Public Relations: Saving the Oldest Olympic Sport

Background  In Strategic Sport Marketing (Shilbury, Westerbeek, Quick, Funk and Karg 2014) the authors present a case study which centres on the removal of amateur wrestling as a sport from the Olympic games. In this case study the authors suggest that the eventual survival of wrestling as a sport, in whole or in part, was …

Neoliberalism, New Media & The Political Discourse

With the rise of convergence and social media culture the influence of mainstream media outlets in political discourse is greater than ever before. The public can now engage in live media, whilst simultaneously commentating with their peers, in a way that can influence politics like never before. With the application of theories from Harvey (2005) …

From the Archive: Professional Wrestling for Amateurs – What, Culture?

Another week of preparing for the end of term has left me short on time - luckily there is still more to go back to from this original series on the misunderstood art of professional wrestling.  Previously we sat down with an actual, real life, wrestling machine – O’Shay Edwards – for a look at …

The Internet – An ideal public sphere?

The aim of this post is to explore and discuss the concept of the Internet as an ideal public sphere - defined by Holub (1991, p.3) as, "…a realm in which individuals gather to participate in open discussions. Potentially, everyone has access to it. No one enters in discourse… with an advantage over another". Over …

Exploring the Participatory Culture

Media and its consumption has evolved down the years from a traditional broadcast culture to what has been dubbed in modern times as a participatory culture. Unlike the traditional broadcast culture of old – government or commercial organisation approved and/or distributed sources of media transmission, such as network radio and television shows – a participatory …

Global Social Media: Case Study – China

Over the past few weeks I have started looking at social media and social interactions in a different light and already have found myself being more critical of its uses, Because of this, in theory, I will perhaps look at changing the way I approach the use of social media going forward. This image is …

Social Gaming – Interacting in the online world

Social gaming is one of my favourite past times, particularly in recent times in the Online world of Grand Theft Auto. Together with two of my good pals I am the president of the Hells Harambe’s Motorcycle Club. We grow pot, we cut coke and we manufacture meth in a large scale operation which takes …

Visual Communities and Social Imaging

As a society we seem to be desperate to find motivation and/or inspiration wherever we turn. What was once the noble art of photography has become something of a hobby for anyone with an iPhone and there are more photos of peoples pub meals online now than there are pubs in the world (probably). When …