Military intervention in Nigerian government has recurred since 1966 amidst social, economic and political crises, and the opinion in some academic and political circles is that the mass media are responsible for creating conducive atmospheres under which such crises and destabilisation flourish. The argument holds that the independent press frames governments, especially civilian administrations, so negatively that the ensuing portrayal of political catastrophe makes it imperative for a forceful intervention rather than a constitutional change. This thesis assumes that the role of the press in the socio-political scenario within which intervention takes place can be gleaned from two perspectives: analysing how issues relating to governments are presented in the press prior to the intervention that forced them out of office, and gauging journalists' impression of military intervention. The expectation is that both perspectives can yield sufficient insight into the personal and institutional factors that influence news. The content analysis of three independent Nigerian newspapers in conjunction with a questionnaire survey of 200 journalists yielded the data for the study. Relative to the questions which are central to this study, it was found that the characterisation of the two governments, especially the civilian government in the 1983 period, was highly critical. However, the extra media data which corroborated such press characterisation strongly argued for the point that the press was more of a mirror of the social and political realities that prevailed at those periods rather than an institution that was out to peddle 'negative' news or to run down governments. However, the influences of other social forces such as the press-government role relationship, institutional routines and values, and the agenda of interest groups in the entire news production process are not overlooked. Though the journalists differed in their individual perceptions of military intervention, with some of them admitting that it was either 'a necessary evil' or 'sometimes desirable', the overriding posture was far from being supportive of military rule. Even the journalists who had harboured the wish for a coup, at some point, admitted that they regretted it soon after. Furthermore, an overwhelming majority would want military intervention to be outlawed without reservations.

This study aims at investigating the role of the Egyptian press in the developmental dimension of the peace process. In exploring this role, the study answers two questions. How did the Egyptian press connect the peace process to the economic, political and social dimension of development? How did the press construct the meaning of peace in terms of the social context in Egypt? The study addresses five main objectives. These objectives are: exploring differences between national and opposition newspapers in dealing with the developmental dimensions of the peace process; examining how the economic dimensions are framed; examining how the political dimensions were presented; exploring how the social/cultural dimensions were portrayed; and how the Egyptian journalists consider the role of the press within its relationship with political institutions. Following the political economy approach, interviews with Egyptian journalists from both the national and the opposition papers under analysis considered the relationship between the press and the government to have been very close all along. The criteria of selecting news in the national newspapers were far from professional news values. Results of the context analysis reinforce the views of these journalists about the relationship between the government and the press and how it influences content. Following the construction of meaning approach, the analysis indicates that the Egyptian press constructed the meaning of peace within the social context. The press considered that peace would lead to the solving of critical economic and political issues facing Egypt. Socially, that peace would secure enough funds to build houses, renew the infrastructure, decrease unemployment, and improve health care. Generally, that peace would help to solve economic, political, and social problems.

This thesis explores the impact of convergence of media and technologies on the management of news organisations and journalists' working practices. Despite being heralded as a new 'revolution' for media, convergence and its relationship with news production has been under researched. This study seeks to address this gap and focuses on the implications of convergence for the production and distribution of news in print and broadcasting organisations. Convergence is approached from a non deterministic perspective and defined as a complex set of technological, economic, managerial and occupational changes largely associated with the blurring of media industries, concentration of ownership, multimedia production processes and the digitisation of news production and distribution. This is an empirical study on newsroom practices based on interviews with senior managers and journalists in five organisations: BBC News, Sky News, Financial Times, The Guardian, and APTN. The analysis, which provides the professionals' perspective on the changes, is organised around two levels: the first is concerned with the managerial decision-making and the restructuring of production processes as a result of convergence, while the second level, drawing from the field of news production studies, investigates how the new production environment affects journalistic practices. As a consequence of the blurring boundaries between diverse media, this study observes a transformation in the management philosophy and mission of traditional news organisations. There is an impetus towards multimedia production and distribution which is achieved through newsroom integration and work reorganisation. Consequently a more demanding working environment requires more versatility from journalists, challenging traditions of media separation in production and culture, and sets the conditions for the detachment of news from its medium specific formats. At another level, new media facilitate dialogue between journalists and the audience transforming their relationship and forcing journalists to reconsider their role as both 'gateopeners' and 'gatekeepers' of information.

This multidisciplinary thesis explores the relationship between new media and young people in Kibera using ethnographic research methods. The research aim is to interrogate the optimism about the use of new media and ICTs for development by amplifying the rare voices of technology users in a marginalised context. The focus on young Kiberans is significant for emergent Global South media audience literature and the ICT4D (Information and Communication Technologies for Development) field. The communicative ecologies framework and the domestication of technologies approach facilitate the identification of dominant forms of local information and communication flows in the communicative environments of the young Kiberans. In light of the analysis of the empirical findings derived from 22 semi-structured interviews, participant observation, go-alongs and documentary evidence, the thesis argues that the mobile phone and the mobile Internet emerge as the most significant forms of new media and ICTs. Additionally, the local information flows of youth groups, youth forums, community radio ( Pamoja FM), Church and school emerge as complementary to the use and appropriation of new media and ICT artefacts. Grounded in the philosophical paradigm of critical realism and drawing upon Amartya Sen’s Capabilities Approach, the social conversion factor of educational attainment is identified as a dominant factor in enabling the Kiberans to appropriate the mobile phone and the mobile Internet into the capability of mobility, a form of development. The mobile phone emerges as a socio-cultural artefact that facilitates the maintenance and extension of social ties. However, the environmental conversion factor of Kibera as the young people’s place of residence and their perceived lower class restricts their creation and extension of social ties in higher class Kenyan networks. Therefore, “the digital spaces created by new media and ICT use and appropriation are simply continuities of the offline” hierarchical social environment in which they exist (Boyd, 2013: 204).

The present study addresses the use of social media by middle-class Cairo residents, contributing to understandings of its political role during a time of upheaval and broad social change surrounding the 2011 Egyptian revolution. Based on in-depth interviews and extended fieldwork, local ways of making sense of social media and its attendant functions are explored, as are its political uses and multifaceted role in individual political trajectories. The study contributes to a literature on the politics of social media which is highly contradictory, with its potential to function as a site of autonomy and participation at odds with accounts emphasizing its apparently depoliticizing nature. Despite extensive scholarly attention there are significant unknowns regarding various processes surrounding the 2011 Egyptian uprisings, in particular the way that social media might be implicated in the puncturing of what have been conceptualized as ‘preference falsification’ dynamics, whereby regimes are said to be maintained by a self-perpetuating unwillingness to express dissent. A related issue concerns the cultural politics of post-revolutionary Cairo, which witnessed a marked rise in activities often framed as socially or politically subversive. While social media appears to have functioned as an important site for the latter, there is a lack of hard evidence as to its role regarding these activities. Addressing these gaps in the literature as well as other concerns, the present study presents illuminating evidence, grounded in user accounts, to argue that the politics of social media are not ahistorical, but rather depend profoundly on a complex interaction between technological affordances, culture, and individual agency. In the process, the distinct spatialities of social media are investigated and issues of visibility, presence, and sociality in social media are established as especially important dimensions of its impact on political life.

The thesis analyses at the discursive construction of national identities in the media, using Scotland as the case study. It focuses on the dialectic of the national Self and its Others and looks at the identity constructions in the two main Scottish broadsheets, the (<i>Glasgow</i>) <i>Herald </i>and the <i>Scotsman. </i>The two key discourse moments chosen for analysis are the 1979 and 1997 devolution referenda in Scotland. The thesis has three main strands of analysis. Firstly, the thesis looks at the Self/Other dialectic in the media. It challenges the view that the Other is always negative and stresses the role of positive Others in national identity construction process. The aim of the analysis of media discourse is to identify various significant Others in the discursive construction of Scottishness. Secondly, it looks at the complex and often ambiguous use of various national deixes in the Scottish media, focusing on personal deixis ‘we’, and other important words like ‘people’, ‘nation’, ‘country’, ‘land’, ‘history’ etc. Thirdly, it uses elements of visual sociology (including content and semiotic analysis) to look at the representations of Scottishness in political cartoons in a number of Scottish and British daily newspapers. The thesis combines elements of discourse analysis, content analysis, visual sociology, and nationalism studies in order to achieve these goals and hopes to achieve a better understanding of the Self/Other dialectic and the role of national deixes in national identity building and preserving.

This research is a timely response to the widespread use of digital media in western social worlds, and a perceived gulf separating school practices from those in contemporary living. I argue for a dynamic educational experience that embeds digital media production in the curriculum. Of central importance is the investigation of a wider conception of literacy that includes the manipulation of moving image and sound through time, as a means of creative expression that also shows critical understanding. By drawing out the particular characteristics of learning with digital media, I identify the ways in which traditional pedagogies could be transformed in order to accommodate more social and collaborative ways of working. In relation to this I explore discursive tensions, including current educational reform measures, perceived as hindering the development of dispersed digital media-making practices. Qualitative ethnographic methods were chosen for their capacity to engage with the complex tensions and textures of modern pedagogy. Photographic, audiovisual and interview materials were gathered in formal and non-formal school settings which, through the adaptation of a values-driven hermeneutic framework, inspired critical and reflexive narrative interpretations. The discussion draws on theories related to cultural studies, media literacy, and film and moving image composition to explore our ‘performance’ with digital media in a networked society, under the prevailing social conditions of possibility. This study positions media-making in schools as a core entitlement which adds to and enriches, rather than supplants, traditional literacy. Given the complex ways in which modern social actors use media representations to negotiate identity, and their relationships with each other and the environment, it is argued that providing primary learners with opportunities for creative digital media-making will create a more relevant, engaging and critically-oriented school experience. Practical media work nurtures the skills, competencies and disposition for praxis-oriented socio-cultural participation, of benefit to the individual, and the local and wider community.

Trafficking in persons (TIP) has continued to captivate media attention in the United Kingdom (UK). These portrayals consistently include narratives of trafficked persons brutally exploited by traffickers. The representations of TIP also consistently indicate that the issue is widespread geographically and extensive in size. Academic literature suggests that the way in which the media represents an issue is influential in persuading public opinions and government policies (Ahmad, 2016; Baker et al., 2013; van Dijk, 1991, Wilson and O’Brien, 2016). Therefore, the main purpose of this thesis was to examine the way in which newspapers within the UK represented the issue of TIP, trafficked persons and traffickers. A total of 121 newspaper articles comprised the data-set from four national newspapers and their Sunday counterparts, which included: The Guardian, The Observer, The Times, The Sunday Times, Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, The Sun and Sunday Sun. The timeframe of the data-set spanned the year 2011. Through a social constructionist lens, thematic analysis identified several key findings. The themes were explored in four empirical chapters, which can be summarised by the following: 1) TIP was represented as a form of modern day slavery, as a particularly abhorrent social issue, and as a pervasive social issue in terms of incidence and geographical location, 2) Representations of trafficked persons’ victimisation were equated to being acted upon (powerless victims) by means of dominance rather than to act by free will (active agents), 3) Representations of traffickers incorporated stereotyped portrayals of minority ethnic perpetrators, and 4) Representations of the trafficked person were objectifying through the emphasis on the (female) body. A wider implication of the commodification of the trafficked person was also discussed. Limitations of the study and directions for future research are suggested. Finally, potential applications of this research are discussed.

This study analyses how sustainable development issues are constructed in the Amazonian press over a five-year period between 1990 and 1994. Drawing on a constructionist framework, the research focuses on two regional newspapers' coverage to assess media roles in processes of policy-making, journalistic perceptions and practices and the construction of discourses within the context of the new ideology of sustainable development. The analysis identifies themes, actors, language and discourses revealing of an Amazonian perspective as the environment rose on the public agenda in the years before and after the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992. During these years, conflict originating in the rise of social movements is an underlying factor identified in the regional news. Using a combination of methodologies, the research comprises analyses of nearly 700 news items, 30 interviews with journalists and language and discourses appearing in the regional press. Trends in the coverage identify environmental, political and economic news framing. The most prominent themes are: the environment and development, Indian matters, health, and political and border affairs. Official sources are the most prominent actors in the news. The research shows how some issues take prominence and others are undermined in the coverage. Analysis of journalists' perceptions of news influence in policy-making, their reporting strategies and source relationships throw light on the context of news reporting and on the articulation of social and cultural definitions of the Amazon in the news. Links between news construction and wider social, political, economic and cultural processes become apparent as language and discourse analyses reveal different narratives emanating from the articulation of the concept of sustainable development. Among the main discourses identified in the news are the nationalist/developmentalist, the preservationist, the negotiating and that of the excluded.

This study looks at the implications of Video Cassette Recorders in Iran at national and individual levels. By 'contextualising' the medium, the audiences, the text, and relevant state policies within the dynamic environment of post-revolutionary Iran, the research questions the VCRs definition, functions, and impacts. The first part describes and explains issues related to the VCRs' critical existence in Iran: factors of VCRs' penetration; government reaction toward its increasing penetration; the complex reasons behind the banishment of video sets and video clubs in 1983; consequences of the 1983 prohibition policy; VCRs' underground life in Iran between 1983-1993; the dominant anti-VCR discourse of 1983-1993 period; the effects of the VCR on other social organisations and institutions and in particular its impact on cinema and broadcast media; the debates which led to VCRs' legalisation in 1993; and development of a centralised organisation of VCR since 1994. The second part at the familial and individual level questions the 'effects' of VCRs on specific attitudes, expectations, and behaviour of the Iranian youth. For this purpose the role of some VCR-related (e.g. ownership, viewing intensity, content preferences, audience activity, and parental control) as well as non-VCR-related factors (i.e. class, gender, and age) in the (trans)formation of traditional/non-traditional attitudes are studied. This survey tests hypotheses relate to: the VCR's class-based diffusion in Iran; its use patterns by the audiences; its impact on the audiences' uses of national media; the impact of length of VCR ownership; the role of the video sets and cassettes in cultivation of (selected non-traditional) attitudes; cultivation relativity across various age and gender groups and classes; and the role of preferred content types, audience activities as well as parental control methods on the amount of cultivation.