The scale of modern surveillance and the debate surrounding its nature have become expansively complex. Consequently, the field of communication and surveillance studies represent a critical area of scholarship with interwoven academic, policy and social implications. This thesis, a critical ideological study of modern surveillance founded upon an empirical study, draws on participant observation, militant ethnography and semistructured interviews as research methods. From a participant insider perspective, it explores and interprets the experiences, meanings and views of counter-surveillance actors targeted by surveillance based on participant observation and militant ethnography conducted during the 2017 Chaos Communication Congress in Leipzig and the 2019 Chaos Communication Camp in Mildenberg, Germany. Drawing on Jeffrey Juris’ militant ethnography and based on the participants’ own experiences in resisting modern surveillance, I focus on the lessons learned from those belonging to the third-wave of privacy activism. Through their personal experiences, this research reveals control strategies, lessons learned and views of privacy activists, hacktivists and civic-hackers on the state of modern surveillance. This thesis concludes that the current symbiotic nature of the state-corporate surveillance and disinformation nexus means any legislative solution to be unlikely.

The aim of the work is the analysis of gay pornography from a gender perspective, which examines the anchoring process of gender and sexual stereotypes and the present opportunity and space for subversion or alternative reading. Particular attention is paid to the question of what role in the design and interpretation of these potentially subversive or affirmative moments plays a transgression of gender stereotypes and norms and related pornographic conventions based on heterosexist sexual dynamics and hierarchies. Furthermore, this work focuses on examining the role as a potential affirmative or parody pornography plays in relation to gay activism and emancipation movement, that focuses on the representation of collective identity and subculture and the structural transformation of these representations in commercially oriented pornography industry across time. For this purpose, the empirical part analysis of randomly selected gay pornographic images of Czech provenance of certain development stages of this genre in our country with a special emphasis on politics displaying protected and / or unprotected sex, and discursive compliance of these policies and their visual representations.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / This research investigates the engagements between community activists and urban authorities in the provision of sustainable sanitation services in the informal settlements of Khayelitsha Cape Town. Since 2008, there have been contestations on the exclusion of informal settlements in the planning and delivery of sanitation services by the City of Cape Town. The planning and decision-making of sanitation services in the informal settlement is complex due to numerous stakeholders involved and thus not clear on how sustainable sanitation can be achieved. The challenge has been on understanding the level where decision-making in the provision of sanitation services is more effective for sustainable sanitation.

In this thesis, I examine definitions of fan activism in context of the assumption that Millennials are not politically active and that all online political engagement is superficial. I argue that the perception of political apathy is partially due to the fact that some of the most enthusiastic and intensive political work done by this generation is simply not picked up by conventional means. Some of this ‘hidden’ work is being accomplished by way of radical fanworks. Specifically, I examine Harry Potter fanworks and the ways in which they place marginalized identities at center stage, as well as the misogyny and homophobia that underlie the stigmatization and belittlement of fanworks. While many validate fan activism only when it engages with traditional political problems via traditional political means, I advocate for the validation of the cultural politics work done by fandom—of the purposefully transgressive narratives individuals create in defiance of typical cultural stories. To dismiss fandom is to dismiss a critical element of youth culture, and to dismiss the cultural politics of fandom in favor of traditional civic and political engagement by fandoms is to ignore the more radical positions being explored online.

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This thesis examines three important topics in corporate governance: the relationship between activist hedge funds and other institutional investors, the role of perks in the market for CEO talent, and public scrutiny and the changing nature of perks. First, I provide an in depth study of the interaction between activist hedge funds and other institutional investors. Hedge funds are more likely to target firms with high levels of institutional ownership, and demonstrate a preference for short term focused institutional investors. Hedge fund activism generates short run and long run abnormal returns without increasing stock return volatility. Regardless of investment horizon, volatility is inversely related to prior period institutional ownership. The trading behavior of institutional owners with different investment horizons is consistent with hedge fund activism creating value. These findings hold regardless of whether investment horizon is based on portfolio churn rate or type of institution. Overall, the results suggest a mutually beneficial relationship between activist hedge funds and other institutional investors. Second, in a coauthored paper with Drs. Seungijn Han and Jiaping Qiu, I provide the first comprehensive analysis on how CEOs’ wage and perks are jointly determined in a competitive CEO market. The underlying theory shows that in equilibrium, firm size, wage, perks and talent are all positively related. Perks are more sensitive than wage to changes in firm size. The more perks enhance the CEO’s productivity, the faster perks increase in firm size. Closed form solutions allow the recovery of the cost function of providing perks. I examine the determinants of CEO perquisite compensation using hand-collected information for S&P 500 companies and find consistent empirical evidence. Third, I examine the impact of public scrutiny on CEO compensation using the unique opportunity provided by the 2008 financial crisis, government support, and legislated compensation restrictions. I introduce novel data on executive perks at S&P 500 firms from 2006 to 2012. Overall, my results are consistent with increased public scrutiny having lasting impact on perks and temporary impact on wage, and with legislated compensation restrictions having temporary impact on wage. Changes in specific perks items provide evidence on which perks firms perceive as excessive and which provide common value. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Thesis advisor: Marilynn S. Johnson / This dissertation explores the labor and collective organization of domestic workers in metropolitan Boston to uncover the new labor activism of the last half century. In 2014, Massachusetts became the fourth state in the U.S. to pass a Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights. The law, the nation’s most comprehensive at the time, signaled a remarkable triumph for household employees whose collective activism anchored in Boston over four years achieved basic labor protections for tens of thousands. While the tale of this recent success has been captured by journalists and a handful of scholars, my study uncovers a multi-generational history of domestic workers’ fight for dignity and economic justice. I locate the origins of the 2014 victory in the grassroots organizing of pioneering Black, Caribbean, and Latinx women decades earlier. Local domestic workers and their allies sustained three separate waves of collective action during a half century marked by growing economic inequality, a decline in trade unionism, and mounting xenophobia. As I demonstrate, they developed a savvy repertoire of strategies that transformed household employment from a seemingly private, hidden affair into a societal concern requiring government intervention. Ultimately, my dissertation explains the emergence of a powerful and unexpected form of labor organizing--the new labor activism--that is community-based, multi-issue oriented, and propelled by working-class women of color. In directing critical attention to the relatively obscure history of domestic worker organizing, my study joins scholarship that expands analysis beyond the realm of the white male industrial worker to reconsider what constituted work, who comprised organized labor, and how we characterize recent labor history. By examining this particular workers’ movement, I present new insights into the groundswell of labor mobilization that erupted in American cities during the later twentieth century. Historians have accurately cast the period as one of organized labor’s weakness, dormancy, and decline. Even so, by prioritizing community-based campaigns anchored by immigrant and non-white women employed as domestic workers, I demonstrate that they also made it a time of hope and agitation, of rebirth and revival rather than repose. With appreciation for complexity, I gauge their activism not merely in terms of wins and losses, but also in regard to workers’ evolving sense of empowerment alongside their ability to spark larger public policy conversations concerning labor standards, the care economy, and the role of government. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2023. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History.

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The current study intends to investigate how processes related to acquiring well-being support are experienced by feminist activists in Belarus and what are the key ideas and notions in their statements. As a result of collected interviews and performed discourse analysis on the empirical material, the author has concluded that activists position themselves within the notion of productive “activism” where burn-out is considered to be a negative, yet normalized part of activist engagement. To receive support, activists narrate their stories in a manner that aligns with the project-based logic of applications for support. Proving personal un-wellness and committing to getting better through short-term actions, activists design their requests for support as contributions to their continued engagement in activism, submitting to a position where exit from activism is impossible.