In this thesis we study epistemic protocols for gossip. Each agent in the gossip scenario knows a unique piece of information which is called a secret. Agents communicate with each other by means of pairwise telephone calls, and in each call the calling pair of agents exchange all the secrets they currently know. In an epistemic gossip protocol, an agent 'a' can call another agent 'b', not because it is so instructed, but because agent 'a' knows that it satisfies some knowledge-based condition defined by the protocol. The goal of gossiping is typically epistemic, for example, that after a sequence of calls, every agent knows the secret of every other agent. The question then arises as to which knowledge conditions bring about the goal of gossiping, and what properties the resulting protocols have. In this thesis we describe a theoretical framework for the study of epistemic gossip protocols based on dynamic epistemic logic. We describe a number of epistemic gossip protocols and formalise these protocols using our theoretical framework. We study and prove the dynamic properties of these protocols in various types of underlying network topologies such as the line topology network, circle topology network, tree topology network, and the complete topology network. Based on our theoretical framework, we implement a software framework for describing, modelling and checking the dynamic properties of epistemic gossip protocols. We call this software framework the Epistemic Gossip Protocol (EGP) tool. The EGP tool automates the checking of dynamic properties of a given epistemic gossip protocol, such as, whether the given protocol achieves the goal of gossiping for every execution sequence of the protocol, whether the given protocol can produce execution sequences that lead to a deadlock, or whether the given protocol can produce an infinite execution sequence due to a loop. We describe the details of the implementation of the EGP tool, and use the tool to model, and check the dynamic properties of our example protocols. We present and discuss the results obtained from our experiments with the EGP tool.

In recent years, many scholars in the field of political communication have discussed professionalisation of election campaigning in dealing with the development of mass media and technology as well as the increased demand for external campaign professionals in the political process. It is true that parties have struggled to manage these on-going alterations efficiently as well as scientifically to attract more voter attention within their limited budget. Naturally, political parties need to seek external campaign professionals’ helps to make a more professionalised election campaign. Accordingly, this research utilises two different dimensions – external and internal- to figure out the notion of professionalisation in election campaigning. Firstly, this research aims to demonstrate how and by how much political parties’ presidential election campaigns in South Korea have become more technically sophisticated in mass media mobilisation and the adaptation of new technologies. Secondly, this research will look at how the relationship between external campaign professionals and political parties has been changed and how political parties have made their organisation more ‘systemic’ and ‘tactical’ using communication technologies. To answer these research purposes, this research will choose three presidential elections (1997, 2002 and 2007) and two major parties –the Grand National Party and the Democratic Party - in South Korea. This will enable the researcher to look at historical alterations and compare election campaign strategies between each of the parties to figure out whether they seek different campaign strategies, and, if so, why they choose differently. Therefore, this research will analyse the data of 25 semi-structured interviews conducted with campaign managers who either were or are inside one of the party organisations and of external campaign professionals who are outside the party organisations in three different periods to answer the research questions. As a result of the above, this research found that professionalisation of Korean election campaigns is underway because both parties have tried to adopt new campaign practices and manage their organisation in a more efficient way. However, due to strict campaign regulations in South Korea, this finally led to the situation that parties cannot invest money into designing competitive campaign strategies through the liberal use of mass media and campaign technology. In addition to this, it is confirmed that both parties have increased the number of external campaign professionals in order to deal with new campaign practices and the relationship between parties and external campaign professionals has become a business relationship.

The first aim of this research is to better understand how the dominant and vernacular literacy practices of adult volunteers at an aviation-centred uniformed youth group in Hong Kong co-exist through a newly launched continuing education programme – a vocational qualification programme – and various types of texts in the volunteering context. Another aim is to explore how these volunteers’ self-generated literacy practices are shaped by new technologies, with a particular focus on a social networking site, Facebook. The study is grounded in the framework of literacy as a social practice (Barton and Hamilton, 2012) and the community of practice (CoP) learning theory (Wenger, 1998). Literacy as a social practice theory reveals that reading and writing practices are purposeful and embedded in broader social goals and cultural practices. Taking a CoP perspective, this thesis also views the uniformed group as a community sharing common knowledge, ideas and practices. The research was conducted using a linguistic ethnographic approach. Based on the analysis of written texts, including assignments and texts related to volunteering work and multimodal texts on Facebook, interviews and participant observation, this study first reveals how the social practices surrounding these digital and print-based texts constitute the professional practices of volunteers and bring formal education into a nonformal education context. Furthermore, this thesis contributes to the understanding of new practices in social media and other technologies, which will become more prevalent in volunteering and further education environments. The significance of literacy practices cannot be considered in isolation from their unique sociocultural context.

Cultural production and labour have been the subject of considerable research in recent years. But relatively little research has paid attention to workers in the internet industries, especially the Chinese internet industries. This thesis uses ethnographic research to examine the quality of the working life of Chinese internet workers and asks: What is working life like in the Chinese internet industries? And how do workers themselves understand and evaluate their experiences of working life? This thesis examines three main inter-related issues in order to answer these questions. First, the work quality of these workers is evaluated via a framework consisting of work effort or intensity, autonomy and security. Empirical data, collected from three months’ covert observation in a Chinese internet company and two periods of interviews in the industries, shows inequalities and injustices in working life. Second, the social class of internet workers provides a crucial context for understanding their working conditions. Chinese internet workers are understood as part of the lower middle class in contemporary Chinese society. They face ‘proletarianisation’: they suffer a worsening of their working conditions and their collaborative acts of agency show close relationships with those of the working class. Thirdly, the agency of these workers is analysed, including their negotiation with, and resistance to, the state and businesses. A key argument is that proletarianisation is the result of exploitation, which is understood from a neo-Marxist perspective here: the bureaucratic capitalist class appropriates the labour efforts of the working class and skills of the middle class through ownership of means of production and exercise of the political authority to allocate these resources. The notion of exploitation is a fundamental mechanism to understand the quality of working life in the industries, as it explains why workers suffer poor working conditions. Workers’ acts of agency explain why workers still work in the industries, despite such poor conditions, and how they strive to improve them. This research also argues that such acts indicate a ‘bottom up’ force in contemporary China, which suggests the potential to create better working conditions and a better China.

The year 2008 witnessed an explosion of online Chinese nationalism, triggered by a series of incidents relating to the Beijing Olympics. In this thesis, I mainly examine the significance and relevance of the internet to the studies of Chinese nationalism, and investigate the extent to which the internet can contribute to the shaping of Chinese nationalism in contemporary Chinese society. I treat online Chinese nationalism as discursive, because the production of online nationalist information, the construction of online nationalist identities and the discussion of online nationalist actions, are all discursive practices which are intrinsically related to the political use of language. Therefore, I argue that the study of online Chinese nationalism should entail critical linguistic analysis of the online texts that discuss Chinese nationalism. Rather than seeing nationalist texts as sheer expressions of nationalist concerns or claims, I am interested in how nationalist texts are made linguistically, and see linguistic features, structures and organisations of the texts as clues for unveiling the underlying nationalist ideologies and power relations. I mainly focus on the online popular discourse of Chinese nationalism, however, since research on nationalism can hardly avoid the power relations between the state and popular nationalist players, I also shed significant light on the official nationalist discourse. To carry out the research, I examine the official newspaper The People’s Daily and the non-official online media the Tianya Forum. By doing this, I intend to find out how the official and online popular nationalist players shaped and reshaped Chinese nationalism through media discourses during the time of the international torch relay of the Beijing Olympics. Moreover, by taking both the official and online popular nationalist discourses into consideration, it also allows me to examine the possible tension and co-optation between both nationalist players, and investigate to what extent online Chinese nationalism as an alternative nationalist discourse, challenges the domination of the state over the politics of Chinese nationalism. To analyse the discourses of Chinese nationalism, I employ Norman Fairclough’s approach to critical discourse analysis as the ultimate research method of the thesis.

Most of the existing literature on American public diplomacy focuses on both historic and present-day use. Literature by academics and practitioners, as well as government reports and studies done by think tanks, all repeatedly highlight the same problems affecting public diplomacy of the United States (from the end of World War II through today): an absence of strategy - what public diplomacy should do and how; as well as clearly defining the role of public diplomacy in American statecraft; and uneven and ineffective implementation. Interestingly, some of the literature on public diplomacy recognizes the practice to date back before the twentieth century, yet there are no studies examining public diplomacy practice prior to the twentieth century. This study offers a new approach to evaluating and understanding the use of public diplomacy in American statecraft by broadening the understanding and interpretation of diplomacy. The aim of this research is to understand how past uses and techniques of foreign public engagement evolved into modern public diplomacy as a tool of American statecraft. The study explores six historic cases where the United States’ government or private American citizens actively engaged with foreign publics, starting with the American Revolution in 1776 through the passage of the Smith-Mundt Bill of 1948. Each case looks specifically at the role foreign public engagement plays in American statecraft, while also identifying trends in American foreign public engagement and making connections between past practice of foreign public engagement and public diplomacy, and analysing how trends and past practice or experience influenced modern American public diplomacy.

This thesis offers an account of information and communication technologies (ICTs) that draws on the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. It argues that Heidegger’s ontological approach presents a welcome antidote to reductionist accounts of the “revolutionary” nature of these technologies that pervade much mainstream commentary. It considers Heidegger’s inquiry into technology within the context of his wider inquiry into the ‘meaning of Being’, resulting in a range of valuable insights into the realities of our technological environment, how we engage with it, and ultimately into what consequences this engagement might have for our Being-in-the-world. Drawing on the conceptual framework developed by Heidegger it offers a critical theoretical account outside the bounds of Critical Theory approaches to ICTs that seeks dialogue with these positions. It seeks to encourage the opening up of a field that has closed itself off, for reasons that are explored in this thesis, to engaging with the valuable insights Heidegger can offer for understanding phenomena such as the ubiquity of contemporary surveillance and the exploitation of labour in the global digital economy.

Western media have come under intense scrutiny over the past 20 years for their propensity to marginalise Africa and to rely on colonial stereotypes, images and narratives. Both within and outside academia, commentators appeal to the concept of ‘Afro-pessimism’ to qualify and condemn this phenomenon. And yet, the notion is under-theorised and existing empirical studies insufficiently analyse and explain the phenomenon. Drawing on journalism, critical/cultural and postcolonial studies, this thesis seeks to answer the following questions: What is Afro-pessimism? Is it an adequate characterisation of media coverage, and if so, to what extent? Is media coverage moving beyond Afro-pessimism? In order to answer these theoretical and empirical questions, this thesis develops a conceptualisation of Afro-pessimism and provides a Critical Discourse Analysis of British and French print media. The analysis focuses on British and French broadsheet newspapers and news magazines. I critically analyse the visual and linguistic features of media texts against the background of their context of production and through interviews with foreign correspondents based in South Africa and Kenya. There are two sites of investigation: (1) the press coverage of the 50th anniversaries of independence (2007-2012); (2) the news magazines’ front covers dedicated to continental Africa (2011-2015). In site 1, I assess three recurring claims about Western media coverage of Africa, and investigate the discursive nature of the coverage in relation to Afro-pessimism and postcolonial memory. In site 2, I explore the emergence of an Afro-optimist discourse in media coverage of Africa. Finally, I offer a critical appraisal of the accounts of journalists at the heart of the production of Africa’s media image.

There are two different types of seizures, epileptic and psychogenic non-epileptic seizures (PNES) - the seizures can look the same and have the same features. Despite the impressive increase in our biomedical knowledge it is difficult for neurologists to differentiate between these seizure conditions; and many of the tests used cannot, on their own, confirm a diagnosis. However, it is crucial to get the diagnosis right because the choice of treatment critically depends on the cause and nature of the seizures. Consequently, history-taking and the interaction between patient and doctor remains key to the investigation and correct and effective treatment of epilepsy and PNES. Recent research indicates that the close examination of doctor-patient encounters not only enables us to identify linguistic and interactional features that help with the diagnosis of epilepsy and PNES, but also yields helpful psychological insights into how people with seizures experience their disorder. Previous work has alerted researchers (and neurologists) to the important role that references to others not present during consultations (third parties) can play. However, previous studies have not examined or described the use of these third party references in detail. This thesis investigates the use of third party references and seizure witness accounts by participants experiencing refractory seizure disorders using secondary data collected during 20 one-to-one doctor-patient consultations. Moreover, patients are routinely invited to bring seizure witnesses and companions along to their first as well as to subsequent visits to seizure clinics. Despite the important diagnostic roles companions are thought to play in these encounters, no previous studies have focussed specifically on their contribution to the interaction between patients and health professionals. To help advance what is known about accompanied interactions in the seizure clinic, 50 patients attending a specialist outpatient seizure clinic consented to participate in an observational study. Findings from this research, funded by the charity Epilepsy Action, help inform existing models of interactional criteria that distinguish between the linguistic and communicative features of PNES and epilepsy patient seizure descriptions. The findings suggest that doctors utilising the differential interactive, linguistic and topical features of seizure patient talk need to carefully consider how they conduct and structure these consultations, and recommendations are offered in this respect. Finally, avenues of future research are discussed.

International educational exchanges are widely considered to be an important form of public diplomacy. They are thought to build relationships and mutual understanding between the peoples of different nations, and thereby contribute to international goodwill and the cause of peace. The Fulbright Program, America’s flagship educational exchange endeavour, was founded upon such principles and expectations. During its first six decades of exchanges, the programme has grown from modest beginnings into an academically prestigious brand in international education. This study offers a newly updated history of the Fulbright Program, based on archival research and semi-structured interviews. It examines the role that the Fulbright Program has played in American public diplomacy and foreign policy since its establishment in the aftermath of the Second World War. It situates the narrative of the exchange programme against its larger context of U.S. foreign relations. The exchange programme is shown to be remarkably adaptable, as it overcomes a range of political and economic challenges throughout its history. Three key themes are drawn from this historical narrative and explored in analytical chapters: funding, bureaucracy and the Fulbright grantee experience. The ebb and flow of Congressional support for exchanges, as well as the phenomenon of cost-sharing by partnering nations, reveals a great deal about the Fulbright Program’s purposes and practices. The perceived purpose of the exchanges can also be inferred by examining the changes that have taken place in the bureaucratic structure of American public diplomacy throughout the history of the Fulbright Program. The grantee experience is arguably the greatest determinant of an exchange programme’s effectiveness, and has been the subject of most Fulbright Program literature. Unlike previous studies, however, which relied primarily on surveys of exchange participants, this study adopts a more holistic approach by focusing on the institution rather than the individual grantee. This study’s framework is based upon the parent fields of public diplomacy. Drawing upon theories from psychology, communications and political science, the analytical framework suggests an original approach for exchange diplomacy research. It critically examines the assumptions that are often used to justify exchanges, including the contact hypothesis, the opinion leader concept and the perceived link between public opinion and foreign policy. Using a combination of archival research and interviews, the study offers new insights into the Fulbright Program’s practices and challenges normative assumptions about the role of exchange diplomacy in foreign policy.