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The variable “issue salience” refers to visibility or prominence of a given topic or theme occurring in the news coverage and is used to explore first-level agenda-setting (McCombs & Shaw, 1972). In addition to actor salience and valence, issue salience is analyzed to describe and explore the news coverage on different events and public debates. Mostly, issue salience is measured as the number of mentioning a particular issue, topic, or theme. Field of application/theoretical foundation: Issue salience is analyzed using content analysis across different subfields of communication and media research, including the field of public diplomacy. In public diplomacy research, scholars measure issue salience in the context of governmental communication on their official channels online and offline or the representation of countries in social or mass media. Researchers embed the concept of issue salience primarily in agenda-setting theory (McCombs & Shaw, 1972), analyzing it as an independent variable from which to derive implications of news media coverage on audiences’ perceptions on a certain object or examining the relationship between issue salience in the media and the public agenda. References/combination with other methods of data collection: When it comes to analyses on issue salience and its link to public perceptions, a mixed-method study design incorporating content analysis in combination with surveys is used to validate issue salience. Exampe study: Zhou et al., 2013 Information about Zhou et al., 2013 Authors: Zhang et al. Research question/reseach interest: Comparison between news coverage on Great Britain (in terms of themes) in U.S.-American and Chinese news media during the Olympic Games 2012 RQ: What were the most salient themes in British, U.S., and Chinese media when they covered the opening ceremony of the London Olympics? Object of analysis: Newspaper (30 media outlets across three countries (the United States, the United Kingdom, and China, not explicated) Time frame of analysis: 24 July 2012 to 12 August 2012 Information about variable Varible name/definition: Media coverage salience: Number of mentions given to a particular theme Level of analysis: Story Values: (1) Countryside (e.g., emphasis of British natural beauty and scenic sites) (2) Creativity (e.g., focus on British creative sector, such as arts, film, and literature) (3) Entrepreneurship (e.g., portrayals on entrepreneurs and investors, or global investment) (4) Green (e.g., emphasis on Great Britain’s sustainability and environmental protections efforts) (5) Heritage (e.g., focus on British royalty, museums, and historic landmarks) (6) Innovation (e.g., discussion of science and technology in Great Britain) (7) Knowledge (e.g., portrayals of research and development at British universities) (8) Music (e.g., mentions of British and music artists) (9) Shopping (e.g., emphasis on British shopping venues such as London as shopping city) (10) Sport (e.g., emphasis on sporting events or athletes, such as David Beckham) (11) Technology (e.g., focus on digital media, e-commerce, and IT services in Great Britain) Scales: Nominal Reliability: Krippendorf’s alpha = .90 References McCombs, M. E., & Shaw, D. L. (1972). The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media. Public Opinion Quarterly, 36(2), 176–187. Zhou, S., Shen, B., Zhang, C., & Zhong, X. (2013). Creating a Competitive Identity: Public Diplomacy in the London Olympics and Media Portrayal. Mass Communication & Society, 16(6), 869–887.

OBJECTIVES: Planning and implementing public health initiatives in mass gatherings such as the Olympic Games pose unique challenges for interorganizational collaboration, which involves interaction among multiple and diverse agencies. Nonetheless, there is limited empirical evidence to support interagency collaboration and public health planning decisions in mass gatherings and how leadership can shape such interactions. We empirically explored these topics in the 2012 London Olympics to identify lessons to inform planning for future mass gatherings.\ud \ud STUDY DESIGN: This is a qualitative case study. \ud \ud METHODS: Data comprised 39 semistructured interviews with key informants conducted before, during, and after the games; in addition, direct observations of field exercises and documentary analysis were also used. Open coding and thematic analysis was used to analyze the data.\ud \ud RESULTS: We identified two main leadership challenges that influenced interagency collaboration: organizational public health leadership and coordinating collaborative decision-making. Two facilitative conditions helped overcome the previous challenges: nurturing interorganizational linkages and creating shared understanding by activating codified frameworks at the organizational level.\ud \ud CONCLUSIONS: Our study highlights leadership issues in interagency collaboration in mass gatherings. Practical implications arising from this study may inform the ways the organizers of mass gatherings, public health and safety agencies, and professionals can engage in effective partnerships and joint working.

The post 9/11 security landscape has seen a fundamental shift in security planning, organization and management across the national and global security domain. This shift is particularly evident with regards to special events. Major national regional and global events such as the Olympic Games, FIFA world cup, the US Super Bowl, and the Boston Marathon draw large crowds of spectators and participants thereby creating vulnerable targets. The 1972 Munich Olympics and 1996 Atlanta Olympics are 2 examples of pre-9/11 attacks on sporting events. Since 9/11, we have seen attacks on events such as the Boston Marathon in 2013, Las Vegas active shooter in 2017 and the bombing in Manchester at the Ariana Grande concert in 2017. These examples highlight the inherent vulnerabilities and security challenges that reside in major events (sporting, cultural, religious, musical). With this in mind, security budgets have increased to deal with such risks and threats. For example, the security budget for the 2012 London Olympics topped $1.46 Billion and the 2010 Vancouver Olympics was over $900 million.

Whereas traditionally hosting the Olympics was viewed as a top-down decision with little public input, public opinion is becoming more important in assessing and evaluating the merits of hosting the Games. Using bid documents from 2010 to 2020, the formal role that public opinion officially plays in the bid phase following the International Olympic Committee (IOC) procedures is examined. Public opinion in the preparation stage is reviewed, which demonstrates the problem of seeking simple declarations of support (Yes/No) that obfuscate important local issues (cost, traffic, urban priorities). Shifts in public opinion during the Games themselves, as well as one and four years after the Games, provide a new perspective on resident attitudes. Using retrospective data from Vancouver 2010 and London 2012, multivariate analysis demonstrates that participation in Olympic-related events (sporting and nonsporting) was the most important predictor of attitudes toward the Games and that concerns over costs were the only concerns that were justified.

IntroductionIn preparation for the London 2012 Olympic Games, existing syndromic surveillance systems operating in England were expanded to include daily general practitioner (GP) out-of-hours (OOH) contacts and emergency department (ED) attendances at sentinel sites (the GP OOH and ED syndromic surveillance systems: GPOOHS and EDSSS).Hypothesis/ProblemThe further development of syndromic surveillance systems in time for the London 2012 Olympic Games provided a unique opportunity to investigate the impact of a large mass-gathering event on public health and health services as monitored in near real-time by syndromic surveillance of GP OOH contacts and ED attendances. This can, in turn, aid the planning of future events.MethodsThe EDSSS and GPOOHS data for London and England from July 13 to August 26, 2012, and a similar period in 2013, were divided into three distinct time periods: pre-Olympic period (July 13-26, 2012); Olympic period (July 27 to August 12); and post-Olympic period (August 13-26, 2012). Time series of selected syndromic indicators in 2012 and 2013 were plotted, compared, and risk assessed by members of the Real-time Syndromic Surveillance Team (ReSST) in Public Health England (PHE). Student’s t test was used to test any identified changes in pattern of attendance.ResultsVery few differences were found between years or between the weeks which preceded and followed the Olympics. One significant exception was noted: a statistically significant increase (P value = .0003) in attendances for “chemicals, poisons, and overdoses, including alcohol” and “acute alcohol intoxication” were observed in London EDs coinciding with the timing of the Olympic opening ceremony (9:00 pm July 27, 2012 to 01:00 am July 28, 2012).ConclusionsSyndromic surveillance was able to provide near to real-time monitoring and could identify hourly changes in patterns of presentation during the London 2012 Olympic Games. Reassurance can be provided to planners of future mass-gathering events that there was no discernible impact in overall attendances to sentinel EDs or GP OOH services in the host country. The increase in attendances for alcohol-related causes during the opening ceremony, however, may provide an opportunity for future public health interventions.TodkillD, HughesHE, ElliotAJ, MorbeyRA, EdeghereO, HarcourtS, HughesT, EndericksT, McCloskeyB, CatchpoleM, IbbotsonS, SmithG. An observational study using English syndromic surveillance data collected during the 2012 London Olympics – what did syndromic surveillance show and what can we learn for future mass-gathering events?Prehosp Disaster Med. 2016;31(6):628–634.

In the past three decades, mass casualty incidents have occurred worldwide at multiple sporting events and other mass gatherings. Organisational safety and healthcare provision can consequently be scrutinised post-event. Within the UK, such incidents in the 1980s provided incentives to improve medical services and subsequent high profile UK-based international sporting events (London Olympics and Paralympics 2012, Glasgow Commonwealth Games 2014, Rugby World Cup 2015) added a further catalyst for developing services. Furthermore in the aftermath of the abandoned France versus Germany association football match at the Stade de France (Paris Terrorist Attacks, November 2015) and the 2016 UK report from HM Coroner on the Hillsborough Inquest, medical cover at sporting events is being further reviewed. Doctors providing spectator cover therefore need to have an awareness of their likely roles at sporting venues. Formal guidance exists in many countries for the provision of such cover but remains generic even though Events Medicine is increasingly recognised as a necessary service. The current evidence base is limited with best practice examples often anecdotally cited by acute care specialists (eg, emergency medicine) who provide cover. This article is therefore intended to present an overview for doctors of the knowledge and skills required to treat ill and injured spectators and enable them to adequately risk-assess venues in cooperation with other health and safety providers, including preparation for a major incident. It also gives guidance on how activity can be adequately assessed and how doctors can have management roles in Events Medicine.

At the beginning of 2013 two independent cases made the headlines of Japanese newspapers. The first case involved the suicide of a high school student that was allegedly triggered after he received several beatings from his basketball coach for failing to perform well enough. The second case involved fifteen female judoka, including competitors in the London Olympics, who filed a letter with the Japanese Olympic Committee complaining of violence by two coaches, including the head coach of the women's team. Both these cases caused a national debate about the practice of taibatsu (corporal punishment) in sport in Japan. This article is based on the outcomes of focus groups that were conducted with students at ten universities from across Japan in 2013. In particular, we examine the ways in which students’ normalised acts of violence from coaches, accepting them as necessary forms of discipline and, in many cases interpreting such acts as indicative of caring coaching and kindness. Further, we consid...

The 2012 London Olympics was a technological and marketing watershed event in the history of live sport mega events. A case study of the 2012 London Olympics was used to demonstrate how effective management of innovations in (a) collaborative information and communication technology (ICT) and (b) social media marketing (SMM) ushered in a new platform template for live sport events worldwide. A review of the literature revealed four primary factors responsible: (1) the foresight, planning, due diligence, and management effectiveness of the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA), London Organising Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) and their technology partners; (2) the confluence of dramatically increased mobile device use and social media engagement by prosumers; (3) the willingness of sponsors, marketers, and global media enterprises to take risks with innovative media and SMM strategies; and (4) the enthusiasm and passion for sport of prosumers worldwide.

Examining how faith-based organizations engage with local communities during mega-sporting events offer unique opportunities for positive social initiatives different from ordinary outreach. Our in...

The purpose of this research is to understand the degree of concern about the Olympic Games and FIFA World Cup and to suggest basic data for establishment of marketing strategies through collecting search volume in the venue of those two events and finding its decision factors and the difference in search volume by country, region, season, and venue. For the purpose of the study, we collected data from 4 countries, Canada, the UK, Brazil, and South Korea - for comparison with domestic data - where Olympics and World Cup were held from 2010 to 2014, and 5 events were selected as the subjects of the study (the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games, 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa, the London 2012 Olympics Games, the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games, and 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil). Oneway ANOVA and DecisionTree were used for statistical processing. The conclusion of this study are as follows. 1. Is there difference between the search volume between the Olympic Games and FIFA World Cup? The search volume was different between the Olympic Games and FIFA World Cup: it was greater in FIFA World Cup in all events and duration between 2010 and 2014. In the UK and Brazil which top soccer countries, the search volume for FIFA World Cup was greater than that of the Olympics. 2. Is there difference by countries regarding the degree of concern about the (summer/winter) Olympics and FIFA World Cup? 1) The search volume for the Olympics was different by countries. In particular, throughout the target period (2010-2014), the greatest was found in Brazil, while low in South Korea and the UK. No difference was found during the events. 2) There was no difference by countries in search volume for FIFA World Cup. 3. Is there difference in the degree of concern by season (off-season, Winter Olympics, Summer Olympics, FIFA World Cup, before and after Winter Olympics, before and after Summer Olympics, and before and after FIFA World Cup)? 1) The search volume for the Olympics was different by season. It reached its peak during the events, with the highest for the Summer Olympics. 2) The search volume for the FIFA World Cup was different by season. It reached its peak during the events, with the highest just before the events. 4. Is there difference according to hosting experience (current venue, previous venue, next venue, no hosting experience)? 1) The search volume for the Olympics was different by hosting experience. It was the highest in the current venue while the lowest in the countries with no hosting experience. 2) The search volume for FIFA World Cup was not different by hosting experience. 5. Is there difference by event (the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games, the London 2012 Olympics Games, the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games, 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa, and 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil)? The search volume was different by event. It was high for the London 2012 Olympics Games, 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa, and 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil while low for the Winter Olympics (the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games and the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games). 6. What are the decision factors in the search volume for the Olympics and FIFA World Cup? The most important decision factor of the search volume was ‘Season’ for the Olympics, ‘Country’ for the Summer Olympics , and ‘Hosting Experience’ and ‘Event’ for other seasons (Winter Olympics, before and after Summer Olympics, before and after Winter Olympics, and off-season) The greatest search volume was found in Brazil during the London Olympics, which is followed by Canada, the venue of the event, during the Winter Olympics. The third was taken by London and South Korea, which showed high search volume during the London Summer Olympics. The fourth was given to Canada during the Sochi Winter Olympics. In regards of FIFA World Cup, Canada’s search volume was the greatest during the FIFA World Cup Brazil, the second was Brazil’s during the FIFA World Cup South Africa, and the third was in the UK’s during the FIFA World Cup Brazil, which precedes Brazil’s during the FIFA World Cup Brazil.

Planning and organization of large-scale events such as Olympic Games are accomplished by several specialized project organizations, in charge of securing finances, completing the infrastructures, negotiating with multiple stake-holders and the day-to-day management of the actual event. These organizations have to cope with a key challenge. Due to their inherently temporary nature they cannot provide the specialized knowledge and specific “project capabilities” (Davies and Brady) on their own, but have to mobilize them from the past and from outside their boundaries, e.g. from previous events or other mega-projects in the host city. Rather than in permanent organizations, then, the knowledge on preparing and performing mega-events is primarily sedimented and embodied in professionals. Drawing on the planning and organization of the London Olympics 2012 as empirical case, the paper addresses, on the one hand, this particular mobilization process. On the other, it looks at how this process is intertwined with three different trajectories that both affect and are affected by the mega-event: the trajectory of the project that aims to recruit necessary skills; the trajectory of individual persons who perceive working for the Olympics as a rewarding episode in their careers; the trajectory of professional communities that expect learning benefits for the construction and project management industry in the UK.

The impact of and reaction to the disruption on transport created by mega-events on host communities and, in particular, businesses, is an underresearched area. Utilizing social exchange theory, this article examines the relationship between businesses and transport authorities in the implementation of the Travel Demand Management (TDM) strategy for the London Olympics 2012. This research identifies the mechanisms by which the authorities meet the specific antecedent conditions that impact on the exchange. This research is unusual as a qualitative approach is used to gain in-depth understanding of the impacts of mega-events on business and their attitudes to these antecedents. The theoretical contribution of this study is a model that depicts the decision-making processes by which businesses evaluate the exchange relationship. Results identify that there is a link between business typology, antecedent, and the level of engagement. The practical implications of the results and the limitations of the study are discussed with reference to future mega-events and research possibilities.

The paper seeks to unravel the field-configuring capacity of Olympic Games, as a large-scale event located at the intersection of several organizational fields. The initial argument is that the Olympics, besides being a cyclically recurring “tournament ritual” in the sports field, constitute a singular flagship project in those fields connected to the preparation and legacy implementation of the event. Conceptually the paper connects, therefore, the literature on field-configuration with a particular branch of project management research. Empirically it builds upon selected results of a major case study of the London Summer Games in 2012, in particular of the massive program of venue construction and urban regeneration linked to this event. The authors maintain that the cross-field-configuring capacity of a global and publicly visible venture like the Olympics is based on the interaction of its public prominence and the performance of involved actors. However, the configuration across field boundaries exh...

Celebrity endorsements, though popular as a means of communicating about products, carry high risks and may lead to negative consequences for the organizations that solicit them, especially when endorsers find themselves embroiled in scandals or crises unrelated to the products they promote. This study investigates how Liu Xiang's withdrawal from the 2012 London Olympics and Sun Yang's unlicensed driving crisis affected their sponsorships of Nike and Beijing Hyundai, respectively. Attribution theory and the concept of in-group/out-group orientation provide a framework for examining both primary and secondary public reactions to these public relations crises on Sina Weibo. As a comparative study, this paper adopts both qualitative (thematic analysis of two official announcements) and quantitative methods (content analysis of 738 Weibo postings). Within a Chinese cultural context, evidence indicates that celebrity-endorsement crises are internally attributed and perceived to be controllable. Where primary public attitudes are concerned, integrity violations lead to more negative reactions; however, inclusion strategies find a better reception than distancing, regardless of the public's crisis-responsibility attributions. For secondary online reactions, Weibo posters’ perceptions of external locus, controllability, and integrity violations generate more “likes” than organizational strategies, thereby proving themselves more influential online. This study ultimately provides a more comprehensive refinement of attribution theory by both conceptualizing crisis-response strategies with a discussion of Chinese cultural sensitivities and offering empirical data on the ways in which primary and secondary crisis communication affects stakeholders via social media.

With companies investing vast sums of money on sponsoring high-profile sports events, it is surprising that very little research exists to examine the possible impact that this has on the sponsors' employees. This two-wave panel study explores the indirect role that Olympic sponsorship and employee support for this sponsorship has on increases in organizational identification and discretionary effortvia, that is, pride and employee assessments of their employer's corporate social responsibility (CSR) credentials. The current study surveyed 241 employees (from three countries) in two phases across a 12-month period in the run-up to the 2012 London Olympics. Olympic sponsorship support was found to be positively associated with organizational pride and CSR perceptions, which both predict increases in organizational identification and discretionary effort (controlling for earlier baseline levels of these outcomes). In addition, there is also evidence of an indirect positive effect (through CSR perceptions and pride) of Olympic sponsorship support on increases in organizational identification and discretionary effort. The implications of these findings for decision makers considering sponsoring major sporting events are discussed; the findings provide interesting insights that can help HR functions to understand the consequences of sports sponsorship and processes involved that explain positive employee responses. (c) 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The dust-jackets of Iain Sinclair’s books are laden with endorsements describing him as the preeminent metropolitan writer of London. Yet those same texts often re-inscribe specifically local and regional practices. A walk around the perimeter of the borough of Hackney, for example, is described, in terms invoking ancient parochial rituals, as “beating the bounds.” This article, focusing on one of London’s most prominent literary spokesmen as a regional or local writer, challenges the conventional binary relationship between metropolis and region. Sinclair’s work does not function under the aegis of this model but overlays competing mappings of the same space on top of one another. Drawing on the idea that London is only knowable as a series of villages, his texts focalize the specificity of particular locales and emphasize first-hand experience of their textures, chiefly through the practices of walking and interviewing locals. For Sinclair, the implications of this regionalism are to be found in defending the “obscurity” of locally-used places, and guarding against their being “overwhelmed by great public schemes.” I draw on examples from a number of Sinclair’s texts that rail against government-endorsed grand projects – the Docklands redevelopment, the Millennium Dome, the London Olympics – to assess their reassertion of regional concerns in the face of centralised (and commercially minded) planning. I argue that these texts oppose the view from central London that adjacent regions are blank spaces ripe for top-down rejuvenation, offering instead a more complex and detailed mapping of their status as regional places in their own right.

Even if the participation of locals is limited in mega-event decision making, their support is crucial to the event's success. Using Social Exchange Theory, the study examines the extent to which community participation and perceived impacts affect residents' support of mega-events. Implementing a structural model, the examination is based on the combination of two pieces of research undertaken before and after the London Olympics. Findings confirm the importance of perceived benefits and costs in community support. They also reveal the increase in positive perceptions after the event, the strengthening of community participation willingness and residents' support, and provide an understanding of the role of perceived success in perspective formulation. Moreover, the study uses an explanatory model for the visualization of the findings.

The history of sports for individuals with disabilities cannot be fully understood without discussing the disabled rights movement history. The disabled rights movement in many ways parallels various civil rights movements of the last 200 years. A series of historic changes took place starting in the late eighteenth century that led to significant advancement in the recognition, acceptance, and civil rights of people with disabilities. In addition, there were several events, organizations, and movements progressing in separate but parallel lanes. These movements converged resulting in a cohesive and mostly seamless pathway from childhood recreation and competition to team play and elite-level completion—from the Special Olympics, to Paralympics, to athletes with bilateral lower extremity limb deficiency competing against able-bodied athletes in the London Olympics in 2014.

After the South Korean men’s soccer team beat its Japanese counterpart in the bronze-medal match at the 2012 London Olympics, South Korean player Park Jung-Woo celebrated with a banner that displayed Dokdo is our land. Dokdo is called the Liancourt Rocks in English, the sovereignty over which has been an ongoing point of contention between South Korea and Japan. This study conducts a critical discourse analysis to examine media representations of Park’s banner celebration, as well as the ensuing discussion in major Korean and Japanese newspapers. The analysis reveals a contrastive picture: The Korean media vocally approached Park’s behavior as an emotional response of self-righteous indignation and quickly enacted memories of Korea’s victimhood in World War II to make justifications, whereas the Japanese media participated in a relatively disengaged absence. Japan’s silence disclosed a glimpse into its rich postwar history of social conflict and political resistance. Such contrast is also indicative of how sport media can be engaged in nuanced social contexts, generating representations that serve nation-state regimes situated in different political dynamics.

Mega-event successes depend considerably on the host community's support, even if their planning and development allows little input from local residents. This study examines the use of a structural model to access key factors of residents' perceptions for the 2012 London Olympics. The findings reveal that community support is influenced by perceptions of positive and negative impacts, and of community participation. They also indicate the importance of the Olympics' perceived positive and negative impacts, whilst the willingness of support is directly and indirectly connected with the community's participation in decision making. Moreover, the study presents the effect of perceived impacts and community participation on local support through the use of a model. Finally, it discusses theoretical and managerial aspects for mega-event planning and development.

While the coverage of women's sport in UK media rises to comparable levels to men's sports during large sporting events like the Olympics, academics agree that “routine” women's sports coverage is under-represented. According to the Women's Sport and Fitness Foundation, “81% of people think that the female athletes at London 2012 make better role models for young girls than other celebrities.” This article examines the representation of women in sport and compares routine coverage of women's sports in the UK national press across a week in February 2012, six months before the London Olympics, with coverage in a week in February 2013, six months after the Olympics, to see if there has been an Olympic “legacy” that increased coverage. It also examines coverage at the same time of year a decade earlier, to see how far, if at all, women's sports coverage in newspapers has progressed. The results suggest that there has been minimal change in everyday coverage of women's sports after the Olympics, and that fema...

Our study of the London Olympics 2012 construction programme showed that systems integration is one of the major challenges involved in delivery of a complex - "system of systems" or array - project. Organizations cope with complexity by decomposing a project into different levels of systems integration with clearly-defined interfaces and buffers between levels and individual component subsystems. At the "meta systems integration" level, an organization has to be established with the capabilities to understand the total system of systems, manage external interfaces with the multiple stakeholder sand coordinate the integration of its component parts. At the "system integration" level, efforts are made to manage each individual system as a loosely-coupled, relatively self-contained subsystem with defined interfaces to coordinate interdependencies with other parts of overall array. Establishing processes to maintain stability whilst responding dynamically to uncertain and changing conditions is one of the most challenging aspects of systems integration. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd.

Traditional media coverage of the Olympic Games has been shown to exhibit biases in terms of gender, nationality, and the type of sports covered, which can contribute to negative societal consequences and inaccurate historical records of such events. Scholars have suggested that because of the Internet�s expanded spatial parameters, new media have the ability to provide more equitable coverage of events such as the Olympics. In this study, we used agenda setting theory to employ a content analysis methodology to determine whether different constructions of the 2012 London Olympics were presented to media consumers on news websites in Australia, Brazil, China, Great Britain, Kenya, and the United States. Findings indicated that very few gender, nationalistic, or sport biases existed in any of the countries� coverage, lending credence to the notion that the Internet affords media managers with an opportunity to provide more equitable coverage and thus a more accurate depiction of events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers three same-sex kisses at three separate media events: a lesbian kiss that appeared in the 2012 London Olympics’ opening ceremony; the kiss between Madonna and Britney Spears at...

In the opening plenary on the first key theme, “education futures”, Prof David Russell (founder of The Russell Partnership and Chairman of The Total Simulator Company) gave a presentation titled “Future Proofing the Student Experience” about his involvement in the London Olympics 2012 and the lessons learnt from major events. He regarded developing scenario planning, applying personalisation, building a sustainable process, gaining customer profiling r Graciella Karijomedjo. Published in the Journal of Tourism Futures. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at: http:// creativecommons.org/licences/by/ 4.0/legalcode

The build-up to the 2012 Olympics was fraught with problems and attracted considerable negative publicity in both the British and international press. One key component of this involved security at the Games, with the inability of G4S, the private security firm awarded the contract for Games security, to fulfil its obligations, resulting in a major shift in security provision in the weeks leading up to the Games. Our research on spectators’ perceptions of safety and security in London during the Games attains particular significance in this context. However, while previous studies have suggested a heightened crime and disorder problem associated with tourism and at mass public events, the findings here demonstrate that visitors to the Olympics saw London, and the Olympic venues, as safe, in terms of both crime and terrorism, with positive consequences for their future plans to revisit London. The evidence suggests that Olympic security was a success for the government and the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG), despite the negative publicity attached to G4S and the private security sector more generally.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether agenda setting was present on Twitter during the 2012 London Olympics. In order to analyze the presence of agenda setting, tweets from the @London2012 account and tweets containing #London2012 were analyzed. The @London2012 account served as the news outlet, while tweets containing #London2012 served as the unit of analysis to determine whether agenda setting was present. A content analysis of these tweets revealed significant differences between the two groups in terms of tweet focus, sports mentioned, and countries mentioned, suggesting no agenda setting presence on Twitter. Additionally, the primary affiliation of individuals utilizing #London2012 was laypeople, which aligned with previous Twitter-specific research. The implications of these and other findings will be discussed further.

Social media have changed the way that social actors participate in sports events. “Prosumers” are able to directly offer different interpretations without journalists’ mediation when a social issue arises. However, social media do not fundamentally change the significance of cultural narratives in communication. This study focuses on discussions initiated by a commercial feed on a Chinese microblogging site during the 2012 London Olympic Games. Qualitative textual analysis was conducted. The study found that enduring cultural narratives create the predrafts of social-media communication; the instantaneity of microblogging referred to not simply its physical appearance but also the meaning of that appearance. In addition, social-media texts illustrate a society’s ongoing stories. Going beyond the limitations of previous control-vs.-freedom paradigms, this study explores a Chinese consumer society that is more dynamic and complex than previous studies would suggest.

This essay draws the contours of the Japanese response to the 2012 London Olympics and the Games' perceived relevance to Japan's sports administration in the coming decades. The analysis is based on Japanese mass media reports and press commentaries that appeared in Japan's four leading national dailies (Asahi, Mainichi, Yomiuri and Sankei) and the Nippon Keizai Shinbun (Nikkei; the Japanese equivalent of the Wall Street Journal) before, during and in the aftermath of the London Olympic Games.

London 2012 was a contradiction of Kipling's meretricious couplet about East and West. What was the response of the East, specifically the South Korean media, to London's selection as the host city of the 2012 Olympics? Furthermore, what were the various viewpoints of the South Korean media regarding the significance of London hosting the Olympic Games hard on the heels of the Beijing Olympics? Answers to these questions can provide insights into the geopolitics and politics of modern South Korea, which has very different relationships with China and Britain. An analysis, macroscopic and microscopic, in terms of politics, economics and culture, of media reactions in South Korea to the Olympics of the two nations can provide illuminating insights into a sports mega-event as an instrument of soft power.

The performance of the transport network and the associated movement of people was one of the most critical elements to London’s successful delivery of the 2012 Olympic Games. During the planning stages Transport for London asked the London Borough of Newham to mitigate the impact of the authority’s 13 500 employees on transport infrastructure close to the Olympic Park. To achieve this, the authority needed to understand the geographic distribution of its workforce and the demand it placed on roads and local transport hubs. The authority’s Geospatial Team led the research based on four cross-referenced data sources, and spatial analysis was used to determine priorities for special absence arrangements and a commissioned coach service. The research was used to support a targeted information campaign but also presented considerations on large-scale data collection, the use of Human Resources data, and the degree to which the movement of people can be measured and managed.

The global media spotlight was switched onto Great Britain for at least 17 days during the 2012 London Olympics. Media debates on Britain's identity raged on from the first minute of the opening ceremony. On the basis of the notions of nation branding, competitive identity and public diplomacy, this study examined reactions of the mainstream media in China to the opening ceremony of the London Olympics, with specific focus given to the amount of media coverage, particular attitudes expressed by news reporters and interpretations or themes emphasised. A content analysis was conducted of 100 news stories sampled from six major Chinese media outlets. Results and implications were discussed.

This chapter surveys a number of works by Anthony Burgess—his novels Nothing Like the Sun and Enderby’s Dark Lady, his biography Shakespeare, and his unproduced Hollywood musical The Bawdy Bard, in order to demonstrate continual interpenetrations in his work between historical scholarship, literary criticism, and fiction-making. Holderness then goes on to demonstrate how these different methodologies can be made to interact, introducing extracts from his own short story, “The Seeds of Time.” Underpinned by a cultural materialist study of the presence of Shakespeare in a series of national festivals—the great Exhibition of 1851, the Festival of Britain in 1951, and the London Olympics of 2012—this story uses imaginative methods to pursue a critical inquiry, combining documentary evidence and critical argument with imaginative speculation.

The hosting of the London 2012 Olympic Games was seen as an opportunity to harness the enthusiasm of the 70,000 volunteers involved and to provide a post-event volunteer legacy. A total of 77 individuals who had acted as volunteers in London 2012 were contacted approximately four years after the Games and agreed to complete a web-based open-ended survey. The participants were asked to indicate their level of current volunteering engagement and whether volunteering at the Games had an impact on their current volunteering levels. The study found that the London Olympics were the first volunteer experience for most of the volunteers who completed the survey, with the main motivation to volunteer being anything related to the Olympic Games. Just over half of the respondents are currently volunteering. Lack of time is shown to be the main barrier towards further volunteering commitment. Only half of respondents had been contacted by a volunteering scheme after London 2012. The implications of the findings for a potential volunteering legacy are then explored.

The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate how the combination of critical discourse analysis and corpus-linguistic methodology can be used to study global sports events, especially their impact on the representations of identities. The study of media texts around global events, such as the London Olympics and the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, can yield important insights into the identities which are ideologically normalised in the reporting of such events, and those which are devalued or excluded. Our study focuses on these two events in particular as the Olympics and the World Cup are regarded as ‘the most dramatic and high profile’ global sports events (Tomlinson & Young, 2006: 1) in that the ‘whole world is watching … the same thing at the same time’ (Rowe, 2003: 284). Media representations generated at these times can be seen to be high-impact reflections of cultural assumptions, tailored to coincide with the expectations and beliefs of the audiences of the mass media. Global sports events are thus prominent representations of not only national ideologies (Kinkema and Harris. MediaSport studies: Key research and emerging issues. In L. A. Wenner (Ed.), MediaSport (pp. 27–54). London: Routledge, 1998), but also of ethnicity and race, as well as gender (Hunt & Jaworska, in press), revealing detailed patterns of intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1991). In the proposed chapter we demonstrate the synergistic relationship possible in corpus-assisted discourse studies (CADS) (see Baker, 2008; Baker et al., Discourse and Society, 19(3): 273–306, 2008; Partington, Duguid, & Taylor, Corpora and discourse, a most congruous beast. In A. Partington, J. Morley, & L. Haarman (Eds.), Corpora and discourse (pp. 9–18). Frankfurt/M: Peter La, 2013), showing how systematic linguistic analysis can yield ideological insights whilst resting on a quantitative base of statistically significant relationships and patterns in language use. Our data comprise a corpus of nearly 30 million words, sampled from national newspaper texts published in Britain from 2011 to 2013 and in South Africa (SA) from 2009 to 2012, in order to track the impact of the respective sporting event on media representation, as suggested by McEnery et al. (2013). Both events boosted representations of national unity in the year of the event, but there was little carry through of the gains to the following year. Divisions in terms of race were maintained, especially in the SA context, whilst gendered representations were often positive in the British context.

1. Realising the Olympic dream - bring on the alchemists 2. Coaching for performance: an interview with Olympic diving coach, Andy Banks 3. Coaching for performance: reflections of Olympic diving coach, Andy Banks 4. Reflection and the art of coaching: fostering high-performance in Olympic Ski Cross 5. 'One door closes, a next door opens up somewhere': the learning of one Olympic synchronised swimmer 6. Stories of success: Cultural narratives and personal stories of elite and professional athletes 7. Thought Piece: Realising the Olympic dream: vision, support and challenge 8. Developing rapid high-pressure team decision-making skills. The integration of slow deliberate reflective learning within the competitive performance environment: A case study of elite netball 9. Reflections on a dream: towards an understanding of factors Olympic coaches attribute to their success 10. Sacrifice: the lonely Olympic road 11. 'Multi-directional management': exploring the challenges of performance in the World Class Programme environment 12. Politics, power & the podium: coaching for Paralympic performance 13. Thought Piece: The political process of constructing a sustainable London Olympics sport legacy: three years on

This article considers how the development of the Olympic Park for the London 2012 Games recast the already complex governance arrangements for regeneration in the area around the site, creating a new set of relationships between government, local stakeholders and the wider public. The tension between effective top-down delivery arrangements and ‘bottom-up’ regeneration is reviewed through a brief case study of changing governance arrangements in the Lower Lea in the decade between bidding and hosting the 2012 Games. Evidence is drawn from the author's reflections on his professional work in the area and from a literature review, including public reports, and documentation of meetings, events and processes. A limited number of interviews with fellow practitioners were held. Tentative conclusions are drawn about how, in similar large-scale projects in the future, the process might be better managed to minimise the necessary disruption to local engagement in the formative stages, moving quickly to ...

In July 2012 thousands of competitors from many nations arrive for the London Olympics, each striving to be a champion. Oh, the drive, resolve, heartache and pain. Our capital will be taken over, the press will both celebrate and criticize events; sponsorship deals will soon dominate the results. The men and women who are competing will have trained for many months or years, striven nationally and internationally, fighting hard for places in their teams. What drives them? This short paper is a personal perspective, unashamedly anecdotal, looking at some of the driving forces behind my own endeavours. I have spent a lifetime climbing mountains, with a focus on the exploration of remote regions. I also deal here with the physiological and medical challenges that high altitude mountaineering poses, and discuss its risks.

The summer of 2012 will see the London Olympic Games taking place, amid extraordinarily tight security arrangements. Biometric technology is playing a significant part in handling staff and athletes attending the London Olympic Park.

The introduction of the Sport England strategy in 2008, with the ambition to develop a ‘world leading community sports system’, offered the opportunity to truly engage grassroots sport delivery with the process of reversing the decline in active sports participation. Unfortunately this opportunity appears to have been missed, with the return to a top down imposition of a ‘sport for sport's sake’ agenda using unprepared and under resourced National Governing Bodies of Sport (NGBs) as the agents of management and delivery, a model that has generally not proven to be successful in the past. It would appear, therefore, time to rethink community sports provision and to find alternative methods of delivery to realize the government's ambitious targets relating to 2012 London Olympics legacy. To add to the debate, this article provides a consideration of the provision and delivery of sporting opportunities in the context of a grassroots organization at community level. It discusses whether sports organizations t...

The principal stated rationale for bringing the 2012 Olympic Games to London was that it represented a once in a generation opportunity to regenerate the city’s East End. And yet, its arrival opens up questions over how problem places within cities are characterised and how selective and power-infused visualisations shape the form and character of urban policy interventions. This paper draws on research conducted on a community of over 200 small businesses that existed on the proposed Olympic Village site in east London before they were evicted in the summer of 2007. It documents the effects of the regeneration on their competitiveness and explores the highly circumscribed politics of contestation that emerged. Collectively, it argues that there should be a greater policy and academic concern with the less visible and ‘spectacular’ elements of cities and communities who cannot easily be seen, but are vital to urban vibrancy, diversity and sustainability.

The London 2012 bid was based on the promise to use the Olympic Games to promote sports participation for all groups across the UK. This is the most ambitious project in the history of the Olympic Games in terms of both its scope and level of change, as, in order to be implemented successfully, it has to address not only people's behaviour but also deeply rooted social structures and relations. This paper addresses the little explored issue of the link between hosting the Olympic Games and sports participation in the host country within the framework of sustainable sports legacy. It takes a process-oriented approach, suggesting that Olympic legacies are constructed and not given, and explores the role of the International Olympic Committee and the UK government in framing sports legacy. The paper draws from relevant literature and two original case studies, and analyses five main processes involved in legacy construction. It is argued that the role of sports participation legacy has been to compensate for...

In this note statistical approaches to modelling sporting performances are discussed. Final year projects based on such modelling have proved popular in the past. With the upsurge in interest in the next Olympic Games in London in 2012, such modelling could provide teachers of statistics with a rich source of meaningful student projects. Students may be more motivated to do such projects simply because London is hosting the Games.

Outcome bias and hindsight bias are related, but how exactly? To remedy theoretical ambiguity and non-existent directly relevant empirical research, we contrast an older idea (Baron & Hershey, 1988, J. Pers. Soc. Psychol., 54, 569) that sees outcome bias as partly mediated through hindsight bias with the idea that the two biases independently affect decision evaluations. In an Internet study of retrospections on the 2012 London Olympics, evaluations of the Games’ success and its foreseeability had independent effects on evaluations of the International Olympic Committee’s decision to award the Olympics to London; there was no evidence of mediation. Further theoretical discussion emphasizes the need to distinguish between a holistic assessment of decisions and a more specific assessment of the decision-making process in future outcome bias research.

The title sequence of Chariots of Fire – filmed on the West Sands beach of St Andrews, Scotland – has become one of the most reworked and reinterpreted moments of British cinema, transposed across a variety of places, politics and times. In exploring these moves – from the period of its setting in 1924, through its production in 1980, and to its most recent reworkings in the London 2012 Olympics – the article examines the constantly evolving legacies of the sequence and the cultural capital which it has accrued via these various contexts. By considering the original production and its subsequent multiple receptions, the article positions the sequence at the vanguard of shifts in film production and cultural heritage. Viewed from the vantage point of the 2012 Olympics, the film provides an integral source of cultural capital not just for national but also for local and regional economies as they increasingly target new sources of revenue in a post-industrial age. Postprint

What do the London Olympics, Toyota, iPhone 5 and Lotus Cars all have in common? Well, the answer is they have all seen procurement risks materialize and have an adverse impact on what they are try...

The London Olympics have just finished. Official reports will soon become available on how many athletes participating in the games had asthma. However, as in the past, prevalence data will often be deducted by the number of athletes using inhaled beta-2 agonists that, according to the new 2012 World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) rules, were on this occasion permitted for all the most commonly used short-acting and long-acting drugs, just following a declaration of use made by the athletes themselves. This self-reporting will largely influence the accuracy of estimates, which will not distinguish between clinical asthma and exercise-induced bronchoconstriction (EIB) without clinical asthma, as recently requested.