Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Telecommunications, 2009. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Feb. 8, 2010). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-05, Section: A, page: 1464. Adviser: David Waterman.

In this dissertation, I explore health care movements as social movements which are complexly embedded in history, culture, and political economy. In order to illuminate issues of power, gender, economics, and modality and practitioner politics, medical pluralism and health movements are examined from nineteenth century eclecticism to the current interest in integrative medicine. From the Thompsonian health movement of the 1830's to the fluorescence of alternative healing in the 1960's and 1990's, the dissertation takes the reader through the multifaceted health and healing landscape. This winding path leads up to the current immense interest in and use of non-biomedical therapies in the United States. Using theoretical orientations from phenomenology to critical medical anthropology, the dissertation examines integrative healing movements in local and national contexts. Locally, ethnographic work was based in Ithaca, NY, through participant observation with Ithaca's Integrative Community Wellness Center, a nonprofit grassroots initiative that aims to provide comprehensive wellness care in community contexts. Nationally, I examine the roles of institutions such as HMO's and hospitals. Alternative, complementary, and integrative healing movements have become a profound part of popular and medical cultures, yet they have heretofore not been a major focus of anthropological or social science research. The dissertation is a contribution to understanding the nature and dynamics of these phenomena and what the future may hold for the use and combination of pluralistic approaches to health and wellness care.

The four experiments examined five issues relating to the use of information by decision makers. The first was time; second was descriptive words instead of university letter grades; third was the information source's credibility; fourth was persuasion technique; and fifth was type of appeal. Time available was variously combined with letter grades, evaluative words, and differentially credible information sources. The first two experiments showed that time and evaluative words affect decisions, and that evaluative words were more effective when time was short. The third experiment showed that credible sources strongly influence a decision, but, when time is short, the effect of a credible source weakens. The fourth experiment aimed to ascertain if one appeal type was more effective than another when used in conjunction with one of two persuasion techniques. Modified versions of the persuasion techniques Foot In The Door (FITD), and Door In The Face (DITF), were crossed with two types of appeal common to public television, Mission and Transaction. Mission appeals discuss quality; Transaction appeals offer a return. The FITD and the DITF manipulated the magnitude of the initial donation request, with subjects then responding to either a Mission or a Transaction appeal. There were no significant effects for pitch, or for persuasion technique. Significant interactions between pitch and sex, and pitch, persuasion, and sex were found. Males gave most when Transaction pitches were used with the DITF and least to Mission appeals with the DITF. Females by contrast responded most to Mission pitches used with the DITF persuasion technique. The results of experiment four have practical implications for public broadcasting fundraising.

This dissertation outlines the material and aesthetic origins of the game film in order to show how video and computer games are altering film's role in the media economy specifically, and the form and function of the mass media more generally. I argue that game cinematization is emblematic of the culture industries' (1) new economic practices and (2) aesthetic and technological convergence. Chapter One introduces the dissertation and offers a precis of the history of film-based licensing in the U.S. In the chapter, I suggest that one of the primary functions of American commercial film is to brand and sell consumer goods, and that understanding the origins of this licensing function is crucial to understanding how games are redefining it. Chapter Two provides a political economy of the institutional and industrial factors that made the game film possible, focusing specifically on a sea change in game business during the late 1980s, and the joint Congressional hearings on game violence in the early 1990s. Chapter Three complements Chapter Two's historical materialist analysis with a textual one, analyzing why game films seem to draw primarily from a single genre--the fighting game. The fighting game's ability to facilitate "safe looking," along with the ways fighting games embody the very essence of genre, have helped ease the transformation of game content into film content. Chapter Four revisits Chapters Two and Three in order to show how the material and aesthetic forces that birthed the game film are among the most influential forces affecting film today. The chapter analyzes the evolution of media makers' attempts to explore and exploit the game medium, and describes the ways games have begun to reshape film business, production, and aesthetics.

Drawing on work in communications, media studies, and history, I argue that the historiographical methods of rhetoric and composition need to move beyond written discourse to consider the use of visual historical representations of the past. To explicate my argument, I analyze multiple examples of local and national television news coverage of the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, and the recent fighting in Kosovo. Based upon these examples, I argue that the television news media work within a dysfunctional, narrative-driven genre that is entirely inadequate in its attempts to analyze current world events, particularly warfare, because of heavy reliance upon culturally recognizable images of the past drawn from both fictional and non-fictional sources. Ultimately, my argument demonstrates the need for a critical methodology in rhetoric and composition for examining texts that are visual--such as photographs, video tapes, and multimedia documents on the Web. I begin with an examination of the history and historiography of rhetoric and composition. Using Susan Jarratt's Rereading the Sophists as an extended example, I analyze how history is both written and critiqued in this field--drawing heavily on such sources as Rhetoric Review's Octalogs and the work of James Berlin, Thomas P. Miller, and Robert J. Connors. To move the historiographical methods into the analysis of visual history, I draw on the work of a wide range of scholars in communications, media studies, and history: Walter Lippmann, Thomas E. Patterson, W. Lance Bennett, Noam Chomsky, Jean Baudrillard, H. Bruce Franklin, and others. After applying the methodology I develop to several texts--from both television and the Web--I extend my arguments beyond historiography to American culture. I argue that the ways in which the past is constructed have direct consequences for the ways in which Americans understand the past and present. Specifically, superficial constructions of history limit the ability of viewers/readers to think critically about the past and thus limit the complexity of arguments on which decisions in the present can be based. In this sense, visual history is an example of deliberative rhetoric limited by the constraints under which forensic rhetoric is constructed.

How does television news present the world to American viewers? This study employs a content analysis of selected international news stories reported by the four major American networks between October and December 1995 to answer this question. International news has been the target of much critique, which this study puts to an empirical test. Specifically, claims about unfairly negative coverage of the Third World were supported, but not in the entirety in which they are often voiced. Coverage of international events is primarily crisis-oriented and secondarily politics-oriented and focuses on events with American involvement. The prevalence of episodic international coverage and the corresponding lack of stories conveying substantive information makes television a less than ideal source to learn about the "big picture" in global events. Methodologically, this study uses new, more precise measuring techniques, including the often omitted visual analysis of newscasts and the concept of unifying story themes.

This thesis is an exploration of the content of Russian teen magazines published in 2003 meant for a female audience. Given that glossy magazines for female teenagers did not appear in Russia until 1991, the long-term effect of the messages these magazines engender is yet to fully be seen in the generations coming of age in post-Soviet society. This thesis is a first attempt to speculate on the effect these magazines are having on Russian teen girls. By analyzing the strategies used in these magazines to promote fashion, cosmetics, skin care and body image, we can perceive the ways in which Western norms of feminine beauty have been successfully imported to Russia during the last 15 years. This study examines the ideal of the "beautiful" female body propagated throughout the Soviet era, and how this ideal changed with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Implications for further research are discussed.

This dissertation is a history of the development of the Canadian federal government's music industry policies from about 1970 to 1998. Over this period the government undertook a number of significant initiatives that mark the emergence of the Canadian music industry as a distinctive object of federal policy. The resulting account is not a single, linear narrative but unfolds in three separate but related streams, based on the following policies: Canadian content quotas for radio, the Sound Recording Development Program (a funding program to support the production and marketing of sound recordings), and revisions to Canada's copyright regime, such as neighbouring rights and a home taping levy. Each of these policies has a distinct history, originating in different areas of government at different times. Together, they do not form a consistent whole as much as an overlapping set of separate "policy assemblages," incorporating distinctive policy instruments and particular configurations of the Canadian music industry. Drawing on Michel Callon's work on the construction of markets, the dissertation explores the various ways in which the Canadian music industry enters into cultural policy through its associations with other extant policy formations. Canada's music industry appears in various roles in this history – as a supplier of programming for broadcasters, as a sector comparable to other 'cultural industries' such as film production and book publishing, and as the representative of the rights of artists and creators. Finally, the dissertation examines the ways in which these conceptions begin to cohere through the efforts of government and the industry representati / Ce travail dresse un historique des mesures prises par le gouvernement fédéral canadien dans le domaine de l'industrie musicale, de 1970 environ jusqu'en 1998. Au cours de cette période, le gouvernement met en place plusieurs mesures décisives qui font de la production musicale un secteur spécifique de la politique fédérale. Le texte qui suit n'est pas un compte rendu chronologique; il s'organise en trois parties distinctes mais interdépendantes, qui recensent trois types de mesures : le quota de contenu canadien pour les programmes radiophoniques, le programme d'aide au dévelopement de l'enregistrement sonore (un programme qui finance la production et le marketing des enregistrements sonores), et les corrections apportées au régime canadien du droit d'auteur : droits voisins, droits à la copie pour usage privé. Ces mesures ont leurs histoires propres, nées à des périodes différentes dans des ministères différents. Considérées dans leur ensemble, elles ne forment pas un tout cohérent, mais plutôt une collection d'"agencements politiques", qui combinent procédures politiques et aménagements propres au secteur concerné, celui de la production musicale au Canada. S'inspirant des recherches de Michel Callon sur la construction des marchés, notre travail explore les différentes filières par lesquelles la production musicale canadienne a pris place dans la politique culturelle grâce à son association avec d'autres institutions déjà en place. L'industrie musicale canadienne joue plusieurs rôles dans notre travail : pour les diffuseurs, celui de fournisseur de programmes, pour les autres secteurs de la vie culturelle (cinéma ou édition), cel

The multimedia industry represents a segment of the economy that has recently witnessed a tremendous growth rate. The rapid development of such an industry results in the need to develop adequate legal protection for multimedia works. Although doubt no longer exists as to the copyright protection afforded to multimedia works, their legal qualification remains controversial. The legal qualification of a work will influence the ownership of patrimonial and moral rights in regards to that work. The author surveys the main possible qualifications for multimedia works. Drawing on legislation and jurisprudence from the United States, France and Europe, the author suggests amendments to the Canadian Copyright Act. These amendments would ensure not only the protection of the audiovisual elements generated by their underlying computer programs, but would, by the same token, cover multimedia works.

My dissertation explores the eclectic singing careers of sisters Eva and Juliette Gauthier. Born in Ottawa, Eva and Juliettte were aided in their musical aspirations by the patronage of Prime Minister Wilfred Laurier and his wife Lady Zoë. They both received classical vocal training in Europe. Eva spent four years in Java. She studied the local music, which later became incorporated into her concert repertoire in North America. She went on to become a leading interpreter of modern art song. Juliette became a performer of Canadian folk music in Canada, the United States and Europe, aiming to reproduce folk music “realistically” in a concert setting. My dissertation is the result of examining archival materials pertaining to their careers, combined with research into the various social and cultural worlds they traversed. Eva and Juliette’s careers are revealing of a period of transition in the arts and in social experience more generally. These transitions are related to the exploitation of non-Western people, uses of the “folk,” and the emergence of a cultural marketplace that was defined by a mixture of highbrow institutions and mass culture industries. My methodology draws from the sociology of art and cultural history, transposing Eva and Juliette Gauthier against the backdrop of the social, cultural and economic conditions that shaped their career trajectories and made them possible. / Ma thèse de doctorat explore les carrières éclectiques des chanteuses Eva et Juliette Gauthier. Nées à Ottawa, ces deux sœurs ont été supportées par le Premier Ministre Wilfred Laurier et sa femme Lady Zoë dans la poursuite de leurs aspirations musicales. Toutes deux ont suivi des cours de chant classiques en Europe, Eva passant quatre ans à Java où elle étudia la musique locale qu’elle a ensuite introduite dans son répertoire de concert en Amérique du Nord. Elle devint ainsi une des interprètes principales de la chanson de l’école moderne. Pour sa part, Juliette est devenue chanteuse de musique folk canadienne, donnant des concerts tant au Canada et aux Etats-Unis qu’en Europe, dans le but d’en donner une représentation « réaliste » à l’intérieur même d’un concert.Ma thèse est le résultat de l’analyse des documents d’archive portant sur leurs carrières et de la recherche des divers milieux sociaux et culturels qu’elles ont traversés. Les carrières d’Eva et de Juliette sont révélatrices d’une période de transition dans le domaine des arts et, de façon générale, dans l’expérience sociale. Ces transitions sont reliées à l’exploitation des peuples non-occidentaux, à l’usage du « folk » et à l’émergence d’un marché culturel défini par le mélange des institutions établies et des industries de la culture de masse. Ma méthodologie puise dans la sociologie de l’histoire de l’art et de la culture, mettant Eva et Juliette Gauthier en relief dans le contexte des conditions sociales, culturelles et économiques qui ont marqué et rendu possible la trajectoire de leurs carrières.