To complement the advancements made in technology for F1 and to support the profit-making model, fan culture is a substantial component of F1. With broadcasting revenues accounting for up to 35% of the annual revenue collected by F1, increasing the audience of this motorsport becomes crucial to its survival (Bond, Ahmed & Allen, 2016). In […]
A global circuit of Formula One
I remember the first time I watched an F1 race on TV. It was a hot humid Sunday evening in 2008 and we were sat on the cool floor. As a young 8-year old, I just stared blankly at the TV screen, intrigued by the awe-inspiring engine sounds, but more intrigued by the excitement of […]
Media in Sporting Events: Beyond TV Dinners
In this age of digital media proliferation and fuelled by the restrictions put in place in 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic, sporting event organisers, their marketing companies, and athletes have redirected and focused their resources at developing their brands. Using a wide range of advertising tactics to penetrate the market of eager eyes, sporting events […]
Winter Games Special II: Athletes and Particulate Matter(s)
Looking Back In the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, air pollution control strategies employed aimed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from traffic and even shut down surrounding industries (cement, concrete and lime plants) in order to contain the potential impending public health crisis from poor air quality (De La Cruz, Calderon, França, Réquia & Gioda, 2019). […]
Winter Games Special I: Real or Fake Snow?
Last weekend, I was at my grandparent’s place and the Winter Olympics held in Beijing was playing on the TV. With their Samsung UHD Curved Smart TV, I could see all the details of the landscape of the places in which the games were being held. Looking at the slopes in Yanqing, I thought something […]
Hello darkness, my old friend
“Hello darkness, my old friend.” Lyrics from an old 1964 song by Simon and Garfunkel called “The Sound of Silence” has gained traction in the past decade after featuring in a Netflix series. While used largely to circulate memes, I find that there is some humorous and meaningful value to this in relation to tackling […]
Reducing the Clutter and the Unnecessary
In light of the pervasiveness of Artificial Light at Night (ALAN) (Gaston et al., 2021) as highlighted in the previous blog post, greater attention must be paid to the extensive effects of ALAN, especially vertically emitted light that scatters into the skies above large urban cities. The recent proliferation of Light-Emitting Diodes (LEDs) brings about […]
Our bodies, the environment, and light
What’s sinister about digital billboards and the bright lights of the city? The dizzy feeling of immersing yourself in the hustle and bustle of an exciting city? Health Implications Defined as “unwanted or excessive artificial light” (Svechkina, Portnov & Trop, 2020: 2), light pollution has been studied heavily since the early 2000s where the negative […]
Growing pains of Capitalism
The Bright Lights When we think of bright lights and the big city, we think of Times Square, New York. Pre-Covid times, Times Square received close to 400,000 visitors daily. When visitors look up, they see brightly lit billboards and signs covering the sides of massive skyscrapers. Yet, in other parts of the United States […]
The Loss of Agency in a Post-Advertising Age
When was the last time you watched an advertisement while scrolling mindlessly on YouTube? Not just one ad, but maybe two or more. In the end of 2020, YouTube established a new policy that allowed advertisements to play on channels that were not partnered on their Partner Program. This meant that the likelihood of a viewer […]