Digital media and networks occupy an increasing central position within contemporary societies. This position does not simply involve communicational forms. From the turn of the millennium, phenomena of on- line activism have regularly emerged, bringing novel political forms of resistance to the fore. In academic literature, such phenomena are defined as ‘hacktivism’, putting hacker culture in contact with the politically motivated use of networked media by social movements. However, these scholarly perspectives often fail to deal sufficiently with the original forms of mediation that are at stake in hacktivist ‘deployments’ of media apparatuses. Finding inspiration especially in the work of Félix Guattari, I propose a ‘machinic’ methodology able to deal with the relations and processes with which the act of researching is inescapably involved, overcoming the distances that epistemologically separate the subject from its objects of research. Hence, I originate a ‘method assemblage’ by combining emergent theories in the field of media and culture, and advancing a critical questioning on the same researching procedures. Linking media ecologies and archaeologies, the resulting creative method allows an approach to the case study of ‘Anonymous’ through a novel critical compass. The original creation of the method aims to study without foreclosing the heterogeneous forms of active resistance actualised through media technologies. I suggest that the short-term, transient character of contemporary forms of resistance does not lack political efficacy. Rather hacktivism has to be reconsidered in vital terms beyond representation, within a field that is ‘micro-political’ and materially involves novel processes of subjectivation and disruptiveness.

The thesis hereby submitted, ‘How Does Technological Development And Adoption Occur In The Media? A Cultural Determinist Model’ was originally published in Media Technology and Society A History: from the telegraph to the Internet (London: Routledge 1998) and Technologies of Seeing: Photography, Cinematography and Television (London: British Film Institute 1996). The argument outlined in those two books is further supported and updated by six other texts published between 1995 and 2005 on the same topic. Media Technology and Society A History: from the telegraph to the Internet deals with the development of electrical and electronic mass media proposing a model for the nature of such developments. It is a final iteration of an approach to this history which has its origins in work first begun in the 1970s. Technologies of Seeing: Photography, Cinematography and Television applies the same model to photographic and cinematographic technologies. The thesis argues that all these media developments can only be understood in a social context; that they are to be understood as examples of what has become known as ‘socially shaped technology’ (or, in terms of the thesis, ‘cultural determinism’). This is contrary to the received dominant view that technology itself is the driver determining social formation – termed the ‘technological determinist’, ‘technicist’ or ‘diffusion theory’ approach. In rejecting technicism, ‘How Does Technological Development And Adoption Occur In The Media? A Cultural Determinist Model’ proposes instead an original, pioneering contribution to a revisionist cultural determinist/SST historiography as well as outlining a model to explicate at a theoretical level how such innovations and adoptions occur.

This PhD submission by previous publication comprises independent critical work from 1997-2001 on 'hypermodernism'. Hypermodern 'new cultural theory' and 'technopolitics' designates a rejection of the binary opposition between modernism and postmodernism as a response to the crises of contemporary culture. Hypermodernism thus refuses the prefix 'post', substituting instead the prefix 'hyper' or 'excess'. Hypermodernism is neither a denial of the domineering epistemological optimism of modernity nor a dismissal of the peremptory theoretical pessimism of postmodernity. Rather, it is an original analytical engagement with and acceptance of 'double moments' of cultural affirmation and negation or 'the continuation of modernism by other means'. The contribution to knowledge represented by the published work is the innovative interpretation and extension of hypermodernism to 'new social theory' and technopolitics. It delineates the renunciation of the binary antagonism between modernity and postmodernity through an acknowledgement of the exigencies of 'hypermodernity'. The premise of hypermodernity is confirmed through the prefix 'hyper' and the discovery of the 'economies of excess'. Hypermodernity therefore integrates the hope of `dromoeconomics' with the despair of the 'project(ile)s of hypermodern(organ)ization'. Here, autonomous critical abilities and the recognition of double moments of social confirmation and contradiction are understood as 'the continuation of modernity by other means'. The concluding section of the PhD submission deals with recent work from 2001 that explores the hypermodern. New cultural, social and technopolitical theory is positively applied to the reaction of the French cultural theorist, Paul Virilio, to the 'strategies of deception'. Hypermodernism repudiates the prefix 'postmodern war', exchanging it for the assertion that 'The Kosovo W@r Did Take Place', merging a critique of the promises of the modern Persian Gulf war and the despondency of postmodern 'cyberwar'. Finally, individual evaluative powers partake of and identify such double moments as the 'orbital space' of the 'integral accident' or 'the continuation of politics by other means'.

This research project critically explores the manner in which online interaction between individuals affects their understanding of information and what this means for the meaning of information within this context. In order to examine these interactions and their effects the research question asked is: To what extent is digital discourse within the context of the online information explosion rendering all information effectively subjective? The aims of the research were to investigate the relationship between individuals and information and to develop a conceptual framework through which to understand this relationship. Coupled with this concept of interpretative methodology within this research is the idea of Verstehen as a way of developing an understanding of language and behaviour. As the research required public online discourse surrounding an information rich topic it was decided that the issue of climate change would meet these needs. It is an issue which is steeped in debate and that features a significant volume of publicly available information in the form of official statistics, reports and projections as well as widespread media coverage. The analysis of this data highlighted the prominence of certain key elements, such as notable individuals who can be seen taking on roles which direct the discourse shaping it either through the comments they make or the information which they share. This generative role-taking plays into the idea that social validation and the perceived credibility of an individual are vital to the impact which they can have on a discussion and in their ability to shape the opinions of others. The contribution to knowledge can be found in the relationships with the discourse with regard to the issue of who constructs meaning for a piece of information; reconceptualising who is regarded as owning a source and who is regarded as credible in an online social context.

After languishing for many years in the periphery of the field as a tacitly closed off concept, visuality is back on the agenda of Visual Culture Studies and, with it, the issue of power. In contrast to its informal use as a term to describe the ‘social fact’ of the visual, Nicholas Mirzoeff’s full scale reappraisal of visuality has revealed its strategic, military genealogy. However, in this and other revisionist accounts, the theory of twenty-first century power remains a predominantly hegemonic one, with visuality operating as an outside force, a power that structures and defines the reality of a world to which we remain subject. In this essay, by identifying emergent tendencies in the logic of capitalism, I present an alternate account of the present. I expose a post-hegemonic visuality which operates by co-opting the radical and experimental energies of digital culture, a visuality which no longer defines a fixed world but exploits the distributed social powers of ‘worlding’, a visuality which taps into and mediates our collective potential to make and remake new worlds. I situate this worlding visuality in the science-fictional context of what Gilles Deleuze calls ‘control society’. In so doing, I attend to the principal lacunae of the field – capital and labour – and examine how social and cultural activities previously identified with ‘resistance’ are increasingly integrated within a dynamic, complex system of power. By focusing on this ‘media ecology’, and taking into consideration the broader cultural implications of network technologies, I dispute the popular rhetoric of the digital and challenge conventional definitions of ‘the visual’. Indeed, I contend that a newly intense visuality necessitates a transformation in current attitudes toward the aesthetic, and that we must examine more closely the realm of bodily affect. I emphasize, throughout, a new temporality of control, insisting that it is crucial we now recognize an immanent, ontological visuality, a power which utilizes the ‘always-on’ communicational relations of a culture associated with cloud computing. To undertake such a study, I employ and adapt a set of tools which (though largely unfamiliar to the field formally identified with visual culture) stimulate the energies expressed in several realms of contemporary thought, particularly those assembled as ‘Non-Representational Theory’. My explicit contribution to the field is formulated around an argument for the need to go beyond representation, and, moreover, that to achieve any critical purchase on digital culture, theories of visuality must attend to the realm of the virtual, as outlined by Henri Bergson, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, among others. For examples, I turn to some apparently familiar places: advertising, television, film and gaming. But, in making transversal intersections across divergent disciplines, I also find expressions of this emergent visuality in less conventional spheres: in twenty-first century literature, in software procedures, in socio-biological experiments. Rather than images to be ‘read’ or interpreted, I take the relations and disjunctions between such examples to be symptoms of a new capitalist visuality, one that manipulates and exploits the multiple, paradoxical nature of the real.

The following thesis examines the possibility that the contemporary Western political leader can be assessed and understood as a performer. It subsequently highlights the various repercussions of this statement, from theoretical, practical, historical and cultural perspectives. Through an extensive, multi-disciplinary literature review and case specific examples, the author argues that researching the politician as a performer has both practical and theoretical value. Included in this review are analyses of key contemporary issues surrounding political performance. The various uses of contemporary media, including the skills and semiotics that they generate, are discussed. Questions are raised regarding the audience's ability to interpret the information they receive through mediated performance. A working definition of audience is developed, to include those who consume and interpret political performance. Also explored in relation to political performance are questions of contemporary celebrity, performativity, and feminism. The thesis suggests that not only is the politician a performer, but that the related theories of performance have an impact on political dialogue at a variety of levels. As is highlighted in the thesis, existing literature has not examined the politician from this perspective. Therefore the work contributes to the body of knowledge around performance and cultural studies.

This thesis argues that orthodox social constructionist and culturalist explanations of the mutation of interpersonal violence in the Anglo-American world over the past three decades need to be challenged. Macro-patterns of interpersonal violence appearing over historical time and social space indicate a direct correlation with changes in political economy. It is argued here that specific forms of physical and sublimated symbolic violence were functional to the development of mercantile and classic industrial capitalism, and thus they were cultivated and harnessed in complex forms across this time period. This suggests that the 'civilizing process' formulated in terms of evolving social relationships and emotional sensibilities is inadequate as an explanation for the decline in the murder and serious violence rates in Europe, and this concept needs to be reformulated in a direct relationship with political economy. The new concept of the 'pseudo-pacification process' arose from an attempted reformulation, which represents the internal pacification of the population as an accidental and rather fragile by-product of capitalism's functional requirements. Current rises in the rates of murder and serious interpersonal violence in vortices appearing in the shift from the classical productivist economy managed by interventionist state politics to a consumer/service economy managed by neo-liberal politics suggests that indeed the aetiological connection between political economy and violence rates needs to be returned to the foreground of criminological theory. The putative 'sensibilities' at the heart of the civilizing process are more likely to be emotional attachments to the rules and affectations that evolved as protective insulation for the brutally competitive practices that energise the capitalist economic project, and they are in danger of disintegrating as the pseudo-pacification process loses much of its functional value in the consumer economy and begins to break down.

Television in Thailand, as in many nations, can be regarded as an essential form of popular media. Although television plays an important role within and across all levels of society, the relationship between television and Thai cultural identity is a problematic and ambiguous one; it is also a subject of study often neglected or not taken seriously enough in Thailand. This research project, "Popular Television and the Construction of Contemporary Thai Cultural Identity', is an exploration into the relationship between television and the formation of contemporary Thai cultural identity. It draws together media and cultural studies and the study of television in contemporary Thailand. Through interviews with key media practitioners and an analysis of popular television programmes (such as the controversial game show 'The Weakest Link', popular dramas, youth programmes, and broadcasts of national rituals), the research has found that television plays a prominent role in Thai cultural identity formation. One existing line of argument is that Thai cultural identity in the era of globalisation has been inevitably influenced by western homogenisation, as is suggested by the thesis of Cultural Imperialism. Yet on the other hand, globalisation has played a multi-faceted role in creating the sense of Nationalism which has led to the strengthening of Thai traditional identity, evidence of which can be seen in the Thai government's use of television to support Thai tradition and values. In this way, television has played a unifying role in the formation of Thai cultural identity. Moreover, globalisation, as a new global-local articulation, has also created a new kind of cultural hybridity which is apparent in the styles, forms, and language usage in certain youth programmes. In addition to the theoretical analyses, focus-group discussions and in-depth interviews have been conducted in order to examine the 'cultural hybridity' of 'mixed-race' youngsters in Thailand, and the roles television has played in the formation of their identity. The research has further found that 'mixed-race' youngsters (`third-culture kids' or TCKs) in Thailand have learnt to 'translate' themselves within the different cultures. And television, in some way, has helped them make sense of, and negotiate between, the different cultures they are living in.

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.

The study takes ideological domination in the field of the media as a point of departure, concentrating on current affairs as one of the most keenly debated issues in the field of mass media since the emergence of news agencies and up to the present age of satellite television channels. The study deals in particular with monopolies of news coverage by the major news agencies, including Reuters, Associated Press (AP), United Press International (UP), and Agence France Press (AFP). The study focuses on the cultural dimensions of news stories and the controversies over their content which have spurred regional and international efforts to establish alternatives to the one-way flow of news and information from core countries to the rest of the world. The study also focuses on American domination in the field of news and the establishment of CNN, which has itself become a symbol of American influence as well as a significant influence on the live news coverage of events. The impact of CNN has also triggered many reactions, including efforts in various countries to compete with it in order to cover the news from perspectives within these countries. The study goes on to focus on the Arab region, which has its own characteristics but also shares many features with other peripheral countries, particularly in the field of the mass media and the reliance of Arab audiences on news sources in core countries. This study deals with various issues concerning the mass media and news coverage in the Arab region, providing a historical framework for the development of its mass media; the political atmosphere and other factors which have affected their performance. The study also examines attempts by Arab countries to work collectively in order to establish alternatives to the core countries’ news outlets. By focusing on the Arab region this study aims to examine in particular the significance of the Arab satellite news channels and their success in competing with the news outlets of core countries. The competitiveness of the Arab satellite channels is evaluated, considering Al-Jazeera as a particularly important example. The study finally focuses on Libya as an example both of an Arab county and as a representative of peripheral countries. This section of the work involves an empirical study into perception and evaluation of regional and international news. This provides ideal opportunities to assess the theoretical framework of the study with references to the features and difficulties of peripheral countries. Libya’s efforts in the field of mass media, and particularly its news outlets, are also evaluated. In addition the study examines the attitudes of the Libyan people towards domestic, regional and international news outlets and their significance in terms of news coverage. This provides a thorough understanding of the perceived weaknesses and strengths of these news outlets, and such information may help in the development of a new strategy for the Libyan mass media in order to make them more competitive.