Crossroads in Cultural Studies Conference 14-17th December 2016 Program Index

owners, users and Internet service providers. Through mapping various academic understandings and
analyzing the failure of direct and indirect initiatives of regulation, this thesis demonstrates the rationales of
reforming current copyright law, which suggests that existing copyright law should not be entirely applied to
cyberspace; at last, it elaborates potential ways of reforming current copyright legislations and suggests
practical ways of Internet governance in relation to piracy. Meanwhile, the Internet is a place which
subversively blurs the boundaries between production and consumption. The tensions between copyright
owners and Internet users could be seen as the conflicts between dominant mainstream cultures and
emerging subcultures. In this sense, this thesis also could be taken as an example of how Internet
governance and cultural studies intersect.
Donna Wong
Digital Sport Piracy – Who are the pirates and what do they need?
The outlook of sport pirates are often aggregated and subsumed under a generic typology of digital pirates
in surveys and studies. The underlying message suggests that individual behaviours and needs are
presumably the same for all digital pirates engaging in diverse infringing activities such as music, movies and
software. Consequently, digital sport pirates are poorly understood which possibly explains the inadequacy
in offerings and measures addressing the problem. This research aims to establish an understanding of
individual piracy behaviour and ascertain motives underlying the need for digital sport piracy. Current
discourse has focused predominantly on industrial views of and measures to stop sport piracy. There is
limited research that provides a picture of the piracy phenomenon from the other side of the spectrum. This
research seeks to fill in a knowledge gap through examining the phenomenon objectively from the key party
involved – consumers of such products (i.e. pirates).
2N
Assembling publics and public images (Chair, Kate Miltner)
Martha Evans How Political Prisoner 46664 Became Nelson Mandela: An Examination of the Anti-Apartheid
Movement’s Role in Creating a World Icon
Anthony Sampson notes that after Nelson Mandela’s imprisonment in 1964, he virtually vanished from
overseas reporting during the 1960s and for much of the 1970s. Yet, in 1990, the live televising of his release
from prison attracted vast global audiences, symbolising the fall of apartheid. How did this forgotten
prisoner become synonymous with the struggle for freedom? This paper chronicles the African National
Congress (ANC) and Anti-Apartheid Movement’s (AAM’s) strategic use of the Mandela figure (and family) in
mounting a worldwide protest against apartheid. This paper looks at the international and local media’s
reactions to popular campaigns and cultural events (such as the 1988 Wembley birthday tribute concert).
The paper argues that the strategic alliance between key activists, the ANC, the AAM and a variety of cultural
collaborators played a pivotal role in hastening the demise of apartheid simultaneously raising the profile of
one of the world’s most-loved global icons.
Ben Little
The Assemblage of Russel Brand’s Celebrity Activism
Comedian Russell Brand’s movement from the entertainment field to political activism has been well
documented. His output incorporates a vast amount of material across film, print, digital and live
performance. Making sense of this transition requires modification to Bourdieu’s field theory (1984). Thus,
starting from Olivier Driessen’s elaboration of the idea of the “celebrity apparatus” (2013), this paper will
argue that to understand Brand’s impact in the political arena, we must do more than measure his success in
terms of the “market populism” (Frank 2000) of the celebrity field. Instead, to study Brand’s political
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