One cop, a police force, and some social media accounts
Why blog about recent events in the police force? Well the purpose of my blog is to capture key learning points, reflections and even events as they emerge, which both influence my PhD research and my work role. So when @teaandtalking live tweeted her experience from an inpatient ward I thought that was a formative moment and, with her support, blogged about it. Over the last week the mental health social media sphere has been buzzing with the suspension and resumption of Inspector Michael Brown aka @mentalhealthcop’s Twitter and blog accounts. I don’t intend to describe what happened but you can check out @Sectioned_ excellent summary if you aren’t aware of it or would like to find out more. I haven’t pestered @mentalhealthcop for an interview as he quite rightly wishes to not discuss the event in public. I am also not going to speculate about the whys and wherefores of what happened. However, with @mentalhealthcop’s blessing, I am going to share a few thoughts and reflections on what this episode might mean for public sector professionals and institutions in social media spaces. Back to the beginning (for me at least) Over the last few years Twitter and blogging, as well as other platforms, have become increasingly mainstream in the public sector. With more and more people (particularly those in formal leadership positions) entering these spaces, and with the advent of social media guidelines for pretty much every professional group, Twitter and other platforms are increasingly being recognised and promoted as legitimate spaces for professionals to occupy. Are the stakes higher? My sense of what happened to @mentalhealthcop is...
You are what you tweet – a #socialNHS
You are what you tweet – this play on words from @Patient_Leader, with whom I am delivering a session at the NHS Expo Pop-up University on Monday 3 March, got me thinking about the part social media can play in enabling all of us who are part of the NHS to be more sociable. What might we sew and what might we reap? Are we what we tweet? Missing the point If we think about social media platforms, such as Twitter, as simply tools for communications or marketing; if we think about them in terms of an opportunity to broadcast information, if we deride people for tweeting a picture of their lunch or sharing the incidentals of their everyday life, then I think we’ve missed the point. Social capital I’d like to suggest that a better approach to thinking about social media is in terms of social capital. Social capital, put very simply, is the benefit we get from our relationships. We tend to have a mixture of strong and loose ties in our relationships. Strong ties might be with our family and close friends (called bonding social capital). Loose ties might be with our neighbours, colleagues or people we have a chat with when walking the dog or at the school gates (called bridging social capital). The greater our social capital the stronger our health and wellbeing, the more we are able to reach our potential, and the more we can get things done. Relationships are as much about seeking commonality, sharing details of our everyday life and thoughts, as much as they are about sharing resources –...
The machine that goes ping! Are apps the answer to everything?
image courtesy of histalktv.com Are apps the solution to everything? perhaps not… given my new role, directing a programme of work developing the use of digital tools such as apps in clinical services, you might guess my response would be a big definite resounding yes. However, a number of conversations I’ve had, and articles I’ve read this week, have caused me to wonder if we are in danger of naivety in we succumb to an uncritical delight in the role apps might play in relation to our health, and indeed many other aspects of our lives. The first thing which has surprised me when talking to clinical services, is that so many have an idea for an app they’d like to develop. Apps are popular – people like them, people think they can improve clinical care, and people think they can help save money in an increasingly cash strapped NHS. All of these things are likely to be correct to varying degrees, but I’m also struck by a sense that we must think critically about how much they can solve. In his recent talk to the Digital Life Design (DLD) conference, Evgeny Morozov questions what he sees as our desire to expect too much from technology at the expense of collective solutions to social problems. In the NHS we talk about empowering people to take control of their health, whereas he talks about the state delegating responsibility to the citizen and blaming them when they fail to do the ‘right thing’. To illuminate this point with a simple example – an app that supports healthy eating may be one...about.me
Victoria Betton
victoria betton
director mHabitat | NHS | social media & mental health doctorate | interested in digital inclusion | parma violets fiend | http://codesigndigitalhealth.co.uk
