The gendered emotional labor of male professional ‘freesurfers’ digital media work

Abstract

Male professional ‘freesurfers’ are paid to live an aspirational lifestyle and communicate this through their digital media work. In this article I argue that a ‘stoke imperative’ championed by the surf industry necessitates emotional labour. Stoke is surf vernacular for a clustering of feeling thrilled, joyful, pleased, happy, optimistic, excited and satisfied. The surf industry manufactures and commodifies stoke to profit from it. Emotional labour is often assumed to be what women are ‘naturally’ predisposed to and ‘better at’. It is found that male professional freesurfers are competent at employing strategies for doing emotional labour when doing digital media work, such as micro-celebrity. However, this involves negotiating expectations, traits, and values of masculinity. It is also found that digital media technologies direct a professional sport ‘technosoma’ that networks emotional labour for profit. The article extends a small body of literature on how emotional labour is practised by men in sport.     

A Bayesian Approach to Multilevel Structural Equation Modeling With Continuous and Dichotomous Outcomes

Multilevel Structural equation models are most often estimated from a frequentist framework via maximum likelihood. However, as shown in this article, frequentist results are not always accurate. Alternatively, one can apply a Bayesian approach using Markov chain Monte Carlo estimation methods. This simulation study compared estimation quality using Bayesian and frequentist approaches in the context of a multilevel latent covariate model. Continuous and dichotomous variables were examined because it is not yet known how different types of outcomes—most notably categorical—affect parameter recovery in this modeling context. Within the Bayesian estimation framework, the impact of diffuse, weakly informative, and informative prior distributions were compared. Findings indicated that Bayesian estimation may be used to overcome convergence problems and improve parameter estimate bias. Results highlight the differences in estimation quality between dichotomous and continuous variable models and the importance of prior distribution choice for cluster-level random effects.     

Organizational Discourse and the Appraisal of Occupational Hazards: Interpretive Repertoires,Heedful Interrelating,and Identity at Work

Scholars and practitioners have often conceptualized hazards as external to discursive processes, focusing instead on the role of strategic communication in representing pre-organized vulnerabilities to stakeholders rather than on the capacity of mundane discourse practices to shape how hazards emerge. In this study of risk discourse in one high reliability organization, a municipal fire department, we demonstrate how hazard appraisals emerged as intersubjective products of organizational discourse. Specifically, we explore how the interpretive repertoires firefighters used to make sense of hazards were medium and outcome of discursive identity formations. Firefighters employed preferred identity terms to amplify identity-enhancing dangers and attenuate vulnerabilities that were threatening to a preferred sense of self.     

Seeing and Not Believing: Concern for Visual Culture in The Humanist

A recent study of a magazine distributed by a powerful conservative Christian group determined the organization showed strong concern for “visual culture.” The publication directed its readers on how to understand the seen world. The present study analyzes a periodical of an avowedly secular group to understand how they might manifest similar or different concerns. On the whole, the content of the magazine called The Humanist appears to indicate that visual culture is as important to agnostics as it is to theists.     

The longitudinal effects of achievement goals and perceived control on university student achievement

In the area of achievement motivation, students’ beliefs pertaining to achievement goals and perceived control have separately guided a large amount theoretical and empirical research. However, limited research has considered the simultaneous effects of goals and control on achievement. The purpose of this study was to examine primary and secondary control as potential mediators of the effects of mastery and performance goals on achievement, measured as final percentage in Introductory Psychology and GPA. The sample consisted of 224 first-year university students at a Canadian doctoral granting university. All participants completed two surveys and consented to release their grades to the researchers. We found that neither performance goals nor mastery goals had direct effects on achievement. However, performance goals had a positive indirect effect on achievement through primary control. Indirect effects also emerged for mastery goals, positively through primary control and negatively through secondary control. These results offer one explanation for the often-found non-significant relationship between mastery and achievement and are discussed in light of interventions aimed to modify goals and/or control and thereby increase achievement.     

Bookstores of Chicago

Les Brown, Television: The Business Behind the Box (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Javanovich, 1971—$8.95)

Arnold Passman's The Deejays (New York: Macmillan, 1971— $7.95)

Allan Jefferys and Bill Owen's DJ (New York: Ashley Books, 1971—$7.95)

Harvey F. Swearer Commercial FCC License Handbook (Blue Ridge Summit, Pa.: Tab Books, 1971—$8.95/5.95)

Dick Perry's Not Just a Sound: The Story of WLW (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1971—$6.95)     

Photography: Three Production Guides

George M. Craven, Oblect and Image: An Introduction to Photography (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1975—$11.50)

Phil Davis, Photography (Dubuque, Iowa: Wm. C. Brown, 1975—$14.95/9.95)

Clifton C. Edom, Photojournalism: Principles and Practices (Dubuque, Iowa: Wm. C. Brown, 1976—$14.95)     

Regulation

Antitrust, the Media and the New Technology (1981, 560 pp.)

Current Developments in CATV 1981 (1981, 629 pp.)

Clifton O. Lawhorne, The Supreme Court and Libel (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1981—$19.95)

Robert D. Sack, Libel, Slander, and Related Problems (Practising Law Institute, 810 Seventh Ave., New York 10019 —$50.00)