A 'manual on masculinity'? The consumption and use of mediated images of masculinity among teenage boys in Ireland

Most of the research on masculinity in Ireland stresses the influences of family, work and education in the construction of gender (Ferguson, 1998; Ferguson and Synott, 1995; Ferguson and Reynolds, 2001; McKeown et al., 1998, Owens, 2000). Although the impact of the entertainment media is regularly alluded to, there is a dearth of empirical work in this area. While it is generally agreed that mediated images play a highly influential role in young people's lives, both the nature and the scope of this influence remain unclear in the absence of concrete ethnographies of reception. This paper discusses the findings of a quantitative and qualitative investigation into Irish male teenagers’ consumption and reception of a broad range of media texts and discusses these findings in relation to the relevant literature. It points to the shortcomings of both 'hypodermic needle' theories, which claim direct media influence, and of some active audience theories, which posit consumers as impervious to ideological influence. Contrary to popular discourses which frame the media as an autonomous, regressive force that lags behind a more progressive reality, the findings presented here suggest that mediated fictions are part of wider 'gender scripts' (Nixon, 1996) that both inform and are informed by the social structures within which (male) viewers are immersed

A Cheap Ticket to the Dance: Systematic Bias in College Basketball's Ratings Percentage Index

A contest model is constructed to examine the existence of conference bias in college basketball's Ratings Percentage Index (RPI). Though a general RPI bias has been identified in previous literature, this is the first study to address whether the bias is random or systematic in nature. Within the theoretical model, the RPI is shown to be systematically biased against teams in high ability conferences, even when all teams play to expectation and can be transitively compared. Further, the bias can prevent the RPI from producing an ordinal mapping from revealed team ability level to the real number line. Given the longevity of the controversial RPI as the NCAA''s primary measure of team ability, these results may indicate that the NCAA is serving a demand for team heterogeneity in selecting for the NCAA Men''s Basketball Tournament.bias

The dynamics of divorce, income, and female labor force participation in Singapore.

Singapore has experienced rising income and female labor force participation over the years. This growth, however, is also accompanied by increasing divorce rate. This paper utilizes Granger causality tests within a multivariate error correction framework to examine the short-run and long-run causal interactions among divorce, income and female labor force participation in Singapore. The long–run results suggest the presence of tradeoffs between income, female labor participation and the family unit, with the twin objectives of economic expansion and the move to draw more women into the labor market having a negative impact on the institution of marriage.causality, divorce, female labor force participation, income, Singapore

The lads from New Ireland :a textual and audience analysis of marginalised masculinities in contemporary Irish film.

In the mid- to late-1990s, Irish Cinema underwent a radical shift, which entailed, among other significant features, a thematic trajectory from the rural to the urban, from the historical to the contemporary and from the local to the universal. This shift also involved a radical reconfiguration of cinematic masculinities, not only in relation to the representation of male characters but also in terms of how masculinity as discourse was being addressed. The earlier critiques of traditional patriarchal masculinity, which emerged from a more politically-engaged and less commercial period in Irish filmmaking, began to give way to more ambiguous, male-centered narratives, whose protagonists resist unequivocal ideological categorisation. What is most striking about this new cycle of male-themed and male-oriented films is their preoccupation with underclass, criminal and socially-marginalised masculinities at the height of the Celtic Tiger, a time of unprecedented economic prosperity in Ireland. Although Ireland’s increased prosperity has also brought forth a number of urban, middle-class films featuring new, gay and reconstructed men {About Adam, Goldfish Memory and When Brendan Met Trudy), the enduring centrality and popularity over the past decade of ‘indigenised’ versions of a number of male-oriented (sub)genres from elsewhere merits particular attention. This thesis explores the changing discursive constructions of masculinity which characterise this strand of contemporary Irish filmmaking and the varying meanings and pleasures which they offer to different subsections of the male audience

Adult Educators at the Crossroads of Language Learning and Workforce Development: A Qualitative Study of Teacher Agency

Since the passage of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) in 2014, there has been renewed questioning about the nature and purpose of adult education programs in the United States, including English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL). The heavy workforce development orientation of the new law is a starker manifestation of trends focused on job training which have been sweeping through the field of adult education for the last few decades. In the midst of these shifts, little research has been done to investigate what the educators charged with meeting these policy goals think about these changes, the nature of their work in this context, and how they negotiate any challenges or contradictions the situation presents. This case-study used cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) and a thematic analysis to investigate adult education ESOL teachers\u27 perspectives about this system and their own agency within it. CHAT informed the project during its preliminary phases. The study found that the greater resources and rule-making powers of the federal policymaking activity system exert pressure on the local adult education activity system, transforming teachers’ imagined objects into the economic outcomes prioritized at the federal level. Despite this, the teachers in the study creatively used their own agency to interact with the tools, community, and division of labor within their programs, in an effort to preserve their own goals