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The Brigstow Institute brings researchers from different disciplines together with a range of partners across the city and beyond to experiment in new ways of living and being. The Brigstow Happenings includes updates and news from research projects funded by Brigstow, as well as upcoming events and opportunities.
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WANTED: Research Assistant for Brigstow seedcorn project
I Didn’t Buy: Empowering online consumer activism against environmental collapse involving Fiona Spotswood (Management) and Tim Kindberg (Matter 2 Media Ltd) is looking to commission a research assistant to deliver some key aspects of the project. They are looking for a research assistant with experience of qualitative research, to analyse qualitative data from online semi-structured interviews (max 9 days work). You would be contracted by Matter 2 Media but your work would be overseen by both Fiona Spotswood and Tim Kindberg.
The project
This project aims to empower online consumers in responding individually and collectively to the climate breakdown and other environmental emergencies. These emergencies are core features of 21st century life, and much of the current response is accordingly online, in petitions, comments and articles. Another, earlier response is Ethical Consumption: making purchase decisions to support companies with progressive environmental policies, or putting pressure on companies selling environmentally damaging products by not consuming them. We will explore the opportunity to combine the approaches, and empower citizens to be more effective as both ethical consumers and online activists. In this project, a team of researchers and designers in social marketing and human-computer interaction will work with citizens to: understand how citizens wish to engage individually and collectively with the environmental emergencies while making online purchase decisions (engagement may include the decision not to buy/consume or the social sharing of ideas and purchase experiences); understand how/whether citizens experience feeling of empowerment online as they engage in different types of activism; and co-design and create a digital prototype, ‘I Didn’t Buy’ to enable critical reflection on these emerging understandings through actual experiences.
Interested? If so, please email Fiona.spotswood@bristol.ac.uk by 10th May outlining your research background and experience.
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