Revision of the author's Thesis (doctoral)--Universidad Autonoma de Santo Domingo, 1993. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [299]-303).

Revision of the author's Thesis (doctoral)--Universidad Autonoma de Santo Domingo, 1993. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [299]-303).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1998. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 239-256). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (M.A.)--Carleton University, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 192-201). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

This dissertation explores historical notions of resistance alongside contemporary playful forms of rebellion. This analysis is centered on the relationship of play to social protest encompassing why we play, how we play, and what this can mean to academics studying social movements, as well as specific contributions for engagement as activists and artists. I propose the need to re-invest in the possibilities of social protest given the absurd nature of certain contemporary political situations and the negative exposure of “somber street protest” by the mainstream media. I rely on play research, performance studies, folktales of tricksters and clowns, sociological research on dissent, analysis of consumerism and identity, and activist publications. This examination includes the work of Erich Fromm, Albert Camus, the Situationist International, Victor Turner, and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Social protest needs to be dynamic to attract participants, inviting participation and enjoyment. My dissertation develops a philosophical structure furthering how we can conceive of dissent within the current political and cultural framework in the United States and investigates actual sites of innovative social movements, including the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army, the Ministry of Reshelving, Tape Babies, Detroit Demolition, guerrilla gardening, and the Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping.

This study is a description and interpretation of mass media appropriations (or media references) in social interaction in US American culture. Two research questions guide the study: One, how, if at all, do cultural members appropriate texts from mass media in their ongoing, socially interactive lives? And two, what are the functions and meanings of mass media appropriations (MMAs) so enacted? The study is situated within the Ethnography of Communication research program and uses Cultural Discourse Theory as its main theoretical frame. The study employs ethnographic and cultural discourse analysis methods including participant-observation, interviewing, cultural description and interpretation to formulate a native theory of mass media appropriations as they are patterned and practiced in US American culture. This theory is then compared to similar practices in Western Apache, Zambian, German, and Dominican American cases. The major descriptive findings include a sequence that MMAs typically follow in social interaction including a trigger, reference, and response; the essential, typical, and possible parts of MMAs, various combinations of which are formulated into types and subtypes of MMAs; the frames typically involved in MMAs including performance, play, and quotation and how they are cued, maintained, and terminated; and a set of dimensions upon which MMAs vary. The major interpretive findings include MMAs being performed for the humor, pleasure, play, shared identity and bonds that they create, these being necessary to diffuse the focus in the culture on self, serious talk and work.

This study describes the cultural discourses in the communication and meta-communication among Finns about the mobile phone. The overall task at hand was to find out how mobile phone communication is described and discussed in speech and writing about mobile phoning, and what the underlying premises are in play on communication, personhood and social relations in these descriptions. Mobile phone communication was approached from the theoretical and philosophical perspective of ethnography of communication, and from cultural discourse analysis in particular. The analyses were conducted through the main theoretical constructs of terms for talk, myths, positioning, and the discursive force of norms. The analysis of interview talk, newspaper, magazine and other media texts, official documents, reports, and books suggested a number of different findings: Pragmatic communicative actions on mobile phone were described with several cultural terms (Carbaugh, 1989) referring to both oral and written communication. Mobile phone talk was discussed by using descriptive terms for talk. 'Idle talk' on the mobile phone was found to vacillate with asiallinen (matter-of-factly) style of communication. The comments about kännykkäkansa (the mobile phone nation), and more generally about Finnishness and mobile phoning were seen as contesting as well as re-creating the almost 150 year old myth of Finnishness. Reachability and disturbance via mobile phone were examined as paradoxical universal. Reachability was found to be related to positive face needs. Disturbance or a threat to one's negative face needs, in turn, was also an inherent feature of the mobile phone, and the need to reach others and respond could count as disturbance. As the model of discursive forces (Hall 1988/1989) was deployed, it was found that the demand or norm of reachability was criticized and challenged in many ways, and the expectation of not disturb others and not being disturbed by them was negotiable. A value of being in peace was considered more important for some Finns than being reachable or disturbing. The analyses provided insights to the Finnish cultural discourses about Finnishness, social relations, communication, and culture and technology.

Gesher is a theatre founded by a group of Russian immigrants in Tel Aviv in 1990. Gesher is a cultural phenomenon that, like a prism, refracts issues of interethnic relations, cultural and immigration policy, and the status of media discourse in Israel. Therefore, Gesher is a rich site for research on cultural production and exchange. In this dissertation, I apply the theoretical perspectives of cultural and critical studies to the analysis of the cultural practices of Gesher and the discourses emerging in the theatre's reception. First, I use the theoretical perspective of cultural studies to write the history of the Gesher theatre, connecting each stage in its evolvement with the cultural and social context in Israel. Second, I offer a critical discourse analysis of Gesher's media reception, exploring questions of cultural production and exchange in the context of hegemonic ideology. I contrast the media reception of Gesher in Israel to its reception abroad. Third, I theorize the dynamic of cultural exchange that emerges in this media reception in order to uncover regimes of power and normative knowledges active in Israeli cultural production. To that end, I construct an original theoretical model grounded in my fieldwork. My analysis of Gesher's reception indicates a novel situation in which the discursive condition of immigration has important parallels to colonization. And so, extrapolating post-colonial discourse analysis to the context of immigration, I suggest a model of Mutual and Internal Colonization. In the discursive process of mutual colonization the roles of the cultural colonizer and the colonized shift in different contexts, leading both immigrants and their hosts to colonize each other, and then ultimately to colonize themselves as these roles turn inwards. In the future, this model can be applied for theorizing the positions of different subjects with hyphenated identities across cultures.

This thesis aims to contribute to recent discussions in media and cultural studies and political communication about reconceptualising the relationships between politics, media and public engagement. It will do so by articulating the context and processes in which private citizens form political publics and the ways in which media genres beyond conventional news and public affairs encourage or enable civic engagement. It explores these issues in the context of the ongoing democratisation of South Korea since 1987, a nation with a particularly dynamic digital culture. The thesis critiques the conventional binaries between the private (emotion/entertainment/fans) and the public (reason/news/publics), and articulates the mediating contexts and processes in which the private shifts to the public. It seeks to situate affect and entertainment (popular culture) as key agents in mobilising and sustaining citizens' political interest and participation. The key research questions are therefore: in what context do media offer a discursive space to connect people's everyday lives to the public world as well as to recruit and sustain political interest?; how does affect play a critical part in making sense of the public world, and mobilising political participation?; and in what ways do private individuals come to shape the public? These questions are examined in the context of ICT-based media environments and in relation to three empirical studies: 1) OhmyNews - a global icon of citizen journalism - in which the ‘feminised' news produced by citizens (re- )contextualised private interests into public concerns, and allowed the public to make a real change in the 2002 Presidential election and the 2010 local elections; 2) online political satire, in which politics is situated in an entertainment mode through citizens' creative reinterpretation, and which helped mobilise citizens' political interest and action during the 2004 Presidential impeachment and general election; and 3) the politicisation of teen fandom, in which music fans were mobilised as political actors in the 2008 anti-US beef protest. The thesis employs a wide range of research methods including participant observation, interpretive textual analysis, and semi-structured and in-depth interviews. In this way the thesis identifies a complex linkage of traditionally separated spheres, such as reason and affect, news and entertainment media, and expert and common knowledge.

This thesis is an analysis of the use and impact of digital communication technology (DCT) in the Gay pub scene in the Kemptown neighborhood of Brighton, East Sussex, UK. The purpose of this work is twofold: to create a snapshot record of the everyday activities in pub spaces at a particular point in the neighborhood's history from the point of view of an American gay man, and to develop an understanding of the impact of digital communications technology (DCT) on the activities in these spaces by investigating the impact of DCT on the idea of 'gay space'. This analysis is broken down into three distinct areas of enquiry: the implementation of DCT in pub spaces by the landlords/owners of the space, the use of DCT by the patrons of these spaces, and an analysis of those spaces that have not directly engaged DCT, neither implementing DCT as a feature of the location, nor limiting its use within the space. This thesis utilizes participant observations, auto ethnographic observations, and interviews made over a period of two years and engages with the theoretical arguments around gay space: its history both within the broad context of UK history, and also with Brighton's special historical status as a gay centre within the UK; its current uses; and the potential for its evolution. This investigation of hof DCT is impacting on gay space also questions to what extent 'gay space' is maintaining a sense of physicality and to what extent an extension of DCT-enabled virtual spaces is altering our relationship to these spaces. The work examines the notion of nostalgia, ownership, and control of space and attempts through its focus on several locations in Kemptown to catalogue the many changes in structure, clientele, locale, and business success that these spaces have gone through in a fairly short time and to determine to what extent the use and influences of DCT has driven these changes. The project includes interviews with landlords and patrons of eight current and former venues in Kemptown and encompasses a group of three key participants in detail through a series of scheduled interviews and group discussions conducted during the duration of the project, and details their particular relationships to the spaces in Kemptown as well as their uses of DCT in these spaces. These participants act as a focal point for the research by helping to create a frame of reference within the work balancing the author's auto ethnographic analysis with the point of view of a local Brighton gay male, as well as contribute to and support the broader narrative of the vicissitudes of smaller pub venues by helping to highlight the historical changes in the pubs being looked at. The specific questions that this research sets out to answer are: • How is digital communicative technology (DCT) affecting self defined gay spaces in Kemptown, Brighton? • How is DCT affecting the behaviours of the patrons and owners/operators in these spaces? • How are the owners/operators of these spaces adapting to DCT? Is there evidence of owners/operators conforming to Winston's theory on the suppression of disruptive potential of new and emerging media technology (1995)? • What are the implications, challenges and opportunities presented to those spaces which are not engaging with DCT in their spaces? • Are “gay spaces” in Kemptown still relevant with the intersection of digital and physical spaces? Do these spaces meet the same requirements as they have in the past? Does DCT have the ability on its own to maintain the relevance of a venue on its own when faced off against other pressures (such as commercial or demographic pressure)? The conclusions reached in this thesis draw attention to the potential for DCT: • Acting as a form of disruptive potential of new communication technologies (Winston, 1995). • The concerns that DCT is suppressing interpersonal communications in favor of mediated discourse (Turkle, 2011, 2012, 2015). • That automobility is creating a privatization of pub spaces, along with the creation of ‘non-places' (Bull, 2004) However, in the author's analysis, there is evidence of cohabitation, and adaptation towards DCT which is reminiscent of Winston's theory of the suppression of disruptive potential of emerging communication technology, as well as a resistance response with nostalgic overtones. The conclusions are also grounded in the larger narratives of pub culture within the UK and note the challenging culture that smaller, brewer-tied and non-tied gay venues have within these changing demographics and cultural acceptance of homosexuality in general. This research adds to the broader field of research into the adaptation of communications technology by drawing attention to the effects of DCT on both spaces and their users and also highlights their effects on a subculture.