Symbolic Footprints: Media Representations of Host Countries

At the beginning of each new Olympiad - the four years pe riod between two Olympic Games - fresh discussions arise in academia, in general day-to-day discourse and in the media, about the intended legacies for the new Games. Moreover, this debate tends to use comparisons between editions of the Games as rhetorical tool in order to assess the plans and preparations of the legacies and the Games itself. In those debates, legacies - or footprints - are commonly linked to questions of jobs creation, urban regeneration, sport participation, and the environment. What is proposed here in this chapter is to discuss the apparent symbolic footprint left by third parties - the media - through how they discursively construct the host city and nation, and the links between that with the organisation of the Games

Chasing a Tiger in a network society? Hull City’s proposed name change in the pursuit of China and East Asia’s new middle class consumers

The English Premier League possesses multiple global dimensions, including its clubs’ economic ownership, player recruitment patterns and television broadcasts of its matches. The owner of Hull City Association Football Club’s economic rights, Dr Assam Allam, announced plans to re-name the club ‘Hull City Tigers’ in an attempt to re-orientate the club towards seemingly lucrative East Asian, and specifically Chinese, markets in 2013. This article, first, draws upon Manuel Castells’ work in The Rise of the Network Society to critically discuss the logic of Hull City’s proposed reorientation to suit ‘new middle class’ consumers in China and the East Asian global region and second, uses the example to theoretically engage with Castells’ idea that ‘networks’ replace ‘hierarchies’ as social structures. This leads to the argument that while these plans might intend to strengthen the club’s financial position, they overlook a concern with local environments that Castells guides us toward. By looking toward the local consumer practices in China and the East Asian global region, Allam would find: (a) the normalisation in production and consumption of counterfeit club-branded sportswear and television broadcasts which makes increasing the club’s revenues difficult; and (b) that the region’s ‘new middle classes’ (marked by disposable income) are unlikely to foster support for Hull City, even if ‘Tigers’ is added to its name

Between Old and New Traditions: Transnational Solidarities and the Love for Liverpool FC

Arguably, in the last 15 years globalisation fuelled by social media have reshaped how socialisations are fostered and maintained. Moreover, the same processes have had a profound impact on one of the most fundamental emotion of humankind: love. Departing from those assumptions, based on an 18-month (n)ethnography of football supporters of one particular English club in Brazil and Switzerland, I sought to unveil the discourses supporters crafted in relation to their historiographies as cosmopolitan flâneurs. The critical discourse analysis showed that they used both individual and collective stories to craft their biographies as true Liverpool FC supporters. From those findings I argue that individualisation in cosmopolitan times entails a ‘Dasein für ausgewählte Andere’, being this other the re-traditionalised structures of modernity. I conclude by pointing out that precarious freedom does not relate to the necessity of choosing, but to their necessity of constantly legitimising their choices

Closing the mental health treatment gap in South Africa: a review of costs and cost-effectiveness

PKBackground: Nearly one in three South Africans will suffer from a mental disorder in his or her lifetime, a higher prevalence than many low- and middle-income countries. Understanding the economic costs and consequences of prevention and packages of care is essential, particularly as South Africa considers scalingup mental health services and works towards universal health coverage. Economic evaluations can inform how priorities are set in system or spending changes. Objective: To identify and review research from South Africa and sub-Saharan Africa on the direct and indirect costs of mental, neurological, and substance use (MNS) disorders and the cost-effectiveness of treatment interventions. Design: Narrative overview methodology. Results and conclusions: Reviewed studies indicate that integrating mental health care into existing health systems may be the most effective and cost-efficient approach to increase access to mental health services in South Africa. Integration would also direct treatment, prevention, and screening to people with HIV and other chronic health conditions who are at high risk for mental disorders. We identify four major knowledge gaps: 1) accurate and thorough assessment of the health burdens of MNS disorders, 2) design and assessment of interventions that integrate mental health screening and treatment into existing health systems, 3) information on the use and costs of traditional medicines, and 4) cost-effectiveness evaluation of a range of specific interventions or packages of interventions that are tailored to the national context

VAR (video-assistant-referee) as Neo-Colonialism? Reading the FIFA 2018 Mens World Cup YouTube Video Comments

The 2018 FIFA Mens World Cup saw the introduction of video-assistant-referee (VAR) as one of its main talking points. For the first time officials had the assistance of replays and VARs to support decisions. Nevertheless, the introduction of VAR was not without controversies. To understand how fans experienced VAR we employed a digital sociological approach (Marres, 2017) by focusing on one loosely defined community (FIFA’s Official YouTube channel), and used digital tools (Rieder, 2015) to scrap users’ comments. We scrapped over 300,000 comments from 31 videos that were analysed through CDA (Chouliaraki & Fairclough, 1999). Three main categories emerged: Global North vs Global South; Non-Neutrality of Technology; VAR is Killing the Beautiful Game. In this paper our analysis focus on the first category - using the remaining two as support - to argue that VAR was comprehended as a tool for neo-colonialism. Fans recognised VAR as: favouring loosely defined Global North sides; improving Global North sides’ chances; controlling Global South players’ actions. We argue that VAR operated as a panopticon (Foucault, 1985) that rationalised/standardised the ways of playing (Mignolo, 1999; Santos, 2014) following an Eurocentric interpretation of the rules. Our findings highlight the paradoxes of technology, where VAR operated as a tool for systemic control and YouTube acted as a site for anti-systemic movements (Bragança & Wallerstein, 1982) that allowed for transnational networks of hope (Castells, 2012). We conclude by showing the reflexive nature of borders (Beck, 2004) where boundaries, barriers and belongings become more transient and fluid

Marketing of Paralympic Sports: Attracting Spectators and Sponsors

This handbook provides a critical assessment of contemporary issues that define the contours of the Paralympic Movement generally and the Paralympic Games more specifically. It addresses conceptualisations of disability sport, explores the structure of the Paralympic Movement and considers key political strategic and governance issues which have shaped its development. The Palgrave Handbook of Paralympic Studies is written by a range of international authors, a number of whom are senior strategists as well as academics, and explores legacy themes through case studies of recent Paralympic games. Written in the wake of the 2016 Rio Paralympic Games, it provides an assessment of contemporary challenges faced by the International Paralympic Committee and other key stakeholders in the Paralympic Movement. Its critical assessment of approaches to branding, classification, social inclusion and technological advances makes this handbook a valuable resource for undergraduate study across a range of sport and disability related programmes, as well as a point of reference for researchers and policy makers

Digital Transformations in a Platform Society: A Comparative Analysis of European Football Leagues as YouTube Complementors

The prevalence of digital technologies and emerging social media platforms in the 21st century has altered the ways in which individuals and groups produce and consume elite football (soccer). Elite football is no longer consumed merely through ‘traditional’ media as television or radio. By comparing the ‘big five’ football leagues (the first divisions in England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain), this article examines how these leagues have adapted to an algorithm logic (monetization strategies/content strategies) on YouTube. Drawing from data collected (64,247 YouTube videos) using YouTube Data Tools, we argue that the ‘big five’s’ content creation on YouTube work in a complementary manner to ‘traditional’ platforms, allowing for the testing and adaption of their content practices based on instant consumer feedback. This article makes a contribution to the literature on the symbiotic media/sport relationship with its analysis and insights into the digital transformations occurring in a ‘platform society’

Between global events and local reverberations: Globalization, local media framing and the 2014 FIFA World Cup

This article advances sociological work on globalization processes. It concerns itself with conceptualizations of how the local and global ‘clash’, utilizing Ulrich Beck’s work on globalization, cosmopolitanism and power. By employing Brazil’s 2014 FIFA men’s World Cup as a case, this article seeks to builds on Beck’s theorizations into the field of football; using the General Law of the World Cup as a symbolic representation for the global/local, interest-driven interactions between Brazil and FIFA. In particular, this article is concerned with how FIFA’s requirements, standards and norms, as imposed on the host nation, were framed within local media and journalistic discourses. The article extends Beck’s insights by problematising how global demands meet local socio-spatial, legal and cultural contexts and how these demands, seeking to regulate and secure consumption, are resisted by various domestic and localized actors situated within a power game