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No description available.

The Elaborated Social Identity Model (ESIM) maintains that police strategy and tactics that are perceived to be illegitimate by crowd members increases the likelihood of disorder. In the context of policing foreign nationals this theory is advanced as an explanation for instances of disorder. The emphasis of the model is the inter-group relations between the in-group (the crowd), and an out-group (the police). Crowd theorists also advance the hypothesis that police psychology in public order can be characterised by a 'Classical' theory of crowd psychology, meaning they perceive crowds as dangerous and irrational. Social identity research would benefit from a more thorough understanding of the dynamics surrounding the policing of foreign nationals at international tournaments. There is a consensus on the importance of accounting for the police psychology in the inter-group interactions, which relative to the dynamics of crowd psychology has been sparsely addressed. Quantitative and qualitative data e.g., interviews, focus group, participant observation and structured observations were collected to address the relationship between police perception~ and practices and the relationship to inter-group dynamics at international football events. The methods employed are Constructed Grounded Theory Method (CGTM), ethnography and statistical analysis. The data gathering context is a naturalistic field study, in which access to the policing public order operation and participant observation field research forms the analysis. The research was conducted prior to, during and after nine international football events. A specific focus of the work is in the examination of the Austrian and Swiss police management of foreign nationals at the Euro 2008 football tournament. At which, access to structured observation data provides a valuable quantitative dynamic to the analysis. The results develop a social identity informed interpretation of occupational police psychology. Findings also suggest the claims of the crowd psychology literature can at times be unsubstantiated. The relationship between the police tactics and the relationship to crowd disorder is more complex than is currently represented; when considered in the broader occupational and inter-group context. The organisational police structure, opposing fan groups, and audiences such as the local population, the media and the private securities are all pertinent variables in understanding inter-group relations in the policing of foreign nationals. In relation to high profile measures of policing (contrary to majority perspective in the literature), this research provides evidence that these measures can offer practical and social benefits; from a police and crowd perspective. The thesis concludes by exploring some of the wider implications of this for future research, theory, policy, crowd management and international football events/tournaments.

No description available.

This is an investigation of football as part of everyday life. It is an attempt to move the focus away from the footballing 'other' and concentrate on the mundane ways in which football culture is sustained as an unspectacular part of people's daily lives. It asks how the consumption of football and the enactment of football culture help to make everyday life more, or less, manageable. It explores the ways in which football's ubiquity is felt beyond explicit identifications as fans or supporters. The embedded nature of football as a part of the everyday has an effect on the lives of family members, work colleagues, friends and acquaintances. These relations are reinforced by football's presence within the powerful and ubiquitous contemporary cultural formations of celebrity, family life and social networks, all of which are also fundamental aspects of everyday life. Adopting Bauman's concept of liquid modernity, football is examined as part of a more fluid way of life in contemporary Britain. Questions are asked about how everyday life is made possible in such a world by seeing football culture as both constituted by and constituting of everyday life. The two main aims are to highlight the ordinary ways in which football is embedded in people's daily lives and to explore how football makes use of solid renditions of the world in making it more appealing to liquid modern living. The research utilises an unconventional methodological strategy. Through the creation of a dialogue between the epistemological views of Zygmunt Bauman and everyday life theorists such as Henri Lefebvre, Michel de Certeau, the Surrealists and their contemporaries the topic is explored through the development of a heurmeneutic sociology. This operationalises the concept of the social researcher as flaneur which takes the researcher's own everyday life as a central resource for the exploration of other people's daily lives. The result is an impressionistic account of football culture that shifts between ethnographic description, reflexive narration and sociological analysis to create a montage of daily life that is appropriate to the interpretation of liquid modern living. Football is conceived as an alternative register for exploring everyday life that challenges readers to view in new ways their own everyday lives and their relationships with football culture. The study is contextualised spatially by exploring football's presence in the home, the workplace, the public house and other transitional spaces of the city. It exposes theories of consumption, alienation, interaction, community, identity and power to the (extra) ordinary realm of people's everyday lives. The interpretation this leads to is that football has become so well embedded in daily life because it has the capacity to adapt to individuals' own needs and desires for security and freedom, belonging and individuality, at a level that is reflexively undemanding enough to succeed on a daily basis. The way it achieves this is through a combination of a history rooted in solidly modern tradition that is also celebrated and promulgated through liquid modern forms of consumption. In everyday life of liquid modernity reflexivity has become habitual, the spectacular domesticated, public/private boundaries blurred, the 'other' is a consumerist fetish, the self a commodity and community exists through consumption. Football feeds this situation through its ephemeral presence in everyday life.

Die Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit sozialen Interaktionen in Videospiel-Welten. Eine verdeckt teilnehmende Beobachtung, in Kombination mit einer qualitativen Inhaltsanalyse, ermöglichte es verschiedene Phänomene innerhalb der Videospiel-Kultur sowie deren Aufbau darzustellen. Bourdieus Kapital-Theorie bietet durch eine Dekontextualisierung die Möglichkeit gesellschaftliche Stellungen unterschiedlicher Akteure innerhalb von Videospiel-Gesellschaften zu verdeutlichen. Soziale Interaktionen werden sowohl durch die Programmierung der Entwickler als auch der ausgehandelten Regeln der Spieler determiniert. Bei langfristigen sozialen Beziehungen vermischen sich die Kapitalsorten des Avatars mit dem realen Pendant des Akteurs. Die virtuellen Welten bieten den Akteuren die Möglichkeit ihr soziales Netzwerk online zu erweitern und diverse soziale Riten aus der Realität in der virtuellen Wirklichkeit zu rekonstruieren. / The working paper is about social interaction in the virtual world of video games. A participant observation, in combination with a qualitative content analysis, gives the opportunities to describe various phenomena within the video game culture and its structure. Through a decontextualization, Bourdieu’s capital theory offers the possibility to clarify the social position of different actors within video game societies. The social interactions are determined both by the developer and the players negotiated rules. In long-term social relationships the avatar’s types of capital mix with the actor’s real equivalent. The virtual worlds offer actors the opportunity to expand their social network online and to reconstruct various social rituals from reality to the video game.

This thesis is concerned with the user experience of crowds, incorporating issues of comfort, satisfaction, safety and performance within a given crowd situation. Factors that influence the organisation and monitoring of crowd events will be considered. A comprehensive review of the literature revealed that crowd safety, pedestrian flow modeling, public order policing and hooliganism prevention, has received the greatest attention with previous research on crowds. Whereas crowd performance, comfort and satisfaction has received less attention, particularly within spectator events (sporting and music for example). Original research undertaken for this doctoral thesis involved a series of studies: user focus groups, stakeholder interviews, and observational research within event security and organisation. Following on from these investigations, the findings have been integrated with a tool to assist crowd organisers and deliverers during the planning of crowd events, and accompanying user feedback interviews following use of the tool. The overarching aim of the research within this thesis was to explore the complex issues that contribute to the user experience of being in a crowd, and how this might be improved. The crowd user focus groups revealed differences in factors affecting crowd satisfaction, varying according to age and user expectations. Greater differences existed between crowd users, than across crowd situations, highlighting the importance of identifying expected crowd members when planning individual events. Additionally, venue design, organisation, safety and security concerns were found to highly affect crowd satisfaction, irrespective of group differences or crowd situations, showing the importance of these issues when considering crowd satisfaction for all crowd events, for any crowd members. Stakeholder interviews examining crowds from another perspective suggested that overall safety was a high priority due to legal obligations, in order to protect venue reputation. Whereas, comfort and satisfaction received less attention within the organisation of crowd events due to budget considerations, and a lack of concern as to the importance of such issues. Moreover, communication and management systems were sometimes inadequate to ensure compliance with internal procedures. In addition a lack of usable guidance was seen to be available to those responsible for organising crowd situations. Eleven themes were summarised from the data, placed in order of frequency of references to the issues: health and safety, public order, communication, physical environment, public relations, crowd movement, event capacity, facilities, satisfaction, comfort, and crowd characteristics. Results were in line with the weighting of the issues within the literature, with health and safety receiving the most attention, and comfort and satisfaction less attention. These results were used to form the basis of observational checklists for event observations across various crowd situations. Event observations took two forms: observing the role of public and private security, and observing crowd events from the user perspective. Observations within public and private security identified seven general themes: communication, anticipating crowd reaction, information, storage, training, role confusion, financial considerations and professionalism. Findings questioned the clarity of the differing roles of public and private security, and understanding of these differences. Also the increasing use of private over public security within crowd event security, and the differing levels of training and experience within public and private security were identified. Event observations identified fifteen common themes drawn from the data analysis: communication, public order, comfort, facilities, queuing systems, transportation, crowd movement, design, satisfaction, health and safety, public relations, event capacity, time constraints, encumbrances, and cultural differences. Key issues included the layout of the event venue together with the movement and monitoring of crowd users, as well as the availability of facilities in order to reduce competition between crowd users, together with possible links to maintaining public order and reducing anti-social behaviour during crowd events. Findings from the focus groups, interviews, and observations were then combined (to enhance the robustness of the findings), and developed into the Crowd Satisfaction Assessment Tool (CSAT) prototype, a practical tool for event organisers to use during the planning of crowd events. In order to assess proof of concept of the CSAT, potential users (event organisers) were recruited to use the CSAT during the planning of an event they were involved in organising. Semi-structured feedback interviews were then undertaken, to gain insight into the content, usefulness, and usability of the CSAT. Separately human factors researchers were recruited to review the CSAT, providing feedback on the layout and usability of the tool. Feedback interviews suggested the CSAT was a useful concept, aiding communication, and providing organisers with a systematic and methodical structure for planning ahead, prioritising ideas, and highlighting areas of concern. The CSAT was described as being clear and easy to follow, with clear aims, and clear instructions for completion, and was felt to aid communication between the various stakeholders involved in the organisation and management of an event, allowing information to be recorded, stored and shared between stakeholders, with the aim of preventing the loss of crucial information. The thesis concludes with a summary model of the factors that influence crowd satisfaction within crowd events of various descriptions. Key elements of this are the anticipation, facilities, and planning considered before an event, influences and monitoring during an event and reflection after an event. The relevance and impact of this research is to assist the planning of crowd events, with the overall aim of improving participant satisfaction during crowd events. From a business perspective the issue is important with competition between events, the desire to encourage return to events, and to increase profit for organisers. From an ergonomics perspective, there is the imperative of improving the performance of crowd organisers and the experience of crowd users.

Die vorliegende Studie untersucht, inwiefern plattformvermittelte Dienstleistungsarbeit in den Bereichen der Personenbeförderung und Essenszustellung in Deutschland und Brasilien prekäre Desintegrationspotenziale aufweist. Die Untersuchung basiert auf wissenschaftlichen Artikeln, Kapiteln aus Sammelbänden, Zeitungsartikeln und öffentlich zugänglichen Statistiken. Die Studie zeigt, dass der Arbeitsinhalt unterschiedliche Gesundheitsrisiken und -gefährdungen für Plattformarbeiter:innen aufweist. Weder in Deutschland noch in Brasilien sind Tätigkeiten in Bereichen plattformvermittelter Personenbeförderung und Essenszustellung finanziell tragfähig. Während in Deutschland Gig-Work eher geringfügig ausgeübt wird, stellt diese Form der Arbeit für viele Gig-Worker:innen in Brasilien die Haupteinnahmequelle dar. Zudem gehen die prekären Arbeitsbedingungen in beiden Ländern mit einer unsicheren Rechtslage einher. Daher sind die Unternehmen oft frei in der Entscheidung hinsichtlich des Geschäfts- und Beschäftigungsmodells. Gleichzeitig wehren sie sich in beiden Ländern weitgehend gegen verbriefte Arbeitnehmer:innenrechte. / This study examines the extent to which platform-mediated service work in the fields of ride hailing and meal delivery in Germany and Brazil contains potentials of precarious disintegration. The study is based on scientific articles, chapters from various edited books, newspaper articles, and publicly available statistics. The study shows that work content presents different health risks and threats for platform workers. Neither in Germany nor in Brazil, activities in platform-mediated ride hailing and meal delivery are financially viable. While in Germany gig work tends to be performed on a marginal basis, for many gig workers in Brazil this form of work is their main source of income. Furthermore, the precarious working conditions in both countries are overshadowed by an uncertain legal situation. Therefore, companies are often free to decide on their business model and the employment relationship. At the same time, in both countries platforms largely resist guaranteed employee rights.