Branding the Games: Commercialism and the Olympic City

This chapter examines the role of branding and sponsorship in the Olympic games - with particular reference to the urban. The chapter identifies tensions between Olympic values, branding activities and a projected legacy. The chapter offers a social-theoretical account of the Olympic brand to analyisis on :London2012. It is a contributiuon to wider analysis in a book drawing upon historical, cultural, economic and socio-demographic perspectives. Olympic Cities examines the role of London hosting the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games as a means to promote urban regeneration and social renewal in East London

’Alright on the night?' Envisioning a ’night time economy’ in the Thames Gateway,

Providing a comprehensive overview and critique of the Thames Gateway plan, this volume examines the impact of urban planning and demographic change on East London's material and social environment

Book Review: Michael Payne - Olympic turnaround

In this book review, Iain McRury looks at an account of the "wake-up call" aimed at the International Olympic Committee in the late 20th century to prevent it from becoming ’extinct’, and its subsequent revival as the Olympics became a brand in itself. This is a re-issue of a book first published in 2005, updated with added material from the Beijing Games and some prefatory comments on London. MacRury judges it as timely and a welcome re-issue of a seminal account of the latest phases in Olympic and sports marketin

The Apprentice: Realities and Fictions for the London Skyline

This chapter examines the representation, values and legitimation in ’the city’, paying particular attention to London and reviewing a popular reality TV show: The Apprentice. The chapter frames the show as a morality tale akin to Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1973). Closer analysis highlights the show’s engagements with rhetorics of legitimation and ethos in ’the city’ and applying frames outlined in Boltanski and Chiapello (2005). The chapter adds to wider interdisciplinary analyis of London and recession, in the context of a book that examines the impact of the recession and discusses London’s future trajectory as an entrepreneurial city and capital of the United Kingdom

’Team GB’ and London 2012: The Paradox of National and Global Identities

This article explores the problems associated with ’national identity’ in the UK and examines the tensions arising between the international and local dimensions of the games through examples of domestic (UK) and international (Brazil, Chicago) media coverage of the key debates relating to London’s period of preparation. The chapter proposes a conception of London 2012 as exemplar of an event poised to generate insights and experiences connected to a new politics of ’cosmopolitan’ identity; insights central to grasping the cultural politics of contemporary urban development-and the paradoxes of national identity in current discourses of Olympism. Properly speaking, cosmopolitanism suits those people who have no country, while internationalism should be the state of mind of those who love their country above all, who seek to draw to it the friendship of foreigners by professing for the countries of those foreigners an intelligent and enlightened sympathy. © 2010 Taylor & Francis

Book Review: New Dimensions of Doctor Who: Adventures in Space, Time and Television. London: I B Tauris. Hills, M. (ed) (2013)

Review of recent edited collection. Doctor Who, New Dimensions and the Inner World: A Reciprocal Review Two significant additions to Doctor Who’s academic ‘canon’ were published recently and, continuing Media Education Journal's interest in new ways of approaching the review format, here we ask two authors, Iain MacRury and Matt Hills, to appraise each others’ texts

Branded content: rupture, rapture and reflections.

This is primarily a discussion about change, a topic relevant to many industries and, particularly, to students as they prepare for exciting but potentially uncertain futures. It is an occasion to think about the implications and emergence of some new promotional idioms such as branded content, sub genres such as ‘native advertising’, and to consider some new generation, high profile, promotional media forms, notably vlogging

Re-thinking the Legacy 2012: The Olympics as commodity and gift

This paper opens discussion about the nature of Olympic ‘legacy’ and articulates a contradiction in the way ‘legacy’ is conceived - between ’gift’ and ’commodity’ (Mauss 1954).The The paper argues that establishing working definitions and parameters for ‘legacy’ is a difficult task. Defining ‘legacy’ is problematic especially if conceived as an entirely predictable or measurable set of objectives. Indeed, the definition of ‘legacy’ is partly constitutive of the legacy itself, a component of achievements that the city might make. Such a ‘legacy definition’ will become a functional term in the complex planning and evolving conceptions underpinning urban change for some time—if successfully negotiated and if governable. As such, ‘legacy’, and the activities and values entailed to it, can come to provide a catalytic ‘vocabulary of motives’ and a legitimating discourse enabling politicians, communities and their individual representatives to justify investments, evolving strategies and activities connected to and connecting developmental gains in a more or less healthy fashion. It is because of this that legacy and its various meanings come to matter