Jonas Heide Smiths notesblog

A parliamentary election is almost upon is here in modest-sized Denmark. The current right-of-center government, supported by the nationalist Danish People’s Party, is being challenged by a left-of-center axis. With Christian Democrats unlikely to reach the (non-taxing) cut-off of 2% and our most left-wing party balancing on that same edge. Also, Helle Thorning-Schmidt – leader [...]

In what seems to me a difficult PR challenge to both, DR (the Danish BBC equivalent) and Copenhagen University’s Department of Sociology have collaborated in censoring a sociology master thesis. As reported in Information (upon which the following is based) Mille Buch-Andersen did a study of the organizational culture of DR’s symphonic orchestra.
While her [...]

I’ve published my thoughts on Ian Bogost’s book Persuasive Games over at game-research.com.
Briefly, I found the book a bit light on theory but excellent as a survey of the explosively growing field.

Researchers at the University of Toronto report that action game play increased players’ spatial skills, also over time. Female players get the biggest boost. Professor Ian Spence notes that
Clearly, something dramatic is happening in the brain when we see marked improvements in spatial skills after only 10 hours of game playing and these improvements are [...]

I didn’t see it coming a few years back but I’m taking an interest in the persuasive powers of games (but then who isn’t? :-))
In that regard, I’ve strewn a few thoughts across my research group blog.