The artist in a networked society

Artists are under pressure from two conflicting sets of sociocultural expectations. On the one hand, they are expected to conform to the historically grounded myth of the artist as heroic genius. On the other hand, they must meet the expectations of the state (plus ensure their own survival) as economic contributors. One way  that these conflicting pressures are managed by artists working within the traditional art world is by separating the creator from the labourer through the use of intermediaries such as dealer galleries, critics, publishers and agents. This allows the artist to symbolically distance themselves from the economic structures that allow them to continue to work. However, for those artists working outside of these systems of support, legitimization and representation, the positioning of the individual as ‘artist’ becomes a much more complex task.

The construction of artists persona in online spaces can be seen most clearly in those artists who operate outside of the traditional art world. Lacking the symbolic distance between the economic producer and the bohemian, mythical genius, these individual artists instead negotiate a place to stand in direct relation to  their audience of fans, followers and audiences. Using examples from a range of fringe, alternative or counter-culture creative practice, this paper investigates artistic persona by linking the artist myth, economic considerations, and networked society to explore current presentation strategies. 

The whole truth is both too much and not sufficient

Lawyers and fans of legal drama will recognise the phrase “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth”. But relevance is also required. In a different context, students often mistakenly believe that quantity of truth will compensate for any deficiencies in quality and relevance.

The curricula of the various Australian jurisdictions, and the National Curriculum, encourage students to conduct research on the Internet. There is a wealth of good information on the Internet; there is also a lot of poor information. Students should learn to interrogate sources to discover if the author has expert knowledge in that area, and if the publisher or website has any quality assurance protocols.

Correctness and quantity of information does not compensate for deficiencies in quality and relevance. Useful scientific information has appropriate precision, accuracy and conciseness.

The Internet gives access to databases, to vast amounts of information, to primary and second-hand data, and to summaries and analyses of information. Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling often said that the use of computers is not a substitute for thinking, and the same is true of the Internet. Teachers will always be needed to guide students on the appropriate use of learning tools on the journey of discovery that we call education.

Surveillance, Governance and Professional Sport

The surveillance capacities of professional sports clubs and Leagues are directly related to their modes of governance. This paper identifies how private sports clubs enact surveillance through processes of inclusion and exclusion. Using three examples to demonstrate these processes, we argue that the surveillance mechanisms associated with sports governance at times replicate, at other times contradict, and at other times influence those associated with broader law enforcement and security developments. These examples also suggest potential increases in surveillance activities that emerge in club governance often flow from external concerns regarding allegations of crime, national security breaches and corruption. These context-specific case studies (Flyvbjerg 2001) demonstrate how surveillance and identity authentication are closely tied to the complex, multi-tiered governance structures and practices in three distinct sports. We then explore how these patterns can be interpreted as either connected to or distinct from equivalent developments involving the surveillance surge (Murakami Wood 2009) and concepts of inclusion and exclusion under the criminal law. We conclude by discussing how both internal and external regulatory forces can shape interrelated facets of surveillance, governance and exclusion in elite sports.

Finding the edge : online persona creation by fringe artists

Self-presentation through the creation of profiles and pages on digitally networked spaces is becoming ever more ubiquitous. In order to develop greater depth of understanding of the place of social media in our self-identification practice, my dissertation investigates the experiences of online persona creation by eight artists. Drawing on sociological and cultural studies approaches to understanding identity as performance, I tie current artists’ presentational and representational practices to historically grounded, socio-culturally constructed discourses of ‘artistness’. Through this connection, I argue that the creation of online persona has not radically changed notions of what it means to be an artist, or how artistness is represented and understood by audiences of fans or followers, but rather that digital technology has allowed for renegotiation of the boundaries of artistness that still draws from historical understandings of the role and persona of the artist. This shifting of boundaries, allowing for more inclusivity within the art world, is demonstrated by my focus on ‘fringe’ artists: those whose creative practice places them outside of the traditional art world and its existing structures of representation, distribution and consumption. The eight fringe artists who participated in this study are drawn from street art, performance poetry, craftivism and tattoo.

Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis drives the methodological focus on the experiences of the artists. Rather than a consideration of behaviour and habit, or what the artists do, this phenomenological approach allowed me to instead focus on what it is like for the artists to create persona, what drives particular types of representational practices. Using unstructured interviews, and online listening as an extension of participant observation, the artists’ narratives of experience are expressed through transcript extracts and screenshots: both are necessary to fully explore the nature of online persona creation.

My analysis of the artists experiences has demonstrated that there are three somewhat distinct registers of performance with which an artist’s persona can engage: the professional register, where one demonstrates ones proficiency, experience, popularity, and professionalism; the personal register, where one connects with
wider social and political interests and activities; and the intimate register, where one allows the audience in to one’s private world. These three registers occupy the same performance space, but are implicitly or explicitly for different segments of the digitally networked audience of fans, followers, friends and family. The complexity of the performance and reception of these registers is influenced by the shared nature of the performance space – where previously different roles would be performed for different audiences without reference to one another, the networked nature of online social media influences decisions of how much, and when, to share with whom.

Interpreted here using themes of strategy|happenstance, specialisation|diversification, visibility|self-protection,
self|others and work|play, the professional, personal and intimate registers of performance enable us to see the consideration and care with which each participant creates their artists persona. The experiences of performing the self in these three registers, as presented here, provides an insight into the complexities involved in creating online persona, while also demonstrating that this type of presentation of self is, in itself, no different from the types of role play and performance of self that has arguably always occurred in our physical world. Despite focusing on the role and performance of artistness, this dissertation speaks to the creation and performance of online persona more broadly. 

Instant rivalry: the Melbourne Victory versus Melbourne Heart derby

The Australian A-League football (soccer) competition only began in 2005 after a major reconstruction of the governance of the game. The model adopted was one team per city so local derbies, often the focus of intense and long-running rivalries in football overseas, did not exist. In 2010 a second team began in Melbourne where previously Melbourne Victory had a monopoly. Within a couple of seasons an intense local rivalry has developed attracting over 40,000 fans to games between Victory and newcomer Melbourne Heart. This is the story of that rivalry and how it has become one of the most eagerly anticipated sporting occasions in a country where historically soccer has been a minority sport.

Iranian women's sports fandom : gender, resistance, and identity in the football movie offside

As sport enters new global territories, attending to questions of cultural difference is increasingly important to studies of women’s sports fanship. This article draws on theories of transnational feminism and feminist sports scholarship to contemplate the cinematic portrayal of the non-Western female football supporter. Women sports fans rarely appear as film protagonists, with the notable exception of the 2006 movie Offside, which tells the story of Iranian women soccer fans attending a World Cup qualifying match. By focusing on the ways that women fans negotiate their marginal status in the sporting arena, I argue that the film unsettles cultural associations between masculinity and football in Iran, and confounds the oppositional construction of the “other” woman as a passive victim of, or freedom fighter against, Islam. 

David Bowie: dancing with madness and proselytising the socio-political in art and life

A longstanding, successful and frequently controversial career spanning more than four decades establishes David Bowie as charged with individual agency. The notion of ‘agency’ here refers particularly to the ‘ability of people, individually and collectively to influence their own lives and the society in which they live’ (Germov and Poole, 2007: 7). That Bowie has influenced many lives is undeniable to his fans. He has long demonstrated an avid curiosity for the enduring patterns of social life which is reflected in his art. Bowie’s opus contains the elements of ideological narratives around sexual (mis)adventure, expressivity, and; resistance to ‘normative’ behaviour. He requisitions his audiences, through frequently indirect lyrics and images, to critically question sanity, identity and essentially what it means to be ‘us’ and why we are here. Here, in this context, ‘dancing with madness’ assumes an intimate relationship, even if brief, where ideas and emotions come passionately together for the purpose of creative expression much like the intertwining and energetic performance of the partner dance Tango. As such, ‘dancing’ is argued here to be an appropriate descriptor for how Bowie has engaged with creative cultural forms but not meant to be self-conscious nor indicate superficiality or ignorance. The idea of madness for its part is a theme in many of his compositions, for example the original album cover for The Man Who Sold the World (1971)  depicts an asylum and includes the song ‘All The Madmen’ and Aladdin Sane (1973)—a lad insane--are but two examples. This paper argues that Bowie’s frequently astute contemplations, manifest through his art over a period now spanning more than forty years, continues to draw fans of like mind to his work with the result that he has a legitimate claim to influence and affect.

Who is he now? The unearthly David Bowie

The question that has led and organised this special edition on David Bowie draws provocative attention to the way his career has been narrated by the constant transformation and recasting of his star image. By asking who is he now? the edition recognises that Bowie is a chameleon figure, one who reinvents himself in and across the media and art platforms that he is found in. This process of renewal means that Bowie constantly kills himself, an artistic suicide that allows for dramatic event moments to populate his music, and for a rebirth to emerge at the same time or shortly after he expires. Bowie has killed Major Tom, Ziggy Stardust, Halloween Jack, Aladdin Sane, and the Thin White Duke to name but a few of his alter-egos. In this environment of death and resurrection, Bowie becomes a heightened, exaggerated enigma, a figure who constantly seems to be artificial or constructed and yet whose work asks us to look for his real self behind the mask – to ask the question, is this now the real Bowie that faces us? Of course, the answer is always no because Bowie is a contradictory constellation of images, stories and sounds whose star image rests on remaining an enigma, and like all stars in our midst, exists as a representation. Nonetheless, with Bowie - with this hyper- schizophrenic, confessional artist – the fan desire to get to know him, to immerse oneself in his worlds, fantasises, and projections - is particularly acute. With the unexpected release of The Next Day ((Iso/Columbia) on the 8th March 2013, the day of his 66th birthday, Bowie was resurrected again. The album and subsequent music videos drew explicitly on the question of who Bowie was and had been, creating a media frenzy around his past work, fan nostalgia for previous Bowie incarnations, and a pleasurable negotiation with his new output. In this special edition, edited by life-long Bowie fans, with contributions from die-hard Bowie aficionados, we seek to find him in the fragments and remains of what once was, and in the new enchantments of his latest work.

Predicting which season ticket holders will renew and which will not

Research question: A major barrier to retaining existing customers is the difficulty in knowing who is most at risk of leaving (or ‘churning’). Given the strategic and financial importance of season ticket holders (STH) to professional sport teams, this paper examines the effectiveness of a range of variables in identifying the STH who are most likely to churn.
Research methods: A longitudinal field study was undertaken to reflect actual conditions. Survey data of a professional sport team STH were collected prior to the conclusion of the season. Actual renewal data were then tracked from team records the following season. This work was replicated across five professional sport teams from the Australian Football League, with renewal predictions made and tracked for over 10,000 STH.
Results and findings: The results suggest that the ‘Juster’ Scale – a simple, one-item purchase probability measure – is an effective identifier of those most at risk of churning, more than 3 months in advance. When combined with ticket utilization and tenure measures, predictive accuracy improves markedly, to the point where these three measures can be used to provide an effective early warning system for managers.
Implications: Whilst there is a tendency to view STH as highly loyal, these data reinforce the importance of actively managing all customers to reduce churn. Despite their commitment, STH do churn, but those most likely to can be predicted by examining their patterns of behaviour in the current season. Efforts to retain STH need to shift their focus from transactional value assessments.

The immediate impact of coach succession events on season ticket holder attitudes

This study is the first to examine the immediate impact that succession events (e.g., removal and hiring) involving head coaches have on season ticket holder (STH) attitudes like satisfaction and renewal intentions. Grounded within a customer equity framework, large-scale survey data from cases of two professional sport teams is presented showing STH attitudes directly before and after major succession events. The data shows that appointing a new coach was met with increases in positive attitudes toward almost every aspect of the STH experience, where the case of removing a coach had no meaningful impact on attitudes. The findings of these cases reaffirm the view that coach succession is a multiple-phase process including distinct stages of removal and replacement. While it is the desire for improved on-field performance that often motivates coach succession, our findings suggest the impact of succession activities on fans is more wide ranging, with significant implications for marketers who manage fan relationships. In guiding the management of a team's fans, coach removal alone should not be relied upon to change attitudes or intentions toward a club. Appointing new leaders completes the cycle, increasing positive STH attitudes and, most importantly, giving an immediate lift to renewal likelihood.

New approaches for studies of Muslim women and sport

This article offers a new approach for examining Muslim women in sport, which combines the domains of sporting participation, consumption and representation. It proposes moving beyond a sports development paradigm and deficit model of sports participation, whereby marginal communities are incorporated into the mainstream by playing sport, to take account of other ways that people engage with sport as consumers and fans. Conceptually, this approach is informed by transnational feminist perspectives, which foreground the role of power hierarchies in the production of knowledge about the sporting female Other. It suggests that sport practitioners, scholars and policy makers pay greater theoretical attention to how Muslim women are constructed within sport discourses. By widening the research focus to consider consumption and representation, possibilities emerge to expand on the narrow research and policy fields of ‘ethnicity’ and ‘well-being’ focused on physical health outcomes through which Muslim women’s engagement with sport is commonly framed.

Sports betting marketing during sporting events: a stadium and broadcast census of Australian Football League matches

OBJECTIVE: Using Australian Football League (AFL) matches as a case study, we investigated the frequency, length and content of marketing strategies for sports betting during two specific settings: 1) at stadiums during four live matches; and 2) during eight televised broadcasts of matches. METHODS: Census of sports betting marketing during Round 12 of the 2011 AFL premiership season. RESULTS: Per match, there was an average of 58.5 episodes (median 49.5, s.d 27.8) and 341.1 minutes (median 324.1 minutes and s.d 44.5) of sports betting marketing at stadiums, and 50.5 episodes (median 53.5, s.d 45.2) and 4.8 minutes (median 5.0 minutes, s.d 4.0) during televised broadcasts. A diverse range of marketing techniques were used to: a) embed sports betting within the game; b) align sports betting with fans' overall experience of the game; and c) encourage individuals to bet live during the game. There were very few visible or audible messages (such as responsible gambling or Gambler's Help messages) to counter-frame the overwhelmingly positive messages that individuals received about sports betting during the match. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: This study raises important questions about the impacts of saturation, integrated and impulse gambling marketing strategies in sporting matches. Future research should explore: 1) how wagering industry marketing strategies may affect the attitudes and behaviours of community sub-groups (e.g. young male sports fans, and children); and 2) which public health and policy strategies, including regulation and harm minimisation messaging, will be effective in responding to wagering industry marketing strategies during sporting matches.

The passion plays of celebrity culture

If there is a cultural arena today where passion plays a central and heightened role, then it is in the affecting and textural operations of celebrity. Celebrity representations are crafted out of passionate aesthetic signifiers and impassioned pleas to the senses, to the emotions and to the exaggerations of feeling that the consumer or fan is asked to register and then fully embody. Celebrity culture attempts to turn one into a passionate creature, ruled by the heart, lost in a sea of desires and desiring wants and needs, as the adoring figure that moves us, moves intimately before us. Such passions can and do go unrequited, of course; some are resisted and rejected, and some celebrity passions register as fully carnal and liberating encounters. That is to say, the plays of celebrity passion serve (hetero) normative and policed accounts of feeling and belonging in the world, fuel a desire for commodity objects and material possessions, and yet also open up the possibility for engagements that are violent, liberal and unregulated. In this article, I will explore the ways in which celebrity culture engages with passion and through the idea of it involving a modern form of the passion play. Following Lauren Berlant, I will argue that the passion ignited by the celebrity works to contain and regulate desire, and yet also offers up the opportunity for sensorial engagements that violate and resist the normative terms of desiring. I will suggest celebrity figures are themselves caught up in this passion play, suffering and feeling deeply at the same time, while channelling this violent crisis to their fans as they do so. Finally, I will write the article passionately, from an impassioned perspective, measuring and weighting my own desires in the contradictions and tensions of passion as they emerge in the body of the writer before you. This article is part of a themed issue entitled ‘Passion’.

Creating symbolic cultures of consumption: an analysis of the content of sports wagering advertisements in Australia

BACKGROUND: Since 2008, Australia has seen the rapid emergence of marketing for online and mobile sports wagering. Previous research from other areas of public health, such as tobacco and alcohol, has identified the range of appeal strategies these industries used to align their products with culturally valued symbols. However, there is very limited research that has investigated the tactics the sports wagering industry uses within marketing to influence the consumption of its products and services.

METHOD: This study consisted of a mixed method interpretive content analysis of 85 sports wagering advertisements from 11 Australian and multinational wagering companies. Advertisements were identified via internet searches and industry websites. A coding framework was applied to investigate the extent and nature of symbolic appeal strategies within advertisements.

RESULTS: Ten major appeal strategies emerged from this analysis. These included sports fan rituals and behaviours; mateship; gender stereotypes; winning; social status; adventure, thrill and risk; happiness; sexualised imagery; power and control; and patriotism. Symbols relating to sports fan rituals and behaviours, and mateship, were the most common strategies used within the advertisements.

DISCUSSION/CONCLUSIONS: This research suggests that the appeal strategies used by the sports wagering industry are similar to those strategies adopted by other unhealthy commodity industries. With respect to gambling, analysis revealed that strategies are clearly targeted to young male sports fans. Researchers and public health practitioners should seek to better understand the impact of marketing on the normalisation of sports wagering for this audience segment, and implement strategies to prevent gambling harm.