The internet and social media have had a significant impact on recipients’ media consumption. As the converging media environment recipients face today offers not only more media products but also new practices of using certain media products, this study focuses on how the social micro-blogging service Twitter impacts the watching of television series. The presented study aims at explaining a new form of media reception by employing a multi-method approach. A content analysis case study of tweets about the US-American series “Homeland” and the German series “Tatort” will give insight into the Twitter content on two different series. Further, qualitative semi-standardized interviews and a survey will shed light on the situational aspects and motivational factors to use Twitter while watching television series. The uses and gratification theory is used as a backdrop to study the motivations to use Twitter while watching television series. The results of the content analysis on the two series indicate that there is a strong focus on the series itself within the tweets. Nevertheless, both series provide somewhat differing Twitter content. While tweets on “Tatort” are more critical and realistic towards the series, tweets about “Homeland” are more likely to be referential. The situation of tweeting while watching television series seems to be characterized by the usage of a second screen. The major motivational factors identified in this study are socializing at a distance and exchanging social information. All in all this study presents a fascinating new form of media reception and furthermore offers description and explanation of its application. Additionally it provides suggestions as to how to approach such a fast-changing, new media environment.

Badania dotyczyły wyłonienia profilów pojęcia ojczyzna w świadomości polskojęzycznej młodzieży w Wilnie. / Tyrimo pagrindinis tikslas buvo išaiškinti, kaip Vilniaus šiuolaikinis lenkakalbis jaunimas suvokia tėvynės sampratą. / Master's work main goal was to introduce contemporary youth and the perception of the homeland concept of profiling.

Thesis (M.A.)--Eastern Illinois University, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [73]-[79]).

Conflicts today aren’t just between two opposing parties but are delocalized for many reasons. One of those reasons is the migration of groups affected by conflict to other countries. These groups are known as Conflict-generated diaspora and even though they move across the border, they never really cease to be involved in the conflict back home. Because of this continued attachment, diasporas can play the role of a peace-maker or a peace-breaker in the homeland conflict. The literature on diasporas is still trying to understand the factors that lead to this behavior. In this context, this study attempts to answer the question - How does migration affect attitudes towards peace deals for homeland conflicts?I conduct a Structured Focused Comparison of Palestinian communities in Palestine and Sweden to test the diasporas as peace-breakers framework, which links conflict-generated migration to negative attitudes towards peace deals for homeland conflicts. The empirical findings do not find support for the hypothesis tested; since the Palestinian diaspora in Sweden showed a more positive attitude towards the Two-state solution as compared to the local Palestinian community. This is an important finding because it makes a strong case for not labeling all conflict-generated diasporas as peace-breakers.

This diploma paper describes various possibilities of how to make the best account of Jihlava ZOO excursions in the primary school lessons of Homeland study and Biology. This work also reports methodical instructions on the realization of these excursions. The theoretical part of my thesis deals with the basic characterization of Primary School Educational Program, on which basis mentioned excursion projects were drawn and, in addition, this part also shows us some essential information about Jihlava ZOO. In following four chapters, the author explains the organization of these proposed excursions and gives us basic data about the concrete possibilities of their usage.

My diploma thesis called ``Methodology of General Science and Homeland study of the region in the example of Rakovnicko`` consists of two parts. The first part is theoretical and describes the region of Rakovník from many aspects such as characteristics and structuring of this territory, physical-geographical and socio-economic dates and the nature and landscape protection. The data for the creation of the second practical part are created from the first theoretical part and these are: teaching materials, worksheets, concepts of walks and excursions and methodical book for teachers of primary school of this area.

In 1991 a private town for Afrikaners was established on the bank of the Orange River, in the semi-desert of South Africa’s Northern Cape Province. As a deliberately Afrikaans, and thus white, community, the town’s aims and existence are controversial, but both its principles and practicalities are not unique. Endeavouring to build an Afrikaner homeland in multiracial South Africa seems incongruous, signalling a retreat from social heterogeneity as a fact of the contemporary world. It raises questions about what people do following a social, political and economic paradigm shift, and about what is occurring within a country with multiple and contradictory accounts of history and a traumatic recent past. It also means resisting the pressure to deal with the past, and therefore the present, in a certain way. Consequently, the frequent question of whether or not the town as an enterprise, or its residents, are racist, reveals instead a complex ordering of society. Life in Orania is filled with ordinary everyday activities of earning a living, raising and educating children, socialising, and practising religion in a town where Christian principles are explicit, each combining elements of intentionality and contingency. Once superficial similarity between residents can be taken for granted, the focus shifts to the differences between them, which rise and fall in importance, highlighting the circumstantial nature of group solidarity. This raises the question of what the differences within the community are, how deeply they reach, and where fundamental commonalities lie that prompt them to choose to build a future together. For the few hundred people involved in the enterprise, Orania is the only way they think they will have a recognisable future: they fear the demise of Afrikaners as an ethnic group through cultural assimilation or dispersal, emigration, and population decline. Their position of victimhood and vulnerability, shaped by the past, shapes their present actions in turn. Afrikaners’ interpretation of themselves as victims is easily supported by the popular historical narrative that Afrikaners have always struggled against outside authorities to be self-determining. This ethnographic study reveals that Orania is a concrete response to the fear that there may not be a place for Afrikaners in South Africa’s future, in the country to which they feel they belong and where their identity is rooted.

The paper explores the impact of the September 11 events on the U.S. politics of homeland security, examines the consequences of the after-9-11 measures taken up by the U.S. Government for international trade, and evaluates the role of these measures in contemporary world.

The movement of workers from the rural to the urban sector has been and continues to be an integral part of economic development. The phenomenon is neither avoidable nor completely preventable. Attempts to explain it have thus been concerned largely with the rate of movement of rural workers to the urban sector and the resultant urban unemployment. The major cause of rural to urban migration is economic. Essentially, this includes calculations about actual or expected incomes and the existence of differences in employment opportunities between the rural and the urban sectors. Workers will normally migrate to a sector if that sector offers more job opportunities and higher average wages. However, some workers may be attracted to the urban sector by better welfare and social facilities but these alone can not account for a significant volume of rural to urban migration. In South Africa, Black workers, as elsewhere, respond to differences in employment opportunities and average wages between sectors by moving to the sector which offers more. However, the homeland policy controls and regulates the movement, settlement and employment of African labor particularly in the White controlled economy (urban sector). The policy seeks to ultimately reduce the African population in the White controlled economy and at the same time to develop the homelands so that a larger number of Black workers would be employed in the homelands or in border areas. Because of the controls in the urban sector, the urban Black labor force has remained largely unstabilized and resulted in a migrant labor system. Attempts to develop the homelands have not made much headway. Since the 1930's their capacity to support their populations has been deteriorating. Often maize and sorghum (staple foods) have to be imported to supplement the little that is produced locally. Rapid population growth and widespread removal of Black workers from the White controlled economy to the homelands in the 1960's created a serious problem of overcrowdedness in the homelands. Population density in these areas is among the highest in Africa. The homeland modern sector is still in its infancy and can only create a small number of jobs in a year. The majority of the economically active African workers continue to seek employment in the White controlled economy. The homeland policy has thus not succeeded yet in its objective. What it has succeeded in doing instead is to concentrate the dependents of urban Black workers in the homelands thereby shifting responsibility to them for providing the workers and their dependents with social services. The homelands remain poor, underdeveloped and cheap reserves of African labor for the White controlled economy.

In 2014, Switzerland was ranked seventh among the most successful nations in exerting what political scientist Joseph Nye calls "soft power": the ability to exercise power by attracting favor through economic and cultural influence rather than through coercion. This ability is partly due to the way Switzerland redefined its national identity following an economic decline in the 1970s and rapidly changing demographics, resulting in its repositioning on the international market. Indicative of this shift is the adoption of the pseudo-English word "Swissness" into the Swiss-German language in the late 1990s. The notion of Swissness, initially used in marketing Swiss products, has become instrumental in reframing and reshaping the cultural landscape of the nation. This dissertation examines a particular case of cultural nation re-branding through an ethnographic analysis of the revival of Streichmusik (string music). Streichmusik, which was once a localized musical practice of the mountainous region of the Appenzell and the Toggenburg, has become identified as quintessentially Swiss. By considering the role of domestic cultural tourism, I ask how Streichmusik, a visual and sonic representation of Swissness, is promoted and at times commercialized, and how commodification of the musical practice has affected its performance, reception, and cultural significance locally and nationally. In my analyses, I focus particularly on two keywords, Heimat (homeland) and Heile Welt (ideal or idyllic world), as well as local terminology denoting authenticity to argue that Streichmusik and the region offer a restorative platform for Switzerland. The resultant notions of nostalgia and reclaiming a rural utopia, position Appenzell and Toggenburg as an embodiment of Swissness. Based on participant observation and interviews, this study focuses on the voices of performers, cultural institutions, and tourist organizations to demonstrate how the tensions between cultural preservation and marketing practices at a local and national level provide a reimagined heritage in their attempt to (re)brand both the region and the nation at large. I further argue that having found a new place in the cultural imaginary through Swissness, Streichmusik performers articulate differing relationships with domestic cultural tourism and globalizing market forces at a time of shifting discourses of Swiss national identity. / 2017-05-31T00:00:00Z