Journal articles on the topic 'Carriera sportiva'

Sponsorship, especially when it comes to professional sports, has a special significance for financing this kind of sporting activities. Namely, sponsorship is in the function of efficient satisfaction of sponsor's interests, which is reflected in maximization of his presence and public recognition through the interconnection with the carrier of some sporting content. At the same time, thanks to sponsorship, sponsored party acquire the ability to achieve better and more prestigious results than others. Since sponsorship has its own specificities, which clearly distinguish it from other contractual relationships, author pointed out: the concept of sports sponsorship; the importance of the sponsored party’s image and the right to use the image, which the sponsor acquires upon conclusion of the contract; the relationship between individual and collective image; limitations for establishing and implementing sponsorship.

The topic of this article is the function of sport in Russia’s bilateral relations with the Baltic States. The author attempts to define the goals which the Russian Federation wants to accomplish by using sport as a ‘soft power’ in relations with the Baltic States. The concept of the article is based on an analysis of three forms of sport politicisation described in the subject literature – as a collector (a carrier of certain values or ideas), a catalyst (a factor initiating processes or events) and a facilitator (the means facilitating communication and understanding). The examples provided as an illustration of the theses relate to the events that took place from 2002 to 2018. The source material consists predominantly of information obtained from online information portals, such as Delfi, RIA, Nowosti and Postimees. The analysis has showed that, in its relations with the Baltic States, Russia tries to use sport to strengthen its position and improve its image internationally. It also attempts to implement a historical policy at sporting events as well as use sporting rivalry as a demonstration of its power.

The strategic and conceptional approach to sport has brought substantial changes in the sporting life of University of Debrecen during the period between 2005–2013. The restructualisation process aiming at the development of university sport as well as the measures related to creating a more transparent financing system demonstrates elements of improvement in comparison to the period prior to the Bologna process. The Sport Concept of the university operates the different areas of sport within a transparent, planed and complex structural framework in accordance with the principles outlined in both the National Sports Strategy (2007) and the legal regulations specified by the Sports Law and its modification (2004, 2011). The conceptional changes of sport at the University of Debrecen followed the main objectives and guidelines of the European Commission that lays a great emphasis on issues such as the integration of athletes into higher education allowing maintenance of parallel educational and athletic carriers for athletes.

The article focuses on popular feminist movements about sportswomen with the example of Nike’s movement “Dream Crazier”. It firstly considers the features of popular feminism, the media’s role as a carrier, and the increased visibility of feminist movements in the digital era. In addition, given the context of the Nike sportswomen campaign, the essay proposes to analyse the engagement of digital media forms, especially posters on sportswomen, with a broader and more effective circulation of feminist claims. The essay contends that by illustrating sportswomen in videos and posters and presenting the discourse of renowned sportswomen like Serena Williams, the campaign conveys feminist appeals on sexual sporting equality, presents female power, and also works with intersectionality that protects equal rights for black sportswomen. This reflects the characteristics of popular feminism in the contemporary period. The essay concludes with further consideration of popular feminism when it refers to the relationship between celebrity figures and commercialized companies.

Carnosine (β-alanyl-L-histidine), abundantly found in skeletal muscle, plays an important role during exercise, especially for high-intensity contractions. Variability in muscle carnosine content between individuals exists and may also be explained by different genetic bases, although no study has addressed the association of polymorphisms in genes related to carnosine metabolism in athletes. This study aimed to investigate the frequency of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the carnosinase genes (CNDP1 and CNDP2) in a large Brazilian cohort of athletes and nonathletes. Eight SNPs were compared between a representative cohort of elite athletes from Brazil (n = 908) and a paired group of nonathletes (n = 967). The athletes were stratified into three groups: endurance (n = 328), power (n = 415), and combat (n = 165). The CNDP2 rs6566810 (A/A genotype) is overrepresented in endurance athletes, but only in international-level endurance athletes. Three SNPs (CNDP2 rs3764509, CNDP2-CNDP1 rs2346061, and CNDP1 rs2887) were overrepresented in power athletes compared with nonathletes. Carriers of the minor allele had an increased odds ratio of being a power athlete. For the rs2346061, no significant difference was observed in genotype frequencies between power and combat sports athletes, but for rs2887 the power and combat groups showed an inverse genotype distribution. In conclusion, we found that minor alleles carriers for CNDP2 rs3764509 (G-allele), CNDP2-CNDP1 rs2346061 (C-allele), and CNDP1 rs2887 (A-allele) are more likely to be a power athlete. These polymorphisms may be novel genetic markers for power athletes. Furthermore, these results are suggestive of a distinct CNDP genotype for sporting development.

<p><em>The Unification of Martial Arts was an important publication about martial arts during the period of the Republic of China. As a media for communication, it exerted a huge positive impact on spreading traditional Chinese martial arts in its ways and the contents. Therefore, this paper explores this journal through the method of literature and logic analysis. The study finds that, in terms of the content spreading, Unification of Martial Arts mainly has analyzed the martial arts from its unified concept, its ambitious thought of building China into a powerful nation, the basic knowledge of martial arts, its history and the legendary stories related to it. In terms of the ways, photographs have become an important carrier of martial arts techniques and a way of expressing national complex. The communication and investigation have presented the readers with a learning platform for interaction. Meanwhile, the dissemination of information about other sports has broken through the limitation in martial arts communication, demonstrating the inclusive spirit in the sporting world.</em></p>

Abstract: Objective: Functionality and quality of life in patients with osteoarthritis undergoing total arthroplasty of the knee. Materials and Methods: This study was conducted in Ziauddin hospital, Karachi from April 2018 until August 2018, making up 40 individuals who have osteoarthrosis of the knee with an indication for total arthroplasty and not being carriers of any other disease affecting the limbs lower. Two scales of evaluation were applied at two different times: pre and postoperative. Health status questionnaire (SF-36) and Knee injury and osteoarthritis outcome score (KOOS) was applied and answered in the preoperative period (on the day of surgery) and the sixth postoperative week. Results: Regarding the dimensions of activities of daily living and activities, sporting and leisure activities were not statistically significant. Our results go against the conclusions reported by Culliton [1], in a study of 13 patients submitted to TKA. The participants were evaluated before the arthroplasty and four weeks later and the results showed that there was a tendency for pain to decrease in that period. Conclusion: It can be concluded that there was a tendency to decrease pain in this period accompanied by an improvement in the quality of life. Taking into account the results obtained, and stressing the concept that quality of life is related to the state of health of the person and that pain and functional limitation caused by OA negatively influence the well-being and the performance of the activities of the person's daily life, it can be concluded that the TCA contributes to the improvement of the performance of the person. Keywords: Osteoarthritis, Joint, Arthroplasty, Articular cartilage, Osteoarthrosis, Knee injury, QoL.

Pendant les années 2011–2013, 151 jeunes talents sportifs et artistes du programme pour talents sportifs et artistiques du Canton du Tessin («Programme pour talents SMS») ont participé à un projet de suivi de leur santé sur le plan psychologique. Les objectifs visés par ce projet étaient l’évaluation du risque de surcharge psychologique de la population observée et le test de l’efficacité d’une intervention psycho-éducative de groupe pour réduire ce risque. Les jeunes talents – subdivisés en un groupe intervention (n=28) et un groupe contrôle (n=123) – ont rempli un questionnaire d’entrée (PRE), mesurant les paramètres psychologiques tels que l’anxiété, les motivations intrinsèques, ainsi que quatre facteurs de burnout et la perception d’un conflit d’intérêt entre pratique sportive/artistique et études. 8 mois après, ils ont été à nouveau interrogés au moyen du même questionnaire (POST), complété par des questions d’évaluation finale. Les réponses aux questionnaires d’entrée ont permis de montrer que 57.6% de l’ensemble des jeunes talents sont potentiellement à risque de surcharge psychologique. Aussi, au terme de l’intervention, les valeurs enregistrées relatives à la perception du conflit d’intérêt entre sport/art et études, et le sentiment de perte de signification ont sensiblement diminué auprès du groupe intervention en comparaison au groupe contrôle. En conclusion, aux vues des résultats de l’étude, l’article invite à réfléchir à des concepts de suivi médico-sportif pour talents scolarisés au niveau secondaire supérieur, dans lesquels une prophylaxie psycho-sportive telles que les groupes de discussion psycho-éducative pour adolescents sportifs et artistiques soit intégrée. Une telle mesure peut en effet renforcer la résilience de ces jeunes talents, au travers d’outils de gestion du stress et de conciliation entre sport/art et études.

I called your producer on the way here in the car because I was very excited. I found out … I did one of those genetic testing things and I found out that I'm 63 percent Irish … I had no idea. I had no idea! I thought I was Scottish and Welsh. It turns out my parents are just full of shit, I guess. But now I’m Irish and it just makes so much sense! I'm a really good drinker. I love St. Patrick's Day. Potatoes are delicious. I'm looking forward to meeting all my cousins … [to Conan O’Brien] You and I are probably related! … Now I get to say things like, “It’s in me genes! I love that Conan O’Brien; he’s such a nice fella.” You’re kinda like a giant leprechaun. (Reese Witherspoon, Tuesday 21 March 2017)IntroductionAs an Irishman and a football fan, I watched the unfolding 2016 UEFA European Championship in France (hereafter ‘Euro 2016’) with a mixture of trepidation and delight. Although the Republic of Ireland team was eventually knocked out of the competition in defeat to the host nation, the players performed extremely well – most notably in defeating Italy 1:0. It is not the on-field performance of the Irish team that interests me in this short article, however, but rather how Irish fans travelling to the competition were depicted in the surrounding international news coverage. In particular, I focus on the centrality of fan footage – shot on smart phones and uploaded to YouTube (in most cases by fans themselves) – in this news coverage. In doing so, I reflect on how sports fans contribute to wider understandings of nationness in the global imagination and how their behaviour is often interpreted (as in the case here) through long-established tropes about people and places. The Media ManifoldTo “depict” something is to represent it in words and pictures. As the contemporary world is largely shaped by and dependent on mass media – and different forms of media have merged (or “converged”) through digital media platforms – mediated forms of depiction have become increasingly important in our lives. On one hand, the constant connectivity made possible in the digital age has made the representation of people and places less controllable, insofar as the information and knowledge about our world circulating through media devices are partly created by ordinary people. On the other hand, traditional broadcast media arguably remain the dominant narrators of people and places worldwide, and their stories, Gerbner reminds us, are largely formula-driven and dramatically charged, and work to “retribalize” modern society. However, a more important point, I suggest, is that so-called new and old media can no longer be thought of as separate and discrete; rather, our attention should focus on the complex interrelations made possible by deep mediatisation (Couldry and Hepp).As an example, consider that the Youtube video of Reese Witherspoon’s recent appearance on the Conan O’Brien chat show – from which the passage at the start of this article is taken – had already been viewed 54,669 times when I first viewed it, a mere 16 hours after it was originally posted. At that point, the televised interview had already been reported on in a variety of international digital news outlets, including rte.ie, independent.ie., nydailynews.com, msn.com, huffingtonpost.com, cote-ivoire.com – and myriad entertainment news sites. In other words, this short interview was consumed synchronously and asynchronously, over a number of different media platforms; it was viewed and reviewed, and critiqued and commented upon, and in turn found itself the subject of news commentary, which fed the ongoing cycle. And yet, it is important to also note that a multiplicity of media interactions does not automatically give rise to oppositional discourse and ideological contestation, as is sometimes assumed. In fact, how ostensibly ‘different’ kinds of media can work to produce a broadly shared construction of a people and place is particularly relevant here. Just as Reese Witherspoon’s interview on the Conan O’Brien show perpetuates a highly stereotypical version of Irishness across a number of platforms, news coverage of Irish fans at Euro 2016 largely conformed to established tropes about Irish people, but this was also fed – to some extent – by Irish fans themselves.Irish Identity, Sport, and the Global ImaginationThere is insufficient space here to describe in any detail the evolving representation of Irish identity, about which a vast literature has developed (nationally and internationally) over the past several decades. As with other varieties of nationness, Irishness has been constructed across a variety of cultural forms, including advertising, art, film, novels, travel brochures, plays and documentaries. Importantly, Irishness has also to a great extent been constructed outside of Ireland (Arrowsmith; Negra).As is well known, the Irish were historically constructed by their colonial masters as a small uncivilised race – as primitive wayward children, prone to “sentimentality, ineffectuality, nervous excitability and unworldliness” (Fanning 33). When pondering the “Celtic nature,” the renowned English poet and cultural critic Mathew Arnold concluded that “sentimental” was the best single term to use (100). This perception pervaded internationally, with early depictions of Irish-Americans in US cinema centring on varieties of negative excess, such as lawlessness, drunkenness and violence (Rains). Against this prevailing image of negative excess, the intellectuals and artists associated with what became known as the Celtic Revival began a conscious effort to “rebrand” Ireland from the nineteenth century onwards, reversing the negatives of the colonial project and celebrating Irish tradition, language and culture (Fanning).At first, only distinctly Irish sports associated with the amateur Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) were co-opted in this very particular nation-building project. Since then, however, sport more generally has acted as a site for the negotiation of a variety of overlapping Irish identities. Cronin, for example, describes how the GAA successfully repackaged itself in the 1990s to reflect the confidence of Celtic Tiger Irishness while also remaining rooted in the counties and parishes across Ireland. Studies of Irish football and rugby have similarly examined how these sports have functioned as representatives of changed or evolving Irish identities (Arrowsmith; Free). And yet, throughout Ireland’s changing economic fortunes – from boom to bust, to the gradual renewal of late – a touristic image of Irishness has remained hegemonic in the global imagination. In popular culture, and especially American popular culture, Ireland is often depicted as a kind of pre-industrial theme park – a place where the effects of modernity are felt less, or are erased altogether (Negra). The Irish are known for their charm and sociability; in Clancy’s words, they are seen internationally as “simple, clever and friendly folk” (98). We can identify a number of representational tropes within this dominant image, but two in particular are apposite here: ‘smallness’ and ‘happy-go-luckiness’.Sporting NewsBefore we consider Euro 2016, it is worth briefly considering how the news industry approaches such events. “News”, Dahlgren reminds us, is not so much “information” as it is a specific kind of cultural discourse. News, in other words, is a particular kind of discursive composition that constructs and narrates stories in particular ways. Approaching sports coverage from this vantage point, Poulton and Roderick (xviii) suggest that “sport offers everything a good story should have: heroes and villains, triumph and disaster, achievement and despair, tension and drama.” Similarly, Jason Tuck observes that the media have long had a tendency to employ the “vocabulary of war” to “hype up sporting events,” a discursive tactic which, he argues, links “the two areas of life where the nation is a primary signifier” (190-191).In short, sport is abundant in news values, and media professionals strive to produce coverage that is attractive, interesting and exciting for audiences. Stead (340) suggests that there are three key characteristics governing the production of “media sports packages”: spectacularisation, dramatisation, and personalisation. These production characteristics ensure that sports coverage is exciting and interesting for viewers, but that it also in some respects conforms to their expectations. “This ‘emergent’ quality of sport in the media helps meet the perpetual audience need for something new and different alongside what is familiar and known” (Rowe 32). The disproportionate attention to Irish fans at Euro 2016 was perhaps new, but the overall depiction of the Irish was rather old, I would argue. The news discourse surrounding Euro 2016 worked to suggest, in the Irish case at least, that the nation was embodied not only in its on-field athletic representatives but more so, perhaps, in its travelling fans.Euro 2016In June 2016 the Euros kicked off in France, with the home team beating Romania 2-1. Despite widespread fears of potential terrorist attacks and disruption, the event passed successfully, with Portugal eventually lifting the Henri Delaunay Trophy. As the competition progressed, the behaviour of Irish fans quickly became a central news story, fuelled in large part by smart phone footage uploaded to the internet by Irish fans themselves. Amongst the many videos uploaded to the internet, several became the focus of news reports, especially those in which the goodwill and childlike playfulness of the Irish were on show. In one such video, Irish fans are seen singing lullabies to a baby on a Bordeaux train. In another video, Irish fans appear to help a French couple change a flat tire. In yet another video, Irish fans sing cheerfully as they clean up beer cans and bottles. (It is noteworthy that as of July 2017, some of these videos have been viewed several million times.)News providers quickly turned their attention to Irish fans, sometimes using these to draw stark contrasts with the behaviour of other fans, notably English and Russian fans. Buzzfeed, followed by ESPN, followed by Sky News, Le Monde, Fox News, the Washington Post and numerous other providers celebrated the exploits of Irish fans, with some such as Sky News and Aljazeera going so far as to produce video montages of the most “memorable moments” involving “the boys in green.” In an article titled ‘Irish fans win admirers at Euro 2016,’ Fox News reported that “social media is full of examples of Irish kindness” and that “that Irish wit has been a fixture at the tournament.” Aljazeera’s AJ+ news channel produced a video montage titled ‘Are Irish fans the champions of Euro 2016?’ which included spliced footage from some of the aforementioned videos. The Daily Mirror (UK edition) praised their “fun loving approach to watching football.” Similarly, a headline for NPR declared, “And as if they could not be adorable enough, in a quiet moment, Irish fans sang on a French train to help lull a baby to sleep.” It is important to note that viewer comments under many of these articles and videos were also generally effusive in their praise. For example, under the video ‘Irish Fans help French couple change flat tire,’ one viewer (Amsterdam 410) commented, ‘Irish people nicest people in world by far. they always happy just amazing people.’ Another (Juan Ardilla) commented, ‘Irish fans restored my faith in humanity.’As the final stages of the tournament approached, the Mayor of Paris announced that she was awarding the Medal of the City of Paris to Irish fans for their sporting goodwill. Back home in Ireland, the behaviour of Irish fans in France was also celebrated, with President Michael D. Higgins commenting that “Ireland could not wish for better ambassadors abroad.” In all of this news coverage, the humble kindness, helpfulness and friendliness of the Irish are depicted as native qualities and crystallise as a kind of ideal national character. Though laudatory, the tropes of smallness and happy-go-luckiness are again evident here, as is the recurrent depiction of Irishness as an ‘innocent identity’ (Negra). The “boys” in green are spirited in a non-threatening way, as children generally are. Notably, Stephan Reich, journalist with German sports magazine 11Freunde wrote: “the qualification of the Irish is a godsend. The Boys in Green can celebrate like no other nation, always peaceful, always sympathetic and emphatic, with an infectious, childlike joy.” Irishness as Antidote? The centrality of the Irish fan footage in the international news coverage of Euro 2016 is significant, I suggest, but interpreting its meaning is not a simple or straightforward task. Fans (like everyone) make choices about how to present themselves, and these choices are partly conscious and partly unconscious, partly spontaneous and partly conditioned. Pope (2008), for example, draws on Emile Durkheim to explain the behaviour of sports fans sociologically. “Sporting events,” Pope tells us, “exemplify the conditions of religious ritual: high rates of group interaction, focus on sacred symbols, and collective ritual behaviour symbolising group membership and strengthening shared beliefs, values, aspirations and emotions” (Pope 85). Pope reminds us, in other words, that what fans do and say, and wear and sing – in short, how they perform – is partly spontaneous and situated, and partly governed by a long-established fandom pedagogy that implies familiarity with a whole range of international football fan styles and embodied performances (Rowe). To this, we must add that fans of a national sports team generally uphold shared understandings of what constitutes desirable and appropriate patriotic behaviour. Finally, in the case reported here, we must also consider that the behaviour of Irish fans was also partly shaped by their awareness of participating in the developing media sport spectacle and, indeed, of their own position as ‘suppliers’ of news content. In effect, Irish fans at Euro 2016 occupied an interesting hybrid position between passive consumption and active production – ‘produser’ fans, as it were.On one hand, therefore, we can consider fan footage as evidence of spontaneous displays of affective unity, captured by fellow participants. The realism or ‘authenticity’ of these supposedly natural and unscripted performances is conveyed by the grainy images, and amateur, shaky camerawork, which ironically work to create an impression of unmediated reality (see Goldman and Papson). On the other hand, Mike Cronin considers them contrived, staged, and knowingly performative, and suggestive of “hyper-aware” Irish fans playing up to the camera.However, regardless of how we might explain or interpret these fan performances, it is the fact that they play a role in making Irishness public that most interests me here. For my purposes, the most important consideration is how the patriotic performances of Irish fans both fed and harmonized with the developing news coverage; the resulting depiction of the Irish was partly an outcome of journalistic conventions and partly a consequence of the self-essentialising performances of Irish fans. In a sense, these fan-centred videos were ready-made or ‘packaged’ for an international news audience: they are short, dramatic and entertaining, and their ideological content is in keeping with established tropes about Irishness. As a consequence, the media-sport discourse surrounding Euro 2016 – itself a mixture of international news values and home-grown essentialism – valorised a largely touristic understanding of Irishness, albeit one that many Irish people wilfully celebrate.Why such a construction of Irishness is internationally appealing is unclear, but it is certainly not new. John Fanning (26) cites a number of writers in highlighting that Ireland has long nurtured a romantic self-image that presents the country as a kind of balm for the complexities of the modern world. For example, he cites New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who observed in 2001 that “people all over the world are looking to Ireland for its reservoir of spirituality hoping to siphon off what they can feed to their souls which have become hungry for something other than consumption and computers.” Similarly, Diane Negra writes that “virtually every form of popular culture has in one way or another, presented Irishness as a moral antidote to contemporary ills ranging from globalisation to post-modern alienation, from crises over the meaning and practice of family values to environmental destruction” (3). Earlier, I described the Arnoldian image of the Irish as a race governed by ‘negative excess’. Arguably, in a time of profound ideological division and resurgent cultural nationalism – a time of polarisation and populism, of Trumpism and Euroscepticism – this ‘excess’ has once again been positively recoded, and now it is the ‘sentimental excess’ of the Irish that is imagined as a salve for the cultural schisms of our time.ConclusionMuch has been made of new media powers to contest official discourses. Sports fans, too, are now considered much less ‘controllable’ on account of their ability to disrupt official messages online (as well as offline). The case of Irish fans at Euro 2016, however, offers a reminder that we must avoid routine assumptions that the “uses” made of “new” and “old” media are necessarily divergent (Rowe, Ruddock and Hutchins). My interest here was less in what any single news item or fan-produced video tells us, but rather in the aggregate construction of Irishness that emerges in the media-sport discourse surrounding this event. Relatedly, in writing about the London Olympics, Wardle observed that most of what appeared on social media concerning the Games did not depart significantly from the celebratory tone of mainstream news media organisations. “In fact the absence of any story that threatened the hegemonic vision of the Games as nation-builder, shows that while social media provided an additional and new form of newsgathering, it had to fit within the traditional news structures, routines and agenda” (Wardle 12).Obviously, it is important to acknowledge the contestability of all media texts, including the news items and fan footage mentioned here, and to recognise that such texts are open to multiple interpretations based on diverse reading positions. And yet, here I have suggested that there is something of a ‘preferred’ reading in the depiction of Irish fans at Euro 2016. The news coverage, and the footage on which it draws, are important because of what they collectively suggest about Irish national identity: here we witness a shift from identity performance to identity writ large, and one means of analysing their international (and intertextual significance), I have suggested, is to view them through the prism of established tropes about Irishness.Travelling sports fans – for better or worse – are ‘carriers’ of places and cultures, and they remind us that “there is also a cultural economy of sport, where information, images, ideas and rhetorics are exchanged, where symbolic value is added, where metaphorical (and sometimes literal, in the case of publicly listed sports clubs) stocks rise and fall” (Rowe 24). There is no question, to borrow Rowe’s term, that Ireland’s ‘stocks’ rose considerably on account of Euro 2016. In news terms, Irish fans provided entertainment value; they were the ‘human interest’ story of the tournament; they were the ‘feel-good’ factor of the event – and importantly, they were the suppliers of much of this content (albeit unofficially). Ultimately, I suggest that we think of the overall depiction of the Irish at Euro 2016 as a co-construction of international news media practices and the self-presentational practices of Irish fans themselves. The result was not simply a depiction of idealised fandom, but more importantly, an idealisation of a people and a place, in which the plucky little people on tour became the global standard bearers of Irish identity.ReferencesArnold, Mathew. Celtic Literature. Carolina: Lulu Press, 2013.Arrowsmith, Aidan. “Plastic Paddies vs. Master Racers: ‘Soccer’ and Irish Identity.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 7.4 (2004). 25 Mar. 2017 <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1367877904047864>.Boards and Networked Digital Media Sport Communities.” Convergence 16.3 (2010). 25 Mar. 2017 <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1354856510367622>.Clancy, Michael. Brand New Ireland: Tourism, Development and National Identity in the Irish Republic. Surrey and Vermont: Ashgate, 2009.Couldry, Nick, and Andreas Hepp. The Mediated Construction of Reality. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2016.Cronin, Michael. “Is It for the Glamour? Masculinity, Nationhood and Amateurism in Contemporary Projections of the Gaelic Athletic Association.” Irish Postmodernisms and Popular Culture. Eds. Wanda Balzano, Anne Mulhall, and Moynagh Sullivan. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. 39–51.Cronin, Mike. “Serenading Nuns: Irish Soccer Fandom as Performance.” Post-Celtic Tiger Irishness Symposium, Trinity College Dublin, 25 Nov. 2016.Dahlgren, Peter. “Beyond Information: TV News as a Cultural Discourse.” The European Journal of Communication Research 12.2 (1986): 125–36.Fanning, John. “Branding and Begorrah: The Importance of Ireland’s Nation Brand Image.” Irish Marketing Review 21.1-2 (2011). 25 Mar. 2017 <https://www.dit.ie/media/newsdocuments/2011/3%20Fanning.pdf>.Free, Marcus. “Diaspora and Rootedness, Amateurism and Professionalism in Media Discourses of Irish Soccer and Rugby in the 1990s and 2000s.” Éire-Ireland 48.1–2 (2013). 25 Mar. 2017 <https://muse.jhu.edu/article/510693/pdf>.Friedman, Thomas. “Foreign Affairs: The Lexus and the Shamrock.” The Opinion Pages. New York Times 3 Aug. 2001 <http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/03/opinion/foreign-affairs-the-lexus-and-the-shamrock.html>.Gerbner, George. “The Stories We Tell and the Stories We Sell.” Journal of International Communication 18.2 (2012). 25 Mar. 2017 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13216597.2012.709928>.Goldman, Robert, and Stephen Papson. Sign Wars: The Cluttered Landscape of Advertising. New York: Guilford Press, 1996.Negra, Diane. The Irish in Us. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006.Pope, Whitney. “Emile Durkheim.” Key Sociological Thinkers. 2nd ed. Ed. Rob Stones. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. 76-89.Poulton, Emma, and Martin Roderick. Sport in Films. London: Routledge, 2008.Rains, Stephanie. The Irish-American in Popular Culture 1945-2000. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2007.Rowe, David, Andy Ruddock, and Brett Hutchins. “Cultures of Complaint: Online Fan Message Boards and Networked Digital Media Sport Communities.” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technology 16.3 (2010). 25 Mar. 2017 <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1354856510367622>.Rowe, David. Sport, Culture and the Media: The Unruly Trinity. 2nd ed. Berkshire: Open University Press, 2004.Stead, David. “Sport and the Media.” Sport and Society: A Student Introduction. 2nd ed. Ed. Barrie Houlihan. London: Sage, 2008. 328-347.Wardle, Claire. “Social Media, Newsgathering and the Olympics.” Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies 2 (2012). 25 Mar. 2017 <https://publications.cardiffuniversitypress.org/index.php/JOMEC/article/view/304>.

Connecting I’ve moved house on the weekend, closer to the centre of an Australian capital city. I had recently signed up for broadband, with a major Australian Internet company (my first contact, cf. Turner). Now I am the proud owner of a larger modem than I have ever owned: a white cable modem. I gaze out into our new street: two thick black cables cosseted in silver wire. I am relieved. My new home is located in one of those streets, double-cabled by Telstra and Optus in the data-rush of the mid-1990s. Otherwise, I’d be moth-balling the cable modem, and the thrill of my data percolating down coaxial cable. And it would be off to the computer supermarket to buy an ASDL modem, then to pick a provider, to squeeze some twenty-first century connectivity out of old copper (the phone network our grandparents and great-grandparents built). If I still lived in the country, or the outskirts of the city, or anywhere else more than four kilometres from the phone exchange, and somewhere that cable pay TV will never reach, it would be a dish for me — satellite. Our digital lives are premised upon infrastructure, the networks through which we shape what we do, fashion the meanings of our customs and practices, and exchange signs with others. Infrastructure is not simply the material or the technical (Lamberton), but it is the dense, fibrous knotting together of social visions, cultural resources, individual desires, and connections. No more can one easily discern between ‘society’ and ‘technology’, ‘carriage’ and ‘content’, ‘base’ and ‘superstructure’, or ‘infrastructure’ and ‘applications’ (or ‘services’ or ‘content’). To understand telecommunications in action, or the vectors of fibre, we need to consider the long and heterogeneous list of links among different human and non-human actors — the long networks, to take Bruno Latour’s evocative concept, that confect our broadband networks (Latour). The co-ordinates of our infrastructure still build on a century-long history of telecommunications networks, on the nineteenth-century centrality of telegraphy preceding this, and on the histories of the public and private so inscribed. Yet we are in the midst of a long, slow dismantling of the posts-telegraph-telephone (PTT) model of the monopoly carrier for each nation that dominated the twentieth century, with its deep colonial foundations. Instead our New World Information and Communication Order is not the decolonising UNESCO vision of the late 1970s and early 1980s (MacBride, Maitland). Rather it is the neoliberal, free trade, market access model, its symbol the 1984 US judicial decision to require the break-up of AT&T and the UK legislation in the same year that underpinned the Thatcherite twin move to privatize British Telecom and introduce telecommunications competition. Between 1984 and 1999, 110 telecommunications companies were privatized, and the ‘acquisition of privatized PTOs [public telecommunications operators] by European and American operators does follow colonial lines’ (Winseck 396; see also Mody, Bauer & Straubhaar). The competitive market has now been uneasily installed as the paradigm for convergent communications networks, not least with the World Trade Organisation’s 1994 General Agreement on Trade in Services and Annex on Telecommunications. As the citizen is recast as consumer and customer (Goggin, ‘Citizens and Beyond’), we rethink our cultural and political axioms as well as the axes that orient our understandings in this area. Information might travel close to the speed of light, and we might fantasise about optical fibre to the home (or pillow), but our terrain, our band where the struggle lies today, is narrower than we wish. Begging for broadband, it seems, is a long way from warchalking for WiFi. Policy Circuits The dreary everyday business of getting connected plugs the individual netizen into a tangled mess of policy circuits, as much as tricky network negotiations. Broadband in mid-2003 in Australia is a curious chimera, welded together from a patchwork of technologies, old and newer communications industries, emerging economies and patterns of use. Broadband conjures up grander visions, however, of communication and cultural cornucopia. Broadband is high-speed, high-bandwidth, ‘always-on’, networked communications. People can send and receive video, engage in multimedia exchanges of all sorts, make the most of online education, realise the vision of home-based work and trading, have access to telemedicine, and entertainment. Broadband really entered the lexicon with the mass takeup of the Internet in the early to mid-1990s, and with the debates about something called the ‘information superhighway’. The rise of the Internet, the deregulation of telecommunications, and the involuted convergence of communications and media technologies saw broadband positioned at the centre of policy debates nearly a decade ago. In 1993-1994, Australia had its Broadband Services Expert Group (BSEG), established by the then Labor government. The BSEG was charged with inquiring into ‘issues relating to the delivery of broadband services to homes, schools and businesses’. Stung by criticisms of elite composition (a narrow membership, with only one woman among its twelve members, and no consumer or citizen group representation), the BSEG was prompted into wider public discussion and consultation (Goggin & Newell). The then Bureau of Transport and Communications Economics (BTCE), since transmogrified into the Communications Research Unit of the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts (DCITA), conducted its large-scale Communications Futures Project (BTCE and Luck). The BSEG Final report posed the question starkly: As a society we have choices to make. If we ignore the opportunities we run the risk of being left behind as other countries introduce new services and make themselves more competitive: we will become consumers of other countries’ content, culture and technologies rather than our own. Or we could adopt new technologies at any cost…This report puts forward a different approach, one based on developing a new, user-oriented strategy for communications. The emphasis will be on communication among people... (BSEG v) The BSEG proposed a ‘National Strategy for New Communications Networks’ based on three aspects: education and community access, industry development, and the role of government (BSEG x). Ironically, while the nation, or at least its policy elites, pondered the weighty question of broadband, Australia’s two largest telcos were doing it. The commercial decision of Telstra/Foxtel and Optus Vision, and their various television partners, was to nail their colours (black) to the mast, or rather telegraph pole, and to lay cable in the major capital cities. In fact, they duplicated the infrastructure in cities such as Sydney and Melbourne, then deciding it would not be profitable to cable up even regional centres, let alone small country towns or settlements. As Terry Flew and Christina Spurgeon observe: This wasteful duplication contrasted with many other parts of the country that would never have access to this infrastructure, or to the social and economic benefits that it was perceived to deliver. (Flew & Spurgeon 72) The implications of this decision for Australia’s telecommunications and television were profound, but there was little, if any, public input into this. Then Minister Michael Lee was very proud of his anti-siphoning list of programs, such as national sporting events, that would remain on free-to-air television rather than screen on pay, but was unwilling, or unable, to develop policy on broadband and pay TV cable infrastructure (on the ironies of Australia’s television history, see Given’s masterly account). During this period also, it may be remembered, Australia’s Internet was being passed into private hands, with the tendering out of AARNET (see Spurgeon for discussion). No such national strategy on broadband really emerged in the intervening years, nor has the market provided integrated, accessible broadband services. In 1997, landmark telecommunications legislation was enacted that provided a comprehensive framework for competition in telecommunications, as well as consolidating and extending consumer protection, universal service, customer service standards, and other reforms (CLC). Carrier and reseller competition had commenced in 1991, and the 1997 legislation gave it further impetus. Effective competition is now well established in long distance telephone markets, and in mobiles. Rivalrous competition exists in the market for local-call services, though viable alternatives to Telstra’s dominance are still few (Fels). Broadband too is an area where there is symbolic rivalry rather than effective competition. This is most visible in advertised ADSL offerings in large cities, yet most of the infrastructure for these services is comprised by Telstra’s copper, fixed-line network. Facilities-based duopoly competition exists principally where Telstra/Foxtel and Optus cable networks have been laid, though there are quite a number of ventures underway by regional telcos, power companies, and, most substantial perhaps, the ACT government’s TransACT broadband network. Policymakers and industry have been greatly concerned about what they see as slow takeup of broadband, compared to other countries, and by barriers to broadband competition and access to ‘bottleneck’ facilities (such as Telstra or Optus’s networks) by potential competitors. The government has alternated between trying to talk up broadband benefits and rates of take up and recognising the real difficulties Australia faces as a large country with a relative small and dispersed population. In March 2003, Minister Alston directed the ACCC to implement new monitoring and reporting arrangements on competition in the broadband industry. A key site for discussion of these matters has been the competition policy institution, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, and its various inquiries, reports, and considerations (consult ACCC’s telecommunications homepage at http://www.accc.gov.au/telco/fs-telecom.htm). Another key site has been the Productivity Commission (http://www.pc.gov.au), while a third is the National Office on the Information Economy (NOIE - http://www.noie.gov.au/projects/access/access/broadband1.htm). Others have questioned whether even the most perfectly competitive market in broadband will actually provide access to citizens and consumers. A great deal of work on this issue has been undertaken by DCITA, NOIE, the regulators, and industry bodies, not to mention consumer and public interest groups. Since 1997, there have been a number of governmental inquiries undertaken or in progress concerning the takeup of broadband and networked new media (for example, a House of Representatives Wireless Broadband Inquiry), as well as important inquiries into the still most strategically important of Australia’s companies in this area, Telstra. Much of this effort on an ersatz broadband policy has been piecemeal and fragmented. There are fundamental difficulties with the large size of the Australian continent and its harsh terrain, the small size of the Australian market, the number of providers, and the dominant position effectively still held by Telstra, as well as Singtel Optus (Optus’s previous overseas investors included Cable & Wireless and Bell South), and the larger telecommunications and Internet companies (such as Ozemail). Many consumers living in metropolitan Australia still face real difficulties in realising the slogan ‘bandwidth for all’, but the situation in parts of rural Australia is far worse. Satellite ‘broadband’ solutions are available, through Telstra Countrywide or other providers, but these offer limited two-way interactivity. Data can be received at reasonable speeds (though at far lower data rates than how ‘broadband’ used to be defined), but can only be sent at far slower rates (Goggin, Rural Communities Online). The cultural implications of these digital constraints may well be considerable. Computer gamers, for instance, are frustrated by slow return paths. In this light, the final report of the January 2003 Broadband Advisory Group (BAG) is very timely. The BAG report opens with a broadband rhapsody: Broadband communications technologies can deliver substantial economic and social benefits to Australia…As well as producing productivity gains in traditional and new industries, advanced connectivity can enrich community life, particularly in rural and regional areas. It provides the basis for integration of remote communities into national economic, cultural and social life. (BAG 1, 7) Its prescriptions include: Australia will be a world leader in the availability and effective use of broadband...and to capture the economic and social benefits of broadband connectivity...Broadband should be available to all Australians at fair and reasonable prices…Market arrangements should be pro-competitive and encourage investment...The Government should adopt a National Broadband Strategy (BAG 1) And, like its predecessor nine years earlier, the BAG report does make reference to a national broadband strategy aiming to maximise “choice in work and recreation activities available to all Australians independent of location, background, age or interests” (17). However, the idea of a national broadband strategy is not something the BAG really comes to grips with. The final report is keen on encouraging broadband adoption, but not explicit on how barriers to broadband can be addressed. Perhaps this is not surprising given that the membership of the BAG, dominated by representatives of large corporations and senior bureaucrats was even less representative than its BSEG predecessor. Some months after the BAG report, the Federal government did declare a broadband strategy. It did so, intriguingly enough, under the rubric of its response to the Regional Telecommunications Inquiry report (Estens), the second inquiry responsible for reassuring citizens nervous about the full-privatisation of Telstra (the first inquiry being Besley). The government’s grand $142.8 million National Broadband Strategy focusses on the ‘broadband needs of regional Australians, in partnership with all levels of government’ (Alston, ‘National Broadband Strategy’). Among other things, the government claims that the Strategy will result in “improved outcomes in terms of services and prices for regional broadband access; [and] the development of national broadband infrastructure assets.” (Alston, ‘National Broadband Strategy’) At the same time, the government announced an overall response to the Estens Inquiry, with specific safeguards for Telstra’s role in regional communications — a preliminary to the full Telstra sale (Alston, ‘Future Proofing’). Less publicised was the government’s further initiative in indigenous telecommunications, complementing its Telecommunications Action Plan for Remote Indigenous Communities (DCITA). Indigenous people, it can be argued, were never really contemplated as citizens with the ken of the universal service policy taken to underpin the twentieth-century government monopoly PTT project. In Australia during the deregulatory and re-regulatory 1990s, there was a great reluctance on the part of Labor and Coalition Federal governments, Telstra and other industry participants, even to research issues of access to and use of telecommunications by indigenous communicators. Telstra, and to a lesser extent Optus (who had purchased AUSSAT as part of their licence arrangements), shrouded the issue of indigenous communications in mystery that policymakers were very reluctant to uncover, let alone systematically address. Then regulator, the Australian Telecommunications Authority (AUSTEL), had raised grave concerns about indigenous telecommunications access in its 1991 Rural Communications inquiry. However, there was no government consideration of, nor research upon, these issues until Alston commissioned a study in 2001 — the basis for the TAPRIC strategy (DCITA). The elision of indigenous telecommunications from mainstream industry and government policy is all the more puzzling, if one considers the extraordinarily varied and significant experiments by indigenous Australians in telecommunications and Internet (not least in the early work of the Tanami community, made famous in media and cultural studies by the writings of anthropologist Eric Michaels). While the government’s mid-2003 moves on a ‘National Broadband Strategy’ attend to some details of the broadband predicament, they fall well short of an integrated framework that grasps the shortcomings of the neoliberal communications model. The funding offered is a token amount. The view from the seat of government is a glance from the rear-view mirror: taking a snapshot of rural communications in the years 2000-2002 and projecting this tableau into a safety-net ‘future proofing’ for the inevitable turning away of a fully-privately-owned Telstra from its previously universal, ‘carrier of last resort’ responsibilities. In this aetiolated, residualist policy gaze, citizens remain constructed as consumers in a very narrow sense in this incremental, quietist version of state securing of market arrangements. What is missing is any more expansive notion of citizens, their varied needs, expectations, uses, and cultural imaginings of ‘always on’ broadband networks. Hybrid Networks “Most people on earth will eventually have access to networks that are all switched, interactive, and broadband”, wrote Frances Cairncross in 1998. ‘Eventually’ is a very appropriate word to describe the parlous state of broadband technology implementation. Broadband is in a slow state of evolution and invention. The story of broadband so far underscores the predicament for Australian access to bandwidth, when we lack any comprehensive, integrated, effective, and fair policy in communications and information technology. We have only begun to experiment with broadband technologies and understand their evolving uses, cultural forms, and the sense in which they rework us as subjects. Our communications networks are not superhighways, to invoke an enduring artefact from an older technology. Nor any longer are they a single ‘public’ switched telecommunications network, like those presided over by the post-telegraph-telephone monopolies of old. Like roads themselves, or the nascent postal system of the sixteenth century, broadband is a patchwork quilt. The ‘fibre’ of our communications networks is hybrid. To be sure, powerful corporations dominate, like the Tassis or Taxis who served as postmasters to the Habsburg emperors (Briggs & Burke 25). Activating broadband today provides a perspective on the path dependency of technology history, and how we can open up new threads of a communications fabric. Our options for transforming our multitudinous networked lives emerge as much from everyday tactics and strategies as they do from grander schemes and unifying policies. We may care to reflect on the waning potential for nation-building technology, in the wake of globalisation. We no longer gather our imagined community around a Community Telephone Plan as it was called in 1960 (Barr, Moyal, and PMG). Yet we do require national and international strategies to get and stay connected (Barr), ideas and funding that concretely address the wider dimensions of access and use. We do need to debate the respective roles of Telstra, the state, community initiatives, and industry competition in fair telecommunications futures. Networks have global reach and require global and national integration. Here vision, co-ordination, and resources are urgently required for our commonweal and moral fibre. To feel the width of the band we desire, we need to plug into and activate the policy circuits. Thanks to Grayson Cooke, Patrick Lichty, Ned Rossiter, John Pace, and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments. Works Cited Alston, Richard. ‘ “Future Proofing” Regional Communications.’ Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Canberra, 2003. 17 July 2003 <http://www.dcita.gov.au/Article/0,,0_1-2_3-4_115485,00.php> —. ‘A National Broadband Strategy.’ Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Canberra, 2003. 17 July 2003 <http://www.dcita.gov.au/Article/0,,0_1-2_3-4_115486,00.php>. Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). Broadband Services Report March 2003. Canberra: ACCC, 2003. 17 July 2003 <http://www.accc.gov.au/telco/fs-telecom.htm>. —. Emerging Market Structures in the Communications Sector. Canberra: ACCC, 2003. 15 July 2003 <http://www.accc.gov.au/pubs/publications/utilities/telecommu... ...nications/Emerg_mar_struc.doc>. Barr, Trevor. new media.com: The Changing Face of Australia’s Media and Telecommunications. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2000. Besley, Tim (Telecommunications Service Inquiry). Connecting Australia: Telecommunications Service Inquiry. Canberra: Department of Information, Communications and the Arts, 2000. 17 July 2003 <http://www.telinquiry.gov.au/final_report.php>. Briggs, Asa, and Burke, Peter. A Social History of the Internet: From Gutenberg to the Internet. Cambridge: Polity, 2002. Broadband Advisory Group. Australia’s Broadband Connectivity: The Broadband Advisory Group’s Report to Government. Melbourne: National Office on the Information Economy, 2003. 15 July 2003 <http://www.noie.gov.au/publications/NOIE/BAG/report/index.htm>. Broadband Services Expert Group. Networking Australia’s Future: Final Report. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service (AGPS), 1994. Bureau of Transport and Communications Economics (BTCE). Communications Futures Final Project. Canberra: AGPS, 1994. Cairncross, Frances. The Death of Distance: How the Communications Revolution Will Change Our Lives. London: Orion Business Books, 1997. Communications Law Centre (CLC). Australian Telecommunications Regulation: The Communications Law Centre Guide. 2nd edition. Sydney: Communications Law Centre, University of NSW, 2001. Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts (DCITA). Telecommunications Action Plan for Remote Indigenous Communities: Report on the Strategic Study for Improving Telecommunications in Remote Indigenous Communities. Canberra: DCITA, 2002. Estens, D. Connecting Regional Australia: The Report of the Regional Telecommunications Inquiry. Canberra: DCITA, 2002. <http://www.telinquiry.gov.au/rti-report.php>, accessed 17 July 2003. Fels, Alan. ‘Competition in Telecommunications’, speech to Australian Telecommunications Users Group 19th Annual Conference. 6 March, 2003, Sydney. <http://www.accc.gov.au/speeches/2003/Fels_ATUG_6March03.doc>, accessed 15 July 2003. Flew, Terry, and Spurgeon, Christina. ‘Television After Broadcasting’. In The Australian TV Book. Ed. Graeme Turner and Stuart Cunningham. Allen & Unwin, Sydney. 69-85. 2000. Given, Jock. Turning Off the Television. Sydney: UNSW Press, 2003. Goggin, Gerard. ‘Citizens and Beyond: Universal service in the Twilight of the Nation-State.’ In All Connected?: Universal Service in Telecommunications, ed. Bruce Langtry. Melbourne: University of Melbourne Press, 1998. 49-77 —. Rural Communities Online: Networking to link Consumers to Providers. Melbourne: Telstra Consumer Consultative Council, 2003. Goggin, Gerard, and Newell, Christopher. Digital Disability: The Social Construction of Disability in New Media. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. House of Representatives Standing Committee on Communications, Information Technology and the Arts (HoR). Connecting Australia!: Wireless Broadband. Report of Inquiry into Wireless Broadband Technologies. Canberra: Parliament House, 2002. <http://www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/cita/Wbt/report.htm>, accessed 17 July 2003. Lamberton, Don. ‘A Telecommunications Infrastructure is Not an Information Infrastructure’. Prometheus: Journal of Issues in Technological Change, Innovation, Information Economics, Communication and Science Policy 14 (1996): 31-38. Latour, Bruno. Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987. Luck, David. ‘Revisiting the Future: Assessing the 1994 BTCE communications futures project.’ Media International Australia 96 (2000): 109-119. MacBride, Sean (Chair of International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems). Many Voices, One World: Towards a New More Just and More Efficient World Information and Communication Order. Paris: Kegan Page, London. UNESCO, 1980. Maitland Commission (Independent Commission on Worldwide Telecommunications Development). The Missing Link. Geneva: International Telecommunications Union, 1985. Michaels, Eric. Bad Aboriginal Art: Tradition, Media, and Technological Horizons. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1994. Mody, Bella, Bauer, Johannes M., and Straubhaar, Joseph D., eds. Telecommunications Politics: Ownership and Control of the Information Highway in Developing Countries. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 1995. Moyal, Ann. Clear Across Australia: A History of Telecommunications. Melbourne: Thomas Nelson, 1984. Post-Master General’s Department (PMG). Community Telephone Plan for Australia. Melbourne: PMG, 1960. Productivity Commission (PC). Telecommunications Competition Regulation: Inquiry Report. Report No. 16. Melbourne: Productivity Commission, 2001. <http://www.pc.gov.au/inquiry/telecommunications/finalreport/>, accessed 17 July 2003. Spurgeon, Christina. ‘National Culture, Communications and the Information Economy.’ Media International Australia 87 (1998): 23-34. Turner, Graeme. ‘First Contact: coming to terms with the cable guy.’ UTS Review 3 (1997): 109-21. Winseck, Dwayne. ‘Wired Cities and Transnational Communications: New Forms of Governance for Telecommunications and the New Media’. In The Handbook of New Media: Social Shaping and Consequences of ICTs, ed. Leah A. Lievrouw and Sonia Livingstone. London: Sage, 2002. 393-409. World Trade Organisation. General Agreement on Trade in Services: Annex on Telecommunications. Geneva: World Trade Organisation, 1994. 17 July 2003 <http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/serv_e/12-tel_e.htm>. —. Fourth protocol to the General Agreement on Trade in Services. Geneva: World Trade Organisation. 17 July 2003 <http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/serv_e/4prote_e.htm>. Links http://www.accc.gov.au/pubs/publications/utilities/telecommunications/Emerg_mar_struc.doc http://www.accc.gov.au/speeches/2003/Fels_ATUG_6March03.doc http://www.accc.gov.au/telco/fs-telecom.htm http://www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/cita/Wbt/report.htm http://www.dcita.gov.au/Article/0,,0_1-2_3-4_115485,00.html http://www.dcita.gov.au/Article/0,,0_1-2_3-4_115486,00.html http://www.noie.gov.au/projects/access/access/broadband1.htm http://www.noie.gov.au/publications/NOIE/BAG/report/index.htm http://www.pc.gov.au http://www.pc.gov.au/inquiry/telecommunications/finalreport/ http://www.telinquiry.gov.au/final_report.html http://www.telinquiry.gov.au/rti-report.html http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/serv_e/12-tel_e.htm http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/serv_e/4prote_e.htm Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Goggin, Gerard. "Broadband" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0308/02-featurebroadband.php>. APA Style Goggin, G. (2003, Aug 26). Broadband. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0308/02-featurebroadband.php>