This research aims to investigate the extent to which media organisations in Taiwan apply human resource management strategies and policies to sustain their competitive advantage in a threatening environment. This study argues that human capital is the most valuable resource of media companies. As long as the human resource is optimally allocated and managed, it can facilitate media companies to outperform their competitors, and thus, enable media companies to achieve sustained competitive advantage. The first stage of this research analyses the Taiwanese media industry from a broad perspective. During the development of Taiwan’s media industry, the government and political parties played important roles. The key factors involved in the changes in the environment are examined from political, economic, social, and technological points of view. In addition, this research analyses the human resource management practices adopted by the two leading media groups in Taiwan. One of the groups is the United Daily News group, an old established media company with its interest in newspapers, and a newly established Eastern Broadcasting Corporation (EBC) group which is a multi-media company. Qualitative research approach was adopted as the framework for this research and also to explore and understand the links between specific human resource management indicators and media organisations’ sustained competitive advantage. Two Taiwanese media groups were selected as case studies. The case study approach involved in-depth interviews conducted with management staff and non-management staff, in order to understand the two companies’ human resource management policies and practices. Connecting the study as a whole, there are three important findings: (1) The deregulation which began from the late 1980s has transformed the Taiwanese media industry from a party-state domination to a fiercely competitive marketplace. (2) Consequently, Taiwanese news organisations have shown a greater propensity to pursue commercial performance. As such, in addition to journalists, advertising sales personnel were included in the talent pool by news organisations. (3) The view of human resources as a pool of capital implies a change in the perception of costs in media companies’ human resource management practices. HRM is practised by the two companies in different degree. Taiwanese media companies should pay attention to the different characteristics of their core workers, and maintain their core workers to convey their organisational culture, and achieve their companies’ SCA. In Taiwan, the HRM function had been ignored for a long time due to decades of regulation on new competitors. However, when the media proprietors spent a majority of their capital on the payroll and emphasized that ‘human capital’ is their most important asset, to some extent, Taiwanese media companies perceived HRM as a means to achieve their companies’ SCA. In this regard, Taiwanese media companies should make more effort to develop and nurture the HRM practices and policies which are suitable for the organisation’s unique culture, in improving the outcomes of their human resource investment and in turn providing sustained competitive advantage.

The Australian Government Internet database, the World War Two Nominal Roll, is problematised and then analysed as a document of patron-sponsored alternative journalism as described by Atton and Hamilton, because it attempts to fulfill functions previously completed in Australia by newspaper publishers and television producers. These functions – of discovering, establishing, editing, contextualizing, recording and publishing memory – have long been regarded as roles of journalism. Later they have been seen as roles also of literary publishing and documentary filmmaking, and most recently of online records management. They became especially evident in the 1990s, the decade of the 50th anniversary of many World War II events, during which many anniversary supplements were published in Australian newspapers and in television documentaries. Partly as a result of this major anniversary, the Australian Government undertook the tasks of discovering, establishing, editing, recording, contextualizing, and publishing World War II military memories as an online database known as the World War Two Nominal Roll. The enactment of this large task required the engagement of a subcontractor who tendered on the basis of skills in records management, and the adoption of a methodology which offered some level of quality assurance of the outputs. The problematisation of this project suggests that the engagement of the subcontractor and the methodology adopted for the World War Two Nominal Roll are analogous to the engagement of professionalized journalists, and the adoption of recognised journalistic methods, for the publication of a media artifact such as an anniversary supplement. In that light, this thesis compares the error rates evident in the Nominal Roll with the literature of error rates in contemporary newspapers, and compares some of the audience effects of publishing the Nominal Roll with those of publishing newspapers. This involves a comprehensive examination and critique of the physical nature of the Roll and the processes of its production. The analysis in the first place suggests that the database Roll is overall more trustworthy than established journalism artifacts but in detail more susceptible to errors of fact and context and less likely to be corrected. This leads to the second assessment that the publication of the database Roll is less effective than newspapers as a means of memorialisation. Finally, the findings suggest that the processes deployed in the compilation of the database Roll would have benefitted from the adoption of aspects of ordinary journalistic routines not used by the database publishers. Reasons for this are proposed and discussed.

The Australian Government Internet database, the World War Two Nominal Roll, is problematised and then analysed as a document of patron-sponsored alternative journalism as described by Atton and Hamilton, because it attempts to fulfill functions previously completed in Australia by newspaper publishers and television producers. These functions – of discovering, establishing, editing, contextualizing, recording and publishing memory – have long been regarded as roles of journalism. Later they have been seen as roles also of literary publishing and documentary filmmaking, and most recently of online records management. They became especially evident in the 1990s, the decade of the 50th anniversary of many World War II events, during which many anniversary supplements were published in Australian newspapers and in television documentaries. Partly as a result of this major anniversary, the Australian Government undertook the tasks of discovering, establishing, editing, recording, contextualizing, and publishing World War II military memories as an online database known as the World War Two Nominal Roll. The enactment of this large task required the engagement of a subcontractor who tendered on the basis of skills in records management, and the adoption of a methodology which offered some level of quality assurance of the outputs. The problematisation of this project suggests that the engagement of the subcontractor and the methodology adopted for the World War Two Nominal Roll are analogous to the engagement of professionalized journalists, and the adoption of recognised journalistic methods, for the publication of a media artifact such as an anniversary supplement. In that light, this thesis compares the error rates evident in the Nominal Roll with the literature of error rates in contemporary newspapers, and compares some of the audience effects of publishing the Nominal Roll with those of publishing newspapers. This involves a comprehensive examination and critique of the physical nature of the Roll and the processes of its production. The analysis in the first place suggests that the database Roll is overall more trustworthy than established journalism artifacts but in detail more susceptible to errors of fact and context and less likely to be corrected. This leads to the second assessment that the publication of the database Roll is less effective than newspapers as a means of memorialisation. Finally, the findings suggest that the processes deployed in the compilation of the database Roll would have benefitted from the adoption of aspects of ordinary journalistic routines not used by the database publishers. Reasons for this are proposed and discussed.

Les musées d’art exposent leurs œuvres selon les modalités de curation et l’architecture même du lieu. Ce mémoire en recherche-création interroge le rôle de médium de l’espace d’exposition en s’appuyant sur un double cadre théorique : les approches matérielles des études médiatiques et la muséologie (études muséales et curatoriales). Les nombreuses spécificités du musée rotond en font un cas particulier récurrent et pertinent pour analyser la manière dont ces courbes spécifiques de l’espace muséal agissent sur l’approche curatoriale d’une exposition et l’expérience qui en découle pour le visiteur. À travers la forme médiatique qu’est le guide d’exposition, il s’agit d’explorer la présentation sur une feuille rectangulaire d’un espace d’exposition circulaire. Trois espaces significatifs font l’objet d’une étude de cas et définissent le cadre de création : la galerie des Nymphéas au Musée de l’Orangerie (Paris, 1927), le Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York, 1959) et la Bourse de Commerce - Pinault Collection (Paris, 2021). Ce mémoire en recherche-création expérimente la dimension médiatique de l’espace rotond par un processus de remédiation du guide d’exposition qui vise à retranscrire matériellement la circularité de ces lieux. Animée par l’analogie entre le circulaire et l’insulaire et investissant leurs modes de représentation, j’y conçois un outil de médiation qui accompagne le visiteur dans sa découverte spatiale du musée rotond et au-delà, le promène dans une itération archipélagique, d’un cercle muséal à l’autre. Chacun des trois musées rotonds de ce pèlerinage offre un fragment de l’expérience à collecter qui, au fil des visites, formera par assemblage l’itinéraire complet et accompli d’une médiation au sein de lieux à l’exposition circulaire. Navigation inédite dans l’archipel Rotonda pour composer son Museario rotondo. Par une approche non-linéaire, tant dans l’aspect théorique et conceptuel que méthodologique, je m’intéresse aux interstices du rotond interrogeant matérialités, possibilités et affordances du circulaire. De l’histoire du rond dans un carré. / Art museums exhibit artworks according to curation methods and the architecture of the building itself. This art-based research thesis questions the medium role of the exhibition space using a double theoretical framework: materialist approach in media studies and museum studies paired with curatorial studies. The numerous specificities of the circular museum convert it into a special case, recurrent and pertinent to analyze the way these specific curves of the museum space act on the curatorial approach of an exhibition and the related experience for the visitor. Threw the media object that the exhibition guide is shaping, the purpose here is to explore the presentation on a rectangular sheet of a circular exhibition space. Three indicative spaces form case studies and define the framework for the creation phase: the Water Lilies Gallery at Musée de L’Orangerie (Paris, 1927), the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York, 1959) and the Bourse de Commerce - Pinault Collection (Paris, 2021). This art-based research thesis experiments with the media dimension of the rotunda space by remediating the exhibition guide in order to transliterate materially the roundness of those places. Motivated by an analogy between circularity and insularity and investing in their representation forms, I design a mediation tool that guides the visitor in his spatial discovery of the rotunda museum and beyond, walks him threw an archipelagic iteration, from a circle museum to another. Each of the three rotunda museums of this pilgrimage offers a fragment of the experience to be collected which, over the visits, will form by assembly the complete and accomplished itinerary of a mediation within places of circular exhibition. Unprecedented navigation in the Rotonda archipelago to compose the Museario rotondo. Through a non-linear approach, as much as in the theoretical aspect as conceptual and methodological ones, I am interested in the interstices of the rotunda, questioning materialities, possibilities, and affordances of the circular. About the story of a round in a square.