Daring to Be Weird: Exploring the Invocation of the “Company Freak” in Vonage’s New Advertising Campaign

A textual analysis was performed on the first five advertisements from Vonage’s “Crazy Generous” campaign. The ads ask the audience to consider what happens when co-optation is itself deployed as a promotional tool. Three primary themes emerge: the main character is Vonage’s “house hippie”; interacting with him is a “sanitary act”; and that by coaxing the main character to take a job with Vonage, the company has has restored social order.     

Commonwealth Media

THE MILITARY AND THE MEDIA by Alan Hooper (Brookfield, Vt.: Gower Publishing, 1982---$38.00)

GOTCHA! THE MEDIA, THE GOVERNMENT AND THE FALKLANDS CRISIS by Robert Harris (London: Faber & Faber/New York: Harper & Row, 1983---$5.95, paper)

THE THIRD AGE OF BROADCASTING edited by Brian Wenham (London: Faber & Faber/New York: Harper & Row, 1982---$5.95, paper)

CHOICE BY CABLE: THE ECONOMICS OF A NEW ERA IN TELEVISION by C.G. Veljanovski and W.D. Bishop (London: The Institute of Economic Affairs, 1983---£2.50, paper)

From the London-based Centre for the Study of Communication and Culture, Robert A. White reports to us on the following recent British studies:

MEDIA LAW IN AUSTRALIA: A MANUAL by Mark Armstrong, et al. (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1983---price not given, paper)

MAKING A TV SERIES: THE BELLAMY PROJECT by Albert Moran (Paddington, New South Wales: Currency 'ress, 1983---A$14.95, paper)

TELEVISION IN THE EIGHTIES: THE TOTAL EQUATION by Rex Moorfoot (London: BBC Publications/Elmsford, N.Y.: Pergamon Press, 1983---$19.95/9.50)

CANADA'S VIDEO REVOLUTION: PAY-TV, HOME VIDEO AND BEYOND by Peter Lyman (Toronto: Lorimer and Co., 1983---$16.95/7.95)

INFORMATION SOCIETY PROGRAM PAPERS (Gamma, Faculty of Management, McGill University, 1001 Sherbrooke St. West, Montreal, Que. H3A 1G5---priced as noted, paper)

AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF CULTURAL STUDIES (School of English, Western Australian Institute of Technology, Bentley, W.A. 6102---A$15.00 per year/twice yearly)     

Part‐time higher education in Northern Ireland

Previous studies have shown that tutors usually enjoy teaching students and working for the University. During 1985 Reg Melton and colleagues in the Student Research Centre in the Institute of Educational Technology interviewed a number of tutors in depth to ascertain their reactions to the experience of reductions in their teaching. Job satisfaction and goodwill appeared to be under considerable strain.     

The BASES Expert Statement on use of music in exercise

The use of music during exercise has become ubiquitous over the past two decades and is now supported by a burgeoning body of research detailing its effects and the contingencies surrounding its use. The purpose of this statement is to present a synopsis of the body of knowledge, with selected references, and to provide practical recommendations for exercise practitioners regarding music selection. Following the identification of methodological shortcomings in early studies, researchers have been guided by new conceptual frameworks, and have produced more consistent findings as a consequence. The use of music has been found to yield ergogenic effects in the exercise domain while also promoting psychological (e.g. enhanced affect) and psychophysical (reduced ratings of perceived exertion) benefits. There is a paucity of research examining the longitudinal effects of music on key outcome variables such as exercise adherence.     

Theoretical foundations for enhancing social connectedness in online learning environments

Group social structure provides a comfortable and predictable context for interaction in learning environments. Students in face‐to‐face learning environments process social information about others in order to assess traits, predict behaviors, and determine qualifications for assuming particular responsibilities within a group. In online learning environments, however, negotiating social information and maintaining social connectedness can pose challenges for participants. Nonverbal strategies one typically uses for enhancing communication and overcoming ambiguity – such as an approving smile or a questioning brow – must be approached differently while learning online where fewer sensory communication channels are typically available. We present the theoretical foundation for how social information processing and group structure theories may be combined to assist instructional designers in further examining the social system perceived by the online learner. We propose a framework for thinking more systematically about the development of group social structure in online learning environments.     

On the robustness of Riccati flows to complete model misspecification

Consider the continuous-time matrix Riccati operator Ricc$\left(Q\right)=AQ+Q{A}^{\prime }?QSQ+R$. In this work, we consider the robustness of this operator to direct perturbations of the matrices (A, R, S) and, in particular, the flow robustness of the corresponding Riccati differential equation. For a given class of perturbation, we show that the corresponding differential equation is well defined in the sense it is bounded above and below, it has a well-defined fixed point, and it converges to this fixed point exponentially fast. Moreover, the flow of the perturbed Riccati flow is close to the nominal Riccati flow when the perturbation is small; i.e. we prove a continuity-type condition in the size of the perturbation.