Journal articles on the topic 'Drugs Marketing Moral and ethical aspects'

This paper attempts to explore many signs of progress enabled by Artificial Intelligence (AI) in financial and corporate business management. It also amid to identify the benefits and cons of AI applications in social life. A systematic content analysis approach has been used to demonstrate the developmental phases of AI. Four distinct organizational maturity clusters i.e. Pioneers, Investigators, Experimenters, and Passives have been developed on basis of dataset. Data collections was carried through emails, customizable chatbots, live chat softwares and automated helpers of top ten online companies and various banking and financial institutions located in Lahore and Karachi cities for making behavioral analysis. The data results revealed that all aspects of financial managements and corporate business activities have been highly influenced by the application of AI. The study demonstrated that 80% senior business executives were of view that AI boost productivity and creates new business avenues. The results also demonstrated that 88% Pioneer organizations have understand and adopted AI techniques according to organization requirements, 82% Investigator organizations are not using it beyond the pilot stage whereas 24% Experimental organizations were adopting AI without understanding it. These results seem to reflect that AI has profound effects on financial industry to streamline its credit decisions from quantitative trading to financial risk management and fraud detection. This study also discovered that the widespread use of AI have raised a number of ethical, moral and legal challenges that are yet to be addressed. Although AI is gaining popularity day by day and it is believed that AI will improve work performance beyond human standards but it could not replace human resources fully.

Prevalence of corporate frauds is critical, therefore, it is very important to detect and institutionalize the black sheep’s in the organization which are involved in misconduct and must be brought to the light via whistleblowing. Ethical leadership equitably influence ethical climate, which in turn will favorably encourages employees in whistleblowing. This study is intended to examine and overcome the research gap based on the mediating aspect of psychological stress and moral attentiveness in association of ethical leadership, ethics oriented climate on whistleblowing. Twelve hypotheses were developed to examine the conceptual framework of the study. A self-administered questionnaire was devised to acquire cross sectional information from 425 employees from the banks in Gujranwala division, Punjab, Pakistan via convenient sampling. Results showed that in the presence of ethical leadership and ethics oriented environment in an organization’ the psychological stress of employees decreases and moral attentiveness of the employees increases and ultimately have the positive impact on whistleblowing. Hence, this research is one of the few cross-sectional researches that examining the mediation mechanism of psychological stress and moral attentiveness in the banking sector of Pakistan.

Rare diseases are a heterogenic group of disorders with a little in common except of their rarity affecting by less than 5 : 10.000 people. In the world is registered about 6000-8000 rare diseases with 6-8% suffering population only in the European Union. In spite of rarity, they represent an important medical and social problem due to their incidence. For many rare diseases have no treatment, but if it exists and if started on time as being available to patients, there is a good prognosis for them to be able for normal life. The problems of patients affected by rare diseases are related to the lack of diagnosis and timely undergoing as well as their treatment or prevention. Orphan drugs are products intended for treatment, diagnosis or prevention of rare diseases, but for their development and marketing the industry has not been interested in yet because of their marketing reasons. Patients suffering from a rare disease although belonging to the vulnerable group for their specific health needs, is becoming invisible in the health care system due to their additional needs un properly recognized. Ethical problems faced by patients, but also health care professionals are related to the allocation of medical diagnostics, unequal approach to health care, inappropriately specialized social services as well as therapy and rare orphan drugs unavailability. Ethical questions related to clinical trails on orphan drugs, population screening and epidemiology testing on rare diseases will also be discussed in this paper.

The UK’s Cancer Drugs Fund (CDF) was introduced in 2010 following the Conservative Party’s promise to address the fact that numerous efficacious cancer drugs were not available because of their cost ineffectiveness, as deduced by the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence. While, at face value, this policy appears only to promote the UK’s public welfare, a deeper analysis reveals the ethically unjustifiable inconsistencies that the CDF introduces; where is the analogous fund for other equally severe diseases? Have the patients without cancer been neglected simply due to the fear-inducing advertising and particularly ferocious speech which surrounds cancer? The CDF is unjustifiable when challenged by such questions. However, it is troubling to think that the CDF might be repealed in order to abolish these ethical concerns. Intuitively, one feels uncomfortable stripping the cancer patient of their benefits just so that they might be on an equally pessimistic footing with others. In the present essay, I argue that, although there are no ethically justifiable grounds for the CDF’s introduction, its removal would be inappropriate. Following this realisation, I investigate whether the procedural steps of the CDF itself—theoretically removed from the context of resource distribution for all disease types—represent an ethically justifiable system. I believe that the answer is yes, given the CDF’s conformity to accountability for reasonableness, a robust framework of procedural justice, which continuously improves the ethical and epistemological standards of the policies to which it is applied.

Consumption is an essential everyday process. By very nature, it is a means of expressing our moral identities and an outlet for ethical obligations. In more recent years, ethical aspects of consumption have come under greater scrutiny with the emergence of ethical consumption discourses, and are currently associated with a range of consumer behaviours and responsible business practices. To this end, religion is an undeniably powerful and concurrently the most successful marketing force that can shape the ethical behaviour, yet under-investigated in consumption practices despite Corporate Socially Responsibility provoked ethical behaviour. Ethical consumption practices are regularly characterised as consumption activities that avoid harm to other people, animals or the environment where basic Buddhist teachings become more pertinent and practiced in Buddhist communities. This study conceptualises the importance of religious beliefs in ethical consumer behaviour and through researcher introspection methodology, the study empirically explore whether and how ethical consumerism is reflected through Five Precepts of Buddhism [i.e. (1) abstain from taking life, (2) abstain from stealing, (3) abstain from sexual misconduct, (4) abstain from false speech, and (5) abstain from intoxicants that cloud the mind]. The study contributes to the theory and teaching in the marketing discipline by linking how religious beliefs enhance ethical consumerism that remains largely unexplored.

Neuromarketing which emerged in recent years assumes that brain contains information that hidden personal preferences and has a relationship between brain activity and verbal preferences. Based on that relationship, neuromarketing utilize the various techniques used in medicine to figure out consumers and create consumer marketing strategies. The techniques utilized in neuromarketing causes moral concerns about gain commercial purposes of the data obtained from consumers. In this context, the purpose of this study is examine neuromarketing and discuss it’s ethical aspects through practitioner’s perpective. For this purpose, the field of research constitute marketing research companies that apply neuromarketing techniques which located in Istanbul. Of the aforementioned companies, since Thinkneuro and Affectspots agreed to participate in this research, were determined as the sample of the study. The data obtained by interview with the managers of the two companies and descriptive analysis result has been observed that different approaches. As a result of research, the statements of companies has overlapped with literature. The assessments of companies’ about ethical aspects of neuromarketing discussed according to teleological and deontological approach of ethics.

The article is devoted to ethical aspects of reputation management. The authors, bringing together different research methodology such as categorical and phenomenological analysis, examine the moral categories associated with the concept of reputation. Therefore, the concept of “image”, “goodwill” reveals its importance in the context of the ethical categories and moral manifestations of consciousness, such as authority, social responsibility, honesty, integrity, respect for the interests of another. In the future human dimensions of management, such as corporate ethics, corporate culture, as well as the position subjectivist approach to research of the image of the organization is ethical-oriented concept of reputation management. The author defends the position according to which it’s necessary to examine social entrepreneurship in all its dimensions, which is designed to assess the activity of the enterprise by connecting scientists, as well as components of civil society, from the perspective of human values – moral and ethical categories. In this understanding, social expertise acts as “ethical expertise”. In conjunction with the notion and phenomenon of corporate ethics there are generalizations in the context of General ethical categories. The authors show that corporate ethics is the basis, the Foundation for formation of business reputation, corporate image and other ethical components of corporate reputation. In connection with the concept of ethically-oriented management protected in the article there are the prospects for use of this methodological approach for its application not only to build a successful business reputation of the organization, but also in the process of creating a brand, developing a content marketing strategy.

Providing a framework for integrating aspects of externally directed corporate and marketing communication efforts, this paper makes a case for the communication of positive and credible ethical values as a potentially critical component in communications strategy and sustainable competitive advantage. Using an uncertainty‐reduction model adapted from the diffusion literature, it is suggested that appropriately communicated moral and ethical values can have a role in underpinning an organisation’s reputation and “trusted capacities”, thereby heightening confidence in likely future actions, offering a predictive mechanism for lowering uncertainty in market transactions, and facilitating a potential to trade by offering a rationale for an organisation’s secure market position. Underpinned by ethical principles, the paper proposes implications for the role of “reputation for trustworthiness” and its symbolic evocation. It is argued that a reputation can become accepted as a social “fact”, able to endure critical interrogation in its social environment.

Abstract Amongst the current, most important, international priorities in public health is the issue of bacterial resistance to antibiotics. This issue is due to the wide misuse and overuse of these drugs, both in human and veterinary medicine. Veterinarians fulfil a very important role as guardians of animal health and as public health actors; if they do not use antimicrobials judiciously, animal health and welfare as well as public health will be severely compromised. Therefore it is of particular importance to study the professional ethos of veterinarians as regards the delivery of antibiotics for animals. In Europe laws and practices regarding the delivery of antimicrobial drugs for animals differ from state to state. In some states, veterinarians are not allowed to sell drugs, they only prescribe, and pharmacists deliver the drugs. In other states, including France, veterinarians are allowed to deliver the drugs they prescribe. In France, veterinarians have thus been accused of conflict of interest; of overprescribing to sell more antibiotics and thus earn more money. Therefore, it appeared particularly accurate to not only study the ethos of veterinarians regarding the delivery of antibiotics to animals, but to also compare this ethos to that of pharmacists. To the authors’ knowledge, such a study has never been carried out in any country. Veterinarians’ and pharmacists’ professional literature was studied and compared using qualitative and quantitative content analysis. A sample of comparable journals was selected for both professions. The study was carried out over a relevant five year period extending from the beginning of 2008 till the end of 2012. All papers dealing with antimicrobial resistances as well as the prescription and delivery of antibiotics for animals were objectively and comprehensively searched and collected using keywords. The selected papers were subsequently independently coded by a multidisciplinary team of coders using conventional, inductive, thematic analysis. The final coding grid was obtained after consensus meetings were held in order to ensure reliability and validity of the data. The results showed that the veterinarians’ professional literature studied reflected a primary concern for ethics whereas the pharmacists’ professional literature primarily focused on marketing. Half of the veterinary continuing education papers dealt with different aspects of ethics; the other half focused on the scientific aspects of antimicrobial resistances. Amongst other papers, more than 30% tackled ethical questions in relation with the delivery of antibiotics for animals. Conversely, in the pharmacists’ literature, half of the continuing education papers concentrated on marketing; the other half described the pharmacology of drugs. Amongst other papers, 60% addressed marketing issues. Ethical questions per se were not approached in the pharmacists’ professional literature studied. In conclusion, veterinary ethos for prescription ethics, good antibiotic use and animal welfare seems to be a feature of the profession. According to this research, the claim that veterinarians are responsible for antibiotic resistances because of conflict of interest is not true.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the evolving themes in dark tourism research. The increase in death-related incidents in the last few years has increased the consumption of dark tourism, igniting a resurgence of dark tourism literature. This study retrieves 363 articles published in Scopus-indexed journals from 1996 to 2021, using the SPAR-4 SLR technique to identify the themes using Sci2 and Gephi software. Keyword co-occurrence network, Bibliographic coupling network, and Collaboration networks were used to identify the knowledge clusters in dark tourism literature. The study reveals that existing studies have largely focused on the scope of dark tourism, destination identification and management, marketing aspects, motives, experiences, and engagement, and mitigating moral and ethical dilemmas. As the themes have remained consistent since the past studies, the study concludes that the research on DT has become stagnated, and there is a need for a novel approach. For that, it recommends that the scope of dark tourism should be enhanced beyond heritage tourism and promoted as a tool for global peace. Further, several gaps in marketing and visit and emotional engagement aspects are identified that could become the research agendas in future studies.

Psychiatric inpatients with capacity may be treated paternalistically under the Mental Health Act 1983. This violates bodily autonomy and causes potentially significant harm to health and moral status, both of which may be long-lasting. I suggest that such harms may extend to killing moral persons through the impact of psychotropic drugs on psychological connectedness. Unsurprisingly, existing legislation is overwhelmingly disliked by psychiatric inpatients, the majority of whom have capacity. I present four arguments for involuntary treatment: individual safety, public safety, authentic wishes and protection of autonomy. I explore these through a case study: a patient with schizophrenia admitted to a psychiatric hospital under the Mental Health Act 1983 after an episode of self-poisoning. Through its discussion of preventative detention, the public safety argument articulates the (un)ethical underpinnings of the current position in English law. Ultimately, none of the four arguments are cogent—all fail to justify the current legal discrimination faced by psychiatric inpatients. I conclude against any use of involuntary treatment in psychiatric inpatients with capacity, endorsing the fusion approach where only psychiatric patients lacking capacity may be treated involuntarily.

The aim of this paper is to discuss the common features and specificity of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) practices of innovative transnational corporations (TNCs) acting in the pharmaceutical industry. The innovativeness of pharmaceutical firms is understood here as their ability to make a breakthrough in the treatment of rare, incurable diseases. The examination of the issue leads to the conclusion that the specificity of CSR in this industry is related to the contradiction between the economic and social/ethical aspects of innovation processes in this field. A key issue of CSR in the innovative pharmaceutical industry seems to be the pricing of drugs, especially orphan and ultra‑orphan drugs, resulting in patients from less developed countries having limited access to life‑saving medicines or those that improve the quality of life. Corporations use their monopolistic position to set extremely high prices. However, without the market/marketing exclusivity offered to pharmaceutical firms by the law, orphan drugs would probably not be developed, produced and commercialized. Traditional CSR practices (corporate philanthropy, community and neighborhood programs, volunteerism etc.) cannot be treated as sufficient ‘compensation’ for the high prices of medicines. Real, true CSR in the innovative pharmaceutical industry requires either abandoning or reducing extreme monopolistic privileges and offering medicines for rare diseases at lower prices.

Product sampling in the retail chains relates to marketing, it makes part of the in-store marketing, and it is one of the sale promotion tools. It used to promote the sales of non-durable products, i.e. food. The paper aimed to find out how it is perceived by customers of retail chains (consumers) in Slovakia. An essential aspect of the sampling effectiveness was verified, namely the addressing of potential customers by the promoters. The article focused on ethical practices during the samplings. The subject of interest was to confirm whether promoters keep basic ethical and moral principles. The repeated request for sampling was one of the points. The vital aspect of the sampling ethics was also considered as well as the truthfulness of customer responses to promoter questions about the taste of the product. The sampling ethics was judged from both viewpoints of the sampling participants. The questionnaire survey was carried out to meet the goal, and the sampling participants were addressed. The online questionnaire method was applied, in which 484 respondents were directed. The survey results have shown that customers perceive samplings positively. Sampling has found its application in Slovakia, and it is a relatively accessible tool for promotion of sales (also from the viewpoint of producers). The promoter is the major contributor to the number of participating customers. The main aspects influencing the level of sampling ethics are the age and gender of the customers. It is believed that at any time, it is appropriate to verify the ethics of one of the sales promotion tools – sampling, and at the same time to find out how customers perceive it. The paper contributes to the area of in-store marketing. It brings findings focused on the popularity of the sampling in practice, purchasing habits of the customers, and at the same time, it opens a space for further improvements. Keywords sampling, sampling perception, sampling ethics, customers, promoters.

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the market access (MA) of ethical drugs, the underlying public-private interaction (PPI) between pharmaceutical companies and public actors, and the implications for the sustainability of the health system. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative interpretivist approach was selected. Interviews were carried out as the primary method of data collection: 27 interviews were conducted with 13 key informants from the pharmaceutical industry. Findings The perspective of MA evolves from formal negotiation with the public actor at various levels to PPI, which should include aspects of interactions with other actors in the network. Conceptualization in these terms is fundamental because it allows an understanding of the implications in terms of the sustainability of the health system. Originality/value The paper discusses MA by highlighting the shift from a “market access as formal negotiation” perspective to a “public-private interaction for market access” perspective, in which the focus is on the content of the interaction and the representation of the network of relevant actors for MA. It contributes to the debate on the sustainability of health systems by suggesting the adoption of a medium-to-long-term approach to economic and social sustainability based on PPI; it adopts an industrial marketing approach and contributes to the recent debate on PPI.

Annotation. Introduction. It has been established that the modern stage in the development of vocational education involves a qualitative change in approaches to the definition of its content, as well as the need for increased attention to its professional and ethical orientation in connection with the market paradigm of socio-economic development of the country. The system of higher vocational education is designed to help the student in shaping professional competencies of a specialist, as well as helping a person build up the world of own professional and personal values, to master creative ways to solve professional and life problems based on ethical norms and rules necessary for professional mobility of a specialist. Purpose. Research and generalization of scientific representations on the theoretical aspects of the professional ethics formation of specialists and justify the preconditions for the professional ethics formation of specialists in the conditions of higher education institutions. Results. The theoretically substantiated preconditions for the formation of professional ethics of specialists in the conditions of higher education institutions, which are: in exacerbation of contradictions between the objective need of the labor market in specialists with a high level of professional ethics, capable of applying it in the process of professional activity, and insufficient development of pedagogical conditions of its formation in the conditions of higher education institution; in the need to improve the professional sphere of economics, in connection with the priority in it receipt of profits over the universal moral values; in the relevance of the development of a higher vocational education system in the direction of formation of professional ethics students needed by professionals for professional mobility in a market economy. The concept of "professional ethics of a specialist" is specified as this professional and ethical activity of an axiological nature, that is, activities due to the values of culture, reflecting the degree of ownership of special knowledge, skills, competences in the field of ethics profession. The factors influencing the formation of professional ethics of a specialist in conditions of HEI: pedagogical (didactic drugs), organizational (structural and content model of the formation of ethics of a specialist, which is a set of components: ethicaleducational, cultural and ethical, methodical, competent and diagnostic) whose overcoming in the learning process allows you to move from a zero level to higher. Conclusions. By studying psychological and pedagogical literature, it has been concluded that the structure of professional ethics of a specialist includes cognitive, emotional, communicative, reflexive and educational components. The structural-content model of the formation of ethics of a specialist is proposed, which is a set of components: ethical and educational, cultural and ethical, methodological, competent and diagnostic

The article’s purpose is to identify the functional aspects of the use of а writer’s image in advertising discourse and to raise the ethical issues that arise in this case. Being at a junction of masscult and elitism, а writer’s image is exploited in advertising and becomes a brand, a stamp, a label. It becomes the part of what implements both functions of attracting attention and self-presentation. The ‘pleasure of recognition’ and the feeling of satisfaction from the involvement in cultural integrity are those positive emotions that advertising marketing focuses on. For this the advertising of consumer goods, catering establishments, shops, medical services, etc., uses literary classics texts. In this way, advertising refers to cultural memory as collective reconstructions of our common past image. The transfer of the classical text specific element into the advertising genre as into another semiotic system automatically simplifies and schematizes the meanings of the source text. At the same time, the range of images used in advertising as in a utilitarian genre demonstrates what fills the collective cultural memory, what is considered as necessary for its preservation. The analysis of advertising texts against the ethical permissibility-inadmissibility, the acceptability-redundancy (being extreme/over the line) gives grounds to draw the following conclusions: - advertising using а writer’s image, being only a small part of the general advertising discourse, creates a visual noise situation, ‘simplifying’ the classical text understanding impoverishes the process of its interpretation; - advertising built on the basis of the writer’s images desemantization and deformation, works towards the deformation and perception of the author, forms false meanings; - advertising, based on linguistic turns of phrase, like any joke, has the potential to cross the border of what is permissible when the writer’s image (name, text) as a result of carnivalization acquires additional vulgar and taboo meanings. The mechanisms that determine the flexibility of language matter also since its instability and aesthetic choice turns out to be inextricably linked with a moral choice.

During periods of socio-economic, innovative-ecological and political transformations, the social system may not perform its functions, which will lead to a disruption of the sustainable of public life. The economy of transformation is a part of the societal system that contributes to the change of the client himself and his needs and demands. These processes are manifested in ignoring generally recognized economic and environmental values, political, ideological, cultural and moral. The development of technologies in the past was usually determined over long periods by some one discovery or progress in one area, today with the development of digitalization, the universal introduction of information technologies in various spheres of life: services, production and economic activities, education, culture, etc. etc., there is a convergence of economics, management and marketing in a short time frame. This phenomenon is caused by the rapid development of information and communication technologies, microelectronics, microbiology, simulations, nanomanipulations, “strong” artificial intelligence in most countries of the world. We believe that the convergence of information technology, biotechnology, nanotechnology and cognitive science is especially significant. And in such modern convergent conditions, neuromarketing technologies are rapidly developing at a new level. The development and application of neuromarketing technologies deserve study so that there is no further ethical "shock" and coercion to buy at an unconscious level. Such technologies were used earlier in various fields of economic activity, in psychology and in solving other issues. Neuromarketing technologies are changing ideas about the environment: nature, man, mind. It is difficult to describe the results of such transformation processes, where all aspects of human life are subject to change.

Background: It is expected that pharmacology education should prepare students as rational prescriber. Credibility of undergraduate pharmacology curricula is rather questionable in this aspect. As assessment shapes learning priorities, it is crucial to design assessment methods of pharmacology in right way to achieve the expected learning outcomes of future physicians. Materials and methods: This descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted to compare the reflection of curricular objectives, content coverage and national health priorities in undergraduate pharmacology written question papers (SAQ) of different universities of Bangladesh in last 10 years (January 2010 to November 2019). Total 131 question papers were collected, and reflection of curricular objectives, content coverage and selective disease burdens were evaluated and compared. Results: One objective regarding factual knowledge (Pharmacological effects, mechanisms of action, pharmacokinetic characteristics and adverse reactions of drugs) had significant higher weightage throughout the decade in all universities. There were statistically significant differences in weightage of reflection of five curricular objectives (p value <0.00001, 0.001, 0.003, 0.004, 0.02) among different universities. There was not a single question reflecting the ethical and legal issues involved in drug prescribing, development, manufacture and marketing in the decade in any university. Chemotherapy was the highest covered area (19.4±3.3), followed by central nervous system (1 6 . 0 ± 3 . 4 ) and general principles of pharmacology (14.3±3.2) throughout the last ten years in all universities. There was statistically also significant difference among different universities in weightage of all content areas except Gastrointestinal pharmacology. Statistically significant difference (p value < 0 . 0 0 0 0 1 ) among different universities in cardiovascular diseases burden was observed. Conclusion: Current study found variation in pharmacology written question papers of different universities in the aspects of reflection of curricular objectives, content coverage and cardiovascular disease burden. Chatt Maa Shi Hosp Med Coll J; Vol.21 (2); July 2022; Page 3-8

Communicative competence in the realities of the modern world is one of the basic skills defining not only the structure of the communicative personality of the digital age, but also a meaningful criterion of socialization, social interactivity within society. At present, the society is undergoing an intensive restructuring, not only in terms of system functioning and institutional transformation, but also in terms of way of interaction, which signals the active establishment of a digital society, as a new stage in civilizational development. This reality is due to the acceleration of the development of digital technologies, the implication of digital processes in all areas of public procedure, and the significant impact of digitization on human communication capabilities caused by spreading of communicative area. This article attempts to consider the digital society from social-philosophy way in a communicative point of view at the level of its structural component – the subject and its characteristics of communicative competence. Background. The digital society is an entirely new stage in the development of mankind, and therefore the logical action is to conduct a comprehensive study of it with a view to a thorough, detailed understanding of the essence, structure, properties and characteristics. A study of communication at the level of the subject within a digital society gives an idea of the characteristics of a modern digital society. Purpose. The article considers communication in a digital society from the point of view of analysis of its producers - individual subjects developing the skills of formation of communicative acts of a new type in a virtual – digital environment, namely communicative competence in digital communication. Materials and Methods. A number of research papers on the theory of digital society, the identification of its basic properties and characteristics, and the provisions on the essence of digital processes were used as research materials; collected views on the vision of communication of the modern type-digital communication. The analysis used social and philosophical reflexes, namely the analytical method. Results. As results, we can voice a number of identified modifications in the field of signs of communicative competence of the modern person of the digitalized society. In this case, we are talking about the abolition of language means used to convey the meaning in a communication act in favor of lexical substitutions with graphic symbols, which confirms the presence of clippiness of thinking and perception. The absence of direct communicative contact practically eliminates the emotional component of communication, or distorts it. The semantic side of communication is distorted and leads to a loss of understanding and empathy. Violation of the cognitive-epiric aspect of the personality shows the deformation of the process of transferring moral values and ethical guidelines, behaviors, which distorts the system of ideas about the surrounding reality, identity and mechanisms of subject-object relationships. The pragmatic level of communication is modified due to subjective situational experience, which is formed mainly in the space of digital reality, which creates difficulties in non-mediated communication. During the goal of the communicative process itself in the virtual-digital environment, a shift occurs in terms of ignoring objective facts, rules and laws, or trivially devaluing the opinion of another communicant, which nurtures nihilism, selfishness, and also leads to the destruction of the entire communication process as a whole. Practical implications. A well-known fact is the mutually agreed connection between society and communication in terms of relaying the qualitative and quantitative characteristics of the studied object and subject, their coevolution. The results of the study can be used in further socio-philosophical understanding of the structures and characteristics of digital society in general, and communication in particular. Analyzing the communicant from the point of view of its specific properties, in this case – the skill of communication in the conditions of digitalization, it is possible to form signs of a modern social device through transformation of communication.

<p><strong>List of Abstract Titles and authors:<br /></strong></p><p><strong>1. Psychosis: A matter of mental effort?</strong></p><p>M Borg, Y Y van der Zee, J H Hsieh, H Temmingh, D J Stein, F M Howells</p><p><strong>2.In search of an affordable, effective post-discharge intervention: A randomised control trial assessing the influence of a telephone-based intervention on readmissions for patients with severe mental illness in a developing country</strong></p><p><strong></strong>U A Botha, L Koen, M Mazinu, E Jordaan, D J H Niehaus</p><p><strong>3. The effect of early abstinence from long-term methamphetamine use on brain metabolism using 1H-magnetic resonance spectro-scopy (1H-MRS)</strong></p><p>A Burger, S Brooks, D J Stein, F M Howells</p><p><strong>4. The effect of <em>in utero exposure </em>to methamphetamine on brain metabolism in childhood using 1H-magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H-MRS)</strong></p><p>A Burger, A Roos, M Kwiatkowski, D J Stein, K A Donald, F M Howells</p><p><strong>5. A prospective study of clinical, biological and functional aspects of outcome in first-episode psychosis: The EONKCS Study</strong></p><p><strong></strong>B Chiliza, L Asmal, R Emsley</p><p><strong>6. Stimulants as cognitive enhancers - perceptions v. evidence in a very real world</strong></p><p><strong></strong>H M Clark</p><p><strong>7. Pharmacogenomics in antipsychotic drugs</strong></p><p><strong></strong>Ilse du Plessis</p><p><strong>8. Serotonin in anxiety disorders and beyond</strong></p><p><strong></strong>Ilse du Plessis</p><p><strong>9. HIV infection results in ventral-striatal reward system hypo-activation during cue processing</strong></p><p><strong></strong>S du Plessis, M Vink, J A Joska, E Koutsilieri, A Bagadia, D J Stein, R Emsley</p><p><strong>10. Disease progression in schizophrenia: Is the illness or the treatment to blame?</strong></p><p>R Emsley, M J Sian</p><p><strong>11. Serotonin transporter variants play a role in anxiety sensitivity in South African adolescents</strong></p><p> S M J Hemmings, L I Martin, L van der Merwe, R Benecke, K Domschke, S Seedat</p><p><strong>12. Iron deficiency in two children diagnosed with multiple sclerosis: Report on whole exom sequencing</strong></p><p><strong></strong>S Janse van Rensburg, R van Toorn, J F Schoeman, A Peeters, L R Fisher, K Moremi, M J Kotze</p><p><strong>13. Benzodiazepines: Practical pharmacokinetics</strong></p><p><strong></strong>P Joubert</p><p><strong>14. What to consider when prescribing psychotropic medications</strong></p><p><strong></strong>G Lippi</p><p><strong>15. Current prescribing practices for obsessive-compulsive disorder in South Africa: Controversies and consensus</strong></p><p><strong></strong>C Lochner, L Taljaard, D J Stein</p><p><strong>16. Correlates of emotional and behavioural problems in children with preinatally acquired HIV in Cape Town, South Africa</strong></p><p><strong></strong>K-A Louw, N Phillips, JIpser, J Hoare</p><p><strong>17. The role of non-coding RNAs in fear extinction</strong></p><p><strong></strong>S Malan-Muller, L Fairbairn, W M U Daniels, M J S Dashti, E J Oakleley, M Altorfer, J Harvey, S Seedat, J Gamieldien, S M J Hemmings</p><p><strong>18. An analysis of the management og HIV-mental illness comorbidity at the psychiatric unit of the Dr George Mukhari Academic Hospital</strong></p><p><strong></strong>M L Maodi, S T Rataemane, T Kyaw</p><p><strong>19. The identification of novel genes in anxiety disorders: A gene X environment correlation and interaction study</strong></p><p><strong></strong>N W McGregor, J Dimatelis, S M J Hemmings, C J Kinnear, D J Stein, V Russel, C Lochner</p><p><strong>20. Collaborations between conventional medicine and traditional healers: Obstacles and possibilities</strong></p><p><strong></strong>G Nortje, S Seedat, O Gureje</p><p><strong>21. Thought disorder and form perception: Relationships with symptoms and cognitive function in first-episode schizophrenia</strong></p><p>M R Olivier, R Emsley</p><p><strong>22. Investigating the functional significance of genome-wide variants associated with antipsychotic treatment response</strong></p><p><strong></strong>E Ovenden, B Drogemoller, L van der Merwe, R Emsley, L Warnich</p><p><strong>23. The moral and bioethical determinants of "futility" in psychiatry</strong></p><p><strong></strong>W P Pienaar</p><p><strong>24. Single voxel proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H-MRS) and volumetry of the amylgdala in social anxiety disorder in the context of early developmental trauma</strong></p><p>D Rosenstein, A T Hess, J Zwart, F Ahmed-Leitao, E Meintjies, S Seedat</p><p><strong>25. Schizoaffective disorder in an acute psychiatric unit: Profile of users and agreement with Operational Criteria (OPCRIT)</strong></p><p><strong></strong>R R Singh, U Subramaney</p><p><strong>26. The right to privacy and confidentiality: The ethics of expert diagnosis in the public media and the Oscar Pistorius trial</strong></p><p><strong></strong>C Smith</p><p><strong>27. A birth cohort study in South Africa: A psychiatric perspective</strong></p><p>D J Stein</p><p><strong>28. 'Womb Raiders': Women referred for observation in terms of the Criminal Procedures Act (CPA) charged with fetal abduction and murder</strong></p><p><strong></strong>U Subramaney</p><p><strong>29. Psycho-pharmacology of sleep wake disorders: An update</strong></p><p>R Sykes</p><p><strong>30. Refugee post-settlement in South Africa: Role of adjustment challenges and family in mental health outcomes</strong></p><p><strong></strong>L Thela, A Tomita, V Maharaj, M Mhlongo, K Jonathan</p><p><strong>31. Dstinguishing ADHD symptoms in psychotic disorders: A new insight in the adult ADHD questionnaire</strong></p><p>Y van der Zee, M Borg, J H Hsieh, H Temmingh, D J Stein, F M Howells</p><p><strong>32. Oscar Pistorius ethical dilemmas in a trial by media: Does this include psychiatric evaluation by media?</strong></p><p>M Vorster</p><p><strong>33. Genetic investigation of apetite aggression in South African former young offenders: The involvement of serotonin transporter gene</strong></p><p>K Xulu, J Somer, M Hinsberger, R Weierstall, T Elbert, S Seedat, S Hemmings</p><p><strong>34. Effects of HIV and childhood trauma on brain morphemtry and neurocognitive function</strong></p><p>G Spies, F Ahmed-Leitao, C Fennema-Notestine, M Cherner, S Seedat</p><p><strong>35. Measuring intentional behaviour normative data of a newly developed motor task battery</strong></p><p><strong></strong>S Bakelaar, J Blampain, S Seedat, J van Hoof, Y Delevoye-Turrel</p><p><strong>36. Resilience in social anxiety disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder in the context of childhood trauma</strong></p><p>M Bship, S Bakelaar, D Rosenstein, S Seedat</p><p><strong>37. The ethical dilemma of seclusion practices in psychiatry</strong></p><p>G Chiba, U Subramaney</p><p><strong>38. Physical activity and neurological soft signs in patients with schizophrenia</strong></p><p>O Esan, C Osunbote, I Oladele, S Fakunle, C Ehindero</p><p><strong>39. A retrospective study of completed suicides in the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Area from 2008 to 2013 - preliminary results</strong></p><p><strong></strong>C Grobler, J Strumpher, R Jacobs</p><p><strong>40. Serotonin transporter variants play a role in anxiety sensitivity in South African adolescents</strong></p><p><strong></strong>S M J Hemmings, L I Martin, L van der Merwe, R Benecke, K Domschke, S Seedat</p><p><strong>41. Investigation of variants within antipsychotic candidate pharmacogenes associated with treatment outcome</strong></p><p>F Higgins, B Drogmoller, G Wright, L van der Merwe, N McGregor, B Chiliza, L Asmal, L Koen, D Niehaus, R Emsley, L Warnich</p><p><strong>42. Effects of diet, smoking and alcohol consumption on disability (EDSS) in people diagnosed with multiple sclerosis</strong></p><p>S Janse van Rensburg, W Davis, D Geiger, F J Cronje, L Whati, M Kidd, M J Kotze</p><p><strong>43. The clinical utility of neuroimaging in an acute adolescnet psychiatric inpatient population</strong></p><p><strong></strong>Z Khan, A Lachman, J Harvey</p><p><strong>44. Relationships between childhood trauma (CT) and premorbid adjustment (PA) in a highly traumatised sample of patients with first-episode schizophrenia (FES</strong>)</p><p>S Kilian, J Burns, S Seedat, L Asmal, B Chiliza, S du Plessis, R Olivier, R Emsley</p><p><strong>45. Functional and cognitive outcomes using an mTOR inhibitor in an adolescent with TSC</strong></p><p>A Lachman, C van der Merwe, P Boyes, P de Vries</p><p><strong>46. Perceptions about adolescent body image and eating behaviour</strong></p><p><strong></strong>K Laxton, A B R Janse van Rensburg</p><p><strong>47. Clinical relevance of FTO rs9939609 as a determinant of cardio-metabolic risk in South African patients with major depressive disorder</strong></p><p>H K Luckhoff, M J Kotze</p><p><strong>48. Childhood abuse and neglect as predictors of deficits in verbal auditory memory in non-clinical adolescents with low anxiety proneness</strong></p><p>L Martin, K Martin, S Seedat</p><p><strong>49. The changes of pro-inflammatory cytokines in a prenatally stressed febrile seizure animal model and whether <em>Rhus chirindensis</em> may attenuate these changes</strong></p><p><strong></strong>A Mohamed, M V Mabandla, L Qulu</p><p><strong>50. Influence of TMPRSS6 A736v and HFE C282y on serum iron parameters and age of onset in patients with multiple sclerosis</strong></p><p><strong></strong>K E Moremi, M J Kotze, H K Luckhoff, L R Fisher, M Kidd, R van Toorn, S Janse van Rensburg</p><p><strong>51. Polypharmacy in pregnant women with serious mental illness</strong></p><p>E Thomas, E du Toit, L Koen, D Niehaus</p><p><strong>52. Infant attachment and maternal depression as predictors of neurodevelopmental and behavioural outcomes at follow-up</strong></p><p>J Nothling, B Laughton, S Seedat</p><p><strong>53. Differences in abuse, neglect and exposure to community violence in adolescents with and without PTSD</strong></p><p><strong></strong>J Nothling, S Suliman, L Martin, C Simmons, S Seedat</p><p><strong>54. Assessment of oxidative stress markers in children with autistic spectrum disorders in Lagos, Nigeria</strong></p><p><strong></strong>Y Oshodi, O Ojewunmi, T A Oshodi, T Ijarogbe, O F Aina, J Okpuzor, O C F E A Lesi</p><p><strong>55. Change in diagnosis and management of 'gender identity disorder' in pre-adolescent children</strong></p><p>S Pickstone-Taylor</p><p><strong>56. Brain network connectivity in women exposed to intimate partner violence</strong></p><p>A Roos, J-P Fouche, B Vythilingum, D J Stein</p><p><strong>57. Prolonged exposure treatment for PTSD in a Third-World, task-shifting, community-based environment</strong></p><p>J Rossouw, E Yadin, I Mbanga, T Jacobs, W Rossouw, D Alexander, S Seedat</p><p><strong>58. Contrasting effects of early0life stress on mitochondrial energy-related proteins in striatum and hippocampus of a rat model of attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder</strong></p><p><strong></strong>V Russell, J Dimatelis, J Womersley, T-L Sterley</p><p><strong>59. Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder in adults: A South African perspective</strong></p><p>R Schoeman, M de Klerk, M Kidd</p><p><strong>60. Cognitive function in women with HIV infection and early-life stress</strong></p><p>G Spies, C Fennema-Notestine, M Cherner, S Seedat</p><p><strong>61. Changes in functional connectivity networks in bipolar disorder patients after mindfulness-based cognitic therapy</strong></p><p>J A Starke, C F Beckmann, N Horn</p><p><strong>62. Post-traumatic stress disorder, overweight and obesity: A systematic review and meta-analysis</strong></p><p><strong></strong>S Suliman, L Anthonissen, J Carr, S du Plessis, R Emsley, S M J Hemmings, C Lochner, N McGregor L van den Heuvel, S Seedat</p><p><strong>63. The brain and behaviour in a third-trimester equivalent animal model of fetal alcohol spectrum disorders</strong></p><p>P C Swart, C B Currin, J J Dimatelis, V A Russell</p><p><strong>64. Irritability Assessment Model (IAM) to monitor irritability in child and adolescent psychiatric disorders.</strong></p><p>D van der Westhuizen</p><p><strong>65. Outcome of parent-adolescent training in chilhood victimisation: Adaptive functioning, psychosocial and physiological variables</strong></p><p>D van der Westhuizen</p><p><strong>66. The effect of ketamine in the Wistar-Kyoto and Sprague Dawley rat models of depression</strong></p><p>P J van Zyl, J J Dimatelis, V A Russell</p><p><strong>67. Investigating COMT variants in anxiety sensitivity in South African adolescents</strong></p><p>L J Zass, L Martin, S Seedat, S M J Hemmings</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p><strong><br /></strong></p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>

Purpose This research paper aims to investigate the impact of pharmaceutical marketing on the prescription behavior of physicians. It further examines whether the use of various promotional techniques including advertisements, sales promotions, personal selling and direct marketing by pharmaceutical companies influences the prescription behavior of doctors. Based on the increasing ethical concerns regarding the promotion of specific drugs for personal gains, the research also investigated the moderating role of ethical ideology in the above relationship. Design/methodology/approach To accomplish the research goals, quantitative research methods were used. Using the online questionnaire, data were collected from 93 doctors working in government and private hospitals in Pakistan, and structural equation modeling technique was used to analyze the impact of pharmaceutical marketing techniques on the prescription decisions of physicians. Findings The findings suggested that marketing strategies of pharmaceutical companies positively influences the prescription behavior of doctors. Further, physicians having weak ethical standards are likely to be strongly influenced by the marketing and promotional practices of companies. Practical implications The research is pivotal in understanding the perspective of doctors and the ethical considerations that need to be addressed while devising the marketing campaigns by pharmaceutical companies. Further, these findings provide important implications regarding the essential linkage between ethical values and the development of right marketing tools. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is one of the first few to empirically develop and test the role of moral values followed by physicians when they take prescription decisions. Based on the findings, future researchers are encouraged to further investigate the need of setting boundaries for pharmaceutical companies and restricting their usage regarding the promotional tactics.

Abstract Background In the EU, clinical assessors, rapporteurs and the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use are obliged to assess the ethical aspects of a clinical development program and include major ethical flaws in the marketing authorization deliberation processes. To this date, we know very little about the manner that these regulators put this obligation into action. In this paper, we intend to look into the manner and the extent that ethical issues discovered during inspection have reached the deliberation processes. Methods To gather data, we used the Dutch Medicines Evaluation Board database and first searched for the inspections, and their accompanying site inspection reports and integrated inspection reports, related to central marketing authorization applications (henceforth, application/s) of drugs submitted to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) from 2011 to 2015. We then extracted inspection findings that were purely of ethical nature, i.e., those that did not affect the benefit/risk balance of the study (issues related to informed consent, research ethics committees, and respect for persons). Only findings graded at least major by the inspectorate were included. Lastly, to identify how many of the ethically relevant findings (ERFs) reach the application deliberation processes, we extracted the relevant joint response assessment reports and reviewed the sections that discussed inspection findings. Results From 2011 to 2015, there were 390 processed applications, of which 65 had inspection reports and integrated inspection reports accessible via the database of the Dutch Medicines Evaluation Board. Of the 65, we found ERFs in 37 (56.9%). The majority of the ERFs were graded as major and half of the time it was informed-consent related. A third of these findings were related to research ethics committee processes and requirements. Of the 37 inspections with ERFs, 30 were endorsed in the integrated inspection reports as generally GCP compliant. Day 150 joint response assessment reports and Day 180 list of outstanding issues were reviewed for all 37 inspections, and none of the ERFs were carried over in any of the assessment reports or list of outstanding issues. Conclusion None of the ethically relevant findings, all of which were graded as major or critical in integrated inspection reports, were explicitly carried over to the joint assessment reports. This calls for more transparency in EMA application deliberations on how ERFs are considered, if at all, in the decision-making processes.

Abstract Background Human embryonic stem cells (hESC) as a source for the development of advanced therapy medicinal products are considered for treatment of Parkinson’s disease (PD). Research has shown promising results and opened an avenue of great importance for patients who currently lack a disease modifying therapy. The use of hESC has given rise to moral concerns and been the focus of often heated debates on the moral status of human embryos. Approval for marketing is still pending. Objective To Investigate the perspectives and concerns of patients with PD, patients being the directly concerned stakeholders in the ethical discussion. Methods Qualitative semi-structured interviews related to this new therapy in seventeen patients from two Swedish cities. Results The participants expressed various interests related to the use of human embryos for development of medicinal therapies; however, overall, they were positive towards the use of hESC for treatment of PD. It was deemed important that the donating woman or couple made the choice to donate embryos voluntarily. Furthermore, there were concerns that the industry does not always prioritise the patient over profit; thus, transparency was seen as important.

AbstractSince the advent of drug regulation in 1962, regulatory agencies have been in the practice of using strict standards to test the safety and efficacy of medical treatments and products. Regulatory agencies, such as the FDA, demand two full-fledged Randomized Clinical Trials demonstrating the safety and effectiveness of drugs to grant its marketing authorization. On the contrary, surgical treatments are left completely unregulated. There are several reasons explaining this difference, and all of them point to the difficulty of conducting well-designed RCTs in surgery. However, we argue that none of these arguments is decisive and that, under certain conditions, surgical RCTs can be morally justified and methodologically sound. Although ethical constraints restrict the number of testable surgical procedures, and surgical trials might not be as dependable as pharmaceutical RCTs, our analysis suggests that, in certain cases, it is possible to obtain high-quality evidence about the safety and efficacy of surgical procedures. Untested surgical treatments may prove to be ineffective and harm patients. Therefore, regulation of surgical procedures seems not only morally acceptable and able to provide reliable scientific evidence, but also desirable and justified from an ethical-political standpoint.

Previous studies have pointed to practices of disconnectivity and disengagement on Facebook, both generally (Stroud, 2010; Sunstein, 2009) and in the specific context of the Israeli society as a divided society in conflict (John and Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015; John and Gal, 2017; Gal, 2019). Our study aims to expand on these previous findings by examining practices of disconnectivity and disengagement in a different setting: among a professional group of Jewish Israeli advertisers who discuss their attempts to exclude Arab-named profiles from responding to their Facebook campaigns. The analysis focuses on a major Facebook group of social media marketing experts in Israel. This group is an open group consisting of 15,789 members, most of them Jewish-Israelis. We examined posts that were published in this group between 2013–2017 and dealt with Israeli-Arab audiences. Our findings emphasize the moral and ethical aspects of practices of disengagement and disconnectivity that — in the case studied here — help normalize and justify exclusion.

This article engages with two rich but largely disparate research traditions: one looks at ethical consumption, that is, constructions and contestations around good food, while the other interrogates the equally contested space of what it means to be a good farmer. The argument is informed by qualitative data collected from, on the one hand, those engaged in shaping urban food policy and institutional procurement plans in Denver, Colorado, and, on the other hand, rural Colorado farmers and ranchers who supply out-of-state markets. Given the growing appeal of locally sourced food from smaller scale producers utilizing certain so-called ethical management practices (resulting in, e.g. cage-free chickens, organic food, and grass-fed beef), the article asks, “how are particular markers of good food,” which I show to be commonly held in urban foodscapes, “understood by rural producers?,” and “how do these constructions play into their conceptions of what it means to be a good farmer?” Conceptually, the argument is situated within a moral economy framework, which reminds us that the market is always mediated by institutions, individuals, and communities and vice versa. This framework emphasizes the point that markets are moralizing – and demoralizing – entities. The article adds to the fields of sociology of consumption and critical agrifood studies by interrogating aspects of how the two “ends” of the supply chain are interconnected. Eaters’ constructions of good food and producers’ understandings of what it means to be a good farmer are shown to be intertwined.

Abstract Background Nusinersen is one of an increasing number of new, expensive orphan drugs to receive authorization. These drugs strain public healthcare budgets and challenge principles for resource allocation. Nusinersen was introduced in the Norwegian public healthcare system in 2018. A national expert group consisting of physicians was formed to oversee the introduction and continuation of treatment in light of specific start and stop criteria. Methods We have studied experiences within the expert group with a special emphasis on their application of the start and stop criteria, rationing of treatment, and experienced moral dilemmas. A research interview with six members of the national expert group was performed, then analysed with manifest content analysis. The analysis was supplemented with publically available sources on priority setting and the process leading up to the introduction of nusinersen and the establishment of the expert group. Results Sixty-six patients have received treatment within the first 25 months since the national expert group’s establishment. Treatment has not been discontinued for any patient. No patients under 18 years of age have been denied treatment, as those who were referred at this age were all deemed to fulfill the start criteria. The expert group has, however, increased geographical treatment equity and facilitated important cooperation at the national level. Furthermore, it has enhanced open and critical discussions of both medical issues and new ethical dilemmas. Conclusion Although facilitating equal access to treatment for SMA patients, the national expert group has not discontinued treatment for any patient. It is suggested that in order for clinicians to be able to ration care for individual patients, they require both adequate support and sufficient formal authority. Start and stop criteria need to be re-evaluated as more knowledge and experience are gained regarding the treatment.

Welcome to the last issue of the IJEI for 2013. It has been an exciting year with numerous conferences and research on academic integrity around the world. Auckland University of Technology kicked off the year with the Fraud, Fakery and Fabrication: Academic and research integrity conference, the International Center for Academic Integrity held their annual conference in San Antonio on 28 February, the National Roundtable and Australian National Speaking Tour for the Exemplary Academic Integrity Project was also held in late February and early March, the 3rd World Conference on Research Integrity was held in Montreal in May, the Plagiarism across Europe and Beyond Conference shared the results of the 'Impact of policies for plagiarism in higher education across Europe' project in Brno, Czech Republic in June, and the 6th Asia Pacific Conference on Educational Integrity showcased the work of Australian Office for Learning and Teaching commissioned projects on academic integrity in Sydney in October. With so much interest and research on this topic across a range of countries and contexts, it is perhaps not surprising that the current issue is an eclectic mix of reflective, conceptual, empirical and case study work from researchers spanning six countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Norway, Australia, Sweden, Indonesia and the UK. The issue covers diverse topics extending from the development of academic skills, to motivations and predictors of student plagiarism, systems to reduce plagiarism and the responsibility of universities to provide marketing information based on ethical principles of honesty and trustworthiness. Student groups represented include secondary school, undergraduate and postgraduate. Radhika Iyer-O'Sullivan, formerly of the British University in Dubai, analyses faculty feedback, samples of student writing and Turnitin Similarity Reports to determine if teaching critical reading as a threshold concept results in critical thinking and subsequently improved critical writing skills. While the sample was small and the results inconclusive, Iyer-O'Sullivan makes the case that teaching critical reading assists students to understand the importance of using supporting evidence to develop a convincing academic argument. Håvard Skaar and Hugo Hammer from Oslo and Akershus University College, Norway use a mixed-methods approach to explore secondary school students' plagiarism of internet sources in essay writing. The survey of 67 students indicated that 75% of students reported plagiarising from online sources and that plagiarism accounted for 25% of the total amount of text. Students with a higher grade in written Norwegian plagiarised less than those with a lower grade, and students more conversant with appropriate citation practices plagiarised less than those students less familiar with referencing conventions. Qualitative feedback from interviews with 29 students indicated that the students wanted to spend as little time and effort as possible on the assessment task and that plagiarism was chosen as a writing strategy, with little reflection on the moral aspects on this decision. In contrast, Rebecca Awdry, from the University of Canberra, and Rick Sarre, from the University of South Australia, found that the university students in their study expressed strong ethical positions in relation to plagiarism, arguing that it was cheating and dishonest. Awdry and Sarre explored students' motivations to plagiarise using a mixed methods approach, and analysed the data through the prism of criminological theory. The authors conclude that while rational choice theory provides some insight into student breaches of academic integrity, there is an apparent disconnect between the way that academics view students' behaviour and how students themselves express their motivations. In agreement with key writers in the field (Bertram Gallant, McCabe, Bretag et al.), Awdry and Sarre conclude that higher education providers should focus less on detection and punishment and more on developing a values-based culture of integrity. Based on a sample of 362 undergraduate psychology students, and in the context of the Indonesian government's position that any form of plagiarism "is a serious offense that may even be classified as an illegal action", Ide Bagus Siaputra, from Universitas Surabaya, explores the proposition that "regardless of the presence or absence of opportunities and the severity of the potential sanctions, some individuals seem to be prone to plagiarism". Siaputra builds on the work of Williams, Nathanson and Paulhus (2010), to propose five variables as predictors of plagiarism, including procrastination, performance, personality, perfectionism, and achievement motivation, and names the model 'the 4PA of plagiarism'. Findings from the author's study indicate that procrastination was the key predictor of plagiarism, followed by achievement motivation. Looking to provide a multi-pronged response to student plagiarism, Ken Larsson and Henrik Hansson from Stockholm University, Sweden share the results of an innovation at their university. The digital system called SciPro was developed to support independent student thesis work, decrease the burden on supervisors for feedback on basic skills, and reduce plagiarism. The system includes a number of modules which facilitate management, communication and learning. According to the authors, SciPro works to prevents plagiarism by providing: 1) clear instructions about rules and regulations for students and supervisors; 2) an online peer-review system; 3) transparent online communication and file storage of accumulated manuscripts; and 4) a final seminar module enabling automatic generation of originality reports from Turnitin when students upload their final thesis manuscripts. Larsson and Hansson report that the implementation of SciPro has resulted in substantial improvements in policy development, successful integration of anti-plagiarism software, and an increased awareness of plagiarism issues. The final paper in the issue reminds us that academic integrity is an issue which underpins every aspect of the educational enterprise and goes well beyond plagiarism in student assessment. Educational psychologist, John Bradley, from the UK, offers a typology of nine misleading data-based marketing claims based on his examination of UK university prospectuses. Bradley's analysis leads him to assert that marketing of higher education should aspire to higher ethical standards than marketing in general because of the high stakes involved for a potentially vulnerable group, and because the reputation of the university is founded on having high standards of scholarship. Rather than rely on external regulators to ensure the authenticity of marketing claims, the author advocates a system of voluntary peer review of university marketing prospectuses based on the principles of research and publication ethics. I trust you will enjoy this varied issue which will interest teachers, researchers, policymakers, administrators and marketers of education, in both secondary and tertiary contexts. Volume 10(1) of the IJEI, to be published in June 2014, will include the best reviewed papers from the Plagiarism Across Europe and Beyond Conference, Czech Republic 2013, along with appropriate papers submitted via the IJEI platform. Tracey Bretag, IJEI Editor Email: tracey.bretag@unisa.edu.au

BackgroundIn the past twenty years the discourse of the weight-centred health paradigm (WCHP) has attained almost complete dominance in the sphere of public health policy throughout the developed English speaking world. The national governments of Australia and many countries around the world have responded to what is perceived as an ‘epidemic of obesity’ with public health policies and programs explicitly focused on reducing and preventing obesity through so called ‘lifestyle’ behaviour change. Weight-related public health initiatives have been subjected to extensive critique based on ideological, ethical and empirical grounds (Solovay; Oliver; Gaesser; Gard; Monaghan, Colls and Evans; Wright; Rothblum and Solovay; Saguy; Rich, Monaghan and Aphramor; Bacon and Aphramor; Brown). Many scholars have raised concerns about the stigmatising and harmful effects of the WCHP (Aphramor; Bacon and Aphramor; O'Dea; Tylka et al.), and in particular the inequitable distribution of such negative impacts on women, people who are poor, and people of colour (Campos). Weight-based stigma is now well recognised as a pervasive and insidious form of stigma (Puhl and Heuer). Weight-based discrimination (a direct result of stigma) in the USA has a similar prevalence rate to race-based discrimination, and discrimination for fatter and younger people in particular is even higher (Puhl, Andreyeva and Brownell). Numerous scholars have highlighted the stigmatising discourse evident in obesity prevention programs and policies (O'Reilly and Sixsmith; Pederson et al.; Nuffield Council on Bioethics; ten Have et al.; MacLean et al.; Carter, Klinner, et al.; Fry; O'Dea; Rich, Monaghan and Aphramor). The ‘war on obesity’ can therefore be regarded as a social determinant of poor health (O'Hara and Gregg). Focusing on overweight and obese people is not only damaging to people’s health, but is ineffective in addressing the broader social and economic issues that create health and wellbeing (Cohen, Perales and Steadman; MacLean et al.; Walls et al.). Analyses of the discourses used in weight-related public health initiatives have highlighted oppressive, stigmatizing and discriminatory discourses that position body weight as pathological (O'Reilly; Pederson et al.), anti-social and a threat to the viable future of society (White). There has been limited analysis of discourses in Australian social marketing campaigns focused on body weight (Lupton; Carter, Rychetnik, et al.).Social Marketing CampaignsIn 2006 the Australian, State and Territory Governments funded the Measure Up social marketing campaign (Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing "Measure Up"). As the name suggests Measure Up focuses on the measurement of health through body weight and waist circumference. Campaign resources include brochures, posters, a tape measure, a 12 week planner, a community guide and a television advertisement. Campaign slogans are ‘The more you gain, the more you have to lose’ and ‘How do you measure up?’Tomorrow People is the component of Measure Up designed for Indigenous Australians (Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing "Tomorrow People"). Tomorrow People resources focus on healthy eating and physical activity and include a microsite on the Measure Up website, booklet, posters, print and radio advertisements. The campaign slogan is ‘Tomorrow People starts today. Do it for our kids. Do it for our culture.’ In 2011, phase two of the Measure Up campaign was launched (Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing "Swap It, Don't Stop It"). The central premise of Swap It, Don’t Stop It is that you ‘can lose your belly without losing all the things you love’ by making ‘simple’ swaps of behaviours related to eating and physical activity. The campaign’s central character Eric is made from a balloon, as are all of the other characters and visual items used in the campaign. Eric claims thatover the years my belly has ballooned and ballooned. It’s come time to do something about it — the last thing I want is to end up with some cancers, type 2 diabetes and heart disease. That’s why I’ve become a Swapper! What’s a swapper? It’s simple really. It just means swapping some of the things I’m doing now for healthier choices. That way I can lose my belly, without losing all the things I love. It’s easy! The campaign has produced around 30 branded resource items including brochures, posters, cards, fact sheets, recipes, and print, radio, television and online advertisements. All resources include references to Eric and most also include the image of the tape measure used in the Measure Up campaign. The Swap It, Don’t Stop It campaign also includes resources specifically directed at Indigenous Australians including two posters from the generic campaign with a dot painting motif added to the background. MethodologyThe epistemological position in this project was constructivist (Crotty) and the theoretical perspective was critical theory (Crotty). Multimedia critical discourse analysis (Machin and Mayr) was the methodology used to examine the social marketing campaigns and identify the discourses within them. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) focuses on critiquing text for evidence of power and ideology. CDA is used to reveal the ideas, absences and assumptions, and therefore the power interests buried within texts, in order to bring about social change. As a method, CDA has a structured three dimensional approach involving textual practice analysis (for lexicon) at the core, within the context of discursive practice analysis (for rhetorical and lexical strategies particularly with respect to claims-making), which falls within the context of social practice analysis (Jacobs). Social practice analysis explores the role played by power and ideology in supporting or disturbing the discourse (Jacobs; Machin and Mayr). Multimodal CDA (MCDA) uses a broad definition of text to include words, pictures, symbols, ideas, themes or any message that can be communicated (Machin and Mayr). Analysis of the social marketing campaigns involved examining the vocabulary, grammar, sentence structure, visuals and overall structure of the text for textual, discursive and social practices.Results and DiscussionIndividual ResponsibilityThe discourse of individual responsibility is strongly evident in the campaigns. In this discourse, it is ultimately the individual who is held responsible for their body weight and their health. The individual responsibility discourse is signified by the discursive practice of using epistemic (related to the truth or certainty) and deontic (compelling or instructing) modality words, particularly modal verbs and modal adverbs. High modality epistemic words are used to convince the reader of the certainty of statements and to portray the statement-maker as authoritative. High modality deontic words are used to instil power and authority in the instructions.The extensive use of high modality epistemic and deontic words is demonstrated in the following paragraph assembled from various campaign materials: Ultimately (epistemic modality adverb) individuals must take responsibility (deontic modality verb) for their own health, including their and weight. Obesity is caused (epistemic modality verb) by an imbalance in energy intake (from diet) (epistemic modality verb) and expenditure (from activity) (epistemic modality verb). Individually (epistemic modality adverb) we make decisions (epistemic modality verb) about how much we eat (epistemic modality verb) and how much activity we undertake (epistemic modality verb). Each of us can control (epistemic modality) our own weight by controlling (deontic modality) what we eat (deontic modality verb) and how much we exercise (deontic modality verb). To correct (deontic modality verb) the energy imbalance, individuals need to develop (deontic modality verb) a healthy lifestyle by making changes (deontic modality verb) to correct (deontic modality verb) their dietary habits and increase (deontic modality verb) their activity levels. The verbs must, control, correct, develop, change, increase, eat and exercise are deontic modality verbs designed to instruct or compel the reader.These discursive practices result in the clear message that individuals can and must control, correct and change their eating and physical activity, and thereby control their weight and health. The implication of the individualist discourse is that individuals, irrespective of their genes, life-course, social position or environment, are charged with the responsibility of being more self-surveying, self-policing, self-disciplined and self-controlled, and therefore healthier. This is consistent with the individualist orientation of neoliberal ideology, and has been identified in various critiques of obesity prevention public health programs that centralise the self-responsible subject (Murray; Rich, Monaghan and Aphramor) and the concept of ‘healthism’, the moral obligation to pursue health through healthy behaviours or healthy lifestyles (Aphramor and Gingras; Mansfield and Rich). The hegemonic Western-centric individualist discourse has also been critiqued for its role in subordinating or silencing other models of health and wellbeing including Aboriginal or indigenous models, that do not place the individual in the centre (McPhail-Bell, Fredericks and Brough).Obesity Causes DiseaseEpistemic modality verbs are used as a discursive practice to portray the certainty or probability of the relationship between obesity and chronic disease. The strength of the epistemic modality verbs is generally moderate, with terms such as ‘linked’, ‘associated’, ‘connected’, ‘related’ and ‘contributes to’ most commonly used to describe the relationship. The use of such verbs may suggest recognition of uncertainty or at least lack of causality in the relationship. However this lowered modality is counterbalanced by the use of verbs with higher epistemic modality such as ‘causes’, ‘leads to’, and ‘is responsible for’. For example:The other type is intra-abdominal fat. This is the fat that coats our organs and causes the most concern. Even though we don’t yet fully understand what links intra-abdominal fat with chronic disease, we do know that even a small deposit of this fat increases the risk of serious health problems’. (Swap It, Don’t Stop It Website; italics added)Thus the prevailing impression is that there is an objective, definitive, causal relationship between obesity and a range of chronic diseases. The obesity-chronic disease discourse is reified through the discursive practice of claims-making, whereby statements related to the problem of obesity and its relationship with chronic disease are attributed to authoritative experts or expert organisations. The textual practice of presupposition is evident with the implied causal relationship between obesity and chronic disease being taken for granted and uncontested. Through the textual practice of lexical absence, there is a complete lack of alternative views about body weight and health. Likewise there is an absence of acknowledgement of the potential harms arising from focusing on body weight, such as increased body dissatisfaction, disordered eating, and, paradoxically, weight gain.Shame and BlameBoth Measure Up and Swap It, Don’t Stop It include a combination of written/verbal text and visual images that create a sense of shame and blame. In Measure Up, the central character starts out as young, slim man, and as he ages his waist circumference grows. When he learns that his expanding waistline is associated with an increased risk of chronic disease, his facial expression and body language convey that he is sad, dejected and fearful. In the still images, this character and a female character are positioned looking down at the tape measure as they measure their ‘too large’ waists. This position and the looks on their faces suggest hanging their heads in shame. The male characters in both campaigns specifically express shame about “letting themselves go” by unthinkingly practicing ‘unhealthy’ behaviours. The characters’ clothing also contribute to a sense of shame. Both male and female characters in Measure Up appear in their underwear, which suggests that they are being publicly shamed. The clothing of the Measure Up characters is similar to that worn by contestants in the television program The Biggest Loser, which explicitly uses shame to ‘motivate’ contestants to lose weight. Part of the public shaming of contestants involves their appearance in revealing exercise clothing for weigh-ins, which displays their fatness for all to see (Thomas, Hyde and Komesaroff). The stigmatising effects of this and other aspects of the Biggest Loser television program are well documented (Berry et al.; Domoff et al.; Sender and Sullivan; Thomas, Hyde and Komesaroff; Yoo). The appearance of the Measure Up characters in their underwear combined with their head position and facial expressions conveys a strong, consistent message that the characters both feel shame and are deserving of shame due to their self-inflicted ‘unhealthy’ behaviours. The focus on ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’ behaviours contributes to accepted and contested health identities (Fry). The ‘accepted health identity’ is represented as responsible and aspiring to and pursuing good health. The ‘contested health identity’ is represented as unhealthy, consuming too much food, and taking health risks, and this identity is stigmatised by public health programs (Fry). The ‘contested health identity’ represents the application to public health of Goffman’s ‘spoiled identity’ on which much stigmatisation theorising and research has been based (Goffman). As a result of both lexical and visual textual practices, the social marketing campaigns contribute to the construction of the ‘accepted health identity’ through discourses of individual responsibility, choice and healthy lifestyle. Furthermore, they contribute to the construction of the spoiled or ‘contested health identity’ through discourses that people are naturally unhealthy and need to be frightened, guilted and shamed into stopping ‘unhealthy’ behaviours and adopting ‘healthy’ behaviours. The ‘contested health identity’ constructed through these discourses is in turn stigmatised by such discourses. Thus the campaigns not only risk perpetuating stigmatisation through the reinforcement of the health identities, but possibly extend it further by legitimising the stigma associated with such identities. Given that these campaigns are conducted by the Australian Government, the already deeply stigmatising social belief system receives a significant boost in legitimacy by being positioned as a public health belief system perpetrated by the Government. Fear and AlarmIn the Measure Up television advertisement the main male character’s daughter, who has run into the frame, abruptly stops and looks fearful when she hears about his increased risk of disease. Using the discursive practice of claims-making, the authoritative external source informs the man that the more he gains (in terms of his waist circumference), the more he has to lose. The clear implication is that he needs to be fearful of losing his health, his family and even his life if he doesn’t reduce his waist circumference. The visual metaphor of a balloon is used as the central semiotic trope in Swap It, Don’t Stop It. The characters and other items featuring in the visuals are all made from twisting balloons. Balloons themselves may not create fear or alarm, unless one is unfortunate to be afflicted with globophobia (Freed), but the visual metaphor of the balloon in the social marketing campaign had a range of alarmist meanings. At the population level, rates and/or costs of obesity have been described in news items as ‘ballooning’ (Body Ecology; Stipp; AFP; Thien and Begawan) with accompanying visual images of extremely well-rounded bodies or ‘headless fatties’ (Cooper). Rapid or significant weight gain is referred to in everyday language as ‘ballooning weight’. The use of the balloon metaphor as a visual device in Swap It, Don’t Stop It serves to reinforce and extend these alarmist messages. Further, there is no attempt in the campaigns to reduce alarm by including positive or neutral photographs or images of fat people. This visual semiotic absence – a form of cultural imperialism (Young) – contributes to the invisibilisation of ‘real life’ fat people who are not ashamed of themselves. Habermas suggests that society evolves and operationalises through rational communication which includes the capacity to question the validity of claims made within communicative action (Habermas The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere; Habermas The Theory of Communicative Action: Reason and the Rationalisation of Society). However the communicative action taken by the social marketing campaigns analysed in this study presents claims as uncontested facts and is therefore directorial about the expectations of individuals to take more responsibility for themselves, adopt certain behaviours and reduce or prevent obesity. Habermas argues that the lack or distortion of rational communication erodes relationships at the individual and societal levels (Habermas The Theory of Communicative Action: Reason and the Rationalisation of Society; Habermas The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere). The communicative actions represented by the social marketing campaigns represents a distortion of rational communication and therefore erodes the wellbeing of individuals (for example through internalised stigma, shame, guilt, body dissatisfaction, weight preoccupation, disordered eating and avoidance of health care), relationships between individuals (for example through increased blame, coercion, stigma, bias, prejudice and discrimination) and society (for example through stigmatisation of groups in the population on the basis of their body size and increased social and health inequity). Habermas proposes that power differentials work to distort rational communication, and that it is these distortions in communication that need to be the focal point for change (Habermas The Theory of Communicative Action: Reason and the Rationalisation of Society; Habermas The Theory of Communicative Action: The Critique of Functionalist Reason; Habermas The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere). Through critical analysis of the discourses used in the social marketing campaigns, we identified that they rely on the power, authority and status of experts to present uncontested representations of body weight and ‘appropriate’ health responses to it. In identifying the discourses present in the social marketing campaigns, we hope to focus attention on and thereby disrupt the distortions in the practical knowledge of the weight-centred health paradigm in order to contribute to systemic reorientation and change.ConclusionThrough the use of textual, discursive and social practices, the social marketing campaigns analysed in this study perpetuate the following concepts: everyone should be alarmed about growing waistlines and ‘ballooning’ rates of ‘obesity’; individuals are to blame for excess body weight, due to ignorance and the practice of ‘unhealthy behaviours’; individuals have a moral, parental, familial and cultural responsibility to monitor their weight and adopt ‘healthy’ eating and physical activity behaviours; such behaviour changes are easy to make and will result in weight loss, which will reduce risk of disease. These paternalistic campaigns evoke feelings of personal and parental guilt and shame, resulting in coercion to ‘take action’. They simultaneously stigmatise fat people yet serve to invisibilise them. Public health agencies must consider the harmful consequences of social marketing campaigns focused on body weight.ReferencesAFP. "A Ballooning Health Issue around the World." Gulfnews.com 29 May 2013. 17 Sep. 2013 ‹http://gulfnews.com/news/world/other-world/a-ballooning-health-issue-around-the-world-1.1189899›.Aphramor, Lucy. "The Impact of a Weight-Centred Treatment Approach on Women's Health and Health-Seeking Behaviours." Journal of Critical Dietetics 1.2 (2012): 3-12.Aphramor, Lucy, and Jacqui Gingras. "That Remains to Be Said: Disappeared Feminist Discourses on Fat in Dietetic Theory and Practice." The Fat Studies Reader, eds. Esther Rothblum and Sondra Solovay. New York: New York University Press, 2009. 97-105. Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing. 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Introduction The term monster might have its roots in the Latin word monere (to warn), but it has since evolved to have various symbolic meanings, from a terrifying mythical creature to a person of extreme cruelty. No matter the flexibility in use, the term is mostly meant to be derogatory (Asma). As Gilmore puts it, monsters “embody all that is dangerous and horrible in the human imagination” (1). However, it may be argued that monsters sometimes perform the much-needed work of defining and policing our norms (Mittman and Hensel). Since their archetype is predisposed to transgressing boundaries of human integrity (Gilmore), they help establish deviation between human and in-human. Their cognition and action are considered ‘other’ (Kearney) and a means with which people can understand what is right and wrong, and what is divergent from appropriate ways of being. The term monster need not even refer to the werewolves, ogres, vampires, zombies and the like that strike fear in audiences through their ‘immoral, heinous or unjust’ appearance or behaviours. Rather, the term monster can be, and has been, readily applied as a metaphor to describe the unthinkable, unethical, and brutal actions of human beings (Beville 5). Inadvertently, “through their bodies, words, and deeds, monsters show us ourselves” (Mittman and Hensel 2), or what we consider monstrous about ourselves. Therefore, humans acting in ways that deviate from societal norms and standards can be viewed as monstrous. This is evident in the representations of public relations practitioners in media offerings. In the practice of public relations, ethical standards are advocated as the norm, and deviating from them considered unprofessional (Fawkes), and as we contend: monstrous. However, the practice has long suffered a negative stereotypical perception of being deceptive, and with public relations roles receiving less screen time than shows and films about lawyers, accountants, teachers and the like, these few derogatory depictions can distort how audiences view the occupation (Johnston). Depictions of professions (lawyers, cops, journalists, etc.) tend to be cliché, but our contention is that fewer depictions of public relations practitioners on screen further limit the possibility for diverse depictions. The media can have a socialising impact and can influence audiences to view the content they consume as a reflection of the real world around them (Chandler). Television, in particular, with its capacity to prompt heuristic processing in audiences (Shurm), has messages that can be easily decoded by people of various literacies as they become immersed in the viewing experiences (Gerbner and Gross). These messages gain potency because, despite being set in fictional worlds, they can be understood as reflective of the world and audiences’ experiences of it (Gerbner and Gross). Tsetsura, Bentley, and Newcomb add that popular stories recounted in the media have authoritative power and can offer patterns of meaning that shape individual perceptions. Admittedly, as Stuart Hall suggests, media offerings can be encoded with ideologies and representations that are considered appropriate according to the dominant elite, but these may not necessarily be decoded as preferred meanings. In other words, those exposed to stories of monstrous public relations practitioners can agree with such a position, oppose this viewpoint, or remain neutral, but this is dependent on individual experiences. Without other frames of reference, it could be that viewers of negative portrayals of public relations accept the encoded representation that inevitably does a disservice to the profession. When the representations of the field of public relations suggest, inaccurately, that the industry is dominated by men (Johnston), and women practitioners are shown as slick dressers who control and care little about ethics (Dennison), the distortions can adversely impact on the identities of public relations practitioners and on how they are collectively viewed (Tsetsura et al.). Public relations practitioners view this portrayal as the ‘other’ and tend to distance the ideal self from it, continuing to be stuck in the dichotomy of saints and sinners (Fawkes). Our observation of television offerings such as Scandal, Flack, Call My Agent!, Absolutely Fabulous, Sex and the City, You’re the Worst, and Emily in Paris reveals how television programmes continue to perpetuate the negative stereotypes about public relations practice, where practitioners are anything but ethical—therefore monstrous. The characters, mostly well-groomed women, are shown as debased, liars and cheaters who will subvert ethical standards for personal and professional gain. Portrayals of Public Relations Practitioners in Television and Media According to Miller, the eight archetypical traits identified in media representations of public relations practitioners are: ditzy, obsequious, cynical, manipulative, money-minded, isolated, accomplished, or unfulfilled. In later research, Yoon and Black found that television representations of public relations tended to suggest that people in these roles were heartless, manipulative bullies, while Lambert and White contend that the depiction of the profession has improved to be more positive, but nonetheless continues to do a disservice to the practice by presenting female workers, especially, as “shallow but loveable” (18). We too find that public relations practitioners continue to be portrayed as morally ambiguous characters who are willing to break ethical codes of conduct to suit the needs of their clients. We discuss three themes prevalent as popular tropes in television programmes that characterise public relations practitioners as monstrous. To Be or Not to Be a Slick and Skilful Liar? Most television programmes present public relations practitioners as slick and skilful liars, who are shown as well-groomed and authoritative, convinced that they are lying only to protect their clients. In fact, in most cases the characters are shown to not only believe but also advocate to their juniors that ‘a little bit of lying’ is almost necessary to maintain client relationships and ensure campaign success. For example, in the British drama Flack, the main character of Robyn (played by Anna Paquin) is heard advising her prodigy “just assume we are lying to everyone”. The programmes also feature characters who are in dilemma about the monstrous expectations from their roles, struggling to accept that that they engage in deception as part of their jobs. However, most of them are presented as somewhat of an ugly duckling or the modest character in the programme, who is not always rational or in an explicit position of power. For example, Emily from Emily in Paris (played by Lily Collins), while working as a social media manager, regularly questions the approaches taken by the firm she works for. Her boss Sylvie Grateux (played by Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu), who embodies the status quo, is constantly disapproving of Emily’s lack of sophisticated self-presentation, among other aspects. In the episode ‘Faux Amis’, Sylvie quips “it’s not you personally. It’s everything you stand for. You’re the enemy of luxury because luxury is defined by sophistication and taste, not emilyinparis”. Similarly, in the first episode of Call My Agent!, Samuel Kerr (played by Alain Rimoux), the head of a film publicity firm, solves the conundrum faced by his anxious junior Gabriel (played by Grégory Montel) by suggesting that he lie to his client about the real reason why she lost the film. When a modestly dressed Gabriel questions how he can lie to someone he cares for, Samuel, towering over him in an impeccable suit and a confident demeanour, advises “who said anything about lying? Don’t lie. Simply don’t tell her the truth”. However, the subtext here is that the lie is to protect the client from unnecessary hurt and in doing so nurtures the client relationship. So, it lets the audience decide the morality of lying here. It may be argued that moral ambiguity may not necessarily be monstrous. Such grey characters are often crafted because they allow audiences to relate more readily to themselves by encouraging what Hawkins refers to as mental play. Audiences are less interested in the black and white of morality and veer towards shows such as Call My Agent! where storylines hone in on the need to do bad for the greater good. In these ways, public relations practitioners still transgress moral standards but are less likely to be considered monstrous because the impact and effect on others is utilitarian in nature. It is also interesting to note that in these programmes physical appearance is made to play a crucial role in showcasing the power and prestige of the senior public relations practitioner. This focus on attire can tend to further perpetuate unfavourable stereotypes about public relations practitioners being high income earners (Grandien) who are styled with branded apparel but lacking in substance and morals (Fröhlich and Peters). Promiscuous Women The urge to attract audiences to a female character can also lead to developing and cementing unfavourable stereotypes of public relations practitioners as uninhibited women who live on blurred lines between personal and professional. These characters are not portrayed as inherently bad, but instead are found to indulge in lives of excess. In her definition of the monstrous, Arumugam suggests that excess and insatiable appetites direct the monster’s behaviour, and Kearney outlines that this uncontainable excess is what signals the difference between humans and others. Such excess is readily identifiable in the character of Patsy Stone (played by Joanna Lumley) in Absolutely Fabulous. She is an alcoholic, regularly uses recreational drugs, is highly promiscuous, and chain-smokes throughout the series. She is depicted as prone to acting deceptively to maintain her vices. In Flack, Robyn is shown as regularly snorting cocaine and having sex with her clients. Those reviewing the show highlight how it will attract those interested in “its dark, acidic sense of humour” (Greene) while others condemn it because it emphasises the “depraved publicist” trope (Knibbs) and call it “one of the worst TV shows ever made” even though it is trying to highlight concerns raised in the MeToo movement about how men need to respect women (McGurk). Female characters such as Robyn, with her willingness to question why a client has not tried to sleep with her, appear to undermine the empowerment of the movement rather than support it, and continue to maintain the archetypes that those working in the field of public relations abhor. Similarly, Samantha Jones (played by Kim Cattrell) of Sex and the City is portrayed as sexually liberated, and in one episode another character describes Samantha’s vagina as “the hottest spot in town: it’s always open”. In many ways Samantha’s sexual behaviour reflects a post-feminist narrative of empowerment, agency, and choice, but it could also be read as a product of being a public relations practitioner frequenting parties and bars as she rubs shoulders with clients, celebrities, and high-profile businesspeople. To this end, Patsy, Samantha, and Robyn glamourise public relations and paint it as simply an extension of their liberated and promiscuous selves, with little care for any expectation of professionalism or work ethic. This is also in stark contrast to the reality, where women often tend to occupy technical roles that see much of their time spent in doing the hard yards of publicity and promotion (Krugler). Making Others Err Public relations practitioners are not just shown as being morally ambiguous themselves, but often quite adept at making others do deceitful acts on their behalf, thus nonchalantly oppressing others to get their way. For example, although lauded for elevating an African-American woman to the lead role despite the show maintaining misrepresentations of race (Lambert), the main character of Olivia Pope (played by Kerry Washington) in the television programme Scandal regularly subverts the law for her clients despite considering herself one of the “good guys” and wearing a “white hat”. Over the course of seven seasons, Olivia Pope is found to rig elections, plant listening devices in political figures’ offices, bribe, threaten, and conduct an affair with the President. In some cases, she calls on the services of her colleague Huck to literally, and figuratively, get rid of the barriers in the way of protecting her clients. For example, in season one’s episode Crash and Burn she asks Huck to torture a suspect for information about a dead client. Her willingness to request such actions of her friend and colleague, regardless of perceived good motivations, reinforces Mittman’s categorisation that monsters are identified by their effect and impact on others. Here, the impact includes the torturing of a suspect and the revisiting of psychological trauma by Huck’s character. Huck struggles to overcome his past as a killer and spends much of the show trying to curb his monstrous tendencies which are often brought on by PR woman Olivia’s requests. Although she is sometimes striving for justice, Olivia’s desire for results can lead her to act monstrously, which inadvertently contributes to the racist and sexist ideologies that have long been associated with monsters and perceptions of the Other. Across time and space, certain ethnic groups, such as those of African descent, have been associated with the demonic (Cohen). Similarly, all that is feminine often needs to be discarded as the monster to conform to the patriarchal order of society (Creed). Therefore, Olivia Pope’s monstrous behaviour not only does a disservice to representations of public relations practitioners, but also inadvertently perpetuates negative and inaccurate stereotypes about women of African American descent. Striving to be Ethical The majority of public relations practitioners are encouraged, and in some cases expected, to conform to ethical guidelines to practice and gain respect, admiration, and in-group status. In New Zealand, those who opt to become members of the Public Relations Institute of New Zealand (PRINZ) are required to abide by the association’s code of ethics. The code stipulates that members are bound to act in ways that serve public interests by ensuring they are honest, disclose conflict of interests, follow the law, act with professionalism, ensure openness and privacy are maintained, and uphold values of loyalty, fairness, and independence (PRINZ). Similarly, the Global Alliance of Public Relations and Communication Management that binds practitioners together identifies nine guiding principles that are to be adhered to to be recognised as acting ethically. These include obeying laws, working in the public’s interest, ensuring freedom of speech and assembly, acting with integrity, and upholding privacy in sensitive matters (to name a few). These governing principles are designed to maintain ethical practice in the field. Of course, the trouble is that not all who claim to practice public relations become members of the local or global governing bodies. This implies that professional associations like PRINZ are not able to enforce ethics across the board. In New Zealand alone, public relations consultants have had to offer financial reparations for acting in defamatory ways online (Fisher), or have been alleged to have bribed an assault victim to prevent the person giving evidence in a court case (Hurley). Some academics have accused the industry of being engaged in organised lying (Peacock), but these are not common, nor are these moral transgressors accepted into ethical bodies that afford practitioners authenticity and legitimacy. In most cases, public relations practitioners view their role as acting as the moral conscience of the organisations they support (Schauster, Neill, Ferrucci, and Tandoc). Furthermore, they rated better than the average adult when it came to solving ethical dilemmas through moral reasoning (Schuaster et al.). Additionally, training of practitioners through guidance of mentors has continued to contribute to the improved ethical ratings of public relations. What these findings suggest is that the monsters of public relations portrayed on our television screens are exaggerations that are not reflective of most of the practice. Women of Substance, But Not Necessarily Power Exploring the role of women in public relations, Topic, Cunha, Reigstad, Jele-Sanchez, and Moreno found that female practitioners were subordinated to their male counterparts but were found to be more inclined to practice two-way communication, offer balanced perspectives, opt to negotiate, and build relationships through cooperation. The competitiveness, independence, and status identified in popular media portrayals were found to be exhibited more by male practitioners, despite there being more women in the public relations industry than men. As Fitch argues, popular culture continues to suggest that men dominate public relations, and their preferred characteristics end up being those elements that permeate the media messages, regardless of instances where the lead character is a woman or the fact that feminist values of “loyalty, ethics, morality, [and] fairness” are advocated by female practitioners in real life (Vardeman-Winter and Place 333). Additionally, even though public relations is a feminised field, female practitioners struggle to break the glass ceiling, with male practitioners dominating executive positions and out-earning women (Pompper). Interestingly, in public relations, power is not just limited due to gender but also area of practice. In her ethnographic study of the New Zealand practice, Sissons found that practitioners who worked in consultancies were relatively powerless vis-à-vis their clients, and often this asymmetry negatively affected the practitioner’s decision-making. This implies that in stark contrast to the immoral, glamourous, and authoritative depiction of public relations women in television programmes, in reality they are mired by the struggles of a gendered occupation. Accordingly, they are not in fact in a position to have monstrous power over and impact on others. Therefore, one of the only elements the shows seem to capture and emphasise is that public relations is an occupation that specialises in image management; but what these shows contribute to is an ideology that women are expected to look and carry themselves in particular ways, ultimately constructing aesthetic standards that can diminish women’s power and self-esteem. Conclusion Miller’s archetypes may be over twenty years old, but the trend towards obsequious, manipulative, and cynical television characters remains. Although there have been identifiable shifts to loveable, yet shallow, public relations practitioners, such as Alexis Rose on Schitt’s Creek, the appeal of monstrous public relations practitioners remains. As Cohen puts it, monsters reveal to audiences “what a member of that society can become when those same dictates are rejected, when the authority of leaders or customs disintegrates and the subordination of individual to hierarchy is lost” (68). In other words, audiences enjoy watching the stories of metaphorical monsters because they exhibit the behaviours that are expected to be repressed in human beings; they depict what happens when the social norms of society are disturbed (Levina and Bui). At the very least, these media representations can act, much as monster narratives do, as a cautionary tale on how not to think and act to remain accepted as part of the in-group rather than being perceived as the Other. As Mittman and Hensel argue, society can learn much from monsters because monsters exist within human beings. According to Cohen, they offer meaning about the world and can teach audiences so they can learn, in this case, how to be better. Although the representations of public relations in television can offer insights into roles that are usually most effective when they are invisible (Chorazy and Harrington), the continued negative stereotypes of public relations practitioners can adversely impact on the industry if people are unaware of the practices of the occupation, because lacking a reference point limits audiences’ opportunities to critically evaluate the media representations. This will certainly harm the occupation by perpetuating existing negative stereotypes of charming and immoral practitioners, and perhaps add to its struggles with gendered identity and professional legitimacy. References Absolutely Fabulous. Created by Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French. 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Introduction This paper offers a survey of familiar popular music performers and songwriters who reference coffee in their work. It examines three areas of discourse: the psychoactive effects of caffeine, coffee and courtship rituals, and the politics of coffee consumption. I claim that coffee carries a cultural and musicological significance comparable to that of the chemical stimulants and consumer goods more readily associated with popular music. Songs about coffee may not be as potent as those featuring drugs and alcohol (Primack; Schapiro), or as common as those referencing commodities like clothes and cars (Englis; McCracken), but they do feature across a wide range of genres, some of which enjoy archetypal associations with this beverage. m.o.m.m.y. Needs c.o.f.f.e.e.: The Psychoactive Effect of Coffee The act of performing and listening to popular music involves psychological elements comparable to the overwhelming sensory experience of drug taking: altered perceptions, repetitive grooves, improvisation, self-expression, and psychological empathy—such as that between musician and audience (Curry). Most popular music genres are, as a result, culturally and sociologically identified with the consumption of at least one mind-altering substance (Lyttle; Primack; Schapiro). While the analysis of lyrics referring to this theme has hitherto focused on illegal drugs and alcoholic beverages (Cooper), coffee and its psychoactive ingredient caffeine have been almost entirely overlooked (Summer). The most recent study of drugs in popular music, for example, defined substance use as “tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, cocaine and other stimulants, heroin and other opiates, hallucinogens, inhalants, prescription drugs, over-the-counter drugs, and nonspecific substances” (Primack 172), thereby ignoring a chemical stimulant consumed by 90 per cent of adult Americans every day (Lovett). The wide availability of coffee and the comparatively mild effect of caffeine means that its consumption rarely causes harm. One researcher has described it as a ubiquitous and unobtrusive “generalised public activity […] ‘invisible’ to analysts seeking distinctive social events” (Cooper 92). Coffee may provide only a relatively mild “buzz”—but it is now accepted that caffeine is an addictive substance (Juliano) and, due to its universal legality, coffee is also the world’s most extensively traded and enthusiastically consumed psychoactive consumer product (Juliano 1). The musical genre of jazz has a longstanding relationship with marijuana and narcotics (Curry; Singer; Tolson; Winick). Unsurprisingly, given its Round Midnight connotations, jazz standards also celebrate the restorative impact of coffee. Exemplary compositions include Burke/Webster’s insomniac torch song Black Coffee, which provided hits for Sarah Vaughan (1949), Ella Fitzgerald (1953), and Peggy Lee (1960); and Frank Sinatra’s recordings of Hilliard/Dick’s The Coffee Song (1946, 1960), which satirised the coffee surplus in Brazil at a time when this nation enjoyed a near monopoly on production. Sinatra joked that this ubiquitous drink was that country’s only means of liquid refreshment, in a refrain that has since become a headline writer’s phrasal template: “There’s an Awful Lot of Coffee in Vietnam,” “An Awful Lot of Coffee in the Bin,” and “There’s an Awful Lot of Taxes in Brazil.” Ethnographer Aaron Fox has shown how country music gives expression to the lived social experience of blue-collar and agrarian workers (Real 29). Coffee’s role in energising working class America (Cooper) is featured in such recordings as Dolly Parton’s Nine To Five (1980), which describes her morning routine using a memorable “kitchen/cup of ambition” rhyme, and Don't Forget the Coffee Billy Joe (1973) by Tom T. Hall which laments the hardship of unemployment, hunger, cold, and lack of healthcare. Country music’s “tired truck driver” is the most enduring blue-collar trope celebrating coffee’s analeptic powers. Versions include Truck Drivin' Man by Buck Owens (1964), host of the country TV show Hee Haw and pioneer of the Bakersfield sound, and Driving My Life Away from pop-country crossover star Eddie Rabbitt (1980). Both feature characteristically gendered stereotypes of male truck drivers pushing on through the night with the help of a truck stop waitress who has fuelled them with caffeine. Johnny Cash’s A Cup of Coffee (1966), recorded at the nadir of his addiction to pills and alcohol, has an incoherent improvised lyric on this subject; while Jerry Reed even prescribed amphetamines to keep drivers awake in Caffein [sic], Nicotine, Benzedrine (And Wish Me Luck) (1980). Doye O’Dell’s Diesel Smoke, Dangerous Curves (1952) is the archetypal “truck drivin’ country” song and the most exciting track of its type. It subsequently became a hit for the doyen of the subgenre, Red Simpson (1966). An exhausted driver, having spent the night with a woman whose name he cannot now recall, is fighting fatigue and wrestling his hot-rod low-loader around hairpin mountain curves in an attempt to rendezvous with a pretty truck stop waitress. The song’s palpable energy comes from its frenetic guitar picking and the danger implicit in trailing a heavy load downhill while falling asleep at the wheel. Tommy Faile’s Phantom 309, a hit for Red Sovine (1967) that was later covered by Tom Waits (Big Joe and the Phantom 309, 1975), elevates the “tired truck driver” narrative to gothic literary form. Reflecting country music’s moral code of citizenship and its culture of performative storytelling (Fox, Real 23), it tells of a drenched and exhausted young hitchhiker picked up by Big Joe—the driver of a handsome eighteen-wheeler. On arriving at a truck stop, Joe drops the traveller off, giving him money for a restorative coffee. The diner falls silent as the hitchhiker orders up his “cup of mud”. Big Joe, it transpires, is a phantom trucker. After running off the road to avoid a school bus, his distinctive ghost rig now only reappears to rescue stranded travellers. Punk rock, a genre closely associated with recreational amphetamines (McNeil 76, 87), also features a number of caffeine-as-stimulant songs. Californian punk band, Descendents, identified caffeine as their drug of choice in two 1996 releases, Coffee Mug and Kids on Coffee. These songs describe chugging the drink with much the same relish and energy that others might pull at the neck of a beer bottle, and vividly compare the effects of the drug to the intense rush of speed. The host of “New Music News” (a segment of MTV’s 120 Minutes) references this correlation in 1986 while introducing the band’s video—in which they literally bounce off the walls: “You know, while everybody is cracking down on crack, what about that most respectable of toxic substances or stimulants, the good old cup of coffee? That is the preferred high, actually, of California’s own Descendents—it is also the subject of their brand new video” (“New Music News”). Descendents’s Sessions EP (1997) featured an overflowing cup of coffee on the sleeve, while punk’s caffeine-as-amphetamine trope is also promulgated by Hellbender (Caffeinated 1996), Lagwagon (Mr. Coffee 1997), and Regatta 69 (Addicted to Coffee 2005). Coffee in the Morning and Kisses in the Night: Coffee and Courtship Coffee as romantic metaphor in song corroborates the findings of early researchers who examined courtship rituals in popular music. Donald Horton’s 1957 study found that hit songs codified the socially constructed self-image and limited life expectations of young people during the 1950s by depicting conservative, idealised, and traditional relationship scenarios. He summarised these as initial courtship, honeymoon period, uncertainty, and parting (570-4). Eleven years after this landmark analysis, James Carey replicated Horton’s method. His results revealed that pop lyrics had become more realistic and less bound by convention during the 1960s. They incorporated a wider variety of discourse including the temporariness of romantic commitment, the importance of individual autonomy in relationships, more liberal attitudes, and increasingly unconventional courtship behaviours (725). Socially conservative coffee songs include Coffee in the Morning and Kisses in the Night by The Boswell Sisters (1933) in which the protagonist swears fidelity to her partner on condition that this desire is expressed strictly in the appropriate social context of marriage. It encapsulates the restrictions Horton identified on courtship discourse in popular song prior to the arrival of rock and roll. The Henderson/DeSylva/Brown composition You're the Cream in My Coffee, recorded by Annette Hanshaw (1928) and by Nat King Cole (1946), also celebrates the social ideal of monogamous devotion. The persistence of such idealised traditional themes continued into the 1960s. American pop singer Don Cherry had a hit with Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye (1962) that used coffee as a metaphor for undying and everlasting love. Otis Redding’s version of Butler/Thomas/Walker’s Cigarettes and Coffee (1966)—arguably soul music’s exemplary romantic coffee song—carries a similar message as a couple proclaim their devotion in a late night conversation over coffee. Like much of the Stax catalogue, Cigarettes and Coffee, has a distinctly “down home” feel and timbre. The lovers are simply content with each other; they don’t need “cream” or “sugar.” Horton found 1950s blues and R&B lyrics much more sexually explicit than pop songs (567). Dawson (1994) subsequently characterised black popular music as a distinct public sphere, and Squires (2002) argued that it displayed elements of what she defined as “enclave” and “counterpublic” traits. Lawson (2010) has argued that marginalised and/or subversive blues artists offered a form of countercultural resistance against prevailing social norms. Indeed, several blues and R&B coffee songs disregard established courtship ideals and associate the product with non-normative and even transgressive relationship circumstances—including infidelity, divorce, and domestic violence. Lightnin’ Hopkins’s Coffee Blues (1950) references child neglect and spousal abuse, while the narrative of Muddy Waters’s scorching Iodine in my Coffee (1952) tells of an attempted poisoning by his Waters’s partner. In 40 Cups of Coffee (1953) Ella Mae Morse is waiting for her husband to return home, fuelling her anger and anxiety with caffeine. This song does eventually comply with traditional courtship ideals: when her lover eventually returns home at five in the morning, he is greeted with a relieved kiss. In Keep That Coffee Hot (1955), Scatman Crothers supplies a counterpoint to Morse’s late-night-abandonment narrative, asking his partner to keep his favourite drink warm during his adulterous absence. Brook Benton’s Another Cup of Coffee (1964) expresses acute feelings of regret and loneliness after a failed relationship. More obliquely, in Coffee Blues (1966) Mississippi John Hurt sings affectionately about his favourite brand, a “lovin’ spoonful” of Maxwell House. In this, he bequeathed the moniker of folk-rock band The Lovin’ Spoonful, whose hits included Do You Believe in Magic (1965) and Summer in the City (1966). However, an alternative reading of Hurt’s lyric suggests that this particular phrase is a metaphorical device proclaiming the author’s sexual potency. Hurt’s “lovin’ spoonful” may actually be a portion of his seminal emission. In the 1950s, Horton identified country as particularly “doleful” (570), and coffee provides a common metaphor for failed romance in a genre dominated by “metanarratives of loss and desire” (Fox, Jukebox 54). Claude Gray’s I'll Have Another Cup of Coffee (Then I’ll Go) (1961) tells of a protagonist delivering child support payments according to his divorce lawyer’s instructions. The couple share late night coffee as their children sleep through the conversation. This song was subsequently recorded by seventeen-year-old Bob Marley (One Cup of Coffee, 1962) under the pseudonym Bobby Martell, a decade prior to his breakthrough as an international reggae star. Marley’s youngest son Damian has also performed the track while, interestingly in the context of this discussion, his older sibling Rohan co-founded Marley Coffee, an organic farm in the Jamaican Blue Mountains. Following Carey’s demonstration of mainstream pop’s increasingly realistic depiction of courtship behaviours during the 1960s, songwriters continued to draw on coffee as a metaphor for failed romance. In Carly Simon’s You’re So Vain (1972), she dreams of clouds in her coffee while contemplating an ostentatious ex-lover. Squeeze’s Black Coffee In Bed (1982) uses a coffee stain metaphor to describe the end of what appears to be yet another dead-end relationship for the protagonist. Sarah Harmer’s Coffee Stain (1998) expands on this device by reworking the familiar “lipstick on your collar” trope, while Sexsmith & Kerr’s duet Raindrops in my Coffee (2005) superimposes teardrops in coffee and raindrops on the pavement with compelling effect. Kate Bush’s Coffee Homeground (1978) provides the most extreme narrative of relationship breakdown: the true story of Cora Henrietta Crippin’s poisoning. Researchers who replicated Horton’s and Carey’s methodology in the late 1970s (Bridges; Denisoff) were surprised to find their results dominated by traditional courtship ideals. The new liberal values unearthed by Carey in the late 1960s simply failed to materialise in subsequent decades. In this context, it is interesting to observe how romantic coffee songs in contemporary soul and jazz continue to disavow the post-1960s trend towards realistic social narratives, adopting instead a conspicuously consumerist outlook accompanied by smooth musical timbres. This phenomenon possibly betrays the influence of contemporary coffee advertising. From the 1980s, television commercials have sought to establish coffee as a desirable high end product, enjoyed by bohemian lovers in a conspicuously up-market environment (Werder). All Saints’s Black Coffee (2000) and Lebrado’s Coffee (2006) identify strongly with the culture industry’s image of coffee as a luxurious beverage whose consumption signifies prominent social status. All Saints’s promotional video is set in a opulent location (although its visuals emphasise the lyric’s romantic disharmony), while Natalie Cole’s Coffee Time (2008) might have been itself written as a commercial. Busting Up a Starbucks: The Politics of Coffee Politics and coffee meet most palpably at the coffee shop. This conjunction has a well-documented history beginning with the establishment of coffee houses in Europe and the birth of the public sphere (Habermas; Love; Pincus). The first popular songs to reference coffee shops include Jaybird Coleman’s Coffee Grinder Blues (1930), which boasts of skills that precede the contemporary notion of a barista by four decades; and Let's Have Another Cup of Coffee (1932) from Irving Berlin’s depression-era musical Face The Music, where the protagonists decide to stay in a restaurant drinking coffee and eating pie until the economy improves. Coffee in a Cardboard Cup (1971) from the Broadway musical 70 Girls 70 is an unambiguous condemnation of consumerism, however, it was written, recorded and produced a generation before Starbucks’ aggressive expansion and rapid dominance of the coffee house market during the 1990s. The growth of this company caused significant criticism and protest against what seemed to be a ruthless homogenising force that sought to overwhelm local competition (Holt; Thomson). In response, Starbucks has sought to be defined as a more responsive and interactive brand that encourages “glocalisation” (de Larios; Thompson). Koller, however, has characterised glocalisation as the manipulative fabrication of an “imagined community”—whose heterogeneity is in fact maintained by the aesthetics and purchasing choices of consumers who make distinctive and conscious anti-brand statements (114). Neat Capitalism is a more useful concept here, one that intercedes between corporate ideology and postmodern cultural logic, where such notions as community relations and customer satisfaction are deliberately and perhaps somewhat cynically conflated with the goal of profit maximisation (Rojek). As the world’s largest chain of coffee houses with over 19,400 stores in March 2012 (Loxcel), Starbucks is an exemplar of this phenomenon. Their apparent commitment to environmental stewardship, community relations, and ethical sourcing is outlined in the company’s annual “Global Responsibility Report” (Vimac). It is also demonstrated in their engagement with charitable and environmental non-governmental organisations such as Fairtrade and Co-operative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE). By emphasising this, Starbucks are able to interpellate (that is, “call forth”, “summon”, or “hail” in Althusserian terms) those consumers who value environmental protection, social justice and ethical business practices (Rojek 117). Bob Dylan and Sheryl Crow provide interesting case studies of the persuasive cultural influence evoked by Neat Capitalism. Dylan’s 1962 song Talkin’ New York satirised his formative experiences as an impoverished performer in Greenwich Village’s coffee houses. In 1995, however, his decision to distribute the Bob Dylan: Live At The Gaslight 1962 CD exclusively via Starbucks generated significant media controversy. Prominent commentators expressed their disapproval (Wilson Harris) and HMV Canada withdrew Dylan’s product from their shelves (Lynskey). Despite this, the success of this and other projects resulted in the launch of Starbucks’s in-house record company, Hear Music, which released entirely new recordings from major artists such as Ray Charles, Paul McCartney, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon and Elvis Costello—although the company has recently announced a restructuring of their involvement in this venture (O’Neil). Sheryl Crow disparaged her former life as a waitress in Coffee Shop (1995), a song recorded for her second album. “Yes, I was a waitress. I was a waitress not so long ago; then I won a Grammy” she affirmed in a YouTube clip of a live performance from the same year. More recently, however, Crow has become an avowed self-proclaimed “Starbucks groupie” (Tickle), releasing an Artist’s Choice (2003) compilation album exclusively via Hear Music and performing at the company’s 2010 Annual Shareholders’s Meeting. Songs voicing more unequivocal dissatisfaction with Starbucks’s particular variant of Neat Capitalism include Busting Up a Starbucks (Mike Doughty, 2005), and Starbucks Takes All My Money (KJ-52, 2008). The most successful of these is undoubtedly Ron Sexsmith’s Jazz at the Bookstore (2006). Sexsmith bemoans the irony of intense original blues artists such as Leadbelly being drowned out by the cacophony of coffee grinding machines while customers queue up to purchase expensive coffees whose names they can’t pronounce. In this, he juxtaposes the progressive patina of corporate culture against the circumstances of African-American labour conditions in the deep South, the shocking incongruity of which eventually cause the old bluesman to turn in his grave. Fredric Jameson may have good reason to lament the depthless a-historical pastiche of postmodern popular culture, but this is no “nostalgia film”: Sexsmith articulates an artfully framed set of subtle, sensitive, and carefully contextualised observations. Songs about coffee also intersect with politics via lyrics that play on the mid-brown colour of the beverage, by employing it as a metaphor for the sociological meta-narratives of acculturation and assimilation. First popularised in Israel Zangwill’s 1905 stage play, The Melting Pot, this term is more commonly associated with Americanisation rather than miscegenation in the United States—a nuanced distinction that British band Blue Mink failed to grasp with their memorable invocation of “coffee-coloured people” in Melting Pot (1969). Re-titled in the US as People Are Together (Mickey Murray, 1970) the song was considered too extreme for mainstream radio airplay (Thompson). Ike and Tina Turner’s Black Coffee (1972) provided a more accomplished articulation of coffee as a signifier of racial identity; first by associating it with the history of slavery and the post-Civil Rights discourse of African-American autonomy, then by celebrating its role as an energising force for African-American workers seeking economic self-determination. Anyone familiar with the re-casting of black popular music in an industry dominated by Caucasian interests and aesthetics (Cashmore; Garofalo) will be unsurprised to find British super-group Humble Pie’s (1973) version of this song more recognisable. Conclusion Coffee-flavoured popular songs celebrate the stimulant effects of caffeine, provide metaphors for courtship rituals, and offer critiques of Neat Capitalism. Harold Love and Guthrie Ramsey have each argued (from different perspectives) that the cultural micro-narratives of small social groups allow us to identify important “ethnographic truths” (Ramsey 22). Aesthetically satisfying and intellectually stimulating coffee songs are found where these micro-narratives intersect with the ethnographic truths of coffee culture. Examples include the unconventional courtship narratives of blues singers Muddy Waters and Mississippi John Hurt, the ritualised storytelling tradition of country performers Doye O’Dell and Tommy Faile, and historicised accounts of the Civil Rights struggle provided by Ron Sexsmith and Tina Turner. References Argenti, Paul. “Collaborating With Activists: How Starbucks Works With NGOs.” California Management Review 47.1 (2004): 91–116. Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.” Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. London: Monthly Review Press, 1971. Bridges, John, and R. Serge Denisoff. “Changing Courtship Patterns in the Popular Song: Horton and Carey revisited.” Popular Music and Society 10.3 (1986): 29–45. Carey, James. “Changing Courtship Patterns in the Popular Song.” The American Journal of Sociology 74.6 (1969): 720–31. Cashmere, Ellis. The Black Culture Industry. London: Routledge, 1997. “Coffee.” Theme Time Radio Hour hosted by Bob Dylan, XM Satellite Radio. 31 May 2006. Cooper, B. Lee, and William L. Schurk. “You’re the Cream in My Coffee: A Discography of Java Jive.” Popular Music and Society 23.2 (1999): 91–100. Crow, Sheryl. “Coffee Shop.” Beacon Theatre, New York City. 17 Mar. 1995. YouTube 1 Feb. 2012 ‹http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_-bDAjASQI ›. Curry, Andrew. “Drugs in Jazz and Rock Music.” Clinical Toxicology 1.2 (1968): 235–44. Dawson, Michael C. “A Black Counterpublic?: Economic Earthquakes, Racial Agenda(s) and Black Politics.” Public Culture 7.1 (1994): 195–223. de Larios, Margaret. “Alone, Together: The Social Culture of Music and the Coffee Shop.” URC Student Scholarship Paper 604 (2011). 1 Feb. 2012 ‹http://scholar.oxy.edu/urc_student/604›. Englis, Basil, Michael Solomon and Anna Olofsson. “Consumption Imagery in Music Television: A Bi-Cultural Perspective.” Journal of Advertising 22.4 (1993): 21–33. Fox, Aaron. Real Country: Music and Language in Working-Class Culture. Durham: Duke UP, 2004. Fox, Aaron. “The Jukebox of History: Narratives of Loss and Desire in the Discourse of Country Music.” Popular Music 11.1 (1992): 53–72. Garofalo, Reebee. “Culture Versus Commerce: The Marketing of Black Popular Music.” Public Culture 7.1 (1994): 275–87. Habermas, Jurgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry Into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989. Hamilton, Andy. Aesthetics and Music. London: Continuum, 2007. Harris, Craig. “Starbucks Opens Hear Music Shop in Bellevue.” Seattle Post Intelligencer 23 Nov. 2006. 1 Feb. 2012 ‹http://www.seattlepi.com/business/article/Starbucks-opens-Hear-Music-shop-in-Bellevue-1220637.php›. Harris, John. “Lay Latte Lay.” The Guardian 1 Jul. 2005. 1 Feb. 2012 ‹http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2005/jul/01/2?INTCMP=SRCH›. Holt, Douglas. “Why Do Brands Cause Trouble? 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On Wednesday 21 April the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts introduced a piece of legislation into the Australian Senate to regulate the way Australians use the Internet. This legislation is presented within Australia's existing system of content regulation, a scheme that the Minister describes is not censorship, but merely regulation (Alston 55). Underlying Senator Alston's rhetoric about the protection of children from snuff film makers, paedophiles, drug pushers and other criminals, this long anticipated bill is aimed at reducing the amount of pornographic materials available via computer networks, a censorship regime in an age when regulation and classification are the words we prefer to use when society draws the line under material we want to see, but dare not allow ourselves access to. Regardless of any noble aspirations expressed by free-speech organisations such as Electronic Frontiers Australia relating to the defence of personal liberty and freedom of expression, this legislation is about porn. Under the Bill, Australia would proscribe our citizens from accessing: explicit depictions of sexual acts between consenting adults; mild non-violent fetishes; depictions of sexual violence, coercion or non-consent of any kind; depictions of child sexual abuse, bestiality, sexual acts accompanied by offensive fetishes, or exploitative incest fantasies; unduly detailed and/or relished acts of extreme violence or cruelty; explicit or unjustifiable depictions of sexual violence against non-consenting persons; and detailed instruction or encouragement in matters of crime or violence or the abuse of proscribed drugs. (OFLC) The Australian public, as a whole, favour the availability of sexually explicit materials in some form, with OFLC data indicating a relatively high degree of public support for X rated videos, the "high end" of the porn market (Paterson et al.). In Australia strict regulation of X rated materials in conventional media has resulted in a larger illegal market for these materials than the legalised sex industries of the ACT and Northern Territory (while 1.2 million X rated videos are legally sold out of the territories, 2 million are sold illegally in other jurisdictions, according to Patten). In Australia, censorship of media content has traditionally been based on the principles of the protection of society from moral harm and individual degradation, with specific emphasis on the protection of innocents from material they are not old enough for, or mentally capable of dealing with (Joint Select Committee on Video Material). Even when governments distanced themselves from direct personal censorship (such as Don Chipp's approach to the censorship of films and books in the late 1960s and early 1970s) and shifted the rationale behind censorship from prohibition to classification, the publicly stated aims of these decisions have been the support of existing community standards, rather than the imposition of strict legalistic moral values upon an unwilling society. In the debates surrounding censorship, and especially the level of censorship applied (rather than censorship as a whole), the question "what is the community we are talking about here?" has been a recurring theme. The standards that are applied to the regulation of media content, both online and off, are often the focus of community debate (a pluralistic community that obviously lacks "standards" by definition of the word). In essence the problem of maintaining a single set of moral and ethical values for the treatment of media content is a true political dilemma: a problem that lacks any form of solution acceptable to all participants. Since the introduction of the Internet as a "mass" medium (or more appropriately, a "popular" one), government indecision about how best to treat this new technology has precluded any form or content regulation other than the ad hoc use of existing non-technologically specific law to deal with areas of criminal or legally sanctionable intent (such as the use of copyright law, or the powers under the Crimes Act relating to the improper use of telecommunications services). However, indecision in political life is often associated with political weakness, and in the face of pressure to act decisively (motivated again by "community concern"), the Federal government has decided to extend the role of the Australian Broadcasting Authority to regulate and impose a censorship regime on Australian access of morally harmful materials. It is important to note the government's intention to censor access, rather than content of the Internet. While material hosted in Australia (ignoring, of course, the "cyberspace" definitions of non-territorial existence of information stored in networks) will be censored (removed from Australia computers), the government, lacking extraterritorial powers to compel the owners of machines located offshore, intends to introduce of some form of refused access list to materials located in other nations. What is interesting to consider in this context is the way that slight shifts of definitional paradigm alter the way this legislation can be considered. If information flows (upon which late capitalism is becoming more dependent) were to be located within the context of international law governing the flow of waterways, does the decision to prevent travel of morally dubious material through Australia's informational waterways impinge upon the riparian rights of other nations (the doctrine of fair usage without impeding flow; Godana 50)? Similarly, if we take Smith's extended definition of community within electronic transactional spaces (the maintenance of members' commitment to the group, monitoring and sanctioning behaviour and the production and distribution of resources), then the current Bill proposes the regulation of the activities of one community by another (granted, a larger community that incorporates the former). Seen in this context, this legislation is the direct intervention in an established social order by a larger and less homogeneous group. It may be trite to quote the Prime Minister's view of community in this context, where he states ...It is free individuals, strong communities and the rule of law which are the best defence against the intrusive power of the state and against those who think they know what is best for everyone else. (Howard 21) possibly because the paradigm in which this new legislation is situated does not classify those Australians online (who number up to 3 million) as a community in their own right. In a way the Internet users of Australia have never identified themselves as a community, nor been asked to act in a communitarian manner. While discussions about the value of community models when applied to the Internet are still divided, there are those who argue that their use of networked services can be seen in this light (Worthington). What this new legislation does, however, is preclude the establishment of public communities in order to meet the desires of government for some limits to be placed on Internet content. The Bill does allow for the development of "restricted access systems" that would allow pluralistic communities to develop and engage in a limited amount of self-regulation. These systems include privately accessible Intranets, or sites that restrict access through passwords or some other form of age verification technique. Thus, ignoring the minimum standards that will be required for these communities to qualify for some measure of self-regulatory freedom, what is unspoken here is that specific subsections of the Internet population may exist, provided they keep well away from the public gaze. A ghetto without physical walls. Under the Bill, a co-regulatory approach is endorsed by the government, favouring the establishment of industry codes of practice by ISPs and (or) the establishment of a single code of practice by the content hosting industry (content developers are relegated to yet undetermined complementary state legislation). However, this section of the Bill, in mandating a range of minimum requirements for these codes of practice, and denying plurality to the content providers, places an administrative imperative above any communitarian spirit. That is, that the Internet should have no more than one community, it should be an entity bound by a single guiding set of principles and be therefore easier to administer by Australian censors. This administrative imperative re-encapsulates the dilemma faced by governments dealing with the Internet: that at heart, the broadcast and print press paradigms of existing censorship regimes face massive administrative problems when presented with a communications technology that allows for wholesale publication of materials by individuals. Whereas the limited numbers of broadcasters and publishers have allowed the development of Australia's system of classification of materials (on a sliding scale from G to RC classifications or the equivalent print press version), the new legislation introduced into the Senate uses the classification scheme simply as a censorship mechanism: Internet content is either "ok" or "not ok". From a public administration perspective, this allows government to drastically reduce the amount of work required by regulators and eases the burden of compliance costs by ISPs, by directing clear and unambiguous statements about the acceptability of existing materials placed online. However, as we have seen in other areas of social policy (such as the rationalisation of Social Security services or Health), administrative expedience is often antipathetic to small communities that have special needs, or cultural sensitivities outside of mainstream society. While it is not appropriate to argue that public administration creates negative social impacts through expedience, what can be presented is that, where expedience is a core aim of legislation, poor administration may result. For many Australian purveyors of pornography, my comments will be entirely unhelpful as they endeavour to find effective ways to spoof offshore hosts or bone up (no pun intended) on tunnelling techniques. Given the easy way in which material can be reconstituted and relocated on the Internet, it seems likely that some form of regulatory avoidance will occur by users determined not to have their content removed or blocked. For those regulators given the unenviable task of censoring Internet access it may be worthwhile quoting from Sexing the Cherry, in which Jeanette Winterson describes the town: whose inhabitants are so cunning that to escape the insistence of creditors they knock down their houses in a single night and rebuild them elsewhere. So the number of buildings in the city is always constant but they are never in the same place from one day to the next. (43) Thus, while Winterson saw this game as a "most fulfilling pastime", it is likely to present real administrative headaches to ABA regulators when attempting to enforce the Bill's anti-avoidance clauses. The Australian government, in adapting existing regulatory paradigms to the Internet, has overlooked the informal communities who live, work and play within the virtual world of cyberspace. In attempting to meet a perceived social need for regulation with political and administrative expedience, it has ignored the potentially cohesive role of government in developing self-regulating communities who need little government intervention to produce socially beneficial outcomes. In proscribing activity externally to the realm in which these communities reside, what we may see is a new type of community, one whose desire for a feast of flesh leads them to evade the activities of regulators who operate in the "meat" world. What this may show us is that in a virtual environment, the regulators' net is no match for a world wide web. References Alston, Richard. "Regulation is Not Censorship." The Australian 13 April 1999: 55. Paterson, K., et. al. Classification Issues: Film, Video and Television. Sydney: The Office of Film and Literature Classification, 1993. Patten, F. Personal interview. 9 Feb. 1999. Godana, B.A. Africa's Shared Water Resources: Legal and Institutional Aspects of the Nile, Niger and Senegal River Systems. London: Frances Pinter, 1985. Howard, John. The Australia I Believe In: The Values, Directions and Policy Priorities of a Coalition Government Outlined in 1995. Canberra: Liberal Party, 1995. Joint Select Committee On Video Material. Report of the Joint Select Committee On Video Material. Canberra: APGS, 1988. Office of Film and Literature Classification. Cinema & Video Ratings Guide. 1999. 1 May 1999 <http://www.oflc.gov.au/classinfo.php>. Smith, Marc A. "Voices from the WELL: The Logic of the Virtual Commons." 1998. 2 Mar. 1999 <http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/csoc/papers/voices/Voices.htm>. Winterson, Jeanette. Sexing the Cherry. New York: Vintage Books. 1991. Worthington, T. Testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Information Technologies. Unpublished, 1999. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Peter Chen. "Community without Flesh: First Thoughts on the New Broadcasting Services Amendment (Online Services) Bill 1999." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.3 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9905/bill.php>. Chicago style: Peter Chen, "Community without Flesh: First Thoughts on the New Broadcasting Services Amendment (Online Services) Bill 1999," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 3 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9905/bill.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Author. (1999) Community without flesh: first thoughts on the new broadcasting services amendment (online services) bill 1999. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(3). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9905/bill.php> ([your date of access]).

IntroductionEmpathy: the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another, either in the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner; also: the capacity for this. (Merriam-Webster, “Empathy”)Compassion: sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it. (Merriam-Webster, “Compassion”)After thirty years of being a vegetarian, my eyes were opened to the inherent cruelty in animal-use industries. I became vegan and spoke out on these issues at animal rights events, rallies and ethical leadership forums. My private psychology practice attracted a significant number of vegans who presented with symptoms of anxiety and depression. However, unlike many of my non-vegan clients who were unclear as to what caused their symptoms, vegans reported it as being directly related to their discovery of systematised animal misuse in society. It was as if they had extended their compassion beyond their own species.Despite these issues being increasingly discussed in open circles, this extension of compassion seems to be limited to veganism. Why is veganism increasing as a compassionate centre, with animal social justice being at its core? Drawing on key emotional experiences of vegans, based on a survey conducted in 2018 and observational data from a private psychology practice, this article explores the experiences of compassion and empathy of vegans, and the impact such experiences can have on social change.The Increase in VeganismVeganism has noticeably increased over the past decade, with greater public debate in the media. A 2016 Roy Morgan poll indicated that the number of strict vegetarian adults in Australia was 2.1 million; an increase of nearly half a million people over four years, and likely to grow (Roy Morgan). Internationally, veganism was the biggest trend of 2018, with over three times the level of interest online as “vegetarian” or “gluten-free” (The Vegan Society).I believe there are a number of reasons for this, including greater awareness through social media, increased social mobility, and people becoming aware of international practices (Oberst). Photos and videos of animal suffering are more easily accessible via mobile devices, and can be shared at a faster rate than mainstream media could traditionally share news (Forgrieve). Small budget Indie films have also shared unknown information with the public, such as Earthlings, Dominion, Cowspiracy, and Kangaroo. In addition to this, I believe there is a greater propensity for people to challenge authority and previous direction from doctors or politicians in what is known as “the era of respect” (Mowat, Corrigan, and Long).These circumstances and more have led to an increase in people making more informed, kinder choices with regard to veganism; suggesting the opening of a new era of compassion beyond one’s own species. However, living in a world where the majority of people’s consumer choices facilitates animal abuse behind closed doors, the vegan is left struggling with “the burden of knowing”; knowledge of the facts of animal mistreatment and the inability to change it or successfully induce others to acknowledge it (Mann, Vystopia).Case Study ResearchBetween 2013 and 2018 I held individual psychological counselling sessions with over 100 self-selected vegans. For these case studies, the definition of “vegan” means someone who has chosen to live their life underpinned by the philosophy of the non-use and non-exploitation of animals and informs what they eat, wear, use and are involved in. These individuals reached out to me because of the trauma they reported experiencing since learning of the ubiquitous nature of animal cruelty in society. They claimed to feel more comfortable with a vegan professional who they felt understood their anguish.From these sessions, using the qualitative research methodology of hermeneutics (Rennie), I began to notice a pattern relating to the nature and enormity of the typical vegan’s distress. Almost every vegan who came to see me presented with symptoms related to their awareness of the systemised cruelty towards animals. Their distress was compounded when they shared this information with their friends and family, whom they were sure would be equally upset by it. Instead, many people responded with indifference, criticism, and anger, saying that everyone has a right to choose what to eat. These feelings of frustration and powerlessness left them unable to reconcile competing beliefs; that the people they loved were capable of turning their eyes away from the suffering their consumer choices were financing. The typical symptoms they reported included (fig. 1):Complicated griefMental anguishDepressionAnxietySelf-medicationAnger and despairSelf-harmSuicidal thoughtsHopelessnessLonelinessPost-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)Fig. 1: Typical symptoms reported by vegans in individual counselling sessions, 2013–2018.After over 1,300 hours of one-to-one sessions with vegans around the world, plus anecdotal stories from vegans I met at numerous events, I came to believe that the vegan’s pain is unique to being vegan and warrants a specific definition.It is imperative to me that vegans do not become labelled as mentally ill or chronically dysfunctional, for which the only solution is medication. As a fellow sufferer of the “burden of knowing”, I wanted to create a term to validate our experience and avoid medicalising our plight. Only then can the vegan’s experience be examined from a humane perspective and solutions be found to help us. Then, we can become part of the rising tide of social action that says human superiority and animal abuse is unacceptable. Because I believe that this experience and associated symptoms are existential in nature, I called this “Vystopia” (Mann, Vystopia).VystopiaThe Existential crisis experienced by vegans, arising out of an awareness of the trance-like collusion with a dystopian world and the awareness of the greed, ubiquitous animal exploitation, and speciesism in a modern dystopia. (Mann, “Suffer”)Vystopia is the anguish a vegan feels, knowing about the systematised cruelty towards animals in society, and the further distress they experience with the unconscious collusion of non-vegans, and their resistance or criticism of this information. Many of my clients experienced a range of symptoms of vystopia (fig. 2): Feelings of alienation from non-vegansMisanthropyGuilt over past consumption of animalsGuilt that they are not doing enough to save animalsInability to enjoy normal aspects of lifeFrustration with non-vegans who don’t ask more questionsAnger with the “burden of knowing”Powerlessness when health professionals tell them “it’s normal”Fig. 2: Symptoms of VystopiaMisdiagnosis of the Vegan’s ConditionMany doctors have referred patients to me for mental health symptoms of eating disorders, social adjustment disorder, and self-harm. It is my opinion that vegans referred to me with these symptoms do not suffer from traditional eating or self-harm disorders.As I learned from working in a psychiatric teaching hospital in the UK, clients with these conditions are often deeply unaware of the reasons influencing their symptoms. Their symptoms become an outward sign of hidden or unconscious distress which is too painful to confront directly. The vegans sent to me are deeply distressed due to the horror they’ve witnessed or now know about in the animal industries.I discovered that regularly viewing graphic videos of animal abuse was linked with vegan clients diagnosed as having self-harm tendencies (Klonsky). They view these as they feel guilty if they don’t know about all aspects of the animal’s suffering. It’s only by knowing all the details that they can be informed and act to change it. Vegan clients who have told their doctors they “can’t eat around people who are consuming animals” are often diagnosed as having eating disorders, although they lack the typical medical symptoms of eating disorders. While it is possible for vegans, like anyone else, to suffer from these conditions, I believe that many clients have been misdiagnosed. For many, their symptoms are indicative of a normal, feeling human’s way of dealing with vystopia: The truth is that it is not a pathology, but the distress a vegan feels when they look at the state of the world and the cruelty and suffering and it’s an absolutely rational response any feeling human being should feel; a dystopian reaction to what they are seeing. (Klaper)Survey ResearchBetween February and July 2018, I conducted an anonymous online survey of 820 vegans. The survey comprised 26 multiple-choice questions covering 7 main areas:How long someone has been veganLength they have experienced vystopiaWhen vystopia was most experiencedWhere people seek help for vystopiaWhat they do to reduce symptomsFamily and relationships where significant others are not veganWhat support is most needed to help vystopiansResultsWhilst an in-depth analysis of the results is outside the scope of this article, some of the key responses are as follows (figs. 3–6):How long have you been vegan?1–5 years48%Less than 6 months16%6–12 months14%5–10 years12%10 years plus10%Fig. 3: Length of time as vegan.How long have you suffered from vystopia?1–5 years39%5–10 years21%6–12 months15%Less than 6 months13%10 years plus12%Fig. 4: Length of time suffering from vystopia.When do you most experience vystopia?Others around you eat animals79%Seeing images of animal cruelty78%Other people refuse to hear about animal cruelty78%Grocery shopping69%People laugh at you for being vegan56%Family celebrations55%Holidays40%At work events39%All the time37%When away from vegan friends30%Other8%NB: Participants invited to tick all that apply Fig. 5: When vystopia is experienced.What do you do to reduce your vystopia?Remove yourself from the world58%Increase animal advocacy55%Talk to friends34%Self-medicate (e.g. alcohol, drugs, food)24%Other16%See a doctor2%Fig. 6: Actions taken to reduce vystopia.Explaining the Differences in Adoption of VeganismWhy do some people extend their compassion towards animals whilst others are unaware of the need to do so, or believe it is anthropomorphic or sentimental? Research is needed to examine this more, but my own research and anecdotal experience suggests some factors:Social ConformityMany people are strongly influenced by what they perceive as socially normal (Mallinson and Hatemi). Cultural and family traditions, media, and community behaviour all influence the food and lifestyle choices of society. Most people are unaware that their consumer choices play a role in the mistreatment and abuse of animals.Social conditioning influences whether people choose to investigate new information further or continue with the status quo for the sake of fitting in. The need to fit in creates a social trance whereby people continue to collude with animal cruelty through their inaction, and in fact their willful ignorance means they are not likely to change their actions, as they don’t know any differently.The vegan is one who has chosen to find out the truth about animal exploitation and extend their compassion towards other species by abstaining from anything related to animal abuse.Personal and Social Defense MechanismsSimilar to social conformity, the concept of being “different” from the perceived norm is enough for many people to continue with their actions, regardless of the consequence for animals. Similarly, those who are suddenly privy to new information may feel judged by the messenger, and resistance is easier than change. The vegan is one who chooses to adjust their actions, despite the judgement or ridicule which may accompany it.Personality VariablesOn the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (Myers and Myers), my anecdotal experience suggests that individuals with preferences for “feeling” over “thinking” are more likely to become vegan. The vegan community consists of many different personality types, with those who are strong “feeling” types more inclined to display empathy and empathetic action.Avoidance of Existential Anxiety When a person’s understanding of the world is challenged, this can create anxiety, where one is compelled to ask, “What else don’t I know?” If animal cruelty can occur at such a widespread rate—with most of society oblivious to it—what else is going on behind closed doors? For some, the reality of facing the truth can create enough angst that they will resist knowing and changing. The vegan may still experience such angst, but is compelled to change for the sake of the animals. Differing Capacity to Encompass Novel IdeasIdeas which vary from a widely believed ideology are often rejected, simply because the new idea is too radical to believe or comprehend. Consider the Law of Gravity or the concept of germs, both initially shunned by experts. Some people are more willing to delve into a new concept and explore the possibilities which come with it. Others are firmly tied to conformist ideology and will only jump on the bandwagon once others are driving it.Differing Levels of ConsciousnessIn the original book on Spiral Dynamics, Beck and Cowan talk about the magnetic forces that attract and repel individuals, the webs that connect people within organisations, and influence the rise and fall of nations and cultures. The book tracks our historic emergence from clans and tribes to networks and inter-connected networks. It identifies seven variations on how change occurs in individuals, society and leadership.Its relevance for veganism is in appreciating that there are different levels of consciousness in society. For example, a vegan passionate about the ethical treatment of animals would be faced with resistance from a hunter with a more tribal level of consciousness, according to the Spiral Dynamics model. It would be like two people from different planets communicating. Another example would be a community outraged by the influence of veganism on local employment, as demand for dairy reduces. By understanding where other people or groups are coming from, we can adapt the way in which we communicate. If vegans talk ethics and non-speciesism to people focused primarily on job security, they will face resistance.Tipping PointsIn marketing, the uptake of products and services follows a certain pattern. For example, in the 1990s, few people believed that the mobile phone market would explode to such a point. The same goes for changes in collective beliefs and ideas in society, such as the early protagonists for the Abolition of Slavery. These early innovators and adopters faced enormous resistance by those who benefited from the trade. As the movement gathered momentum, it reached what Gladwell has called the “Tipping Point”, “the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point” (12). As Gladwell stresses here, “ideas, products, messages and behaviours spread like viruses do” (7).In The Empathetic Civilization, Rifkin discusses society being wired for empathy. This occurs when the neurons in the brain mirror those of people around them, and can be likened to the psychological concept of “entrainment”. This phenomenon suggests that vegans have the ability to influence others through showing empathy and compassion.Increasingly, teenage vegans are referred to me who say, “I just had this awareness and know it is wrong to eat animals”. Many of them hadn’t seen anything on veganism or spoken to anyone about animal exploitation. I believe that this is an example of what Jung has called the “Collective Unconscious”; the structures of the unconscious mind which are shared among beings of the same species. This is encouraging for vegans who often feel helpless and cannot see how a vegan world will happen in their lifetime.ConclusionThose who are vegan for ethical reasons appear to feel compelled to take action to end animals’ plight. This may be because of the ubiquitous nature of the problem, but also because other people’s non-veganism is contributing to their vystopia.The extended compassion of vegans leaves them feeling depressed, wondering how enough people are going to change in order for veganism to become the new norm. The concept of entrainment is an encouraging one for vegans, reminding us of the importance of playing our part in being the example we want others to “entrain” to.It is my experience that empathy alone will not alleviate vystopia for these ethically-driven vegans. Vystopia can only be alleviated through action. A person may feel compelled to take action to end the suffering of refugees, children, the homeless and when they tell people, their efforts are applauded. The vegan who changes their everyday consumer choices to end animal suffering is often met with resistance, derision or criticism, as the non-vegan insists they have choice or that animals are inferior to humans. Another person may disagree with animal cruelty and yet refuse to change their consumer habits which finance the cruelty. One’s food choices are powerful political actions, and disagreeing with animal cruelty yet eating animals fuels the vegan’s vystopia. By shifting our focus from how awful the world is to taking action every day to mirror the vegan world we seek, we are creating a new norm to which others will entrain.With the increase in veganism trending upwards, the changes we are seeing across the world might mirror our compulsion to act. While the depth of animal empathy and vystopia is full of real anguish, I believe it also provides what we need to propel the world towards a vegan norm.ReferencesBeck, Don Edward, and Christopher Cowan. Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership and Change. New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2005.Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret. Dirs. Kip Anderson and Keegan Kuhn. Appian Way, A.U.M. Films, First Spark Media, 2014.Dominion. Dir. Chris Delforce. Aussie Farms, 2018.Earthlings. Dir. Shaun Monson. Libra Max and Maggie Q, 2005.Forgrieve, Janet. “The Growing Acceptance of Veganism.” Forbes 2 Nov. 2018. 29 Mar. 2018 <https://www.forbes.com/sites/janetforgrieve/2018/11/02/picturing-a-kindler-gentler-world-vegan-month/#331421342f2b>.Gladwell, Malcolm. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. London: Abacus, 2000.Jung, Carl G. The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. 1969.Kangaroo: A Love-Hate Story. Dirs. Michael McIntyre and Kate Clere-McIntyre. Hopping Pictures, 2017.Klaper, Michael. “Interview with Dr. Michael Klaper.” YouTube 17 Aug. 2018. 29 Mar. 2019 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=87&v=8EQOUODlq2c>.Klonsky, E. David. “The Functions of Deliberate Self-Injury: A Review of the Evidence.” Clinical Psychology Review 27.2 (2007): 226–39. Mallinson, Daniel J., and Peter K. Hatemi. “The Effects of Information and Social Conformity on Opinion Change.” Plos One 13.5 (2018). 29 Mar. 2019 <https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0196600>.Mann, Clare. “Do You Suffer from Vystopia? The Discovery of Systemised Cruelty.” Blog post. No date. 5 Apr. 2019 <https://www.veganpsychologist.com/do-you-suffer-from-vystopia/?platform=hootsuite>.———. Vystopia: The Anguish of Being Vegan in a Non-Vegan World. Sydney: Communicate31, 2018.Mowat, Andrew, John Corrigan, and Douglas Long. The Success Zone: 5 Powerful Steps to Growing Yourself and Leading Others. Mt. Evelyn: Global Publishing Group, 2009.Myers, Isabel Briggs, and Peter B. Myers. Gifts Differing: Understanding Personality Type. 2nd ed. Mountain View: Consulting Psychologists Press, 1995.Oberst, Lindsay. “Why the Global Rise in Vegan and Plant-Based Eating Isn’t a Fad (600% Increase in U.S. Vegans + Other Astounding Stats).” Food Revolution Network 18 Jan. 2018. 20 Mar. 2019 <https://foodrevolution.org/blog/vegan-statistics-global/>. Rennie, David L. “Methodical Hermeneutics and Humanistic Psychology.” The Humanistic Psychologist 35.1 (2007): 1-14.Rifkin, Jeremy. The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis. Cambridge: Polity, 2010.Roy Morgan. “The Slow But Steady Rise of Vegetarianism in Australia.” Roy Morgan 15 Aug. 2016. 29 Mar. 2019 <http://www.roymorgan.com/findings/vegetarianisms-slow-but-steady-rise-in-australia-201608151105>.The Vegan Society. “Statistics.” The Vegan Society, 2019. 20 Mar. 2019 <https://www.vegansociety.com/news/media/statistics>.

Babies and toddlers are amassing huge followings on social media, achieving microcelebrity status, and raking in five figure sums. In East Asia, many of these lucrative “micro­-microcelebrities” rise to fame by inheriting exposure and proximate microcelebrification from their social media Influencer mothers. Through self-branding techniques, Influencer mothers’ portrayals of their young’ children’s lives “as lived” are the canvas on which (baby) products and services are marketed to readers as “advertorials”. In turning to investigate this budding phenomenon, I draw on ethnographic case studies in Singapore to outline the career trajectory of these young children (under 4yo) including their social media presence, branding strategies, and engagement with their followers. The chapter closes with a brief discussion on some ethical considerations of such young children’s labour in the social media age.Influencer MothersTheresa Senft first coined the term “microcelebrity” in her work Camgirls as a burgeoning online trend, wherein people attempt to gain popularity by employing digital media technologies, such as videos, blogs, and social media. She describes microcelebrities as “non-actors as performers” whose narratives take place “without overt manipulation”, and who are “more ‘real’ than television personalities with ‘perfect hair, perfect friends and perfect lives’” (Senft 16), foregrounding their active response to their communities in the ways that maintain open channels of feedback on social media to engage with their following.Influencers – a vernacular industry term albeit inspired by Katz & Lazarsfeld’s notion of “personal influence” that predates Internet culture – are one type of microcelebrity; they are everyday, ordinary Internet users who accumulate a relatively large following on blogs and social media through the textual and visual narration of their personal lives and lifestyles, engage with their following in “digital” and “physical” spaces, and monetize their following by integrating “advertorials” into their blog or social media posts and making physical appearances at events. A pastiche of “advertisement” and “editorial”, advertorials in the Influencer industry are highly personalized, opinion-laden promotions of products/services that Influencers personally experience and endorse for a fee. Influencers in Singapore often brand themselves as having “relatability”, or the ability to persuade their followers to identify with them (Abidin). They do so by make consciously visible the backstage (Goffman) of the usually “inaccessible”, “personal”, and “private” aspects of mundane, everyday life to curate personae that feel “authentic” to fans (Marwick 114), and more accessible than traditional celebrity (Senft 16).Historically, the Influencer industry in Singapore can be traced back to the early beginnings of the “blogshop” industry from the mid-2000s and the “commercial blogging” industry. Influencers are predominantly young women, and market products and services from diverse industries, although the most popular have been fashion, beauty, F&B, travel, and electronics. Most prominent Influencers are contracted to management agencies who broker deals in exchange for commission and assist in the production of their vlogs. Since then, the industry has grown, matured, and expanded so rapidly that Influencers developed emergent models of advertorials, with the earliest cohorts moving into different life stages and monetizing several other aspects of their personal lives such as the “micro-microcelebrity” of their young children. What this paper provides is an important analysis of the genesis and normative practices of micro-microcelebrity commerce in Singapore from its earliest years, and future research trajectories in this field.Micro-Microcelebrity and Proximate MicrocelebrificationI define micro-microcelebrities as the children of Influencers who have themselves become proximate microcelebrities, having derived exposure and fame from their prominent Influencer mothers, usually through a more prolific, deliberate, and commercial form of what Blum-Ross defines as “sharenting”: the act of parents sharing images and stores about their children in digital spaces such as social networking sites and blogs. Marwick (116-117), drawing from Rojek’s work on types of celebrity – distinguishes between two types of microcelebrity: “ascribed microcelebrity” where the online personality is made recognizable through the “production of celebrity media” such as paparazzi shots and user-produced online memes, or “achieved microcelebrity” where users engage in “self-presentation strateg[ies]”, such as fostering the illusion of intimacy with fans, maintaining a persona, and selective disclosure about oneself.Micro-microcelebrities lie somewhere between the two: In a process I term “proximate microcelebrification”, micro-microcelebrities themselves inherit celebrity through the preemptive and continuous exposure from their Influencer mothers, many beginning even during the pre-birth pregnancy stages in the form of ultrasound scans, as a form of “achieved microcelebrity”. Influencer mothers whose “presentational strategies” (cf. Marshall, “Promotion” 45) are successful enough (as will be addressed later) gain traction among followers, who in turn further popularize the micro-microcelebrity by setting up fan accounts, tribute sites, and gossip forums through which fame is heightened in a feedback loop as a model of “ascribed microcelebrity”.Here, however, I refrain from conceptualizing these young stars as “micro-Influencers” for unlike Influencers, these children do not yet curate their self-presentation to command the attention of followers, but instead are used, framed, and appropriated by their mothers for advertorials. In other words, Influencer mothers “curate [micro-microcelebrities’] identities into being” (Leaver, “Birth”). Following this, many aspects of their micro-microcelebrities become rapidly commodified and commercialized, with advertisers clamoring to endorse anything from maternity hospital stays to nappy cream.Although children of mommybloggers have the prospect to become micro-microcelebrities, both groups are conceptually distinct. Friedman (200-201) argues that among mommybloggers arose a tension between those who adopt “the raw authenticity of nonmonetized blogging”, documenting the “unglamorous minutiae” of their daily lives and a “more authentic view of motherhood” and those who use mommyblogs “primarily as a source of extra income rather than as a site for memoir”, focusing on “parent-centered products” (cf. Mom Bloggers Club).In contrast, micro-microcelebrities and their digital presence are deliberately commercial, framed and staged by Influencer mothers in order to maximize their advertorial potential, and are often postured to market even non-baby/parenting products such as fast food and vehicles (see later). Because of the overt commerce, it is unclear if micro-microcelebrity displays constitute “intimate surveillance”, an “almost always well-intentioned surveillance of young people by parents” (Leaver, “Born” 4). Furthermore, children are generally peripheral to mommybloggers whose own parenting narratives take precedence as a way to connect with fellow mothers, while micro-microcelebrities are the primary feature whose everyday lives and digital presence enrapture followers.MethodologyThe analysis presented is informed by my original fieldwork with 125 Influencers and related actors among whom I conducted a mixture of physical and digital personal interviews, participant observation, web archaeology, and archival research between December 2011 and October 2014. However, the material presented here is based on my digital participant observation of publicly accessible and intentionally-public digital presence of the first four highly successful micro-microcelebrities in Singapore: “Baby Dash” (b.2013) is the son of Influencer xiaxue, “#HeYurou” (b.2011) is the niece of Influencer bongqiuqiu, “#BabyElroyE” (b.2014) is the son of Influencer ohsofickle, and “@MereGoRound” (b.2015) is the daughter of Influencer bongqiuqiu.The microcelebrity/social media handles of these children take different forms, following the platform on which their parent/aunt has exposed them on the most. Baby Dash appears in all of xiaxue’s digital platforms under a variety of over 30 indexical, ironic, or humourous hashtags (Leaver, “Birth”) including “#pointylipped”, #pineappledash”, and “#面包脸” (trans. “bread face”); “#HeYurou” appears on bongqiuqiu’s Instagram and Twitter; “#BabyElroyE” appears on ohsofickle’s Instagram and blog, and is the central figure of his mother’s new YouTube channel; and “@MereGoRound” appears on all of bongqiuqiu’s digital platforms but also has her own Instagram account and dedicated YouTube channel. The images reproduced here are screenshot from Influencer mothers’ highly public social media: xiaxue, bongqiuqiu, and ohsofickle boast 593k, 277k, and 124k followers on Instagram and 263k, 41k, and 17k followers on Twitter respectively at the time of writing.Anticipation and Digital EstatesIn an exclusive front-pager (Figure 1) on the day of his induced birth, it was announced that Baby Dash had already received up to SGD25,000 worth of endorsement deals brokered by his Influencer mother, xiaxue. As the first micro-microcelebrity in his cohort (his mother was among the pioneer Influencers), Baby Dash’s Caesarean section was even filmed and posted on xiaxue’s YouTube channel in three parts (Figure 2). xiaxue had announced her pregnancy on her blog while in her second trimester, following which she consistently posted mirror selfies of her baby bump.Figure 1 & 2, screenshot April 2013 from ‹instagram.com/xiaxue›In her successful attempt at generating anticipation, the “bump” itself seemed to garner its own following on Twitter and Instagram, with many followers discussing how the Influencer dressed “it”, and how “it” was evolving over the weeks. One follower even compiled a collage of xiaxue’s “bump” chronologically and gifted it to the Influencer as an art image via Twitter on the day she delivered Baby Dash (Figure 3 & 4). Followers also frequently speculated and bantered about how her baby would look, and mused about how much they were going to adore him. Figure 3 & 4, screenshot March 2013 from ‹twitter.com/xiaxue› While Lupton (42) has conceptualized the sharing of images that precede birth as a “rite of passage”, Influencer mothers who publish sonograms deliberately do so in order to claim digital estates for their to-be micro-microcelebrities in the form of “reserved” social media handles, blog URLs, and unique hashtags for self-branding. For instance, at the 3-month mark of her pregnancy, Influencer bongqiuqiu debuted her baby’s dedicated hashtag, “#MereGoRound” in a birth announcement on her on Instagram account. Shortly after, she started an Instagram account, “@MereGoRound”, for her baby, who amassed over 5.5k followers prior to her birth. Figure 5 & 6, screenshot March 2015 from instagram.com/meregoround and instagram.com/bongqiuqiuThe debut picture features a heavily pregnant belly shot of bongqiuqiu (Figure 5), creating much anticipation for the arrival of a new micro-microcelebrity: in the six months leading up to her birth, various family, friends, and fans shared Instagram images of their gifts and welcome party for @MereGoRound, and followers shared congratulations and fan art on the dedicated Instagram hashtag. During this time, bongqiuqiu also frequently updated followers on her pregnancy progress, not without advertising her (presumably sponsored) gynecologist and hospital stay in her pregnancy diaries (Figure 6) – like Baby Dash, even as a foetus @MereGoRound was accumulating advertorials. Presently at six months old, @MereGoRound boasts almost 40k followers on Instagram on which embedded in the narrative of her growth are sponsored products and services from various advertisers.Non-Baby-Related AdvertorialsPrior to her pregnancy, Influencer bongqiuqiu hopped onto the micro-microcelebrity bandwagon in the wake of Baby Dash’s birth, by using her niece “#HeYurou” in her advertorials. Many Influencers attempt to naturalize their advertorials by composing their post as if recounting a family event. With reference to a child, parent, or partner, they may muse or quip about a product being used or an experience being shared in a bid to mask the distinction between their personal and commercial material. bongqiuqiu frequently posted personal, non-sponsored images engaging in daily mundane activities under the dedicated hashtag “#HeYurou”.However, this was occasionally interspersed with pictures of her niece holding on to various products including storybooks (Figure 8) and shopping bags (Figure 9). At first glance, this might have seemed like any mundane daily update the Influencer often posts. However, a close inspection reveals the caption bearing sponsor hashtags, tags, and campaign information. For instance, one Instagram post shows #HeYurou casually holding on to and staring at a burger in KFC wrapping (Figure 7), but when read in tandem with bongqiuqiu’s other KFC-related posts published over a span of a few months, it becomes clear that #HeYurou was in fact advertising for KFC. Figure 7, 8, 9, screenshot December 2014 from ‹instagram.com/bongqiuqiu›Elsewhere, Baby Dash was incorporated into xiaxue’s car sponsorship with over 20 large decals of one of his viral photos – dubbed “pineapple Dash” among followers – plastered all over her vehicle (Figure 10). Followers who spot the car in public are encouraged to photograph and upload the image using its dedicated hashtag, “#xiaxuecar” as part of the Influencer’s car sponsorship – an engagement scarcely related to her young child. Since then, xiaxue has speculated producing offshoots of “pineapple Dash” products including smartphone casings. Figure 10, screenshot December 2014 from ‹instagram.com/xiaxue›Follower EngagementSponsors regularly organize fan meet-and-greets headlined by micro-microcelebrities in order to attract potential customers. Photo opportunities and the chance to see Baby Dash “in the flesh” frequently front press and promotional material of marketing campaigns. Elsewhere on social media, several Baby Dash fan and tribute accounts have also emerged on Instagram, reposting images and related media of the micro-microcelebrity with overt adoration, no doubt encouraged by xiaxue, who began crowdsourcing captions for Baby Dash’s photos.Influencer ohsofickle postures #BabyElroyE’s follower engagement in a more subtle way. In her YouTube channel that debut in the month of her baby’s birth, ohsofickle produces video diaries of being a young, single, mother who is raising a child (Figure 11). In each episode, #BabyElroyE is the main feature whose daily activities are documented, and while there is some advertising embedded, ohsofickle’s approach on YouTube is much less overt than others as it features much more non-monetized personal content (Figure 12). Her blog serves as a backchannel to her vlogs, in which she recounts her struggles with motherhood and explicitly solicits the advice of mothers. However, owing to her young age (she became an Influencer at 17 and gave birth at 24), many of her followers are teenagers and young women who respond to her solicitations by gushing over #BabyElroyE’s images on Instagram. Figure 11 & 12, screenshot September 2015 from ‹instagram.com/ohsofickle›PrivacyAs noted by Holloway et al. (23), children like micro-microcelebrities will be among the first cohorts to inherit “digital profiles” of their “whole lifetime” as a “work in progress”, from parents who habitually underestimate or discount the privacy and long term effects of publicizing information about their children at the time of posting. This matters in a climate where social media platforms can amend privacy policies without user consent (23), and is even more pressing for micro-microcelebrities whose followers store, republish, and recirculate information in fan networks, resulting in digital footprints with persistence, replicability, scalability, searchability (boyd), and extended longevity in public circulation which can be attributed back to the children indefinitely (Leaver, “Ends”).Despite minimum age restrictions and recent concerns with “digital kidnapping” where users steal images of other young children to be re-posted as their own (Whigham), some social media platforms rarely police the proliferation of accounts set up by parents on behalf of their underage children prominently displaying their legal names and life histories, citing differing jurisdictions in various countries (Facebook; Instagram), while others claim to disable accounts if users report an “incorrect birth date” (cf. Google for YouTube). In Singapore, the Media Development Authority (MDA) which governs all print and digital media has no firm regulations for this but suggests that the age of consent is 16 judging by their recommendation to parents with children aged below 16 to subscribe to Internet filtering services (Media Development Authority, “Regulatory” 1). Moreover, current initiatives have been focused on how parents can impart digital literacy to their children (Media Development Authority, “Empowered”; Media Literacy Council) as opposed to educating parents about the digital footprints they may be unwittingly leaving about their children.The digital lives of micro-microcelebrities pose new layers of concern given their publicness and deliberate publicity, specifically hinged on making visible the usually inaccessible, private aspects of everyday life (Marshall, “Persona” 5).Scholars note that celebrities are individuals for whom speculation of their private lives takes precedence over their actual public role or career (Geraghty 100-101; Turner 8). However, the personae of Influencers and their young children are shaped by ambiguously blurring the boundaries of privacy and publicness in order to bait followers’ attention, such that privacy and publicness are defined by being broadcast, circulated, and publicized (Warner 414). In other words, the publicness of micro-microcelebrities is premised on the extent of the intentional publicity rather than simply being in the public domain (Marwick 223-231, emphasis mine).Among Influencers privacy concerns have aroused awareness but not action – Baby Dash’s Influencer mother admitted in a national radio interview that he has received a death threat via Instagram but feels that her child is unlikely to be actually attacked (Channel News Asia) – because privacy is a commodity that is manipulated and performed to advance their micro-microcelebrities’ careers. As pioneer micro-microcelebrities are all under 2-years-old at present, future research warrants investigating “child-centred definitions” (Third et al.) of the transition in which they come of age, grow an awareness of their digital presence, respond to their Influencer mothers’ actions, and potentially take over their accounts.Young LabourThe Ministry of Manpower (MOM) in Singapore, which regulates the employment of children and young persons, states that children under the age of 13 may not legally work in non-industrial or industrial settings (Ministry of Manpower). However, the same document later ambiguously states underaged children who do work can only do so under strict work limits (Ministry of Manpower). Elsewhere (Chan), it is noted that national labour statistics have thus far only focused on those above the age of 15, thus neglecting a true reflection of underaged labour in Singapore. This is despite the prominence of micro-microcelebrities who are put in front of (video) cameras to build social media content. Additionally, the work of micro-microcelebrities on digital platforms has not yet been formally recognized as labour, and is not regulated by any authority including Influencer management firms, clients, the MDA, and the MOM. Brief snippets from my ethnographic fieldwork with Influencer management agencies in Singapore similarly reveal that micro-microcelebrities’ labour engagements and control of their earnings are entirely at their parents’ discretion.As models and actors, micro-microcelebrities are one form of entertainment workers who if between the ages of 15 days and 18 years in the state of California are required to obtain an Entertainment Work Permit to be gainfully employed, adhering to strict work, schooling, and rest hour quotas (Department of Industrial Relations). Furthermore, the Californian Coogan Law affirms that earnings by these minors are their own property and not their parents’, although they are not old enough to legally control their finances and rely on the state to govern their earnings with a legal guardian (Screen Actors Guild). However, this similarly excludes underaged children and micro-microcelebrities engaged in creative digital ecologies. Future research should look into safeguards and instruments among young child entertainers, especially for micro-micrcocelebrities’ among whom commercial work and personal documentation is not always distinct, and are in fact deliberately intertwined in order to better engage with followers for relatabilityGrowing Up BrandedIn the wake of moral panics over excessive surveillance technologies, children’s safety on the Internet, and data retention concerns, micro-microcelebrities and their Influencer mothers stand out for their deliberately personal and overtly commercial approach towards self-documenting, self-presenting, and self-publicizing from the moment of conception. As these debut micro-microcelebrities grow older and inherit digital publics, personae, and careers, future research should focus on the transition of their ownership, engagement, and reactions to a branded childhood in which babies were postured for an initimate public.ReferencesAbidin, Crystal. “Communicative Intimacies: Influencers and Perceived Interconnectedness.” Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, & Technology. Forthcoming, Nov 2015.Aiello, Marianne. “Mommy Blog Banner Ads Get Results.” Healthcare Marketing Advisor 17 Nov. 2010. HealthLeaders Media. 16 Aug. 2015 ‹http://healthleadersmedia.com/content/MAR-259215/Mommy-Blog-Banner-Ads-Get-Results›.Azzarone, Stephanie. “When Consumers Report: Mommy Blogging Your Way to Success.” Playthings 18 Feb. 2009. 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There is a moment in Al Gore’s 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth devised to expose the sheer audacity of fossil fuel lobby groups in the United States. In their attempts to address significant scientific consensus and growing public concern over climate change, these groups are resorting to what Gore’s film suggests are grotesque distortions of fact. A particular example highlighted in the film is the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s (CPE—a lobby group funded by ExxonMobil) “pro” energy industry advertisement: “Carbon dioxide”, the ad states. “They call it pollution, we call it life.” While on the one hand employing rhetoric against the “inconvenient truth” that carbon dioxide emissions are ratcheting up the Earth’s temperature, these advertisements also pose a question – though perhaps unintended – that is worth addressing. Where does life reside? This is not an issue of essentialism, but relates to the claims, materials and technologies through which life as a political object emerges. The danger of entertaining the vested interests of polluting industry in a discussion of climate change and its biopolitics is countered by an imperative to acknowledge the ways in which multiple positions in the climate change debate invoke and appeal to ‘life’ as the bottom line, or inviolable interest, of their political, social or economic work. In doing so, other questions come to the fore that a politics of climate change framed in terms of moral positions or competing values will tend to overlook. These questions concern the manifold practices of life that constitute the contemporary terrain of the political, and the actors and instruments put in this employ. Who speaks for life? And who or what produces it? Climate change as a matter of concern (Latour) has gathered and generated a host of experts, communities, narratives and technical devices all invested in the administration of life. It is, as Malcom Bull argues, “the paradigmatic issue of the new politics,” a politics which “draws people towards the public realm and makes life itself subject to the caprices of state and market” (2). This paper seeks to highlight the politics of life that have emerged around climate change as a public issue. It will argue that these politics appear in incremental and multiple ways that situate an array of actors and interests as active in both contesting and generating the terms of life: what life is and how we come to know it. This way of thinking about climate change debates opposes a prevalent moralistic framework that reads the practices and discourses of debate in terms of oppositional positions alone. While sympathies may flow in varying directions, especially when it comes to such a highly charged and massively consequential issue as climate change, there is little insight to be had from charging the CPE (for example) with manipulating consumers, or misrepresenting well-known facts. Where new and more productive understandings open up is in relation to the fields through which these gathering actors play out their claims to the project of life. These fields, from the state, to the corporation, to the domestic sphere, reveal a complex network of strategies and devices that seek to secure life in constantly renovated terms. Life Politics Biopolitical scholarship in the wake of Foucault has challenged life as a pre-given uncritical category, and sought to highlight the means through which it is put under question and constituted through varying and composing assemblages of practitioners and practices. Such work regards the project of human well-being as highly complex and technical, and has undertaken to document this empirically through close attention to the everyday ecologies in which humans are enmeshed. This is a political and theoretical project in itself, situating political processes in micro, as well as macro, registers, including daily life as a site of (self) management and governance. Rabinow and Rose refer to biopolitical circuits that draw together and inter-relate the multiple sites and scales operative in the administration of life. These involve not just technologies, rationalities and regimes of authority and control, but also politics “from below” in the form of rights claims and community formation and agitation (198). Active in these circuits, too, are corporate and non-state interests for whom the pursuit of maximising life’s qualities and capabilities has become a concern through which “market relations and shareholder value” are negotiated (Rabinow and Rose 211). As many biopolitical scholars argue, biopower—the strategies through which biopolitics are enacted—is characteristic of the “disciplinary neo-liberalism” that has come to define the modern state, and through which the conduct of conduct is practiced (Di Muzio 305). Foucault’s concept of governmentality describes the devolution of state-based disciplinarity and sovereignty to a host of non-state actors, rationalities and strategies of governing, including the self-managing subject, not in opposition to the state, but contributing to its form. According to Bratich, Packer and McCarthy, everyday life is thus “saturated with governmental techniques” (18) in which we are all enrolled. Unlike regimes of biopolitics identified with what Agamben terms “thanopolitics”—the exercise of biopower “which ultimately rests on the power of some to threaten the death of others” (Rabinow and Rose 198), such as the Nazi’s National Socialism and other eugenic campaigns—governmental arts in the service of “vitalist” biopolitics (Rose 1) are increasingly diffused amongst all those with an “interest” in sustaining life, from organisations to individuals. The integration of techniques of self-governance which ask the individual to work on themselves and their own dispositions with State functions has broadened the base by which life is governed, and foregrounded an unsettled terrain of life claims. Rose argues that medical science is at the forefront of these contemporary biopolitics, and to this effect “has […] been fully engaged in the ethical questions of how we should live—of what kinds of creatures we are, of the kinds of obligations that we have to ourselves and to others, of the kinds of techniques we can and should use to improve ourselves” (20). Asking individuals to self-identify through their medical histories and bodily specificities, medical cultures are also shaping new political arrangements, as communities connected by shared genetics or physical conditions, for instance, emerge, evolve and agitate according to the latest medical knowledge. Yet it is not just medicine that provokes ethical work and new political forms. The environment is a key site for life politics that entails a multi-faceted discourse of obligations and entitlements, across fields and scales of engagement. Calculating Environments In line with neo-liberal logic, environmental discourse concerned with ameliorating climate change has increasingly focused upon the individual as an agent of self-monitoring, to both facilitate government agendas at a distance, and to “self-fashion” in the mode of the autonomous subject, securing against external risks (Ong 501). Climate change is commonly represented as such a risk, to both human and non-human life. A recent letter published by the Royal Australasian College of Physicians in two leading British medical journals, named climate change as the “biggest global health threat of the twenty-first century” (Morton). As I have argued elsewhere (Potter), security is central to dominant cultures of environmental governance in the West; these cultures tie sustainability goals to various and interrelated regimes of monitoring which attach to concepts of what Clark and Stevenson call “the good ecological citizen” (238). Citizenship is thus practiced through strategies of governmentality which call on individuals to invest not just in their own well-being, but in the broader project of life. Calculation is a primary technique through which modern environmental governance is enacted; calculative strategies are seen to mediate risk, according to Foucault, and consequently to “assure living” (Elden 575). Rationalised schemes for self-monitoring are proliferating under climate change and the project of environmentalism more broadly, something which critics of neo-liberalism have identified as symptomatic of the privatisation of politics that liberal governmentality has fostered. As we have seen in Australia, an evolving policy emphasis on individual practices and the domestic sphere as crucial sites of environmental action – for instance, the introduction of domestic water restrictions, and the phasing out of energy-inefficient light bulbs in the home—provides a leading discourse of ethico-political responsibility. The rise of carbon dioxide counting is symptomatic of this culture, and indicates the distributed fields of life management in contemporary governmentality. Carbon dioxide, as the CPE is keen to point out, is crucial to life, but it is also—in too large an amount—a force of destruction. Its management, in vitalist terms, is thus established as an effort to protect life in the face of death. The concept of “carbon footprinting” has been promoted by governments, NGOs, industry and individuals as a way of securing this goal, and a host of calculative techniques and strategies are employed to this end, across a spectrum of activities and contexts all framed in the interests of life. The footprinting measure seeks to secure living via self-policed limits, which also—in classic biopolitical form—shift previously private practices into a public realm of count-ability and accountability. The carbon footprint, like its associates the ecological footprint and the water footprint, has developed as a multi-faceted tool of citizenship beyond the traditional boundaries of the state. Suggesting an ecological conception of territory and of our relationships and responsibilities to this, the footprint, as a measure of resource use and emissions relative to the Earth’s capacities to absorb these, calculates and visualises the “specific qualities” (Elden 575) that, in a spatialised understanding of security, constitute and define this territory. The carbon footprint’s relatively simple remit of measuring carbon emissions per unit of assessment—be that the individual, the corporation, or the nation—belies the ways in which life is formatted and produced through its calculations. A tangled set of devices, practices and discourses is employed to make carbon and thus life calculable and manageable. Treading Lightly The old environmental adage to “tread lightly upon the Earth” has been literalised in the metaphor of the footprint, which attempts both to symbolise environmental practice and to directly translate data in order to meaningfully communicate necessary boundaries for our living. The World Wildlife Fund’s Living Planet Report 2008 exemplifies the growing popularity of the footprint as a political and poetic hook: speaking in terms of our “ecological overshoot,” and the move from “ecological credit to ecological deficit”, the report urges an attendance to our “global footprint” which “now exceeds the world’s capacity to regenerate by about 30 per cent” (1). Angela Crombie’s A Lighter Footprint, an instruction manual for sustainable living, is one of a host of media through which individuals are educated in modes of footprint calculation and management. She presents a range of techniques, including carbon offsetting, shifting to sustainable modes of transport, eating and buying differently, recycling and conserving water, to mediate our carbon dioxide output, and to “show […] politicians how easy it is” (13). Governments however, need no persuading from citizens that carbon calculation is an exercise to be harnessed. As governments around the world move (slowly) to address climate change, policies that instrumentalise carbon dioxide emission and reduction via an auditing of credits and deficits have come to the fore—for example, the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme and the Chicago Climate Exchange. In Australia, we have the currently-under-debate Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, a part of which is the Australian Emissions Trading Scheme (AETS) that will introduce a system of “carbon credits” and trading in a market-based model of supply and demand. This initiative will put a price on carbon dioxide emissions, and cap the amount of emissions any one polluter can produce without purchasing further credits. In readiness for the scheme, business initiatives are forming to take advantage of this new carbon market. Industries in carbon auditing and off-setting services are consolidating; hectares of trees, already active in the carbon sequestration market, are being cultivated as “carbon sinks” and key sites of compliance for polluters under the AETS. Governments are also planning to turn their tracts of forested public land into carbon credits worth billions of dollars (Arup 7). The attachment of emission measures to goods and services requires a range of calculative experts, and the implementation of new marketing and branding strategies, aimed at conveying the carbon “health” of a product. The introduction of “food mile” labelling (the amount of carbon dioxide emitted in the transportation of the food from source to consumer) in certain supermarkets in the United Kingdom is an example of this. Carbon risk analysis and management programs are being introduced across businesses in readiness for the forthcoming “carbon economy”. As one flyer selling “a suite of carbon related services” explains, “early action will give you the edge in understanding and mitigating the risks, and puts you in a prime position to capitalise on the rewards” (MGI Business Solutions Worldwide). In addition, lobby groups are working to ensure exclusions from or the free allocation of permits within the proposed AETS, with degrees of compulsion applied to different industries – the Federal Government, for instance, will provide a $3.9 billion compensation package for the electric power sector when the AETS commences, to enable their “adjustment” to this carbon regime. Performing Life Noortje Mares provides a further means of thinking through the politics of life in the context of climate change by complicating the distinction between public and private interest. Her study of “green living experiments” describes the rise of carbon calculation in the home in recent years, and the implementation of technologies such as the smart electricity meter that provides a constantly updating display of data relating to amounts and cost of energy consumed and the carbon dioxide emitted in the routines of domestic life. Her research tracks the entry of these personal calculative regimes into public life via internet forums such as blogs, where individuals notate or discuss their experiences of pursing low-carbon lifestyles. On the one hand, these calculative practices of living and their public representation can be read as evidencing the pervasive neo-liberal governmentality at work in contemporary environmental practice, where individuals are encouraged to scrupulously monitor their domestic cultures. The rise of auditing as a technology of self, and more broadly as a technique of public accountability, has come under fire for its “immunity-granting role” (Charkiewicz 79), where internal audits become substituted for external compliance and regulation. Mares challenges this reading, however, by demonstrating the ways in which green living experiments “transform everyday material practices into practices of public involvement” that (118) don’t resolve or pin down relations between the individual, the non-human environment, and the social, or reveal a mappable flow of actions and effects between the public realm and the home. The empirical modes of publicity that these individuals employ, “the careful recording of measurements and the reliable descriptions of sensory observation, so as to enable ‘virtual witnessing’ by wider audiences”, open up to much more complex understandings than one of calculative self-discipline at work. As “instrument[s] of public involvement” (120), the experiments that Mares describe locate the politics of life in the embodied socio-material entanglements of the domestic sphere, in arrangements of humans and non-human technologies. Such arrangements, she suggests, are ontologically productive in that they introduce “not only new knowledge, but also new entities […] to society” (119), and as such these experiments and the modes of calculation they employ become active in the composition of reality. Recent work in economic sociology and cultural studies has similarly contended that calculation, far from either a naturalised or thoroughly abstract process, relies upon a host of devices, relations, and techniques: that is, as Gay Hawkins explains, calculative processes “have to be enacted” (108). Environmental governmentality in the service of securing life is a networked practice that draws in a host of actors, not a top-down imposition. The institution of carbon economies and carbon emissions as a new register of public accountability, brings alternative ways to calculate the world into being, and consequently re-calibrates life as it emerges from these heterogeneous arrangements. All That Gathers Latour writes that we come to know a matter of concern by all the things that gather around it (Latour). This includes the human, as well as the non-human actors, policies, practices and technologies that are put to work in the making of our realities. Climate change is routinely represented as a threat to life, with predicted (and occurring) species extinction, growing numbers of climate change refugees, dispossessed from uninhabitable lands, and the rise of diseases and extreme weather scenarios that put human life in peril. There is no doubt, of course, that climate change does mean death for some: indeed, there are thanopolitical overtones in inequitable relations between the fall-out of impacts from major polluting nations on poorer countries, or those much more susceptible to rising sea levels. Biosocial equity, as Bull points out, is a “matter of being equally alive and equally dead” (2). Yet in the biopolitical project of assuring living, life is burgeoning around the problem of climate change. The critique of neo-liberalism as a blanketing system that subjects all aspects of life to market logic, and in which the cynical techniques of industry seek to appropriate ethico-political stances for their own material ends, are insufficient responses to what is actually unfolding in the messy terrain of climate change and its biopolitics. What this paper has attempted to show is that there is no particular purchase on life that can be had by any one actor who gathers around this concern. Varying interests, ambitions, and intentions, without moral hierarchy, stake their claim in life as a constantly constituting site in which they participate, and from this perspective, the ways in which we understand life to be both produced and managed expand. This is to refuse either an opposition or a conflation between the market and nature, or the market and life. It is also to argue that we cannot essentialise human-ness in the climate change debate. For while human relations with animals, plants and weathers may make us what we are, so too do our relations with (in a much less romantic view) non-human things, technologies, schemes, and even markets—from carbon auditing services, to the label on a tin on the supermarket shelf. As these intersect and entangle, the project of life, in the new politics of climate change, is far from straightforward. References An Inconvenient Truth. Dir. Davis Guggenheim. Village Roadshow, 2006. Arup, Tom. “Victoria Makes Enormous Carbon Stocktake in Bid for Offset Billions.” The Age 24 Sep. 2009: 7. Bratich, Jack Z., Jeremy Packer, and Cameron McCarthy. “Governing the Present.” Foucault, Cultural Studies and Governmentality. Ed. Bratich, Packer and McCarthy. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. 3-21. Bull, Malcolm. “Globalization and Biopolitics.” New Left Review 45 (2007): 12 May 2009 . < http://newleftreview.org/?page=article&view=2675 >. Charkiewicz, Ewa. “Corporations, the UN and Neo-liberal Bio-politics.” Development 48.1 (2005): 75-83. Clark, Nigel, and Nick Stevenson. “Care in a Time of Catastrophe: Citizenship, Community and the Ecological Imagination.” Journal of Human Rights 2.2 (2003): 235-246. Crombie, Angela. A Lighter Footprint: A Practical Guide to Minimising Your Impact on the Planet. Carlton North, Vic.: Scribe, 2007. Di Muzio, Tim. “Governing Global Slums: The Biopolitics of Target 11.” Global Governance. 14.3 (2008): 305-326. Elden, Stuart. “Governmentality, Calculation and Territory.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 25 (2007): 562-580. Hawkins, Gay. The Ethics of Waste: How We Relate to Rubbish. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2006. Latour, Bruno. “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam?: From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern.” Critical Inquiry 30.2 (2004): 225-248. Mares, Noortje. “Testing Powers of Engagement: Green Living Experiments, the Ontological Turn and the Undoability and Involvement.” European Journal of Social Theory 12.1 (2009): 117-133. MGI Business Solutions Worldwide. “Carbon News.” Adelaide. 2 Aug. 2009. Ong, Aihwa. “Mutations in Citizenship.” Theory, Culture and Society 23.2-3 (2006): 499-505. Potter, Emily. “Footprints in the Mallee: Climate Change, Sustaining Communities, and the Nature of Place.” Landscapes and Learning: Place Studies in a Global World. Ed. Margaret Somerville, Kerith Power and Phoenix de Carteret. Sense Publishers. Forthcoming. Rabinow, Paul, and Nikolas Rose. “Biopower Today.” Biosocieties 1 (2006): 195-217. Rose, Nikolas. “The Politics of Life Itself.” Theory, Culture and Society 18.6 (2001): 1-30. World Wildlife Fund. Living Planet Report 2008. Switzerland, 2008.

Introduction Taste is considered a gustatory and physiological sense. It is also something that can be developed over time. In Bourdieu’s work taste is a matter of distinction, and a means of drawing boundaries between groups about what constitutes “good” taste. In this context it is necessary to perform or display tastes over and over again. This then becomes part of a cultural habitus, a code that can be read and understood. In the field of “feeding the family” (DeVault) for respondents in my study, healthy food prepared from scratch became the symbol of appropriate mothering, a means of demonstrating a middle class habitus, distinction, and taste. I use the term “family foodways” to emphasize how feeding the family encapsulates more than buying, preparing, cooking, and serving food, it incorporates the ways in which families practice, perform, and “do” family food. These family foodways are about the family of today, as well as an investment in the family of the future, through the reproduction and reinforcement of cultural values and tastes around food. In the UK, there are divisions between what might be considered appropriate and inappropriate family foodways, and a vilification of alternatives that lack time and effort. Warde identifies four antinomies of taste used by advertisers in the marketing of food: “novelty and tradition,” “health and indulgence,” “economy and extravagance,” and “convenience and care” (174). In relation to family foodways, there are inherent tensions in these antinomies, and for mothers in my study in order to demonstrate “care”, it was necessary to eschew “convenience.” Indeed, the time and effort involved in feeding the family healthy meals prepared from scratch becomes an important symbol of middle class taste and investment in the future. The alternative can be illustrated by reference to the media furore around Jamie Oliver’s comments in a Radio Times interview (that coincided with a TV series and book launch) in which Deans quotes Oliver: "You might remember that scene in [a previous series] of Ministry of Food, with the mum and the kid eating chips and cheese out of Styrofoam containers, and behind them is a massive f****** TV.” Oliver uses cultural markers of taste to highlight how “mum” was breaking the rules and conventions associated with appropriate or aspirational class based family foodways. We assume that the “mum and kid” were using their fingers, and not a knife and fork, and that the meal was not on a plate around a table but instead eaten in front of a “massive f****** TV.” Oliver uses these cultural markers of taste and distinction to commit acts of symbolic violence, defined by Bourdieu and Wacquant, as “the violence which is exercised upon a social agent with his or her complicity” (67), to confer judgement and moral approbation regarding family foodways. In this example, a lack of time and effort is associated with a lack of taste. And although this can be linked with poverty, this is not about a lack of money, as the mother and child are eating in front of a big television. Oliver is therefore drawing attention to how family foodways become cultural markers of taste and distinction. I argue that appropriate family foodways have become significant markers of taste, and draw on qualitative data to emphasise how respondents use these to position themselves as “good” mothers. Indeed, the manner of presenting, serving, and eating food fulfils the social function of legitimising social difference (Bourdieu 6). Indeed, Bourdieu claims that mothers are significant as the convertors of economic capital into cultural capital for their children; they are “sign bearing” carriers of taste (Skeggs 22). In taking time to prepare healthy meals from scratch, sourcing organic and/or local ingredients, accommodating each individual household members food preferences or individual health needs, being able to afford to waste food, to take time over the preparation, and eating of a meal around the table together, are all aspects of an aspirational model of feeding the family. This type of intensive effort around feeding becomes a legitimate means of demonstrating cultural distinction and taste. Research Background This paper draws on data from a qualitative study conducted over nine months in 2011. I carried out a series of asynchronous on-line interviews with seventy-five mostly middle class women and men between the ages of twenty-seven and eighty-five. One third of the respondents were male. Two thirds were parents at different stages in the life course, from those who were new to parenting to grand parents. There was also a range of family types including lone parents, and co-habiting and married couples with children (and step-children). The focus of the inquiry was food over the life course and respondents were invited to write their own autobiographical food narratives. Once respondents agreed to participate, I wrote to them: What I’m really after is your “food story.” Perhaps, this will include your earliest food memories, favourite foods, memorable food occasions, whether your eating habits have changed over time and why this may be. Also, absolutely anything food related that you'd like to share with me. For some, if this proved difficult, we engaged in an on-line interview in which I asked a series of questions centred on how they developed their own eating and cooking habits. I did not set out to question respondents specifically about “healthy” or “unhealthy” foodways and did not mention these terms at all. It was very much an open invitation for them to tell their stories in their words and on their terms. It was the common vocabularies (Mills) across the narratives that I was looking to discover, rather than directing these vocabularies in any particular way. I conducted several levels of analysis on the data and identified four themes on the family, health, the body, and the foodie. This discussion is based on the narratives I identified within the family theme. A Taste for “Healthy” Family Foodways When setting out on this research journey, I anticipated a considerable shift in gender roles within the home and a negotiated family model in which “everything could be negotiated” (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim xxi), especially “feeding the family” (De-Vault). Considering the rise of male celebrity chefs such as Jamie Oliver and the development of a distinct foodie identity (Naccarato and LeBesco, Johnston and Baumann, Cairns et al.), I envisaged that men would be more likely to take on this role. Given women’s roles outside the home, I also envisaged the use of convenience food, ready meals, and take-away food. However, what emerged was that women were highly resistant to any notion of relinquishing the responsibility for “feeding the family” (DeVault). Indeed, the women who were parents were keen to demonstrate how they engaged in preparing healthy, home-cooked meals from scratch for their families, despite having working identities. This commitment to healthy family foodways was used as a means of aligning themselves with an intensive mothering ideology (Hays) and to distance themselves from the alternative. It was a means of drawing distinctions and symbolising taste. When it comes to feeding the family, the “symbolic violence” (Bourdieu and Wacquant 167) afforded to mothers who transgress the boundaries of appropriate mothering by feeding their children unhealthy and/or convenience food, meant that mothers in my study only fed their children healthy food. It would be inconceivable for them to admit to anything else. This I consider a consequence of dualist and absolutist approaches to food and foodways, whereby “convenience” food continues to be demonised in family food discourses because it symbolises “lack” on many levels, specifically a lack of care and a lack of taste. This was not something I had anticipated at the beginning of the study; that mothers would not use convenience food and only prepared “healthy” meals was a surprise. This is indicative of the power of healthy food discourses and inappropriate family foodways, as symbolised by the mum feeding her kid “cheese and chips out of a Styrofoam container,” in informing respondents’ food narratives. I gained full ethical approval from my university and all respondents were given pseudonyms. The quotes I use here are taken from the narratives within the family theme and are representative of this theme. I cannot include all respondents’ narratives. I include quotes from Faye, a forty-six year-old Secretary married with one child; Laura, a thirty-five year-old Teaching Assistant, married with two children; Zoe, a forty-four year-old Recruiter, married with two children; Gaby, a fifty-one year old Architect Designer, married with two children; Ophelia, a fifty-three year-old Author, married with two children; Valerie, a forty-six year-old Website Manager, single with one child; and Chloe, a forty-six year old Occupational Health Sex Advisor, co-habiting with two children at home. Cooking “proper” healthy family meals is a skilled practice (Short) and a significant aspect of meaningful family-integration (Moiso et al.). It has symbolic and cultural capital and is indicative of a particular middle class habitus and this relates to taste in its broadest sense. Hence, Faye writes: My mum was a fabulous, creative cook; she loved reading cookery books and took great pride in her cooking. We didn't have a lot of money when we were young, but my mum was a very creative cook and every meal was completely delicious and homemade. Faye, despite working herself, and in common with many women juggling the second shift (Hochschild and Machung), is solely responsible for feeding her family. Indeed, Faye’s comments are strikingly similar to those in DeVault’s research carried out over twenty years ago; one of DeVault’s participants was quoted as saying that, “as soon as I get up on the morning or before I go to bed I’m thinking of what we’re going to eat tomorrow” (56). It is significant that cultural changes in the twenty years since DeVaults’ study were not reflected in respondents’ narratives. Despite women working outside of the home, men moving into the kitchen, and easy access to a whole range of convenience foods, women in my study adhered to “healthy” family foodways as markers of taste and distinction. Two decades later, Faye comments: Oh my goodness! I wake up each morning and the first thing I think about is what are we going to have for supper! It's such a drag, as I can never think of anything new or inspirational, despite the fact that we have lots of lovely cookery books! In many ways, these comments serve to reinforce further the status of “feeding the family” (DeVault) as central to maternal identity and part of delineating distinction and taste. Faye, in contrast to her own mother, has the additional pressure of having to cook new and inspirational food. Indeed, if preparing and purchasing food for herself or her family, Faye writes: I would make a packed lunch of something I really enjoyed eating, that's healthy, balanced and nutritious, with a little treat tucked in! […] I just buy things that are healthy and nutritious and things that might be interesting to appear in [my daughter’s] daily lunch box! However, by “just buying things that are healthy”, Faye is contributing to the notion that feeding the family healthily is easy, natural, care work and part of a particular middle class habitus. Again, this is part of what distinguishes cultural approaches to family foodways. Health and healthiness are part of a neo-liberal approach that is about a taste for the future. It is not about instant gratification, but about safeguarding health. Faye positions herself as the “guardian of health” (Beagan et al. 662). This demonstrates the extent to which the caringscape and healthscape can be intertwined (McKie et al.), as well as how health discourses seep into family foodways, whereby a “good mother” ensures the health of her children through cooking/providing healthy food or by being engaged in emotion (food) work. Faye reiterates this by writing, “if I have time [my cooking skills] […] are very good, if I don't they are rumbled together! But everything I cook is cooked with love!” Hence, this emotion work is not considered work at all, but an expression of love. Hence, in terms of distinction and taste, even when cooking is rushed it is conceptualised in the context of being prepared with love, in opposition to the cultural symbol of the mother and child “eating cheese and chips out of a Styrofoam container.” Convenience “Lacks” Taste In the context of Warde’s care and convenience antinomy, food associated with convenience is considered inappropriate. Cooking a family meal from scratch demonstrates care, convenience food for mothers symbolises “lack” on many levels. This lack of care is interwoven into a symbolic capital that supposes a lack of time, education, cultural capital, economic capital, and therefore a lack of taste. Hence, Laura writes: We never buy cakes and eat very few convenience foods, apart from the odd fish finger in a wrap, or a tin of beans. Ready meals and oven chips don’t appeal to me and I want my kids to grow up eating real food. It is notable that Laura makes the distinction between convenience and “real” food. Similarly, Zoe claims: We eat good interesting food every day at home and a takeaway once in a blue moon (2–3 times a year). Ready meals are unheard of here and we eat out sometimes (once a month). In Gaby’s account she makes reference to: “junk food, synthetic food and really overly creamy/stodgy cheap calorie foods” and claims that this kind of food makes her feel “revolted.” In James’s research she makes connections between “junk food” and “junk families.” In Gaby’s account she has a corporeal reaction to the thought of the type of food associated with cheapness and convenience. Ophelia notes that: After 15 years of daily cooking for my family I have become much more confident and proficient in food and what it really means. Today I balance the weekly meals between vegetarian, pasta, fish and meat and we have a lot of salad. I have been trying to cook less meat, maybe twice or sometimes including a roast at weekends, three times a week. Teens need carbs so I cook them most evenings but I don’t eat carbs myself in the evening now unless it’s a pasta dish we are all sharing. Here, Ophelia is highlighting the balance between her desires and the nutritional needs of her children. The work of feeding the family is complex and incorporates a balance of different requirements. The need to display appropriate mothering through feeding the family healthy meals cooked from scratch, was especially pertinent for women working and living on their own with children, such as Valerie: I am also responsible for feeding my daughter […] I make a great effort to make sure she is getting a balanced diet. To this end I nearly always cook meals from scratch. I use meal planners to get organised. I also have to budget quite tightly and meal planning helps with this. I aim to ensure we eat fish a couple of times a week, chicken a couple of times of week, red meat maybe once or twice and vegetarian once or twice a week. We always sit down to eat together at the table, even if it is just the two of us. It gives us a chance to talk and focus on each other. It is notable that Valerie insists that they sit down to eat at a table. This is a particular aspect of a middle class habitus and one that distinguishes Valerie’s family foodways from others, despite their low income. Hence, “proper” mothering is about cooking “proper” meals from scratch, even or perhaps especially if on a limited budget or having the sole responsibility for childcare. Chloe claims: I like to cook from scratch and meals can take time so I have to plan that around work [...] I use cookbooks for ideas for quick suppers [...] thinking about it I do spend quite a lot of time thinking about what I’m going to cook. I shop with meals in mind for each night of the week [...] this will depend on what’s available in the shops and what looks good, and then what time I get home. Here, food provision is ultimately tied up with class and status and again the provision of good “healthy” food is about good “healthy” parenting. It is about time and the lack of it. A lack of time due to having to work outside of the home and the lack of time to prepare or care about preparing healthy meals from scratch. Convenience food is clearly associated with low socio-economic status, a particular working class habitus and lack of care. Conclusion In an era of heightened neo-liberal individualism, there was little evidence of a “negotiated family model” (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim) within respondents’ narratives. Mothers in my study went to great lengths to emphasise that they fed their children “healthy” food prepared from scratch. Feeding the family is a central aspect of maternal identity, with intensive mothering practices (Hays) associated with elite cultural capital and a means of drawing distinctions between groups. Hence, despite working full time or part time, the blurring of boundaries between home and work, and the easy availability of convenience foods, ready-meals, and take-away food, women in my study were committed to feeding the family healthy meals cooked from scratch as a means of differentiating their family foodways from others. Dualist and absolutist approaches to food and foodways means that unhealthy and convenience food and foodways are demonised. They are derided and considered indicative of lack on many levels, especially in terms of lacking taste in its broadest sense. Unhealthy or convenient family foodways are associated with “other” (working class) mothering practices, whereby a lack of care indicates a lack of education, time, money, cultural capital, and taste. There are rigid cultural scripts of mothering, especially for middle class mothers concerned with distancing themselves from the symbol of the mum who feeds her children convenience food, or “cheese and chips out of Styrofoam containers in front of a f***ing big television.” References Beagan, Brenda, Gwen Chapman, Andrea D’Sylva, and Raewyn Bassett. “‘It’s Just Easier for Me to Do It’: Rationalizing the Family Division of Foodwork.” Sociology 42.4 (2008): 653–71. Beck, Ulrich, and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim. Individualization, Institutionalized Individualism and its Social and Political Consequences. London: Sage, 2002. Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London: Routledge, 1984. Bourdieu, Pierre, and Loïc Wacquant. An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Cambridge: Polity, 2002 [1992]. Cairns, Kate, Josée Johnston, and Shyon Baumann. “Caring about Food: Doing Gender in the Foodie Kitchen.” Gender and Society 24.5 (2010): 591–615. Deans, Jason. “Jamie Oliver Bemoans Chips, Cheese and Giant TVs of Modern-day Poverty.” The Guardian 27 Aug. 2013: 3. DeVault, Marjorie I. Feeding the Family. London: U of Chicago P., 1991. Hays, Sharon. The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1996. Hochschild, Arlie Russell, and Anne Machung, The Second Shift (2nd ed). London: Penguin Books, 2003. James, Allison. “Children’s Food: Reflections on Politics, Policy and Practices.” London: BSA Food Studies Conference, 2010. 3 Dec. 2013. ‹http://www.britsoc.co.uk/media/24962/AllisonJames.ppt‎›. James, Allison, Anne-Trine Kjørholt, and Vebjørg Tingstad. Eds. Children, Food and Identity in Everyday Life, London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009. Johnston, Josée, and Shyon Baumann. Foodies, Democracy and Distinction in the Gourmet Kitchen. London: Routledge, 2010. McKie, Linda, Susan Gregory, and Sophia Bowlby. “Shadow Times: The Temporal and Spatial Frameworks and Experiences of Caring and Working.” Sociology 36.4 (2002): 897–924. Mills, Charles Wright. The Sociological Imagination. London: Penguin, 1959. Naccarato, Peter, and Kathleen LeBesco. Culinary Capital. London: Berg, 2012. Short, Frances. Kitchen Secrets: The Meaning of Cooking in Everyday Life. Oxford: Berg, 2006. Skeggs, Beverley. Class, Self and Culture. London: Routledge, 2004. Warde, Alan. Consumption, Food and Taste. London: Sage, 1997.

Introduction: Bubbles and Sport The ephemeral materiality of bubbles – beautiful, spectacular, and distracting but ultimately fragile – when applied to protect or conserve in the interests of sport-media profit, creates conditions that exacerbate existing inequalities in sport and society. Bubbles are usually something to watch, admire, and chase after in their brief yet shiny lives. There is supposed to be, technically, nothing inside them other than one or more gasses, and yet we constantly refer to people and objects being inside bubbles. The metaphor of the bubble has been used to describe the life of celebrities, politicians in purpose-built capital cities like Canberra, and even leftist, environmentally activist urban dwellers. The metaphorical and material qualities of bubbles are aligned—they cannot be easily captured and are liable to change at any time. In this article we address the metaphorical sporting bubble, which is often evoked in describing life in professional sport. This is a vernacular term used to capture and condemn the conditions of life of elite sportspeople (usually men), most commonly after there has been a sport-related scandal, especially of a sexual nature (Rowe). It is frequently paired with connotatively loaded adjectives like pampered and indulged. The sporting bubble is rarely interrogated in academic literature, the concept largely being left to the media and moral entrepreneurs. It is represented as involving a highly privileged but also pressurised life for those who live inside it. A sporting bubble is a world constructed for its most prized inhabitants that enables them to be protected from insurgents and to set the terms of their encounters with others, especially sport fans and disciplinary agents of the state. The Covid-19 pandemic both reinforced and reconfigured the operational concept of the bubble, re-arranging tensions between safety (protecting athletes) and fragility (short careers, risks of injury, etc.) for those within, while safeguarding those without from bubble contagion. Privilege and Precarity Bubble-induced social isolation, critics argue, encourages a loss of perspective among those under its protection, an entitled disconnection from the usual rules and responsibilities of everyday life. For this reason, the denizens of the sporting bubble are seen as being at risk to themselves and, more troublingly, to those allowed temporarily to penetrate it, especially young women who are first exploited by and then ejected from it (Benedict). There are many well-documented cases of professional male athletes “behaving badly” and trying to rely on institutional status and various versions of the sporting bubble for shelter (Flood and Dyson; Reel and Crouch; Wade). In the age of mobile and social media, it is increasingly difficult to keep misbehaviour in-house, resulting in a slew of media stories about, for example, drunkenness and sexual misconduct, such as when then-Sydney Roosters co-captain Mitchell Pearce was suspended and fined in 2016 after being filmed trying to force an unwanted kiss on a woman and then simulating a lewd act with her dog while drunk. There is contestation between those who condemn such behaviour as aberrant and those who regard it as the conventional expression of youthful masculinity as part of the familiar “boys will be boys” dictum. The latter naturalise an inequitable gender order, frequently treating sportsmen as victims of predatory women, and ignoring asymmetries of power between men and women, especially in homosocial environments (Toffoletti). For those in the sporting bubble (predominantly elite sportsmen and highly paid executives, also mostly men, with an array of service staff of both sexes moving in and out of it), life is reflected for those being protected via an array of screens (small screens in homes and indoor places of entertainment, and even smaller screens on theirs and others’ phones, as well as huge screens at sport events). These male sport stars are paid handsomely to use their skill and strength to perform for the sporting codes, their every facial expression and bodily action watched by the media and relayed to audiences. This is often a precarious existence, the usually brief career of an athlete worker being dependent on health, luck, age, successful competition with rivals, networks, and club and coach preferences. There is a large, aspirational reserve army of athletes vying to play at the elite level, despite risks of injury and invasive, life-changing medical interventions. Responsibility for avoiding performance and image enhancing drugs (PIEDs) also weighs heavily on their shoulders (Connor). Professional sportspeople, in their more reflective moments, know that their time in the limelight will soon be up, meaning that getting a ticket to the sporting bubble, even for a short time, can make all the difference to their post-sport lives and those of their families. The most vulnerable of the small minority of participants in sport who make a good, short-term living from it are those for whom, in the absence of quality education and prior social status, it is their sole likely means of upward social mobility (Spaaij). Elite sport performers are surrounded by minders, doctors, fitness instructors, therapists, coaches, advisors and other service personnel, all supporting athletes to stay focussed on and maximise performance quality to satisfy co-present crowds, broadcasters, sponsors, sports bodies and mass media audiences. The shield offered by the sporting bubble supports the teleological win-at-all-costs mentality of professional sport. The stakes are high, with athlete and executive salaries, sponsorships and broadcasting deals entangled in a complex web of investments in keeping the “talent” pivotal to the “attention economy” (Davenport and Beck)—the players that provide the content for sale—in top form. Yet, the bubble cannot be entirely secured and poor behaviour or performance can have devastating effects, including permanent injury or disability, mental illness and loss of reputation (Rowe, “Scandals and Sport”). Given this fragile materiality of the sporting bubble, it is striking that, in response to the sudden shutdown following the economic and health crisis caused by the 2020 global pandemic, the leaders of professional sport decided to create more of them and seek to seal the metaphorical and material space with unprecedented efficiency. The outcome was a multi-sided tale of mobility, confinement, capital, labour, and the gendering of sport and society. The Covid-19 Gilded Cage Sociologists such as Zygmunt Bauman and John Urry have analysed the socio-politics of mobilities, whereby some people in the world, such as tourists, can traverse the globe at their leisure, while others remain fixed in geographical space because they lack the means to be mobile or, in contrast, are involuntarily displaced by war, so-called “ethnic cleansing”, famine, poverty or environmental degradation. The Covid-19 global pandemic re-framed these matters of mobilities (Rowe, “Subjecting Pandemic Sport”), with conventional moving around—between houses, businesses, cities, regions and countries—suddenly subjected to the imperative to be static and, in perniciously unreflective technocratic discourse, “socially distanced” (when what was actually meant was to be “physically distanced”). The late-twentieth century analysis of the “risk society” by Ulrich Beck, in which the mysterious consequences of humans’ predation on their environment are visited upon them with terrifying force, was dramatically realised with the coming of Covid-19. In another iteration of the metaphor, it burst the bubble of twenty-first century global sport. What we today call sport was formed through the process of sportisation (Maguire), whereby hyper-local, folk physical play was reconfigured as multi-spatial industrialised sport in modernity, becoming increasingly reliant on individual athletes and teams travelling across the landscape and well over the horizon. Co-present crowds were, in turn, overshadowed in the sport economy when sport events were taken to much larger, dispersed audiences via the media, especially in broadcast mode (Nicholson, Kerr, and Sherwood). This lucrative mediation of professional sport, though, came with an unforgiving obligation to generate an uninterrupted supply of spectacular live sport content. The pandemic closed down most sports events and those that did take place lacked the crucial participation of the co-present crowd to provide the requisite event atmosphere demanded by those viewers accustomed to a sense of occasion. Instead, they received a strange spectacle of sport performers operating in empty “cathedrals”, often with a “faked” crowd presence. The mediated sport spectacle under the pandemic involved cardboard cut-out and sex doll spectators, Zoom images of fans on large screens, and sampled sounds of the crowd recycled from sport video games. Confected co-presence produced simulacra of the “real” as Baudrillardian visions came to life. The sporting bubble had become even more remote. For elite sportspeople routinely isolated from the “common people”, the live sport encounter offered some sensory experience of the social – the sounds, sights and even smells of the crowd. Now the sporting bubble closed in on an already insulated and insular existence. It exposed the irony of the bubble as a sign of both privileged mobility and incarcerated athlete work, both refuge and prison. Its logic of contagion also turned a structure intended to protect those inside from those outside into, as already observed, a mechanism to manage the threat of insiders to outsiders. In Australia, as in many other countries, the populace was enjoined by governments and health authorities to help prevent the spread of Covid-19 through isolation and immobility. There were various exceptions, principally those classified as essential workers, a heterogeneous cohort ranging from supermarket shelf stackers to pharmacists. People in the cultural, leisure and sports industries, including musicians, actors, and athletes, were not counted among this crucial labour force. Indeed, the performing arts (including dance, theatre and music) were put on ice with quite devastating effects on the livelihoods and wellbeing of those involved. So, with all major sports shut down (the exception being horse racing, which received the benefit both of government subsidies and expanding online gambling revenue), sport organisations began to represent themselves as essential services that could help sustain collective mental and even spiritual wellbeing. This case was made most aggressively by Australian Rugby League Commission Chairman, Peter V’landys, in contending that “an Australia without rugby league is not Australia”. In similar vein, prominent sport and media figure Phil Gould insisted, when describing rugby league fans in Western Sydney’s Penrith, “they’re lost, because the football’s not on … . It holds their families together. People don’t understand that … . Their life begins in the second week of March, and it ends in October”. Despite misgivings about public safety and equality before the pandemic regime, sporting bubbles were allowed to form, re-form and circulate. The indefinite shutdown of the National Rugby League (NRL) on 23 March 2020 was followed after negotiation between multiple entities by its reopening on 28 May 2020. The competition included a team from another nation-state (the Warriors from Aotearoa/New Zealand) in creating an international sporting bubble on the Central Coast of New South Wales, separating them from their families and friends across the Tasman Sea. Appeals to the mental health of fans and the importance of the NRL to myths of “Australianness” notwithstanding, the league had not prudently maintained a financial reserve and so could not afford to shut down for long. Significant gambling revenue for leagues like the NRL and Australian Football League (AFL) also influenced the push to return to sport business as usual. Sport contests were needed in order to exploit the gambling opportunities – especially online and mobile – stimulated by home “confinement”. During the coronavirus lockdowns, Australians’ weekly spending on gambling went up by 142 per cent, and the NRL earned significantly more than usual from gambling revenue—potentially $10 million above forecasts for 2020. Despite the clear financial imperative at play, including heavy reliance on gambling, sporting bubble-making involved special licence. The state of Queensland, which had pursued a hard-line approach by closing its borders for most of those wishing to cross them for biographical landmark events like family funerals and even for medical treatment in border communities, became “the nation's sporting hub”. Queensland became the home of most teams of the men’s AFL (notably the women’s AFLW season having been cancelled) following a large Covid-19 second wave in Melbourne. The women’s National Netball League was based exclusively in Queensland. This state, which for the first time hosted the AFL Grand Final, deployed sport as a tool in both national sports tourism marketing and internal pre-election politics, sponsoring a documentary, The Sporting Bubble 2020, via its Tourism and Events arm. While Queensland became the larger bubble incorporating many other sporting bubbles, both the AFL and the NRL had versions of the “fly in, fly out” labour rhythms conventionally associated with the mining industry in remote and regional areas. In this instance, though, the bubble experience did not involve long stays in miners’ camps or even the one-night hotel stopovers familiar to the popular music and sport industries. Here, the bubble moved, usually by plane, to fulfil the requirements of a live sport “gig”, whereupon it was immediately returned to its more solid bubble hub or to domestic self-isolation. In the space created between disciplined expectation and deplored non-compliance, the sporting bubble inevitably became the scrutinised object and subject of scandal. Sporting Bubble Scandals While people with a very low risk of spreading Covid-19 (coming from areas with no active cases) were denied entry to Queensland for even the most serious of reasons (for example, the death of a child), images of AFL players and their families socialising and enjoying swimming at the Royal Pines Resort sporting bubble crossed our screens. Yet, despite their (players’, officials’ and families’) relative privilege and freedom of movement under the AFL Covid-Safe Plan, some players and others inside the bubble were involved in “scandals”. Most notable was the case of a drunken brawl outside a Gold Coast strip club which led to two Richmond players being “banished”, suspended for 10 matches, and the club fined $100,000. But it was not only players who breached Covid-19 bubble protocols: Collingwood coaches Nathan Buckley and Brenton Sanderson paid the $50,000 fine imposed on the club for playing tennis in Perth outside their bubble, while Richmond was fined $45,000 after Brooke Cotchin, wife of team captain Trent, posted an image to Instagram of a Gold Coast day spa that she had visited outside the “hub” (the institutionally preferred term for bubble). She was subsequently distressed after being trolled. Also of concern was the lack of physical distancing, and the range of people allowed into the sporting bubble, including babysitters, grandparents, and swimming coaches (for children). There were other cases of players being caught leaving the bubble to attend parties and sharing videos of their “antics” on social media. Biosecurity breaches of bubbles by players occurred relatively frequently, with stern words from both the AFL and NRL leaders (and their clubs) and fines accumulating in the thousands of dollars. Some people were also caught sneaking into bubbles, with Lekahni Pearce, the girlfriend of Swans player Elijah Taylor, stating that it was easy in Perth, “no security, I didn’t see a security guard” (in Barron, Stevens, and Zaczek) (a month later, outside the bubble, they had broken up and he pled guilty to unlawfully assaulting her; Ramsey). Flouting the rules, despite stern threats from government, did not lead to any bubble being popped. The sport-media machine powering sporting bubbles continued to run, the attendant emotional or health risks accepted in the name of national cultural therapy, while sponsorship, advertising and gambling revenue continued to accumulate mostly for the benefit of men. Gendering Sporting Bubbles Designed as biosecurity structures to maintain the supply of media-sport content, keep players and other vital cogs of the machine running smoothly, and to exclude Covid-19, sporting bubbles were, in their most advanced form, exclusive luxury camps that illuminated the elevated socio-cultural status of sportsmen. The ongoing inequalities between men’s and women’s sport in Australia and around the world were clearly in evidence, as well as the politics of gender whereby women are obliged to “care” and men are enabled to be “careless” – or at least to manage carefully their “duty of care”. In Australia, the only sport for women that continued during the height of the Covid-19 lockdown was netball, which operated in a bubble that was one of sacrifice rather than privilege. With minimum salaries of only $30,000 – significantly less than the lowest-paid “rookies” in the AFL – and some being mothers of small children and/or with professional jobs juggled alongside their netball careers, these elite sportswomen wanted to continue to play despite the personal inconvenience or cost (Pavlidis). Not one breach of the netballers out of the bubble was reported, indicating that they took their responsibilities with appropriate seriousness and, perhaps, were subjected to less scrutiny than the sportsmen accustomed to attracting front-page headlines. National Netball League (also known after its Queensland-based naming rights sponsor as Suncorp Super Netball) players could be regarded as fortunate to have the opportunity to be in a bubble and to participate in their competition. The NRL Women’s (NRLW) Premiership season was also completed, but only involved four teams subject to fly in, fly out and bubble arrangements, and being played in so-called curtain-raiser games for the NRL. As noted earlier, the AFLW season was truncated, despite all the prior training and sacrifice required of its players. Similarly, because of their resource advantages, the UK men’s and boy’s top six tiers of association football were allowed to continue during lockdown, compared to only two for women and girls. In the United States, inequalities between men’s and women’s sports were clearly demonstrated by the conditions afforded to those elite sportswomen inside the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) sport bubble in the IMG Academy in Florida. Players shared photos of rodent traps in their rooms, insect traps under their mattresses, inedible food and blocked plumbing in their bubble accommodation. These conditions were a far cry from the luxury usually afforded elite sportsmen, including in Florida’s Walt Disney World for the men’s NBA, and is just one of the many instances of how gendered inequality was both reproduced and exacerbated by Covid-19. Bursting the Bubble As we have seen, governments and corporate leaders in sport were able to create material and metaphorical bubbles during the Covid-19 lockdown in order to transmit stadium sport contests into home spaces. The rationale was the importance of sport to national identity, belonging and the routines and rhythms of life. But for whom? Many women, who still carry the major responsibilities of “care”, found that Covid-19 intensified the affective relations and gendered inequities of “home” as a leisure site (Fullagar and Pavlidis). Rates of domestic violence surged, and many women experienced significant anxiety and depression related to the stress of home confinement and home schooling. During the pandemic, women were also more likely to experience the stress and trauma of being first responders, witnessing virus-related sickness and death as the majority of nurses and care workers. They also bore the brunt of much of the economic and employment loss during this time. Also, as noted above, livelihoods in the arts and cultural sector did not receive the benefits of the “bubble”, despite having a comparable claim to sport in contributing significantly to societal wellbeing. This sector’s workforce is substantially female, although men dominate its senior roles. Despite these inequalities, after the late March to May hiatus, many elite male sportsmen – and some sportswomen - operated in a bubble. Moving in and out of them was not easy. Life inside could be mentally stressful (especially in long stays of up to 150 days in sports like cricket), and tabloid and social media troll punishment awaited those who were caught going “over the fence”. But, life in the sporting bubble was generally preferable to the daily realities of those afflicted by the trauma arising from forced home confinement, and for whom watching moving sports images was scant compensation for compulsory immobility. The ethical foundation of the sparkly, ephemeral fantasy of the sporting bubble is questionable when it is placed in the service of a voracious “media sports cultural complex” (Rowe, Global Media Sport) that consumes sport labour power and rolls back progress in gender relations as a default response to a global pandemic. Covid-19 dramatically highlighted social inequalities in many areas of life, including medical care, work, and sport. For the small minority of people involved in sport who are elite professionals, the only thing worse than being in a sporting bubble during the pandemic was not being in one, as being outside precluded their participation. Being inside the bubble was a privilege, albeit a dubious one. But, as in wider society, not all sporting bubbles are created equal. Some are more opulent than others, and the experiences of the supporting and the supported can be very different. The surface of the sporting bubble may be impermanent, but when its interior is opened up to scrutiny, it reveals some very durable structures of inequality. Bubbles are made to burst. They are, by nature, temporary, translucent structures created as spectacles. As a form of luminosity, bubbles “allow a thing or object to exist only as a flash, sparkle or shimmer” (Deleuze, 52). In echoing Deleuze, Angela McRobbie (54) argues that luminosity “softens and disguises the regulative dynamics of neoliberal society”. The sporting bubble was designed to discharge that function for those millions rendered immobile by home confinement legislation in Australia and around the world, who were having to deal with the associated trauma, risk and disadvantage. 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