This thesis explores changing discourses of childhood and the ways in which power relations intersect with socio-cultural norms to shape screen-based media for Palestinian children. Situated within the interdisciplinary study of childhood, the research is an institutional and textual analysis that includes discursive and micro-level analysis of the socio-political circumstances within which children consume media in present-day Palestine. The thesis takes a social constructionist view, arguing that ‘childhood’ is not a fixed universal concept and that discourses of childhood are produced at specific historical moments as an effect of power. The study has a three-part research agenda. The first section uses secondary literature to explore theories and philosophies relating to definitions of childhood in Arab societies. The second employs participant observation and semi-structured interviews to understand the history and politics of children’s media in the West Bank. The final part of the research activity focuses on the impact that definitions of childhood and the politics of children’s media have on broadcasting outcomes through an analysis of (a) discourses on children’s media that circulate in Palestinian society, and (b) local and pan-Arab cultural texts consumed by Palestinian children. The analysis demonstrates that complex ideological and political factors are at play, which has led to the marginalisation, politicisation and internationalisation of local production for children. Due to the lack of alternatives, local producers often rely on international funding, and are hence forced to negotiate competing definitions of childhood, which while fitting with an international agenda of normalising the Israeli occupation, conflict culturally and politically with local conceptions of childhood and hopes for the Palestinian nation. While the Palestinian community appreciates the positive potential of local production, discourses and strategies around children’s media show that Palestinian children are constructed as vulnerable, incomplete and in constant need of guidance. Pan-Arab content presents a slightly less didactic approach and in certain cases presents childhood as a dynamic space of empowerment. However, by constructing children as ‘consumercitizens’, it alienates Arab (and Palestinian) children from disadvantaged backgrounds,as the preferred audience is middle-class children living in oil-rich countries of the Gulf.

In the first few years of the 21st Century, access to and use of Web 2.0 digital technologies by everyday, non-professional web users increased considerably in the UK. Today anyone of any age with access to a computer, digital tools and an internet connection can engage in social media dialogues as creators and publishers of digital content. This practice is no longer the preserve of the professional. Many academics and media commentators see this as a significant shift from the way individuals traditionally receive and ‘passively’ consume media to a position where they are more actively, responsively and inclusively engaged. In the last fifteen years much research has been concerned with the online activities of children and young people. Several web commentators have written with enthusiasm of the ‘net generation’ and ‘digital natives’. However, little research has been conducted into the digital and online engagement of adult web users. This study investigates how adults aged 18-28, 40-50 and 65+ create, publish and share content online. Content creation, in the context of this project, is defined as an arrangement of visual and/or audio material that requires some element of composition or editing. Through the use of qualitative interviews this research provides an insight into the practices of these three age ranges of adults who use digital technology and the internet to create and share their content. The study addresses how they use content sharing to communicate online and their motivations for engaging in these practices. Issues of this kind are of importance for individuals’ selfexpression and participation in an increasingly digitalised world. The research found that participants from all age groups often used both digital and analogue technologies side-by-side and this helped, rather than hindered, their ability to create and share content. Several participants, particularly the over-65s, revealed that digital technologies were enablers that unlocked suppressed behaviour and creative desires. Artistic self-expression, personal achievement, affiliation to others and receiving recognition and feedback were all given as motivational reasons for creating and sharing content across the age spectrum. The research findings offer an alternative to the over-simplistic and sometimes polemical perception that the so-called ‘digital generation’ are more digitally adept and literate than older internet users.

This research project assesses the relationship between the use of Facebook and the development of social movements throughout their life cycle by focusing on the case study of Popolo Viola. On 5th December, 2009, hundreds of thousands of Italian citizens took to the streets of Rome to say ‘no’ to the politics of Silvio Berlusconi’s government and to ask for his resignation as Prime Minister. The demonstration was planned and organized, mainly on Facebook, by a group of bloggers. A single-issue protest rapidly evolved into a social movement, called ‘Popolo Viola’, ‘Purple People’. The colour purple was chosen because it was not previously associated with any political movement, and as a word to the wise that the movement was not linked to any political party. New groups and pages arose on Facebook: apart from the page ‘il Popolo Viola’, which now had more than 460,000 members (data August, 2013), thousands of pages and groups were opened at a local level, both inside and outside Italy. Through the lenses of Social Movement Theory and the Critical Theory of Technology this study focuses on the role played by the use of Facebook in the development of the movement’s organizational structure, the building of its collective identity, and its mobilization processes. The methodology adopted for this purpose includes both quantitative and qualitative methods: on the one hand, there is an analysis of membership data and interaction levels on the Popolo Viola Facebook page, and a survey; on the other hand, there are in-depth interviews with the Facebook page administrators, influential members and activists of the movement, and content analysis of the online conversations among activists. The findings of this research show how Facebook proved to be an efficient mobilizing structure for the social movement only on a short-term basis. After its initial success, the incompatibility between the commercial interests behind Facebook’s design, and the ideology of Popolo Viola became manifest. Facebook failed to provide the movement with the necessary instruments in terms of a shared democratic management of its resources. The inability to manage Facebook pages and groups according to commonly agreed values promoted vertical power structures within the movement, contributing to controversial management of the Facebook page and to internal divisions which significantly hindered the potential of the anti-Berlusconi protest. Moreover, gradual changes in the Facebook code increasingly promoted top-down flows of communication which, in conjunction with controversial decisions in the moderation of discussions that were made by the page administrators, progressively decreased the plurality of voices within the movement’s page, and hampered the formation of a strong collective identity. Facebook therefore proved to represent much more than a mere communication tool for Popolo Viola, playing a vital role in influencing the movement’s structure, leadership, communication flows and collective identity. The rise and fall of Popolo Viola, with all its complexity, constitutes a useful case study of the evaluation of technology as a problematic force for social change. That said, this is not an issue which relates to the technology itself, but rather to the values and interests that drive the actors who are involved in this power struggle. Taking into account the relationships between culture, technology and capital, this study offers a balanced assessment of the dynamics which characterize the development of social movement protest on commercial Social Network Media.

This research looks at how the shift in the status of Egyptian bloggers from underground dissident voices to mainstream political and media players affected the plurality they add to the public space for discourse in Egypt’s authoritarian settings. The role of the internet – and more recently social media and bloggers – in democratic transition has been studied by various media scholars since the introduction of the worldwide web and especially after the Egyptian and Tunisian uprisings of 2011. But no work has been done to study how bringing those once-underground bloggers into the public and media spotlight affected the nature of the blogosphere and the bloggers themselves. Star bloggers were not only covered by the media after January 25th, 2011, they also started joining the media as column writers; a move that had various effects on them and the blogosphere but was never examined in media studies. The plurality the blogosphere adds to the Egyptian public space for discourse in light of those changes as well as in light of the financial and practical sustainability of blogging was hence never looked at in a context similar to Egypt’s. Guided by modified theories of the public sphere and theories of hegemony and manufacturing consent, I look at whether bloggers have been co-opted into the historical bloc in the process of renewing the social order and how this affects them and the online sphere. Also, guided by theories of power and media elites, I look at bloggers’ backgrounds to assess whether they come from power elites and are transforming into media elites, thus limiting the plurality of the online sphere. Finally, guided by theoretical works on institutionalizing and commercializing the internet, I look at how those shifts into mainstream affect the independence and freedom of the blogs and microblogs. The research uses a comparative study to assess how those changes affect prominent versus less prominent bloggers and compare their backgrounds. The study uses quantitative content analysis and framing analysis of chosen media outlets and interviews with bloggers, marketeers and media professionals. The findings trace an increase in media coverage of bloggers post January 25th, 2011, especially in the prominent bloggers category, and an overall positive framing of bloggers post the uprising. This led to the mainstreaming of bloggers into the media as well as public work, which had various implications on the freedom they had over their content and voice, both online and offline. It also points to a dramatic decrease in bloggers’ activity on their blogs in favour of mainstream and social media and due to star bloggers becoming more career-oriented and their failure to make blogs financially sustainable. The findings also indicate that more prominent bloggers seem to come from more elite backgrounds than others and enjoy luxuries that allow them the time, technology and security to post online. This research concludes that the shifts in bloggers’ status post-January 25th have limited the plurality they add to the discourse in Egypt.

This research has analysed the role of Internet memes in the contemporary Russian alternative discourse. It has identified memes as the Internet common language that users exploit to communicate on all topics and also utilise as the mind-bombs to influence the political discourse. This project focused on the employment of memes in the deliberation of the Crimean crisis in the Russian Twitter in 2014. Pro-government and anti-government activists have used this format of texts to promote their agenda and interpret the events, discuss political leaders, contest symbols of state propaganda and alternative narratives. The study is highly original as it followed the development of memes in real time; the interviews collected with the prominent meme makers and sharers stand out as the testaments of direct participants of this process. The subsequent in-depth analysis of the distributed memes unveiled the prevailing themes, narratives and symbols that shape the political and social discussion between the elites and resistance in contemporary Russia. This research on the role of the Internet memes in political deliberation of the Crimean crisis contributed to the under-studied field of political uses of memes in a non-Western authoritarian environment. The conceptual framework includes recent theory on the Internet memes, tactical activism, connective action, carnivalesque resistance, individual action frames and creativity for politics. Internet memes have proven to be a popular vehicle of critical political communication in Russian social networks due to the ease of producing and sharing, opportunity for self-expression and receiving feedback to one’s creativity and benefits of anonymity that escapes censorship and protects activists. My study has revealed that memes are limited in the sophistication of the ideas they can convey and in maintaining a long-term meaningful discourse; they serve as the in-jokes of digital communities; their ambiguity and anonymity challenges community building yet nurtures the spread of ideas; therefore, memes are more likely to serve as disruptive mind-bombs that connect ideas rather than individuals. This research has documented and analysed the media and political developments in Russia during 2011-2014 and provided suggestions for further research on the utilisation of entertaining artful texts for political deliberation, formation of the alternative discourse and political mobilisation in the restricted Russian media ecology.

In 2010, in response to the announcement that the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) would be reducing the annual grant given to the British Council, the organisation announced it would increase its virtual presence. This thesis examines the organisation’s new social media strategy and evaluates whether it is aligned with the British Council’s core purposes. Using case study analysis, three British Council country office social media channels are reviewed. The analysis is informed by a table of components that are used to evaluate the British Council’s social media. These components and subsequent presentation of results were constructed through research carried out on the British Council, social media and the theoretical perspective of Alexander Vuving’s soft power currencies. Through studying the organisation’s approach to building trust and making relationships worldwide, and also placing the organisation into the context of a contributor to UK “soft power”, this research explores the role this modern means of communication has for a cultural relations organisation.

This study primarily examines the dynamics of the long-term relationship between the BBC World Service and its mainly Muslim Northern Nigerian audiences. It broadly explores the pattern and consequences of Northern Nigerians’ interactions with international media, focusing particularly on their engagement with the BBC World Service. Employing a multidimensional qualitative research approach, the study examines the historical background of the relationship, the transformations it has undergone, and how the current dynamics of global geopolitics and advances in communications technologies are redefining it. It looks at the complex processes and procedures of both media content production and reception. On the production side, it unveils the BBC’s contradictory functions of providing ‘impartial’ international news service and promoting British public diplomacy, the complexity of its relationship with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and the nature of its engagement with distribution technologies. On the reception side, the mainly Muslim Northern Nigerians are found to be high consumers of BBC news and current affairs programmes but with considerable level of selectivity. Although they see BBC as the most credible international broadcaster that aids their comprehension of international affairs and generally influences their everyday life, they still regard it as essentially a Western cultural and ideological instrument that portrays the West positively and depicts the Muslim world and Africa negatively. The findings point to patterns and particularities of postcolonial transnational audiences’ consumption of media that suggest new conceptual and theoretical strands in reception research. They indicate audiences’ tendency to exhibit a phenomenon of selective believability in their interactions with transnational media; the mediating role of religion, culture and ideology in such interactions; and the dynamics of credibility and believability. Credibility is found to be a necessary but not sufficient condition for believability in audiences’ consumption of dissonant media messages.

Online anonymity has been an important element in scholarly debates on the role of the internet in modern day democracy. Proponents of the right to anonymity argue that it helps secure users' privacy, autonomy and freedom of speech. Critics, on the other hand, see the act of withdrawing identity information as a way to limit or avoid responsibility for one's actions. Despite large amount of evidence that the role of anonymity on the internet is diverse and context sensitive, researchers have observed a unidirectional trend towards its limitation or even complete elimination. The process, which might be called de-anonymisation of online spaces, is influenced by what Lessig (2006) described as four main forces shaping internet’s architecture: law, technology, market and social norms. But it also features at the level of discourse, which so far has received very little academic attention. The meanings, values and power struggles underlying the debate on online anonymity have also been largely ignored in Central and Eastern European contexts. In order to close this gap, this study examines a case from Poland, in which an identity of an anonymous blogger was revealed by a mainstream newspaper. It also investigates the broader characteristics of the coverage of online anonymity in the Polish press. By employing content and discourse analyses, and drawing on the work of critical internet scholars, it offers first empirical evidence that newspapers in Poland can be agents of de-anonymisation. Specifically, the findings reveal the debate on online anonymity is characterised by four key conflicts: 1) a conflict over the status of journalists and internet users in online deliberation; 2) a conflict over the vision of the digital public sphere; 3) a conflict over Poland's democratisation process; and 4) a conflict of values underlying perceptions of online anonymity.

There has been a growing literature concerning the role of online technologies in fostering collective action in democratic countries (Bennett and Segerberg, 2012, 2013; Bimber et al., 2005). However, studies in non-democratic settings have tended to focus on high profile but often relatively short-term mobilisations. Longer-term online activism and campaigns outside democratic settings have remained relatively under-researched and difficult to analyse. This thesis, therefore, seeks to examine some of the existing assumptions around collective action, derived largely from experiences in democratic countries, by focusing on a country with no tradition of collective activism. It draws on Bennett and Segerberg’s (2013) framework of connective action logic, to analyse two case studies from Saudi Arabia:the Women’s Right to Drive Campaign (October 26th campaign), and the Teachers’ Rights campaign. In particular, this study examines the role of the Internet in three areas: (a) mobilising support for campaigns; (b) shaping the organisational structure of collective action; and (c) challenging the systemic environment. In order to address these issues, the thesis draws on two types of data: firstly, extensive interviews with campaigners and international journalists and secondly, social network analysis. Final results indicate that Internet technologies have help to create a new space, allowing social campaigners to express themselves without significant disruption and to achieve some of their goals, although the social and political context plays an equally important role in shaping campaigns as technology does. It has also proved a useful tool for countering media hostility and negative coverage. The Internet did not affect the organisational structure of either of these campaigns, which still followed a hierarchal structure even though some started as ‘connective action’.

Like many organisations in the 21st century, longstanding civil society organisations are facing new challenges in adapting to the digital age. This thesis addresses those concerns through an exploration of the social meaning and contextualised effects of digital activism at case study Amnesty International. It provides a socio-cultural account of AI and a conceptual perspective on digital activism as part of Amnesty's digitalisation processes. It explores existing concerns around the tension between the potential of digital activism for more decentralised, grassroots movements through broadened political participation, and the more centralised and hierarchical structures developed by long-standing humanitarian organisations - a problem which has been described as the tension between networks and hierarchies (e.g. Lindgren 2013a: 24-25) or between sovereignty and networks (Galloway & Thacker 2007: 1). This study contends that there are analytical issues and conceptual implications in describing the new activism as "digital", as what I shall call "digitality" here is neither the sole nor the primary feature along which activism has changed in recent years. The study will argue that digital activism is conceptually dysfunctional because practices described as digital activism aren't always based predominantly on digital activities, which is reflected in participants' descriptions of the phenomenon. Digitality as a descriptor is therefore misleading. The concepts of networked activism (activism based on wide social networks as facilitated by digital technology) and hybrid activism (activism based on top-down and bottom-up co-construction) will therefore be suggested as potentially more suitable descriptions or categories for what has thus far been called digital activism. Those attributes were highlighted as the dominant characteristics of the new activism by study participants. The thesis further argues that humanitarian organisations are facing difficulties in conceptualising and adopting digital activism to the extent that digital activism has become disruptive to them. For that purpose, the thesis draws on Simon Lindgren's (2013a) work on the sociology of digital disruption. The thesis argues that digital disruption occurs as a result of digital activism challenging hierarchical organisational structures, practices, and cultures, leading to structural and cultural changes. It further argues that, in response to the cultural and structural challenges posed by digital activism, the organisation is moving away from an understanding of digital activism and culture as something that is digital towards something that is networked, which is reflected in participant views and the organisation' restructuring of its digital work from a centralised to a networked model. There are also tentative efforts at Amnesty International to move beyond a network model towards co-constructive (hybrid) working practices with its constituencies. As evidence for the disruptive potential of digital activism the thesis will provide staff members' differing views of digital media and digital activism, uncertainty surrounding the terminology for digital activism, and the organisation's continuously changing integration of digital work (digitalisation). The findings draw on data from a multi-method quasi-ethnographic case study of digital activism conceptualisations and practices at Amnesty International. The methods include participant observation offline at the organisation's headquarters in London, online observation in the internal Amnesty International Social Media Managers' Facebook group, and 20 interviews with AI staff members.