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People with disabilities have traditionally occupied stigmatised identities due to less conventional ways of operating in daily life. The online medium with its absence of visible identity markers, which have typically determined how a person is read offline, combined with the constructive potential embedded within a largely textual medium, potentially, bring together greater control and flexibility in identity construction. The online medium, therefore, may offer social benefits to people with disabilities that are not available in other contexts. This research discursively explores what kinds of experiences are available for people with disabilities online. It argues that the online medium offers alternative subjectivities for positioning people with disabilities in the social world. Discursive findings, however, also show that operating online within a disabled identity creates marginalised experiences.Discourse analysis, underpinned by a social constructionist philosophy, which emphasises the constructive nature of language in creating experience, is utilised as a methodology for gathering and analysing data. I have adopted Gilbert and Mulkay's (1984) concept of an 'interpretative repertoire' to manage the construction of discursive patterns identified in the data. Semi-structured interviews with 21 people with physical and sensory disabilities, who used the online medium daily, or several times per week, were carried out. Participants were recruited from various disability organisations in New Zealand and were invited to take part in an online interview via email, or another online communication program of their choice. Participants were met in person prior to the interviews to confirm the researcher's credibility and to build rapport.Seven key repertoires were identified in the data, with each one organised around several discursive resources. A choice to disclose repertoire allows disability to become a flexible feature of identity to be revealed and/or concealed in a contextualised and occasioned fashion. The accessing a socially valued subjectivity repertoire enables people with disabilities to position themselves as valued members of the social world, free of the physical and psychological barriers constructed by others that surround disabled identities. A transcendence repertoire functions in the talk of people with disabilities by surpassing the physical, social, and psychological limitations arising from having to operate within a disabled body, allowing far greater capacity for participation. A participating in the world repertoire affords people with disabilities the opportunity to be part of a wider community of relationships, people, interests, activities, and information, creating a sense of global belonging and connection. The keeping safe and qualified deception repertoires, together, enable people with disabilities to successfully manage the dilemma of participating in a medium where there is potential for substantial self-gain as well as harm. In contrast to the repertoires available for experiencing alternative subjectivities, which operate outside the oppression of disabled identities, a disabling differentials repertoire demonstrates the social disadvantages surrounding disabled identities online. Discursive findings are discussed in relation to disembodiment, as the online medium enables abilities to extend beyond the body, lifting the ceiling on standard ways of operating. This opens up psychological benefits as people with disabilities are afforded opportunities to access and participate within many dimensions of social life. At a collective level, political implications associated with the absence online of disabled identities are raised. Issues of technopower are also mentioned, along with future research directions. Overall, participants' constructions demonstrate how the online medium makes available a social space where people with disabilities can temporarily step outside the physical, social, and psychological constraints of operating within disabled subjectivities. This was cherished and celebrated.

Rural experiences are under-represented in the end-of-life care literature. In addition, population projections indicate that the numbers of older rural people are increasing. In an attempt to better understand their needs, this study considers how older people experience end-of-life (EOL) care in a rural New Zealand setting. Having responded to local media and community notices, seven participants, who in the last eighteen months had cared for someone over the age of 65 with a terminal illness, spoke about their experience of rural EOL care. Their stories were then transcribed and analysed, using narrative analysis. Participants spoke about similar issues, but from different, sometimes conflicting, perspectives. Positioning themselves primarily as carers, rather than as rural people, the participants’ stories nevertheless reflected their social location for caring, as they talked about exhaustion and needing 24 hour support; limited access to specialist palliative care services; and the difficulties of caring for people with complex needs. At the same time they spoke of the joys and rewards of caring. The ambivalence and conflict evident in the stories indicates the participants’ location in a particular place and time in the history of dying. Caught between two paradigms of care, these participants vacillate between the desire for the empathic, compassionate care of yesteryear and the best that modern medical technology can offer. Discussing when to continue and when to stop medical intervention produced the most conflicting perspectives. However, all agreed that having time to form therapeutic relationships is a key component of EOL care. Overall, the stories demonstrate that the multiple and complex experiences of older rural people render stereotypical assumptions about rural life and dying at home problematic. However, as this study demonstrates, simply talking with people provides access to and understanding of their lived realities. Incorporating this kind of approach in future rural EOL care planning will move us closer to achieving contemporary goals of positive ageing and dying well.

Despite evidence to the contrary, policy makers, some researchers and many who provide health and social services to sex workers continue to reflect and reinforce the notion that sex workers are dysfunctional and constitute a threat to public health. This thesis presents the results of a study which explicitly examined how indoor sex workers look after their psychological wellbeing. Twelve participants (who had worked as sex workers for at least 3 years) took part in semi-structured interviews and discussed how they looked after themselves both at work and in their wider social context. Interviews were transcribed and analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Two main themes emerged from the data. The first, “doing sex work”, relates to workplace practices. The second theme, “being a sex worker”, relates to how the women understand their experience of being a sex worker in their social context and how they care for themselves in this arena; also apparent in this theme are aspects related to entry and exit of the industry. All participants took part in the study to increase understanding of and social justice for sex workers. Most of the participants see sex work as having a positive contribution to their personal growth. The findings show that participants are resilient and employ self-care practices that are commonly used by many in occupations that deal with people or who are stigmatised in some way. Major conclusions drawn from the study are that working in a supportive environment, prior understandings of sex work, personal traits and reasons for entering the sex industry are closely related to positive psychological wellbeing.

When people migrate to a new country, they experience changes in many areas of life. Migrants are faced with the challenges of making sense of as well as dealing with these changes in life. This research is interested in understanding the experiences of Chinese migrants in New Zealand as well as exploring how to conduct 'psychological intervention‘ work with recent Chinese migrants to deal with the challenges associated with migration. This research consists of two parts. The first part is concerned with developing a better understanding of the way Chinese migrants make sense of their experiences after migrating to New Zealand. In this part, focus groups were held and a discursive approach was used to analyze participants' accounts. Findings from this part show that negotiating meanings for "migration" and "fitting in" is the central process for Chinese migrants to make sense of their migratory experiences in New Zealand. In this meaning-making process, Chinese cultural meanings provide useful discursive resources for Chinese migrants to draw upon to better understand their experiences of migrating from China to New Zealand. Chinese sayings, such as "fish or bear‘s paw", "loss are accompanied by gain", "life is about negotiating loss and gain", are used by Chinese migrants in ways that allow them more flexibility in constructing their experiences in New Zealand. More importantly, adopting a dialectical sense-making embedded in traditional Chinese cultural knowledge is helpful for participants to transfer their discursive constructions from negative to positive aspects of their migration experiences. The second part of this research involves exploration and application of a culturally appropriate 'psychological intervention‘ with recent Chinese migrants in transition from living in China to living in New Zealand. This part draws upon the findings from the first part of the research. In the second part, two groups of participants were invited to attend a three-session group intervention. Useful discursive constructions around flexible meanings of "migration" and "fitting in" found in the first part of the research were introduced to participants. A discursive analytical approach was used to observe how participants take up these introduced meanings and to examine the discursive changes throughout the three group sessions. The second part of the research illustrates that participants took up the introduced meanings of "migration" and "fitting in" as a flexible process, and use these to further co-construct helpful meanings to negotiate their 'problematic‘ experiences. In all, this research articulates the importance of cultural meanings and cultural ways of making sense of migratory experiences by Chinese migrants. It also shows the importance of building a shared experience, making use of Chinese cultural meanings, and taking a social constructionist approach in psychological intervention work with Chinese migrants. The implications of this research are discussed in terms of further research on migrants' experiences and how to conduct 'psychological interventions' with Chinese migrants.

The study explored the relationship between retirement and marital status and objective and subjective measures of social support. A secondary analysis was conducted on a sample of 6,662 men and women aged 55-70 years of age. Results of a series of 2-way ANOVAs revealed greater interaction with friends amongst retired individuals than those who were employed. Marital status was shown to be associated with interaction with family and levels of perceived social support. An interaction between retirement and marital status was also shown to influence levels of perceived social support. The results reveal that retirement and marital status have an individual and interaction effect on various measures of social support and indicate the importance of considering marital status when researching, educating and working with issues regarding retirement and social support.

To be successful, social network sites need continual activity to flourish and grow. One of the most important challenges faced by designers of social network sites, is to encourage contribution from community members. ‘Self-sustainability’ is critical to the survival of networked communities and is dependent on community members adding content in a sustained way over time. Motivating community members to take it upon themselves to freely contribute information is the key to the success of any social network environment (Powazek, 2002; Ling et al., 2005). This thesis aims to investigate whether persuasion techniques can be used to inform the design process in order to motivate members of a social network community to contribute content. While persuasion theories have been effective in influencing target behaviour outside of the online environment, traditionally they have not been utilised by digital media designers. With the advent of social media, the application of social psychology is becoming more valuable in the development of features and strategies for the online environment. Recently the field of Captology has begun to systematically investigate computers as persuasive technology. Within this field, this thesis has investigated using the ‘Elaboration Likelihood Model’ (ELM) as a strategic framework and ‘Social Proof’ as a motivating influence to develop peripheral elements designed to encourage user online contribution, and to design a site that is visually appealing and functional. This is essential in establishing the credibility of the site without which the influences of persuasion are unable to function. This Masters ‘research through design’ project engages an existing community group of water sports enthusiasts in a trial of a live prototype website. The website was designed to utilise the internet as a medium and social networking as a tool, in order to gather individual knowledge, give it a context, and to create a self-sustaining collective knowledge base of locations, optimum conditions and user experiences. Users were divided randomly into two groups – the test and the control. Using ELM, the peripheral and central routes of processing communication were identified, and used to build the framework on which to develop the test environment. Both groups were exposed to the same fundamental design and functionality, however the test group was presented with additional peripheral elements designed using the principles of Social Proof. The research charted user contributions over the course of 82 days, with a survey undertaken with both groups at the completion of the test period. Results indicated a significant difference between the two test groups with users exposed to the influences of Social Proof more motivated to contribute content and visit the website more often than users from the control group. The findings of this study show that motivating contribution can be achieved using ELM and Social Proof to design persuasive elements in a social networking environment. The synthesis of graphic design, interface design and the theories of social science can guide designers in the creative process of developing networked environments for social media, and lead to a more engaging user experience.