News interviews are core within current practices of journalism. They point to the existence of a mediated public space and bolster the concept of democratic accountability. This research investigates what impact these concepts have on the news interviews broadcast by the Today programme (BBC Radio 4) and how interaction within them invoked the public. The programme has a responsibility to uphold the democratic life of the UK, making it a compelling focus of research. The case study examined in this thesis is the broadcast of news interviews concerning the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 (HFEA 2008) and how they shaped representations of the biomedical techniques contained within the legislation. In particular, research investigated what the news interviews reveal about the biological citizen: a specific configuration of citizenship increasingly important in the twenty first century. The research method is Conversation Analysis and the news interviews as broadcast are the empirical data on which findings are based. The study contributes to the understanding of the method through the investigation of the structural organisation of the news interviews and how this affected interaction. Findings suggest that the news interviews on the Today programme highlights the political dimensions of the HFEA 2008, that interviewees were predominantly MPs or public figures and that the gender ratio is skewed towards male voices. It points to the fact that the programme prefers news interviews that contain two interviewees, as this promotes adversarial encounters within interaction. Research also establishes how interviewers have at their disposal a range of devices, such as third party citations, which they use within questions in order to achieve a neutral posture. A further set of findings uncovers the need of interviewees to maintain a positive image of themselves, employing politeness strategies in order to co-operate when answering a question.

This thesis investigates how the digital games industry conceptualises its audiences in both the United States and the United Kingdom. Drawing upon research focused on other media industries, it argues in favour of a constructionist view of the audience that emphasises its discursive form and institutional uses. The term “player” is institutionally constructed in the same way, not referring to the actual people playing games, but to an imagined entity utilised to guide industrial decisions. Using both desk research and information gathered from expert interviews with digital game development professionals, this thesis looks at how ideas about players are formed and held by individual workers, transformed to become relevant for game production, and embedded into broader institutional conceptions that are shared and negotiated across a variety of institutional stakeholders. Adapting the term “audiencemaking” from mass communication research, this thesis identifies three key phases of the “playermaking” process in the digital games industry. First, information about players is gathered through both informal means and highly technologised audience measurement systems. Institutional stakeholders then translate this information into player, product and platform images that can be utilised during production. The remainder of the thesis looks at the more broad third phase in which these images are negotiated amongst a variety of institutional stakeholders as determined by power relations. These negotiations happen between individual workers who hold differing views of the player during development, companies and organisations struggling over position and value across the production chain, and the actual people playing games who strive to gain more influence over the creation of the images meant to represent their interests. These negotiations also reflect national policy contexts within a highly competitive global production network, visible in the comparison between the US neoliberal definition of both the industry and players as primarily market entities and the UK creative industries approach struggling to balance cultural concerns while safeguarding domestic production and inward investment. Ultimately, this thesis argues that conceptions of players are a central force structuring the shape and operation of a digital games industry in the midst of rapid technological, industrial, political and sociocultural change.

This thesis analyses the media coverage and dominant institution responses to the media and protest tactics employed by three different protest groups. The three case studies examine the interactions between protest groups, their political targets, and the mainstream media. It pays particular attention to each group's media and protest tactics, and how their messages transition from protest action into media coverage and political debates. The three different protest groups comprise of a Cardiff community campaign to save a pub called Save the Vulcan, the environmental direct action group Plane Stupid and their protests against airport expansion, and the mass protests of G20Meltdown against the G20 summit held in London in April 2009. This thesis analyses the media coverage of each group using the concept of political opportunity structures to ascertain the influence of the political and media context on protest groups and their actions. Interviews with activists involved in all three protest groups, and ethnography conducted from within one of the groups, namely, the Save the Vulcan campaign revealed differing attitudes towards the choice of media and protest tactics. All three groups were aware of their portrayal in media coverage, and actively geared their tactics towards attracting media attention. The research analysed protester communications on the internet and leaflets to explore how they represented their issues. A content analysis of British newspaper articles examined the impact of each group's media and protest tactics on press coverage. Offical documents from the dominant institutions of the police and centralised political institutions were examined to ascertain the debates surrounding the issues. On the basis of these empirical findings and discussion this thesis argues for a revision of the theorisation of political opportunity structures. This grants increased recognition of media coverage and importance of protest group aims and goals in the assessment of their success and failure to communicate their messages. Finally, the thesis argues that political and media opportunities do influence the success and failure of protest groups, but it is the effective use of media and protect tactics that puts protest groups into a position to succeed or fail.

This thesis examines the process of mass communication from media strategies to audience belief in relation to the conflict in Ireland. It documents the media strategies used by the various actors and participants in the conflict, from the Northern Ireland Office, Royal Ulster Constabulary, Foreign Office and Army to Sinn Fén and the Irish Republican Army, via the Ulster Defence Association, other political parties, Civil liberties and human rights organisations and many others. It reveals the continuing disinformation efforts of the British government, examines how source organisations interact with journalistsw, how journalists and their editors operate and looks at the outcome of their endeavours by analysing international coverage of the Northern Ireland conflict. Finally, the research examines the reception of media information amongst people living in Northern Ireland and Britain. Key questions here included the extent to which `violence' acted as a key organising category in British perceptions of the conflict and the effectiveness of propaganda in structuring public (mis)understandings.

This thesis is written to promote and pursue an understanding of lesbian fandom and its function on the Internet. It will demonstrate how a particular television text Xena: Warrior Princess (X: WP) and a dedicated online fandom „xenasubtexttalk‟ (XSTT) of diverse lesbian fan membership gained empowerment and agency through their fan practices. Since the screening of the television fantasy series X: WP (1995-2001), there has been a marked increase in academic enquiry into lesbian fan culture on the Internet. This thesis contributes to the lesbian spectatorship of fandom with a specific interest in online fandom. This research suggests there are many readings of X: WP and the dedicated websites set up to discuss the series have increased during and post the series broadcast period. This study explores the contradictions, the gaps, and the differences between fan responses to the series, especially the lesbian discourse and fan fiction that developed during and after the television series ended. This investigation suggests that fan scholarship can obtain a new insight into lesbian Internet fan practices as a virtual space producing new lesbian fan online identities and discourses that challenge traditional forms of lesbian fandom. It does this by presenting three distinct, significant and interrelated layers of lesbian online textual engagement. While interrelated, these layers are separate and important as they each reveal new lesbian online fan performances of identity that challenge traditional performances of reading and writing habits of lesbian fans.

The moving image has been a tool of education as well as a means of entertainment for over 100 years. Whilst there are many videos marketed either for, or about autism, there has been little or no research into the responses of autistic people to the medium, particularly from the participatory and emancipatory paradigm of qualitative research. This thesis examines the responses of a group of adult autistics compared with non-autistic adults, taking as a starting point the variety of psychological theories purporting to explain autistic differences in cognition and learning style. The study was of particular value in revealing the unique insights of the autistic participants and concluded that there appear to be autistic strengths that suggest that autistic people engage particularly well with the medium provided it is presented in an appropriate format. The thesis can be seen to operate at two levels. Firstly the academic consideration of the responses of a group of autistic and some non-autistic participants to visually mediated material, and secondly it is an exploration of the insider relationship of the researcher within a discourse traditionally constructed from the outside. There is an experiental and emancipatory exploration of the themes highlighted by Tregaskis (2004) in his paper on identity, positionality and power which examines the issues for Disabled Researchers. The study has revealed some interesting insights into autistic people's culture and concludes that there is scope for much more research into this topic and questions whether the ethics of autism research need reconsideration.

This thesis examines how the German print news media negotiate notions of Germanness by narrating the acts of violent crime committed by the right-wing extremist group National Socialist Underground (NSU) between 2000 and 2011. Combining Paul Ricœur’s textual hermeneutics with insights from narrative criminology as well as violence and narrative media studies, I approach the NSU as a narrative puzzle. I thereby investigate how the media narrate a murder series of nine men with a migration background, a nail bomb attack in a Turkish-dominated street and an (attempted) murder of two police officers. I compare the narratives constructed both before and after the identification of the perpetrators in November 2011. Through an extensive narrative analysis of news media discourse, I examine how notions of Germanness are negotiated through the construction of relationships between perpetrators, victims, society and the state. The key argument is that the NSU has not affected dominant perceptions of Germanness, but reinforced existing ones through the creation of a hierarchy of “‘Others’ within”: immigrants, East Germans, and (right-wing) extremists. The findings show that the interpretation of acts of violent crime, especially over extended periods of time, is rooted in everyday practices of story-telling and identity construction.

This thesis examines the spaces of urban-industrial northern England within the context of post-industrial change. This work combines close textual analysis and an interdisciplinary approach, which includes an examination of sociological, economic and political contexts relating to de-industrialisation and the growth of the service economy. The thesis is organised into four chapters, each dealing with a different manifestation of northern space, including ‘The Red-Brick Terraced Street’, ‘The Council Estate’, ‘The Mill and the Mosque’, and ‘The Gentrified North’. I argue that within a range of texts, the representation of northern space reflects the fragmentation that is a key feature of both the post-industrial experience. Furthermore, it is argued that the gendered balance of northern representation has shifted, spatially and generically, back towards a feminine paradigm. Contrary to surface appearances, it is also argued that important elements of traditional hegemonic representations of northern space are seen to persist within the spaces of the new despite the fragmentation that characterises the post-industrial era.

Many aspects of the Nazis’ methods of persuasion, especially the rhetoric and psychology of printed propaganda and the speeches of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels have been the subjects of intensive study. Oddly, the subject of technology applied as an instrument or supplement to propaganda, or the rhetorical contributions of technological devices, has very little representation in Nazi studies, despite the significance it played in their rise to power. This thesis attempts to fill that gap. Specifically, I will be treating lights and lighting, sound and music, the Nuremberg Party Rallies, radio, and cinema from a rhetorical perspective. The rhetorical framework I have constructed to analyze these elements relies on a synthesis of Richard Weaver’s Tyrannizing Image and Kenneth Burke’s Terministic Screen concepts. Burke provides an important connection to visual rhetoric while Weaver provides links to culture, myth, and history.The ultimate goal of this thesis is to show how the rhetorical theories of Kenneth Burke and Richard Weaver can be used to explain the Nazis’ persuasion tactics. Aristotle demanded that rhetors “know all available means of persuasion,” and obviously, technological devices have rhetorical value. To prove this, I have relied as much as possible on primary sources, especially the autobiographies of former Nazis and Hitler’s Mein Kampf, but the Hitler biographers (Joachim Fest, Robert Waite, and John Toland) have also proved their usefulness. While this thesis is not an exhaustive treatment of the subject, it at least sows the field with seeds of thought. I do not address either the printed propaganda of Nazism or the speeches of Hitler or Goebbels. I examine instead the rhetorical devices and methods used by the Nazis to reinforce these types of persuasion.

Begging is a complex, ambivalent phenomenon. People are often divided on their views on begging creating a dichotomy of standpoints; those who emphasise with the issue and those who are critical of it. The phenomenon cannot be understoon in a binary fashion. Both the written thesis and the audio-visual component move from a stance where begging is associated with being a socio-cultural issue to one that is actually much more complex and very political in nature. In doing so, it critiques the regulation of begging in Mumbai using religious codes of practice and secular law as well as analysing notions of power. There are two components to the thesis comprising a written element and an audio-visual documentary, which can stand independent of each other but are also linked as much of the dialogue that is a part of the documentary is discussed in depth in the written thesis and vice versa. The aim of the written critique is to support and amplify the audio-visual presentation.