This is a revisionist audience study examining the everyday media cultures of twenty-four young teenage girls from Melbourne in Australia. It argues that in an era of proliferated and convergent media, audience studies cannot restrict its vision to a single media text, technology, or genre. / It takes a broad approach to girls’ media culture and considers the full range of media that girls engage with on a daily basis. It identifies a hegemonic discourse about girls’ media use which it calls “(feminist) new media effects”. This anxiety takes as its key concern the proliferation of media and mediated representations of girls across the spaces of everyday life. (Feminist) new media effects discourse renders girls passive and unable to cope with such media presence without the guidance of adults to teach them how to correctly engage with the media. In order to challenge this construction, the thesis examines participants’ engagements with a range of convergent media texts and technologies, including Internet social networking, repeat DVD spectatorship, young female celebrities, and discourses of moral panic. It shows how mediated representations of girls across these sites are embedded in the fabric of participants’ everyday lives. Apart from highlighting the challenge that this poses to the practice of conducting audience research, it demonstrates the ways that girls both resist and incorporate mediated constructions of femininity within their everyday negotiations of teenage girlhood. It argues that the representation of girlhood constructed in (feminist) new media effects discourse – the vulnerable girl overwhelmed by toxic media messages – is key to girls’ media culture. My findings indicate that participants are primarily invested in resisting this construction of youthful femininity.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Melbourne, Centre for Public Policy, 2006. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [350]-[354]).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2008. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 134-144). Also available online in ProQuest, free to University of Oregon users.

Thesis (M.J.)--Carleton University, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 149-157). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 99-102).

Thesis (PhD) -- Bond University, 2009. / "A thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy"-- t.p. Bibliography: pages 336-365. Also available via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 99-102). Also available in print.

Thesis (MCS)--AUT University, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references. Also held in print ( leaves : ill. ; 30 cm.) in the Archive at the City Campus (T 302.230993 WAL)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2005. / Supervisor: Maxwell E. McCombs. Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI Company.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2005. / Supervisor: Neal Burns. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.