When ‘the show’ cannot go on: An investigation into sports mega-events and responses during the pandemic crisis

This article examines the relationship between sports mega-events and the coronavirus disease-2019 pandemic. Focusing primarily on the 2020 Summer Olympics and Union of European Football Associations Euro 2020 in football – representing two mega-events that were postponed due to the pandemic – this article explores the emerging discourses from sport governing bodies, and how these organisations communicated their initial responses to the pandemic between February and May 2020. The article takes a digital qualitative research approach and draws upon frame analysed media sources and public communications. As it proceeds, this article first illuminates how global sports entered a temporary standstill and, second, how sport governing bodies positioned themselves with regard to responding to the global crisis from within the sporting sphere. Subsequently, this article emphasises how the relevant responses, as communicated by sport governing bodies, reflected the broader reactive and adaptive pandemic responses apparent within socio-political fields

The Achievement of a Decentralized Water Management Through Stakeholder Participation: An Example from the Drôme River Catchment Area in France (1981–2008)

International audienceDifferent water Acts (e.g., the European Water Framework Directive) and stakeholders involved in aquatic affairs have promoted integrated river basin management (IRBM) over recent decades. However, few studies have provided feedback on these policies. The aim of the current article is to fill this gap by exploring how local newspapers reflect the implementation of a broad public participation within a catchment of France known for its innovation with regard to this domain. The media coverage of a water management strategy in the Drôme watershed from 1981 to 2008 was investigated using a content analysis and a geographic information system (GIS). We sought to determine what public participation and decentralized decision-making can be in practice. The results showed that this policy was integrated because of its social perspective, the high number of involved stakeholders, the willingness to handle water issues, and the local scale suitable for participation. We emphasized the prominence of the watershed scale guaranteed by the local water authority. This area was also characterized by compromise, arrangements, and power dynamics on a fine scale. We examined the most politically engaged writings regarding water management, which topics each group emphasized, and how the groups agreed and disagreed on issues based on their values and context. The temporal pattern of participation implementation was progressive but worked by fits and starts

When climate science became climate politics: British media representations of climate change in 1988

Climate change has become a pressing environmental concern for scientists, social commentators and politicians. Previous social science research has explored media representations of climate change in various temporal and geographical contexts. Through the lens of Social Representations Theory, this article provides a detailed qualitative thematic analysis of media representations of climate change in the 1988 British broadsheet press, given that this year constitutes an important juncture in this transition of climate change from the domain of science to that of the socio-political sphere. The following themes are outlined: (i) “Climate change: a multi-faceted threat”; (ii) “Collectivisation of threat”; (iii) “Climate change and the attribution of blame”; and (iv) “Speculative solutions to a complex socio-environmental problem.” The article provides detailed empirical insights into the “starting-point” for present-day disputes concerning climate change and lays the theoretical foundations for tracking the continuities and discontinuities characterising social representations of climate change in the future

British press attitudes towards the EU's global presence:from the Russian-Georgian War to the 2009 Copenhagen Summit

This article surveys the way in which British print media have presented the European Union (EU)'s global presence in the international arena by analysing two case studies which reflect two very distinctive areas of EU foreign policy: global climate change policy and the policy towards Russia. It employs frame analysis, allowing for the identification of the way in which the discourse of the press was categorized around a series of central opinions and ideas. Frames underscore the connections made by journalists between different events, policies or phenomena and their possible interpretations. The analysis highlights that acting through the common framework of the EU rather than unilaterally was a strategy preferred by the British press. These findings are in stark contrast with the deep Euroscepticism which characterizes press attitudes towards most policy areas, and is often considered to be rooted in the British political culture, media system, public opinion or the longstanding tradition of viewing the European continent as the other

Cytokines as mediators of chemotherapy-associated cognitive changes: Current evidence, limitations and directions for future research

10.1371/journal.pone.0081234PLoS ONE812-POLN

The effectiveness of celebrities in conservation marketing

Celebrities are frequently used in conservation marketing as a tool to raise awareness, generate funding and effect behaviour change. The importance of evaluating effectiveness is widely recognised in both marketing and conservation but, to date, little research into the effectiveness of celebrity endorsement as a tool for conservation marketing has been published. Using a combination of interviews and an online choice survey instrument, we investigated the extent to which a sample of UK-based conservation organisations, and other charities, evaluate their own usage of celebrity endorsement, and then carried out an experimental evaluation of a hypothetical marketing campaign. This experiment compared participants' willingness-to-engage (WTE) with, and recall of, a conservation message presented in versions of an advert featuring one of three prominent UK celebrities (David Beckham, Chris Packham or HRH Prince William) or a non-celebrity control treatment (featuring Crawford Allan, a director of TRAFFIC USA). We find that the organisations we interviewed did not routinely evaluate their marketing campaigns featuring celebrities. Furthermore, our experiment provides evidence that celebrity endorsement can produce both positive and negative effects. Participants were more willing to engage when presented with an advert featuring one of the three celebrities than the non-celebrity control, and WTE varied according to the characteristics of the celebrity and the respondent. However, celebrities were less effective at generating campaign message recall than non-celebrities. These findings suggest that celebrity endorsement should be used carefully. Further work is required to fully understand the role celebrity endorsers can play in conservation but, drawing on best practice from the field of marketing, this study introduces an approach to evaluation which could be applied more widely to improve the effectiveness of conservation marketing