’s contribution to knowledge and (3) conversely may serve to simply privilege masculinised assumptions as to what does and does not count as knowledge.

REF impact and the discipline of politics and international studies

On 22–23 November 2016, the Department of Politics and International Studies (PAIS) at the University of Warwick hosted a lively conference on research ‘impact’, a key component of the Research Excellence Framework (REF)—the periodic peer review in UK Higher Education to evaluate the quality of academic work, in turn determining how nearly £2 billion of annual research funding is allocated among competing institutions. In contrast to many other conferences and workshops about impact, a feature of REF that has generated much fevered commentary across the university sector about the public value of academic research, our event was tightly focused on impact as it relates to the discipline of Politics and International Studies. Featuring presentations from a range of academic and non-academic constituencies—including journalists, government officials, and representatives from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE),1 the creator and (at the time of writing) controller of the REF—conversation was particularly timely, owing to the publication, a few months earlier, of the eagerly awaited Stern Review on the future of university research assessment. This special issue contains selected papers from the conference, with the goal of shedding light on how the discipline as a whole, but also its varied composite parts, is responding to the impact agenda in the lead up to REF2021, now looming close on the horizon. We are grateful to the contributors for their participation and for opening up many new facets to the ongoing dialogue about impact.

Politics, Policy, and the UK Impact Agenda: The Promise and Pitfalls of Academic Engagement with Government

The author thanks Sergio Catignani, Rob Freathy, Patrick Porter, the anonymous reviewers, and especially Helena Mills for invaluable comments/discussion. He also thanks the University of Exeter for “Impact Accelerator” funding, and the UK Economic and Social Research Council [Grant Number ES/H015906/1] for its support of an intra-PhD policy secondment.

Five perils of the impact agenda in higher education

The impact of higher education institutions on society has become the focus of significant policy attention in recent years, most prominently as part of research evaluation. This paper presents a theoretical exploration of the notion, identifying the key dimensions as source, form, trajectory, intensity, timescale and destination. While acknowledging the importance of porosity between universities and society, and the need to address critical contemporary challenges, five dangers of the impact agenda are highlighted: the normative dimension; the linear relationship; unpredictability; measurement; and instrumentalization. As a response to dominant conceptualizations, the paper proposes the notion of the generative intrinsic as a more robust basis on which to base the work of universities.

Gayby Baby – From the politics of representation to the politics of care

Background: Real life stories can enable audiences to empathise with the experiences of marginalised groups and communities and are extremely powerful tools in struggles for equality. High-quality documentary research can convey the life experiences of marginalised peoples in ways that are recognisable to them and which further their struggle for equality. Often, marginalised people are represented by ‘filmmakers’ eager to capitalise on the affect produced by detailed renditions of everyday political struggles. However, film-makers are rarely trained in how to empower participants to understand film-making and distribution processes. These understandings and dialogic processes are important if participants are to have a real say in how they are represented. Process: In 2011, Maya Newell and Charlotte Mars began to develop an observational feature documentary Gayby Baby (2015) focused on same-sex families, for the first time revealing the child’s perspective on debates concerning Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Intersex, Queer and their children’s equality. They were interested in empowering participants to have a real say in the film. Jen Skattebol’s family was one of the four families featured in the film. This shared activist experience grounds the authors’ discussion of ethical care in representative practices. Discussion: Recently, documentary film-making and academic research has seen the emergence of a new value system that measures success in terms of ‘impact’ in the public sphere. This developing interest amplifies the ethical issues involved in representational work and raises new questions concerning the implications of subject participation in the development of resources that aim to improve health and well-being in broad political terms. This article sketches out the contours of a more ethical form of social impact making that grew out of kitchen table conversations between documentary subject and maker – the researched and researcher. Ethical frameworks of care need to be recalibrated in line with the issues foregrounded by burgeoning social impact agendas.

The higher education impact agenda, scientific realism and policy change: the case of electoral integrity in Britain

Pressures have increasingly been put upon social scientists to prove their economic, cultural and social value through ‘impact agendas’ in higher education. There has been little conceptual and empirical discussion of the challenges involved in achieving impact and the dangers of evaluating it, however. This article argues that a realist approach to social science can help to identify some of these key challenges and the institutional incompatibilities between impact regimes and university research in free societies. These incompatibilities are brought out through an autobiographical ‘insider account’ of trying to achieve impact in the field of electoral integrity in Britain. The article argues that there is a more complex relationship between research and the real world which means that the nature of knowledge might change as it becomes known by reflexive agents. Secondly, the researchers are joined into social relations with a variety of actors, including those who might be the object of study in their research. Researchers are often weakly positioned in these relations. Some forms of impact, such as achieving policy change, are therefore exceptionally difficult as they are dependent on other actors. Strategies for trying to achieve impact are drawn out such as collaborating with civil society groups and parliamentarians to lobby for policy change.

The politics of research impact: academic perceptions of the implications for research funding, motivation and quality

There is growing interest in demonstrating the societal and economic value of research around the world with the UK and Australia at the forefront of these developments. Characterised as an ‘impact agenda’, impact policies have incited debate amongst the academic community and beyond. On the one hand, the edifying and reinforcing effects of impact can be seen to provide greater visibility about the use of public investment in research, whilst, on the other concerns about the subsequent and unintended effects on the nature and quality of research and research cultures, have contributed to a discourse which was (in the very beginning at least) one dominated by resistance. We draw on a qualitative analysis of interviews with UK and Australian mid-senior career academics (n = 51) which explored academic perceptions for resisting an impact agenda, to describe a range of perceived effects on research funding, motivation and quality. We find a persistent perception that impact favours and prioritises ‘types’ of research, leading to a concern that this will reduce funding for certain disciplines. We also note how academics perceived deleterious effects on motivation, culture, capacity and the quality of research. Where impact was seen to ‘direct’ or ‘drive’ research, we discuss how some academics suggested they would re-orientate their work, often at the expense of quality. Indeed, misconceptions about the very meaning of ‘impact’ appear to persist alongside varied intepretations of impact policies and mixed perceptions about how impact is considered in practice with respect to funding decisions. In addition, we posit that extrinsic motivations for impact are ‘crowding out’ intrinsic motivations of academics, altering perceptions of self-determination. This is further compounded by the growing politicisation of knowledge which in turn creates an ideological barrier to engagement. If impact is to be embraced and sustained at scale, institutions must target and harness a wider range of intrinsic motivations and epistemic responsibilities, improving academics’ abilities to respond to the impact agenda in addition to working with, not against those who create policy.

Critical international relations and the impact agenda

How should critical International Relations (IR) scholars approach the ‘impact agenda’? While most have been quite resistant to it, I argue in this essay that critical IR should instead embrace the challenge of impact – and that both IR as a field and the impact agenda more broadly would gain greatly from it doing so. I make this case through three steps. I show, firstly, that critical IR has till now been very much at the impact agenda’s margins, and that this situation contrasts strikingly with its well-established importance within IR teaching and research. I argue, secondly, that critical IR scholars both could and should do more impact work – that the current political conjuncture demands it, that many of the standard objections to doing so are misplaced, and indeed that ‘critical’ modes of research are in some regards better suited than ‘problem-solving’ ones to generating meaningful change – and offer a series of recommended principles for undertaking critically-oriented impact and engagement work. But I also argue, thirdly, that critical social science holds important lessons for the impact agenda, and that future impact assessments need to take these lessons on board – especially if critical IR scholarship is to embrace impact more fully. Critical IR, I submit, should embrace impact; but at the same time, research councils and assessments could do with modifying their approach to it, including by embracing a more critical and political understanding of what impact is and how it is achieved.

The impact agenda and the study of British politics

This article attempts to discern the nature of impact in relation to the British politics sub-field of political studies. It reviews evidence from REF2014 to establish how political scientists working in this area understood and tried to demonstrate impact. It critically appraises how the impact agenda is affecting how research into British politics is prioritised, undertaken and disseminated, and questions whether this is a good thing for the sub-discipline. The implications of this for the shape of British politics research going forward are considered. While welcoming the possibility of a re-centring of scholarly attention on British politics, the article cautions against a retreat to the parameters of the British Political Tradition and the Westminster Model view.

Effects of index client and geo-targeting on HIV case identification: an observational study

Abstract Background Despite huge investments in HIV prevention, treatment, and care in sub-Saharan Africa, fewer than one in 10 individuals knows their HIV status, and 40% of individuals living with HIV are not cognisant of their positive status. Efforts to improve and strengthen HIV service delivery, particularly in HIV testing, are necessary to increase efficiency in HIV case finding and optimise service delivery. Standard approaches to HIV testing have not been effective in addressing this gap. Our objective was to evaluate a targeted approach for HIV case identification in a PEPFAR-supported HIV programme in Nigeria. Methods Between October, 2016, and June, 2017, we implemented a strategy that included index client testing, geo-targeted HIV testing, and provider-initiated counselling and testing in 14 local government areas in Akwa Ibom, southern Nigeria. The tests were administered in conjunction with the conventional method of testing and were in line with the PEPFAR impact agenda. We estimated the number of individuals who needed to be tested by each method in order to meet a benchmark of 8000 new diagnoses per quarter. We described dispersion using median and IQR. Findings Conventional methods in the 14 local government areas required testing of 600 000 individuals (median 50 000 [IQR 741 000]) whereas using our targeted approach, we met 60% of the benchmark in each quarter by testing 214 000 individuals on average (median 14 000 [IQR 12 000]). Interpretation We demonstrated that use of a targeted approach to HIV testing can increase the efficiency of case identification. This process can therefore help increase early initiation of treatment and retention of subjects diagnosed with HIV. Funding PEPFAR.

The rise of impact in academia: repackaging a long-standing idea

Since the Research Excellence Framework of 2014 (REF2014) ‘impact’ has created a conceptual conundrum gradually being pieced together by academics across the Higher Education sector. Emerging narratives and counter-narratives focus upon its role in dictating institutional reputation and funding to universities. However, not only does literature exploring impact, rather than ‘REF2014 impact’ per se, seldom see it as part of a changing sector; it often treats it as a new phenomenon within the political and social sciences. Here, drawing on academic perceptions of impact set in motion in the UK during the 1970s, we critique the underlying assumption that impact is new. We argue three key points to this end. Firstly, contrary to much of the literature examining academic perceptions of impact, it is a long-standing idea. Secondly, within such accounts, the effect of academic research on policy and society (which is longstanding) and the instrumentalisation of impact as a funding requirement (which is relatively new) are conflated. Thirdly, this conflation creates a novelty effect. In the context of a wider sea change to Higher Education, we examine different forms of consent, acceptance, endorsement and resistance surrounding the ‘new’ impact agenda to argue that this ‘novelty effect’ masks an important transitory process of acclimatisation among academics.

The ESRC university project on ‘dissident’ Irish republicanism: some reflections on the relationship between research, academia, and the security state

ABSTRACTThis article focuses on a particular research project, funded by the ESRC, which aimed to examine the so-called dissident Republicanism in Ireland. By analysing the flaws in the proposal for the ESRC project, this article attempts to tease out and highlight some of the critical issues faced by those engaged in sustained research activity in the social sciences. The subsequent analysis throws into a much sharper focus the nature of the relationship between academia and the state. The article deploys original ESRC and Government documentation and evaluates pertinent secondary source material to conclude that particular types of state intervention into the research process, such as Research Excellence Framework and the ‘impact agenda’, have had (and will continue to have) a deleterious effect on genuinely autonomous academic output. Indeed, in certain key areas, the emergence of a ‘security state’ agenda has not only fostered a sterile functionalism in academia which militates against the construction of independent and critical narratives but also threatens to diminish our understanding of complex social phenomena, such as the use of violence for political purposes.

Creativity, Risk and the Research Impact Agenda in the United Kingdom

This article describes the recent requirement for UK universities to account for the social and economic impact of their research, and asks whether this impact agenda may change the conduct of research itself. Three critical issues are highlighted: the epistemology of impact; the problem of quantifying qualities; and the likelihood of impact growing in significance and changing the landscape of research – so-called ‘impact creep’. Overall, the article identifies some features of the research impact agenda that pose risks to creativity and risk-taking by academics.

Research Impact, the ‘New Academic Capital’: An Environmental Scan of Research Impact Indicators and Resources for the Humanities and Social Sciences across 32 Countries

Research impact agendas are gaining momentum globally and changing research policies from funding agencies and universities. This article reports on an environmental scan of research impact indicators and resources for Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) from 32 countries. Changing policies from national research funders include new expectations for researchers to mobilize their research to non-academic audiences that could benefit from its use and demonstrate the tangible impacts of their work. Many have argued that research impact agendas disadvantage HSS as compared to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields. As such, the purpose of this environmental scan was threefold: (a) to examine how funding agencies are defining and conceptualizing research impact and KMb in different countries, (b) to gather and analyze research impact indicators used to assess HSS and (c) to identify practical resources that might support HSS researchers with research mobilization and impact. The scan yielded 721 research impact resources relevant to HSS; included analysis of 1,105 indicators; and identified 87 resources for researchers (including tools, networks, projects and open access repositories). Supplementary files for this article include a taxonomy of research impact indicators as well as a guidebook of research impact resources for researchers.

The impact agenda and critical social research in education: Hitting the target but missing the spot?

This paper considers whether the impact agenda that has developed over the last decade in UK universities is likely to help create the conditions in which critical educational research makes a more visible difference to society. The UK audit of university research quality (the research excellence framework (REF) now includes an assessment of impact. Impact pathways are requirements of both national and European Union research funding bodies and the Australian Research Council. Issues in the assessment of the social impact of research are explored by the European projects Evaluating the impact of EU SSH, social science humanities, research (IMPACT-EV) and ACcelerate CO-creation by setting up a Multi-actor Platform for Impact from Social Sciences and Humanities (ACCOMPLISSH). For many UK researchers the institutional focus on influencing the world outside the academy has brought welcome support and resources to engage with society and may appear to bring universities back to something approaching their original civic identity. However, evidence from across the academy suggests that impact as depicted in REF impact case studies does not accurately represent the experience either of the academic research endeavour or of impact as it may be more broadly construed. Analysis reported here of 85 highly rated impact case studies in the education unit of assessment of the 2014 REF suggests there is a risk that the REF impact process will embed a shift against qualitative and theoretically driven methodology that is often found in socially critical educational research. Impact is postured as neutral, hiding the neoliberal drive towards research models based on implementation, evaluation and policy. There is a need to create spaces in universities for rethinking of the impact agenda, perhaps looking at value or social creation instead of, or as an integral aspect of, impact.

Changing the World? The Politics of Activism and Impact in the Neoliberal University

This article explores the political differences between academic activism and the recently emerged research impact agenda. While both claim that academic work can and should engage with and influence the world beyond the academic ‘ivory tower’, their political meaning and practice are radically different. Following the distinction made by Jacques Rancière, we argue that research impact performs a policing function which, despite its own rhetoric, is arranged as an attempt to ensure that academic work maintains a neoliberal status quo by actually having no real political impact. Academic activism, in contrast, serves to politicize scholarly work by democratically disrupting political consensus in the name of equality. Being an academic activist in an era of research impact rests in a twofold movement: that of both acting in the name of equality in an effort (using Marx’s terms) to ‘change the world’ and resisting and contesting an academic administration whose police actions have attempted to eliminate such forms of democratic practice from the political consensus. The argument is illustrated with examples from the Australia Research Council’s statements on research impact and the practice of climate change activism.