The increasingly politicized presence of Muslim communities in Britain today is raising issues not only for society in general but for other faith communities as well. Among these the Evangelical constituency, including the members of various Christian diasporas, is struggling to find a coherent response which is true to its Bible-based, activist roots. This thesis discusses the relationship of religion to the theoretical notion of the public sphere. Specifically it hypothesizes an Evangelical micro public sphere as the framework for an empirical exploration of the responses of British Evangelicals to Muslims since the events of 11th September 2001. It describes the formation, composition and discourse of this sphere drawing on data gathered from books, articles, lectures and interviews with key participants. The data reveal a marked tension, indeed a polarization, amongst Evangelicals, with an increasingly sharp disagreement between ‘confrontationalists’ and ‘conciliators’. A detailed analysis of the interaction of this sphere with Muslims, the national media and church leaders follows, leading to a concluding discussion of the future trajectory of the British Evangelical movement. Whilst it is still too early to say whether Evangelicalism will be strengthened or weakened, its encounter with Islam is likely to be an increasingly significant factor in British public life for the foreseeable future.

The dissertation examines how economic matters were depicted between 1770 and 1820 in two European kingdoms. Britain and Sweden are studied during this Age of Revolutions from the state’s perspective; state-managed newspapers are examined, one from Britain, the London Gazette, and two from Sweden, Stockholms Post-Tidningar and Inrikes Tidningar. These were stable types of media that transformed slowly alongside the changing popular press. State-managed newspapers were produced both to inform and manage the loyalty of populations. Aside from the continued development of the centralized state, this was also the time when Enlightenment ideals were spreading, the public sphere was transforming, notions of the nation and nationalism were developing, and communication strategies were changing; these concepts are the basis for the model of the development of modernity used in this study. Economic matters are seen as existing in a value-realm model that gradually disintegrated over time, expressing the birth of the modern world. This model included political, social-cultural, and technological values, in addition to economic matters. This disintegration involved a sense of uniformity. In both Britain and Sweden, economic objects, practices, ideas, and discourses received similar treatments over time. This process was, however, non-linear and not complete by the dawn of industrial transformation.   The first two chapters discuss the theory and methodological approaches. The form, order, and content of the newspapers are analyzed to show how economic matters became separate or unembedded to varying degrees over a fifty-year time span. British and Swedish descriptions are compared, as well as how the other state was portrayed in the opposing newspapers. These observations are described in three empirical chapters, relating events and analyses from 1770 to 1775, 1790 to 1795, and 1815 to 1820. The results of this dissertation show how early modern economic matters can be viewed beyond quantitative contents as an expression of becoming modern, offering complimentary context. Advances in thinking about data generated modern numerical indicators, also reflected by form and order qualities. The unembeddedness of economic matters was an ongoing and non-linear process that was expressed by increased abstractness, separation, and emphasis.

L'espace public (1962) de Jürgen Habermas est souvent lu comme le premier ouvrage de sa carrière. Notre mémoire tâche de porter un éclairage différent sur celui-ci, de lire L'espace public comme point d'aboutissement de la pensée habermassienne des années 1950. Par l'exploration d'un certain nombre d'écrits mineurs et majeurs pré-1962, L'espace public se révèle une sorte de théorie critique de la société, encore fortement empreinte de marxisme, faisant figure de synthèse partielle des écrits de jeunesse. / Jürgen Habermas' The structural transformation of the public sphere (1962) is often read as the first landmark of his career. Our study sets out to shed a different light upon it, to read The structural transformation of the public sphere as the arrival point of Habermas' 1950s thought. While we explore a certain number of minor and major pre-1962 works, his thesis reveals itself as some kind of critical theory of society, still deeply rooted in Marxism, that embodies a partial synthesis of his early works.

New Ways To Express Old Hatred is a sociological account of the consistencies and changes comic racist discourse has experienced over the past forty years in British popular culture, accounting for both content and communicative form in relation to the ethics and aesthetics of humour. The main focal point of the study concerns a case study representative of the communicative changes installed by the digitalisation of media in the cultural public sphere. Sickipedia.org which demonstrates a contemporary, participatory comic community that is simultaneously representative of popular culture. Sickipedia.org circulates explicit comic racist material on a large scale across several formats including its main website, several smart phone applications and a range of social media including Facebook and Twitter. This contemporary emergence of comic racism is discussed in relation to the historical context of wider comic racism in British popular culture, comparatively evaluating the form and content of material from the 'clubland' humour of the 1970s, the anti-racist tradition of 1980s Alternative comedy, the thematically fragmented popular comedy of the 1990s through to prejudicial liquidity evident in more recent comedy. The central argument being asserted is that comic racist discourse has been consistently reproduced for the last forty years. However its communicative form, aesthetic presentation and in some cases its content has undertaken a process of transformation in order for it to be circulated in contemporary popular cultural products unchallenged by both social critics and institutional authorities. Critical humour studies stresses that ridicule-based humorous discourse must be treated critically, especially if that ridicule is directed at groups who are socially marginalised. Comic racism represents the discursive stability of traditional racist discourses that have circulated in society since the Enlightenment, reproducing the ideological perspectives of white supremacy, social exclusion of 'Others' and the perceived, amalgamated biological and cultural inferiority of non-white 'races'. Drawing from content analysis and critical discourse analysis of Sickipedia.org, this study, on a textual level, with reference to theory and history, critically discusses the persistent reproduction of comic racism in the cultural public sphere of the UK, deconstructing the hateful messages embedded in racist jokes and providing an original contribution to critical humour studies.

Despite the attention historians have given to the Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras in Central Europe, few works have sought to understand these events' reverberations throughout the nineteenth century in a local or regional context. Taking the northern German city of Hamburg as its focal point, this study investigates the change in the urban political culture affected by eight years of Napoleonic occupation. In the process of replacing Hamburg's sprawling and archaic government with one characterized by Gallic centralization and rigor, the French introduced a new style of politics that relied on consistent, public, and martial presentations of its authority. This public presence was heightened not only by the implementation of modern policing techniques, but also by a series of choreographed, ideologically-charged public spectacles whose effectiveness relied on a clever manipulation and politicization of urban space.

The topic of the thesis is women's emancipation movement in Žilina introduced on the basis of an example of local department of Slovak Women's Association Živena between 1918 and 1945. To start with, the thesis presents the situational context of the town in question and its surrounding regions as well as the Živena Association. It deals with the composition of the department's members and the ways it influenced the selection of adressees, the public's attitude towards the department and self-perception of members' role in the public sphere. The thesis analyses also the chosen strategies of the department's admission into the town's public space, external and internal reasons for choosing them and their success rate in the case of promoting women's emancipation thoughts among the local public.Considering the chosen time period, the thesis also focuses on the development of the studied topics influenced by political and social changes taking place in the region of current Slovakia in the covered time period.

Orientador: Caroline Kraus Luvizotto / Resumo: A pesquisa proposta pretende refletir sobre o papel do jornalismo em ambientes de conversação informais, com vistas à deliberação na esfera pública midiatizada. Para isso, foram criados dois ambientes de conversação informais, um na cidade de Coimbra, em Portugal, e outro em Ribeirão Preto, no Brasil. Cada ambiente teve como temática um caso de corrupção política e conteúdos jornalísticos foram oferecidos como suporte para a discussão entre os sujeitos. Para o trabalho, utilizamos como aporte teórico as teorias da midiatização de Braga e Stromback e teorias da deliberação e da esfera pública de Habermas, Maia, Avritzer e Marques. A proposta metodológica utilizada consiste na análise de ambientes deliberativos face-a-face proposta por Maia. A discussão foi dividida em duas etapas (antes e depois da inserção dos conteúdos), classificada e comparada. Também é utilizada metodologia de análise de enquadramento para obtenção de detalhamentos sobre os conteúdos jornalísticos oferecidos aos participantes, tendo em vista notar as marcas de influência na discussão sobre os casos. Também foi feita avaliação quantitativa do debate por meio da aplicação de questionários ao início e ao final da discussão, tendo em vista observar variações nos posicionamentos dos sujeitos. Por fim, foi realizada análise comparativa entre os resultados obtidos em solo português e em solo brasileiro, de acordo com metodologia de análise comparativa. Notou-se que houve mudanças de posicionamentos entre os part... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: The proposed research aims to reflect on the role of journalism in informal conversation environments, with a view to deliberation in the mediatized public sphere. For this, two informal conversation environments were created, one in the city of Coimbra, in Portugal, and the other in Ribeirão Preto, Brazil. Each environment had as its theme a case of political corruption and journalistic contents were offered as a support for the discussion between the subjects. For the work, we use as a theoretical contribution the theories of the mediatization of Braga and Stromback; theories of deliberation and the public sphere of Habermas, Maia, Avritzer and Marques. The methodological proposal used is the analysis of face-to-face deliberative environments proposed by Maia. The discussion was divided into two stages (before and after the insertion of the contents), classified and compared. It is also used a framework analysis methodology to obtain details on the journalistic contents offered to the participants, considering notice the marks of influence in the discussion about the cases. A quantitative evaluation of the debate was also carried out through the application of questionnaires at the beginning and at the end of the discussion, in order to observe variations in the subjects' positions. Finally, a comparative analysis was performed between the results obtained in Portuguese soil and in Brazilian soil, according to the methodology of comparative analysis. It was noticed that the... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Mestre

[pt] O presente estudo da Gestão Democrática no âmbito do Conselho Comunitário de Segurança Pública do bairro de Olaria – RJ visa identificar de modo geral, como se dá a interação entre os segmentos representantes da Segurança Pública e da Sociedade Civil, através da gestão compartilhada no espaço de atuação do CCS de Olaria. Os Conselhos Comunitários de Segurança Pública são considerados como uma variação dos Conselhos Gestores de Políticas Públicas, peças essenciais no processo de democratização, universalização e descentralização das Políticas Sociais. Portanto, considera-se que tais espaços, contribuem para a democratização da esfera pública, ao difundirem um novo paradigma de participação social, onde se estabelece a interlocução entre vários grupos sociais como forma de ampliar a participação dos segmentos com menos acesso ao aparelho de Estado. / [en] This study of the Democratic Administration in the Community Council of Public Security of the neighborhood of Pottery – RJ seeks to identify in general, how is the interaction between segments of Public Security and representatives of civil society through shared management within performance of the CCS Pottery. The public safety community councils are considered as a variation of the management boards of public policies, essential pieces in the process of democratization, decentralization and universalization of social policies. Therefore, it is considered that these spaces contribute to the democratization of the public sphere and disseminate a new paradigm of social participation, which establishes a dialogue between various social groups as a way of broadening the participation of the segments whit less access to the State apparatus.

[pt] O presente trabalho trata das peladas jogadas no Aterro do Flamengo, parque público na cidade do Rio de Janeiro, a partir do trabalho de campo realizado com o Ellite Futebol Clube. Desde a inauguração, em 1965, criou-se uma identificação entre o Aterro e os peladeiros, já que com o crescimento da cidade, havia menos terrenos ou áreas livres para a prática amadora do futebol. As quadras do Parque também tinham o objetivo de suprir essa necessidade. Fundado em 1998, o Ellite é formado por amigos de colégio que vêem nas peladas jogadas todas as quartas-feiras uma forma de manter a amizade. É uma das diversas equipes que fazem dos campos do Aterro a sua casa. Jogam, segundo eles, uma pelada organizada, o que de certa forma contraria o imaginário de improviso e espontaneidade desta prática. As peladas aqui estudadas, a partir do exemplo do Ellite, têm características particulares, que nos fazem perceber como o espaço urbano público é rico em contraste, diversidade e conflitos. / [en] This work is about the pick up soccer games played at the Aterro do Flamengo, a public park at Rio de Janeiro, from fieldwork with Ellite Futebol Clube. Since its inauguration in 1965, it has been created an identification between the Aterro and the pick up soccer game players, especially because with the growth of the city there were less land or open spaces for the practice of the amateur soccer. The courts from the park had also the purpose to meet this need. Founded in 1998, Ellite is formed by college friends who see in the pick up games played all Wednesdays a way to keep the friendship. It is one of several teams that make the fields of the Aterro like their home and make that a space of sociability. They play, according to them, an organized pick up game, which somehow contradicts the imagination of improvisation and spontaneity of this practice. The pick up soccer games studied here, from the example of Ellite, have particular characteristics that make us realize how urban public space is rich in contrast, diversity and conflict.

Por facilitarem radicalmente a publicação online, os blogs configuram-se como uma das principais ferramentas de um novo panorama comunicativo baseado na participação efetiva de cidadãos das mais diferentes formações na produção de conteúdo. Para determinar se, nos dois meses que antecederam a eleição presidencial de 2006 no Brasil, o potencial de os blogs introduzirem novos atores na esfera pública efetivou-se, foi procedida uma análise do conteúdo dos principais jornais, revistas e portais do Brasil, além dos quatro blogs de maior destaque no período. Conclui-se que, estritamente no campo desta pesquisa, poucas novas vozes lograram superar a barreira da recepção. / For making online publication extremely easy, blogs are one of the most important tools of a new communication paradigm based on the effective participation of individuals from differente backgrounds in the production of online content. In order to determine blog\'s potential in introducing new actors in the public sphere, a series of content analysis were processed on he most important newspaper, magazines and websites, besides the four most influential blugs, during tha timeframe. The conclusion is, strictly in the universe of this research, few new voices could overcome the reception barrier.