The Revolutionary era was a period of radical political change in France which dissolved traditional boundaries of privilege. It was also a time of creative experimentation on the stage, the street, and in print. Performance and theatrical language were an integral part of the French Revolution. This interdisciplinary thesis makes a vital contribution to knowledge of the cultural production of the French Revolution by analysing the theatrical influences in its satirical prints. It argues that printmakers drew from different aspects of Revolutionary performance to create their prints, from street singers and fairground performers to unsanctioned Revolutionary events and topics favoured by the stage, including the representation of Revolutionary characters in hell. These depictions – observed for the first time under thematic banners – provide a new insight into the multiplicity of opinions, beliefs and attitudes during the French Revolution.

The category of young adult (YA) fiction encompasses a wide range of genres; but despite this generic diversity, it has so far failed to represent the full range of communities that make up contemporary British society. Discussions are ongoing between professionals in the publishing industry and campaigning individuals and organisations who are aiming to redress this imbalance. Writers making new work are in a position to help effect a change, but acknowledging and responding to the call for inclusion can be far from straightforward, with questions being raised such as: ‘how far can a writer stray from their own lived experience?’ and ‘how can a writer avoid tokenism or cultural appropriation when writing for inclusion?’ This thesis consists of a new YA contemporary novel, Sea Change, and an accompanying critical essay, which reflects on the challenges I encountered while aiming to write for inclusion. Set in the Scottish Highlands, Sea Change is a contemporary YA crime novel, in which the world of the sixteen-year-old protagonist, Alex, is thrown into turmoil when he discovers a dead body next to his fishing boat. The decisions Alex makes following this discovery set in motion the plot of the story. The narrative, as it unfolds, facilitates the exploration of themes frequently associated with adolescence, such as friendship, risk-taking and the maturation into an adult identity, along with themes specifically linked to Alex’s status as a member of marginalised communities because of his sexuality and social class, such as prejudice, acute stress brought on by economic pressure, and low self-esteem. This thesis, then, reviews the opinions and recommendations being expressed by campaigners for greater diversity, and exposes the uncertainties and challenges a writer faces when aiming to write for inclusion.

Although scholarly interest in the field of emblematics has increased greatly over the last decade, there is still much to be done, particularly in the area of religious emblems. The emblem form has been considered from the perspective of individual author, geographical factors and theological background but there have been few comparative studies with respect to religious emblems. This study will compare Protestant and Catholic emblems produced during the Reformation and Counter- Reformation, drawing on specific examples from, in particular, France, but also Germany and England. Emblems played a huge role in early-modern life. They expressed contemporary thought and also became part of the physical environment, being etched into stone, or wood, or sewn into cloth as decoration. In a period of such political, civil, and religious unrest, it would, therefore, seem likely that the Catholic and Protestant emblem would be quite distinct types either expressing theologically opposed notions, or manipulating the text/image relationship in quite different ways. Understanding how these emblems functioned, therefore, necessitates close reading, indeed, reading in the way the emblems were intended to be read. This study, therefore, will address the question of differences through detailed analysis of specific examples. This study begins with an introduction which gives a brief history of emblem literature and a review of relevant secondary material. Key terms and definitions regarding emblems are also explained here. This chapter also introduces the authors of the emblems analysed in later chapters. The first part of this thesis examines the emblem form in the wider context of the Reformation. From an initial overview of some of the key issues of the Reformation in chapter one, chapters two and three move on to analyse closely a wide corpus of Catholic and Protestant emblems. In these chapters the emblem is broken down into its component parts of verse and picture. Chapter two examines the religious emblem from the perspective of motif while chapter three approaches the emblem from a thematic angle. The second part of this study adopts a different approach presenting case studies of three authors. Chapter four explores the importance of the visual element in the emblems of Protestant author Rollenhagen. Chapter five investigates the Jesuit influences which shape the emblems of Catholic Berthod. While chapters four and five offer an insight into the work of prototypical Protestant and Catholic authors chapter six demonstrates the successful fusion of both Protestant and Catholic influences in the emblems of Wither. Indeed, this study suggests that the differences between Protestant and Catholic at this time are largely exaggerated with respect to emblems. Protestant and Catholic emblems are not, this study maintains, in essence all that different. It argues that, in fact, Protestant and Catholic emblems were often very close in terms of content and that the real difference is in the way they manipulate the text/image relationship.

This thesis parts from the premise that avant-garde art collectives produce discourses meant to articulate the opposition to the art/life divide as one that interrelates fields such as aesthetics, politics, philosophy, and even economics. By utilizing a comparative framework, it plays on the complementarity and differences between four 1960s groups that formed very specific organizations directed at challenging society, in one way or another related to the Situationist International: The Situationist Times (France), King Mob Echo (UK), Black Mask and its transformations (US), and S.NOB (Mexico). Through the medium of magazines, they intended to reach a mass audience that in the act of reading and looking at their images and texts would be prompted to discern organizations that undermined the world-system. Thus, the Situationist Times attempted to form a (people’s) movement that in an applied creativity that rejected the metanarrative of progress would be able to realize the malleability of history. King Mob followed a conspiratorial logic with the idea of a dis-organized mass suddenly acting in concert against states. Black Mask and its transformations played with the idea of a war for territory, the occupation of a ‘free zone’ by a community in the midst of a dominated world. Finally, S.NOB’s idiosyncratic anarchism came from an opposition to the totalizing discursive practices of the Mexican Revolution, giving primacy to fragmentation and an anti-organizational bent; while it had no direct relationship to any of the above groups, it shows how their techniques and theories develop out of an engagement with Surrealism and past avant-gardes. S.NOB provides not a counterpoint but a contextual revelation of the limits of these collectives, in the Bataillean sense that opens all of them up to a ‘contamination’ with historicity and thought that treats all of them as equal in scope and importance.

Since the 1990s, studies within the inter-disciplinary fields of crime, the media and children have been wide-ranging. In spite of this however, to date, research into the media’s reporting on the missing and murdered child has been a neglected area of study. This thesis redresses this gap by providing the first significant study into the missing and murdered child and the way in which the media interrogates this phenomenon within the mediated public sphere. Reflecting on historical and contemporary debates and ideas about the public sphere, the thesis draws on current literature and considers the way in which mediated narratives about the missing and the murdered child, reinforce particular ideological and cultural assumptions about the politics of childhood, motherhood, community and privacy. The thesis considers the way in which the media’s coverage of the missing and the murdered child has contributed to the ‘emotionalization’ of the public sphere. The study examines established viewpoints about the nature of an emotionalized public sphere and the extent to which it undermines Western values associated with liberal democracy. A qualitative textual analysis of two case studies was conducted into the media’s coverage of two high-profile incidents of child murder and abduction- the Soham murder investigation in 2002 and the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, 2007. Samples for analysis were drawn from both print and broadcast media including five UK national tabloid newspapers- Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, Sun, Daily Star, Daily Express together with an episode of the BBC’S Crimewatch. Findings from this study reveal that a public sphere shaped by emotion provides a vehicle whereby subaltern counter-publics, the voice of ordinary citizens takes precedence. Moreover, I argue that the distinctiveness of this research is that it highlights the way in which a mediated public sphere informed by emotion appears to promote active citizenship and engagement with matters of public concern, of which the missing and the murdered child are but two examples. Finally, I suggest that it is through participation, and perhaps social and political engagement in response to such incidents, that contributes to the reformulation of a mediated public sphere and thereby sustains the very doctrines that underpin the role of the state and civil society.

Serving the good of the community is a professional value prized by those who work in the provincial press. It is also seen as a vital role for local newspapers by those outside the industry. A localised form of the Fourth Estate, the good of the community therefore justifies and underpins the routines and news values of those who work in regional and local news organisations. This thesis investigates the extent to which this notion serves as a functional value for the English provincial news industry; it positions it within an historical context to understand its relationship with the economic structure of the local newspaper. As such, after Foucault, it constitutes the good of the community as a discursive position which functions in different ways during different periods of development for the provincial press. The history of the provincial press is charted from its inception in the eighteenth century to the present day. This history conceptualises its development within six distinct stages; as such it seeks to demonstrate the fluidity of the notion of serving the good of the community which is presented as absolute by the industry. Interviews with current workers within the industry are used to expose the way in which the concept functions for the industry today and concomitant changes wrought by digital innovation. These demonstrate that the notion functions best at those titles which enjoy direct investment in their ability to act in a way which serves the good the community; conversely it is most under threat at those titles which are increasingly removed from their locale for reasons of profit. This thesis ends with the suggestion that preserving the ability of the provincial news industry to serve the good of the community necessitates a new approach to an assessment of its value; it suggests that alternative funding models are needed if the ability of the industry to meet this goal is to be retained.

Early 17th-century Antwerp, despite political and religious troubles, was a thriving European art centre and home of such renowned artists as Peter Paul Rubens and other painters of his circle, like Jan Brueghel I, Frans Snyders, Anthony van Dyck and Hendrick van Balen. This interdisciplinary thesis in Technical Art History, after a general introduction to this specific art scene, looks at how specific aspects of their studio practice, such as collaborations within and outside their studios or the many copies and versions of their paintings, found manifestation in their works but also in their theoretical concepts. For this an in-depth study and examination of c.20 paintings from mainly Scottish collections (National Galleries of Scotland Edinburgh, Glasgow Museums, Hunterian Art Gallery of the University of Glasgow, Talbot Rice Gallery of the University of Edinburgh, Hopetoun House South Queensferry) was conducted, using detailed photography, multispectral imaging, tracings, dendrochronology, polarised light microscopy and SEM- EDX-analysis of paint samples in cross-sections. The technical examination and analysis, informed by art historical research, significantly aided the answering of questions regarding these paintings’ materials and techniques, as well as they helped to authenticate sometimes contested authorship and date. Four main chapters discuss Frans Snyders’ studio practice focussing on reappearing motifs, Rubens’ tronies, Jan Brueghel’s minute staffage figures in collaborative works, as well as Rubens’ and Brueghel’s painting Nature Adorned by the Graces. An own chapter critically discusses the test results of the application of Stable Lead Isotope Analysis on paint samples, which were carried out at the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre (SUERC).

This thesis examines the practice of campaigning journalism, where a newspaper seeks political influence and claims to do so on behalf of its readers or a wider public. It is a production and content study of campaign journalism in the Scottish press, examining the journalists’ orientation to their readers, both in terms of social responsibility toward them in facilitating their citizenship, and in terms of accountability or answerability to them as their quasi-representatives. The study also analyses the newspapers’ representation of the substance and legitimacy of public opinion to politicians at the Scottish Parliament, in particular the governing Scottish Executive (now Scottish Government), and the framing of politicians’ obligation to respond to public demands as formulated by the newspapers. In short, it seeks to investigate newspapers’ democratic claims to be the voice of ‘the public’. Existing literature indicates that a key legitimation of campaigning journalism is that the newspaper is acting on behalf of a public or publics. However, it is not clear how these claims are substantiated. Existing mechanisms of accountability and normative conventions of responsibility are based on the liberal model of democracy, whereby the press are responsible for informing voters. In campaigning, the press instead adopt the language of representing group interests or protest politics that would fit with a corporatist or participatory model of democracy. These alternative models presuppose active or at least attentive publics, and newspapers’ interaction with and representation of them in this sense. This would fit with popular notions of Scottish political history as characterised by activism, and the aspirations of the Scottish Parliament. However, the campaigns instead addressed an imagined public that were conceived of as a market, and represented ‘the public’ as a passive and powerless aggregate of interests. Despite campaigning being taken up on behalf of disadvantaged groups, those affected were only given a voice to express their feelings as victims, and political advocacy was largely reserved to the newspaper rather than extended to associations and organisations in civic society. The neo-liberal assumption of private (not political) self-determination and freedom as the defence of property and other personal interests meant that affected individuals were portrayed as passive and vulnerable ‘victims’ whose freedom and agency were oppressed by criminal perpetrators. Where social welfare was addressed it was dissociated from taxation, and portrayed in terms of consumer preferences. Publics were otherwise addressed and portrayed as an aggregate mass of instrumental interests and fearful, defensive feelings, not as associative or discursive.

This thesis investigates the relationship between media and identities in contemporary Greece. Acknowledging the diversity of Greek society, the study follows the circulation of discourses about the nation and belonging and contrasts the articulation of identities at a local level with the discourses about the nation in the national media. Through a series of case studies I examine how people of Greek, Cypriot and Turkish origins living in Athens articulate their identities through everyday practices and media use. At the same time I investigate the television news discourse which is nationalized, largely projecting an essentialist representation of identity that does not reflect the complexity of the society it claims to describe. The study follows the shifts in peoples' discourses according to context and observes that it is in their encounters with the news media, compared to other contexts, that some of the informants express a more closed discourse about difference and belonging. This points to the power of the media, through a number of practices, to raise the boundaries for inclusion and exclusion in public life. Hence, while for the majority of the Greek speakers the news is a common point of reference, for the Turkish speakers it is often a reminder of their `second class citizenship' and exclusion from public life. Public discourse, much dominated by the media in the case of Greece, is a complex web of power relations, subject to constant negotiation. This is an interdisciplinary study that draws upon a number of theories and approaches by means' of a theoretical and methodological triangulation. The thesis aims to contribute primarily to two literatures, namely media and audience studies —particularly the developments towards a theory of mediation — and the literature that addresses the relationship between media and identity. In the light of the analysis of the empirical findings the study argues that neither of the hitherto dominant paradigms in theorising the relationship between media and identity (namely, strong media/weak identities and weak media/powerful identities) is adequate to describe what emerges as a multifaceted process. What is proposed is an approach that takes into account both a top-down and a bottom-up perspective. Media and identities should be understood in a dialectical fashion where neither is foregrounded from the start. The concepts of culture and the nation are understood through a historical perspective that recognises their constructedness and diversity. Identity is conceptualised as relational and performative rather than fixed and stable.

The private and public domains are usually regarded as a dichotomy: what is in one is not in the other. There can be many reasons for intrusions by the news media into the private lives of people. This thesis assesses the extent to which celebrity is a useful conduit for understanding why the media intrudes into people’s private lives and the extent to which celebrity affects any public interest justification for doing so. In essence: does celebrity make a difference in press intrusions into the private lives of others, or is it just one of many factors. The private lives of celebrities have been subject to invasion by the press for many years, while the conceptual definition of privacy has been fiercely debated by academics and lawyers. In 2011, as a direct consequence of the revelation that the News of the World had illegally accessed murder victim Milly Dowler’s voicemail during an active police investigation into her disappearance, the first part of the Leveson Inquiry was launched in order to examine the relationship between the British press and the public, the police and politicians. The significance of the Leveson Inquiry on public life and the media and political spheres means that an analysis of press intrusions into the private lives of both celebrities and those, like the Dowler family, who were unlucky enough to fall under scrutiny due to tragic events, is essential in understanding the relationship between celebrity, privacy and the press in twenty-first century England. This thesis utilises an observation study of the Leveson Inquiry public hearings from the Royal Courts of Justice, and the resulting evidence, to investigate the impact of celebrity on the nature and extent of press intrusion into the privacy of celebrities, and how it differs in the cases of noncelebrities who become of interest to the media. The thesis concludes that the element of celebrity has a major impact on press intrusion into the private lives of individuals regardless of their personal status, as ordinary individuals are targeted due to their proximity to a celebrity, or as a result of being caught up in extraordinary circumstances. However, social media platforms are threatening the role of the press in revealing private information about individuals to the general public, as both traditional celebrities and ‘internet micro-celebrities’ communicate directly with global audiences.