published_or_final_version / Journalism and Media Studies Centre / Master / Master of Journalism

published_or_final_version / abstract / English Studies / Master / Master of Arts

published_or_final_version / SPACE / Master / Master of Arts

published_or_final_version / Journalism and Media Studies Centre / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

The principal focus of this dissertation is to investigate the role of media coverage in the investment decisions of mutual fund investors and the consequent effects on flows into the funds. I examine investor attention and learning effects by examining the relation between media coverage of mutual funds and the net investor flows to the funds. Using a database of nearly 10,000 news articles, I find that the existence and stance of media coverage affects net investor flows into the fund in ways consistent with investor attention and learning. Further, the media coverage does not have a uniform effect on flows. News articles with positive (negative) tones are associated with significant increases (decreases) in flows. I find that fund size and past performance influence the impact of media coverage on mutual fund flows. I also find that, as a fund ages and investors receive additional news about the fund, there are smaller effects from the news. This is consistent with the hypothesis that investors learn about funds through media coverage and that this knowledge affects their investment behavior. These results suggest that media coverage can have significant economic effects on mutual funds through the effects on investors' attention and learning. / text

The principal objective of this thesis is to explore the representation of China in British television documentaries broadcast between 1980 and 2000, focusing on historical documentaries. The thesis addresses, as its primary research questions and on the basis of substantial database, what is represented, how that representation is realised, and the social, historical influences which contextualise and underpin the representation of China. These questions relating to textual representation are framed within the wider context of Sino-Western relations, Western self-perceptions and conceptions of China. The study aims to reveal mechanisms of textual representation by concentrating on two main dimensions: the internal narrative structures and key discursive formations of the documentary text (including visuals), and structures of power relations operating to shape the representation in both the textual domain of meaning mediation and institutional domain of documentary production. Two aspects of the representation are foregrounded: China as a civilisation and China as a Communist `other'. The thesis focuses primarily on the narrative as a methodology in approaching representation, as documentary achieves meaning mainly through the stories it tells. Two dimensions of narrative are explored: a structuralist dimension drawing on theories developed by Propp and Silverstone, and a discursive dimension which is framed within Foucault's concept of power and knowledge. Extensive primary research established the database for the study, which is made up of 170 documentaries broadcast during the sample period between 1980 and 2000, and 18 field interviews with key personnel in broadcasting and production companies. The thesis argues that the British television documentary representation presents a largely Western understanding of China filtered through, among other things, selfperceptions and conceptions of the `other', and mediated by various sources of power. The process of representing `what is China' is enmeshed with the process of constructing how China should be viewed. The result of this social construction of truth and knowledge is that certain values, convictions, and ideologies are reinforced and reproduced in the vital domain of documentary representation

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Any consideration of the theme of ‘house and home’ leads into discussion on three different levels of discourse. First of all, houses have biographical and historical significance; they are, after all, real places in which real lives are lived. Secondly, home is an ideologically loaded noun, a bastion of value which is inextricably entwined with the notion of the pure woman. Thirdly, in literature, houses are metaphorical places. This thesis is primarily a study of those metaphorical places. It explores representations of ‘house’ and ‘home’ in late Victorian women's poetry. However, it also takes account of the biographical, historical and ideological significance of the house, looking at factors which may have helped to shape each poet's representations of ‘house and home’. The house occupies an ambiguous position in the poetry of the later Victorian period. It is variously imagined as a haunted house, a ruin, an empty house of echoes, and a prison of isolation and despair. At times, the house is a recognisable domestic place (the private house), at others, it is turned into a place of art or poetry, a new aesthetic ‘home’ for the female imagination. In some poems the house is a focus for nostalgia and homesickness. Yet it is also often a place which must be left behind. What unites the poets I have studied is the fact that the houses they inhabit in their work are never entirely their own and they are rarely entirely at home in them. Home is less roomy as a concept. It tends to carry religious or ideological connotations and is usually represented as a place of duty and responsibility. It also comes to mean the final resting place: the grave. Thus house and home, which are not identical terms, are freighted with different meanings. It is the mismatch of these two terms, the tension between them, which I explore in this thesis.