Thesis (Ph. D.)--Syracuse University, 2005. / "Publication number AAT 3177024."

Based on archival research, in-depth interviewing, and extensive participant observation carried out over two years in both New York and Los Angeles, this ethnography of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) critically examines the professionalization of a media advocacy organization and interrogates the value of visibility in contemporary sexual politics. On what and whose terms has the visibility of gays and lesbians been conceptualized and negotiated, and with what consequences for movement politics? How has GLAAD responded to movement tensions between legitimationist and liberationist approaches to social and cultural change? What is the nature of GLAAD's relationships with the media industries and with other movement agents and organizations? What representations does the leading cultural advocate for the gay and lesbian movement help (re)produce and, in the process, which political constituencies does it represent? I approach GLAAD as a positioned organization in the movement and media fields, in Pierre Bourdieu's sense of the word, in which various agents with stakes in the representation of gays and lesbians compete for various kinds of capital. I describe how, as a result of field positioning objectives, corporate media professionals have come to dominate efforts by the gay and lesbian movement to improve the representation of sexual minorities in mainstream culture. This professionalization has tended to produce normalized representations of gays and lesbians and has fundamentally altered the relationships between the gay and lesbian movement and the media, leading to unprecedented levels of integration. While this integration has contributed greatly to GLAAD's fundraising and institution-building objectives, it has not necessarily led to more influence in the media advocacy system, especially in periods of conflict, and may in fact have made it more difficult for the gay and lesbian movement to advocate effectively on behalf of diverse lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender constituencies.

This dissertation examines how a nonprofit media organization, Active Voice, uses reality-based film as a catalyst for audience engagement, dialogue, identification and social change. This ethnography of cultural production investigates Active Voice's pursuit of social justice goals through broad partnerships that include local and national non-profits, grassroots advocacy organizations, as well as policy makers and corporations. The fieldwork spanned 16 months of study at the Active Voice headquarters in San Francisco, California, when the organization developed from a public television initiative into a strategic, entrepreneurial organization that became an independent nonprofit in 2005. This field study centers on the multi-institutional production process of a community campaign that used the public television broadcast of the 3-part documentary series, The New Americans (2004), as a catalyst for community dialogue and activism on immigration issues. Through comparisons with U.S. public service media projects, such as public journalism and public television outreach, the dissertation identifies and analyzes complex links among documentary representation and advocacy; entrepreneurism and social change; information and entertainment. The study argues that Active Voice's collaborative campaign production process, as well as its engagement with popular genres and venues, answers some of the critiques of U.S. public television as irrelevant and elitist. Following this analysis, this dissertation recommends a cultural policy that fosters public service media projects that balance popular culture with community, nonprofit goals.

My dissertation analyzes the processes of subject formation through the civilizing missions of nationalism and secularism in India, and toward that end, provides a secular critique of the resurgence of Hindu nationalism, which seeks to unify the nation in the name of “one nation, one culture, one people.” After providing an introduction to the some of the dominant theories of nationalism, I compare the works of Partha Chatterjee and Jacques Derrida in terms of the different ways in which they consider their subjectivities as derived, the former through European history and the latter through the French language. Afterwards, I argue that it is necessary to draw a parallel relation between political and cultural modes of belonging to the nation with the psychological experience of nationhood. After raising the problematic relationship that psychoanalysis shares with history and postcolonial theory, I employ Slavoj Zizek's psychoanalytic theory to theorize the subject of Hindu nationalism. Then, I introduce the gendered and sexualized subject of the nation and highlight its problematic relationship with the essentially male discourse of nationalism. Specifically, I analyze ‘lesbian subjectivity’ and its exclusion by patriarchal and heterosexual discourse of Hindu nationalism, which posits the citizen-body as a male, homo-social entity through Deepa Mehta's film Fire. Following that, I raise the problematic of translation of secularism in the Indian context and the inherent challenges present in articulating a ‘secular subjectivity’ in a space that is fraught with the discourses of modernity, nativism, nationalism and religion. I argue that in spite of the problems of political translation that secularism faces, it behooves us to retrieve a secular subjectivity that stands in strong opposition to the discourses of religious fundamentalism in India. Finally, I argue that the act of religious conversion on part of low caste Hindus to Islam and Christianity is actually a performance of cultural criticism, which puts on the anvil the Hindu majoritarian agenda to ‘Indianize, Hinduize, and Spiritualize’ the nation of India.

This dissertation ethnographically examines media-political power relations during the negotiations, ratification and implementation stages of the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland. The Good Friday Agreement marks the latest effort to construct an 'agreed-upon' state where none has previously existed. This effort is contextualized within the socio-economic changes brought about by an emergent 'Celtic Tiger' Irish economy and set against Unionist opposition to the peace process, as expressed by the Loyalist Marching Season and the annual violence around the Drumcree Church Parade. These processes are further contextualized within the long historical processes that gave rise to contending Irish and British nationalisms and the role of the news media in producing them. Drawing on Gramsci, Weber, Anderson, dialogic and articulation theory, this work argues that the nation-state is historically 'produced' and---if successful---its ideals are embodied by those who claim that nationality as a part of their identity. If so, then the project of producing the nation-state is ongoing process where the ideological ties that bind members of that community to each other and to the state must be constantly reinforced and re-articulated in order to sustain that nation-state. Hegemonic and coercive strategies are seen here as intertwined tactics of power that shape and define the social fabric of any cultural matrix---including historic blocs and nation-states---conditioning and shaping the terms of discourse and parameters of violence. As Foucault pointed out, these relations trace their way upward from the micro-physics of meaning/value production upward to larger social value/meaning systems, including news production and ethno-political struggle. This dissertation explores the ways the news media and the political realm---including international capital and the state---overdetermine each other and shape the terms of political discourse and the capacity to express violence. This work also explores the limits of media-based, political strategies to gain popular consent. In the intimate social landscape of Northern Ireland converges with the historically deep argument over national aspiration, to reveal the fragility and contingent character of the nation-state project and the limits of state-inspired propaganda campaigns to gain consent.