BackgroundLack of breastfeeding support is often cited by mothers as one of the key reasons for premature weaning. The experiences and perceptions of breastfeeding mothers in a range of contexts and their support needs have been studied, but there has been little exploration of the specific breastfeeding topics that women are investigating via social networking sites (SNSs) such as Facebook, and how breastfeeding peer supporters respond to queries about breastfeeding concerns on a SNS.MethodsThis online ethnography took place in the Australian Breastfeeding Association’s (ABA) closed Facebook groups. These groups have been created for breastfeeding mothers to seek and provide support to their peers. All wall posts, comments and images for 15 of these groups were captured over a four-week period between 21 July and 17 August 2013.ResultsThe data were collected on a total of 778 wall posts with a total of 2,998 comments posted into the initial wall posts. Analysis revealed that 165 (21%) of these wall posts were queries and 72 (44%) of the queries were specific breastfeeding questions. Twelve breastfeeding topic areas were identified, and the top three topic areas were further analysed for not only their content but the nature of informational and emotional support provided to the community members.ConclusionsThe closed Facebook groups hosted by the ABA provided both informational and emotional support that appeared to be facilitated by an authentic presence from both trained peer breastfeeding counsellors and other mothers. The group administrators played a vital role in both responding to the queries and overseeing the discussions to ensure they adhered to the ABA’s Code of Ethics.
Tourism is recognised as having a two-way relationship with the environment (Halleux, 2017). On the positive side, many tourists are attracted to destinations to experience product attributes such as cultural heritage, flora and fauna, sea and sand. Implicitly, sustainability practices and maintaining the destination’s environmental integrity are critical to this form of tourism (Ecorys, 2013). On the darker side, however, it is recognised that tourism places significant pressure on a destination’s natural environment through pollution, ecosystem degradation and additional strain on natural resources (Weston et al., 2016). Thus, many tourist destinations have reputations that are intrinsically linked to their management of the environment and potentially negative product attributes that can impact on the environment (such as garbage, waste and sewage) (Inversini et al., 2009). In this context, Fombrun et al.’s (1999:72) definition that reputation is considered as “a perceptual representation of a company’s [or destination’s] past actions and future prospects that describes the firm’s overall appeal to all of its key constituents when compared with other leading rivals” is applied in this chapter.
Researchers suggest that the youth of today has disengaged from the political landscape in Australia. However, the online realm provides potential first time voters an avenue in which to engage in politics in an environment that is generally associated with a youthful demographic. New media tactics utilised during the 2007 Australian federal election aimed to not only attract youthful voters, but also to educate and deliver policy on a level generally associated with the 18-24 demographic. This study explored the effectiveness of new media in the political communication context, in particular with relation to first time voters. This research found that first time voters were not as engaged as predicted, and that the third party sites were more popular with undecided voters than the formal political party sites in voter influence.
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