The aim of this research study is to analyse the nature of undergraduate media studies in England, necessarily from the inside, and document the social practices that constitute the subject in the light of its historic and contemporary challenges and the influence of changing public higher education discourses over the period of the fieldwork, 2012-2013. Conceptually, media studies is regarded as socially constructed and enacted through discursive practices that reveal the nature of the power relationships that are the basis of the ways ‘things get done’. This approach is based on Foucault’s (1984, 2002a, 2002b, 2002c) conception of power and discourse and dovetails with a substantial part of the sociology of higher education. The fieldwork consisted of a series of semi-structured face-to-face interviews with a range of participants drawn from media studies lecturers, other university professionals, media studies graduates and a secondary school headteacher with experience of advising university applicants. This provided examples of discursive practices from both ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ media. The thematic analyses of the data show a complex set of interacting oppositional discourses that are skilfully managed by these professional practitioners to maintain a balance of Foucauldian power. This ensures that public policy changes are assimilated and ‘delivered’ whilst sometimes also mitigating their impact and maintaining a prevailing rationale for media studies. The study concludes by contrasting the findings with the emerging discourses of Critical University Studies (CUS). With a declared position (Williams, 2012a) in opposition to higher education public policy reforms, CUS is considered as a set of academic discursive practices that are distinct from the more nuanced balance of oppositional discourses evidenced through the participant responses here.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--City University of Hong Kong, 2006. / "Submitted to Department of English and Communication in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy" Includes bibliographical references (leaves 249-263)

The development of communication technology has also created new structures, able to challenge the traditional power roles of the communicative process. Social media have become a fruitful arena of this change due to their users having the possibility to respond to the producers’ messages. Thus, the traditional lineal structure turns to an interactional one and consequently, the lines become blurred between the roles of the dominant and dominated as assumed by the senders/producers and the receivers respectively. Controversial issues shed light on this ‘battle for power’, such as the sustainability actions and reporting of Zara and H&M. These companies are the leaders of the fast fashion industry; one of the most ‘unsustainable’ fields. Through a critical discourse analysis of the posts that the companies launch on their Facebook-sponsored accounts as well as the comments related to sustainability that they obtain from their users, the communicative process occurring in social media can be assessed. The aim of this analysis is to provide an insight into how the communicative process between sender and receiver in social media creates public opinion and affects the development of sustainability discourse. It has been shown that users have found in social media a powerful tool to challenge the companies’ power: they can comment on the informative product in question. Also the users have taken the sustainability discourse as the required ‘object’ when questioning a product’s reliability. The latter is in some way another means with which to challenge the companies’ power.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-07-27T13:54:51Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 GARDENE LEAO DE CASTRO MENDES.pdf: 7037295 bytes, checksum: d606d14851da21000138487a4cf2bb1a (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-05-13 / This paper aims at examining how young people are meant by the print media of Goiás, with particular emphasis on the quality of coverage of Daqui jornal during february, march and april 2010. I chose this subject because, according Waiselfisz (2011), in recent years (2004/2008) there is a frightening increase in the number of youth homicides in Brazil. The research was done with Daqui because this is an important vehicle in Goiás, with the largest circulation of newspapers in the state. To analyze the utterances of Daqui, I work with Analysis Discourse French, since it allows the evaluation of historic buildings and ideological present in an discourse, considering not only the materiality of language but also its external (historical conditions, social and ideological). From the analysis done, I realized that the young poor urban peripheries are represented stigmatized by the rooting an imaginary in which the practice of extermination seems to be accepted and approved. The newspaper coverage gives great space for matters relating to crime and prejudice before the young offender or the drug user. Themes such as culture, sports, education, among others, are rarely addressed. The crystallization of this memory allows for such interpretations are taken as "truths", not allowing the reader other kinds of meaning, so that violence is regarded as something common and necessary to control youth. There is a growing population in the "belief" in this imagery, which turns out to be complacent about the situation of extermination of poor youth. The utterances produced by Daqui crystallizes an memory and an continuous acceptance of killings of poor youth, encouraging the criminality, the prejudice and the invisibility of them. Research Line: "Education, Society and Culture". / Este trabalho busca verificar como os jovens são significados pela mídia impressa goiana, analisando, especificamente, a cobertura do jornal Daqui durante os meses de fevereiro, março e abril de 2010. Escolhi este tema porque, segundo Waiselfisz (2011), nos últimos anos (2004/2008), no Brasil, há um aumento assustador do número de homicídios de jovens. A pesquisa foi feita tendo como corpus de análise o jornal Daqui por este ser um importante veículo formador de opinião em Goiás, possuindo, atualmente, a maior tiragem de jornais impressos do Estado. Para analisar os enunciados do Daqui, utilizo como referencial teórico a Análise de Discurso Francesa, já que ela possibilita observar as construções históricas e ideológicas presentes em um discurso, considerando não apenas a materialidade linguística, como também sua exterioridade (condições históricas, sociais e ideológicas). A partir das análises feitas, pude perceber que o jovem pobre das periferias urbanas é representado nos enunciados do Daqui de forma estigmatizada, sedimentando um imaginário no qual a prática de seu extermínio parece ser aceita e autorizada. A cobertura do jornal dá grande espaço para assuntos relacionados à criminalidade e ao preconceito diante do jovem infrator ou usuário de drogas, sendo que temáticas como a cultura, o esporte, a educação, entre outras, raramente são abordadas. A cristalização desta memória permite que tais interpretações sejam tomadas como verdades universais , não possibilitando ao leitor outros tipos de significação, fazendo com que a violência seja considerada como algo comum e necessário para controlar jovens. Há na população uma crescente crença neste imaginário, que acaba sendo complacente com a situação de extermínio de jovens pobres. Os enunciados produzidos pelo Daqui colaboram por cristalizar a aceitação de homicídios de jovens pobres, estimulando a criminalização, o preconceito e a invisibilidade dos mesmos. Linha de Pesquisa: Educação, Sociedade e Cultura .

Postpartum depression (PPD) is a medicalized condition that exists on a continuum of postpartum mood disorders. PPD is reported to be experienced by 10-15% of mothers and 10% of fathers during pregnancy or after the birth of a baby. PPD, as experienced by either parent, is considered a serious condition because of its potential short- and long-term negative impacts on the developing child. In this thesis I explore how motherhood and fatherhood are constructed in the context of articles on maternal and paternal PPD in Canadian and American newspapers. Specifically, I focus on how references to the opposite partner were used to position each parent, and how each parent was positioned with respect to the new baby. In the articles on maternal PPD, husbands were either inconsequential to the story, positioned as being absent, or constructed as supporting the mother through instrumental and action-oriented behaviours. In addition, mothers were constructed as lonely and isolated because of self-imposed limitations (e.g., feeling ashamed for not being happy). In the articles on paternal PPD, the mother-father relationship was based on differences and competition. Fathers were constructed as isolated, lonely and misunderstood, most often through mother-blaming, such as by positioning the mother as responsible for the father’s well-being (e.g., causing his PPD), and by labelling PPD “a woman’s domain.” Fathers’ loneliness was presented as being due to imposed limitations of others (e.g., others did not properly prepare fathers for fatherhood). Mothering was constructed as being instinctually skilled, tolerant, and self-sacrificing, with the inherent capability to manage multiple roles and changes. The mother-baby relationship was constructed as naturally joyful, all-important and –consuming. Fathers were not expected to be as skilled or instinctively prepared and tolerant, to engage in chores/childcare, or to be explicitly overjoyed with the baby. Mothers were blamed for their distress in the role, while others were blamed for fathers’ distresses. Gendered stereotypes in the parenting role were perpetuated in these newspaper articles. Parenthood was not constructed as a collaboration, but rather motherhood and fatherhood stood in isolation from each other, with motherhood positioned as the primary role. These constructions continue to maintain fathers in the background of parenthood as an “other,” and to position mothers as responsible for the well-being of her partner, child(ren) and herself.

Thesis (M.A.)--Bowling Green State University, 2008. / Document formatted into pages; contains vii, 82 p. Includes bibliographical references.

There has been an increase in the number of people migrating around the world in recent decades. The main reasons for this migration are mostly social pressures, conflicts, and wars. With the Arab spring, which showed its effect in the early 2010s, a civil war arose in Syria. With the civil war that had its influence in Syria in 2011, thousands of people had to take shelter in Turkey. With the rapid increase in Syrian refugees who took refuge in Turkey, this issue has become vital in Turkey's agenda. Many studies on the media and the representation of immigrants and refugees show that these groups are often negatively represented. In this research, news about Syrian refugees published in Cumhuriyet, Hürriyet, and Sabah newspapers, among the best-selling newspapers in Turkey, are examined. In addition, the fact that the three selected newspapers have different political stances, this situation adds sample diversity to this research. June 2011 - March 2012 and June 2016 - March 2017 constitute the times of the sample. The first time sample represents the early times of both the Syrian Civil war and the arrivals of Syrian refugees in Turkey. In contrast, the second time sample represents the time that Syrian refugees are more integrated into Turkish society and not a new subject for Turkey anymore....

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The diploma thesis deals with the Autonomous social centre Klinika in the Prague district of Žižkov and the left-wing, mostly anarchist, groups that affiliate with the centre. The thesis studies the current shape and form of media discourse related to the far-left political scene in the Czech Republic. Using the critical discource approach, the thesis analyzes a number of texts from the multimedia company MAFRA (Lidovky.cz, iDnes.cz) and that of alternative left-wing media (A2larm.cz, Denikreferendum.cz). The thesis investigates whether the fact that the publishing house is owned by the anti-politician Andrej Babiš projected in any way in case of the right-wing (centre- right) media. The main finding is, that the scrutinized right-wing media consistently avoid the question of legitimacy of squatting but their approach to squatting and leftist activist scene is not hostile. On the other hand, the scrutinized leftist media emphasize the legitimacy of squatting. The influence of Andrej Babiš was not confirmed.

Background, Problem Statement and Gap - Political agendas informed by the negative impacts of increasing consumption (including fashion consumption) have allocated major parts of the responsibility to contribute to sustainable development to individual consumers. These agendas subsequently highlighted the need to provide more information, including through media and social media, about the negative impacts of fashion consumption - and consumption at large - to the consumer. Within our paper, this depicted approach, which is sometimes criticized by scholars, is conceptualized as ‘Consumer Responsibilization’ and viewed through the theoretical lens of discourse. However, despite consumers having increased access to information, products, and services related to sustainability and sustainable fashion (SF), changes of consumption habits are stagnant. This phenomenon, which is a serious problem hindering sustainable development, is widely defined as the knowledge-to-action-gap (KAG) within the literature. Scholars whose studies were limited to the offline world have criticized Consumer Responsibilization and have linked this approach to the KAG. There exists a gap in knowing which role the social media platform Instagram, plays for the Consumer Responsibilization approach in SF communications and it’s potential to expedite the KAG. Consumption from the perspective of culture is understood in this research as socially integrated, complex, and not always rational. Purpose - Our research purpose is to fill the identified gap and investigate the Consumer Responsibilization discourse on Instagram used within SF communications. We want to find out which actors are taking advantage of this discourse, the way it is represented and how users of Instagram react. We also investigate how the unique affordances of Instagram and its potential as a site for discourse affect the discourse in question and could influence the KAG. Method - Multimodal discourse is the theoretical perspective used to detect and understand the representation of consumer responsibilization on Instagram. Meaning that we, informed by literature, see discourse as not only communicated through entities of text but also through other semiotic elements called modes. We adopted a culturalist perspective situated within qualitative marketing research and followed passive and immersive netnographic procedures, whereby ethnographic approaches are adapted to observe social media data. Our ontological and epistemological framing of this research is within interpretivism and constructivism, as we acknowledge that our role as researchers involves constructing meaning through subjective analysis. Through exploratory and iterative understanding, we followed abductive logic and hermeneutic philosophy to produce knowledge. We followed exploratory and selective sampling to find publicly accessible Instagram posts that used SF-related hashtags and communicated Consumer Responsibilization. Triangulation developed through the quantification of follower counts, likes and comments, reinforced patterns in our findings. Additionally, each researcher contributed an immersion journal of rich descriptions of our experiences navigating Instagram as users. Through multimodality, all the different elements of a post were analyzed as contributors to the discourse (e.g., text, image, and engagement). An iterative combination of Descriptive coding, Initial coding and Axial coding were applied for analysis and synthesis of themes from patterns that emerged in the data (Saldaña, 2009). Findings - Consumer Responsibilization discourse is being represented by SF communications on Instagram by various actors, through posts following the logic of rationalization, sharing call to actions, compelling imagery and self-auditing tools (such as checklists or bullet-point step-by-step guides). We identified categories of prominent account types, namely individuals or groups of individuals with the status of Opinion Leaders, Brands/Businesses, NGOs / Activist Organizations, and News or Media accounts. The majority of collected posts address consumers with a call to action to contribute to SF, through multimodal elements, and they follow either an Information Approach, Activism / Charity Approach or Consumption Approach with their suggested actions. According to the literature, Instagram's unique affordances as a social media platform favors visual content, which is deemed more effective with persuasion and gaining attention among users (Laestadius, 2016; Russman and Svensson, 2016; Schroeder and Borgerson, 2005). While we found patterns of visual communication which are typical of an account type, there are other patterns of engagement from users observed throughout the data which indicate the tone and intended message of a post influences the public’s response. Discursive polyphony and confusion, terms coined by Markkula and Moisander (2012), seem to arise from varying conflicting messages and SF principles, highlighting the ambiguity of SF discourse. This can, according to Markkula and Moisander (2012), be a contributor to KAG. Our data, based on the responses found in the comments, hints towards users experiencing feelings of conflict and confusion when being confronted with the different SF discourses. Users typically respond to SF posts framed by Consumer Responsibilization and rationalization with resistance, defensiveness, justification, support, gratitude, criticism, or skepticism. While reacting to SF discourses, users also replicate and further contribute to them. Practical implications and Theoretical limitations - Our thesis contributes to research of cultural forces that contribute to KAG, by locating our observations from Instagram, which is a compelling site to observe SF discourse. Previous research in this field has been conducted offline, with primary input from consumers, whereas our research gathered deep cultural insight from secondary data posted publicly online. As such, our findings are limited by users who post publicly not being representative of the public who are not active on Instagram, are unfamiliar with SF discourses or have set their accounts to be private. Our findings contribute to cultural marketing and SF research and elaborates on criticisms of Consumer Responsibilization. In future campaigns, social media managers, marketing managers and policy makers must consider the complex, overlapping and contradicting messages with SF discourse, and how they contribute to KAG. Discursive confusion, few suggestions of manageable solutions, and limited scope of information are risks to worsening the KAG. Our findings indicate that consumers also require public support from businesses and governments to tackle collective systemic issues.