A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy / The thesis critically analyses the potential of digital technologies – in particular, digital terrestrial television – to enable substantive diversity of programming in a public service broadcaster, the South African Broadcasting Corporation. The thesis deploys critical political economy of the media approaches. These approaches argue for a social constructivist approach to technology and not a celebratory determinist approach, which confuses the potential of technology with what actually happens in ‘real world’, contested policy contexts. The research uses qualitative methodologies, specifically thematic analyses of policy texts and in-depth interviews with policy actors and informants. Ultimately, the thesis finds that the changing political context in South Africa, which has moved away from participatory policy making processes, has resulted in missed opportunities to harness the digital potential to diversify programming. The thesis finds that with the government’s deployment of more authoritarian ‘statist’ and market-orientated policies, the policy space has narrowed, ultimately limiting the possibilities for the delivery of substantive diversity of content and programming. Finally, the thesis finds that to begin to reverse these trends in the digital, multi-channel environment, the government needs to (re)commit to consultative policy making processes and to regulation and public funding in the public interest. / XL2018

Career paths in the field of cultural and creative production and the attainment of recognition have been associated with networking and point at the relevance of maintaining social relationships. Social capital has been discussed as one key element, given the fact that forming social relations with significant others potentially aids individuals striving for symbolic capital – the precursor to recognition. The emergence of online social networking platforms as a means to amplify opportunities to build social relationships raises questions in regards to its impact on building social capital. The key question that arises is: To what extent can digitally mediated social relationships support creative professionals in attaining recognition for their work by capitalising on digitally mediated social ties? To answer this, it was necessary to uncover the nature of digitally mediated social relatedness in order to understand how and why these relations may be eligible to produce social capital. Tracing this process through drawings of personal networks elicited a wealth of narratives around the influence of digitally mediated social interaction on symbolic capital. This thesis identified that accessing social capital resources via digitally mediated social interaction operates within the context of two prime factors: risk and trust. As such, digitally mediated social ties are useful for building social capital. However, this holds primarily in contexts where risk is relatively low and therefore the required level of trust is marginal. The relevance of digitally mediated social ties in building social capital is thus largely context driven, whereby the individual circumstances of creative professionals are crucial. My findings highlight the ambivalent nature of digitally mediated social ties in terms of their conceptualisation as a form of social relationship. Interestingly, while being highly volatile and fluctuating in nature, these liquid ties, as I have labelled them in my thesis, do afford access to resources such as trust that have hitherto been primarily associated with strong social ties. Essentially, this challenges the prime conceptualisation of social capital as an affordance of strong, established social relationships in the formation of symbolic capital. Therefore, I make a case for a more nuanced approach to (mediated) social capital, which conceptualises the relevance of the social tie in light of its affordance, rather than its formal quality.

My thesis interrogates the changing nature of the espionage genre on Western television since the middle of the Cold War. It uses close textual analysis to read the progressions and regressions in the portrayal of the female spy, analyzing where her representation aligns with the achievements of the feminist movement, where it aligns with popular political culture of the time, and what happens when the two factors diverge. I ask what the female spy represents across the decades and why her image is integral to understanding the portrayal of gender on television. I explore four pairs of television shows from various eras to demonstrate the importance of the female spy to the cultural landscape. These shows represent the female spy's birth in the era of the sexual revolution, her rise as a feminist career woman, and the post-9/11 restrictions on who is allowed to serve the country. I argue that the conflation of nation and family that occurs in each show serves to elevate the primacy of the heterosexual reproductive unit, challenging the outwardly-progressive representation of the apparently feminist spy figure. Analyzed in concert, these shows reveal the conservative bent of the espionage genre despite the higher visibility of its female protagonists.

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Thesis (M.S.)--University of Nevada, Reno, 2005. / "August, 2005." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 93-100). Library also has microfilm. Ann Arbor, Mich. : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [2005]. 1 microfilm reel ; 35 mm. Online version available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (MA(Research Psychology)--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 61-66)

Thesis (M.S.)--Kutztown University. / Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 45-06, page: 2705. Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 91-97).

Thesis (M. A.)--Oklahoma State University, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M. P. A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2006.