This thesis examines feminist and queer actors emerging in highly mediated environments and the forms of political organisation and critical knowledge production they engage in. It indicates that older debates around gender and sexuality are being reformulated in digital networks and identifies alternative understandings which are being developed. The study foregrounds a performative conceptualisation and argues that political realities are produced in dynamic configurations of communication media, discourses and bodies. It suggests that network technologies constitute sources of vulnerability and anxiety for feminists and stresses the significance of registering how embodied subjectivities emerge from these experiences. To achieve its aims and to map activity happening across different spaces and scales, the project attended to context-specific processes of mediation at the intersections of online and offline settings. It employed ethnographic methods, internet visualisation, in-depth interviewing and textual analysis to produce the following key outcomes: it registered changing understandings of the political in relation to new media amongst a network of women's organisations in London; it investigated the centrality of social media and global connections in the shaping of local queer political communities in Brighton; it complicated ideas of control, labour and affect to analyse emerging sexual identities in online spaces like nofauxx.com, and offline postporn events; finally, it traced feminist actors gathering around new reproductive technologies, at the crossing fields of grassroots activism and the academy. Today, women's groups and queer activists increasingly use networked communication for mobilisation and information-sharing. In a climate of widespread scepticism towards both representational politics and traditional media, questions about the role of digital networks in enabling or limiting political engagement are being raised. This thesis aims to contribute to these debates by accounting for the ways in which feminist and queer activists in digital networks reformulate the relationship between communication media and politics.

This thesis explores the ‘credibility' of news in Saudi Arabia, comparing online media with official newspapers. The latter are heavily regulated offering limited viewpoints. But the Saudi government has been less able to regulate online. Against a historical background of news development in Saudi Arabia, the thesis explores the rise of online from discussion forums established in the 1990s to online newspapers and social media. Largely qualitative methods (interviews, focus groups) plus a quantitative survey, were adopted to collect two sets of data: from educated readers, and from journalists working for online publications. Additionally, material from two news case studies was gathered. Questions concerned: how online news was evaluated by users compared to more traditional reporting; how producers perceived the distinctiveness of online titles and the issues they faced. The data from the case studies – an ‘internal' news story, Corona virus and an ‘external' event, Egyptian elections – was subjected to ‘frame' analysis, addressing the different news coverage of official print titles, online news and independent Twitter accounts. Focus was on whether online reporting offered more varied viewpoints and greater reader participation, and whether there was evidence for more management of news by the Saudi authorities in relation to the internal as compared to the external news event. The thesis argues that compared to official newspapers, online titles have largely gained greater credibility amongst educated Saudi users. They are regarded as offering different views, more ‘objective' reporting and actively encourage reader comment. Findings indicate that online is less censored than official newspapers, but editors/journalists have learnt the skills of self-censorship to avoid blocking. Exchange of views on Twitter also demonstrate the possibility of distinctive voices and viewpoints being aired and argued over. In these ways, the relation between online news and readers/users begins to enable the formation of independent ‘public opinion'.

This thesis explores the recent phenomenon of music concert goers filming these concerts and uploading the footage to YouTube. This contemporary practice poses several questions of the nature of contemporary music culture. The status of the concert as live event is problematised by this mediation of the experience. The videos create producers of fans and allow these fans to make a substantive contribution to music culture as authors of music texts consumed through a major distribution network. The fact that these fans are not paid for their efforts begs the question as to what they gain from this enterprise; particularly as it serves as a distraction for filmers from the immersive concert experience. This thesis will use the work of Walter Benjamin on the ‘aura' as a yardstick against which to judge current attitudes amongst music fans as to the status of live music alongside other ways of experiencing music. The thesis will also offer a contemporary reappraisal of Pierre Bourdieu's concept of ‘cultural capital' that accounts for the recognition that filmers receive from other music fans for their efforts in filming concerts. Concerts are restricted spaces in which music is simultaneously produced and consumed. Broadcasting videos of these events on YouTube provides recognition for filmers both for having attended and managed to capture footage to be shared with those unable to attend for various reasons. Filmers are not paid for their efforts and so this recognition serves as a form of cultural capital in lieu of financial reward. The thesis is based upon interviews with a global sample of music fans who either film concerts or watch these films on YouTube.

This research explores the purpose of the ‘teacher' in an increasingly mediated world. It focuses on the teaching of immigration and explores a pedagogic response attuned to the conflicting attitudes aroused by this controversial topic. Given the pendulum swings between ‘knowledge' and ‘skills-based' forms of study, this research explores the political nature of media learning and the role of media teaching beyond instrumental transmission on the one hand and mere facilitation on the other. Following the work of Biesta (2016), it emboldens the teacher to not shy away from an engagement with ‘difficult questions or inconvenient truths' inherent in teaching a topic such as immigration. This practitioner action research contrasts traditional (Media Studies 1.0) and ‘new' (Media Studies 2.0) approaches to the study of film, press and social media through the teaching of media representations of immigration and immigrants in a predominantly White school in the South of England over a nine month period as part of an A level Media Studies course. In doing so, the research reassesses a conceptual model of media study for the social media age. There are many threats to media studies as a school based subject. Some of these emanate from within the subject itself. The Media Studies 2.0 (Gauntlett, 2007) manifesto argues that formal media studies has failed to grapple with a qualitatively changed media ecology augured by the shift from broadcast to online/social media. This, the critique contends, has resulted in the conflation of the previously fixed phases of media production, distribution and consumption and their pedagogic cousins of teaching, classroom and learning. Within school-based education, media studies is thus seen as losing its distinctive edge with other curriculum subjects using media forms as intrinsic components of the e-Learning experience for both teachers and students. This research questions this overly positive view of social media's potential to act as a nascent pedagogic space for students to develop new technical skills and engage in meaningful cultural debate. The topic of immigration invites explicit teaching through the media concept of representation contrasting two pedagogical approaches. Through the lens of teaching this potentially socially divisive issue, the distinctive features of media studies are explored in presenting a complex, nuanced and sensitive position from which to foster civic engagement in young people. Using a Critical Realist (Bhaskar, 1975) ontological and epistemological framework, the research constructs a theoretical position rooted in what to study (a modified version of the influential BFI model, Bowker, 1991), how to study media (Multiliteracies, Kalantzis, 2008), the purpose of media study (framing and classification, Bernstein, 1975)) and anti-essentialist classroom relations as they pertain to race (Critical Race Theory, Ladson-Billings, 2004). This research asserts the importance of developing a self-reflexive pedagogical response to issues of racial tolerance, social justice and economic power. Additionally, the research presents insights into the multimodal teaching and learning that traverse traditional divides between home/school, public/private spaces and real/imagined spaces. In this context, it reasserts the value of school-based media study as fostering critical, analytical, practical and technical competences that offer the structured self-reflexive space not afforded in general social media consumption practices.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Canterbury, 2009. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 146-158). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Zugl.: Duisburg, Essen, Univ., Diss., 2006

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Bowling Green State University, 2008. / Document formatted into pages; contains viii, 161 p. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Carleton University, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 373-416). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Queensland, 2005. / Includes bibliography.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Duquesne University, 2005. / Title from document title page. Abstract included in electronic submission form. Includes bibliographical references (p. 179-191) and index.