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Purpose: This chapter examines how two basic rights, freedom of expression, and the right to equality based on one’s dignity, reputation, and honor, were balanced in a case involving a stand-up comedian and an adolescent suffering from Treacher Collins syndrome. Methodology/Approach: The case is contrasted with Jürgen Habermas’ concept of the public sphere and with the intrinsic and utilitarian values that Canadian courts have attributed to free speech. Findings: Because the case was dealt with first in a human rights tribunal and then by a court of appeal, a number of considerations were overlooked in court proceedings: how laughter occurs; the broadening of Ward’s audience and its consequences; and Ward’s publicity strategy. These aspects are explored here to give a more complete picture of the case beyond the court decisions. Originality/Value: In Canada, freedom of expression is usually dealt with ordinary courts. A whole new avenue for dealing with this right is human rights bodies and tribunals. Contesting free speech in the name of defamation is being replaced by rights entrenched in human rights charters, such as the right to equality based on the preservation of one’s dignity, reputation, and honor.

Using a novel measure incorporating stylistic and acoustic data on recorded music from 1967 to 2017, we search for trends in the evolution of musical diversity in 125,340 albums. We find that temporal patterns of diversity differ for stylistic and acoustic data. We also find that the patterns differ dramatically by genre. Some genres, such as blues, jazz, and pop-rock, decrease in diversity over time; most other genres increase in diversity. The causes of these different trends present a puzzle for future research. We also find different patterns for recordings that made the Billboard 200 charts compared to all recordings, suggesting an association between selection processes driven by consumer popularity and diversity. Moreover, associations of diversity and industry structure found in prior research do not hold when we analyze data beyond the smaller sample of the more popular recordings found in Billboard. These findings have implications for many prior studies based exclusively on best-selling recordings

Purpose – This chapter examines medical consumerism and the changing relations between patients as consumers and the medical system across two women's health contexts, breast cancer and infertility.

Methodology/approach – The analysis draws on two qualitative studies: The first explores the experiences of 60 breast cancer survivors through in-depth interviews and participant observation (Sulik, 2005), and the second uses in-depth interviews to analyze 18 women's experiences with infertility (Eich-Krohm, 2000).

Findings – The medical consumer is an individualized role that shifts attention away from the quality problem in health care and toward the quality of the person as a medical consumer who is characterized to be optimistic, proactive, rational, responsible, and informed.

Research limitations/implications – As medicine has become a form of mass consumption, the category of medical consumer has elevated the individual in medical decision-making. The shift from patient to medical consumer is an ongoing process that is grounded in a tension between medical control and individual agency, and is exacerbated by the intensity and incomprehensibility of modern medicine.

Practical implications – The proliferation of medical information and personal illness narratives through the Internet, advice books, and self-help groups have advanced lay knowledge about preventive medicine and medical treatment while simultaneously introducing new fears and anxiety about the multitude of options and outcomes.

Originality/value of chapter – This study contributes to our knowledge on medical consumerism and its impact on illness experience and the synthesis of lay and professional knowledge.

Purpose – To explore the nature of metaphorical thinking in marketing and consumer research, with particular emphasis on consumers’ metaphor-manufacturing proclivities.

Methods/approach – The chapter concentrates on one of the most compelling and powerful metaphors of the 20th century, the sinking of the RMS Titanic in April 1912. It uses introspective methods to interrogate consumers’ figurative interpretations of the iconic catastrophe.

Findings – Four categories of consumer metaphor-making are identified: negative, positive, reflexive and visual.

Research implications – The profusion of Titanic tropes suggests that researchers should resist unearthing ‘deep’ metaphors and focus instead on ‘wide’ metaphors, those that spread across the surface of society and culture.

Practical implications – ZMET, the widely used metaphorical elicitation procedure, warrants a complement called TMET. This Titanic Metaphor Elaboration Tendency is better attuned to contemporary branding thinking than its more familiar predecessor.

This paper presents a theoretical definition of protest that overcomes the bifurcation of politics and culture in mainstream social movement research. The model is grounded in a study of drag performances, which have a long history in same-sex communities as vehicles for expressing gay identity, creating and maintaining solidarity, and staging political resistance. Extending Tilly’s concept of repertoires of contention, we propose the term “tactical repertoires” to refer to protest episodes, and we identify three elements of all tactical repertoires: contestation, intentionality, and collective identity. We combine social constructionist perspectives on gender and sexuality, the social movement literature, and writings in performance studies to understand how drag performances function as tactical repertoires of the gay and lesbian movement. We argue that because they are entertaining, drag shows illuminate gay life for mainstream audiences and provide a space for the construction of collective identities that confront and rework gender and sexual boundaries.

We explore how marketers can manage brand meaning through the use of celebrity endorsements. We theorize that consumers look to celebrity endorsements for brand symbolism, which they appropriate to construct and communicate their self-concepts by forming self-brand connections (SBC).

This research employs an experimental paradigm, with two empirical studies examining whether marketers can create meaning for their brands through the use of celebrity endorsements.

Study 1 finds that celebrity endorsement enhances SBC when consumers aspire to be like the celebrity, but harms them when consumers do not; furthermore, this effect is more pronounced when the brand image is congruent with the celebrity’s image. The effect is further moderated by the degree to which a brand communicates something about the user, with more symbolic brands having stronger effects than less symbolic brands. Study 2 finds that the effect of celebrity endorsement on SBC is augmented when consumers’ self-esteem is threatened. Consumers self-enhance by building connections to celebrities with favorable images or distancing themselves from those with unfavorable images.

These findings can help marketers’ decisions regarding when and whom to use as a celebrity endorsers by taking into account how consumers use meaning appropriated from celebrities when constructing the self.