La tesi esamina in che modo i complessi fenomeni della globalizzazione e della digitalizzazione contribuiscano a riscrivere la nozione di «sistema mediatico» in una chiave di superamento dei tradizionali confini nazionali. Se, infatti, per lungo tempo vi è stata una coincidenza tra i confini dei sistemi mediatici e quelli degli stati nazionali, è altresì evidente che la nascita di organismi sovranazionali e attori non statali e le relazioni transnazionali rese possibili dallo sviluppo dei media digitali hanno comportato un mutamento di paradigma. La ricerca si sofferma sui casi di Spagna e Italia, due Paesi appartenenti al cosiddetto “modello pluralista-polarizzato” (Hallin e Mancini, 2004) e che condividono diverse caratteristiche del sistema della comunicazione, nella convinzione che un’analisi comparativa incentrata su due sistemi simili (Przeworski e Teune, 1970) possa aiutare a evidenziare maggiormente le differenze tra i singoli casi. Entrambi i sistemi mediatici sono stati messi in relazione con i livelli di globalizzazione e digitalizzazione espressi dai principali indici di misurazione e sono stati indagati, secondo una prospettiva macro, sulla base di quattro dimensioni cruciali: l’internazionalizzazione della proprietà mediatica, la diffusione delle nuove tecnologie, la legislazione e i riferimenti sovranazionali in essa contenuti, i legami linguistici e la presenza di media ispanici e italici in altri Paesi del mondo. / The dissertation examines how globalization and digitalization concur to rewrite the notion of «media system» in overcoming national boundaries. For many years, in fact, there has been a coincidence between boundaries of media systems and those of national states; nowadays, the growth of supranational organizations, non-state actors and transnational relations made possible by the development of digital media led to a change of paradigm. The research dwells on cases of Spain and Italy, two countries that belong to the “pluralist-polarized model” (Hallin and Mancini, 2004) and that share some characteristics of communication system, in the belief that a comparative analysis focused on “most similar systems” (Przeworski and Teune, 1970) can help to highlight the difference between them. Both media systems have been related to globalization and digitalization degrees and analysed in a macro perspective according to four crucial dimensions: internationalization of media ownership, development of new technologies, supranational references in media laws, language legacies and diffusion of Hispanic and Italic media worldwide.

A body of research has established the political relevance of Social Media (SM) platforms for populist parties, claiming that populist politicians utilize a ‘bypassing-strategy’. However, the rather reluctant employment of Facebook and Twitter by German citizens other than, for example, media professionals and politicians, raises questions of the utilization intention for public actors. Even though multiple scholars already indicated the necessity of research on the ‘embeddedness of digital tools’ in journalists’ routines (Jungherr, 2016: 374) such studies remain scarce. Therefore this study aims to shed light on how power is exercised by political actors through the use of SM within Chadwick’s (2017) hybrid media system. In order to do so it firstly examines the existence of references to the Twitter and Facebook pages of politicians of the German right-wing populist party AfD within the coverage of four German newspapers about the party during the final phase of the 2017 General Federal Election campaign. Secondly, by employing issue competition theory, issues and topics that three AfD politicians communicated about on their SM pages are compared with those that the party has been covered in relation to in newspaper articles. The findings of the quantitative content analysis on the newspaper articles showed only few cases in which AfD politicians’ SM statements were quoted. In regard to issue competition theory, the quantitative mapping of issues and topics in newspaper coverage about the AfD as well its politicians’ SM statements however, demonstrate prevailing similarities between the issues and topics that dominated the newspaper coverage about the party as well as its politicians SM pages. A thematic analysis on the latter found three themes that suggest a possible explanation for the few cases in which newspaper articles referenced SM statements: All three politicians used SM differently to promote, circulate and comment on issues and topics which influenced whether statements originated from the platform or from other contexts, such as rally events, tv debates, media article etc. These different types of content distributed and published on the politicians’ SM pages could be a possible explanation for the limited instances in which SM statements were quoted by newspaper articles. These findings suggest that the AfD did indeed pursued a bypassing strategy and employed SM platforms to directly communicate with its supporters. However, future studies should continue research on the embeddedness of SM statements in contexts other than campaigning times. Furthermore insights from qualitative interviews with politicians about their utilization strategies and journalists regarding their possible hesitance to quote politicians’ SM Statements, that may be grounded in professional standards, are necessary in order to obtain a more complete assessment of the role of SM for political actors in navigating the hybrid media system.

abstract: This dissertation describes the development of a state-of-the-art immersive media environment and its potential to motivate high school youth with autism to vocally express themselves. Due to the limited availability of media environments in public education settings, studies on the use of such systems in special education contexts are rare. A study called Sea of Signs utilized the Situated Multimodal Art Learning Lab (SMALLab), to present a custom-designed conversational scenario for pairs of youth with autism. Heuristics for building the scenario were developed following a 4-year design-based research approach that fosters social interaction, communication, and self-expression through embodied design. Sea of Signs implemented these heuristics through an immersive experience, supported by spatial and audio-visual feedback that helped clarify and reinforce students' vocal expressions within a partner-based conversational framework. A multiple-baseline design across participants was used to determine the extent to which individuals exhibited observable change as a result of the activity in SMALLab. Teacher interviews were conducted prior to the experimental phase to identify each student's pattern of social interaction, communication, and problem-solving strategies in the classroom. Ethnographic methods and video coding were used throughout the experimental phase to assess whether there were changes in (a) speech duration per session and per turn, (b) turn-taking patterns, and (c) teacher prompting per session. In addition, teacher interviews were conducted daily after every SMALLab session to further triangulate the nature of behaviors observed in each session. Final teacher interviews were conducted after the experimental phase to collect data on possible transfer of behavioral improvements into students' classroom lives beyond SMALLab. Results from this study suggest that the activity successfully increased independently generated speech in some students, while increasing a focus on seeking out social partners in others. Furthermore, the activity indicated a number of future directions in research on the nature of voice and discourse, rooted in the use of aesthetics and phenomenology, to augment, extend, and encourage developments in directed communication skills for youth with autism. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Media Arts and Sciences 2013

This thesis covers design and implementation of a media system solution for home networks with personal computers and a set-top box. In a home there are effectively two independent media systems with the same purpose: the personal computer and the digital set-top box, with the purpose of delivering digital media in form of audio and video to the consumer. The goal of the thesis work was to implement a solution that bridges the gap between the two systems, so that the user, from the set-top box, can play back media that is actually stored on one or several personal computers. Our solution is based on UPnP technology, which is used for service discovery and control. The choice of UPnP is motivated by an evaluation of discovery protocols, which concludes that UPnP is the most suitable technology in this particular system. Also, an evaluation of suitable transport protocols was done. Here,HTTP was used. For the personal computer, a media server and a graphical user interface for configuring the media server were created. For the set-top box, a media client, and a graphical user interface for browsing the content of the media server, were created. In conclusion, the creation of the prototype was successful and the set-top box was able to playback media that had been shared by the PC on the network.

La présente recherche interroge l’espace public européen présent dans les télévisions régionales en France et en Allemagne. L’Union européenne est une construction politique complexe, qui fait dans sa communication extérieure elle-même l’amalgame entre « Union européenne » et Europe. Prenant en compte les spécificités culturelles et interdisciplinaires inhérentes à notre cotutelle franco-allemande, nous avons choisi de combiner trois méthodes. En premier lieu, la méthode de Hickethier propose une analyse structurelle des programmes de télévision, bien adaptée à notre contexte bilingue et binational parce qu’elle rend possible la comparaison des données de la même manière au-delà des langues en codant les données en variables. Puis nous avons réalisé une analyse herméneutique mettant en lumière les points communs dans le traitement de l’information européenne. La troisième méthode a consisté en plusieurs entretiens d’experts avec des journalistes et des responsables médiatiques dans les deux régions étudiées. Les télévisions publiques, dans les systèmes allemand et français, ont comme mission l’éducation des citoyens. Ainsi le Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk regroupe l’ensemble de service public médiatique pour les Länder de Saxe, Saxe-Anhalt et Thuringe ; France 3 en revanche est une chaîne nationale dédiée aux régions. Toutes deux situées aux frontières de la France et de l’Allemagne, elles devraient hypothétiquement faire montre d’une certaine volonté et présenter les évènements se produisant dans les pays voisins, en Belgique et au Royaume-Uni pour France 3 et en Pologne et en République Tchèque pour le MDR, ouvrant ainsi des fenêtres sur l’Europe. Nous avons collecté et analysé plus de 43 heures de programmes télévisés dédiés à l’information d’octobre à décembre 2013. De tous les programmes analysés, un cinquième parle en effet de l’Europe ou de l’Union européenne. Néanmoins, la majorité des informations européennes consiste en une simple mention du nom « EU », « Bruxelles » ou même d’un autre pays européen. Contrairement à nos attentes, l’Europe n’apparaît pas essentiellement comme un monstre technocratique et dirigeant présenté d’un point de vue négatif, au contraire : les informations européennes sont présentes essentiellement dans le domaine de la culture et du sport. En outre, de nombreux exemples de reportages de qualité montrant des similitudes sur les deux chaînes ont été trouvés. Par exemple, le traitement des informations concernant l’intégration des Roms sont présents sur les deux chaînes de manière didactique. L’émission « MDR-Aktuell » du 5/12/2013 proposait un reportage dans un village proche de la frontière germano-tchèque alors que France 3 Nord-Pas-de-Calais interviewait en Roumanie une famille Rom ayant vécu trois ans dans la banlieue de Lille. Cette « série spéciale » de France 3 est symptomatique d’un phénomène rencontré à plusieurs reprises sur les deux chaînes analysées : l’information européenne sert de « prétexte informatif » à parler de questions qui concernent en fait le pays du média considéré. Un deuxième phénomène récurrent concerne la tendance de chacun des médias à construire une perspective de l’Autre opposé au « chez soi », dans le contexte européen ou même de l’Etat-nation. Ceci est présent surtout dans les productions des plus petites rédactions (Boulogne-sur-Mer ou Magdebourg), alors que les grandes rédactions comme Lille ou Leipzig parlent plus d’une perspective européenne transcendante. Ceci fut particulièrement visible dans le traitement de l’information concernant la tempête Xaver qui a balayé l’Europe le 5/12/2013. Dans ce cas, on peut parler d’européanisation synchrone de l’information, puisque le même évènement est traité simultanément par différentes télévisions. (...) / My research investigates the European public sphere present in both French and German regional television programmes, with the aim of identifying European elements based on regional content. The French media system is centralized like the French republic, whilst the German media system, a “present of the Allies”, is based in and on each Länder. France 3 is a national TV channel, based in Paris, with regular programming content dedicated to the regions. Analyzed in this thesis are regional productions for Picardy and Nord-Pas-de-Calais, broadcast on France 3 Nord-Pas-de-Calais and France 3 Picardie. The Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk, analyzed in this thesis, is the regional TV broadcaster for the Länder of Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia. Both are situated along the French and German borders and should be willing to present events from the neighboring countries of Belgium and the United Kingdom, Poland and the Czech Republic. This study was undertaken in cooperation between two universities in France and Germany. In order to reconcile these scientific and cultural realities with each other and to cover the needs of both schools of thought, I utilized three methods. First, I used a sociological method after Hickethier that proposes a structural analysis of the television programmes. This method allows a comparison that transcends cultures and languages by coding each relevant element into variables. Second, I used a hermeneutical analysis illuminating the common Europen themes of French and German TV programmes. The third method consists of interviews with experts, journalists and further relevant media personnel in France and Germany. This study shows that in 43 hours of TV programmes, collected between October and December of 2013, from France 3’s and MDR’s information programmes and shows, one-fifth of the programmes make mention of the European Union or of the specific countries themselves. Contrary to our hypothesis, the European Union was not represented as a technological, controlling behemoth, but in a positive or a neutral manner, most often in conjunction with themes of culture and sport. These themes are most often covered in news magazines like “Brisant”, while more serious magazines like “MDR-Aktuell” cover economic and political themes in a more negative manner. This study also found examples of similar qualitative reporting by both French and German television stations. For example, the information concerning the integration of the Roma in both countries is presented in a didactic manner. Broadcast on December 5th, 2013, the programme,“MDR-Aktuell”, included coverage of a village situated 50 km south of the Czech-German border in Bohemia where Roma and Czechs live peacefully together. France 3 Nord-Pas-de-Calais followed a positive path in presenting a segment in Romania in which France 3 journalists interviewed a family who lived in a ghetto in Lille (North France). This “Special Series” illustrates a phenomenon common to all the TV programmes analysed in this study: using Europe as a frame of reference in order to discuss regional or even national problems. A second recurrent phenomenon concerns each television station branch’s tendency to speak from a more narrow perspective and to construct “Othering”. This is revealed through the thematic analysis we performed on each TV branch’s production on the hurricane “Xaver”, which occurred all over Europe on December 5th, 2013. In conclusion, this study has found that regional television in both France and Germany, despite working with several ontological differences due to differing political and media systems, offer European content, some with greater educational value to the EU. Interviews with experts provide an impetus for both France 3 and MDR’s journalists and directors to promote a positive image of its European neighbours and of the EU on regional television.

During the Covid-19 vaccination in Croatia, there were inconsistencies and irregularities with the surplus vaccine and its recipients. Media coverage of the affair was extensive. The details were broadcasted in traditional media and social media. Like many other spheres of social life, the media system has progressed under the baton of technological and communication changes. The destabilisation of traditionally conducted communication required the adaptation and reshaping of all its actors. This study argues that we live in a hybrid media system, where traditional media and social media are in symbiosis (Chadwick, 2013) and are interconnected. The study aims to investigate what makes online content viral and discuss findings in a hybrid media context. The study conducts a content analysis, examining articles posted on media organisation web pages and their Facebook pages covering the vaccination affair. The variables in the analysis are based on the virality concept (taken from the field of marketing).

No description available.

MySpace is a type of "social networking" website where people meet, socialize, and create friendships. The way MySpace members, particularly younger individuals, interact online underscores the changing nature of mass media. Media system dependency states that individuals become reliant on media in their daily life because of fundamental human goals. This reliance, termed a dependency, leads to repeated use. Media system dependency was applied in the current study to explain how and why individuals became habitual MySpace users. To attain results a survey was administered to a convenience sampling of 401 adult undergraduates at the University of Central Florida. Members reported MySpace dependency had a moderate correlation to MySpace use, and they actively used the website an average of 1.3 hours of use per day. Results indicated members use MySpace to primarily satisfy play and interaction orientation dependencies. MySpace use was found to have a correlation with number of MySpace friends. "Number of friends created" in turn had a correlation with MySpace dependency, as people returned to interact with their friends. Individual factors were also found to be a source of influence in MySpace dependency. These individual factors were demographics, psychological factors related to use of the Internet, and psychological factors related to use of MySpace. Factors related to MySpace, extroversion and self-disclosure, were positively correlated with intensity of dependency. The influence of factors related to the Internet was partly supported; computer self-efficacy was not significantly related to MySpace dependency, while computer anxiety was significantly related to MySpace dependency. Speed of connection to the Internet and available time to use the Internet were not related to MySpace dependency. Additionally, significant differences were found between genders in overall dependency, extroversion, self-disclosure, computer anxiety, and computer self-efficacy. These findings provide evidence that MySpace members were little, if at all, constrained by factors related to use of the Internet, but were attracted to the websites for similar reasons as real-life relationships. Finally, MySpace is just one of the large number of online resources that are predominantly social, such as email, message boards, and online chat. This study found that through a "technology cluster" MySpace members use these other social innovations more frequently than non-members. However, members also used significantly more non-social innovations, which may indicate that MySpace members are part of a larger technology cluster than anticipated or perhaps are in the same category of innovation adopter.

This essay examines how two daily newspapers, the Swedish Dagens Nyheter and the Russian Izvestia retell and report on the Russian-Ukrainian war. The study is based on the theory of propaganda by Garth S. Jowett and Victoria O`Donnell and the media system theory by Daniel C. Hallin and Paolo Mancini which is applied to fifty randomly selected articles from a six-week period. The purpose of this study is to see how further reporting differs between the two newspapers that operate in two different media systems and whether propaganda is visible in the newspapers reporting. The survey is carried out by studying how often Dagens Nyheter and Izvestia report on the Russian- Ukrainian war and if propaganda techniques are used in the published articles. Furthermore, the terms used to describe the war in the two newspapers are also examined.  The study is based on a quantitative content analysis where articles were collected over a six-week period as empirical material. The articles were coded in a code-scheme and the results are presented in three diagrams and one chart.The study resulted in marked differences between Dagens Nyheter and Izvestia`s reporting where propaganda is strongly prominent in the Russian newspapers Izvestia and non-existent in the Swedish Dagens Nyheter. Additional results that this study promotes are that the newspapers construct, report and describe the war in two completely different ways. / Denna studie undersöker hur två dagstidningar konstruerar och rapporterar om det Rysk-ukrainska kriget ur ett propagandateoretiskt perspektiv samt ur ett mediesystemteoretiskt perspektiv. Tidningarna som undersöks är den svenska tidningen Dagens Nyheter och den ryska tidningen Izvestia. Syftet med denna undersökning är att se hur vidare rapporteringen skiljer sig åt mellan de två tidningarna som verkar i två olika mediesystem samt om propaganda är synlig i de två tidningarnas rapportering. Undersökningen sker genom att studera hur ofta Dagens Nyheter respektive Izvestia rapporterar om det Rysk-ukrainska kriget samt om propagandatekniker används i de publicerade artiklarna. Vidare undersöks vilka termer som används för att beskriva kriget i de båda tidningarna.  Studien grundar sig i en kvantitativ innehållsanalys där artiklar samlats in under en sexveckorsperiod som empiriskt material. Artiklarna kodas i ett kodschema och resultatet presenteras i tre diagram och en tabell.Studien resulterade i markanta skillnader mellan Dagens Nyheters och Izvestias rapportering, där propaganda är starkt framträdande i den ryska tidningen Izvestia och obefintlig i Dagens Nyheter. Ytterligare resultat som studien visar är att tidningarna konstruerar, rapporterar och beskriver kriget på två skilda sätt.

This study explores the discursive construction of Chinese women in the Chinese reality show Sisters Who Make Waves, with a special focus on the discursive shifts and their relevance to the wider discourse of and about Chinese women. The analysis is carried out on two levels: the discursive construction of Chinese women in the said reality show and its recontextualisation across other discourses including in the public sphere and semi-private opinions of Chinese women.  This research discusses the discursive construction of Chinese women in the Chinese media field and the discrepancy between “top-down” and “bottom-up” discourse. The project uses a multi-layer theoretical framework situated in media and society, gender and media representation, celebrity culture and digital labour to explore the discursive construction of Chinese women. The study applies to the reality show as the primary context, media perceptions as the recontextualising context, interviews with female employees in the Chinese internet industry as the secondary context. In order to investigate the arguments and discursive strategies in different contexts, this study employs a multilevel model of the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) in Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA).  The findings discover that the said reality show focuses on the topos of age and the topos of beauty. These two main topoi cause different representations of social actors in Chinese media perceptions. As the representatives of female digital labour, the female employees in the Chinese internet industry construct three discursive strategies of self and relate their self-perception to those of other women. Furthermore, the study implies the discursive shifts in the discourse on Chinese women. This thesis contributes to understanding the discursive construction of women in the Chinese context, particularly the media and gender representations in the Chinese hybrid media system. In addition, this study stands outside the Western world and expands the understanding of the topic in a non-western setting.