Social science sites of the week

Here is our latest weekly update.

This week the Paralympics opened.

Get started with our free news and research resources.
See the latest Mori poll  for public opinion research on whether people thought the Olympics brought us closer together and what they think the lasting impact will be.

Also focusing on the possible social impact of the Olympics is

British Future
British Future is a new independent, non-partisan think tank which is seeking to involve people in an open conversation, which addresses people’s hopes and fears about identity and integration, migration and opportunity
Its website lists events, and news aimed at encouraging cohesiveness. Its website has some case histories of individuals discussing what it means to be British. There are also some useful publications and polls about the state of the nation.

Hurricane Isaac
In the news this week Hurricane Isaac.

See weather forecasts and tracking from the US National Hurricane Center
These include graphics.
Radio Reference has links to online emergency service social media and channels.
Corelogic report on insurance coverage of Americans. in relation to current hurricane damage.
The US Census Bureau  has also launched an app called. OnTheMap for Emergency Management.  which offers access to Access detailed U.S. Census Bureau reports on the workforce and population for current natural hazard and emergency related events. Search for Isaac to get mapping and statistics of potential population effected.
Unisys Weather Information Systems has historic data on storms and hurricanes From 1851 onwards.
The American Meteorological Society provides free access to article abstracts from its journals covering all aspects of weather and climate. Search full-text of 11 AMS journals running from 1873 to present, including Monthly Weather Review (1873-present), Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (1970-present), Journal of Climate (1988-present). In some cases full text is for subscribers only.

 Disseminating your research
A useful online tutorial for researchers created by the East Midlands Research Support Group (EMRSG) a consortium of university libraries based in and around the East Midlands partners include Coventry, Loughborough, De Montfort and Nottingham. It was designed to be generic and reusable and is offered for use under a creative commons license.
Topics covered are: Journals and journal articles; Other forms of publishing; Author bibliometrics; Journal bibliometrics; Networking –(covers conferences and use of social media tools such as twitter, blogs , wikis)
Each module has aims and objectives, pre-requisities and time guidance.
Modules encourage researchers to reflect on their practice and engage in some exercises. There are video clips of good practice.
For those interested see some presentations from the research group about the challenges of creating the tutorials.

Mapping digital Nigeria
96 page report from the Soros Foundation. This useful country report covers law, internet technology, consumption, impact on journalism and business
This is the latest in a series of country reports which the foundation has produced. Over 20 other titles covering nations worldwide have also been produced and can be downloaded from the website.
See the example for the UK which was published in 2011.

US Election News. SuperPAC App for iOS
This new App promises American voters the opportunity to find out more about political election ads. It was developed by Glassy Media, a company that was associated with the ” at the MIT Media Lab. According to the website what happens is that you
– Hold up the app to a presidential ad, wherever you’re watching it

– Find out who and how much money is behind the ad

– Rate and see how others have rated the ad: Love/Fair/Fishy/Fail

– See the claims of the ad and whether they’re based on any facts
Other places which are excellent for political ad information are the Political Communication Lab Stanford University.
The Living Room Candidate.
has an archive of presidential campaign commercials. 1952-2008. It also has a teaching resources section where you can edit and make your own ad.
See also their 2012 blog analysis.

Also on the election. Barack Obama question and answer session on Reddit.
This week American president Barack Obama took part on social news site reddit in a public session. See what American voters asked him. See CNN coverage.
Techcrunch coverage.

LSE public lectures and events. Now available as podcasts on Soundcloud.
Over 1400 now available covering a range of political social and economic topics. They include a discussion with former US president Bill Clinton. The site also links to lse iTunes, YouTube and audio/video.
Other universities on sound cloud include:

UCL
Yale.
Harvard.
Another really good place for tracing academic UK audio is Backdoor broadcasting
See this recent podcast on the birth of the Paralympics.

EU Screen
Launches some great new themed collections.
This EU funded project aims to digitise clips and programmes from major collections in Europe. The most recent exhibitions include
Sportswomen and Swedish TV from the 1950s-1980s; Civil rights in Northern Ireland. 1968-69 RTE coverage. Being European (changing conceptions of EU membership/ identity)

National Archives timeline of foreign offices
The Uk National Archives have created a really useful visualisation of name changes and responsibilities of Uk Foreign Affairs government departs from 1945 onwards on their labs website.The links click through to the Discovery catalogue where you can trace information and lists of records held by the archives for the individual department.