Introduction The media play a huge part in sport; we find out what's happening, how our team is doing and it creates great sporting moments and sports celebrities and stars. This unit looks at the role played by the media in sport and how this has changed with the development of internet and satellite TV. Who calls the shots – athletes, teams or the media moguls? How do social scientists explain this relationship between sport and the media? This material is from our archive and is an adapted extr
7.4 Conclusion Despite their very considerable differences, and the very different kinds of evidence they draw upon, it is clear from these brief exchanges between theoretical frameworks that ‘the personal’ and social policies meet and remake one another in multiple and complex ways. Making welfare directly conditional upon work represents an unusually focused response to particular perceptions of personal lives, and the material circumstances and social conducts associated with them. And as policies be
6 A short biography of Mandy: comparing theories about work and welfare Mandy's biography has some
4.2 Neo-liberal interpretations of welfare to work Neo-liberalism begins from an emphasis on the free market, individual freedom and responsibility. Neo-liberal approaches use the ‘less eligibility’ principle. Welfare is thought to distort ‘free’ markets, because it either removes incentives to work, or drives up entry-level pay to rates that are not economical for employers. Neo-liberals tend to advocate what Peck (2001) terms the ‘hard’ Labour Force Attachment model of working for welfare, which places claimants directly
Introduction This unit is an adapted extract from the course Personal lives and social policy
(DD305)
1.6 Using a historical approach By adopting a historical approach we gain some distance from the present and everyday, viewing more clearly our taken-for-granted assumptions. Today's formations of parenthood and sexualities did not suddenly appear fully formed, but are the results of centuries of change. By looking at a particular historical phenomenon, fertility decline in Britain, we can explore some of the tensions and contradictions between deeply embedded and newer ideas and practices emerging at that time. These strug
4.3.2 Network externalities and increasing returns to scale The reader should ask herself the following question: Would I subscribe to a telephone service knowing that nobody else subscribes to a telephone service? The answer should be: Of course not! What use will anyone have from having a telephone when there is no one to talk to? (Shy, 2001, p. 3) The uncertainty surrounding production in the introductory phase, which places such importance on
4.2.1 Figure 9a: A selection of 35 mm SLR film cameras Learning outcomes After studying this unit you should be able to: appreciate the importance of technological change, costs of production and consumer preferences to the changing organisation of production; understand the relation between the quantity demanded of a good and its price as represented by the demand curve; understand economic models of the relation between firms’ costs and output; analyse the role of technology and costs in influencing in 4.3 Live fast, die young Both the automobile and PC industries were characterised by a great deal of turbulence in the first 20 to 30 years of their existence. In both cases, many new firms entered the industry, introduced new varieties of the product, and soon left the industry, leaving only a few dozen firms to compete during the growth phase. By 1926 only 33 per cent of the firms that had started producing automobiles during the previous 22 years had survived. In the case of PCs, by 1999 only 20 per cent of the fi Learning outcomes After studying this unit you should be able to: understand the relationship between technological change and industrial revolutions; appreciate the pervasive effect that new technologies can have on the economy and, in particular, on productivity; understand how industry dynamics can be analysed using the ‘industrial life cycle’ model; use data and historical examples to support economic arguments. Introduction The material presented here focuses on the politics of racial violence in Britain. The material is an audio file, originally 30 minutes in length, and examines the issues around this subject. It was recorded in 1995. This material is from our archive and is an adapted extract from Crime, order and social control (D315) which is no longer taught by The Open University. If you want to study formally with us, you may wish to explore other courses we offer in this Author(s): Learning outcomes On completion of this unit, you should be able to: identify criteria to evaluate whether prison works. Learning outcomes After studying this unit you should be able: define social construction and social constructionism. 1.6.4 Blogs The founder of Technorati claims that the number of ‘blogs’ doubles every five months and that the creation rate is approaching two per second. One estimate I read in July 2010 put the number at 400 million blogs. Because these online diaries offer instant publishing opportunities, you potentially have access to a wealth of knowledge from commentators and experts (if they blog) in a wide ra 1.5.9 Plagiarism Referencing is not only useful as a way of sharing information, but also as a means of ensuring that due credit is given to other people’s work. In the electronic information age, it is easy to copy and paste from journal articles and web pages into your own work. But if you do use someone else’s work, you should acknowledge the source by giving a correct reference. Taking someone's work and not indicating where you took it from is termed plagiarism and is regarded as an infringemen 1.5.7 Referencing We mentioned above that we need to reference sources to ensure we abide by copyright legislation. But there is another reason we need to give accurate references to items we use – so we can share it. Consider this scenario. A friend says they’ve just read an interesting article where Joshua Schachter, founder of Delicious has spoken about why it isn’t a faceted search system, and you should read it. How would you go about finding it? Would you start looking in a news database, a s 1.5.3 Desktop search tools Finding your paperwork or electronic files can be a problem. You may find that even if you do have some sort of filing system, your structure soon gets quite large with files in multiple locations, which can be hard to navigate. You may find yourself making arbitrary decisions about which folder to place a document in. It may make sense now but in the future, when you look where you think it should be, it’s not there. At times like this you may resort to the search command from the Wi 1.4.7 T is for Timeliness The date when information was produced or published can be an important aspect of quality. This is not quite as simple as saying that 'good' information has to be up to date. Here is an example of a news item from an on 1.4.3 R is for Relevance Relevance is an important factor to consider when you are evaluating information. It isn’t so much a property of the information itself but of the relationship it has with your question or your ‘information need’. For example,if you are writing an essay about the geography of Chile, a book or website about Chilean political history would not be relevant. So there are a number of ways in which a piece of information may not be relevant to your query:
Activity 9
