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. / Arts, Faculty of / Sociology, Department of / Graduate

Thesis (MA (Political Science. International Studies))--University of Stellenbosch, 2010. / Bibliography / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This research has used a critical discourse analysis approach encompassing postcolonial theory and theory of media effects in order to investigate the influence of political discourse in the media upon youth’s violence in Cameroon. As a result it has been found that the use of private violence by young people in urban cities has become ordinary. Such an attitude reflects among other some aspects of youth’s lifestyle designed to cope with the hardship of their social status and to resist the elite’s dominance. While no counter-narrative has been found in the independent publications about the portrayal of youth’s violence as criminal by the state-owned press, the young people nevertheless have produced through a street culture a narrative deconstructing the political discourse in the media and highlighting their grievances in a more or less violent tone. Thus the use of private violence during the riot in February 2008, is far from an isolated (re)action of angry young people , it obeys the very practicality of their existence and the political turmoil it might cause is incidental to the way of life in which it is embedded. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die navorsing het ‘n kritiese diskoers analise-benadering gebruik wat ‘n postkoloniale teorie en ‘n teorie van media-effekte insluit om sodoende die invloed van politieke diskoers in die media op jeuggeweld in Kameroen, te ondersoek. Daar is gevolglik gevind dat die gebruik van private geweld deur jongmense in stedelike gebiede normaal geword het. So ‘n houding reflekteer onder andere sommige aspekte van die jeug se leefstyl wat ontwerp is om die ontbering van hul sosiale status te hanteer en ook die elite se dominasie te weerstaan. Ofskoon geen teen-narratief sover gevind is in die onafhanklike publikasies oor die uitbeelding van jeuggeweld as krimineel en die publikasies van die staatsbeheerde pers wat die jeug uitbeeld met min agentskap nie, het jongmense wel ‘n teen-narratief geskep deur ‘n straat-kultuur. Hierdie teen-narratief dekonstruktueer die politieke diskoers in die media en onderstreep hul griewe in ‘n geweldadige toon. Dus die gebruik van private geweld gedurende die onluste in Februarie 2008, wat nie as ‘n geïsoleerde (re)aksie van woedende jongmense gesien kan word nie, is getrou aan die wese van hulle bestaan en die politieke onrus wat dit moontlik mag veroorsaak, is bykomstig tot die leefstyl waarin dit vasgelê is.”

This thesis examines the discourse strategies used to construct initiation schools in online media and message boards. The focus is on understanding the tensions that come with enacting traditional practices in the face of modernity and its associated cultural expectations. The thesis describes the manner in which these tensions are constructed in text by the media in news reports and participants in discussion forums. While there is still debate around whether the internet will revolutionise public participation and create a digital utopia; the internet is acknowledged as one of the widest reaching sources of information and entertainment. Specifically, the internet provides a platform to challenge the traditionally top-down communication between the elite, who have privileged access to the media, and the general public, who were previously constructed as passive recipients of information. Using the male circumcision initiation rite, this thesis examines how the South African public discursively constructs the epistemic location of African traditions in South Africa. The study drew on a sample of news articles from the News24 site, the largest news site in South Africa, ranging from January 2008 to December 2013. A corpus of 62 articles were analysed using the Critical Discourse Analysis technique described by Teun van Dijk. The findings of the thesis were that the initiation rite is used as a rhetorical tool to argue for the abandonment of African cultural practices in favour of modern, Western influenced beliefs and values. The findings also indicate that the initiation rite is reduced to the act of circumcision in the media by focusing on the injury and deaths of the initiates and excluding the meaning of the rite as a meaningful cultural practice. The conclusion of the thesis challenges the epistemicide committed against the male circumcision initiation rite from within the Decolonial school of thought, which critically examines everyday interaction for universalising, normative language that aims to commit cultural epistemicide to reinforce the white, male, European, Christian traditions of masculinity. / Psychology / D. Litt. et Phil. (Psychology)

This thesis examines the discourse strategies used to construct initiation schools in online media and message boards. The focus is on understanding the tensions that come with enacting traditional practices in the face of modernity and its associated cultural expectations. The thesis describes the manner in which these tensions are constructed in text by the media in news reports and participants in discussion forums. While there is still debate around whether the internet will revolutionise public participation and create a digital utopia; the internet is acknowledged as one of the widest reaching sources of information and entertainment. Specifically, the internet provides a platform to challenge the traditionally top-down communication between the elite, who have privileged access to the media, and the general public, who were previously constructed as passive recipients of information. Using the male circumcision initiation rite, this thesis examines how the South African public discursively constructs the epistemic location of African traditions in South Africa. The study drew on a sample of news articles from the News24 site, the largest news site in South Africa, ranging from January 2008 to December 2013. A corpus of 62 articles were analysed using the Critical Discourse Analysis technique described by Teun van Dijk. The findings of the thesis were that the initiation rite is used as a rhetorical tool to argue for the abandonment of African cultural practices in favour of modern, Western influenced beliefs and values. The findings also indicate that the initiation rite is reduced to the act of circumcision in the media by focusing on the injury and deaths of the initiates and excluding the meaning of the rite as a meaningful cultural practice. The conclusion of the thesis challenges the epistemicide committed against the male circumcision initiation rite from within the Decolonial school of thought, which critically examines everyday interaction for universalising, normative language that aims to commit cultural epistemicide to reinforce the white, male, European, Christian traditions of masculinity. / Psychology / D. Litt. et Phil. (Psychology)