Social science sites of the week
New and interesting sites of the week
Local and mayoral elections.
Follow the results as they come in with the live BBC analysis
For more in-depth academic analysis of past elections and statistical results see the Plymouth University Local Elections Centre website. There is a new mapping section which has turnout maps for local areas.
New for May! Sage launch Social Science bites
A new podcast series.
This will include short interviews with leading social scientists. Currently available: Rom Harré on What is Social Science?, Danny Dorling on Inequality In many cases transcripts will be provided. Technical and copyright information is available on the website.
Another excellent source of audio files – of academic presentations from conferences is Backdoor Broadcasting browse the latest list on the right of the page to see recent examples covering research skills, academic disciplines (humanities, philosophy, gender and more!)
Many individual universities also have podcasts and audio from their events see the lse of public events and lectures.
See our recommended links to academic lectures (audio and visual) via delicious.
Language box
The LanguageBox was initially funded by JISC and designed, built and run by the Faroes project team at the University of Southampton and the University of Portsmouth. It is currently managed by the LLAS Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies, at the University of Southampton.
It intends to provide free open access to language materials suitable for teaching Types of resources include lecture notes, slides, worksheets. It is possible to browse by level, language type of resource.
For instance see this video presentation on the French 2012 elections. from academic staff at Newcastle University
It also has associated PowerPoint slides.
French presidential elections.
This week a key debate. See the coverage on the BBC.
France 2 records the high viewing figures. See some key moments
Daily motion currently has the full version.
For some reaction try Figaro which is scanning social media throughout the campaigns for mentions. And has high and low points for the candidates.
Another interesting social media site has been created by Slate.fr the WIKIPOL is a type of Wikipedia with encyclopedia style entries on the main candidates it has been completed in conjunction with avec Po. More than 1,000 key figures, politicians, advisers are covered. Each entry has biographical information, quotations, details on affiliations, lists of publications.
Browse our blog for more examples.
Also some humour sites (with thanks also to Lucile Deslignères, Librarian, Oxford University Language Centre, for some good suggestion)
Canal plus humour
Liens Socio
The francophone generalist portal in social sciences founded in 2001 has created a new blog for PHD candidates in political science. Specially designed for the French presidential and legislative elections of 2012, the blog questions politicians on the place of the PhD in France. Articles, analysis and interviews are available. There are also video films of discussions with French academic staff.
World Development Indicators 2012 now available.
It includes many time series of data covering global poverty and development trends since 1960.
Free data journalism handbook released by European Journalism Centre
Creative commons licensed book which introduced you to the basics of data journalism: what it is, what told to use uses real life case studies from international news rooms. Go behind the scenes at the Guardian data blog.
Developing young researchers.
NFER (National Foundation for Educational Research) launches new gateway
with online guidance for people who are interested in working with young researchers. It includes topics on how to get young people involved, with some useful case studies.
The other resources section includes links to associated projects.
18 days in Egypt.
American documentary filmmaker and journalist Jigar Mehta has launched crowd-sourced interactive documentary project aimed at capturing the history of the revolution in Egypt. Explore videos contributed by citizen journalists on the website. Note it seems to load better using Firefox. Being the site is powered by GroupStream, an innovative new platform for group storytelling. Se videos hear stories.
Natural England making available free data
Free access to GIS Digital Boundary Datasets for protected sites, habitats, and other information either as national datasets covering all of England or in 100km tiles for the larger datasets.
Material available under an open government license.
Other related environmental data resources. ICUN red list indangered species.
UNEP environmental explorer
World database on protected areas.
