In November 2012, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced the implementation of the Local Community Radio Act of 2010, which marks the largest expansion of community radio stations in U.S. history. The act responds to the decade-long community radio movement in which many civilian groups advocated that community radio—an “old-fashioned” yet affordable public medium—still plays a significant role in fostering the expression of diverse voices and citizen participation in this digital era. Despite the successful advocacy effort in the policy-making arena, the real impact of community radio remains a question. Who listens to and participates in community radio? Does the connection between community radio and community exist? This dissertation investigates audience interaction and participation in the U.S. community radio sector, seeking to empirically and theoretically advance audience research in community radio and alternative media in general. Methodologically, this dissertation is based on case studies from two community radio stations KOOP and KPFT in Texas through multiple methods including 5-year ethnographic fieldwork, in-depth interviews with 70 individuals including staff, programmers and listeners, a web-based listener survey with 131 respondents, and a textual analysis of producer-audience communication platforms such as blogs and social networking sites. The results demonstrate the limitations of audience interaction and participation caused by resource constraints and community radio programmers’ tendency to speak with themselves. Therefore, I recommend that community radio broadcasters should consider developing systemic approaches to evaluate and facilitate audience participation, which requires an understanding that the value of community engagement lies beyond audience size or the amount of listener donations. This dissertation concludes that community radio remains relevant in this digital era. This affordable and accessible form of alternative media to some extent bridges a digital divide. The medium also facilitates the development of a genuine relationship between radio programmers and listeners, thus the formation of virtual and real communities. These are the very elements that make meaningful dialogues possible in any communication environment. / text

This thesis began as an audience exploration into early adopters of “podcasting” technology through the journalistic radio program Latino USA, distributed by National Public Radio. An explosion in the use of this new media has changed the way radio networks distribute programming, yet little communications research has been done about the audience. This examination documents how podcast audiences are significantly younger and are both substituting and supplementing traditional media. The study also determined that iPod users are significantly more likely to abandon CDs, listen to less radio, and watch less television as the industry converts from 20th Century analog to 21st Century digital technology. Qualitatively speaking, the podcast audience is highly regarded, but quantitatively small. Despite producer expectations that podcasting is the digital mass media of the future, the data shows audiences to have interpersonal connections to podcasting. As such podcasting remains niche programming and not a true mass medium. / text

Drawing on the fieldwork in a village community in Eastern Thailand, Ban Noen PutsaPluak Ked, this thesis explores the complex relationships between processes of globaIisation, representations in the mainstream media and activist media; and villagers' responses to change. The research, summarised here has three interrelated objectives: First, to examine how globalisation and industrialisation are represented in the mainstream and activist media. Second, to investigate the role played by the activist media in promoting counter visions of possible futures. Thirdly, to investigate the practices and ideas that local people have developed to resist or accept globalisation. The research employs a multi-method approach combining ethnographic methods, a questionnaire survey; textual analysis; and focus groups. The findings point to a complex relationship between mediated representations and visions of modernity. They also demonstrate that villagers' responses are strongly stratified by age, length of residence, and relation to the pivot of the new industriaIisation- a major chemical plant and that they remain strongly influenced by the crucial nexus of traditional Thai society, the patron client system. Additionally, content analysis and critical discourse analysis suggest that Thai news television programmes reproduced both the ideology of globalism and the celebration of consumerism. Moreover, the voices of marginalized groups and local people are also absent from the activist media.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), doing business while keeping the environment and society in mind, has grown in importance to businesses. Companies, and especially multinationals, are communicating their CSR efforts in the hopes to get a positive commercial effect. The way in which audiences perceive these communications is crucial. There is a connection between culture and communication; communication and CSR; and CSR and culture. This thesis studies the influence of culture on the specific type of communication: CSR communication. Two culturally diverse countries, Sweden and Spain, are compared in this exploratory study. Using cross-national comparative surveys and in-depth interviews with people from both countries and placing this into context using cultural background, the relation between culture and CSR communication has been explored. The results support the assumption that the perception of CSR and CSR communication is different between the two groups of respondents. This suggests that the effectiveness of CSR communication can be increased by tailoring it to the specific audience. While the statements cannot be made for the entire ‘next generation of working professionals’, the exploratory study is valuable in making strong indications and suggestions for further research.

Opera is unique among forms of Western classical music and performing arts in that it has always been a popular and accessible form of “cultured” entertainment. As a city with one of the longest and richest histories of opera performance in Texas, San Antonio provides a significant opportunity to survey the relationship between this popular art form and discourses of identity, power, and difference across ethnic, class, and gender divisions. This paper has two aims. First, it investigates the history of opera reception in San Antonio in order to examine changes in the traditional values of its citizens over the past century, focusing on the influence of ethnic identity among German immigrants. Then, it looks at the scholarship on cultural performance in various contemporary situations analogous to that of San Antonio and constructs five key processes of identification that show how individuals contextualize themselves in shared histories and identities through their participation in cultural performance of opera. / text

"Audience costs" models of international relations suggest a purely informational role for domestic politics in conflict settings. Here, domestic politics serve as a rich signal of belligerents' true intentions, allowing them to more quickly resolve disagreements, decreasing the likelihood and duration of war. But if belligerents can have different beliefs about publicly available information, then domestic politics might confuse rather than clarify conflict situations, increasing the likelihood and duration of war. I present empirical evidence of conventional "audience costs" models' shortcomings in explaining the dynamics of the US counterinsurgency efforts in Iraq and the response of Iraqi insurgents to those efforts. I then develop a formal model to show how differences in beliefs between insurgents and counterinsurgents about domestic political audiences in Iraq may have contributed to the prolonged nature of the conflict. I argue that the underlying cause of the conflict's duration is disagreement between belligerents about whether and how Iraqi civilians contribute to a successful counterinsurgency, leading belligerents to disagree not only before fighting about who is likely to win, but during fighting about who is actually winning. / text

In this project, I argue for the importance of public engagement as a method of scholarship for the discipline of creative writing, in writing studies, and the broader humanities. I do so by using historical study, ethnography and survey data, in order to trace the history of creative writing's disciplinarity, define its contemporary practices as socially collaborative and inventive, and show how those practices align with the goals and methods of public engagement projects. This dissertation contributes to a growing body of work in composition studies calling for collaboration between composition and creative writing, and I argue that though creative writers in the academy often participate in what is variously called "community outreach" or "public engagement" activities, that work can and should be more clearly articulated as part of the work of the discipline. Higher education's recent turn toward public engagement--as evidenced by monographs on the subject but also by real-world changes like the addition of language about public engagement to the tenure and promotion guidelines and ten-year plans of many universities--presents a compelling opportunity to re-articulate what it means to be a writer in the university. Work in public engagement provides new access to institutional prestige and funding, and opens connections between the various areas of writing studies in order to better serve university communities, teachers, and students.

ABSTRACT Title: How do you get the students to listen? – A study of Academic Works communication towards students (Hur får du en student att lyssna? – En studie av Academic Works kommunikation mot studenter) Number of pages: 38 (41 including enclosures) Author: Fredrik Hansson Tutor: Peder Hård af Segerstad Course: Media and Communication studies C Period: Autumn 2007 University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Information Science, Uppsala University. Aim: The purpose of this paper is to study the strategies involved in the communication process between an organisation and its target audience. The study also aims to examine the company Academic Work and its communication efforts towards the targeted audience students. Method/Material: In order to examine the aim above, interviews were made with two persons involved in the communication of Academic Work. In addition to the interviews, a questionnaire was carried out at campus Ekonomikum, Uppsala University. Main results: The main result can be summarized as: · Academic Works communications have a lot of resemblance with the papers presented theory. · Events and direct meetings is the communication effort by Academic Work that has the biggest impact on student’s awareness and knowledge of the company. · A large majority of the students at campus Ekonomikum at Uppsala University are interested in working part-time and are aware of Academic Work. Despite this, only a few percents of the students participating in the questionnaire are working or have ever worked for Academic Work. Keywords: Communication, students, Academic Work, target audience, strategies, message, media channel.

På sociala nätverkssidor tillåts användarna att presentera sig själva. Sociala medier ger användarna möjlighet att styra och kontrollera sin presentation på ett annat vis än hur presentationen kan styras i ansikte-mot-ansikte situationer. De sociala medierna tenderar dock att rikta sig till en bredare publik i jämförelse med den interpersonella situationen. Således måste användarna på de sociala medierna ge en konsekvent bild av sig själva för att inte ge en annorlunda självpresentation än den som har givits offline. Hur presentationer online skiljer sig från varandra har nyligen börjat studeras. Exempelvis finner vi en kartläggning om hur Facebook skiljer sig från LinkedIn i användarnas sätt att presentera sig. Fältet efterfrågar dock mer forskning som undersöker enskilda medier för att se om man i det valda mediet har mindre eller större tendenser till att skilja mellan presentationen online respektive offline. Utefter detta har vi identifierat studiens forskningslucka då vi konstaterat att det saknas forskning om hur vi presenterar oss på Instagram. Studiens syfte är att undersöka sociala mediers betydelse för människors självpresentation. Vi valde att tillämpa en kvalitativ metod. Vi genomförde semistrukturerade samtalsintervjuer med sex deltagare. Samtalsintervjun utgjorde den interpersonella offlinepresentationen som därefter jämfördes med onlinepresentationen, vilket utgjordes av deltagarnas instagraminnehåll. Studiens teoretiska ramverk behandlar publikanpassning och tre olika former av missrepresentation: idealisering, uteslutande av demografiska aspekter samt ett ogiltigt självkoncept. Vi har via innehållsanalyser letat efter just dessa fenomen. Studiens resultat visar att självpresentationen på Instagram är ytterst begränsad och dessutom uteslutande av fullständiga kontexter. Vi finner ingen påtaglig publikanpassning utan finner snarare att användarna utgår ifrån att deras följare, publik, är väl insatta i deras liv och därmed förstår den fullständiga kontexten som är utesluten i en uppladdad bild. Resultatet visar också att de tre formerna av missrepresentation inte går att tillämpa på Instagram som socialt medium trots att vi finner små tendenser av idealiserande. Idealiserandet beror antagligen främst på Instagrams tekniska utformning. / At social networking sites, the users are allowed to present themselves. Social media are providing the users with opportunity to control their presentations in a way that is not possible in face-to-face communication. The difference, when it comes to audience, is that the social media sites are tending to speak to a much wider audience than interpersonal situations. This leads to that the users have to communicate a consistent self presentation so that the online presentation will match the presentation given in offline situations. How online and offline presentations differs from each other is a relatively new subject. New studies show how Facebook’s and LinkedIn’s users are presenting themselves differently in these different kinds of mediums. Still, the field of communication and social media are requesting more research on how single mediums tend to differ in the presentation in contrast to the presentation which takes place in real life. Through this, and the fact that Instagram is an unexplored medium, were we able to identify this studies purpose, which is to investigate and create an understanding of the significance that social media has on self presentation. We used a qualitative approach in this study. We executed semi-structured interviews with six participants, which came to be treated as offline presentations of the participants lives. This presentation where later compared with content analysis to the participants Instagram profile. The theoretical framework of this study discusses audience accommodations and three different forms of misrepresentation online: idealizing, exclusion of demographic aspects and an invalid concept of the self. The result of the study shows that the self presentation on Instagram is highly limited and excluding of surrounding contexts. We do not find any substantial audience adjustment but instead that Instagram users tend to presuppose that their audience are well aware of their life and therefor are aware of the full context. The result also shows that the three forms of misrepresentation online cannot be applied on Instagram even if we see some tendency of idealizing.

Online reflective practices that are high-stakes – summatively assessed, or used as evidence for progression or membership in a professional body – are increasingly prevalent in higher education, especially in professional and vocational programmes. A combination of factors is influencing their emergence: an e-learning agenda that promises efficiency and ubiquity; a proliferation of employability, transferable skills and personal development planning policies; a culture of surveillance which prizes visibility and transparency; and teacher preference for what are seen as empowering pedagogies. This thesis analyses qualitative interview data to explore how students and teachers negotiate issues of audience, performance and authenticity in their high-stakes online reflective practices. Using mask metaphors, and taking a post-structuralist and specifically Foucauldian perspective, the work examines themes of performance, trace, disguise, protection, discipline and transformation. The central argument is that the effects of both compulsory reflection, and writing online, destabilise and ultimately challenge the humanist ideals on which reflective practices are based: those of a ‘true self’ which can be revealed, understood, recorded, improved or liberated through the process of writing about thoughts and experiences. Rather than revealing and developing the ‘true self’, reflecting online and for assessment produces fragmented, performing, cautious, strategic selves. As a result, it offers an opportunity to work critically with an awareness of audience, genres of writing and shifting subjectivity. This is rarely, if ever, explicitly the goal of such practices. Instead, online reflective practices are imported wholesale from their offline counterparts without acknowledgement of the difference that being online makes, and issues of power in high-stakes reflection are disguised or ignored. Discourses of authentic self-knowledge, personal and professional development, and transformative learning are not appropriate to the nature of high-stakes online reflection. The combination creates passivity, anxiety and calculation, it normalises surveillance, and it produces rituals of confession and compliance. More critical approaches to high-stakes online reflection, which take into account addressivity, experimentation and digitality, are proposed.