Heavy Metal is a peculiar music genre, made by fans for fans, which spread throughout the entire planet and became, over its five decades of existence, a global community as well. These aspects of Heavy Metal make it a very interesting phenomenon to study. Heavy Metal has previously been researched with a micro outlook on its local connotations in several different Global South countries, analyzing one at a time. As far as the whole Global Metal community is concerned, to this day, there seems to be no literature that is based on the Global South perspective, but only on the Western one. As it has not been attempted to study Global Metal with a macro outlook and to take a broader perspective on it, this research employs a larger view on the Global South’s point of view on Metal culture. Therefore this study aims at giving possible explanations about the reasons behind Heavy Metal worldwide spread. Results will show how further Heavy Metal reception studies on Global South metalheads should be approached through the lens of the Cosmopolitan paradigm; how the metalheads of the sample tend to indicate Death Metal as the most spread sub-genre and to describe themselves as open minded and tolerant. This research helps showing a slight tendency of metalheads to consider themselves part of a Global community, which is defined more like a family, underlining their inclination towards cosmopolitanism. Finally it will show how there should be a broader study on the sense making of well-known songs to determine whether or not there is a certain degree of similar interpretation across different cultures.

The world political economy passed through sea changes starting from the early-1980s. The transformation of the finance capital was an indispensible and important aspect of this change. Most of the countries in this process adapted themselves in line with the abovementioned transformation and liberalized their financial systems. However, the specific country practises diverged from each other considerably. On the one hand, some of the countries transformed their finance capital as part and parcel of a comprehensive political economy framework. As a result of the strategic involvement of the state (&lsquo / pro-active states&rsquo / ) and the organic interaction between the interest groups in the industrial and financial sphere, the transformation of financial systems materialized within the context of the upward restructuring of the overall political economy structure of these countries. On the other hand, some countries could not establish the productive link between industrial, financial and state elites (&lsquo / reactive states&rsquo / ) and the financial transformation exacerbated the structural problems in the countries in question. As illuminating examples of the former and latter categories, Spain and Turkey represent instructive cases in point. In this regard, the aim of this study is to make a comparative political economy analysis between the transformation of the finance capital in Spain and Turkey and to pinpoint the diverging paths of the political economy structures of these countries.

This thesis explores the ontological content of the integration of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in biomedical education, through a critical exploration of “CAM" policy related documents from the World Bank, the World Health Organization and Health Canada, as a means of contextualizing "CAM" in biomedical education. It also interrogates curriculum documents from a project that seeks to standardize “CAM” in biomedical education. This thesis suggests that there are ontological parallels to the colonial era conversion of indigenous medicine evoked in the contemporary 'integration' of CAM in biomedical education.

本研究旨在探討台灣電視產業中，商品為何、商品的特性、商品的生產過程，以及與生產結構間的對應關係。本研究採行批判的傳播政治經濟學視野，對台灣四十餘年來的電視事業進行考察。研究結果指出，電視事業中的商品，首要應為節目本身，而台灣的電視節目的首要消費者，是廣告業主而不是觀眾。同時因為國民黨時期無線三台特殊的經營體制，形塑本地節目製作業的特性：規模小、業務人員為公司主要人力。導致台灣節目的廉價化與廣告化，不論在三台寡占市場時期，或衛星電視頻道百家爭鳴時期，皆是如此。 / My objective is to find out the commodity in TV industry in Taiwan, and figure out the characteristics of the commodity, the production process, and the relationship between the commodity and the production structure. Therefore, I studied the TV production process in Taiwan for 40 years from an critical political-economy perspective. At the end, I figure out that the commodity in TV industry is programmers, and the very first consumer of this commodity is advertisers rather than audiences. Because of the special operate model of three main TV broadcasters protected by KMT, TV program producers are small and poor, and they spend too much time in maintain the relationship with advertisers and TV managers. After all, TV program in Taiwan looks like advertisement and the quality of it is low end. No matter the market is monopolized by the three main broadcasters, or opened for hundred of satellite channels, the circumstance are all the same.

The objective of this study was to investigate whether community print media is fulfilling its developmental mandate in society using a comparative study of Alex News and Greater Alex Today community newspapers. This study is as the result of an outcry from various stakeholders claiming that community print media is no longer playing its developmental role in society due to the impact of structure and agency. They also claim that community media is no longer representing the interests and needs of the communities that it serves and lacks community participation. There are also concerns that community print media is no longer serving historically disadvantaged communities and is failing in its role to disseminate information in the community. They claimed that the control and ownership of community media is not in the hands of the community that it is supposed to serve, but in the hands of outsiders who are after business opportunities and profit-making. The qualitative research method was used for this study and the findings correlated with the literature reviewed. It concluded that the constraints of structure and agency is shaping the role of community media in society. Based on these findings the research recommends that government should assist the community newspapers by providing a subsidised printing machine that can be placed in a central place for easy access by the community newspapers. It also recommends that the community newspaper should transform from the traditional newspaper print to digital media to cut the printing costs and that the government should allocate more funds to MDDA. / Communication Science / M.A. (Communication Science)