This thesis presents work on athlete pose estimation in single-view broadcast videos. Human pose estimation is an important problem in computer vision and has received much interest in the research community due to the wide range of applications. This thesis presents a novel framework for the semi-automatic estimation of human pose in television quality sports footage. The focus is on achieving accurate pose estimation results on sports video sequences, with the assistance of a human operator in a broadcast studio setting, that can be used to drive post-action analysis and graphical overlays. A method for extracting and tracking off-the-shelf scale-invariant features on athletes is tested. Evaluation shows that such features are ill-suited for tracking articulated motion due to drift, data association, and a general lack of stable features to track. A keyframe-driven approach, inspired by the Pictorial Structures model, is developed for estimating 2D pose of athletes in sports sequences. This approach models the human body as a tree of loosely linked parts and introduces a temporal smoothness term aimed at ensuring temporal consistency of pose throughout the sequence. The evaluation demonstrates that such an approach is able to extract human pose in such videos, but requires a significant amount of manual interaction to do so with accuracy required for broadcast settings. A novel non-sequential method for maximising benefit from manually annotated keyframe poses using minimum spanning trees is developed. The developed algorithm serves two purposes: keyframe selection, and keyframe information propagation. Optimal keyframes are automatically selected and suggested to the operator for labelling. Once labelled, information from these keyframes is propagated throughout the sequence and automatically generated keyframes are created in visually similar frames. Qualitative and quantitative evaluation demonstrates an increase in accuracy and a decrease in the number of required keyframes. Finally, a geometric method for converting 2D poses into 3D is developed. The algorithm assumes a weak perspective projection for the video sequence and known relative limb lengths for the athlete, and is able to recover the relative scale given at least three labelled keyframes by solving a continuous optimisation problem. Evaluation against a baseline geometric method shows improved stability and lower residual error.

The new communication technology and its implications on national and international relations has been one of the key debates during the last two decades. This received a new impetus with the emergence of Direct Broadcasting Satellite (DBS) together with the convergence of electronic information processing, data bank and telecommunication networks in a single system known as telematic. The DBS system has received increasing attention since it offers a wide range of choice to people. However, in many countries it is also suspected of ravaging culture and sovereignty, while undermining national broadcasting. This sentiment is not shared by all societies and governments, since some believe it has also enhanced freedom and democracy. The penetration of DBS in Iran began since 1993, when people in the capital and other major cities began to receive images transmitted by dozens of foreign broadcasters. Within a short period of time, satellite became one of the most focal points of interest of the Iranian people and continued alongside the installation of satellite dishes. In April 1994, the state fired the first volley as a warning to the viewers and demonstrated that the period of tolerance was over. This reaction deeply involved government, Majles (Parliament), press and people in an intensive course of satellite discourse followed by fuqaha (pl. Faqih - jurisconsultant in Islamic law) intervention. Here, each group of participants branched out and took different stances; some appeared in favour, while others stood against foreign satellites. Accordingly, the Islamic Republic of Iran passed a bill which prohibited the reception of satellite signals. However, at the same time it put forward a project for developing national radio and television. In this study, the introduction, penetration and the impact of DBS on the Iranian media sphere, particularly on the broadcasting system, within the context of globalisation, will be discussed. It will also focus on the responses of the Islamic Republic to DBS, by looking at their perspectives and the measures they have taken since the popularisation of DBS in Iran from 1993 until 1997.

This thesis examines the symbolic construction of rurality within a key site of contemporary cultural reproduction, television. In particular, it undertakes a semiotic analysis of ruralities in the popular texts of series television drama, and then relates these to the thoughts and practices of programme makers charged with their creation. The thesis defines a space for greater critical reflection upon popular media texts within the context of a broader cultural turn taking place across the humanities and social sciences. It demonstrates how the endeavour of contemporary rural studies is defined, in part, by this movement of ideas, but argues that it has failed to adequately explore the relationship between television and the cultural construction of rurality. This absence is surprising given the ubiquitous nature of these discourses in everyday life and a spate of highly popular televisual forms that appear to draw heavily on notions of rurality. The thesis takes as its substantive focus for discussion the series dramas Dangerfield, Heartbeat and Peak Practice, demonstrating the way rural identities are constructed in a variety of ways through their texts. It begins by highlighting a predominantly idyllic construction of rural setting at work in these dramas and the way that established social relations of these settings are built around a culturally competent set of problem solving, middle class, incomers. The analysis goes on to reveal how narrative conflict at work in these symbolic worlds defines the social relations of rurality in both a positive and negative fashion, and highlights the way that rural identities will often be transformed, as well as affirmed, over the unfolding of narrative events.

In this thesis, I discuss media representations of social class. My particular focus is on entertaining television formats and as an empirical example, I analyse the BBC Three docusoap People Like Us (2013l). To explore how social class is reflected in and impacts on the production of the programme, I conduct interviews with people participating in it, carry out a discourse analysis of its content and also attempt a small-scale audience research to get an understanding of how the programme was perceived. Theoretically, my research is framed by a Bourdieusian conception of social class and relevant related concepts like habitus, doxa and symbolic violence. I come to the conclusion that class divisions are clearly reflected and played out in the media field in multiple, interlinked ways. In the discourse analysis of People Like Us (2013l) I show how negative working-class stereotypes structure the programme narratively. I demonstrate how these stereotypical and reductionist images are artificially constructed and how they are linked with contemporary political discourses around class. Furthermore, I discuss how class hierarchies structure access to and power over the production of media output and underpin a division of labour that divides people into subjects and objects of representations largely along class lines. In the analysis of my empirical example, I explore the exploitative nature of this constellation and also the (moral) value that is attached to the respective class positions. Bourdieu makes the point that media representations are part of a wider class struggle. The analysis carried out in this research very much confirms this assessment, however, in the field of large-scale cultural production these battles are fought with very unequal weapons. The discourse analysis of my chosen empirical example explores, in connection with the conducted interviews with participants of the programme, a number of instances of very manipulative editing that cannot just be explained by the genre-typical requirements and the intention of the programme to entertain.

This study explores three dimensions of the relationship between Al Jazeera channel and the Qatari state: the administrative, the financial and the editorial. Moreover, it investigates 1) whether journalists of the channel are able to enjoy complete professional autonomy in their selection of news stories, 2) whether or not they have the freedom to discuss Qatari issues without any editorial interference and 3) whether they can avoid revealing their news sources. In addition to that, the study explores the importance of Arab cultural identity in news making on the channel. Finally, it examines whether any of the four theories of press identified by Schramm are applicable. To achieve these aims, the study uses three academic methods: the case study, the content analysis and the interview methods. The study concluded that, though the channel has a large amount of freedom more than any other Arab news organisation, still it is an official Qatari media news organisation, launched, financed administrated by the Qatari government. It was launched as a new media innovation in Qatar to promote the principles of democracy and the values of free media in Arab world. However, partly because of its origins as a project introduced by the Qatari state, it tends not to contradict or oppose the general policy of Qatar. One of the key conclusions of the research is that journalists working for the channel do not enjoy complete professional autonomy and that they cannot freely select or choose the news they want to deal with; they cannot discuss Qatari sensitive issues in the talk shows or other programmes and that they experience significant pressure to reveal their news sources. This lack of freedom is imposed under the editorial system of the organisation. The thesis argues that the channel has three types of relationship with Qatari state. Firstly, the Qatari government provides the channel with the annual budget that secures the channel’s financial resources to maintain its work and its media and editorial policy. Secondly, a strong regulatory and administrative framework compels the channel to comply with all governmental regulations that relate to the Amiri decree which established the channel and its amended articles. Finally, the thesis argues that the editorial policy indirectly denies journalists opportunities to cover Qatari affairs which might embarrass the government. Thus, there is evidence of a significant dependency upon the Qatari state which means that none of Schramm’s ‘four theories of the press’ are directly applicable. The thesis concludes that journalists only enjoy a relative professional autonomy constrained and circumscribed by the external pressures described above.

This research study has been carried out for the purpose of thoroughly examining and evaluating "liNE 1088 ", an interactive live cultural / informational TV programme, on the Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation (CYBC, the State Channel of Cyprus), of which I am the researcher and presenter. The CYBC, as a public service institution, is the only TV channel in Cyprus to offer programmes of this kind on a regular basis. At this point in time, especially now that Cyprus has joined the ED, the people of Cyprus need to be educated and informed on many matters that concern them, especially those which are relevant to the multicultural dimensions of Europe, and the many ways in which they affect their life. The aim of the project is to examine ways and forms of improving the TV programme "LINE 1088" in order to maximise the viewers' participation in the programme in accordance with the EU's directives on public broadcasting. The objectives of the study have been, mainly through an extensive audience research, to ascertain the strong points and the shortcomings of the programme as a whole, to what extent it meets the expectations of its audience, as well as how its overall quality may be improved. For this research a "mixed method" approach was adopted in order to collect data., using quantitative and qualitative research techniques. For the purpose of achieving validity, I used multiple data collection techniques and a range of sources of information namely four different kinds of surveys: literature review, existing viewing pools and the review of five transcripts with findings from one research technique checked against the findings from the research of another type. The results of the project led to a set of recommendations for the overall improvement of my programme as well as to a working model (pro to-type), for the CYBC which could fit into a more global picture of broadcasting and thus motivate society to become more actively concerned with cultural socialisation A working model which should not be static, but embody the time dimension and gradually become polymorphic. This vision should have as broad a range as possible. This working model could become a manual for public television and contribute to cultural development and to a society of active citizens. The project is the product of lifelong research, learning and experience in the media and in culture. Being the fIrst of its kind in Cyprus it will, I hope, contribute to a new body of knowledge in this field and will also become a valuable tool in a wider context.

The impetus of this research was to consider the implications of interactivity and convergence for television's textual and industrial forms in relation to the BBC's status as a public service broadcaster. In particular the thesis focuses on the events of a historical period book-ended by two particularly significant shifts in strategy. In April 2006 the BBC announced Creative Future, its five-year editorial Vision. One of the earliest, and most significant, reforms to be implemented was a profound organisational restructuring to 'enable 360-degree commissioning and production and ensure creative coherence and editorial leadership across all platforms and media' (BBC, 2006a). This institutional transformation represented the full-scale adoption of a mUlti-platform and multi-media approach to commissioning, producing and distributing public service 'content' first embarked upon in the early 2000s. Taking as its springboard the provocative statement made by Ashley Highfield, the BBC's Director of New Media and Technology, in 2001 that: 'The days of commissioning programmes are over. We are now only commissioning projects that have levels of interactivity', the thesis traces the emergence of the BBC's multi-platform 'Project' as industrial strategy, as cultural form and as progenitor of the 360-degree approach to 'building public value'. Following an introduction, chapter one traces the most influential regulatory, industrial, institutional, and cultural moments of the Project's pre-history. The chapter provides a survey. of literature around thorny concepts such as 'interactivity' and 'convergence' and of earlier research into the similarities and differences of the BBC and Channel4's nascent digital strategies at the tum of the millennium. Finally there is a discussion of the impact of Channel 4's Big Brother as pioneering mUlti-platform format on the UK media production landscape: Chapter two outlines how this thesis seeks to address, in some part, the lack of engagement with industrial production within television studies. Drawing on Caldwell's notion of critical industrial practice (2006), the chapter forwards the notion that the productivity of the experimental multi-platform text might actually be understood in terms of its functioning as a site for reflexive practices, and as a 'performance of context'. The chapter also introduces key work on the modelling of viewer/user engagements across and within dispersed textualities, and also how a public service context may serve to re-frame such industrial strategies. The remaining three chapters advance the thesis' aim to originate a chronological typology of early Project textual configurations, each taking a textual configuration and a genre as their focus. Chapter three locates its analysis of a granular Project within the contextual registers of its commission: firstly to experiment with the drama genre using interactivity; secondly to pilot extremely localised content to a discrete viewing group utilising a 'new' technology; thirdly to use these tools to re-connect with a local community seen as part of an estranged audience. Chapter four compares two weblTV game/shows to delineate the woven Project's attempts to marshall and mobilise communities of interest, in particular appealing to an increasingly elusive youth demographic. It also traces an increasing emphasis on the desire to experiment with the harnessing of viewer/user 'play' and creative 'co-production' as means of delivering a re-formulated public service as pUblic value, for the digital age. Chapter five explores the aesthetics and production. practices of bundled Projects as their template developed, engaging in particular with how they mobilise notions of quality as delineated by Charlotte Srunsdon (1997) and, later, Helen Wheatley (2004), of viewer/user participation and of 'Sritishness' in order to drive digital take-up through Ihiking landmark television with digital 'content'. The chapter concludes with an exploration of how bundled Projects contributed to the evolution of the '360degree commissioning' strategy, of its centrality to the SSC's Creative Future vision and of the ramifications of the SSC's adoption of this vision for in-house and independent producers, as well as for its relationship with its viewers/users. The thesis concludes with a reflection on how the work here will help arm television studies' future examination of the second wave of multi-platform Projects that are emerging as Creative Future's 'Find, Play, Share' initiative, launched in late 2007, takes shape.

The technological, sociological and cultural position of television, as a method of delivering content, has been the subject of much academic debate in the past twenty years. Perceived threats to television have emerged through the convergence of technologies, which has enabled traditional media forms to take on the characteristics of each other. As a result there is no such thing as a dominant communications medium in the 21st Century, as shared technological characteristics mean that the user can access a multitude of content through one single device. Some believe that television is on the wane, leading to dire predictions of the ‘death’ of television. For others, if television is to survive and develop as a communications medium, it needs to take on one element of convergence by becoming more interactive. There is a substantial amount of academic work which suggests how television can achieve this and what the content provided will do. However, these are merely suggestions, as there is no research which looks at what interactive content actually is. The assumption for scholars, who believe that interactive television is a viable format, is that it is inevitable that interactivity will become an everyday element of television use. Ideas as to how this can be achieved have been put forward but have not been followed up. This research aims to fill that empirical gap and is informed not by what could be but what is. It is clear that digital television has allowed for an additional stream of information to be accessed, through the red button on the remote control. This content provides a variety of options for the viewer, however, the key question, which this research is addressing, is how much of it is interactive? Additional research is now needed to establish just how much of this content exists, what the red button allows the audience member to do and how. Therefore it is necessary to measure and quantify the amount of red button content across a sample of channels, which represent the three types of broadcasting comprising the British broadcasting landscape; public service (the BBC), commercial (ITV) and subscription (Sky).

This thesis examines the media representation of The Daily Show’s ‘Rally to Restore Sanity’ and the way the rally participants engaged with it. This was a unique event because of the speculation and ambiguity that surrounded it which included characterisations of activism for civil discourse, advocacy for Democrats in the run up to the Congressional mid-term election, to those labelling it as a mass comedy/music event. Also, given that The Daily Show was shifting from its television platform to the field of public protest, this was an opportunity to examine whether the rally could push the boundaries of satire by instigating a more civilised tone in America’s political news discourse. The rally would also be an opportunity to better understand the type of people that engaged with this hybrid satire event and whether their attendance was an act of civic participation.

Launching in 2006, Al Jazeera English (AJE) set out to challenge the dominance of Western-based organisations in the field of international English-language news broadcasting. Ambitions of ‘balancing the current typical information flow by reporting from the developing world back to the West’ directly link the organisation to longstanding debates on asymmetric global news flows (AJE Website, Corporate Profile, 04/09/2008). In this context, the aim of my thesis is to develop a theoretical framework that allows to conceptualise two related aspects: 1) assessing degrees of both similarities and differences between AJE and established Western-based news broadcasters and 2) addressing underlying mechanisms that begin to explain degrees of difference that AJE has managed to carve out in the field of international television news. On the basis of a critical realist ontology, I combine Bourdieu’s concepts of field, habitus and capital with an understanding of agency as advanced by Archer. While the first allows me to conceptualise the relational nature of questions of news flows on the level of journalistic practices (which in the past have primarily been the domain of macro-theory), the latter serves to acknowledge the role of the reflexive powers of the individual when it comes to professional trajectories and editorial decision making. Combined, these approaches are uniquely positioned to explore the complexities of a news organisation aiming to be simultaneously similar enough to be on a par with established networks and different enough to live up to aims of ‘reporting back’. My findings suggest that overall, in accordance with its remit, AJE focussed on the global South and on people outside the realms of power to a greater extent than BBC World News, while in other areas asymmetries at odds with AJE’s remit (such as gender imbalances or an association of the South with conflict) were found to be reproduced. This dialectic was reflected in the channel’s organisational environment, where a relatively autonomous position, characterised by a largely non-commercial outlook, provided actors with a rare degree of autonomy, the utilisation of which, however, continues to be contingent on an ongoing negotiation between AJE’s twin aims of (professional) similarity and (editorial) difference.