Since the establishment of Venezuela's democratic arrangement in 1958 with the signature of the Punto Fijo Pact the country democratic practises have been marked by the dependency of the exploitation of crude oil and the overt involvement of the private mass media as guard of the interest of the political elites. Although the Punto Fijo Pact represent the Venezuela's first step towards democratisation, it paved the way for the institutionalisation of clientelism as feature of the country's political tradition. By the late 1980s the population grew tired of inability of the political elites to redistribute evenly the country's oil revenues, thus starting a period of political reconfiguration that saw the decline of the traditional party system and rise of the Bolivarian movement as major political force that pledged the reconstruction of Venezuela's democratic system under a participatory arrangement. The election of Hugo Chávez as the Bolivarian movement candidate in 1998 saw the realignment of Venezuela's political forces, in particular the withdrawal of traditional political parties and the emerge of the private mass media, in particular the television networks, as a major political actor. The main argument of this dissertation is that from 1998 up to the parliamentary elections of 2010, the private television stations in Venezuela took on the role of opposition providing the population with the means to voice their criticisms of the Bolivarian government policies. The stand taken by the private television networks, as the de facto political party, was possible due to the deterioration of the Venezuelan party system and the constriction of the liberal rights of the citizenry, producing, amongst other things, the enactment of the Ley Resorte, to restrict the involvement of the private television networks in the political sphere as well as to control the flow of information. To be able to study why the private television networks were perceived by the Bolivarian movement as de facto political party and why the Bolivarian movement introduced legislation to constrain its participation in the political sphere, this thesis will examine from a historical perspective the role that the private mass media have had in Venezuela's political system and to what extent the Bolivarian movement perception that they were the de facto opposition was an adequate characterisation of the role that private television networks had up until 2010 when the opposition political parties presented themselves again to election to the Venezuela National Assembly after a hiatus of more than five years without representation in the legislative branch.

This research arises from my practice as a professional artist and my concern with issues of language and communication, particularly, the investigation of ways that arouse emotion and rational thought at once through language. Visual Poetry is a form of expression, which provokes both, and I saw the potential to expand its underlining principles further with the emergence of new technologies. With the digital medium, the main elements of visual and sound poetry: image, sound and text, can now be incorporated into the same piece of work. The aim of this study is to explore new digital communicative systems that interweave visual, oral and semantic elements of language, to produce new media languages where the pre-linguistic and linguistic maintain their symbiotic identities. This study examines theoretical and artistic concerns emerging from the area in-between, which is created by interlacing image, sound and text in the same artwork. It addresses the following series of questions: How to transfer the main concepts from Visual Poetry to Digital Art? How does computer technology transform image, sound and text to create new media languages? What is the role of the author, reader, writer, producer in these new interactive textualities of image, sound and text? How has this affected the new conventions of reading, looking, producing, using and thinking? What does the digital add to the interactivelexts of Visual Poetry? What new meanings and processes of thinking, understanding and interpretation are appearing? In which way do new technologies enhance the collaborative nature of practice? This investigation brings knowledge from other disciplines into the art field and it explores different serniotic models such as the linguistic the visual and the aural. It blurs the barriers between the visual and the linguistic: between different art forms such as fine art, visual poetry and sound art/poetry in a new digital and technological arena. It questions the conventions applied to these critical areas with the aid of the new tools and critical concepts available through digital technology. This study challenges the viewer/listener/user with an interface of signs from different languages and serniotic systems: the visual (still and moving images), the audible and the linguistic, to participate and explore the multiple possibilities within a work. This investigation seeks to contribute to a new body of knowledge in the development of the areas of Visual Poetry, Digital Art and the new genre of Electronic Poetry, by creating new, innovative, digital artworks for which, as a new form of expression, critical and analytical conventions are still in the process of development.

This practice-based research investigates movement and gesture in relation to the theatre work of Robert Wilson. A group of performers was established to explore Wilson’s construction of a code of movement during a series of over fifty workshops and films including: a feature film Oedipus; a live performance Two Sides to an Envelope; and a theatre production The Mansion’s Third Unbridled View. The creation of an embodied experience for the spectator, perceived through the senses, is central to Wilson’s theatre. Integral to this are the relationships between drama and image, and time and space. Wilson’s images, in which the body is presented in attitudes of stillness and repetition, are created through these transitional structures. Taking these structures as a starting point for my own performative work, the research led to an abstracted form of natural behaviour, where the movements and arrangements of bodies defined specific movement forms. Subsequently, the relationship between movement and images in Wilson’s theatre was reconsidered through Deleuze’s analysis of the cinematic image. Deleuze identifies subjectivity with the ‘semi-subjective image’, in which traces of the camera’s movements are imprinted in the film. In films made to register these movements, images of moving bodies evincing a sense of time passing were also created. This led to my discovery of film as a direct embodiment of performance, rather than as a form of documentation. Critical to these films, the theatre production, performances, and workshops was the relationship between images and continuous motion predicated upon Wilson’s idea of space, the horizontal: and time, the vertical. This idea enabled me to consider Wilson’s theatre and video works in relation to Bergson’s philosophy concerning duration. The research discovered new ways of interpreting Wilson’s aesthetic through Bergson’s idea that motion is an indivisible process which can also be perceived in relation to the position of bodies in space. Through this understanding, an original performance language was created based on the relationship between stasis and motion, and the interplay between the immersive, semiotic and instrumental modes of gestural communication.

Previous research indicates that social norms interventions provide a promising avenue to encourage behaviour change. This study examined the efficacy of a social norms intervention, with the inclusion of personalised individual feedback, to encourage pro-environmental behaviour change. A qualitative approach was used to gain an in-depth understanding of how people respond to social norms feedback and personalised individual feedback on environmental behaviours. Central to this research was an innovative Facebook app called iGreen, which was designed specifically by the author and a number of colleagues to provide a seven-week social norms intervention. This app comprised environmentally themed games, a quiz on aspects of everyday domestic behaviours that impact on the environment, and the ability to provide feedback on respondents’ previous quiz answers. Respondents were randomly allocated to either a no feedback group, a personalised individual feedback group, or a group in which feedback also included the average quiz answer of other iGreen users (social norms feedback group). A sample of fifty-one people who used iGreen completed all quizzes, forty-four of these respondents completed a post-intervention questionnaire, and thirty respondents were interviewed. Drawing on elements of a discourse analysis approach to analyse the interviews enabled an in-depth understanding of why a social norms intervention might, or might not encourage pro-environmental behaviour and how people respond to personalised individual feedback and social norms feedback. The major finding in this research is that the quiz encouraged behaviour change because the questions increased the salience of injunctive norms and personal norms. This supports the focus theory of normative conduct and norm activation theory, which both state that increasing the salience of norms influences behaviour. Another finding is that environmental behaviour change can be constrained due to people associating some behaviours with the stigmatisation of environmental activists. Lastly, respondents in all three intervention groups claimed to have changed some behaviour and there were no apparent differences between the groups. This suggests that increased salience (in this case induced by answering repeated quiz questions) encouraged behaviour change. This raises the question of whether increased salience, rather than feedback, may account for some of the behaviour change found in previous social norms research. This research identifies key elements of an intervention that can increase its potential to encourage pro-environmental behaviour which has potential practical application in the design of innovative social norms interventions. The main contribution of this research is the discovery that making people’s everyday behaviours more salient can encourage pro-environmental behaviour. A digital quiz is a simple, cost-effective and engaging method for increasing salience and encouraging behaviour change, and this should be explored in future research.

This thesis explores the moral implications of watching suffering on the media. In particular, it addresses the question of how audiences construct their moral agency vis-à-vis the suffering of distant others they witness through television news. Theoretically, the thesis takes as a point of departure the concept of mediation as media practices. Based on an underlying assumption of moral agency as discursively constructed and articulated, I have drawn an analytical framework which employs the discursive practices of media witnessing and media remembering to explore the ways audiences talk about distant suffering and position themselves in relation to it. The thesis is empirically grounded in the context of Greece and based on focus group discussions with members of the Greek audience. The empirical analysis indicates that viewers engage with distant suffering in a multiplicity of ways that are not exhausted in feelings of empathy or compassion and their diametric opposites of apathy and compassion fatigue. These forms of engagement are filtered through both the nature and extent of media reports of suffering, and discourses about power and politics entrenched within the national culture. In this context, the analysis demonstrates that viewers position themselves as witnesses vis-à-vis news reports of distant suffering in four different modes, which are described as “affective”, “ecstatic”, “politicised” and “detached” witnessing. The exploration of the practice of media remembering illustrates the construction of a moral hierarchy in the way viewers remember distant suffering, where some events are constructed as banal and others become landmarks in audience memory. Finally, the viewers’ positioning as public actors with regard to media stories of human pain is shown to be, on the one hand, conditional upon the media staging of humanitarian appeals, and, on the other hand, embedded within and limited by frameworks of understanding civic participation in public life. The thesis contributes to a growing body of literature on the mediation of distant suffering. It especially addresses the largely neglected empirical question of audience engagement with media stories of human pain, offering both empirical evidence and an analytical framework for the study of this engagement.

This thesis contains three independent chapters aimed at increasing our understanding of the effects of Internet diffusion on politics and development. The first chapter proposes a novel methodology for measuring Internet penetration. Using IP geolocation data, a new measure of Internet access is created, which counts the number of IP addresses per person in a region. This is the first measure of Internet penetration that is comparable not only across countries but across sub-regions of countries such as states or even electoral districts. The second chapter applies this measure to test whether Internet diffusion can weaken incumbent power in a semi-authoritarian regime. Using Malaysia as a test case, I find that the Internet is responsible for a six point swing away from the incumbent party in the 2008 elections. In the third chapter, co-authored with Valentino Larcinese, we look at the effects of the Internet on U.S. presidential elections. In accordance with anecdotal evidence, we find that increased Internet penetration leads to an increase in small donations to the Democratic Party and a swing towards the Democratic presidential candidate.

Evidently, Korean dramas have become, within just a decade, one of the types of broadcasting content most in demand in many Asian countries, but this popularity, frequently called the Korean Wave, seems to have been obtained rather unexpectedly. This thesis examines how the Korean broadcasting industry succeeded in breaking into neighbouring markets over a relatively short period of time, and whether the Korean government played a certain role in supporting the fast acquisition of Korean dramas of Asian audiences. Through the analysis, using a combined research method, the thesis uncovers how the government’s support policies have not provided meaningful help for drama exports. Rather, the subordinate relationship of Korean broadcasters to the government and the relatively early marketisation of the Korean broadcasting industry have more efficiently stimulated Korean dramas’ entrance into neighbouring broadcasting markets.

The size of the blogosphere has long been a contentious issue amongst people researching the social media as it cannot be accurately determined. Bodies (BlogPulse, BlogScope, Technorati, etc.) which used to track the growing phenomenon across the world were careful with their choice of words when reporting on its size, such as Sifry’s Technorati report which said, “On July 31, 2006, Technorati tracked its 50 millionth blog” (Sifry, 2006, August 6). However, as Rosenberg (2006, August 9) points out, “… it doesn’t really matter. There’s still a revolution going on.” This ‘revolution’ is dominated by young people and in Malaysia, it was found that 74% of the bloggers in Malaysia were below 25 years old (Windows Live Spaces, 2006) but there is limited study on the phenomenon of casual blogging amongst this age group in Malaysia and the use of English in the blogs. The current study contributes to this body of literature, drawing from works on blogging, linguistic analysis, identity, and varieties of English. It adopts the social-constructivist framework and postulates that blogging is a social action which causes the blogosphere to be in a state of constant revision where “individuals create their own subjective meanings of their experiences through interactions with each other and their surrounding environment” (Hartas, 2010:44). This study used mixed methods in order to answer the research questions using three instruments: survey, interview, and weblog analysis to yield the data needed to investigate the content and interactive blog communication of selected young Malaysian casual bloggers who blog in English. The survey data yielded information about their blogging habits and content; the interview data yielded information about their language learning endeavours which influenced their choice of language or varieties of language in their blogs; and the in-depth analysis of one blog yielded information on how language was used in the blog to achieve communicative intent. The findings reveal the blogging habits of young Malaysian bloggers, and how their attitude towards their identity as Malaysians using English and socio-cultural factors influence their choice of language and/or varieties of English in their blog communication. It discovers the unconventional manner of using an existing language to achieve communicative intent among those in the same blogospheric region. This study makes both the bloggers and their blog texts the focus of its research.

This PhD explores the experience of female journalists working in the Saudi Arabian press. It looks at the difficulties they face as women journalists, their motives for working in this area and their writings. The research discusses how the culture gender segregation in Saudi Arabia impacts upon Saudi media representations of gender stereotypes and the role of print media (the press) in exposing women’s issues to the public and forming public opinion. I utilised a media studies’ approach adopting an Islamic feminist perspective. I generated data from indepth interviews with seven Saudi female journalists working in Saudi press, who discuss female-related topics as well as content analysis of related press articles. The analysis indicated that the Saudi culture of extreme gender segregation has impacted on the experience of female journalists, particularly on their ability to compete with male journalists. As my analysis argues, my participants report experiencing female segregation and discrimination mainly affecting their pay, job opportunities, promotion, availability and access to information. My findings further suggest that the media in Saudi Arabia is the most direct venue for women to express their views and discuss their issues. In accordance with previous studies in the field, my study reveals that Saudi Arabian women interpret feminism within the boundaries of their specific culture and Islamic standpoint. Lastly, I discuss how current political, social and economic reforms in the region, which influence women’s status in the public arena, are reflected in the Saudi press.

Who are we? Why do we do the things we do? These questions are constantly under scrutiny, forever unable to provide us with adequate answers, it seems. Yet, with the continuing rise in popularity of digital media, we are able to situate these questions in a different sphere and see aspects of the self that we were unable to perceive before. Digital media forms have provided us with the capacity to explore whole new worlds, as well as allowing for new and innovative methods of communication. These changes make a huge impact on the daily lives of individuals. This thesis presents a theoretical contribution to both psychoanalytic thinking and to the rapidly expanding field of games studies, with especial reference to avatar-based games. It considers the status of the bond formed between the individual at play (known here as the ‘user’) and the game itself. Furthermore, it presents this as a model which identifies the user’s relation to the game dynamic through an understanding of the key components of a video game, including aspects such as the control mechanism. Elements which cross the boundary between the user/game realities are also considered with relation to hyperreality, thus forming a more complete imagining of this framework. This also allows for an application of this dynamic to what we define as violent (and associated) acts within games. In turn, this allows for a more complete understanding of the game situation, and can be applied to our understanding of the user as well. This thesis provides a standalone framework which can also be utilised in other types of investigation in future.