Introduction to the Special Issue on Voice and Representation of Marginal Groups

Advertising, Marketing, Public Relations and contemporary News: in these potentially powerful forms of cultural communication whose voices do we hear and which of these voices command most attention? This special edition of the Journal of Promotional Communication offers some tentative answers to these important societal questions. Thus in this issue the subject of voice and both its re-presentation and representation are addressed and rightly afforded critical importance within the realms of media communication and culture. As Couldry (2010) argues, voice is fundamental as a process by which individuals can give their accounts, but vitally, he also refers to the idea of voice as a value too. That is to say we can understand much about broader societal values through nuanced appreciations of types of voices heard and the levels of being heard. In this special issue we are most interested and concerned with the voices we do not hear and those we hear framed in a manner that reduces their authority

Tracking changes in everyday experiences of disability and disability sport within the context of the 2012 London Paralympics

The 2012 Paralympics was the biggest ever, the most accessible and best attended in its 64-year history. The Paralympics and ideas of disability associated with the Games provide significant opportunity for reflection on how far societal opinions, attitudes and behaviour have changed regarding disability. In 2012 – the first ever “legacy games” – an explicit aim of the Paralympics was to “transform the perception of disabled people in society”, (Channel 4), and use sport to contribute to “a better world for all people with a disability” (IPC 2011). The 2012 Games therefore came with a social agenda: to challenge the current perceptions many people have about disability and disability sport. Within this report – commissioned by the UK’s Paralympic broadcaster, Channel 4 – we consider everyday experiences of disability and disability sport within the context of the London 2012 Paralympics and televised coverage of the Games. The analysis is based 140 in-depth interviews that took place in the UK over a period of eighteen months, during the lead up to, and immediately after, the Games: between January 2011 and September 2012. Embedded in the lifeworld of our participants, we ask whether the 2012 Paralympics was successful in changing perceptions of disability

Her majesty the student: marketised higher education and the narcissistic (dis)satisfactions of the student-consumer

Intensifying marketisation across higher education (HE) in England continues to generate critical commentary on the potentially devastating consequences of market logic for learning. In this paper, we consider the student-consumer prominent in these debates as a contested yet under-analysed entity. In contrast to the dominance of homo economicus discursively constructed in policy, we offer a psychoanalytically-informed interpretation of undergraduate student narratives, in an educational culture in which the student is positioned as sovereign consumer. We report findings drawn from in-depth interviews that sought to investigate students’ experiences of choice within their university experience. Our critical interpretation shows how market ideology in an HE context amplifies the expression of deeper narcissistic desires and aggressive instincts that appear to underpin some of the student ‘satisfaction’ and ‘dissatisfaction’ so crucial to the contemporary marketised HE institution. Our analysis suggests that narcissistic gratifications and frustrations may lie at the root of the damage to pedagogy inflicted by unreflective neoliberal agendas. We finish with a discussion about the managerial implications of our work

From awww to awe factor: UK audience meaning-making of the 2012 Paralympics as mediated spectacle.

This article considers UK audiences’ meaning-making of television coverage of the London 2012 Paralympic Games. As an elite sporting event, the Paralympics has been categorized alongside other high-profile media spectacles. Yet, an analysis of the ‘spectacle’ has further significance here in relation to what Mitchell and Snyder conceptualize as ‘fascination with spectacles of difference’, which encourages audiences to view the disabled person through their impairment, rather than as a human being. Inspirational ‘supercrip’ stories that glorify ‘special achievement’ fuel perceptions that disabled athletes have extraordinary, heroic qualities, and coverage of the 2012 Paralympics was no different. The spectacle is created through everyday talk. Therefore, we utilize in-depth interviews supported by netnography-inspired methods to consider to what extent media representations appropriated disability into ‘spectacle’, consequently perpetuating ablest discourses, whilst also addressing the intended social agenda by facilitating greater understanding. Our findings suggest an unexpected emotional engagement with the (mostly) sporting spectacle, with audience narratives moving from ‘awww’ to ‘awe’ as sporting achievement was celebrated. The disabled sporting ‘hero’ as ‘superhero’ is, we argue, further evidence of the influence of discourses that attempt to transform a stigmatized identity, i.e. disability, into a revered one – athleticism, thus reinforcing existing hierarchies of ability/disability

‘It’s quite difficult letting them go, isn’t it?’ UK parents’ experiences of their child’s higher education choice process

This paper challenges the dominant discourse that Higher Education (HE) choice is a consumer choice and questions assumptions underpinning government policy and HE marketing. HE choice is largely viewed as a rational, decontextualised process. However, this interpretivist study found it to be much more complex, and to be about relationships and managing a transition in roles. It focuses on parents, an under-researched group, who play an increasing part in their child’s HE choice. It finds that they experience this process primarily as parents, not consumers and that their desire to maintain the relationship at this critical juncture takes precedence over the choice of particular courses and universities. The role of relationships, and in this context relationship maintenance, is the main theme. This is experienced in two principal ways: relationship maintenance through conflict avoidance and through teamwork. These significant findings have implications for the way governments and universities consider recruitment. © 2017 Society for Research into Higher Educatio

The paradoxes and pressures of trying to maintain academic professionalism in Higher Education

In UK HE where students are increasingly constructed as consumers, little is written about the corresponding academic conceptualisation; the lecturer as service provider. Whilst some authors embrace such metaphors, others identify negative behavioural consequences. This interpretivist study of academics seeks to examine the notion of academic as service worker by examining how academics experience interactions with students and how these influence their professional identities. Early data interpretation reveals themes of boundary setting in student encounters; the need to regulate emotions; and evidence of self-exploitation suggesting academics are complicit in extra responsibilities and how this contributes to new forms of academic labour. A final theme depicts an idealised version of academia as a coping mechanism. Market pressures are reshaping what it means to be an academic, forcing them to face the many paradoxes of maintaining professionalism characterised through their everyday experiences of being squeezed both by managerialism and rising student expectations

Variable buoyancy anchor deployment analysis for floating wind applications using a Marine Simulator

The research presented in this paper has been primarily sponsored by EPSRC’s Supergen ORE Hub & ORE Catapult Floating Offshore Wind Centre of Excellence (grant number FF2021-1040). The authors acknowledge funding received from Energy Technology Partnership Knowledge Exchange Network scheme (grant number PR057-ME) that provided additional funding to support this work. The authors wish to thank Oceanetics Inc. and Aubin Group for their support towards this project. This work has benefited from the support and funding received from Net Zero Technology Centre and The University of Aberdeen through their partnership in The National Decommissioning Centre (NDC) and The Scottish Government’s Decommissioning Challenge Fund in part-funding the establishment of the Marine Simulator research facility at the NDC.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Deployment feasibility studies of variable buoyancy anchors for floating wind applications

Postprin