University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of Communication

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 302-317).

Thesis (PhD) --Stellenbosch University, 2012. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The rapidly growing presence of old and new media in postcolonial Namibia, particularly from the decade after the turn of the Millennium, has significance for cultural and identity transformations in the country. Formerly entrenched social identities, shaped by restrictive colonialism and indigenous traditions, appear to be under pressure as shifts become apparent in the face of globalisation. This thesis examines the characteristics of change from the perspective of young adults’ mediated experiences in the city of Windhoek. The research constitutes a cultural study that addresses the current knowledge gap regarding how growing local and global media presences are increasingly situated in youth identity and cultural lifestyle spaces. Degrees of reflexive response to mediated information and entertainment are examined in an attempt to understand awareness of and reaction to local and global power narratives situated in actors’ relationships with media. It was found that participants responded positively to the novelty and opportunities that global media offered for identity and lifestyle negotiations, while also revealing ontological anxieties about erosion of ‘traditional’ culture, and concern about absence of recognition and representation of the ‘local’ in global media productions. This led to the research conceptually establishing three participant orientations to media: cultural expropriationist, cultural traditionalist and cultural representationalist. The study concluded that while media seemed to be instrumental in identity and cultural change, social tension over matters of culture appeared to be emerging. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die snelgroeiende teeenwoordigheid van ou en nuwe media in postkoloniale Namibië, veral sedert die dekade ná die millenniumwending, is beduidend vir kulturele en identiteitsverskuiwings in dié land. Voorheen verskanste sosiale identiteite, gevorm deur die beperkinge van kolonialisme en inheemse tradisies, skyn onder druk te wees soos verskuiwings duidelik begin te word in die lig van globalisering. Hierdie proefskrif ondersoek die eienskappe van hierdie veranderinge vanuit die perspektief van jong volwassenes se gemedieerde ondervindinge in die stad Windhoek. Hierdie navorsing behels ’n kulturele studie wat bydra tot die begrip van plaaslike en globale media-teenwoordigheid as toenemend gesitueer op die terrein van jeugidentiteit en kulturele lewenstyle. Daar word ondersoek ingestel na verskillende grade van refleksiewe reaksies op gemedieerde inligting en vermaak, in ’n poging om te verstaan hoe bewustheid van en reaksie op plaaslike en globale magsnarratiewe gesitueer is in rolspelers se verhoudings met media. Daar is bevind dat respondente positief gereageer het op die nuwighede en geleenthede wat globale media bied vir identiteits- en leefstylonderhandelinge, terwyl ontologiese onsekerhede oor die ondermyning van ‘tradisionele’ kultuur, en kommer oor die afwesigheid van erkenning en representasie van die ‘plaaslike’ in globale mediaproduksies, ook aan die lig gekom het. Hierdie bevinding het gelei daartoe dat die navorsing drie oriëntasies onder deelnemers vasgestel het: kultureel-onteienend, kultureel-tradisioneel, en kultureel-verteenwoordigend. Die studie het tot die gevolgtrekking gekom dat, terwyl die media instrumenteel in identiteits- en kultuurverandering blyk te wees, dit tegelykertyd sosiale spanning oor kulturele aangeleenthede aanwakker.

Submitted in partial fulfilment of requirements for an MA in Journalism and Media Studies in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Witwatersrand, August 2017 / The purpose of this research is to demonstrate how alternative youth media, particularly onlinebased news sources, in covering the #FeesMustFall (#FMF) campaign 2015 students protest from October 14, 2015 to October 23, 2015, challenged news framing, while shifting traditional mainstream media’s agenda-setting role. In post-apartheid South Africa in 2015, which was dubbed “the year of the student”, the history of student politics was significant in what culminated in the hashtag #FeesMustFall campaign, challenging the representation of student protesters in the media. The unprecedented local and international alternative youth media and mainstream media coverage of the 2015 student protests—in print, online and on social media platforms—signaled the impact of the biggest student protests since 1994. The results from this qualitative research sampling online-based news platforms and interviews with journalists for their opinions on the blanket media coverage of the protests, shows a significant paradigm shift in how newsrooms re-examined what would be a silent consensus of framing and agenda-setting as was dictated by alternative youth media. / XL2018

This transformative mixed-methods research study, uniquely designed as a 12-week curriculum to facilitate critical media literacy, drew upon the principles of critical pedagogy to investigate Black adolescents ‘perceptions of the impact of media on their racial identities. Responding to the high rate of media consumption among Black youth, the Critical Encounters Unit engaged 79 Black high school students in the southeast United States in examining how they made sense of their media encounters. Data on participants ‘perceptions of the role media plays in constructing Black identities and societal perceptions of Blacks were gathered through pre-post study surveys of all participants‘ self-identities and media literacy, interviews with 15 participants, 467 student journals, and 15 video observation field notes. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2015 / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

The Index of Receptivity to Tobacco Industry Promotion (IRTIP) is a model that is used by hundreds of articles. The causal claim based on findings from this model is even more pervasive, and has resulted in much of the modern post 1998 tobacco legislation that is still enforced. This thesis tested the link between adolescent receptivity to tobacco industry promotion and susceptibility to smoking. Pierce et al. (1998) reported that they had found a positive and causal association between receptivity and susceptibility by using IRTIP. They claimed that receptivity to tobacco industry promotion was the only significant causal factor affecting adolescent susceptibility to smoking. Exposure to peer and parental smoking was not found to be a significant effect. A review of the literature found that many sections of IRTIP differ from accepted marketing theory on how cigarette advertising and promotions affect adolescent adoption of cigarette smoking. The proxy measures used in IRTIP were shown to diverge from those previously used for measuring the constructs of Attention, Intention, Desire and Action (AIDA) in marketing communications. IRTIP also differs from previous theory by including measures that attempt to quantify the effect of tobacco premiums into a model that was designed to measure the effects of advertising.

This dissertation focuses on the production and development of a conspicuous, widespread culture phenomenon in contemporary Japan, which is characterized by numerous young, mediapromoted personalities, or pop-idols, who are groomed for public consumption. The research, based on eighteen months of in-depth fieldwork in the Japanese entertainment industry, aims to contribute to the understanding of the allegorical role played by pop-idols in the creation of youth culture. Pop-idols are analyzed as personified symbols that function as vehicles of cultural production. The principal issues suggested in this research include: the criteria of popidol production; the ways in which pop-idols are produced; the perceptions of pop-idol performances by producers, performers, and consumers; the ways in which idol personalities are differentiated from each other; the ways in which pop-idol performances are distinguished from other styles or genres; and the social, cultural, political, economic, and historical roots as well as consequences of pop-idols' popularity. These issues are explored through the examination of female pop-idols. The single, most important function of pop-idols is to represent young people's fashions, customs, and lifestyles. To this end, the pop-idol industry generates a variety of styles that can provide the young audience with pathways toward appropriate adulthood. They do this within their power structure as well as their commercial interest to capitalize on adolescence - which in Japan is considered the period in which individuals are expected to explore themselves in the adult social world. The stylized promotion, practiced differently by promotion agencies that strive to merchandise pop-idol images and win public recognition, constitutes a field of symbolic contestation. The stage is thus set for an investigation of the strategies, techniques, and processes of adolescent identity formation as reified in the construction of idol personalities. This dissertation offers a contextualized account of dialogue that occurs between capitalism, particular rhetoric of self-making, and the lifestyle of consumers, mediated by pop-idols and their manufacturing agencies that function together as the cultural apparatus. The analysis developed in this dissertation hopes to provide theoretical and methodological contributions to the study of celebrities in other social, cultural, and historical settings.

Presented as a comparative analysis, this qualitative audience study tests the hypothetic proposition that youths’ (1) consumption of media is mediated by various socio-economic determinants as well as cultural and institutional practices. In order to test this hypothesis, the research examines the media (more specifically, television) consumption practices and lifestyles of black South African youths living in an urban city (Durban) and a peri-urban town (Alice) at a particular moment in time. Positioned as a historical study that reflects a specific period in the history of television (and media) in South Africa, the study attempts to provide a snapshot of youths, television consumption and lifestyles in post-apartheid South Africa. It assesses the relationship between youths and media during a specific period, namely, around a decade after South Africa’s first democratically elected government and when the country was still in the throes of political and economic change and transition. It assesses this relationship over a four-year period (from 2002 to 2006) and reflects on this epoch in relation to the then existing policy and regulatory framework as well as to the findings from other relevant empirical research. The analysis reflects upon the social constructs of class and gender in relation to the study’s broader findings on television consumption, which are derived from qualitative and quantitative empirical data. It develops categories and typologies of the lifestyles of youths towards this end and it concludes that youths’ media consumption practices and the production and reproduction of lifestyles is a complex matrix of ‘lived’ experiences, cultural identity and other socialising factors such as age, race and class. Moreover, it shows that peoples’ media choices and the related selection and appropriation of media are fundamentally informed by specific policy and regulatory regime. Notwithstanding this, the ways in which black South African youths use media (imported programming or local television content, for example) and accordingly fashion their lifestyles, remains largely determined by their class, their access to Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and the proximity of the experiences represented in the media to those with which they can identify. (1) I refer to youths (in the plural) in recognition of the heterogeneity of young people classically referred to as the amorphous group, youth. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2011.

Thesis (M. A.)--University of Canterbury, 2006. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 153-164). Also available via the World Wide Web

The early 1990s saw a major change in the Ethiopian history in so far as Ethiopian media consumption practices was concerned. With the change of government in 1991, the ‘Iron Curtail’ prohibiting the dissemination of Western symbolic products within the country was lifted which in turn led to a surge in demand for Western predominantly American media texts. In order to supply this new demand, informal video houses showing primarily American action movies were opened in Addis Ababa. There was a significant shift in Ethiopians’ films consumption practices which were previously limited to watching films produced by socialist countries mainly the former Soviet Union. This study set out to probe reasons for the attraction of American action movies shown in video-viewing houses in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia amongst the urban unemployed male youth. Particularly, it examines how the meanings produced by and embedded in the cultural industries of the West are appropriated in the day-to-day lives of the youth. The importance of video houses as a shared male cultural space for Ethiopian unemployed youth and the watching of American action movies in this space are the main entry and focus of this study. Using qualitative methods such as observation, in-depth interviews and focus group discussions, the study explores what happens in this cultural space and how one makes sense of the impact of American media on local audiences. The findings of the study point to the embeddedness of viewing practice in everyday life and the importance of local contexts in understanding text-reader interaction. This is shown by the male youth’s tendency to use media messages as a mode of escape and a symbolic distancing from their lived impoverished reality. The study also seeks to highlight that the video houses as cultural space have contributed to the creation of marginal male youth identities in the Ethiopian patriarchal society. As such, these and other findings, the study argues, highlight the deficiencies of the media imperialism thesis with its definitive claims for cultural homogenisation as effect of globalisation of media. As such, this study should be read as emphasising the capability of local audience groups in Third World country like Ethiopia to construct their own meanings and thus their own local cultures and identities, even in the face of their virtually complete dependence on the image flows distributed by the transnational culture industries.