Extended Essays (M.A.) - Simon Fraser University, 2006. / Theses (School of Communication) / Simon Fraser University. Senior supervisor : Dr. Catherine Murray. Also issued in digital format and available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawai'i, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 319-353).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--American University, 1993. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 291-302).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1969. / Typescript. Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 789-809 (v. 3)).

No description available.

This thesis examines a group of television-makers that aimed to circumvent the regulations affecting standards of content and to reshape the boundaries of permissible violent content. It also examines the regulators who, in a period of significant regulatory restructuring, were required to police those boundaries and protect viewers from ‘harmful’ or ‘offensive’ content, and programme-contributors from ‘unfair’ treatment. In doing so, the aim is to offer a broader, empirically rich understanding of the individual, organisational and external factors that can lead to non-compliance and the relaxation of regulatory affairs over time; and to understand how rules or regulations can get pushed and reshaped. My findings revealed that both regulators and television-makers were confronted by conflicting economic and public interest objectives/responsibilities, and that, due to a variety of individual, organisational and external-level factors, they tended to prioritise their economic obligations, and this led to a loosening of the standards of consumer protection. The factors that influenced television-makers’ and regulators’ decision-making, and thereby this sequence of events, included, but were not limited to, the government’s shift toward deregulation, technological advancements, changing politics, a competitive organisational culture and a lack of sufficient accountability for television-makers.

This study looks at the dominant discourses in the news and documentary coverage of the British military in the occupation of Iraq. It is in these discourses that the justification for the war and occupation rests and in this justification lies the interpretation of the function, efficacy and cost of the military. To do this I have examined the genres of news, news and current affairs documentaries and traditional documentaries to see how these genres favour certain discourses and circumstances which allow certain questions to be asked, but resist others. Evidence from the Chilcot Inquiry is used to illustrate what themes and questions have been silenced in the television coverage. The dominant discourse of coverage is that of the suffering, heroic soldier, taking part in a ‘humanitarian’ war, although what this actually entails is not examined in depth. In this study it is the news and NCA documentaries and not traditional documentaries which provide a deeper context, a wider range of voices, and a more critical view of the military’s role and strategy in Iraq. The nature of the occupation is confused, the junior nature of the British military’s relationship with the Americans is not explained, the financial cost of the occupation is ignored in the elision with the moral cost of death, and the political and governing role of a military occupation is not considered. Although all genres describe the soldiers’ role as humanitarian, there is little visual evidence to illustrate it, and the paradox of soldiers who fight, but can have no enemy as they are there to ‘help’ the Iraqis becomes apparent. The footage of fighting soldiers therefore becomes a representation of soldiers, and where the footage is specific, individual soldiers talk about their betrayal or suffering where the enemy is the British government. The emotional discourse of the suffering soldier inhabits this space between the represented and the reproduced and represses any questions about the military’s responsibility for their actions in Iraq, and hence curtails the civic function of documentary and news to inform.

Chinese cyberspace is vibrant with new expressions created and disseminated by Internet users. Generally light in tone, terms such as 'Grass Mud Horse' and diaosi (literally meaning 'dick strings') have been argued to constitute a playful and satirical form of speech exemplifying grassroots netizens' carnivalesque resistance against the authoritarian party-state. Grounded in and informed by a historical review of the transformations of class and gender relations in China, my doctoral research goes beyond such a dichotomising framework by adopting a critical socio-linguistic perspective. Through extensive original discourse analysis, focus groups and in-depth interviews with a cross-section of the Chinese urban and rural youth population, I sketch out two major ambivalences of online wordplay in Chinese cyberspace, finding that, on the one hand, it simultaneously recognises and disavows the living conditions of the truly underprivileged-migrant manual workers; and, on the other hand, that it both derides the lifestyles of the economically dominant and also displays a desire for middle-class lifestyles. Interviews further reveal that Chinese Internet discourse articulates tensions between the stance of urban young men in the lower-middle class and that of urban young women in the middle class. The former reveals men's anxieties and self-victimisation at what could be called the changing gender order. The latter emphasises women's autonomy and aspirations with regard to ideal masculinities. I conclude that this latter stance is underpinned by an emerging ideology of 'consumerist feminism', which celebrates women's empowerment but limits this to the private realm and to personal consumption. Finally, the thesis also takes into account the co-option of Internet discourse by corporations and party media and the ways in which this shapes the changing connotations of online wordplay and its bearing on the wider social order and power struggles in contemporary China.

Thesis (M.A.)--Ohio State University, 1961. / Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center

Thesis--Cornell University, 1979. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 195-209).