Academic literature on the topic 'Self-help groups Victoria'

The blended online digital (BOLD) approach to teaching is popular within many universities. Despite this popularity, our understanding of the experiences of students making the transition to online learning is limited, specifically an examination of those elements associated with success. The aim of this study is to explore the experiences of students transitioning from a traditional mode of delivery to a more online approach in an inaugural BOLD Bachelor of Nursing program at a regional multi-campus institution in Victoria, Australia. Fifteen students across two regional campuses participated in one of four focus groups. This qualitative exploration of students’ experience contributes to contemporary insights into how we might begin to develop programs of study that help students develop self-regulation. A modified method of thematic analysis of phenomenological data was employed to analyse the focus group interview data to identify themes that represent the meaning of the transition experience for students. This qualitative exploration of students’ experience contributes to contemporary insights into how we might begin to develop programs of study that help students develop self-regulation.

The victorian discourse of self-help, popularized by Samuel Smiles in the mid-nineteenth century, was integral to the success of mid-Victorian British emigration and colonialism. As Robert Hogg notes in his study of British colonial violence in British Columbia and Queensland, Samuel Smiles's notion of character, which embraced the virtues of hard work, perseverance, self-reliance, and energetic action, helped sanction masculine colonial violence and governance in these regions (23–24). According to Robert Grant in his examination of mid-Victorian emigration to Canada and Australia, one's desire “to better him or herself” was closely entwined with Smiles's self-help philosophy and the rhetoric of colonial promotion permeating British self-help texts “in the projection of the laborer's progress from tenant to smallholder to successful landowner through hard work” (178–79). Francine Tolron similarly observes the pervasiveness of the success narrative in emigrant accounts of New Zealand, noting that this story often constitutes “yet another tale of the British march of Progress” (169) with the yeoman, John Bull, as the hero at its centre, who adopts the imperialist impetus to subdue the wilderness and recreate an ideal England in which a man can earn gentility through hard work and uprightness of character (169–70). She extends accounts by male emigrants to New Zealand to the “collective psyche” of all New Zealanders “whose stuff is made up of earth, so to speak, the inheritors of the old archetypal Englishman who worked on the land before the dawn of the industrial era” (173). These studies contribute significantly to a growing body of scholarship that considers the connections between self-help literature and British emigration and colonialism. Yet, occasionally such analyses apply the meaning of self-help rhetoric universally across British male and female emigrant groups when the rise from tenant to landowner was typically a male, not a female, prerogative. Building on this important body of work, this paper considers how domestic concerns, rather than a sole focus on controlling foreign lands and people, informed versions of success penned by a particular group of mid-Victorian middle-class female emigrants and these women's understanding of their positioning within the colonies.

“THE NATION is only the aggregate of individual conditions, and civilization itself is but a question of personal improvement,” argued Samuel Smiles in his 1859 Self-Help, the work that codified the supremacy of aspiration over occupation as a marker of identity for thousands of readers on the ill-defined boundary of the lower-middle and upper-working classes (16; ch. 1).1 Smiles’s importance, then and now, lies not in his invention of “self-improvement” as a defining feature of this group, but rather in his skill at publicly expressing the complex set of ideals and values that had already been worked out in, and expressed by, small groups of improvers for at least two generations.

The relative quiescence of British working-class radicalism during much of the two decades after 1848, so central to the foundations of mid-Victorian stability, has been the subject of many explanations. Though Chartism did not expire finally until the late 1850s, its mainstream strategy of constitutionalist organization, huge meetings, enormous parliamentary petitions, and the tacit threat of violent intimidation seemed exploded after the debacle of Kennington Common and the failed march on Parliament in April 1848. But other factors also contributed to undermine the zeal for reform. Alleviating the pressures of distress, emigration carried off many activists to America and elsewhere. Relative economic prosperity rendered the economic ends of reform less pressing, and proposals like the Chartist Land Plan less appealing. The popularity of various self-help doctrines, including consumer cooperation, also militated against collectivist political action. “Labour aristocrats” and trade union leaders, moreover, preferred local and sectional economic improvement to the risks and expense of political campaigning.Accounts of mid-Victorian political stability have had little to say, however, about the impact of European radicalism on the British working-class movement after 1848. That the failure of the continental revolutions brought thousands of refugees to Britain is well known. But although useful studies exist of the internationalist dimensions of Chartism prior to 1849—and of some of the refugee groups generally in this period—the effects of the exiled continental radicals on British working-class politics in the early 1850s have remained largely unconsidered.

Introduction:The National Strategy for Disaster Resilience (NSDR) characterizes resilient communities as having strong disaster and financial mitigation strategies, strong social capacity, networks, and self-reliance. Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) embrace many characteristics of a disaster resilient community. NPOs do not operate for the profit of individual members. Community groups like Lions and Rotary Club have long histories, and while not established to respond to disasters, they frequently have heavy involvement in preparing for or recovering from, disasters.Aim:The study aims to address the question, “What is the potential role of nonprofit organizations in building community resilience to disasters?”Methods:An applied research project was carried out, using theories of resilience, social capital, and the Sendai framework to conceptualize the frameworks and guide the process. Qualitative research methods, thematic analysis, and case studies helped identify Lions, Rotary, and Neighbourhood Houses Victoria strengths, barriers, and enablers.Results:Research demonstrated how NPOs made significant contributions to building communities’ resilience to disasters. NPOs facilitate three Sendai guiding principles of engaging, empowering, and enabling the community to build disaster resilience. Actions included raising awareness to disaster risk, reducing disaster risk, helping prepare for disasters, and contributing to long term disaster recovery. NPO strengths included local knowledge, community trust, and connections, which matched characteristics listed in the NSDR for a disaster resilient community. However, barriers to participation included traditional emergency services ignoring NPOs, lack of role definition, and lack of perceived legitimacy.Discussion:As the first Australia research to scientifically analyze the contributions of these NPOs to build community resilience, before, during and after disaster, this study enhances understanding and recognition of NPOs and assists in identifying means to facilitate their disaster resilience activities and place them more effectively within Emergency Management strategic processes. Greater utilization of such assets could lead to better community outcomes.

The study shows how imperial rituals (traditionally used at the meeting of the emperor or to celebrate the anniversaries of his reign) become part of national commemorative practices in Lviv. The process of adaptation and use of the European tradition of patriotic mass events in the city is demonstrated on the examples of Polish historical anniversaries. The connection between the constitutional reforms in the state and the transition of national celebrations from the private to the public sphere is highlighted. It is alleged that in the second half of the 19th century in Western Europe became popular mass events designed to strengthen the position of ruling elites. In the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires celebrated the birthdays of rulers, in France – the republican holidays, in Germany – the anniversaries of military victories. With the help of railways, it was possible to gather large masses of subjects in one place under one pretext, thus «turning» them into a nation. It was stated that celebrating past Polish victories was a much safer occupation for Polish elites than preparing for a new uprising. Even more patriotic than the usual «organic work». Therefore, commemorative practices have become extremely popular in Halychyna. As noted, in the days of mass politics, the Polish political nation could no longer be limited exclusively to the nobility, it was necessary to involve the Masurian peasants and the bourgeoisie in the national project. And since there was fierce competition among various political groups, mass events «for the people» had to be interesting and understandable to the general public. It was found that historical events were not only «mentioned», they were also interpreted and popularized accordingly. Depending on who organized the celebrations and to whom such activities were directed, either the democracy of the former Commonwealth, or the peaceful coexistence of different nations («Poland, Lithuania, and Rus’»), or the military victories of kings, or sacrifice, loyalty and the courage of the bourgeoisie were brought to the fore. The methodological basis of the study comprises the principles of historicism, objectivity, and systematics. General scientific and special research methods were used in solving the set tasks: historiographical analysis, generalization, chronological, retrospective. The scientific novelty of the work lies in a comprehensive analysis of the state of the study of the issue in modern historiography and a comparison of existing data with the available evidence of the time. And also in the complex analysis of mass actions as the phenomenon. Based on modern research and source material, it is shown that with the growing role of local self-government, the Polish historical narrative began to dominate over the general imperial in the public space of Lviv. At the same time, it maintained a semblance of loyalty to the central government, taking full advantage of constitutional freedoms to advance the national «agenda». Over time, there were changes in the senses that reached the general public through rituals: kings and victories were replaced by the constitution of May 3, which provided rights and freedoms for the «people» in the modern sense of the term. And with the aggravation of interethnic relations, the militarization of mass celebrations became more visible, when the municipal guards were no longer the municipal guards, but members of the scout organizations, which symbolically replaced the Austrian military on the city streets. Prospects for further research are that this period was very full of similar actions, which have not yet been the subject of research by historians. Their analysis will help to better understand the processes that eventually led to the well-known events in Lviv after the First World War.

Author’s note: Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Victoria Banyard, Associate Director, Center on Violence Against Women and Children, Rutgers University. Victoria.banyard@rutgers.edu<br />Objective: An emerging prevention strategy to reduce peer sexual violence among adolescents is bystander training (that is, actionism). The situational-cognitive model of actionism describes key variables that may promote action, the first of which is detecting the opportunity to help. The purpose of this study was to examine this first stage of action to better understand youth who report opportunity to respond to situations of sexual violence.Method: The current cross-sectional study examined a measure of youth bystander opportunity in a baseline sample of youth in school grades 7–10 in the Great Plains region of the US (N=2,225). Students indicated whether they witnessed four situations related to risk of peer sexual violence.Results: Opportunities for actionism varied based on the type of situation. Opportunities to intervene were most common for situations involving unwanted touching and sexual rumours. Older youth, girls and youth with self-reported risk factors such as alcohol use and internalising symptoms were more likely to report opportunities for actionism.Discussion: Further study of bystander opportunity and correlates of bystander opportunity could help better tailor prevention approaches to provide practice in strategies that are based on the range of opportunities which particular groups of youth may be most likely to encounter.<br />Key messages:<br /><ul><li>Adolescents have the potential to prevent peer sexual violence by being active bystanders when they are aware of risk.</li><br /><li>Youth reported more opportunities to respond to unwanted sexual contact and sexual rumours than sexual assault.</li><br /><li>Older youth, girls and youth who used alcohol were more likely to report response opportunities.</li></ul>

In this paper we explore the rise of anti-gambling apps in the context of the massive expansion of gambling in new spheres of life (online and offline) and an acceleration in strategies of anticipatory and individualised management of harm caused by gambling. These apps, and the techniques and forms of labour they demand, are examples of and a mechanism through which a mode of governance premised on ‘self-care’ and ‘self-control’ is articulated and put into practice. To support this argument, we explore two government initiatives in the Australian context. Quit Pokies, a mobile app project between the Moreland City Council, North East Primary Care Partnership and the Victorian Local Governance Association, is an example of an emerging service paradigm of ‘self-care’ that uses online and mobile platforms with geo-location to deliver real time health and support interventions. A similar mobile app, Gambling Terminator, was launched by the NSW government in late 2012. Both apps work on the premise that interrupting a gaming session through a trigger, described by Quit Pokies’ creator as a “tap on the shoulder” provides gamblers the opportunity to take a reflexive stance and cut short their gambling practice in the course of play. We critically examine these apps as self-disciplining techniques of contemporary neo-liberalism directed towards anticipating and reducing the personal harm and social risk associated with gambling. We analyse the material and discursive elements, and new forms of user labour, through which this consumable media is framed and assembled. We argue that understanding the role of these apps, and mobile media more generally, in generating new techniques and technologies of the self, is important for identifying emerging modes of governance and their implications at a time when gambling is going through an immense period of cultural normalisation in online and offline environments. The Australian context is particularly germane for the way gambling permeates everyday spaces of sociality and leisure, and the potential of gambling interventions to interrupt and re-configure these spaces and institute a new kind of subject-state relation. Gambling in Australia Though a global phenomenon, the growth and expansion of gambling manifests distinctly in Australia because of its long cultural and historical attachment to games of chance. Australians are among the biggest betters and losers in the world (Ziolkowski), mainly on Electronic Gaming Machines (EGM) or pokies. As of 2013, according to The World Count of Gaming Machine (Ziolkowski), there were 198,150 EGMs in the country, of which 197,274 were slot machines, with the rest being electronic table games of roulette, blackjack and poker. There are 118 persons per machine in Australia. New South Wales is the jurisdiction with most EGMs (95,799), followed by Queensland (46,680) and Victoria (28,758) (Ziolkowski). Gambling is significant in Australian cultural history and average Australian households spend at least some money on different forms of gambling, from pokies to scratch cards, every year (Worthington et al.). In 1985, long-time gambling researcher Geoffrey Caldwell stated thatAustralians seem to take a pride in the belief that we are a nation of gamblers. Thus we do not appear to be ashamed of our gambling instincts, habits and practices. Gambling is regarded by most Australians as a normal, everyday practice in contrast to the view that gambling is a sinful activity which weakens the moral fibre of the individual and the community. (Caldwell 18) The omnipresence of gambling opportunities in most Australian states has been further facilitated by the availability of online and mobile gambling and gambling-like spaces. Social casino apps, for instance, are widely popular in Australia. The slots social casino app Slotomania was the most downloaded product in the iTunes store in 2012 (Metherell). In response to the high rate of different forms of gambling in Australia, a range of disparate interest groups have identified the expansion of gambling as a concerning trend. Health researchers have pointed out that online gamblers have a higher risk of experiencing problems with gambling (at 30%) compared to 15% in offline bettors (Hastings). The incidence of gambling problems is also disproportionately high in specific vulnerable demographics, including university students (Cervini), young adults prone to substance abuse problems (Hayatbakhsh et al.), migrants (Tanasornnarong et al.; Scull & Woolcock; Ohtsuka & Ohtsuka), pensioners (Hing & Breen), female players (Lee), Aboriginal communities (Young et al.; McMillen & Donnelly) and individuals experiencing homelessness (Holsworth et al.). While there is general recognition of the personal and public health impacts of gambling in Australia, there is a contradiction in the approach to gambling at a governance level. On one hand, its expansion is promoted and even encouraged by the federal and state governments, as gambling is an enormous source of revenue, as evidenced, for example, by the construction of the new Crown casino in Barangaroo in Sydney (Markham & Young). Campaigns trying to limit the use of poker machines, which are associated with concerns over problem gambling and addiction, are deemed by the gambling lobby as un-Australian. Paradoxically, efforts to restrict gambling or control gambling winnings have also been described as un-Australian, such as in the Australian Taxation Office’s campaign against MONA’s founder, David Walsh, whose immense art collection was acquired with the funds from a gambling scheme (Global Mail). On the other hand, people experiencing problems with gambling are often categorised as addicts and the ultimate blame (and responsibility) is attributed to the individual. In Australia, attitudes towards people who are arguably addicted to gambling are different than those towards individuals afflicted by alcohol or drug abuse (Jean). While “Australians tend to be sympathetic towards people with alcohol and other drug addictions who seek help,” unless it is seen as one of the more socially acceptable forms of occasional, controlled gambling (such as sports betting, gambling on the Melbourne Cup or celebrating ANZAC Day with Two-Up), gambling is framed as an individual “problem” and “moral failing” (Jean). The expansion of gambling is the backdrop to another development in health care and public health discourse, which have for some time now been devoted to the ideal of what Lupton has called the “digitally engaged patient” (Lupton). Technologies are central to the delivery of this model of health service provision that puts the patient at the centre of, and responsible for, their own health and medical care. Lupton has pointed out how this discourse, while appearing new, is in fact the latest version of the 1970s emphasis on the ‘patient as consumer’, an idea given an extra injection by the massive development and availability of digital and interactive web-based and mobile platforms, many of these directed towards the provision of health and health-related information and services. What this means for patients is that, rather than relying solely on professional medical expertise and care, the patient is encouraged to take on some of this medical/health work to conduct practices of ‘self-care’ (Lupton). The Discourse of ‘Self-Management’ and ‘Self-Care’ The model of ‘self-care’ and ‘self-management’ by ‘empowering’ digital technology has now become a dominant discourse within health and medicine, and is increasingly deployed across a range of related sectors such as welfare services. In recent research conducted on homelessness and mobile media, for example, government department staff involved in the reform of welfare services referred to ‘self-management’ as the new service paradigm that underpins their digital reform strategy. Echoing ideas and language similar to the “digitally engaged patient”, customers of Centrelink, Medicare and other ‘human services’ are being encouraged (through planned strategic initiatives aimed at shifting targeted customer groups online) to transact with government services digitally and manage their own personal profiles and health information. One departmental staff member described this in terms of an “opportunity cost”, the savings in time otherwise spent standing in long queues in service centres (Humphry). Rather than view these examples as isolated incidents taking place within or across sectors or disciplines, these are better understood as features of an emerging ‘discursive formation’ , a term Foucault used to describe the way in which particular institutions and/or the state establish a regime of truth, or an accepted social reality and which gives definition to a new historical episteme and subject: in this case that of the self-disciplined and “digitally engaged medical/health patient”. As Foucault explained, once this subject has become fully integrated into and across the social field, it is no longer easy to excavate, since it lies below the surface of articulation and is held together through everyday actions, habits and institutional routines and techniques that appear to be universal, necessary and/normal. The way in which this citizen subject becomes a universal model and norm, however, is not a straightforward or linear story and since we are in the midst of its rise, is not a story with a foretold conclusion. Nevertheless, across a range of different fields of governance: medicine; health and welfare, we can see signs of this emerging figure of the self-caring “digitally engaged patient” constituted from a range of different techniques and practices of self-governance. In Australia, this figure is at the centre of a concerted strategy of service digitisation involving a number of cross sector initiatives such as Australia’s National EHealth Strategy (2008), the National Digital Economy Strategy (2011) and the Australian Public Service Mobile Roadmap (2013). This figure of the self-caring “digitally engaged” patient, aligns well and is entirely compatible with neo-liberal formulations of the individual and the reduced role of the state as a provider of welfare and care. Berry refers to Foucault’s definition of neoliberalism as outlined in his lectures to the College de France as a “particular form of post-welfare state politics in which the state essentially outsources the responsibility of the ‘well-being' of the population” (65). In the case of gambling, the neoliberal defined state enables the wedding of two seemingly contradictory stances: promoting gambling as a major source of revenue and capitalisation on the one hand, and identifying and treating gambling addiction as an individual pursuit and potential risk on the other. Risk avoidance strategies are focused on particular groups of people who are targeted for self-treatment to avoid the harm of gambling addiction, which is similarly framed as individual rather than socially and systematically produced. What unites and makes possible this alignment of neoliberalism and the new “digitally engaged subject/patient” is first and foremost, the construction of a subject in a chronic state of ill health. This figure is positioned as terminal from the start. They are ‘sick’, a ‘patient’, an ‘addict’: in need of immediate and continuous treatment. Secondly, this neoliberal patient/addict is enabled (we could even go so far as to say ‘empowered’) by digital technology, especially smartphones and the apps available through these devices in the form of a myriad of applications for intervening and treating ones afflictions. These apps range fromself-tracking programs such as mood regulators through to social media interventions. Anti-Pokie Apps and the Neoliberal Gambler We now turn to two examples which illustrate this alignment between neoliberalism and the new “digitally engaged subject/patient” in relation to gambling. Anti-gambling apps function to both replace or ‘take the place’ of institutions and individuals actively involved in the treatment of problem gambling and re-engineer this service through the logics of ‘self-care’ and ‘self-management’. Here, we depart somewhat from Foucault’s model of disciplinary power summed up in the institution (with the prison exemplifying this disciplinary logic) and move towards Deleuze’s understanding of power as exerted by the State not through enclosures but through diffuse and rhizomatic information flows and technologies (Deleuze). At the same time, we retain Foucault’s attention to the role and agency of the user in this power-dynamic, identifiable in the technics of self-regulation and in his ideas on governmentality. We now turn to analyse these apps more closely, and explore the way in which these articulate and perform these disciplinary logics. The app Quit Pokies was a joint venture of the North East Primary Care Partnership, the Victorian Local Governance Association and the Moreland City Council, launched in early 2014. The idea of the rational, self-reflexive and agentic user is evident in the description of the app by app developer Susan Rennie who described it this way: What they need is for someone to tap them on the shoulder and tell them to get out of there… I thought the phone could be that tap on the shoulder. The “tap on the shoulder” feature uses geolocation and works by emitting a sound alert when the user enters a gaming venue. It also provides information about each user’s losses at that venue. This “tap on the shoulder” is both an alert and a reprimand from past gambling sessions. Through the Responsible Gambling Fund, the NSW government also launched an anti-pokie app in 2013, Gambling Terminator, including a similar feature. The app runs on Apple and Android smartphone platforms, and when a person is inside a gambling venue in New South Wales it: sends reminder messages that interrupt gaming-machine play and gives you a chance to re-think your choices. It also provides instant access to live phone and online counselling services which operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. (Google Play Store) Yet an approach that tries to prevent harm by anticipating the harm that will come from gambling at the point of entering a venue, also eliminates the chance of potential negotiations and encounters a user might have during a visit to the pub and how this experience will unfold. It reduces the “tap on the shoulder”, which may involve a far wider set of interactions and affects, to a software operation and it frames the pub or the club (which under some conditions functions as hubs for socialization and community building) as dangerous places that should be avoided. This has the potential to lead to further stigmatisation of gamblers, their isolation and their exclusion from everyday spaces. Moreland Mayor, Councillor Tapinos captures the implicit framing of self-care as a private act in his explanation of the app as a method for problem gamblers to avoid being stigmatised by, for example, publicly attending group meetings. Yet, curiously, the app has the potential to create a new kind of public stigmatisation through potentially drawing other peoples’ attention to users’ gambling play (as the alarm is triggered) generating embarrassment and humiliation at being “caught out” in an act framed as aberrant and literally, “alarming”. Both Quit Pokies and Gambling Terminator require their users to perform ‘acts’ of physical and affective labour aimed at behaviour change and developing the skills of self-control. After downloading Quit Pokies on the iPhone and launching the app, the user is presented an initial request: “Before you set up this app. please write a list of the pokies venues that you regularly use because the app will ask you to identify these venues so it can send you alerts if you spend time in these locations. It will also use your set up location to identify other venues you might use so we recommend that you set up the App in the location where you spend most time. Congratulation on choosing Quit Pokies.”Self-performed processes include installation, setting up, updating the app software, programming in gambling venues to be detected by the smartphone’s inbuilt GPS, monitoring and responding to the program’s alerts and engaging in alternate “legitimate” forms of leisure such as going to the movies or the library, having coffee with a friend or browsing Facebook. These self-performed labours can be understood as ‘technologies of the self’, a term used by Foucault to describe the way in which social members are obliged to regulate and police their ‘selves’ through a range of different techniques. While Foucault traces the origins of ‘technologies of the self’ to the Greco-Roman texts with their emphasis on “care of oneself” as one of the duties of citizenry, he notes the shift to “self-knowledge” under Christianity around the 8th century, where it became bound up in ideals of self-renunciation and truth. Quit Pokies and Gambling Terminator may signal a recuperation of the ideal of self-care, over confession and disclosure. These apps institute a set of bodily activities and obligations directed to the user’s health and wellbeing, aided through activities of self-examination such as charting your recovery through a Recovery Diary and implementing a number of suggested “Strategies for Change” such as “writing a list” and “learning about ways to manage your money better”. Writing is central to the acts of self-examination. As Jeremy Prangnell, gambling counsellor from Mission Australia for Wollongong and Shellharbour regions explained the app is “like an electronic diary, which is a really common tool for people who are trying to change their behaviour” (Thompson). The labours required by users are also implicated in the functionality and performance of the platform itself suggesting the way in which ‘technologies of the self’ simultaneously function as a form of platform work: user labour that supports and sustains the operation of digital systems and is central to the performance and continuation of digital capitalism in general (Humphry, Demanding Media). In addition to the acts of labour performed on the self and platform, bodies are themselves potentially mobilised (and put into new circuits of consumption and production), as a result of triggers to nudge users away from gambling venues, towards a range of other cultural practices in alternative social spaces considered to be more legitimate.Conclusion Whether or not these technological interventions are effective or successful is yet to be tested. Indeed, the lack of recent activity in the community forums and preponderance of issues reported on installation and use suggests otherwise, pointing to a need for more empirical research into these developments. Regardless, what we’ve tried to identify is the way in which apps such as these embody a new kind of subject-state relation that emphasises self-control of gambling harm and hastens the divestment of institutional and social responsibility at a time when gambling is going through an immense period of expansion in many respects backed by and sanctioned by the state. Patterns of smartphone take up in the mainstream population and the rise of the so called ‘mobile only population’ (ACMA) provide support for this new subject and service paradigm and are often cited as the rationale for digital service reform (APSMR). Media convergence feeds into these dynamics: service delivery becomes the new frontier for the merging of previously separate media distribution systems (Dwyer). Letters, customer service centres, face-to-face meetings and web sites, are combined and in some instances replaced, with online and mobile media platforms, accessible from multiple and mobile devices. These changes are not, however, simply the migration of services to a digital medium with little effective change to the service itself. Health and medical services are re-invented through their technological re-assemblage, bringing into play new meanings, practices and negotiations among the state, industry and neoliberal subjects (in the case of problem gambling apps, a new subjectivity, the ‘neoliberal addict’). These new assemblages are as much about bringing forth a new kind of subject and mode of governance, as they are a solution to problem gambling. This figure of the self-treating “gambler addict” can be seen to be a template for, and prototype of, a more generalised and universalised self-governing citizen: one that no longer needs or makes demands on the state but who can help themselves and manage their own harm. Paradoxically, there is the potential for new risks and harms to the very same users that accompanies this shift: their outright exclusion as a result of deprivation from basic and assumed digital access and literacy, the further stigmatisation of gamblers, the elimination of opportunities for proximal support and their exclusion from everyday spaces. References Albarrán-Torres, César. “Gambling-Machines and the Automation of Desire.” Platform: Journal of Media and Communication 5.1 (2013). Australian Communications and Media Authority. “Australians Cut the Cord.” Research Snapshots. Sydney: ACMA (2013) Berry, David. Critical Theory and the Digital. Broadway, New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014 Berry, David. Stunlaw: A Critical Review of Politics, Arts and Technology. 2012. ‹http://stunlaw.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/code-foucault-and-neoliberal.html›. Caldwell, G. “Some Historical and Sociological Characteristics of Australian Gambling.” Gambling in Australia. Eds. G. Caldwell, B. Haig, M. Dickerson, and L. Sylan. Sydney: Croom Helm Australia, 1985. 18-27. Cervini, E. “High Stakes for Gambling Students.” The Age 8 Nov. 2013. ‹http://www.theage.com.au/national/education/high-stakes-for-gambling-students-20131108-2x5cl.html›. Deleuze, Gilles. "Postscript on the Societies of Control." October (1992): 3-7. Foucault, Michel. “Technologies of the Self.” Eds. Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman and Patrick H. Hutton. Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988 Hastings, E. “Online Gamblers More at Risk of Addiction.” Herald Sun 13 Oct. 2013. ‹http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/online-gamblers-more-at-risk-of-addiction/story-fni0fiyv-1226739184629#!›.Hayatbakhsh, Mohammad R., et al. "Young Adults' Gambling and Its Association with Mental Health and Substance Use Problems." Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health 36.2 (2012): 160-166. Hing, Nerilee, and Helen Breen. "A Profile of Gaming Machine Players in Clubs in Sydney, Australia." Journal of Gambling Studies 18.2 (2002): 185-205. Holdsworth, Louise, Margaret Tiyce, and Nerilee Hing. "Exploring the Relationship between Problem Gambling and Homelessness: Becoming and Being Homeless." Gambling Research 23.2 (2012): 39. Humphry, Justine. “Demanding Media: Platform Work and the Shaping of Work and Play.” Scan: Journal of Media Arts Culture, 10.2 (2013): 1-13. Humphry, Justine. “Homeless and Connected: Mobile Phones and the Internet in the Lives of Homeless Australians.” Australian Communications Consumer Action Network. Sep. 2014. ‹https://www.accan.org.au/grants/completed-grants/619-homeless-and-connected›.Lee, Timothy Jeonglyeol. "Distinctive Features of the Australian Gambling Industry and Problems Faced by Australian Women Gamblers." Tourism Analysis 14.6 (2009): 867-876. Lupton, D. “The Digitally Engaged Patient: Self-Monitoring and Self-Care in the Digital Health Era.” Social Theory & Health 11.3 (2013): 256-70. Markham, Francis, and Martin Young. “Packer’s Barangaroo Casino and the Inevitability of Pokies.” The Conversation 9 July 2013. ‹http://theconversation.com/packers-barangaroo-casino-and-the-inevitability-of-pokies-15892›. Markham, Francis, and Martin Young. “Who Wins from ‘Big Gambling’ in Australia?” The Conversation 6 Mar. 2014. ‹http://theconversation.com/who-wins-from-big-gambling-in-australia-22930›.McMillen, Jan, and Katie Donnelly. "Gambling in Australian Indigenous Communities: The State of Play." The Australian Journal of Social Issues 43.3 (2008): 397. Ohtsuka, Keis, and Thai Ohtsuka. “Vietnamese Australian Gamblers’ Views on Luck and Winning: Universal versus Culture-Specific Schemas.” Asian Journal of Gambling Issues and Public Health 1.1 (2010): 34-46. Scull, Sue, Geoffrey Woolcock. “Problem Gambling in Non-English Speaking Background Communities in Queensland, Australia: A Qualitative Exploration.” International Gambling Studies 5.1 (2005): 29-44. Tanasornnarong, Nattaporn, Alun Jackson, and Shane Thomas. “Gambling among Young Thai People in Melbourne, Australia: An Exploratory Study.” International Gambling Studies 4.2 (2004): 189-203. Thompson, Angela, “Live Gambling Odds Tipped for the Chop.” Illawarra Mercury 22 May 2013: 6. Metherell, Mark. “Virtual Pokie App a Hit - But ‘Not Gambling.’” Sydney Morning Herald 13 Jan. 2013. ‹http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/smartphone-apps/virtual-pokie-app-a-hit--but-not-gambling-20130112-2cmev.html#ixzz2QVlsCJs1›. Worthington, Andrew, et al. "Gambling Participation in Australia: Findings from the National Household Expenditure Survey." Review of Economics of the Household 5.2 (2007): 209-221. Young, Martin, et al. "The Changing Landscape of Indigenous Gambling in Northern Australia: Current Knowledge and Future Directions." International Gambling Studies 7.3 (2007): 327-343. Ziolkowski, S. “The World Count of Gaming Machines 2013.” Gaming Technologies Association, 2014. ‹http://www.gamingta.com/pdf/World_Count_2014.pdf›.

One might rightly think that the first female television chief executive in Australia, Maureen Plavsic, would have some important and useful advice and words of wisdom about what being successful in business involves. Apparently, Ms Plavsic considers being 'passionate' about what you do is central to being successful in contemporary business practice (Kitney 26). At first glance, this might seem a perfectly natural contemporary way to talk. The purpose of this paper is to step back from that idea of 'passion' as a driver of contemporary practice and to consider how it became inevitable that the passionless manager or employee is a failed species. I argue that emotion, and passion, as heightened emotion, have come to play a newly understood role in our work lives. There are various identifiable mechanisms, in any specific historical period, that produce ways of thinking about appropriate behaviour for groups such as managers. Foucault ("Governmentality") has described this specification as a form of governmentalisation of the population. They are targeted in various ways, in relation to how they should 'feel' at work (http://home.iprimus.com.au/panopticon1/). This includes through advertisements selling communication skills for managers, in training manuals, through training courses, in management books, professional journals and self-help books, and through organisational practices such as the development of 'human' resource departments. Numerous academics, including Hochschild, Mumby and Putnam, Fineman, and Tracy have also taken considerable interest in the way emotion has come to play such as important part in work-life. They, too, have contributed significantly to legitimising new ways to think about the heart and its place in business. Through knowing and enacting or even resisting the broad range of discourses circulating around these ideas, individuals produce themselves 'as a work of art' (Foucault, "On the Genealogy"; "Technologies"). Indeed,Foucault insists that the production of the self should be understoodas 'a creative activity' (Foucault, "On the Genealogy" 351). The body is continually 'finely tuned', constructed, and reconstructed as a 'performing self' (Schilling 35) through the constitution of knowledge about what is appropriate for the managerial identity. This notion of identity, as a work of art, is used in this paper, following Hall, to suggest 'the meeting point, the point of suture,between, on the one hand, the discourses which attempt to "interpellate", speak to us or hail us into place as subjects of particular discourses, and on the other, the processes which produce subjectivities, which construct us as subjects which can be "spoken" ' (5-6). By taking this social and discursive perspective on 'passion', as heightened emotion, it is possible to understand some of the processes by which passion has come to be thought about as 'corporate capital'. What are the some of the key discursive practices that achieve this identity? One interesting package that may well have produced Maureen Plavsic's response about 'being passionate' comes in the form of the idea of 'emotional capital'. The term has some resonances with other familiar descriptors, including the relationship between women and emotion. However, it directly recalls two different sets of contemporary knowledge about good managers: the idea of 'emotional intelligence' and the centrality of 'capital' in various forms of good business practice. I will briefly unpack each of these two ideas below. The idea of emotional intelligence, popularised by Goleman, is 'hot', both in education and in business (http://www.mngt.ac.nz/ejrot/). Throughout the world, government reports and training programs are tapping into cognitive psychologists' discoveries that successful people and companies become so because they bring their 'heart' to work, not just their heads. The language of emotional intelligence has entered everyday language from newspaper reports to professional development journals. Self-help specialist Daniel Goleman uses the authority of the academic discipline of cognitive psychology to re-present the emotions as 'a different kind of intelligence' (36) and to signify their relationship to other forms of intelligence. He uses Gardner's 1993 book on multiple intelligences to claim that interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligence are the keys to self-knowledge and other-knowledge (Cited in Goleman, 39) and that what individuals can achieve is 'appropriate' emotion (56) if they can name and use emotion properly. Goleman provides a rationale for the changing valorisation of the emotions, giving EQ an equal significance with IQ, describing emotional intelligence as a 'master' aptitude, one that 'affects all other abilities, either facilitating or interfering with them' (80). More recently, communication guru Kevin Thomson has provided carefully elaborated strategies for achieving the idealised state of Passion at Work. In this book and his companion text Emotional Capital, he argues for the role of emotional capital as central to business success. The elision of two relatively stable and legitimate discourses of the idea of 'capital' and 'emotional intelligence' is a clever rhetorical move. He links emotional capital directly to the idea of intellectual capital. Contemporary obsession with the new technologies and the developing new economy, based on service, has led to renewed interest in the storage and use of organisational knowledge as a form of intellectual capital, as Drucker rightly forecast. By drawing together the resources of this meaning for 'capital' and 'emotion', Thomson's term has considerable respectability and appeal for business. Eliding the idea of intellectual capital and intellectual property further strengthens this. This issue of ownership will be commented on in the latter part of the paper. Thomson goes on to argue, in Emotional Capital, that emotional capital is the 'fuel to fire your intellectual capital' (6). This emotional capital is 'begging to be valued as brand and corporate capital' (6). Legitimising strategies such as these make the idea of emotion and the more specific instrumentalisation of passion very attractive to managers looking for success in their work. Thomson offers simple, accessible promises for success based on these ideas. In 'Six Secrets for Personal Success' he suggests, again and again, that passion is the key. The final chapter puts this idea in perspective. It is called the 'Passion Pack: The 'How to' Mobilise Hearts and Minds and Generate Buy-in to Change' (169-211). This section contains a set of 'practical tools' to 'arouse your desire' to be passionate (170). A writer, like Thomson, has the capacity to be very influential. He was President of the International Association of Business Communicators (with a worldwide membership of 40 000) in 1998-1999, contributes regularly to professional journals, and works the speaking circuit. Just like Tom Peters before him, the capacity of persuasive management 'gurus' to put a spin on ideas combines with the important discursive moves made by other more powerful capacities to speak. These moves include the pronouncements of academics, including psychologists, educators, and governments, who are all looking for ways to shape up the population for own their various agendas. The capacity for 'naming' emotions, such as 'being passionate', has been identified as a characteristic of training programs and therapy approaches to communication training throughout the world, by researchers such as Cameron. Naming plays a critical part in developing and promoting emotional capital. This capacity allows and encourages fine-grained work on the self. However, it also puts a new spin on the relationship between managers and their organisations. Rather than to imagine emotions in the 'private' domain, it is now much more acceptable to manage the public heart of the manager. The instrumentalisation of emotion encourages on-going fine-tuning of behaviours and feelings in oganisations. What's more, managers themselves can opt to be trained by psychologists and communication specialists in learning to name and direct or redirect their previously unmanageable and often 'unwanted' emotional lives towards more productive work, as this now contributes to the emotional capital of the organisation. This emotional capital can contribute, alongside the intellectual and financial capital, to the success of the business. Maureen Plavsic's interview demonstrates that, at least at the very top of business, her intellectual/emotional property is not contested. For such a successful CEO, maybe the payoffs are good enough for her to make the creative move of reconstituting her identity in line with such demands. It remains to be seen how successful such moves will be in wooing managers further down the organisation. However, the governance of the population operates, not solely through its repressive capacities, but also through the seduction that images like 'emotional capital' conjure up for managers. If they enrol for communication training programs, they are offered not only the capacity to master the 'master aptitude', but also they are told from many different discursive terrains that they will achieve guaranteed access to business success. Becoming corporate capital is increasingly hard to resist in the new work order. References Cameron, Deborah.Good to Talk?: Living and Working in a Communication Culture. London: Sage, 2000. Drucker, Peter. Managing for the Future. Oxford: Butterworth Heinemann, 1990. Fineman, Stephen. Emotions in Organizations. London: Sage, 1993. Foucault, Michel. Governmentality. The Foucault Effect.Eds. G. Burchell, C. Gordon, & P. Miller. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991. Foucault, Michel. "On the Genealogy of Ethics: An Overview of Work in Progress". The Foucault Reader. Ed. P. Rabinow. London: Penguin, 1986. Foucault, Michel. "Technologies of the Self". Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault. Eds. L. Martin, H. Gutman, & P. Hutton. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988. Foucault, Michel. The Use of Pleasure. Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin, 1992. Goleman, Daniel. Emotional Intelligence. Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, London: Bloomsbury, 1996. Hall, Stuart. "Introduction: Who Needs Identity?" Questions of Cultural Identity. Eds. S. Hall & P. du Gay. 1-17. London: Sage, 1996. Hochschild, Airlie. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feelings. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983. Kitney, Damon. "One to Watch". BOSS, Financial Review10 (2001): 25-8. Mumby, Dennis, and Putnam, Linda. "The Politics of Emotion: A Feminist Reading of Bounded Rationality". Academy of Management Review 17.3 (1992): 465-86. Schilling, Chris. The Body and Social Theory, London: Sage, 1993. Thomson, Kevin. Passion at Work. Oxford: Capstone, 1998. Thomson, Kevin. Emotional Capital. Oxford: Capstone, 1998. Tracy, Sarah. "Becoming a Character for Commerce". Management Communication Quarterly 14.1 (2001): 90-128. Links http://www.mngt.ac.nz/ejrot/ http://home.iprimus.com.au/panopticon1/ Citation reference for this article MLA Style Hatcher, Caroline. "Corporatising Character" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 4.5 (2001). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0111/Hatcher1.xml >. Chicago Style Hatcher, Caroline, "Corporatising Character" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 4, no. 5 (2001), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0111/Hatcher1.xml > ([your date of access]). APA Style Hatcher, Caroline. (2001) Corporatising Character. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 4(5). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0111/Hatcher1.xml > ([your date of access]).

As a mode of open access public self-expression, blogs are one form of the unfolding massification of culture (Lovink). Though widely varied in content and style, they are characterised by a reverse chronological diary-like format, often produced by a single author, and often intimately expressive of that author’s thoughts and experiences. The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of blogs as a space for the detailed and on-going expression of the day to day experiences of sufferers of serious illness. We might traditionally consider the experience of illness as absolutely private, but illness, along with the process of recovery, retains a social and cultural aspect (Kleinman et al). A growing body of literature has recognised that the Internet has become a significant space for the recovery work that accompanies the diagnosis of serious illness (Orgad; Pitts; Hardey). Empowerment and agency are often emphasised in this literature, particularly in terms of the increased access to information and support groups, but also in the dynamic performances of self enabled by different forms of online communication and Web production. I am particularly interested in the ongoing shifts in the accessibility of “private” personal experience enabled by blog culture. Although there are thousands of others like them, three “illness blogs” have recently caught my attention for their candidness, completeness and complexity, expressing in vivid depth and detail individual lives transformed by serious illness. The late US journalist and television producer Leroy Sievers maintained a high profile blog, My Cancer, and weekly podcast on the National Public Radio website until his death from metastasised colon cancer in August 2008. Sievers used his public profile and the infrastructure of the NPR website to both detail his personal experience and bring together a community of people also affected by cancer or moved by his thoughts and experiences. The blogger Brainhell came to my attention through blogsphere comments and tributes when he died in February 2008. Spanning more than four years, Brainhell’s witty and charming blog attracted a significant audience and numerous comments, particularly toward the end of his life as the signs of his deteriorating motor system as a result of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS, or “Lou Gherig’s disease”) riddled his intimate posts. Another blog of interest to me here, called Humanities Researcher, incorporates academic Stephanie Trigg’s period of illness and recovery from breast cancer within a pre-existing and ongoing blog about the intersection between professional and personal life. As I had crossed paths with Trigg while at Melbourne University, I was always interested in her blog. But her diagnosis with breast cancer and subsequent accounts of tests, the pain and debilitation of treatment and recovery within her blog also offer valuable insight into the role of online technologies in affecting experiences of illness and for the process of recovery.The subject matter of illness blogs revolves around significant personal transformations as a result of serious illness or trauma: transformations of everyday life, of body and emotional states, relationships, physical appearance, and the loss or recovery of physical ability. It is not my intention in this brief analysis to overgeneralise on the basis of some relatively limited observations. However, many blogs written in response to illness stand out for what they reveal about the shifting location or locatability of self, experience and the events of ongoing illness and thus how we can conceptualise the inherent “privacy” of illness as personal experience. Self-expression here is encompassing of the possibilities through which illness can be experienced – not as representation of that experience, a performance of a disembodied self (though these notions have their merits) – but an expressive element of the substance of the illness as it is experienced over time, as it affects the bodies, thoughts, events and relationships of individuals moving toward a state of full recovery or untimely death. Locating Oneself OnlineMany authors currently examining the role of online spaces in the lives of sufferers of serious illness see online communication as providing a means for configuring experience as a meaningful and coherent story, and thus conferring, or we could say recovering, a sense of agency amidst a tumultuous and ongoing battle with serious illness (Orgad, Pitts). In her study of breast cancer discussion forums, message boards and websites, Orgad (4) notes their role in regaining “the fundamentals disturbed by cancer” (see also Bury). Well before the emergence of online spaces, the act or writing has been seen as “a crucial affirmation of living, a statement against fearfulness, invisibility and silence” (Orgad, 67; Lorde, 61). For many decades scientists have asserted that “brief structured writing sessions can significantly improve mental and physical health for some groups of people” (Singer and Singer 485). The Internet has provided an infrastructure for bringing personal experiences of illness into the public realm, enabling a new level of visibility. Much of the work on illness and the Internet focuses on the liberatory and empowering act of story telling and “disembodied” self-expression. Discussion forums and cancer websites enable the formation of patient led “discourse communities” (Wuthnow). Online spaces such as discussion forums help their participants gain a foothold within a world they share with other sufferers, building communities of practice (Wegner) around specific forms of illness. In this way, these forms of self-expression and communication enable the sufferer of serious illness to counter the modes by which they are made “subjects”, in the Foucauldian sense, of medical discourse. All illness narratives are defined and constructed socially, and are infused with relations of power (Sontag; Foucault, Birth of the Clinic). Forms of online communication have shifted productive practice from professions to patients. Blogs, like discussion forums, websites, email lists etc., have come to play a central role in this contemporary shift. When Lovink (6) describes blogs as a “technology of the self” he points to their role in “self-fashioning”. Blogs written about and in the context of personal illness are a perfect example of this inclination to speak the truth of oneself in the confessional mode of modern culture borne of the church, science and talkshow television. For Foucault (Technologies of the Self, 17), technologies of the self: Permit individuals to effect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct and way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, immortality. Likewise, as a central concept for understanding Internet identity, the notion of performance (eg, Turkle) highlights the creativity with which illness bloggers may present their role as cancer patient in online spaces, perhaps as an act of resistance to “subjectifying” medical discourses and practices. Many bloggers wrest semiotic power through regular discussion of the language of pathology and medical knowledge, treatment processes and drugs. In the early stages of her treatment, Trigg plays with the new vocabulary, searching for etiologies and making her own semantic connections: I’ve learnt two new words. “Spiculated” describes the characteristic shape of a carcinoma on an ultrasound or x-ray. …The other word is at the other end of the spectrum of linguistic beauty: “lumpectomy”. It took me quite a while to realise that this was not really any different from partial mastectomy; or local excision. It’s an example of the powerful semantic connotations of words to realise that these phrases name the same processes: a long cut, and then the extraction of the diseased tissue (Humanities Researcher, 14 Oct. 2006).Partly due to the rarity of his illness, Brainhell goes through weeks of waiting for a diagnosis, and posts prolifically in an attempt to test out self-diagnoses. Amidst many serious and humorous posts analysing test results and discussing possible diagnoses Brainhell reflects on his targeted use of the blog: I am a word person. I think in sentences. I often take complex technical problems at work and describe them to myself in words. A story helps me understand things better. This blog has become a tool for me to organize my own thoughts about the Mystery Condition. (Brainhell, 6 Jan. 2004)The emancipatory potential of blog writing, however, can be easily overstated. While it is valuable to note and celebrate the performative potential of online production, and its “transformative” role as a technology of the self, it is easy to fall back on an unproblematic distinction between the actual and the virtual, the experience of illness, and its representation in online spaces. Textual expression should always refer us to the extra-textual practices that encompass it without imposing an artificial hierarchy of online and offline, actual experience and representation. As with other forms of online communication and production, the blog culture that has emerged around forms of serious illness plays a significant role in transforming our concepts of the relationship between online and offline spaces. In his My Cancer blog, Sievers often refers to “Cancer World”. He notes, for example, the many “passing friends” he makes in Cancer World through the medical staff and other regular patients at the radiation clinic, and refers to the equipment that sustains his life as the accoutrements of this world. His blog posts revolved around an articulation of the intricacies of this “world” that is in some ways a means of making sense of that world, but is also expressive of it. Sievers tries to explain the notion of Cancer World as a transformation of status between insider & outsider: “once we cross over into Cancer World, we become strangers in a strange land. What to expect, what to hope for, what to fear – none of those are clear right now” (My Cancer, 30 June 2008). Part of his struggle with the illness is also with the expression of himself as encompassed by this new “world” of the effects and activities of cancer. In a similar way, in her Humanities Researcher blog Trigg describes in beautiful detail the processes, routines and relationships formed during radiation treatment. I see these accounts of the textures of cancer spaces as lying at the point of juncture between expression and experience, not as a disembodied, emancipatory realm free from the fetters of illness and the everyday “real” self, but always encompassed by, and encompassing them, and in this way shifting what might be understood to remain “private” in personal experience and self-expression. Blogs as Public Diary Axel Bruns (171), following Matthew Rothenberg, characterises blogs as an accessible technological extension of the personal home page, gaining popularity in the late 1990s because they provided more easy to use templates and web publishing tools than earlier webpage applications. Personalised self expression is a defining element. However, the temporal quality of the reverse chronological, timestamped entry is equally significant for Bruns (171). Taking a broader focus to Bruns, who is most interested in the potential democratisation of media in news related blogs, Lovink sees the experimentation with a “public diary” format as fundamental, signalling their “productive contradiction between public and private” (Lovink 6). A diary may be written for posterity but it is primarily a secretive mode of communication. While blogs may mirror the temporal form of a diary, their intimate focus on self-expression of experience, thoughts and feelings, they do so in a very different communicative context.Despite research suggesting that a majority of bloggers report that they post primarily “for themselves” (Lenhart and Fox) – meaning that they do not deliberately seek a broad audience or readership – the step of making experiences and thoughts so widely accessible cannot be overlooked in any account of blogging. The question of audience or readership, for example, concerns Trigg in her Humanities Researcher blog: The immediacy of a blog distinguishes it from a journal or diary. I wrote for myself, of course, but also for a readership I could measure and chart and hear from, sometimes within minutes of posting. Mostly I don’t know who my readers are, but the kindness and friendship that come to me through the blog gave me courage to write about the intimacies of my treatment; and to chart the emotional upheaval it produced. (Trigg)In their ability to produce a comprehensive expression of the events, experiences, thoughts and feelings of an individual, blogs differ to other forms of online communication such as discussion forums or email lists. Illness blogs are perhaps an extreme example, an open mode of self-expression often arising abruptly in reaction to a life transforming diagnosis and tracking the process of recovery or deterioration, usually ending with remission or death. Brainhell’s blog begins with MRI results, and a series of posts about medical examination and self-examination regarding his mystery condition: So the MRI shows there is something on my brain that is not supposed to be there. The doctor thinks it is not a tumor. That would be good news. …As long as you are alive and have someone to complain to, you ain’t bad off. I am alive and I am complaining about a mystery spot on my brain, and lazy limbs. (Brainhell, 24 Dec. 2003)Brainhell spent many weeks documenting his search for a diagnosis, and continued writing up to his final deterioration and death in 2008. His final posts convey his physical deterioration in truncated sentences, spelling errors and mangled words. In one post he expresses his inability to wake his caregiver and to communicate his distress and physical discomfort at having to pee: when he snorted on waking, i shrieked and he got me up. splayed uncomfortably in the wc as he put dry clothes on me, i was gifted with his words: “you choose this, not me. you want to make it hard, what can i do?” (Brainhell, 13 Jan. 2008). The temporal and continuous format of the blog traverses the visceral, corporeal transformations of body and thought over time. The diary format goes beyond a straightforward narrative form in being far more experiential and even experimental in its self-reflective expression of the events of daily life, thoughts, feelings and states of being. Its public format bears directly on its role in shaping the communicative context in which that expression takes place, and thus to an extent shapes the experience of the illness itself. Nowhere does the expressive substance of the blog so fully encompass the possibilities through which the illness could be experienced than in the author’s death. At this point the blog feels like it is more than a catalogue, dialogue or self-presentation of a struggle with illness. It may take on the form of a memorial (see for example Tom’s Road to Recovery) – a recovery of the self expressed in the daily physical demise, through data maintained in the memory of servers. Ultimately the blog stands as a complex trace of the life lived within its posts. Brainhell’s lengthy blog exemplifies this quite hauntingly. Revealing the Private in Public Blogs exemplify a further step in the transformation of notions of public and private brought about by information and screen technologies. McQuire (103) refers to contemporary screen and Internet culture as “a social setting in which personal identity is subject to new exigencies”. Reality television, such as Big Brother, has promoted “a new mode for the public viewing of private life” (McQuire 114) contributing to the normalisation of open access to personal, intimate revelations, actions and experiences. However, privacy is “an elusive concept” that relates as much to information and property as to self-expression and personal experience (McCullagh). That is, what we consider private to an individual is itself constituted by our variable categories of personal information, material or immaterial possessions, or what counts as an expression of personal experience. Some analysts of online storytelling in the context of illness recognise the unsustainability of the distinction between public and private, but nonetheless rely on the notion of a continuum upon which activities or events could be considered as experienced in a public or private space (Orgad, 129-133). One of the characteristics of a blog, unlike other forms of online communication such as chat, discussion forums and email, is its predominantly public and openly accessible form. Though many illness bloggers do not seem to seek anonymity or hold back in allowing massive access to their self-expression and personal experience, a tension always seems to be there in the background. Identification through the proper name simply implies potential broader effects of blog writing, a pairing of the personal expressions with the person who expresses them in broader daily interactions and relationships. As already “public” figures, Stephanie Trigg and Leroy Sievers choose to forego anonymity, while Brainhell adopted his alias from the beginning and guarded his anonymity carefully. Each of these bloggers, however, shows signs of grappling with the public character of their site, and the interaction between the blog and their everyday life and relationships. In his etiquette page, Brainhell seems unclear about his readership, noting that his blog is for “friends and soul-mates, and complete strangers too”, but that he has not shared it with his family or all of his friends. He goes on to say: You may not have been invited but you are still welcome here. I made it public so that anyone could read it. Total strangers are welcome. Invited friends are welcome. But of those invited friends, I ask you to ask me before you out me as the blog author, or share the blog with other people who already know me. (Brainhell, 18 Feb. 2004) After his death Ratty took steps to continue to maintain his anonymity, vetting many comments and deleting others to “honor BH’s wishes as he outline in ‘Ettiquett for This Blog”’ (Brainhell, 2 Feb. 2008). In Leroy Sievers’ blog, one post exploring the conflict raised by publicly “sharing” his experiences provoked an interesting discussion. He relays a comment sent to him by a woman named Cherie: I have stage four colorectal cancer with liver mets. This is a strange journey, one I am not entirely sure I can share with my loved ones. I am scared it might rob them of the hope I see in their eyes. The hope which I sometimes don’t believe in. (My Cancer, 26 July 2006) Sievers struggles with this question: “How do you balance the need to talk about what is happening to you with the tears of a close friend when you tell him or her the truth? There’s no simple answer.” The blog, in this sense, seems to offer a more legitimate space for the ongoing, detailed expression of these difficult and affective, and traditionally private experiences. In some posts the privacy of the body and bodily experiences is directly challenged or re-negotiated. Stephanie Trigg was concerned with the effect of the blog on her interactions with colleagues. But another interesting dilemma presents itself to her when she is describing the physical effects of cancer, surgery and radiation treatment on her breast, and forces herself to hold back from comparing with the healthy breast: “it's not a medical breast, so I can't write about it here” (Humanities Researcher, 10 Jan. 2007). One prostate cancer blogger, identified as rdavisjr, seems to have no difficulties expressing the details of a physical intrusion on his “privacy” in the far more open forum of his blog: The pull-around ceiling mounted screen was missing (laundry?), so Kelly was called into the room and told to make a screen with a bed sheet. So here I am with one woman sticking her finger up my ass, while another woman is standing in front of the door holding an outstretched bed sheet under her chin (guess she wanted a view!)The screen was necessary to ensure my privacy in the event someone accidentally came into the room, something they said was a common thing. Well, Kelly peering over that sheet was hardly one of my more private moments in life! (Prostate Cancer Journal, 23 Feb. 2001). ConclusionWhatever emancipatory benefits may be found in expressing the most intimate of experiences and events of a serious illness online, it is the creative act of the blog as self-expression here, in its visceral, comprehensive, continuous timestamped format that dismantles the sense of privacy in the name of recovery. The blog is not the public face of private personal experience, but expressive of the life encompassed by that illness, and encompassing its author’s ongoing personal transformation. The blogs discussed here are not alone in demonstrating these practices. The blog format itself may soon evolve or disappear. Nonetheless, the massification enabled by Internet technologies and applications will continue to transform the ways in which personal experience may be considered private. ReferencesBruns, Axel. Gatewatching: Collaborative Online News Production. New York: Peter Lang, 2005.Bury, Michael. “Chronic Illness as Biographical Disruption.” Sociology of Health and Illness, 4.2 (1982): 167-182.Foucault, Michel. Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception. Trans. A.M. Sheridan. London: Tavistock, 1973.———. “Technologies of the Self” Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault. Ed. Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman, Patrick M. Hutton, 1988: 16-49. Hardey, Michael. “‘The Story of My Illness’: Personal Accounts of Illness on the Internet.” Health 6.1 (2002): 31-46Kleinman, Arthur, Veena Das, and Margaret Lock, eds. Social Suffering. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Lenhart, Amanda, and Susannah Fox. Bloggers: A Portrait of the Internet’s New Storytellers. Washington: PEW Internet and American Life Project, 2006. Lorde, Audre. The Cancer Journals. San Francisco: Spinsters Ink, 1980.Lovink, Geert. Zero Comments: Blogging and Critical Internet Culture. London: Routledge, 2008. McCullagh, Karen. “Blogging: Self Presentation and Privacy.” Information and Communications Technology Law 17.1 (2008): 3-23. McQuire, Scott. “From Glass Architecture to Big Brother: Scenes from a Cultural History of Transparency.” Cultural Studies Review 9.1 (2003): 103-123.Orgad, Shani. Storytelling Online: Talking Breast Cancer on the Internet. New York: Peter Lang, 2005. Pitts, Victoria. “Illness and Internet Empowerment: Writing and Reading Breast Cancer in Cyberspace.” Health 8.1 (2004): 33-59.Rothenberg, Matthew. “Weblogs, Metadata, and the Semantic Web”, paper presented at the Association of Internet Researchers conference, Toronto, 16 Oct. 2003. ‹http://aoir.org/members/papers42/rothenberg_aoir.pdf›.Singer, Jessica, and George H.S. Singer. “Writing as Physical and Emotional Healing: Findings from Clinical Research.” Handbook of Research on Writing: History, Society, School, Individual, Text. Ed. Charles Bazerman. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2008: 485-498. Sontag, Susan. Illness as Metaphor; And, AIDS and Its Metaphors. London: Penguin, 1991. Trigg, Stephanie. “Life Lessons.” Sunday Age, 10 June 2007. Turkle, Sherry. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995. Wenger, Etienne. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Wuthnow, Robert. Communities of Discourse: Ideology and Social Structure in the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and European Socialism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989.BlogsBrainhell. ‹http://brainhell.blogspot.com/›. rdavisjr. Prostate Cancer Journal. ‹http://pcjournal-rrd.blogspot.com/›. Sievers, Leroy. My Cancer. ‹http://www.npr.org/blogs/mycancer/›. Tom’s Road to Recovery. ‹http://tomsrecovery.blog.com/›. Trigg, Stephanie. Humanities Researcher. ‹http://stephanietrigg.blogspot.com/›.

The population of Australia is increasing in age, consequently the incidence of cancer diagnoses is rising. This rise will have a dramatic impact on hospitals with much of the disease burden extending to psychological support for cancer care. At present few men diagnosed with cancer seek support. This study sought to explore men's perceptions of support and prostate cancer support groups. The benefits of support groups for men with prostate cancer have been well documented in international studies. In Australia however, relatively few men diagnosed with prostate cancer join such groups and few studies have examined the factors that influence membership and attendance. This study investigated the experiences of a sample of 181 Australian men diagnosed with prostate cancer, 80 of whom were members of support groups and 107 who were not. The participants were recruited from prostate cancer support groups and an outpatient department of a major cancer hospital, in Melbourne, Australia. The two groups were compared on a range of factors, including disease characteristics, illness perceptions and views of prostate cancer support groups. Further, members of support groups rated a number of objectives to determine the effectiveness of the groups. The majority of members recommended prostate cancer support groups to other men with prostate cancer (92%), however of the non-members of prostate cancer support groups, almost half (48%) had never heard of them. Factors that discriminated between support group members and non-members were emotional perceptions of the illness, symptom reports and illness coherence, with support group members reporting higher scores on these variables. Length of diagnosis and age were also factors that discriminated between the groups with support group members younger and diagnosed longer than non-members. There were no differences between the groups on personal control, both groups reported high perceptions of control over the disease. Members reported more benefits and less costs associated with prostate cancer support groups than non-members. Benefits included information, support, sharing experiences, and supporting other men with the disease. Costs included negative discussions, other men dying, and the distance required to travel to the groups. Both members and non-members reported distance to travel to the groups as a major barrier to attendance. The majority of members had heard of the groups through friends and, for non-members who had heard of the groups, through hospital staff. General practitioners were one of the least likely sources of information about prostate cancer support groups reported by members. Prostate cancer support group members reported high levels of satisfaction with the groups on a range of objectives outlined by the Cancer Council of Victoria. Making friends and accessing community assistance exceeded men's expectations of attendance, however men reported a desire for more information and communication. A need for more funding, advertising, and recognition of prostate cancer support groups by medical staff was also reported. Many men with prostate cancer are unaware of support groups, however a number of benefits were noted by both members and non-members. Greater recognition of prostate cancer support groups by medical staff may provide men with prostate cancer an opportunity to access those benefits. Health service providers should consider the important role prostate cancer support groups play in the recovery of men from prostate cancer and consider ways of dispelling myths men may hold regarding the notion of support.

Re-Imagining Black Women dissects “post-politics”—the repertoire of dominant fantasies, frames, and narratives that hope for an afterlife beyond the social activism of the mid-twentieth century. This push for post-politics, such as post-feminism or post-racial thinking, serves as a form of race, gender, and class management that is uniquely suited for this neoliberal era. Alexander-Floyd centers black women as subjects, locating Moynihan’s black cultural pathology melodrama as the earliest basis for neoliberalism’s focus on self-regulation, solidifying patriarchal family formations, and the splitting of groups into virtuous victors who are worthy citizen subjects versus villainous, abject others in need of rehabilitation. Forging a unique methodology that fuses insights and approaches from political science, women’s studies, black studies, media studies, and most notably psychoanalysis, Re-Imagining Black Women provides a tour-de-force of black politics, exposing and addressing gender and other elements repressed or disavowed in the study of US race and politics. Each chapter traces the interplay of melodrama and liminality, examining political figures, such as Condoleezza Rice and Barack Obama and his My Brother’s Keeper initiative; cultural sites, such as The Help and Tyler Perry’s Madea; white male rape of black women and the social contract; and black women and the MeToo movement. This study helps to explain how some people were seduced by post-racial, post-feminist fantasies, exposing the primary ways in which they still operate. Re-Imagining Black Women also discusses post-politics in the COVID-19 era. It is a pioneering work that helps readers understand contemporary culture and politics and equips them to navigate turbulent political futures.