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Classical PR works on the basis that the public wants to buy the product. But the classic tools – media relations, leaflets, public meetings and exhibitions, and even advertising – all fail instantly when the product offered is unpopular or resisted. The approach for the communications of contentious projects is different and makes use of the “power pyramid”, which is how decisions are made within the democratic system. Stakeholders are the key to the successful communications management of difficult projects. To be successful, contentious projects must utilise a special stakeholder – the third‐party advocate. A mechanism for segmenting these stakeholders and mobilising them – often through a mutually beneficial project – must be in place. This maximises the chances of contentious projects succeeding.

Black women have traditionally occupied a unique position in the American economic structure – at the very bottom. The year 1920 is a unique historical moment to examine how this came to be. Economic prosperity immediately following World War I, the first wave of Black migration, and accelerating industrialization created occupational opportunities that could have enabled Black women to escape working poverty, as the majority of Black men did, but they were actively constrained. Historical narratives have extensively described Black women’s occupational restriction across regions to dirty work, such as domestic service, but not often in conjunction with a comparison to the expanding opportunities of Black men and White women. While intersectionality studies have honed in on the unique place of Black women, little attention has been devoted to this from a historical vantage point. This chapter examines the role that race, gender, and place played in shaping the experience of working poverty and integrates a consideration of queuing theory and Black population size to examine how variations might shape racial outcomes in the labor market in 1920.

According to Italian theorist Antonio Gramsci, whose best-known contribution to critical thought is his theory regarding hegemony, education “serves a directly important function in maintaining hegemony…[for] [i]t is a vehicle by which consensus is maintained and the knowledge of the ruling bloc (the majority ruling class) is legitimated” (Gross, 2011, p. 66). Although Gramsci's theoretical work was initially situated within the Fascist-dominated Italian legislature in which he aimed to understand how the ruling class maintained power over the proletariat (oppressed groups), his concept offers a lens through which social critics have been able to understand the prevailing superstructures of power in Western capitalist societies. This chapter, therefore, relies on Gramsci's theories to develop an argument (and writing pedagogy) regarding the democratic ability of the historically Black college and university (HBCU), for I contend the HBCU, particularly its first-year composition classroom, is a space where students can practice and propel democracy, thus countering the hegemony that insists on oppressing Black and Brown people.

While the HBCU, as defined by the 1965 Higher Education Act, is a by-product of the superstructure and is thusly grounded upon and legitimated by what bell hooks terms “the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy,” therefore functioning as institutionalized spaces for constructing and maintaining hegemony, HBCUs, explains Eddie S. Glaude Jr. in his 2016 Democracy in Black, are “institutions that both cultivated their (Black folks') civic capacities and served as a space to transmit values that opposed the value gap” (p. 125). In other words, Black folks have had to create “safe spaces” like the HBCU, to exist in their full humanity within an oppressive America whose white citizens devalued their being, and therefore, their American citizenship. Although the HBCU is legitimated by the hegemony, the HBCU, I argue, remains a space where the democracy America has yet to realize can be learned and practiced, especially if teachers, particularly within first-year composition programs, employ counterhegemonic curriculums and practices like the AfriWomanist approach to teaching I offer here.

The insufficient attention given up to now by Spanish academic researchers to quality in tourism, does not by any means invalidate the generalised conviction that the subject has a basic influence on the competitive future of Spanish tourism. Quality has become a key dimension of the tourist product and of tourist enterprise. For this reason a profile of the lines of research developed by Spanish experts on the subject has been undertaken in the article, in order to provide a retrospective overview. This effort remains limited, though we are beginning to see the creation of research centres which will, in the forseeable future, set the pace in this area of specialisation.

In this article Professor Perry argues that Plessy v. Ferguson and the de jure segregation it heralded has overdetermined the discourse on Jim Crow. She demonstrates through a historical analysis of activist movements, popular literature, and case law that private law, specifically property and contract, were significant aspects of Jim Crow law and culture. The failure to understand the significance of private law has limited the breadth of juridical analyses of how to respond to racial divisions and injustices. Perry therefore contends that a paradigmatic shift is necessary in scholarly analyses of the Jim Crow era, to include private law, and moreover that this shift will enrich our understandings of both historic and current inequalities.

This study aims to contribute to research into narrative brands by investigating if the lack of closure in the ambiguous season two’s ending of the Australian television series, Wanted, constituted a brand transgression.

Comments on posts about Wanted from social media accounts associated with the series were downloaded and analysed using thematic analysis informed by non-participatory netnography.

Audiences found the ambiguous ending of Wanted season two disappointing and it did not fulfil implied promises and their expectations, which fits the description of a brand transgression, and so they engaged in behaviours indicative of a brand transgression such as spreading negative word of mouth online. The ambiguous ending could have been a cliff-hanger to lead into a third season that was not guaranteed when the final episode aired, or the ending for the entire series. Although a third season was eventually made and positively received by audiences, viewer numbers declined by nearly a third, illustrating the importance of brand management for narrative brands.

This research has implications for the creators of television series, particularly if they do not know if it will be renewed. Not providing audiences with their expected closure can constitute a brand transgression and damage the narrative brand’s residual brand equity and potential earnings from streaming or a revival at a later date.

Prior research has focused on audiences’ responses to definitive endings, rather than ambiguous endings, which is the focus of this research. Furthermore, narrative brands are still an under-researched context.

This study aims to investigate consumer perceptions of inauthenticity due to adulteration of a narrative brand ending by using the research context of the final season and ending of the television series, Game of Thrones.

Two data sets totalling 2,032 online comments detailing consumer reactions to the final season of Game of Thrones were analysed using thematic analysis and human interpretive analysis. The coding was an iterative and continuous process, and posts were returned to and re-examined to refine codes and groupings as the analysis progressed.

The results indicate consumers perceived the ending of the eighth and final season of the television series, Game of Thrones, did not meet their expectations and was not authentic due to rushed writing and illogical character and plot developments. Consumers judged this adulteration was so great that it was a moral violation and transgression. Consumers also sought to assign blame for the inauthenticity, which they attributed to the writers and showrunners, who became the subject of revenge behaviours.

This study indicates consumers of narrative brands, due to their strong emotional attachments to their characters and storyworlds, may perceive unexpected and extensive changes to them as moral violations and transgressions and thus inauthentic. Consumers establish the authenticity of a narrative brand by regularly scrutinising narrative and character development against their expectations as shaped by prior narrative content. Due to their emotional attachment, consumers may attempt to attribute blame for the inauthenticity. The findings have not been established in prior research, and inauthenticity in a narrative brand context is also explored for the first time.

The purpose of this study is to investigate members’ reactions to the forced closure of a narrative video game brand community and its participatory culture.

The BioWare Social Network forums closure was announced in a thread, which attracted 8,891 posts. These were analysed using thematic analysis, facilitated by the software program Leximancer and non-participatory netnography.

The brand community and participatory culture members were predominantly distressed because they would lose their relationships with each other and access to the participatory culture’s creative output.

Previous research suggested that video game players cannot be fans and that player-generated content is exploitative. However, members, self-identified as fans, encouraged BioWare’s use of their player-created content for financial gain and articulated the community’s marketing benefits, all of which have implications for Fan and Game Studies’ researchers. Research using primary data could identify brand communities and participatory cultures’ specific benefits and their members’ attitudes about brands’ commercial use of their outputs. Further research is required to identify other products and brands not suitable for establishing brand communities on social media to determine the best ways to manage them.

Addressing narrative brand communities’ complaints quickly can prevent negative financial outcomes and using social media sites for brand communities may not be suitable structurally or because of members’ privacy concerns. Furthermore, consumers often have intense emotional bonds with narrative brands, their communities and participatory cultures, which marketers may underestimate or misunderstand.

This study of the unique phenomenon of the forced closure of a narrative brand community and its participatory culture increased understandings about them.

This research explores the skills, attitudes and knowledge of micro and small businesses in the peripheral high growth region of Moreton Bay in southeast Queensland that would enable these businesses to adopt and use new business technology.

Sixteen in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with participants recruited via snowball sampling and utilised in conjunction with the Queensland government’s Digital Scorecard survey data. The interviews were analysed using thematic analysis, NVivo 12 and a phenomenographic approach.

All micro and small business owners understood the value of new business technology and expressed a positive attitude towards its uptake but felt constrained by a lack of knowledge, time and resources. Thus, they require targeted and local guidance and tools to minimize the demands on their time of implementation, which has implications for policymakers, governments and educators.

Past studies on micro and small businesses adopting new technology have either looked at large regions or specific types of technology leaving the technological skills, attitudes and knowledge gaps of micro and small businesses in peripheral regions unexamined. This research aims to fill that gap by studying a specific high growth peripheral region, Moreton Bay, on the edge of the greater Brisbane city area. We recommend a phased approach to developing digital skills, adopting technology and appropriate support programs for each stage.