The aim of the research is to examine the multiple spatial frameworks and materially manifested forms of memory by applying current memory studies theory to four areas of memorial experience: personal memory, civic memory, tourism and film. The thesis looks at memory practices based in the North East, particularly those that take place in Newcastle upon Tyne, and explores how the city is remembered in specific memory practices and institutions. Combining work in memory studies and cultural geography, the thesis highlights how memory is spatialized and is particularly concerned with the city that shapes, and is shaped by, memory and memory practices. Changes have taken place in the relationship between space, place and temporality that have affected memory and practices of memorialization. At first glance, the technologies we use and the spaces we inhabit can be interpreted as leading to a pervasive amnesia. The thesis challenges this assumption. It proposes that the concept of heterotopia provides a critical mode of reading memory spaces offering a more positive account of the way memory is currently being experienced. The thesis looks at how memory is realized in the fabric of the city and how the historical city itself is represented through the discursive practices of memorial public art, the museum and the cinema, creating a collective cultural memory. The particular contribution that this thesis makes is that it tests the explanatory power of the concept of heterotopia in relation to memorial sites and it applies memory studies to the city of Newcastle in a time of transition and renewal.

Narratives about the discovery of one’s favourite artist are popular discussion topics among adult pop music fans, as are narratives of rediscovery later in life, suggesting that memory and nostalgia are powerful forces that can repeatedly draw fans back to that affective moment when they first discovered, and perhaps rediscovered, their idols. The impact of cultural influences like pop music during the formative period of adolescence cannot be underestimated. Such early identifications with pop music icons enable some adolescents to then carry those attachments with them their entire lives, forming lifelong fandoms. Through an ethnographic investigation into one such fan community, adult female fans of ’80s heart throbs Duran Duran, this research focuses on ‘mature’ pop fans in an effort to explore an enduring and lifelong fandom that is deeply communal, entrenched in a worldwide network of other fans. Of particular interest is the way in which fans connect via a hybrid of online and offline interactions, as well as how the resulting interaction mix generates complex dynamics and hierarchies. While this research focuses on Duran fan culture, fans of other teen idols were surveyed for comparative purposes, in particular bands that also experienced a resurgence of success after announcing a ‘reunion’, including Take That and the Backstreet Boys. Parallels are also drawn to the lifelong loyalty expressed by fandoms of other artists who were not teen-pop pinups, such as David Bowie (Stevenson 2009) and R.E.M. (Bennett 2010), whose now ‘post-popular’ music (Hills 2010) has seen continued popularity among cult audiences for almost four decades.

This thesis examines the everyday activities of Indian youth on the MTV India Facebook fan page. The two-phase research design included a period of participant observation, combined with conducting online interviews, and a visit to New Delhi, India to conduct offline interviews. The thesis analyzes several aspects of identity performance (e.g. online identity performance, relation between online and offline identity, ideal presentation of an online identity) in relation to Goffman’s (1959) presentation of self in everyday life, and argues that the MTV India Facebook fan page has become a site for identity performance. Since such identity performance is bounded by participants’ everyday activities, the fan page can also be identified as a particular ‘place’. I use Tuan’s (1977) idea of ‘place-making’ and illustrate how the MTV India Facebook fan page has become a meaningful and familiar ‘place’ overtime through performance of routine activities and everyday practices (Seamon, 1979). These activities can be identified as articulating ‘Youngistan’ (voice of Indian youth) and performing Indian-ness, suggesting that fans have appropriated the fan page for performing specific activities that are particular to them. In addition, the thesis takes the local-global character into consideration and argues that local-global combine together to form separate, unique cultures such as MTV India, which safeguard ‘locality’ within the global product and help in ‘place-making’ activities.

The critical commentary presents and contextualizes a film and video making practice spanning three decades. It locates a contemporary visual music practice within current and emerging critical and theoretical contexts and tracks back the history of this practice to the artist’s initial screenings of work as part of the 1980’s British Scratch video art movement. At the heart of the body of work presented here is an exploration and examination of methods and working practices in the encounter of music, sound and moving image. Central to this is an examination of the affective levels that sound and image can operate on, in a transsensorial fusion, and political and cultural applications of such encounters, whilst examining the epistemological regimes such work operates in. A combination of factors has meant that work such as this, arising in the UK provinces, can fall below the historicizing and critical radar – these include the ephemeral and transitory nature of live performance work; the difficulties of documenting such work; the fragility and degeneration of emerging and quickly obsolescent formats; and a predominance of a London–centric focus on curating, screening and historicizing of experimental film and video art practices. My film and video practice has been screened nationally and internationally over three decades, and has been recognized as exemplary practice both in the early 1980s at the inception of the Scratch movement and in more recent retrospectives. The critical commentary argues that this work contributes new knowledge of the history, contexts and practices of film and video art and audiovisual and visual music practices.

This study seeks to understand what kink is, exploring this question using narratives and experiences of gay and bisexual men who engage in kink in the UK. In doing so, contemporary understandings of the gay kinky subcultures in the UK are provided. It discusses the role of the internet for these subcultures, highlighting the use of socio-sexual networking sites. It also recognises the existence of kink dabblers who engage in kink activities, but do not immerse themselves in kink communities. A qualitative analysis is used consisting of semi-structured in-depth interviews with 15 individuals who identify as part of a kink subculture and 15 individuals who do not. Participants were recruited through a mixture of kinky and non-kinky socio-sexual networking sites across the UK. Complimenting this, the author attended kink events throughout the UK and conducted participant observations. The study draws on subcultural theory, the leisure perspective and social constructionism to conceptualise how kink is practiced and understood by the participants. It is one of the first to address the gap in the knowledge of individuals who practice kink activities but who do so as a form of casual leisure, akin to other hobbies, as well as giving due attention to the increasing presence and importance of socio-sexual networking sites and the Internet more broadly for kink subcultures. Community and non-community members were shown to possess similarities as well as distinct differences. The Internet was shown to play a significant role in all participants’ kink narratives. The research calls for further explorations of different aspects of the UK kink subculture which recognises the important role of the Internet for kink practitioners in shaping both the offline and online kink communities. The study also calls for research related to kink practitioners who are not embedded within subcultural kink communities.

This study is an exploration of everyday photographic practice and of the places that photographers visit and inhabit offline and online. It discusses the role of movement, the senses and repetition in taking photographs. Ultimately it is about photographers and their photographic routines and habits. Since the advent of photography, numerous texts on the subject have typically focused on photographs as objects. This trend has continued into the digital age, with academic writing firmly focusing on image culture rather than considering new issues relating to online practice. Although various technological innovations have given the photographer flexibility as to how and what they do with their images, the contention of this thesis is that analogue routines have been mostly transposed into the digital age. Nevertheless, there remains a lack of empirical enquiry into what photographers actually do within online spaces. This study is one of the first to address this knowledge gap. Taking a unique approach to the study of photography, it draws upon work in various fields, including phenomenology, social anthropology, human geography and sensory ethnography, to produce an innovative conceptual and methodological approach. This approach is applied in the field to gain an in-depth understanding of what ‘doing’ photography actually entails. An in-depth analysis of interviews with and observations of North East photographers reveals how they engage with everyday life in a distinctive way. Habitually carrying a camera allows them to notice details that most would ignore. Online and offline movements often become entangled, and when photographers explore Flickr there is a clear synergy with the way in which they explore their local city space. This research is a call to others to give serious consideration to online and offline photography practices, and an attempt to stimulate new discussions about what it means to be a photographer in the world.

Discourses about pornography have grown since the diffusion of print communication and the first erotic representations. In the 80s, the so-called sex wars involved intense debates about pornography s liberating or objectifying nature, while in the 90s, the emergence of porn studies offered a more balanced and contextualized analysis of pornography, highlighting the need for researchers to also focus on the audience s understanding of the experience. Although the majority of research in this field has focused on adults, much of the concern relates to children. To date, however, most of the research relating to children has focused on effects and on potential harm. Audience researchers in Cultural Studies have examined how children understand representations of sex, love and romance, but only in relation to mainstream media. Yet when it comes to pornography in particular, the discussion is to a great extent based on adults assumptions about what is potentially harmful for children. My aim is to approach children s use and interpretation of sexual content in the media through an audience reception approach. In a sense, this brackets off the question of possible risk or harm, in favour of focusing on the nature of the experience itself. My research is based on interviews conducted with young adults (18-22 years old) thinking retrospectively about their experiences with sexual content in childhood and early teenage life. Despite the number of disadvantages this approach may have, this thesis aims to focus on how participants themselves report and account for their actual experiences. Using a basic thematic coding, I consider the self-reported nature and context of young people s experiences. Next, I focus on the discourses used to interpret and contextualize their experiences. Finally, through a narrative approach I examine their constructions of identities in talking about sexuality. In these ways, this thesis wishes to offer new insights into the topic through an audience reception approach that until now has been largely missing from the academic agenda.

This dissertation attempts to outline general problems regarding the appropriateness of the concept of public service broadcasting in the late 1990s, a direct result of the liberalisation of the global broadcasting environment. The work is an assessment of the SABC's fulfilment of its public service mandate, the general hypothesis being that the SABC has failed to fulfill its public service mandate due to its inability to remain financially stable and politically independent from the government of the day. The research examined feelings and opinions regarding the concept of public service broadcasting within the SABC in order to discover whether current changes in the broadcasting environment have influenced the SABC's fulfilment of its public service mandate. The assumption is that if the concept of public service broadcasting is shifting, commitment to the principles underlying public broadcasting will shift and therefore public broadcasters are no longer working along traditional lines. The research concludes that the SABC is facing many of the same problems that public broadcasters the world over have faced during the 1990s: the lack of stable funding, the withdrawal of financial support from the government in the face of increasing competition from other broadcasters and the resulting move towards a more business-like, strategic approach are all traits identified amongst public broadcasters the world over. This does not mean to say that the SABC's situation is not unique in some senses, for example it has been far more sUbject to political trajectory than many other public broadcasters due to its past status as a state broadcaster and its operation in a strongly political environment. The SABC also faces large-scale criticism from the South African press, which has proved to be an obstacle for the SABC with regard to its ability to move beyond its past. The fact that challenges facing the SABC are not new suggests that the changing environment is not catering for public service broadcasting and therefore its principle of a distancing from vested interests needs to be rethought. / Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.) - University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2000.

The aim of the study is to investigate and explore the role of community newspapers against the background of profit-driven media environment. The study adopted a qualitative research method. Data was collected using in-depth interviews with editors of the four community newspapers under study namely Public Eye, The Mirror, Echo and Edendale Eyethu, as well as readers of these publications. The study used focus group discussions as an additional qualitative instrument for data gathering. The SPSS software programme was used to present the data from the readers. Findings of the study The study found that media conglomerates and other businesses on the media possess both the human and financial resources to place them in a powerful position to determine the media content. However, while we know that this happens, some interventions could be considered to make sure that a more viable and sustainable balance between commerce and community is found and maintained. The study also showed that due to “market-driven journalism” embraced by the community newspapers, the right of the readers or consumers is increasingly compromised, and also that the profit-driven aspects of these publications confirm that media or journalism ethics of the community press is also at stake in that appear to benefit private and public sectors. This means the ample space allocated to advertisers as evidenced in almost every page of these newspapers, contribute to denying the readers access to relevant news or information. The study found that local content and political news are of great relevance to the readers, Community newspapers are vital in creating awareness amongst community members of different events taking place in the community hence enabling them to take an active part in different aspects of developments taking place. Community members would like to see more in-depth coverage in local news content, more coverage in events taking place locally such as community initiative projects, and more coverage on schools sports tournaments. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2010.

The dramatic transition from South Africa's previous apartheid political system to a democratic dispensation, has posed unique challenges for the media. Ethical practices per se are difficult, with joumalists being faced with the demanding position of having to act ethically on a tightrope between a totalitarian heritage and a newly emerging democratic nation. This thesis begins with the mapping out of a new theoretical model of ethical practice for South African journalists - a model that is open-ended, context-sensitive, and emphasises critical and creative thinking, as well as diversity and relativity in the process of moral decision-making. Considerable debate - both nationally and internationally - currently surrounds the ethical role of joumalists. In South Africa, these polarised positions have tended to emerge as the two main discourses evident in the local press: the watchdog discourse, broadly corresponding to the libertarian theory of the role of the media; and the nation-building discourse, which approximates to the egalitarian or social responsibility model. This thesis argues that the two discourses are not necessarily mutually exclusive; the theoretical framework does not exclusively support either normative theory as such, but rather facilitates the fostering of both sets of values represented by each respectively. The case studies examined in this thesis are all underpinned by this idea. Attention is given to an examination of the violence coverage in KwaZulu-Natal, demonstrating an ethical breakdown in reporting during the years of apartheid, which shadowed journalists into the transitional period after the unbanning of the ANC and the lifting of all Emergency Regulations in 1990. The concepts of privacy and hate speech are examined, illustrating a lack in the culture of the South African press, of any concise articulation of its journalistic mission or what is expected of journalists. Finally coverage of the country's HIV/Aids pandemic is examined, the ethics involved in reporting such coverage are explored, and the ethical implications of an advocacy role vis-a-vis HIV/Aids, and reporting in general, are discussed. The thesis ultimately attempts to map out an ethics that creatively seeks to guide journalists in both binding people together, and exposing what is wrong between them, in order that they may participate in the crafting of a new moral order. / Thesis (Ph.D)-University of Durban-Westville, 2004.