There is a lack of narrative research in the United Kingdom (UK) that captures the stories of young people who are, or have previously been, dealing with issues surrounding their use of drugs and/or alcohol. This study, through the utilisation of a narrative approach, aims to provide a rich and detailed description of young people’s experiences, and the difficulties they’ve faced, with their use of drugs and/or alcohol. In this study I have presented the stories of three males aged seventeen to eighteen in rough verse form and then individually analysed the narratives using Engels’ narrative analysis approach. The young males have recently been discharged from a specialist support service for their use of drugs and/or alcohol which has caused concern. The specialist support service supports adolescents (aged fourteen – eighteen) with their drug and/or alcohol use. Each young male was interviewed twice, the first interview allowed the young person to tell their story in its entirety. During the second interview, each young person’s narrative was presented back to them in rough verse form and they were asked to reflect upon reading their story as well as check the anonymity of their identity in their narrative. It is hoped that the findings will help inform Educational Psychologists of some of the challenges faced by young adults who have experienced difficulties as a result of their substance use. In turn it is hoped that this may lead to better informed hypothesis generation when encountering young people who have problematic relationships with drugs and/or alcohol.

On 7 July 2005, Britain suffered its first ever suicide attack. Four young British-born Muslims, apparently well-educated and from integrated backgrounds, killed their fellow citizens, including other Muslims. The incident raised the vision that British Muslims would be seen as the ‘enemy within’ and a ‘fifth column’ in British society. To examine how this view emerged, this thesis investigates the representation of British Muslims in two major British broadsheets, The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph, over a two-year period (7 July 2005-8 July 2007). A corpus of 274 news items, including editorials, comments, interviews, and news reports on the London bombings, has been collected and analysed using the inductive approach based upon thematic analysis. The thesis asks a significant question: How did these broadsheets present British Muslims in the wake of the London bombings? This thesis aims to present a narrative of how the London bombings (hereafter 7/7) emerged in these broadsheets based on their reaction to an interpretation and perception of the 7/7 event. This research indicates that the two broadsheets shared a similar cultural approach in combating Islamist terrorism, by encouraging the embracing of British values, although their different political orientations led to them differing attitudes over the precise manner in which this should be achieved. The Guardian was more concerned about individual liberty and human rights, while The Daily Telegraph emphasised the adaptation of tough legislation to combat terrorism. Given modern Britain’s secular moral fibre, the supremacy of British values dominated the debates on British Muslims which somehow reflected a manifestation of a systematic campaign to redefine Islam as a religion that fits into secular Western society, validating terms such as ‘Moderate Muslim’, ‘Islamic terrorists’, ‘Islamic extremists’, ‘Islamic militants’ and ‘Islamic terrorism’. Although both newspapers argue that radicalisation is a foreign-imported dilemma that has its roots in “Islamic ideology”, they differ in their attitudes on how to deal with it. This thesis uses Cohen’s (1972) text, which suggests that the media often portray certain groups within society as “deviant” and “folk devils” and blames them for crimes. This research into the reactions of two broadsheets permits a contemporary discussion of the London bombings and British Muslims in the light of Cohen’s concept. It aims to locate the presence of a nexus of the four Ps - political parties, pressure groups, the press, and public bodies - that influence reporting and shape the debates (Ost, 2002; Chas, 2006, p.75). It is evident that the reporting of the two broadsheets blends three significant components: the views of self-proclaimed Islamic scholars, experts and hate preachers; the use of out-of-context verses of the Quran; and the use of political language to represent British Muslims. Arguably, the press transformed the 7/7 event, suggesting that it was driven by religious theology rather than being a politically motivated act.

Since the emergence of the global child rights movement in the late 1990s, there has been a notable increase in research and policy focusing on child sexual abuse (CSA) in African settings (Mildred & Plummer, 2009). My thesis contributes to this field by using a case study approach to examine how residents of an informal settlement define and respond to CSA. Studies in Tanzanian settings have started to explore communities’ perceptions of CSA (Abeid, Muganyizi, Olsson, Darj, & Axemo, 2014; Kisanga, Nystrom, Hogan, & Emmelin, 2011). However, the thesis moves beyond questioning what types of sexual acts are understood to constitute CSA, instead asking why some acts are considered abusive and others not. Recognizing the culturally constructed nature of abuse, it examines how living within the informal settlement context affects residents’ understandings of two prominent themes: consent and harm. The thesis also examines local protective mechanisms for preventing and responding to acts of CSA. When considering CSA prevention, it notes that local prevention strategies typically utilize a risk avoidance approach; there is consequently inadequate emphasis on addressing social, economic and infrastructural factors perpetuating the risk of CSA within informal settlements. Moreover, in a research setting where statutory and community-based normative frameworks co-exist, the thesis analyses the impact of legal pluralism on decision-making relating to access to justice. Drawing on Moore’s (1973) concept of semi-autonomous social fields, it argues that the co-existence of multiple systems allows for a high level of choice over which interventions to pursue. However, adults typically make decisions on victims’ behalf, potentially choosing interventions that meet their own interests, rather than prioritizing the child’s. The choice offered by co-existing normative systems can therefore disadvantage victims of CSA in their pursuit of justice.

The aim of this research is to explore the unconscious elements that fuels the ‘radioactive atmosphere’ of psychoanalytic institutions - unconscious sources of the chronic conflicts that sometimes plague the relationships between members of psychoanalytical societies and obscure the path of a constructive resolution of conflict that leads to progress and further development. The starting point of this thesis was Hinshelwood’s (1999) idea about the displacement of negative countertransference feelings from patients to colleagues as a source of tensions amongst analysts. The first part of the thesis (Chapters 1-4) explores the development of the ideas on countertransference and its uses for a better understanding of ‘the patient’, surveys different perspectives on the life in psychoanalytic organizations, and points to the existence of a link between analysts’ analytic attitude towards patients and their attitude towards colleagues. The second part of the thesis presents the empirical study set to test the correspondence between the analyst’s omniscient attitude towards patient and arrogant attitude towards colleagues (Chapter 6). The preliminary findings indicates that ‘sibling rivalry’ and complicated relations during training as one source of conflict in psychoanalytic institutions, and are further investigated in the empirical research presented in Chapter 7, using the psychoanalytically informed research interview as an experimental situation, an original research method. The final chapter examines the main findings of this empirical research.

No description available.

No description available.

Bullying is a widespread problem in schools and a vast amount of research has been conducted on the subject. In order to examine how members of the school community perceive bullying, self-report questionnaires were devised for completion by secondary school pupils from two year groups, teachers and support staff. The scenario-based questionnaires compared their views on defining bullying, the perceived seriousness of different behaviours and the bullying perceived to occur in the school. The questionnaires indicated that perceptions of bullying were mediated by the age, gender and group (pupil, teacher and support staff) of participants. Indirect behaviours (such as social exclusion) were less likely to be defined as bullying and were perceived as less serious than direct behaviours. Where the victim portrayed in the questionnaire was female, perceptions of seriousness for the incidents described were higher than for male victims. Staff rated direct and indirect behaviours more seriously than did pupils. Differences between schools indicated that perceptions were not fixed and there was potential for change. Open-ended comments made on the questionnaires revealed further complexity in perceptions of bullying and illustrated the benefits of utilising qualitative techniques to study bullying. Therefore, an additional study was conducted whereby a sample of teachers and support staff from participating schools were interviewed, using a semistructured approach, about their experiences of bullying. Results were analysed using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (Smith, 2003) and findings suggested the need to consider bullying in a wider context, focusing on schools as organisations with external and internal influences affecting their functioning. The research highlighted the importance of schools working together to focus on what is understood by the term bullying. Interventions need to recognise the complexity of bullying and not treat it in isolation. Practical issues for studying bullying in schools and the potential benefits of combining quantitative and qualitative research are discussed.

This project sits within the field of popular culture, exploring the ways in which people read Terry Pratchett’s Discworld. The primary research objective was to ascertain whether political values encoded within the comedic text would be understood by its readers. An iterative mixed methods approach was used to gauge audience engagement. Of the potential audiences, there was an audience segment who rejected the text on generic (fantasy) grounds. Of those with a greater investment of time, in dramatic production, this led to resentment and a refusal to impute any significance to the text. Audiences of the productions who invested less time rejected the fantasy genre but accepted the significance of the text as they experienced it. Subsequent on-line research on the more engaged fan audience showed different levels of engagement. Among fans, there was a minority who enjoyed the text but rejected any real world significance. More often the fans described their Discworld favourites in terms that reflected a connection with their own lived experience. Specific themes emerged which were discussed in relation to the text: The accessibility of the comic protagonists is discussed in relation to models of masculinity in late modernity. Vimes was admired by all demographic groups, often as an aspirational figure, with 64% nominating him as a favourite. Transtextual relationships with the gothic articulate a female voice within the Discworld and shows how fans relate their own mortality to the Discworld character Death. The theme of personal social responsibility recurs in the Discworld and is discussed in relation to the macro level politics of terrorism and conflict. Discworld fans tended to be socially and politically active, the majority of the fan respondents felt that key socio-political themes were evident in the Discworld diegesis.

Since the early 2000s, a largely Internet-based network of independent news operations has emerged focused on small geographic areas in the UK, often run by non-professional journalists. ‘Hyperlocal’ journalism seems to have captured the imagination of academics and policy-makers, with some arguing that it has the potential to fill the democratic deficit caused by the decline of mainstream local newspapers. Attention has largely focused on the journalistic values of these websites rather than their wider cultural value, with relatively little recourse to primary research in the UK context. This thesis addresses both of those aspects by drawing on a range of data: a large-scale overview of the sector, three case study accounts of hyperlocal news operations, and an analysis of interviews with practitioners. The research finds that hyperlocal news operations are spread across the UK and collectively produce an impressive number of news stories. In that sense, they play a useful role in local news ecologies and their independence marks them out as an alternative to an increasingly consolidated mainstream local news sector. Hyperlocal news operations are gaining legitimacy through engagement with audiences on social media and through recognition by other news media. The thesis also finds that the hyperlocal journalist is often motivated by a desire to redress mainstream media’s representation of their locality or by a single campaign issue. Hyperlocal journalists traverse both the digital ‘beat’ and the real-world ‘beat’, using reciprocal journalism practices in order to build a community around their service. However, many services are precariously placed as the journalists exploit their own labour and avoid engaging fully with issues of economic sustainability. Taking a case study approach, the thesis explores the working practices and environments of three hyperlocal news operations in detail, including looking at audience engagement. It finds further evidence of these issues of precarity, making the potential of sustaining hyperlocal operations difficult. However, the case study accounts also highlight the value of focusing on everyday aspects of community life and how that can help build audiences and enable citizens to become participants in content creation and distribution. Finally, the thesis argues that hyperlocal can play a more vital role in the UK’s local news landscape should the right conditions be created by policy-makers to create a more level regulatory playing-field.

Interactive TV, a new media service based on an amalgamation of traditional TV watching and Web-based features, has turned consuming TV programmes and value-added services into an individual and interactive experience. This research aims to stimulate thinking about the changing role of interactive TV as it moves from a passive medium to a more active medium, enabling learning opportunities for young adults previously confined to the personal computer (PC) domain. This new paradigm of interactivity for education and learning offers personalised and innovative ways to learn that differ from learning in traditional academic courses. To ensure that TV-based learning is adequately supported, the research provides teaching and learning materials through electronic media. A Taiwanese educational TV multimedia home platform (MHP)programme entitled 'Follow Me after School', which is composed of science topics, reference materials, study quizzes and interactive functions, is used to facilitate teaching through screen-based media and stimulate youths' after-school learning activities. Joshua Meyrowitz's 'situational' approach is adopted to form the methodological framework of this work. The framework incorporates a set of quantitative questionnaires and the formation of youth groups to watch interactive TV's edutainment programmes. The methodology also involves qualitative data-collection methods, such as participant media activities recorded on a guided, open-end, diary-style form and multitasking analyses, to provide in-depth understanding of learners' experiences in the new media environment. Drawing on new technologies' involvement in children's educational and social experiences, this research focuses on pre-adolescents in Taiwan and presents a scenario demonstrating that although well-designed interactive TV has highly elevated technological capabilities, it cannot change the fact that children's TV watching at home is mostly a social and shared activity. Watching TV is a major part of routine activity in a family environment, neither complemented by nor substituted for PC-related behaviours in certain time, space and social-cultural conditions.