M.Comm. / Barter trade, the oldest form of exchange, is resurging in the 21st century. The traditional association of barter trade with undeveloped economies and economies in crisis has changed. Businesses and countries are realising the mutual benefits that can be derived from exchanging goods/services directly. The advent of the Internet and advances in information technology has transformed barter trade into a strategic business tool. Barter trade is especially prevalent in the media industry owing to the ‘perishable’ nature of media inventory. Studies in developed countries have researched the growth of barter trade and its related benefits, difficulties and associated attitudes. No comparable studies were found for South Africa and therefore the primary objective of this study was to establish the extent to which barter trade was utilised in the media industry in South Africa and its associated benefits, difficulties and management practices.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Open University. BLDSC no. DX222753.

Documentary filmmakers have been considered artists, authors, or intellectuals, but rarely as labor. This study investigates how the nature of work as well as life is changing for those who work in the expanding area of TV documentary in China, in the midst of China’s shift towards a market-based economy. How do documentary makers reconcile their passion for documentary making with the increasingly precarious conditions of work? And, how do they cope with and resist the pressures of neoliberalism to survive in increasingly competitive local and global markets? Based on data gathered through the interviews with 40 practitioners from January 2014 to August 2017 and my own experience as a director and worker in the Chinese documentary for a decade, I outline the particularity and complexity of the creative work in China. My research indicates that short-time contracts, moonlighting, low payments and long working hours, freelancing, internship, and obligatory networking have become normal working conditions for cultural workers. Without copyright over their intellectual creations, cultural workers are constrained to make a living as waged labor, compelled to sell their physical and mental labor in hours or in pieces. Self-responsibility and entrepreneurism have become the symbols of the neoliberal individual. Following the career trajectories of my interviewees, I elaborate on the mechanisms by which cultural workers are selected, socialized and eliminated. When they decide to escape from the production line, they use four types of strategies: going international, surviving in the market, switching to new media career, and sticking to journalistic ideals. This dissertation also reveals that global production has intensified exploitation by increasing working hours through a 24/7 production line that works across national borders and time zones, amplifies competition by introducing global talent, and alienates local workers by imposing the so-called “universal” aesthetics of global production. The crisis of cultural work is the outcome of the incapacity of the neoliberal imagination to imagine plausible and feasible futures for sustained creative work. It is through my research into the history of documentary production in China and conversations with cultural workers that I found explanations for the increasing precarity of work and possible forms of resistance to it in post-socialist China.

Taiwan's new media have developed quickly since the mid-1980s. However, media legislation has lagged behind the introduction of new media technologies. For instance, the wide-spread but still entirely illegal cable television-linked service, the Fourth Channel, is a unique feature of the development of new media in Taiwan. This idiosyncratic situation in Taiwan's media industry cannot be simply described as due to the rapid development of technology. The aim of this thesis is to provide a context in which to examine the development of television broadcasting and the introduction of cable and satellite television in Taiwan and its idiosyncratic nature. This thesis (1) explores the major factors in influencing the development of the television system in Taiwan; (2) identifies the similarities and differences of the introduction and development of television, cable and satellite television systems between Taiwan and the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan and Hong Kong; and (3) analyses the implications of the introduction of new media (cable and satellite television) in Taiwan. The study reveals that Taiwan's television system has been heavily influenced by its unique sociopolitical, economic and cultural circumstances. As a result, a particular form of the television system, which does not fit into the models provided by the five selected case studies, has developed in Taiwan.

The burgeoning of a new print form—the women’s press—in early twentieth-century China signaled a radical transformation in the ways of women’s literary and cultural production. This dissertation focuses on the discursive and imaginative space afforded by the women’s press. It explores in the women’s journals the processes of knowledge production and circulation that re/formulated the notions of gender and national identity. I examine writings by women and also by men writing in a feminine voice or assuming a female identity. In addition, I include writings that deploy “woman” as a trope through which authors express concerns of national salvation, social transformation, or Chinese modernization. The dissertation shows how experiences and expressions of “modernity” intersect with women’s print culture, and how the women’s press mediates a mixed gendered space for both women and men authors to bring into light a wide range of concerns at a critical historical juncture as Chinese modernity unfolded. How and why did women collaborate, reconcile, or contest with men in their writings or debates on themes related to feminine literary tradition, nationalism, feminism, ethnicity, and the female body to envision and construct “modern” Chinese women? In order to answer these questions, this thesis examines in the women’s press the multifarious writings by various groups of women, including “traditionally” literate women, “progressive” feminist activists, “ethnic” Manchu women reformers, “new-style” urban professionals, and “modern” female students. By reexamining prevailing assumptions regarding the relationship between Chinese feminism and nationalism, the “modern” production of women’s literature, and the masculinist formation of the New Woman, this analysis seeks to both highlight women’s agency and subjectivities in their political and cultural engagements and to illustrate the complexity and multivalence in the imaginings of modern Chinese women. Throughout, I argue that the women’s press provides a productive site for us to understand gender, women’s writing, and modernity in late Qing and early Republican China. / published_or_final_version / Modern Languages and Cultures / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

The emergence of digital technology represents a paradigmatic historical shift. As a process transforming sociotechnical structures, digitalization has had pervasive effects on organizing structures and business logics, as well as contemporary society as a whole. In recent years, these effects have been particularly salient in the content-based (e.g. music and imaging), and most recently the print-media (e.g. newspapers and magazines) industries. Facing dramatically declining sales of print media products, publishers have sought to leverage digital technology for innovation. However, the digital revenues still do not yet typically compensate for the decline in print media sales. This thesis explores the organizational implications of digitalization in the media domain. Scholars have increasingly stressed that digital technology has some distinct characteristics that have fundamental implications for innovation. This thesis examines aspects of these implications that have been far from fully explored, including the roles of digital technologies as enablers of process innovation (new methods, procedures or responsibilities), product innovation outcomes (which shift or expand an organization's domain) and associated changes in organizational cognition and identity. The thesis is based on four empirical investigations, reported in appended papers, of the evolution of digital platforms, the new content creation practices they enable, and how traditional print media firms have sought to innovate and reorient themselves in relation to these novel phenomena. The composite analysis illustrates how the distinct characteristics of digital technologies are complicit in transitions from stable to fragile product categories, highlights the need for a dynamic approach to identity orientation, and discusses and proposes key concerns in scholarly studies of digital innovation in organizations based on insights generated by the underlying studies.

In the last five years there has been great public interest in Hollywood’s “gender problem,” namely its unequal representation of women in key creative roles such as director, producer, and studio head. Yet, in the long history of women in film and television, comedians have had the greatest success and degree of agency over their work. From silent film comediennes like Mabel Normand to Lucille Ball, Carol Burnett, and more recently Tina Fey and Amy Schumer, women comedians have resoundingly had success behind-the-screen as well as in front of it. In order to comprehend the disjuncture between the data and the women comedians’ success, we must account for the women at the center of contemporary popular culture who seem to have successfully navigated highly gendered structures of media. This dissertation offers an extension of the existing scholarship on the industrial practices of women mediamakers. This dissertation offers a historical production study of gender. This dissertation opens up ways of exploring the range and complexity of gendered practices in Hollywood. It shows how these actions operate within discursive frames and institutional frameworks that generally serve to perpetuate the exclusion of women. I suggest that cultural industries like film and television, when examined simultaneously as creative spaces and business enterprises using a political economy approach blended with cultural studies, offer revelatory sites for the study of gendered labor practices in Hollywood.

China entered the WTO, which has the meaning stands for globalization and contact with world economic, also means that China¡¦s market is open to foreign country. After China joined WTO, media industry used to be constrained by China central government also need to face the unrestricted trend gradually. What will be the effect when media industry interacted with the unrestricted trend, foreign investment and market competition? And what is the attitude that China will have when foreign and international companies enter media industry (liberalism and western culture entering China), which also deserves our attention. Therefore, my research engage in the theory, international rules and the practice of China to study the media industry market opening after China joined WTO. The research will divide into two directions based on economic of globalization. First, the related rules of media industry in the international economic and trade organization (WTO) came with economic globalization and the real practice after China joined WTO. Second , I will talk about the rising of transnation media group. And how American transnation media group giant disposition in China ? Above is my major research directions. The research would talk about the GATS of WTO regarding the opening rules of media market , the negotiation between China and America base on the WTO frame and the contents that China promises to open the market ,the how China would modify their domestic laws to response the changes after WTO and how China think about their media industry strategy and media core value to further talk about the changes of China internal media market. Furthermore, I would mention the investment and disposition of American transnation media group based on their business profit to further understand the current situation about those American company entered China, and I also take two famous international group as an example, they are, VIACOM and TIME WARNER , base on these two company¡¦s real operation to check the China¡¦s practice and control about transnation media groups to fully investigate how much China unrestricted media industry after attending WTO.

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1982 M93 / Master of Science

The Umea university Faculty of humanities offers programs, courses, cross-disciplinary educations and post graduate studies. The university mentions on their website that newly graduated students rapidly establish themself in the labour market. Meanwhile a survey made by statistics Sweden (Statistiska centralbyrån) shows that graduates in humanities i general and graduates in journalism and media particularly experiences the longest gap between graduation and permanent employment. The labor market of media and communications branches off in a variety of businesses and the ever so fast development of technologies has created an evenly fast developing anticipation in the employees. The purpose of this study is to use the program of media- och communication in Umea university as case, and study the graduates entrance in the labour market. Furthermore the purpose is to build understandings for how the graduates value the expertise they have acquired and how this is to be understood in relation to the development of the industry. The study is based on an online survey in which 11 years of graduates answers 11 questions. In total 104 respondents answered the survey and the main conclusions interrelates to theories of the implications of competences, and how the information society has restructured the circumstances of the labour market. The main conclusions summarizes that the graduates rapidly establishes themself in the labour market, an that even though 50% of the graduates has chosen to complement their studies they generally experience satisfaction with the choice of subject. Furthermore the results shows that the workers assignments has changed over time, however only in some areas.