Him Too? Cristiano Ronaldo and the News Coverage of a Rape Case Allegation

ABSTRACT

This paper uses critical thematic analysis to explore the news media coverage of a rape allegation case against the football player Cristiano Ronaldo. After providing the context of the case, we examine the literature on how rape cases are represented by the news media. We then proceed to a critical thematic analysis of a purposive sample of Portuguese national newspapers, first identifying ten sub-themes in a total of 140 news stories and opinion columns and then considering the patterns of three critical themes that tended to dismiss the allegations, highlight the seriousness of the allegations and neutralize sexual victimization. Each of these considers prevailing ideologies, news values and journalistic practices.     

Student gender stereotypes: contrasting the perceived maleness and femaleness of mathematics and language

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the gender stereotypes endorsed by elementary and high school students regarding mathematics and language. We developed a questionnaire allowing students to rate mathematics and language as either male or female domains and administered it to a sample of 984 elementary and high school French‐speaking Canadian students (Grades 6, 8, and 10). Results showed that, with the exception of Grade 6 boys, students did not believe that mathematics was a male domain, or even conceived of mathematics as a predominantly female domain, suggesting that the traditional stereotype favouring boys in mathematics might have changed over the past few years. Moreover, language was clearly viewed as a female domain. Overall, our findings suggest that boys seem to be in need of encouragement in school, especially regarding language, where the advantage given to girls is particularly salient.     

Statistical learning and dyslexia: a systematic review

The existing literature on developmental dyslexia (hereafter: dyslexia) often focuses on isolating cognitive skills which differ across dyslexic and control participants. Among potential correlates, previous research has studied group differences between dyslexic and control participants in performance on statistical learning tasks. A statistical learning deficit has been proposed to be a potential cause and/or a marker effect for early detection of dyslexia. It is therefore of practical importance to evaluate the evidence for a group difference. From a theoretical perspective, such a group difference would provide information about the causal chain from statistical learning to reading acquisition. We provide a systematic review of the literature on such a group difference. We conclude that there is insufficient high-quality data to draw conclusions about the presence or absence of an effect.     

The role of intuition in pedagogical tact: Educator views

Pedagogical tact concerns a teacher's ability to adequately handle complex classroom situations that require immediate action. As such, pedagogical tact can be viewed as an enactment of teachers’ intuition. While most teachers, teacher educators, educational leaders and scholars readily recognise the importance of pedagogical tact (and by extension, intuition), few pre-service or in-service programmes devote explicit attention to developing this important teacher quality. This study set out to understand why. Specifically, data were collected to investigate how educators perceive intuition, and its role in teacher pedagogical tact. Ten focus group discussions were held with school board members, teacher educators, school principals, in-service teachers and pre-service teachers. Participants recognised two types of intuition commonly described in the literature (local and nonlocal), and affirmed the importance of intuition for teacher pedagogical tact. These educators also noted that teachers are rarely if ever encouraged to make conscious use of their intuition, let alone develop it. There was consensus that teachers differ in how well they are able to tune into their intuition. Though the scale of the study is small, the findings suggest that more attention should be given to developing teacher intuition and pedagogical tact than is currently the case.     

Optimising ‘cash flows’: converting corporate finance to hard currency

Following recent works that have underlined the increasing search for liquidity in economic exchange, this article studies how illiquid forms of money are converted into liquid forms by corporate finance actors. In the name of ‘shareholder value’, the various forms of value generated by companies (such as ‘trade credit’) tend to be increasingly transformed into liquid forms of money that are easily distributable to shareholders (‘cash flows’). Describing this phenomenon as an example of what anthropologists of money call ‘conversion’, this paper highlights how such a conversion process was necessary for the historical development of ‘shareholder value’ policies in corporate finance. Considering documentary sources and interviews with consultants, auditors, and private equity fund managers involved in ‘cash flow’ optimisation practices, this paper details this conversion phenomenon and shows how it has relied on the historical elaboration of specific metrological, technical, legal, and moral norms.     

Politicians’ perspective on the community-related impacts of major sports events – a case study for Innsbruck-Tyrol

While scholarly attention with respect to the social impacts of sports events has increased in recent years, there is still little research discussing the wide-ranging community-related impacts stemming particularly from major sports events. Local political leaders, as (elected) representatives of the community, are important stakeholders within this context and face the challenge of balancing diverse interests in the implementation of major sports events. The purpose of this study is to assess the importance politicians attribute to event impacts that create sustainable outcomes for residents living in a host city. Based on a content analysis, a list of general event impacts (outputs and legacies) produced by major sports events was created and subsequently discussed with scholars and experts in the field to classify the criteria as community relevant or not. A final number of 56 criteria (34 of which are considered community relevant) was then used in the assessment of the politicians’ (representing either the State of Tyrol or the City of Innsbruck) attitude towards these impacts. The findings of the study indicate that, though aware of community interests, politicians nevertheless prioritize economic and touristic benefits for the host city/region such as place marketing. Moreover, politicians seem to have a better understanding of tangible impacts (e.g. infrastructure), underestimating the important intangible impacts (e.g. voluntariness) closely related to community issues. Thus, the research in hand outlines the need to sensitize governments to community interests when planning and implementing major sports events.