In this study, I use social constructionist feminist and queer theory and narrative analysis to identify messages about gender, sexuality, and sexual violence in both the book versions and film adaptations of The Hunger Games trilogy, the Divergent trilogy, and the Vampire Academy series. These three series are representative of a major pop culture trend in which young adult novels are not only popular and financially successful, but in which these types of novels are being adapted into major films. In this study, I demonstrate that the book and film series all generally privilege whiteness, able-bodiedness, and heterosexuality, and in doing so, these texts reproduce a narrow worldview and privilege normative ways of knowing and being. However, while the films strictly reinforce normative understandings of gender, sexuality, and sexual violence, each book series reimagines gender in important ways, disrupts normative scripts that denigrate women’s ownership over their sexuality, and represents sexual violence in graphic but not exploitative ways that portray the real life consequences and complexity of sexual violence. My analysis of these texts reveals that the book series employ a variety of mechanisms that empower the women protagonists including establishing their narrative agency and representing them as gender fluid, while the film series utilize a variety of mechanisms that both objectify and superficially empower women including an emphasis on women’s sexualized physical bodies especially in times of vulnerability, the pronunciation of “natural” sexual differences, and the strict regulation of women’s bodies by dominantly masculine men. I argue that the significant alteration of the books’ original messages are a product of logistical, historical, cultural, and economic elements of the film industry, which has continually constructed women’s roles in terms of their sexual availability, victimization, and need to be rescued by heroic men. In this study, I address the institutional imperatives of the film industry that dictate specific representations of gender, sexuality, and sexual violence, and I address what these representations might mean for audiences. / Media & Communication

The term telemedicine is broadly defined as the use of information and communication technology to deliver health care at a distance. However, the concept of ‘telemedicine’ still lacks consensus both in the literature and in practice. Generation of telemedicine knowledge and evidence for clinical practice is still controversial within the telemedicine scholarship and among decision-makers as telemedicine objectives remain ill-defined and outcomes vary in time. In Ontario, despite the fast pace of information and communication technology change and the increased interest in its health applications, telemedicine is not a mainstream model of care delivery within the medical system. This study empirically investigates the social construction of telemedicine technologies to understand how telemedicine expectations shaped telemedicine in Ontario (Canada) from 1993 to 2017. Drawing from the Social Construction of Technologies framework (SCOT) and historical narrative analytical techniques, it identifies the shared understandings of what telemedicine is (and is not) and what role telemedicine plays in the health care system. I used grounded theory methodology to develop a narrative theory of how the future of telemedicine in Ontario has been constructed over the last 24 years from national newspaper articles, stakeholder documents, service provider websites, and semi-structured interviews with relevant telemedicine stakeholders. Findings show that the development of telemedicine narratives in Ontario is a multi-storied process of conflicting and overlapping visions and expectations among stakeholders and interests. Telemedicine expectations focus mostly on the process of innovation, the provideroriented approach to telemedicine, and the advantages and risks of adopting consumercontrolled telemedicine in a publicly insured health care system. The telemedicine visions result fragmented among different stakeholders and practices, overall inhibiting telemedicine’s future agenda. These findings intend to help researchers, policy makers, private vendors, and health care providers to create a vision of telemedicine that accommodates competing expectations among the clinical, technical, political, and commercial worlds. / Thesis / Doctor of Science (PhD) / Telemedicine delivers health care at a distance by letting doctors talk to patients or other doctors via video, email, or text messages. However, as simple as this idea is, researchers, physicians, policy-makers, and entrepreneurs have speculative, overlapping, and conflicting views about what it should be. These differing views create ambiguity and often confuse the aims of health policy decision-makers and end-users limiting telemedicine’s development. I intend to clarify telemedicine’s shared and diverging understandings of what telemedicine should be by analyzing how stakeholders in Ontario have told and tell stories about telemedicine’s future over the last three decades. I view stories of the technology’s future as persuasive policy arguments that stakeholders adopt to shape and use telemedicine according to their visions and goals. These findings will help researchers, policy-makers, doctors, and businesspeople understand what telemedicine is (and is not) to help them define policies and guidelines for its adoption and implementation.

This thesis argues that the research problem, which describes a lack of a common understanding of the digital age, and what its major transformations mean for different stakeholders, can be fruitfully interrogated by attending to emergent forms of making sense in the digital theater. The aim of the study was met by raising and responding to the following research questions: How does the digital theater understand and experience digital existence in participatory potentials, and how do creatives in the digital theater bridge participatory intensities, the tensions and sometimes gaps between experienced reality and digital capabilities to expand on their own and their theaters’ participatory potential? The study combined a phenomenological approach, with an ethnographic method and narrative analysis, supported by a theoretical framework of existential media studies with a particular focus on digital existence, in combination with prospects for participation, using cultural participation theories. The original contribution of the study was to apply theoretically sampled dimensions that reflected and expanded on cultural participation theories and existential media studies in a theorizing synthesis, and that revealed three intermingling themes: subverting, intentionality expanded, and presence, i.e., how the respondents navigated, bridged and communicated participatory potentials to subvert participatory contexts to expand and extend on participation, intentionally, and with close attention to contentious considerations in the present moment.

The purpose of this study was to deconstruct how and to what extent white faculty members resisted upholding white supremacy culture (WSC; Okun, 1999) during a critical event (Mertova and Webster, 2019) in their service learning and community-engaged (SLCE) practice. There are many critiques of SLCE practices, especially due to the perpetuation of colonization (Hernandez, 2017), assumptions based in racism and classism (Green, 2003), Whiteness (Applebaum, 2016; Leonardo, 2002) and characteristics of white supremacy culture (Okun, 1999). These topics have received more attention over the past decade, but there is still significantly less research on actions taken by SLCE faculty to actively resist perpetuating them (Mitchell et al., 2012). Guided by critical event narrative inquiry (Mertova and Webster, 2019) and framed by both first- and second-wave Critical Whiteness Studies (Jupp and Badenhorst, 2021), six participants were engaged in two empathetic interviews to answer the following research questions: 1. What impact has the examination of their own Whiteness had on white faculty members' SLCE praxis? 2. How did white faculty members resist upholding Whiteness (Leonardo, 2002) and characteristics of white supremacy culture (Okun, 1999) during critical events in their service learning and community-engaged (SLCE) practice? 3. How do white faculty members continue to resist Whiteness and WSC in their SLCE praxis despite barriers, challenges, and tensions they have faced on their campuses and within their communities in doing so? Critical narrative analysis (Langdridge, 2007) was used to deconstruct the faculty members' experiences during these critical events (Mertova and Webster, 2019) in their SLCE practice. Findings relate to the importance of considering the setting, context, and impact of action taken within specific academic fields as well as the field of service learning and community engagement more broadly. / Doctor of Philosophy / Service Learning and Community Engagement (SLCE) describes the ways in which faculty and students engage with off-campus community organizations for the supposed benefit of all involved. The assumption is that students explore and experience topics they learn about in their classes, faculty members can have more direct impact with their teaching and research, and community partners reap the benefits of this student involvement and faculty engagement. There are many concerns, however, about the presence and perpetuation of colonization (Hernandez, 2017), assumptions based in racism and classism (Green, 2003), Whiteness (Applebaum, 2016; Leonardo, 2002) and characteristics of white supremacy culture (Okun, 1999) through SLCE. These topics have received more attention over the past decade, but there is still significantly less research on actions taken by SLCE faculty to actively resist perpetuating them (Mitchell et al., 2012). The purpose of this study was to explore the ways that white faculty members addressed these topics in their own teaching, research, and service work. Through two interviews each of the six participants shared more about their own identities and the impact these had on their development and experiences. They also provided context about their academic fields, the relationships they have with their community partners, and the ways in which they have taken action to address the topics of Whiteness and the characteristics of white supremacy culture in their SLCE. The findings of this study relate to the importance of considering the setting, context, and impact of action taken within specific academic fields as well as the field of service learning and community engagement more broadly.

<p dir="ltr">When diagnosed with cancer, it is not uncommon for patients to turn to narratives—both fiction and non—looking for comfort or a way to make sense of their situation. When it comes to cancer on screen, we often see a romanticized version of cancer diagnosis: young sick kids falling in love, messages of going on to do amazing things after treatment, or visuals of glamorized sickness. This is not reflective of the dark thoughts that often find homes in the minds of cancer patients. And yet, little media exists to resonate with these darker narratives. Netflix’s The Midnight Club, a horror show catered toward young adults, helps to twist the pre-existing narratives surrounding cancer by utilizing the conventions of the horror genre to explore the darker sides of cancer diagnosis through storytelling. Though often uncomfortable, the show’s ability to discuss thoughts of mortality, pain, and loss in wake of terminal diagnosis is one important of discussion, as is done in this paper.</p>

Yes / This article explores the implications for identity through presenting a detailed analysis of how three British Pakistani women narrated their involvement in higher education. The increased participation of British South Asian women in higher education has been hailed a major success story and is said to have enabled them to forge alternative, more empowering gender identities in comparison to previous generations. Drawing on generative narrative interviews conducted with three young women, we explore the under-researched area of Pakistani Muslim women in higher education. The central plotlines for their stories are respectively higher education as an escape from conforming to the ‘good Muslim woman’; becoming an educated mother; and Muslim women can ‘have it all’. Although the women narrated freedom to choose, their stories were complex. Through analysis of personal ‘I’ and social ‘We’ self-narration, we discuss the different ways in which they drew on agency and fashioned it within social and structural constraints of gender, class and religion. Thus higher education is a context that both enables and constrains negotiations of identity.

This research aims to explore the lived experiences of young British Muslims in higher education at the University of Bradford and the implications this has for the construction of their identities. The increased participation of Muslims in higher education has been hailed a major success story and is said to have enabled the forging of new, alternative, more empowering identities in comparison to previous generations. This thesis provides a new approach in exploring young British Muslims identity by focusing on the dynamics underling identity construction through the use of a pluralistic method to present an array of informants’ accounts of their experiences (Frost et al., 2011). Phase one of the research included qualitative ethnographic observations which were carried out at the University of Bradford City Campus and was chosen in order to capture the use of the various social settings by informants and to understand actions, practices and meanings people gave to issues relevant to the research. Moreover, phase one was used to identify diversity of experience and select participants for phase two, the more focused aspect of the study which involved narrative interviews. A generative narrative interview was conducted with five young Muslims and aimed to understand how students negotiated their identity as Muslims in Britain within the higher educational contexts. The research revealed that rather than Muslims utilising university as a place whereby they are able to forge new identities, as depicted in previous literature, higher education is a context which demands the negotiation of identities that both enabled and constrained.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which started on February 24, 2022, has marked a turning point in Russian-Western relations. While liberal democratic societies’ unanimous condemnation of that invasion was followed by unprecedented sanctions and a rupture of diplomatic and economic relations with Russia, some Western social and political actors supported, to some extent, the Russian rhetoric regarding the invasion of Ukraine. Consequentially, this paper not only reveals that Russian state discourses aimed to justify the invasion, it also identifies the selective dissemination of Russian state discourses by the AfD in Germany. Moreover, it compares the antagonistic discursive dynamics in the authoritarian pseudo-civil sphere and the similar discourses of the radical right in the democratic civil sphere, and examine their reception in Russia and Germany. Drawing on Multilayered Narrative Analysis, which relies on a combination of cultural sociological Civil Sphere Theory (CST) and mnemonic figurations developed in the historical sociology of Bernhard Giesen, this paper first describes the Russian state discourses intended to sacralize the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It then examines to what extent the populist radical right disseminated these in Germany, before analyzing and comparing the symbolic influence of such discourses in the Russian pseudo-civil and German civil spheres.

Underlying institutional forms are normative orders which give meaning to rules, norms, practices and customs. It is only recently that scholars have seriously considered the role of normative orders in institutional dynamics. Two meta-theories of institutionalism offer competing visions of how these normative orders are invoked. The Institutional Logics Perspective calls normative orders “institutional logics” and suggest that they are invoked in a consistent stable fashion. The Pragmatist Institutionalism approach calls normative orders “anchoring concepts” and suggests that they are used in less predictable ways to produce meaning. This study introduces the concept of fidelity to capture the difference between these two approaches and test which approach may offer a more accurate account of how normative orders are invoked in practice. The study uses the case of the USCG response to melting Arctic ice to study this issue by focusing on the two most dominant normative orders of American government. The study relies on interviews conducted with USCG personnel dealing with the agency’s response to melting Artic Ice. The data is then analyzed through a narrative analysis framework. The study finds that normative orders are invoked, in this case, in a manner more closely aligned with Pragmatist Institutionalism. This finding has implications for how administrative judgement is understood especially with respect to public agencies. / Ph. D. / Rules, norms, practices and customs are all types of institutional forms which derive meaning from something called normative orders. Normative orders help individuals make determinations on things such as whether rules are “good”/“bad” or when those rules are appropriate to apply. While these normative orders are understood to be important, they are not yet well understood. Two recent approaches which attempt to better define normative orders offer competing visions. The Institutional Logics Perspective calls normative orders “institutional logics” and suggest that they are invoked in a consistent stable fashion. The Pragmatist Institutionalism approach calls normative orders “anchoring concepts” and suggests that they are used in less predictable ways to produce meaning. This study introduces the concept of fidelity to capture the difference between these two approaches and test which approach may offer a more accurate account of how normative orders are invoked in practice. The study uses the case of the USCG response to melting Arctic ice to study this issue by focusing on the two most dominant normative orders of American government. The study relies on interviews conducted with USCG personnel dealing with the agency’s response to melting Artic Ice. The data is then analyzed through a narrative analysis framework. The study finds that normative orders are invoked, in this case, in a manner more closely aligned with Pragmatist Institutionalism. This finding has implications for how administrative judgement is understood especially with respect to public agencies.

[pt] Esta pesquisa tem como objetivo investigar o Letramento Racial – compreensão crítica das dinâmicas raciais e suas implicações sociais, capacitando indivíduos a reconhecer, questionar e combater o racismo estrutural – e a Pigmentocracia – uma das manifestações racistas que considera a cor da pele um importante fator de estratificação social –, tópicos que emergem nas narrativas de ex-alunos negros de pele clara da graduação da Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio). Nessas narrativas, nos debruçamos sobre como os participantes constroem suas identidades raciais e como tais identidades, na interação social, geram reflexões sobre o desenvolvimento de multiletramentos, em especial o Letramento Racial Crítico e o Letramento de Reexistência, como uma presença contínua na universidade. O referencial teórico desta pesquisa, guiada pela metodologia qualitativa-interpretativista, baseia-se em categorias derivadas da Análise de Narrativa, o que nos permite priorizar uma perspectiva microssocial dos relatos trazidos nas entrevistas semiestruturadas, realizadas com três participantes. As interações que se desenvolvem reforçam e ao mesmo tempo afrouxam arranjos sociais, que se tornam visíveis como resultado da prática narrativa. Assim, as análises nos direcionam para as práticas identitárias de ex-alunos negros de pele clara da PUC-Rio e aos conflitos discursivos em torno do racismo em uma instituição elitista, predominantemente branca, e localizada na Zona Sul do Rio de Janeiro, bem como apresentam a importância dos efeitos do letramento racial no cotidiano profissional desses estudantes. / [en] This research aims to investigate Racial Literacy – a critical understanding of racial dynamics and their social implications, enabling individuals to recognize, question, and combat structural racism – and Pigmentocracy – one of the racist manifestations which considers skin color an important factor of social stratification. These topics emerge in the narratives of light-skinned black undergraduates at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio). In these narratives we focus on how the participants construct their racial identities, the meanings attributed to these, as well as how these develop in social interaction, to reflect on the development of multiliteracies, especially Critical Racial Literacy and Literacy of Re-existence, as a continuous presence at university. The theoretical framework of this research, guided by a qualitative-interpretative methodology, draws on categories stemming from Narrative Analysis. This enables us to prioritize a micro social perspective of the accounts provided in the semi-structured interviews conducted with three participants, paying attention to the social encounters brought to life during storytelling. The interactions which develop as these story worlds unfold at once reinforce and disrupt settled social arrangements which become visible as a result of narrative practice. Hence, the analyses direct us towards the identity practices of these students related to discursive conflicts surrounding racism in a largely white elitist institution situated in Rio de Janeiro s South Zone: PUC-Rio; as well as they present the importance of the effects of racial literacy in the professional daily lives of these students.