This study examines the media habits of young people in Saudi Arabia, in particular their use of the Internet and television, and how use of the Internet impacts upon other activities. Using a combination of methods (focus groups, survey and time diaries) this thesis examines the rate of Internet adoption, the different uses of the Internet that are driving its penetration among the population, and the motives of media users in relation to the adoption and use of the Internet compared with television. The study also includes pertinent information regarding the notion of how the use of new media might be seen to be taking over the use of other types of media, whereby a new medium may replace traditional media if the time for media consumption is limited and if the new medium is regarded as more appealing than traditional media. The study has produced results on three main areas: Firstly, in respect of the interaction between the Internet usage behaviour and television viewing patterns, the study has demonstrated that there is a negative association between both mediums in relation to some activities. In other words, the uses of the Internet for social and entertainment functions displaced TV viewing. However, the relationship between the Internet and TV use is more complex scenario because of the multiple applications offered by the Internet. Secondly, with regard to the use of the Internet and television in a social context, television has become a central part of social life within the household where television represents a main source for family time, particularly in Ramadan while the Internet is a solitary activity where it is used in more private spaces. Thirdly, the key findings concern the gender differences of media use, and factors that might explain gender differences. The study found that Saudi females are less likely to engage in certain online activities such as social networking. Furthermore, Saudi females were also more likely to have their Internet access monitored and circumscribed by family members, with parents controlling the location and the amount of time spent using the Internet.

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This thesis reconceptualises the concept of realism in relation to television using a semiotic approach. The Thesis proposes that "realism" may be used as a tool for the understanding of the place of television texts in the legitimation and representation of social relations. The theoretical approach is based on semiotic work that foregrounds the social constitution of meaning; particularly the work of Barthes on myth, Bakhtin, Kress and Volosinov. From film studies, Bordwell and Nichols are also used. The concepts drawn from their work are applied to a reformulation of realism in direct reference to the signifiers of television texts. Realism is considered in the light of these theories as not one specific form but as a property of all texts: of how a represented "world" is constructed and understood in social life. The study focuses on a small number of the totality of semiotic resources that contribute to the construction of realism in television: camera movement, camera stability and camera position, shot duration and continuity. It provides a detailed transcription and analysis of a number of television texts from different theme areas: the news, police drama and documentary and a game/quiz show. I propose in this thesis that the use of semiotic resources in different ways in different texts produces distinct realisms that in their represented "world" express certain values and interests in respect of wider social relations of power. Television texts are therefore the product of changing social environments and the resources used in their production represent this.

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THE TELEVISION MESSAGE AS SOCIAL OBJECT: A comparative study of the structure and content of television programmes in Britain (excluding public affairs, children's television and shorts). The thesis will be both a theoretical and empirical examination of the applicability of the varieties of analysis of symbolic orders which have been advanced by such writers as Levi-Strauss and Foucault. The thesis is an exploration, through the study of the narrative structure of a series of television drama programmes, of the relationship between television, myths and folktales. Following upon work done principally by Claude Levi-Strauss and Vladimir Propp, but also others writing in the field of semiological and structural analysis, a detailed examination of the video-recorded texts of a thirteen part drama series is presented. It is argued in the context of an examination of, respectively, television and language, television and the mythic, and of the nature of narrative, that the television drama preserves the forms which otherwise might be thought of as particular to oral culture and communication. Television, in its preservation of these forms, and in its generally mythic character, gains its effectiveness thereby and must be understood sociologically in such terns. The effect of such an understanding, it is argued, will be to challenge any comprehension of the medium simply as the particular product of a particular historical period and/or an imposition in culture of one world view on an other. The television message is both a collective product and a transhistorical one. It is argued that on both counts it needs to be understood as a genuine expression of a social need, though in its expression of that need it does not necessarily simply act to preserve existing social and cultural conditions.