“Be Soft”: Irony, Postfeminism, and Masculine Positions in Swedish Sport Betting Commercials

Gambling advertising usually draws heavily on gendered stereotypes, including portrayals of male gamblers as tough and successful. Meanwhile, representations of men in advertising have grown increasingly diverse, with emotional and sexualized men accompanying heroic, muscular portrayals. In this article, both these bodies of research are drawn upon to discuss a series of Swedish sports betting commercials which encourage the viewer to “bet hard” while also “being soft.” The celebration of “softness” is ambiguous but can be seen as referencing gendered, political discussions about men and masculinity. Engaging with hybrid masculinities theory, postfeminism, and discourses about gambling and betting, the article demonstrates that meanings around “softness” are ambiguous, ironic, and serve to normalize gambling by distancing it from discourses about addiction. The commercials represent a shift in gambling advertising, but the linking of men’s politics to gambling also represents a new complexity in narratives about “new,” or “soft,” men.

A Framework for Identifying Sequences of Interactions That Cause Usability Problems in Collaborative Systems

Collaborative systems support shared spaces, where groups of users exchange interactions. In order to ensure the usability of these systems, an intuitive interactions’ organization and that each user has awareness information to know the activity of others are necessary. Usability laboratories allow evaluators to verify these requirements. However, laboratory usability evaluations can be problematic for reproducing mobile and ubiquitous contexts, as they restrict the place and time in which the user interacts with the system. This paper presents a framework for building software support that it collects human–machine interactions in mobile and ubiquitous contexts and outputs an assessment of the system’s usability. This framework is constructed through learning that is based on neural networks, identifying sequences of interactions related to usability problems when users carry out collaborative activities. The paper includes a case study that puts the framework into action during the development process of a smartphone application that supports collaborative sport betting.

Who Bets on Sports? Characteristics of Sports Bettors and the Consequences of Expanding Sports Betting Opportunities

Currently, several proposed changes in sports betting laws are being debated in the United States and the European Union. This article examines the characteristics of sports bettors in three countries, Canada, Spain, and the United Kingdom, to determine who bets on sports in environments where this activity is both legal and popular. Unconditional and conditional analyses find that annual participation rates in sport betting are low, and that sport bettors tend to be young males with relatively high incomes. Sports bettors stand to gain the most from an expansion of legal sports betting opportunities, while the negative impacts of increased access to sports betting are expected to be minimal in the United States and difficult to assess in the European Union.

The Prevalence of E-Gambling and of Problem E-Gambling in Poland

This study estimated the levels of involvement in e-gambling and problem e-gambling in Poland and identified selected sociodemographic variables associated with e-gambling activities. The study was conducted using a representative sample of the adult inhabitants of Poland (n = 2000). The survey contained questions measuring three aspects of gambling (involvement in e-gambling, types of e-gambling activity, and problematic e-gambling). Results suggested that 4.1% of respondents were involved in e-gambling and 26.8% of them could be classified as problem gamblers. The most popular e-gambling games were lotteries and sports betting. Gender, age, size of city of residence, level of education, and income were identified as significant predictors of involvement in e-gambling. The results indicated that men, younger people, and people who earnt less were more often involved in e-gambling. Having children, playing online scratch cards, and online sport betting—but not online lotteries—turned out to be typical for problem online gamblers. The prevalence of problem gambling among Polish e-gamblers suggests that extended research in this area is needed.