This thesis examines television news anchor credibility - cultivation . The establishment of trust is examined through its relationship to station identity and audience construction. Open-focused interviews with news anchors, news directors, producers and make-up artists in a major Canadian television market were conducted. I maintain that anchors' actions and looks can personify distinction and credibility when they reflect viewers' tastes and sensibilities . Perceptions of anchor trustworthiness are the key t o viewer loyalty decisions and station identity . I contend that credibility cultivation requires anchors' entry into a complex system of expressive control which is exercised through constraint and expectation. Institutional needs for trust and an audience, the constraints imposed by the medium, entertainment format and news genre, all contribute to the expressive standards which must be adhered to. The image demands are intensified when viewer reflexivity , continuity and trust needs are incorporated into an already rigid performance regimen. There is room, however, for anchors' authentic expressions which are integral to the construction of trust and necessary reflections of both station and viewer uniqueness. Findings suggest that anchors who cultivate the appearance of their own accessibility are likely to be trusted because they seem familiar , on some level , to typical citizens tuning in . I argue that while this image is currently in vogue, it is unlikely to be a permanent mode of trustworthy expression. Dominant styles and viewer loyalty patterns appear to undergo evolutionary transformations. Distrust of the friendly facade could arise from any number of unforseen cultural changes and through changing expectations that are prompted by anchors who continually negotiate the trustworthiness of their image with the audience. / Arts, Faculty of / Anthropology, Department of / Graduate

The purpose of this thesis is to identify and quantify the information clues found in the document representations in the World Wide Web environment. This study uses three topics to find document representations: custom publishing, distance education, and tactile graphics. Four Web search engines are used: AltaVista, InfoSeek Ultra, Lycos, and Open Text Index. The findings of the random sample show that the search engines produce little duplication in their display of the results. Just over half of the cases reveal information clues about the document's authorship, origin, format or subject. The summary field shows the highest number of information clues. The title and Uniform Resource Locator fields do not contain many information clues. Few of the fields contain clues about the authorship of the documents. Topical relevance is questionable in many of the cases. The study recommends further research on the comparison of search engines, on the study of searches on the Web for commercial, academic and personal topics, and on information seeking behaviors relating to Web searching. Recommendations are made for Web training and Web page design to assist users in finding relevant information more quickly. / Arts, Faculty of / Library, Archival and Information Studies (SLAIS), School of / Graduate

In recent years, much critical attention has focused on the impact of the serial killer figure on such established literary genres as detective and gothic fiction. The present study reverses this mode of inquiry by looking at the effect of modernist and postmodernist narrative in shaping the cultural construction of archetypal serial murderer Jack the Ripper. Texts discussed include The Whitechapel Murders Papers (1889), Adelaide Belloc-Lowndes' The Lodger (1913), Iain Sinclair's White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings (1987) and Charles Palliser's Betrayals (1994). Of specific concern is the way in which the aesthetic co-option of serial murder has continually worked to obscure and depoliticize its gendered nature. The study closes by suggesting ways in which the wrongs of the Ripper might be re-written in order to produce a less misogynist and exotic conception of multiple murder. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

This research explores the group interaction of three adult English as an Additional Language (EAL) university students in the context of the computer. The group met five times over a period of five weeks to collaborate for two hours on creative writing tasks at the computer. The five activities were linked to the theme of Identity and included a short story, a poem, a letter, a television commercial and a written dialogue. Through a qualitative case study approach, the research sought to meld the learners' perceptions of the interactive process with that of the researcher. The study describes the themes and patterns which emerge from the collaborative sessions and also examines the role that process plays in the outcome of the product. To document the process I kept a journal, took notes during the sessions and conducted both group and individual discussion/interviews. Each session was both audio and video taped. The findings of the study suggest that the interaction surrounding the computer is a complex phenomenon influenced by factors such as, group dynamics and task type, as well as individual factors. The study showed that the computer facilitated group oral corrections to grammar, vocabulary, spelling and punctuation, but that the talk which surrounded the computer tended to be less fluid and less complex from that of conversational interaction. The computer also prompted alternate means of communication in terms of body language and "talk through the screen". Implications from the findings suggest that the communication which surrounds group interaction on the computer is indeed different then that of group written and oral interaction. The advent of the computer has created a whole new sea of interchange, one which requires further inquiry. / Education, Faculty of / Language and Literacy Education (LLED), Department of / Graduate

The Greater Vancouver Region is in an era of growth, fundamental change, and reexamination of regional and local quality of life. Within this context, the complete community policies of the Livable Region Strategic Plan have been developed to help achieve a region where human community flourishes within the built and natural environment. At the same time as these policies respond to change, they also demand significant alterations to community and regional priorities and practices. Accepting and pursuing complete community objectives of compactness, diversity and choice in existing suburban communities represents particular challenges. While regional policy reflects a general appreciation of this fact, understanding these challenges from a local perspective is essential to successfully weaving complete community goals into the existing regional fabric, and is the problem addressed by this thesis. Through both a literature review and case study approach, the research sought to identify the factors which support and constrain progress towards more complete communities through local planning in established neighbourhoods. The thesis focuses on the case study of the Lynn Valley community planning process in order to explore how the local perspective might modify inherently regional complete community goals and expectations. The study concludes that achieving a balance between regional goals and local interests is most critical in the Greater Vancouver metropolitan setting. The Lynn Valley case suggests that factors affecting community planning outlined in the literature are realistic and valid in practice. It further suggests that the prospects for achieving complete communities in established neighbourhoods will be influenced by local perspectives on: growth, change, aging in place, and a spirit of fairness in accepting change among local communities. The complete community vision resonates at the local level. Complete community objectives and strategies may be accepted locally to the degree they are seen as a means to achieve community aspirations and improve the quality of life of residents over their life cycle. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

Through the delivery of a building code education module over the internet, the effectiveness of on-line education in a work environment was examined. Building officials served as the expert facilitators and instructors and the students were architects and designers. Guests from an arm of the National Research Council involved in building code issues were also invited to take part. Thirty-nine selected students were placed in two groups (Group I and Group II) controlling for age, work experience, computer skill and knowledge of the building code. Two groups, each with about 20 students were selected to participate in an on-line computer conference. Group I received an on-line curriculum with posttests after each section and Group II received only posttests. Academic achievement comparisons were then made between the two groups. T-tests were used to compare achievement for the two groups of learners, one with an online curriculum and one without an on-line curriculum, but both given the opportunity to conference and answer specific section review or posttest questions. Dependent variables were identified as instructor access, motivation, participation levels, comparisons to the traditional classroom, level and convenience of on-line involvement, virtual classroom overall rating, course rating, instructor rating, interest, ability to synthesize ideas, academic achievement, and group communication. The independent variables were computer attitudes, expectations about the conferencing system, interpersonal sphere of control, terminal access, and curriculum design. Frequencies were compiled and displayed in graph form to portray variables. Comparisons were made using Pearson Correlations. Results indicate that: • the internet can be a valuable tool for student access and knowledge-building exercises, supporting the hypothesis that students who experience group or collaborative learning in the virtual classroom are more likely to judge the outcomes of an on-line course to be superior to the outcomes of traditional classrooms; • students who depend on their own effort rather than "luck" are more likely to regularly and actively participate on-line; • those with high viewed the on-line experience with some trepidation indicating that they would not prefer to take another on-line course; • the curriculum did not affect gains in building code knowledge between curriculum and non-curriculum groups when exposed to a computer conferencing delivery system; • the interface continues to confound students and leads to frustration that can debilitate the learning experience; and • on-the-job learning is constrained by time and work load demands. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate

The government of the People's Republic of China officially recognizes China as being composed of 56 nationalities . China's 55 minorities only make up 8.8 percent of its total population, while the majority, the Han, compose approximately 91.2 percent (Gladney 1991: 223). This investigation of minorities in China attempts to reveal that the government has adopted special policies for its 55 recognized minorities. The reasons for, and the consequences of minority policy will be addressed, as will the complex relationship that exists between the minorities and the Han majority. Finally, the policies themselves and their utility will be examined in order to ascertain whether the policies have been beneficial and to whom. The methodology used in this investigation consists of participant observation and personal interviews. I travelled to North-East China's Jilin Province, where I conducted ethnographic research. This fieldwork focussed on the Chinese-Korean minority living in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, and is used to put the scholarly literature into perspective. The Korean-Chinese hold a special position, unlike no other nationality in China. Not only are the Korean-Chinese fairly recent immigrants, but their educational levels are believed to be the highest in the nation, considerably higher than national averages (Lee 1986: 3-4, 117). The birthrate of the Korean- Chinese is also highly commended as it is the lowest of any one nationality, including the Han (Gu and Zhao 1994: 19). Thus, although the Korean-Chinese can be used to show the linkages between the literature and fieldwork, one must not forget the special circumstances that they enjoy, which I elaborate upon further in this thesis. Essentially, through examination of the literature and the ethnographic fieldwork I have conducted, several conclusions are put forth in this thesis. First, special policies exist that favour China's 55 minority groups over the Han majority. Second, these policies could have been enacted for several reasons. These include: 1) to allow China to continue along the socialist path; 2) as an attempt to correct past injustices; 3) to increase the overall standard of living of China's citizens; 4) to provide defence against border attack; 5) to reduce minority discontent; 6) to promote a better image of China; 7) to relieve population density problems in urban areas; 8) to allow China to better exploit its natural resources; and 9) to promote national unity, and loyalty and reduce local nationalism and Han chauvinism. Third, these policies benefit both parties, with no one party being totally dependent on the other. Finally, although some authors disagree (Gladney 1991; Mackerras 1994), it will become apparent in this thesis that minority policy in China has been successful for the most part. / Arts, Faculty of / Anthropology, Department of / Graduate

The purpose of this study was to examine twelve Japanese and twelve Western fairy tales to determine how often prosocial and antisocial behaviours appeared, and to find out what specific behaviours were being committed, whether the actions were committed by major or minor characters, what their motives might have been, if there was a difference in the number of prosocial and antisocial behaviours occurring between the historical versions and contemporary versions of the stories, and what possible differences there might be in the perceptions of two Western raters and two Japanese raters who were asked to identify and classify the prosocial and antisocial behaviours. The stories were chosen based on the titles examined in a 1967 study by Lanham and Shimura. The specific editions were selected on the basis of publication date, authenticity of the translation, nationality of the translator, and availability to the researcher. It was found that the Japanese stories contained a slightly higher number of prosocial than antisocial behaviours. The Western stories contained nearly twice as many antisocial behaviours as prosocial behaviours. In looking at the stories, all but two Japanese stories contained either more prosocial behaviours or an approximately equal number of prosocial and antisocial behaviours. In contrast, the majority of the Western stories contained a greater number of antisocial behaviours. Japanese story characters in four stories repented their "bad ways", and the "bad" characters in three Japanese stories and seven Western stories are punished with either a beating, blindness, and torture/death. In the selected Japanese stories, major characters committed most of the prosocial (78 percent) and antisocial behaviours (84 percent). In the Western stories, major characters committed most of the antisocial behaviours (88 percent), and just over half of the prosocial behaviours (59 percent). Although the researcher identified 33 percent of all the identified behaviours as having no specified or implied motive, the raters consistently assigned a motive, based on a subjective interpretation of both the action and the definition of the motives. There was a slight increase in the number of prosocial acts in the contemporary versions of Western stories, although the number of antisocial acts in the Western stories was still greater than the number of prosocial acts. There was only one significant cultural difference found between the Japanese raters and the Western raters, which had to do with the concept of admitting defeat. The researcher explores how prosocial and antisocial behaviours are learned in young children and argues that antisocial messages in children's literature do have an impact on children and their behaviour, and it is the responsibility of parents, teachers and publishers to be aware of the messages in children's literature and to provide guidance in order to help children to become prosocial adults. / Education, Faculty of / Language and Literacy Education (LLED), Department of / Graduate

The study area of the SNORCLE Lithoprobe transect comprises the northern Canadian Cordillera and the northwestern Canadian shield. An array of five portable broadband seismographs has been deployed along the trend of the transect, to complement five permanent stations of the Canadian National Seismic Network and seven Alaskan short-period instruments. The objective of the experiment is to examine the physical state of the upper mantle along the transect. P-wave travel-time residuals up to 2 seconds have been measured, and analyzed using a non-linear tomographic technique, thereby recovering velocity structure between 100 and 600 km depth for the western portion of the transect. Two significant P-wave mantle velocity anomalies have been located. The first, a relatively shallow high-velocity feature located at the western edge of the model, has been interpreted as being the edge of the Pacific slab from the southern Alaska subduction zone. The second is a large, tabular low-velocity anomaly centered at 60°N by 136°W, elongate northwest-southwest, dipping southeast, and reaching a depth of 450-500 km. This low-velocity anomaly is judged to reflect a thermal anomaly of the order of 100°C, with a possible compositional component. Multiple interpretations of the low-velocity feature are considered, the two main hypotheses being a mantle plume or a flow feature related to the proximity of the subducting slab and the opening of the northern Cordilleran slab window. The latter hypothesis is favored, due to the absence of other evidence for a plume in this region. In addition, the upper part of the low-velocity anomaly may reflect the influence of strain heating at lithospheric levels, related to the convergence of the Pacific and North American plates and the uplift of the St. Elias Mountains. / Science, Faculty of / Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, Department of / Graduate

In 1995, the Salmon River Watershed Roundtable (SRWR) became a pilot project for a collaborative process to establish community-developed ecosystem objectives, (part of a larger project to develop goals, objectives and indicators of ecosystem health). This thesis evaluates the collaboration using mostly qualitative methods including document analysis, participant observation, interviews with process participants, and a survey of watershed residents. A comparison of the case study to a 5-stage model of collaboration framed the description of events, revealed parallels between the case study and the model, and placed the case study in the "structuring" stage of collaboration. Through evaluating the process from the participants' viewpoints, several conclusions were drawn. (1) The overall goal of the pilot project was achieved, community developed ecosystem objectives were established. (2) Process strengths included: wide-spread awareness and support for the project within the watershed; a clearly defined convenor role; a well organized and facilitated process which encouraged participation of people present; and the education of local residents about their watershed and their neighbours. (3) Process weaknesses or areas for improvement included: unclear roles of watershed residents and government agencies; poor attendance at community meetings; long and repetitive meetings; mistrust over the use of government funds; and scepticism about the ability of the SRWR to implement the objectives developed. Although the project cost $124,955 in contributed funding, as well as huge commitments of time and energy, most process participants thought the benefits of the process out-weighed those costs. Benefits included: anticipated improvements in ecosystem health; education of, and shared understanding among watershed stakeholders; information for use in other planning processes; and organizational direction for the SRWR. Successul elements of the case study provide a strong basis for continuing the pilot project into its next phases (developing ecosystem indicators and a monitoring program) and for cautiously attempting the process in other watersheds. Further assessments should be conducted in the future to determine the productivity of the process outcomes with respect to long term improvements in ecosystem health. Future efforts to develop ecosystem objectives should pay special attention to the cultural and social appropriateness of process methods, and power, authority and acocuntability within the process. Specific recommendations made for the SRWR regarding roles and responsibilities, communications, process, skill development and future research are also applicable to future projects. Both the federal and provincial governments have roles to play in the future promotion and development of ecosystem objectives in collaboration with local multi-stakeholder groups. / Science, Faculty of / Resources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES), Institute for / Graduate