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The current study examines the effectiveness of brand integrations in music videos by taking into account the impact of both brand placement characteristics (i.e., brand prominence, valence of artist–brand relationship) and audience characteristics (i.e., artist connectedness).

A 2 (prominence: prominent vs. subtle) by 2 (valence: positive vs. negative) by 2 (connectedness: high vs. low) between-subjects experimental design is used. Each respondent first watched one music video via YouTube in which one branded product was placed either prominently or subtly. To manipulate the valence of the artist–brand relationship respondents were instructed to read a magazine article that revealed either a positive or negative attitude of the artist toward the placed brand. Two hundred twenty young adults participated in this study.

This study shows that prominent placements appear to be beneficial for the attitude toward the integrated brand when an individual is strongly connected to the artist in the music video, while subtle placements are beneficial both when an individual is weakly or strongly connected to the artist. Further, negative celebrity-brand relationships do not seem to affect brand attitudes in a negative way.

Embedding the brand in a music video gives marketers and advertisers the chance to reach consumers in a new, creative way. But this study shows that the advertiser should pay attention to the way in which the brand is integrated. Further, negative celebrity information does not seem to affect brand attitudes in a negative way. This makes the music video a very interesting medium for advertisers.

The current study contributes to previous research on brand placement by investigating the effectiveness of brand placements in music videos and the role of artist connectedness. In addition, the study is original as it includes valence in the model.

Purpose/approach: This introduction provides an overview of the themes and chapters of this volume.

Research implications: The chapters in this volume present original research employing empirical and textual methods illustrating the complex responses and policy challenges posed by contemporary understandings and misunderstandings of the nature of gender. Various forms of gender panic and responses to it within individuals, institutions, national states, and the world society are explored.

Practical and social implications: Research demonstrates that gender panic can lead to potentially harmful reactions and fruitless policies that reinforce rather than dismantle the gender binary, thereby, impacting vulnerable members of societies.

Value of the chapter: The chapter and the volume are intended to illustrate the nature of current gender panics and related policies and to encourage further scholarship with the goal of promoting greater understanding as well as developing constructive solutions to issues raised.

Purpose: This chapter examines the resurgence of femininity among Euro-American women who do so under the guidance of a dating coach for success in heteronormative relationships. I set this analysis against Sheryl Sandberg’s concept of “leaning in” at the workplace and older strains of feminist theory in order to analyze, contextualize, and situate the dating group’s engagement with and resistance to feminist theory.

Methodology/Approach: My argument comes from a narrative and content analysis of the dating coach’s blog, public access forum, and data from following the group’s Facebook members-only group from January 2016 to January 2017.

Findings: Katarina Phang’s dating group both rejects and engages with feminist theory. It is very similar to the neoliberal vision of female embodiment in three key ways. The group’s techniques also reference older variants of feminist theory, specifically Virginia Woolf’s and second wave feminist proponents of “consciousness-raising.”

Research Implications: In a “postfeminist” period, researchers have reported a contradiction of a conception of feminism co-existing with a desire for a traditional heteronormative relationship. Phang’s dating philosophy fills and outlines this space neatly.

Social Implications: The cultural resurgence of femininity re-inscribes the gender binary and re-invokes polarized conceptions of gender within heteronormative relationships as well as re-invokes older variants of feminist theory.

Originality/Value: No such study of this dating group has been conducted, nor attention to the resurgence of femininity among Euro-American women with desire as the prime motivator.

Research suggests that centers of calculation, empowered by accounting inscriptions, are similar to maps: they provide a useful, albeit simplified, version of reality. The purposes of this paper are to examine whether and how digital platforms change the nature of centers of calculation, and to improve the understanding of the relationship between digital platforms and accounting.

An in-depth, single case-study design is used to empirically investigate how a Nordic hotel chain competed with global online travel agencies (OTAs) in the quest for the “new oil”—customer data.

The paper demonstrates how the case organization created a local alternative to global digital platforms with the aim of acquiring customer data, thereby moving from a center of calculation (CoC) to what authors label a “center of data appropriation” (CDA). While CoCs are guided by accounting inscriptions that enable “mapping”, CDAs are constructed around accounting inscriptions with other properties that enable digital “mirrors” of the economic domain. The authors find that this has two governing effects. First, multiple centers emerge that compete for access to the periphery. Second, future forms of competition can follow dynamic trajectories, where mutual dependence between CDAs may lead to coopetition.

Scholars have suggested that surveillance capitalism creates market-power imbalances. This study indicates that the transformation of local organizations into CDAs enables them to challenge global digital-platform organizations. Therefore, authors argue that local organizations may retain some market power by establishing local CDAs.

On October 21, 1989, the Berlin wall fell, announcing the collapse of the Soviet empire and the demise of 20th century socialism. In a much celebrated article published the same year, a senior official of the U.S. Department of State, Francis Fukuyama, announced the “end of history,” celebrating “the unabashed victory of economic and political liberalism and the universalisation of Western democracy as the final form of human government.”¹ Indeed, the Cold War is over and we can all rest in peace. Capitalism has prevailed and we can now use interchangeably such words as market economy, freedom and democracy.