This thesis examines the process of mass communication from media strategies to audience belief in relation to the conflict in Ireland. It documents the media strategies used by the various actors and participants in the conflict, from the Northern Ireland Office, Royal Ulster Constabulary, Foreign Office and Army to Sinn Fén and the Irish Republican Army, via the Ulster Defence Association, other political parties, Civil liberties and human rights organisations and many others. It reveals the continuing disinformation efforts of the British government, examines how source organisations interact with journalistsw, how journalists and their editors operate and looks at the outcome of their endeavours by analysing international coverage of the Northern Ireland conflict. Finally, the research examines the reception of media information amongst people living in Northern Ireland and Britain. Key questions here included the extent to which `violence' acted as a key organising category in British perceptions of the conflict and the effectiveness of propaganda in structuring public (mis)understandings.

This thesis analyses the extent and forms of class relations in the Soviet Union. The theoretical approach adopted to the analysis 'of the Soviet class structure is based on a critique of the classical Marxist approach to class, as well as of common sociological approaches to class, particularly the Weberian conception of class. These issues are the concern of the Introduction, which outlines an alternative approach to class structure based on a conception of relations of production which differs from the classical Marxist approach, particularly in avoiding any reliance on the labour theory of value for defining relations of production and hence for demarcating class boundaries. Chapter One provides an outline of developments in the Soviet rural class structure in the 1920s, and by criticising common conceptions of such developments argues that the strategy of socialist transformation adopted in the policy of forced collectivisation was economically unnecessary and politically disastrous. The purpose of this Chapter is to throw the contemporary class structure of the Soviet Union into historical relief, by indicating the historical context out of which many contemporary features of the Soviet Union developed. It is hoped that this will indicate that many features of the contemporary social structure are historically specific, rather than being necessary features of a state socialist society. Following from this, the analysis of relations of production in the 1960s and 1970s is begun in Chapter Two, where the relations between different kinds of economic agents, particularly collective economic agents (economic units) are examined, using the approach developed in the Introduction to analyse the relations of production as relations between economic agents, which affect the relative economic capacities of agents. It is argued that, because such capacities are always subject to change through processes of struggle and negotiation, an important but hitherto rather neglected aspect of the relations ,of production concerns the policies of economic agents. Consequently, the manner in which agents at various levels in the economy calculate both their own internal state and the course of action which they adopt with respect to other agents is subjected to detailed scrutiny in this Chapter. Chapter Three analyses the legal and political conditions of the relations of production, since in the Soviet Union such economic relations are operative primarily between state agencies, or collective agencies whose relations to the state agencies are legally and politically regulated by the state. Consequently, the issue of the 'withering away of the state' with the decline of private property is considered, as well as various common Western conceptions of Soviet politics. Following on from this, the analysis of politics in terms of a series of 'arenas of struggle' is proposed, and in the light of this approach the capacities of the main central party and state agencies to regulate the economy (and hence to determine the relations of production by implementing effective economic plans) is reviewed. The conclusion from this review is that there are serious limits on the capacity of such central party and state agents to co-ordinate the division of labour, so that theories of an all-powerful totalitarian party or elite dominating Soviet politics and the economy are misguided. Nevertheless, it is argued that there is sufficient central control of the state agencies for one to be able to say that various state agencies do not pursue autonomous objectives. In other words, political relations between state agencies are not such as to preclude socialist planning of the overall economy. Chapter Four examines welfare and social policy as a means of assessing the importance of non-wage forms of income, and concludes that the overall effect of such forms of public expenditure is probably, as intended, to equalise incomes. This point is taken up again in Chapter Five, where the occupational structure and wage differentials are examined, prior to an overall assessment of the distribution of income, which concludes that a policy of income equalisation has been pursued fairly successfully over the past twenty-five years or so. While such a policy may now be running into difficulties of various kinds, in so far as it has been successfully pursued, it has meant that the connection between the distribution of income and the access of agents to the means of production has been partially undermined. Hence class relations have been seriously weakened in the Soviet Union, and it is concluded that they are non-existent within the state sector of the economy. However, this does not mean that there is no class structure in the Soviet Union since collective farm members are still in a different class position from state employees. There may also be capitalist relations in the so-called 'parallel economy' but their extent must be severely limited by the official prohibitions on such activities which means that, if resources are diverted from official purposes, this is largely done on an individual 'self-employed' basis. It is also argued that the 'intelligentsia' cannot be considered as a single, separate stratum from the state employed 'working class' or the collective farm members. Consequently, the official theory of the Soviet class structure must be considered to be seriously deficient.

This thesis develops a theoretical framework for the generation of artificial societies. In particular it shows how sub-systems emerge when the agents are able to learn and have the ability to communicate. This novel theoretical framework integrates the autopoietic hypothesis of human societies, formulated originally by the German sociologist Luhmann, with concepts of Shannon's information theory applied to adaptive learning agents. Simulations were executed using Multi-Agent-Based Modelling (ABM), a relatively new computational modelling paradigm involving the modelling of phenomena as dynamical systems of interacting agents. The thesis in particular, investigates the functions and properties necessary to reproduce the paradigm of society by using the mentioned ABM approach. Luhmann has proposed that in society subsystems are formed to reduce uncertainty. Subsystems can then be composed by agents with a reduced behavioural complexity. For example in society there are people who produce goods and other who distribute them. Both the behaviour and communication is learned by the agent and not imposed. The simulated task is to collect food, keep it and eat it until sated. Every agent communicates its energy state to the neighbouring agents. This results in two subsystems whereas agents in the first collect food and in the latter steal food from others. The ratio between the number of agents that belongs to the first system and to the second system, depends on the number of food resources. Simulations are in accordance with Luhmann, who suggested that adaptive agents self-organise by reducing the amount of sensory information or, equivalently, reducing the complexity of the perceived environment from the agent's perspective. Shannon's information theorem is used to assess the performance of the simulated learning agents. A practical measure, based on the concept of Shannon's information ow, is developed and applied to adaptive controllers which use Hebbian learning, input correlation learning (ICO/ISO) and temporal difference learning. The behavioural complexity is measured with a novel information measure, called Predictive Performance, which is able to measure at a subjective level how good an agent is performing a task. This is then used to quantify the social division of tasks in a social group of honest, cooperative food foraging, communicating agents.

There is increasing interest in how people manage the multiple demands of paid work, home and personal life, and the consequences that failure to achieve ‘balance' between these domains may have on health. There has been limited qualitative research exploring the meanings and connections people attach to gender, ‘work-life balance’ and health; this is particularly so for workers who do not occupy managerial or professional jobs. To fill this gap in the literature this qualitative study examined narratives about ‘work-life balance’ amongst women and men working in ‘non-professional’ jobs in a single organisation. Forty semi-structured interviews were carried out with women and men working in administrative, technical and manual jobs within a single organisation based in various cities across the UK. As with the wider labour market, jobs were largely segregated by sex; all the administrative workers were women, whilst all but one of the manual employees were men. The sample included people who worked full-time and part-time, along with participants who also had other employment or were in further education. The sample was diverse in relation to age and family situation. The study was framed within the context of Clark’s (2000) work/family border theory, which aims to explain how individuals balance paid work and family, and construct the borders between these domains. The thesis focused on paid employment, family, leisure, and reported experiences of work-life balance amongst the sample. It concludes by revisiting Clark’s work/family border theory, considering the importance of different domains and borders for this sample, and the role of gender within the theory. The accounts of work-life balance given by these participants differed from those reported in studies of professional employees. Whilst much of the literature problematises paid work as being the main source of conflict, within this sample experiences varied. Due to the relatively low-paid nature of the work carried out amongst the sample, in many instances the necessity of work in providing for self and family predominated over considerations of work-life balance. Borders surrounding the leisure domain were highly permeable, meaning this domain was often compromised by work and family demands. Participants generally held traditional attitudes to gender roles, particularly in relation to the domestic sphere. This influenced choices constructed around paid work, and experiences of work-life balance. Health was not a key concern, although high levels of strain in different spheres, particularly in relation to the home and family sphere, led to stress for some participants.

This thesis examines media representations and audience reception processes through a detailed study of media reporting and public understandings of asylum and refugee issues. It is based on sixty interviews in which refugees seeking asylum, professionals working with them and members of the general public were invited to comment on their own memories and beliefs using pictures from the TV coverage. The pictures used are included in a detailed thematic content analysis of national and regional broadcast news. Public understandings are systematically compared to the content of media reporting. In particular it explore people’s memories and beliefs of national and regional broadcast news. The content analysis revealed that the national news represents asylum in unsubstantiated and problematic ways whilst the regional news has a more balanced approach to representation of the issue. The thesis explores the diversity of audience reactions and the different ways in which people may accept or reject the media representations. However it also draws attention to the themes which recurred in all of the interviews and argues that there is strong evidence of media effects. The thesis highlights factors in media coverage which are particularly influential. It demonstrates how language, structures, and images may influence audience responses and examines how media representations may structure patterns of misinformation. The audience were poorly informed on asylum and refugee issues. In addition attention is drawn to viewers’ everyday relations and experiences. Some interviewees use specific knowledge to reject news reports. The research provides comprehensive and fruitful insights of cultural differentiation linked to ‘race’/ethnicity, gender, class and geographical location. The thesis concludes by arguing for a media studies schema which connects questions about audience reception with questions about media production and content as well as the construction of broader relations within society enabling researchers to contribute to current debates about power, control and social conditions.

Children and young people at residential schools are among the most vulnerable and marginalized of societal groups. While increasingly research has focused upon the everyday worlds of these children and young people, there has been an absence of research in Scotland that has examined the complex matrix of children’s human rights, complaints processes and advocacy, exploring children and young people’s understandings about those key themes and the institutional relations affecting their daily lives. Situated within a theoretical and contextual framework informed by institutional ethnography and children’s human rights, this thesis provides an account of young people’s understandings about rights, ‘complaints’ and advocacy, illustrating key textual constituents of adult dominated institutional relations influencing those understandings. The thesis begins from the standpoint of young people at residential school, acknowledging young people as expert knowers of their own experiences and claiming that these experiences are located within multifarious intersections of social, generational and institutional relations. Young people revealed in the research that they had little or no knowledge about their rights and that they preferred to discuss their concerns - their ‘complaints’ - with people they know and trust. Young people also disclosed that they had little contact with formal advocates and a poor understanding about advocacy services and the residential school’s internal complaint process. By mapping institutional factors affecting young people’s knowledge and understanding, this research has illuminated the multifaceted complaints process environments located within social care, health, education and legal contexts, explicating the systemic barriers to hearing the concerns of young people about possible rights violations. As researcher, I argue that it is essential for young people at residential school to understand their rights to claim rights violations and seek resolutions to possible rights infringements. Secondly, complaints process definitions need to be informed from a rights-based perspective and coordinate with young people’s own understandings about what constitutes a ‘complaint’. Defining complaints and implementing complaints processes from a human rights perspective, together with ensuring young people have trusting relationships with known advocates in their everyday worlds, is imperative for determining young people’s access to complaint processes and ensuring young people fully realize their entitlements. This research shows how institutional texts – unseen and unknown to young people – exist in ways that may actually interfere with this objective and prohibit the implementation of young people’s participation, protection and provisions rights. By extending our knowledge of young people’s everyday worlds beyond the scope of what is readily apparent in the ordinary ways in which we live our lives, this research has identified sites of potential change within the system of institutional texts, making it possible to effect change that will facilitate, rather than obfuscate, the implementation of young people’s human rights.

Within the social sciences, the extensive literature on homosexuality as a socio-cultural construct and on ‘queer’ identities and experiences generally focuses on Western European or Anglo-American societies. Sexuality and homosexuality remain relatively unexplored fields of enquiry within Russian studies, even if it is usually acknowledged that the complex transformations undergone by Russian society since the fall of the communist system have deeply affected sexual practices and attitudes to sex and sexuality. This thesis addresses a gap in the literature by exploring how ‘lesbian’ identities, broadly understood as encompassing the whole spectrum of LBT (lesbian, bisexual, transgender/transsexual) women’s sexualities, are (re)constructed and (re)negotiated in contemporary Russia. It draws on data generated through participant observation, ethnographic interviews with sixty-one queer-identified women, and expert interviews with activists in local community initiatives; ethnographic data is framed within a broader analysis of discourses on lesbianism in popular culture and the media. The thesis critically assesses the centrality of the ‘East/West’ binary in the existing literature on Russian sexualities. Rather than imposing Western-centric categories of identity, it explores women’s own identifications and the meanings they attach to them, framing them within shifting discourses on sexuality, gender and morality across the Soviet and post-Soviet period. The thesis also looks at how sexual identities are performed, negotiated and expressed across everyday contexts such as the home, the workplace, and the street. It interrogates women’s strategies of identity negotiation, highlighting the constraining effects of heteronormative and gendered notions of respectability, but also foregrounding the importance of individual agency. The thesis also maps ‘lesbian/queer’ space in the different urban settings of Moscow and provincial Ul’ianovsk. It explores how ‘lesbian/queer’ space is collectively carved out of the city landscape, while also examining the cultural practices and patterns of socialising attached to specific ‘lesbian’ settings; it also highlights the role of ‘lesbian/queer’ space in validating and performatively producing shared notions of non-heteronormative sexual identities.

This dissertation presents four papers that seek to make theoretical and practical contributions to the literature on work-life boundary management. Specifically, this research explores new relationships between boundary antecedents, moderators and outcomes, tests the impact of different working arrangements, and uses multiple research methods in order to add to our understanding of how we can manage work-life boundaries in such a way that better work-life outcomes are recognized. The research makes contributions to three areas of work-life literature. First, this research contributes to literature on work–life boundary management by redefining the role of permeability as an essential mechanism by which boundaries can influence work-life outcomes. Using survey and daily diary data with homeworkers in the UK, this research suggests that permeability is a moderator that influences the impact of segmenting and integrating employment practices on work-life outcomes. Further, this dissertation also provides evidence to support the idea that the employment context in an important consideration when considering boundary management. Using qualitative and quantitative research conducted in both highly segmented and highly integrated work environments this research has underscored the importance of considering that boundary strategies are not 'one size fits all’. This dissertation also contributes to the growing body of literature that examines the relationship between individual preferences for integration or segmentation and the resources provided by their work environment. Drawing on Person-Environment Fit (Edwards, 1996, Rothbard, 2005) the research uses polynomial regression and response surface analysis to examine boundary management among employees working off-shore versus those in traditional office-based roles. ‘Fit’, as well as ‘misfit’ between segmentation-preference and segmentation-supply and the resulting impact on work-life outcomes is examined. Last, this research also makes a contribution to the literature that connects the Job Demands-Resources Model to the work-life interface (Demerouti et al., 2001). Drawing on Boundary and Border Theories (Zerubavel, 1991, Clark, 2000), this research uses data from a daily diary study of homeworkers to examine daily predictors and outcomes of boundary strength. In addition, the data demonstrate that boundary permeability acts a moderator that regulates the impact of job demands and resources, apart from just segmenting and integrating working practices, on work-life outcomes and well-being. Together, these papers reflect the importance of examining work/non-work boundaries through the lens of individual and organisational difference and allow us to better understand the mechanisms which can be used to better manage these boundaries.

This thesis explores the intersection of age, gender and sexuality in representations of older lesbian characters in contemporary narrative film. Taking the 1990s as a benchmark of lesbian visibility, I explore the turn of the century representability by focusing on British and American film (1995 to 2009). I identify a hypervisibility paradox during this period of cinematic production where the presence of a multitude of young lesbian and bisexual characters can be seen to be in complete contrast with the invisibility of the older lesbian. Mainstream postfeminist culture censors the ageing female body, except in its ‘successfully aged’, youthful, heterosexualised form. Older lesbian characters are excluded from this frame of visibility and, instead, are represented through paradigms associated with the concept of ‘ageing as decline.’ There is little in existing age studies or lesbian film studies to articulate an understanding of the intersection of age, gender and sexuality in cinematic representation. I adopt an interdisciplinary cultural studies approach to make my contribution in what is an under-researched area and present a multifaceted approach to a complex cultural image. I investigate the continuity of the concept of the lesbian as ghostly (Castle, 1993) through narratives of illness, death and mourning. I argue that the narrative of ‘ageing as decline’ stands in for the process of ‘killing off’ lesbian characters (identified in 1960s and 1970s cinema). The intersection of the identity old with lesbian thus results in a double ghosting and ‘disappearance’ of the older lesbian character. Regarding Notes on a Scandal (Eyre, 2006), I pursue two particular readings. One emphasises the return of the lesbian as monstrous based on the construction of ageing and lesbian desire as abject (Kristeva, 1982). A second reading moves beyond the monstrous lesbian as a ‘negative’ stereotype and identifies the protagonist as a queer character who subverts heteronormativity. Finally, I turn to oppositional reading practices in order to optimise the possibilities of identifications across mainstream film texts. Based on Judi Dench’s various transgressive film roles, her role as M in the Bond franchise in particular, I explore this actress’ subversive potential to represent the older lesbian. I conclude that despite mainstream cinema’s hypervisibility paradox, characters who transgress age, gender and sexuality norms can provide opportunities for lesbian identification.

Background and rationale: Urban regeneration is an example of an intervention that seeks to address social and spatial inequalities that negatively affect the health and wellbeing of residents living in inner-city neighbourhoods (Thomson et al., 2006, Kearns, 2012). Although urban regeneration takes many forms, this thesis focuses on the policy of relocation. This policy is practiced across different countries including US, UK, and in Western Europe, and involves moving residents out of sub-standard housing. Post-relocation of resident population, the substandard housing is demolished and the neighbourhood is redeveloped. While previous studies regarding young people and relocation have focused on outcomes (Leventhal and Brooks-Gunn, 2005, Deluca and Rosenblatt, 2010, Zuberi, 2012) or young people’s feelings of empowerment within the decision making process (Fitzpatrick et al., 2000); little is known about how young people experience the process of moving, or how they perceive and negotiate neighbourhood change. Therefore the aim of the thesis is to address this gap in knowledge. Methods: Using qualitative, longitudinal, mixed-method (semi-structured home interviews, go-along, and photo-elicitation) interviews, 15 participants between the ages of 11-18 were interviewed in 2011, with a subsample re-interviewed in 2012. Participants were recruited from two deprived neighbourhoods (in Glasgow, Scotland) that were undergoing similar programmes of regeneration and relocation. At wave one, all participants lived in a high-rise flat due for demolition, and were awaiting relocation. Results: Pre-relocation, most participants described witnessing change in the neighbourhood although, given the slow process of regeneration, it was unsurprising that the participants’ everyday experiences of neighbourhood were inexplicably tied to their experience of regeneration. It was therefore difficult to separate the two, as one appeared to influence the other. For some, the slow progress of regeneration meant experiencing continuing (or worsening) physical and social problems in the neighbourhood. For example, participants who were aware or concerned about antisocial behaviour (ASB) in the neighbourhood were also more likely to feel that regeneration had made their neighbourhood a more dangerous place to walk in. Post-relocation, participants described their new neighbourhoods as comparatively more quiet and clean, although they also suggested that there were still problems of ASB. While relocation provided some challenges for the participants, in general they found the experience non-stressful and at times found that their new neighbourhood was closer to friends and family. At the same time as experiencing urban change, all of the participants experienced biographical change. These changes often occurred independently of the regeneration, and were often described as more stressful. For the participants, these changes included changing or leaving school, relationship breakdowns, and parental separation. In these instances, regeneration and relocation were seen as the most manageable change occurring in their life. Conclusions: The thesis highlights the importance of examining the entire process of regeneration and relocation rather than focusing on the outcomes associated with it. Given the slow process of regeneration, many of the young people interviewed in the study were growing up within, through, and alongside these neighbourhood changes, with changes in their personal lives being more influential or stressful than change at the neighbourhood-level. However, they were not victims of circumstance, but rather, were active in maintaining a ‘normal’ everyday life by utilising social and spatial resources.