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Background: The football industry is a giant economic driver in the world with the English Premier League being the one with the largest following worldwide. Recently, the Premier League club Manchester City FC got charged with over 100 breaches of the leagues financial fair play rules invoking discussion and reactions among fans. This provides an opportunity to conduct research of social identity threat situations of a real-time event. Therefore, the study of Manchester City FC fans is a valid case to contribute to the understanding of British football fans´ reactions to social identity threats and coping strategies.  Purpose: This study aims to explore the reaction and coping mechanisms of football fans as their supported club has been accused of potential rule-breaking activities. Method: The study is following an interpretivist approach through a single case study. A qualitative content analysis method is used to analyse the data gathered through a Manchester City online forum. The data is analysed through manual coding, where the sub-categories emerge from the raw codes gathered from the Manchester City online forum. Conclusion: This study suggests that social mobility is not prominent amongst Manchester City FC fans in the occurrence of this Social Identity Threat, while aggressive coping strategies such as Social Competition and Social Creativity are prominent in the analysis of the sample. The study also supports previous research identifying humour as a prominent coping strategy and identifies similarities between British sports fan and sports fans in other cultures.

The external shock of COVID-19 forced many professional sport organizations to cancel live sporting events, requiring sport organizations to engage consumers primarily through social media. This research uses the Sports Experience Design (SX) framework to explore how social media influenced the WNBA fan experiences in the 2020 season. In addition, principles of a relationship marketing approach were integrated into the SX to guide this investigation. To understand how the WNBA’s social media content fits into the SX framework the research examined engagement rates and how that impacts the user’s experience and organization’s strategy and off-season opportunities for the organization or players to remain relevant to their consumer base. / Business Administration/Marketing

This dissertation traces the circulation and consumption of Japanese anime, or Anime, in Kuwait to examine the changing consciousness of normativity regarding gender and sexuality for audiences and fans. Anime has been distributed and accessible since the 1970s in Kuwait. Nonetheless, with the advent of "New Anime" after the 2000s, the audience has widely accepted characters and protagonists that deviate from the existing representational practices portraying active men and passive women. Drawing from gender and sexualities studies, media and anime studies, Antonio Gramsci's theory of hegemony as well as Raewyn Connell's theory on masculinities, this study critically investigates "hegemonic masculinities" in Kuwaiti society to argue the ways in which the reception and practices of Anime help to erode them. / 博士(アメリカ研究) / Doctor of Philosophy in American Studies / 同志社大学 / Doshisha University

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According to conventional wisdom, football fans exhibit perpetual loyalty to the clubs that they choose to support. These prevailing beliefs are largely the product of the fanaticism and intense partisanship that fans display. However, in South Africa, the reality is that the majority of the football teams are either failing to harness this loyalty, or that the loyalty levels that their fans display, contradict conventional wisdom. Due to the important role that these fans play in revenue generation, there is a need for leadership at these clubs to better understand this lucrative market. The objective of this study was to establish whether the loyalty levels displayed by fans in South Africa correspond with, or contradict, conventional wisdom. The limited understanding of the matter within a South African context means that clubs lack the required understanding of their respective fan bases. This creates a situation, which stifles the efficacy of management to implement positive changes. This study was anchored in the model of Stewart and Smith (2007) of sport fans' motivations. There are three core dimensions distinguished by the model. These relate to psychological, socio-cultural and social motives, all of which facilitate the process of an individual becoming a fan; and then subsequently remaining loyal. A qualitative research approach was used to collect the data for this study. An interview guide was used to collect the information from the fans and the top management of Cape Town City Football Club through face-to-face interviews. Each interview was recorded with the aid of a voice recorder and all the data collected were then transcribed. The findings from the study show that fans demonstrate more support to Cape Town City Football Club when the team is winning, as opposed to when it is going through a rough patch. Conclusively, the lack of understanding of fans in football clubs means that it is difficult to communicate in an all-inclusive way, considering that not all fans are the same. Based on the findings, the study suggests that leadership at South African football clubs should allow for open dialogues to be created, in which the issues can be discussed; so that practices implemented would better serve the target population.

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Spaceborne scatterometer instruments are important tools for the remote sensing of the Earth's environment. In addition to the primary goal of measuring ocean winds, data from scatterometers have proven useful in the study of a variety of land and cryopshere processes as well. Several satellites carrying scatterometers have flown in the last two decades. These previous systems have been "fan-beam" scatterometers, where multiple antennas placed in fixed positions are used. The fan-beam scatterometer approach, however, has disadvantages which limit its utility for future missions. An alternate approach, the conically-scanning "pencil-beam" scatterometer technique, alleviates many of the problems encountered with earlier systems and provides additional measurement capability. Due to these advantages, the pencil-beam approach has been selected by NASA as the basis for future scatterometer missions. Whereas the fan-beam approach is mature and well understood, there is need for a fundamental study of the unique aspects of the pencil-beam technique. In this dissertation, a comprehensive treatment of the design issues associated with pencil-beam scatterometers is presented. A new methodology is established for evaluating and optimizing the performance of conically-scanning radar systems. Employing this methodology, key results are developed and used in the design of the SeaWinds instrument - NASA's first pencil-beam scatterometer. Further, the theoretical framework presented in this study is used to propose new scatterometer techniques which will significantly improve the spatial resolution and measurement accuracy of future instruments.

Multiple fans are sometimes used in an array configuration to cool various types of electronic equipment. In addition to adding another noise source, using two fans with closely spaced blade passage frequencies (BPF) can create an annoying beat frequency. A two fan array with each fan having a different BPF was considered. The fans were theoretically modeled at the BPF and first harmonics. Each fan has two acoustic paths to the far field. Thus, each fan was modeled as a two source array. The first control configuration consisted of one control filter using six control sources and six error sensors in a fully coupled control system designed to control both fans simultaneously. The second configuration used two independent controllers with three control sources and three error sensors, one controller per fan. Experimentally, the averaged narrow band reduction of the BPFs and the second harmonic of the two independent controllers were 15.6 and 7.4 dB respectively, compared to a reduction of 14.4 and 5.7 dB at the two frequencies using a single control loop. The results suggest that independent controllers perform better than the single control loop for the fan array studied. Optimization of active noise control systems has increased performance but sometimes with decreased robustness. Two control source configurations for the sound power reduction of a simple source were analyzed by modeling the control systems. The two control source configurations were four symmetric control sources surrounding the noise source and an optimized linear array of four control sources. Simulation results show the linear array control source configuration is more sensitive to microphone placement errors, with a 20-33 dB reduction in attenuation for a microphone placement error of 2 mm compared to a 0.8 dB drop in attenuation for the symmetric case. The linear array configuration was found to be more sensitive to the microphone placement errors compared to the symmetric configuration. A 2.5 mm change in one microphone position causes an average of 6 dB loss in attenuation for the linear array configuration compared to a 0.6 dB loss for the symmetric configuration.

Noise from information technology (IT) equipment is a significant problem in today's modern society. Active Noise Control (ANC) has shown promise in reducing the effect of IT fan noise on users. Though ANC has been applied to axial fans (such as those found in desktop computers), it has not been applied to centrifugal fans, such as those found in laptop computers. This work applies an ANC method to a centrifugal fan mounted in a mock laptop enclosure. This method is applied in four steps. First, secondary sources are placed in the vicinity of the fan. Second, an accurate model of the radiation from the fan and secondary sources is constructed. Third, the total power radiated from this system is minimized. This creates nodal lines in the vicinity of the fan. Fourth, ANC error sensors are placed on the nodal lines predicted by the model. This creates these nodal lines experimentally, thus creating the minimum power condition. The noise from the exhaust and inlets of the fan will first be controlled individually. Then the method will be applied to the combined system. Global sound power radiation will be measured in all cases.