The use of virtual-reality technology in the areas of rehabilitation and therapy continues to grow, with encouraging results being reported for applications that address human physical, cognitive, and psychological functioning. This article presents a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis for the field of VR rehabilitation and therapy. The SWOT analysis is a commonly employed framework in the business world for analyzing the factors that influence a company's competitive position in the marketplace with an eye to the future. However, the SWOT framework can also be usefully applied outside of the pure business domain. A quick check on the Internet will turn up SWOT analyses for urban-renewal projects, career planning, website design, youth sports programs, and evaluation of academic research centers, and it becomes obvious that it can be usefully applied to assess and guide any organized human endeavor designed to accomplish a mission. It is hoped that this structured examination of the factors relevant to the current and future status of VR rehabilitation will provide a good overview of the key issues and concerns that are relevant for understanding and advancing this vital application area.

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A SWOT analysis of the field of virtual reality rehabilitation and therapy

Virtual Reality (VR) has now emerged as a promising tool in many domains of therapy and rehabilitation (Rizzo, Schultheis, Kerns & Mateer, 2004; Weiss & Jessel, 1998; Zimand, Anderson, Gershon, Graap, Hodges, & Rothbaum, 2002; Glantz, Rizzo & Graap, 2003) Continuing advances in VR technology along with concomitant system cost reductions have supported the development of more usable, useful, and accessible VR systems that can uniquely target a wide range of physical, psychological, and cognitive rehabilitation concerns and research questions What makes VR application development in the therapy and rehabilitation sciences so distinctively important is that it represents more than a simple linear extension of existing computer technology for human use VR offers the potential to create systematic human testing, training and treatment environments that allow for the precise control of complex dynamic 3D stimulus presentations, within which sophisticated interaction, behavioral tracking and performance recording is possible Much like an aircraft simulator serves to test and train piloting ability, virtual environments (VEs) can be developed to present simulations that assess and rehabilitate human functional performance under a range of stimulus conditions that are not easily deliverable and controllable in the real world When combining these assets within the context of functionally relevant, ecologically enhanced VEs, a fundamental advancement could emerge in how human functioning can be addressed in many rehabilitation disciplines

A SWOT Analysis of the Field of Virtual Rehabilitation and Therapy.

Cultural entrepreneurs, cultural entrepreneurship: Music producers mobilising and converting Bourdieu's alternative capitals

/ This article examines economic aspects of convergence and of multi-platform expansion in the media sector. Focusing on television broadcasters in the UK, it analyses the recent migration of conventional media towards multi-platform strategies and asks whether digitization is making content delivery more resource—intensive than before or whether it is facilitating greater efficiency. Findings suggest that adaptation to a multi-platform outlook on the part of conventional media requires investment in staffing and re-versioning of content. Funding this, especially in a period of economic downturn, has encouraged a more selective approach towards content, with concomitant implications for diversity. Notwithstanding generally low commercial returns from online activities so far, the potential economic advantages to be had from multi-platform are significant. The experience of UK broadcasters suggests a well-executed ‘360-degree’ approach to commissioning and distribution will increase the value that can be r...

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From Television to Multi-Platform Less from More or More for Less?

This paper considers an emerging practice whereby citizen’s use of ubiquitous and domesticated technologies enable a parallel form of criminal justice. Here, weaponised visibility supersedes police intervention as an appropriate response. Digital vigilantism is a user-led violation of privacy that not only transcends online/offline distinctions but also complicates relations of visibility and control between police and the public. This paper develops a theoretically nuanced and empirically grounded understanding of digital vigilantism in order to advance a research agenda in this area of study. In addition to literature on vigilantism and citizen-led violence, this paper draws from key works in surveillance (Haggerty and Ericsson, British Journal of Sociology, 51, 605–622, 2000) as well as visibility studies (Brighenti 2007; Goldsmith, British Journal of Criminology, 50(5), 914–934, 2010) in order to situate how digital media affordances and cultures inform both the moral and organisational dimensions of digital vigilantism. Digital vigilantism is a process where citizens are collectively offended by other citizen activity, and coordinate retaliation on mobile devices and social platforms. The offending acts range from mild breaches of social protocol to terrorist acts and participation in riots. The vigilantism includes, but is not limited to a ‘naming and shaming’ type of visibility, where the target’s home address, work details and other highly sensitive details are published on a public site (‘doxing’), followed by online as well as embodied harassment. The visibility produced through digital vigilantism is unwanted (the target is typically not soliciting publicity), intense (content like text, photos and videos can circulate to millions of users within a few days) and enduring (the vigilantism campaign may be top search item linked to the target, and even become a cultural reference). Such campaigns also further a merging of digital and physical spaces through the reproduction of localised and nationalist identities (through ‘us/them’ distinctions) on global digital platforms as an impetus for privacy violations and breaches of fundamental rights.

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Digital Vigilantism as Weaponisation of Visibility

This book focuses on how everyday media such as Facebook, iTunes andGoogle can be understood in new ways for the21st centurythrough ideas of convergence.Key chapters explore the development of the internet, the rise of social media and the new opportunities for audiences to create, collaborate upon and share their own media.

Media Convergence: Networked Digital Media in Everyday Life

In recent history, the music industry has been built on a small number of relationships, largely driven from the top down. While the actual music forges a direct link between musicians and their fans, the reality of the industry is that a number of intermediaries interrupt that relationship, forcing musicians to communicate through their management companies and record labels. The promise of the new technologies is to reconfigure the possibilities, allowing the emergence of new relationships. The communication and distribution potential of the Internet (which can be encapsulated as Music 2.0) suggests that disintermediation and reconfigured relationships are possible. But what is the reality of this promise? In the context of a broader global experience, this paper draws on primary research consisting of interviews with a range of Australian musicians to explore how they may be forging new networks of opportunity, and how realistic the promise of Music 2.0 might be.

A View from the Trenches of Music 2.0

Curriculum design in higher education environments, namely the consideration of aims, learning outcomes, syllabus, pedagogy and assessment, can often be ad hoc and driven by informal cultural habits. Academics with disciplinary expertise may be resistant to (or ignorant of) pedagogical approaches beyond existing practice. In an environment where there is a need to develop online activities for students, one way to counter this friction is through a team-based approach underpinned by design-thinking. A design-thinking team brings together content, pedagogical and technical expertise to examine and resolve curriculum design issues. This paper explores a number of case studies in which such teams developed units of study and programmes for online delivery. The paper looks at the possibilities that the team approach can be a vehicle to instigate cultural change within and beyond the team; that is, from an individualist to a collective approach and ownership of the curriculum and its design, maintenance and co...

Team-based curriculum design as an agent of change

TV is being reshaped, re-imagined and reinvented in unpredictable ways. Broadcasting has become only one of a set of options for the distribution of TV content, alongside cable, DVDs, internet downloads, and online video streams. Simultaneously, audiences have embraced new modes of engagement with audio-visual products, with many seamlessly shifting from the role of consumer to that of producer. Broadcasting still reigns, but its place as the normative television form is under greater threat than ever. The articles in this issue of MIA suggest that, while it may no longer be the cultural norm, broadcasting may still have a role to play in whatever television becomes. The current phase of television suggests contested continuities rather than radical seismic shifts, as the new technologies open up possibilities beyond broadcasting. Of most interest is the emerging tension between what newly empowered users want television to be, and the institutional desire to dictate the direction and pace of change.

Sherman Young

Papers

Media Convergence: Networked Digital Media in Everyday Life

A View from the Trenches of Music 2.0

Team-based curriculum design as an agent of change

Beyond Broadcasting?: TV for the Twenty-first Century

The Book is Dead: Long Live the Book