Chapter 1 considers culture as a product of communication. The central problem is to understand how an array of influencing factors such as food supply, technology and physical and intellectual environment are represented, stored and shared as 'food culture'. It considers mechanisms by which culture might be transmitted from one location to another including the relevance of historical literature and Louis Hartz's notion of Australia as a 'cultural fragment' cast off from the Old World. Chapter 2 shows that the Australian literature represents a discourse in which information about various aspects of feeding was gathered from local and overseas sources and circulated for instruction, entertainment and use. The discourse and the means of conducting it were products of their age. Public participation was evident in the correspondence columns of weekly newspapers and in 'contributory' cookery books. The discourse drew on various themes that were prominent in other Western discourses and reflected social and moral values of the times. It evidenced beliefs that the manner of a society's feeding demonstrates the extent of its' civilisation and that refinement of food and feeding contributes to the improvement of society. It also reflected nationalist sentiment and demonstrated some attempts to develop a distinctive Australian cuisine. Chapter 3 supports these claims with detailed analysis of recipes published in a sample of journals and cookery books. Chapter 4 describes five instances which illustrate in more depth the influence of print media in culture development. The first two show deliberate use of print media to reform cookery practice. The third shows the role of print in cookery education, suggesting an alternative mechanism by which cookery in Australia retained its British character. The fourth tests the idea that the transmission of food and science cultural influences from the Old World to the New followed broadly similar paths and questions the origins of the domestic science movement. The fifth examines commercial influences exerted through print media and notes that food production, processing and distribution enterprise was to become increasingly influential as Australia (and other countries) turned to industrial feeding. The thesis concludes with some reflections on the processes of culture formation and the role of mass communications. It suggests that food culture is both an expression of conceptions of character and identity and a formative influence on them, that the engine of cultural change has been industrial progress and, finally, that the communication system which supports and enriches food culture may also tend to undermine it.

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.

The Inuit have experienced significant cultural changes since initial contact with European settlers and explorers in the 17th Century, changes that accelerated in the mid- 20th century. Basing their relationships to the Inuit in imperialism (the policy and practice of empire expansion), Europeans used political, economic and cultural tactics to swiftly establish a cultural hierarchy and solidify the Inuit’s position as ‘The Other’ – an ‘out-group’ viewed as inherently inferior to the ‘in-group’. The Arctic has remained hierarchized because of implicit settler colonial processes that permeate political and cultural relations and underpin modern policy development. An examination of the nutrition transition – the shift away from traditional foods to commercialized market options – brings these implicit settler colonial processes into focus. The transition to a Western diet has accompanied chronic poverty and provoked high levels of food insecurity, resulting in numerous negative health outcomes among Inuit. Current health promotion initiatives employ an ineffective downstream approach to reduce Nunavut food insecurity – which is approximately three times greater than the Canadian average – when the issue is a result of rampant poverty. Disproportionately high rates of food insecurity are a manifestation of settler colonialism and fuel a covertly racist national attitude toward the Inuit, maintaining their marginalized position. This study examines national coverage of Nunavut food insecurity as presented in two of Canada’s most widely read newspapers: The Globe and Mail and National Post. A critical discourse analysis (CDA) was employed to analyze 24 articles, 19 from The Globe and Mail and 5 from National Post. Analysis suggests national print media propagates the Inuit’s position as The Other by selectively reporting on social issues such as hunger, poverty and income. Terms such as “Northerners” and “Southerners” are frequently used to categorically separate Nunavut from the rest of Canada and Inuit-driven efforts to resolve their own issues are widely ignored. This effectively portrays the Inuit as helpless and the territory as a failure, and allows Canadians to maintain colonialist views of Inuit inferiority and erroneously assume Federal initiatives effectively address Northern food insecurity. / Thesis (Master, Kinesiology & Health Studies) -- Queen's University, 2014-02-27 10:52:16.947

This study examined the civic properties afforded by Twitter and considered whether hashtag communities achieve issues-pluralism in order to facilitate at least some viewpoints to popular expression otherwise absent from print media. Data sources included Twitter hashtag communities that formed around the 2013 Alberta Budget and the associated print media coverage. This inquiry found that while diverse actors contribute to the formation of Twitter hashtag communities, the associated discussion failed to drive issues-pluralism. Twitter's most apparent value to civil society is information exchange--both in terms of tweet content and hyperlinked content and multimedia. In spite of this strength, Twitter is ill-suited as a communicative forum for civil society. Discussion uptake and opinion expression were relatively modest among participants, and the conversation was overwhelmingly dominated and driven by agents of traditional news media intent on perpetuating roles in content gatekeeping and who operated in the service of profits.

Media play an important role in transmitting information for citizens in a country as large as Canada. Much of what Canadians know about the larger country comes to them through the media they view. What then, is the information that media carries forward. How do the media depict political movements and political actors who are not politicians? This thesis explores the implications of media coverage for feminist organizations in Canada, using as a case study media’s response to the cuts to the Status of Women Canada by the Harper government in the fall of 2006. This analysis specifically focuses on the image of feminism created in media and the importance (or lack thereof) communicated by media about such organizations. / Thesis (Master, Political Studies) -- Queen's University, 2007-10-23 20:03:09.21

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.

This study focuses on digital transition in the Chinese newspaper industry and on associated changes in management and business practice at newspaper publishers. Drawing on a case study analysis of two leading metropolitan newspaper companies – the Qianjiang News Chain and the Nandu News Chain, it sets out to investigate how newspaper publishers are adjusting their management strategies and production practices to adapt to technological changes and ensure their survival. It also examines to what extent the changes are in line with the relevant government policies. Looking specifically at electronic retailing and online marketing operated by the two publishers respectively, this dissertation will address three questions. How the strategic management of newspaper companies in China is changing to facilitate the operation of new businesses in the Internet era. How content production related to the new businesses is changing in response to digital transition and the integration of editorial and commercial activities. To what extent the altered practices of newspaper companies are either consistent or conflicting with the requirement of related government policies. Findings of the empirical analysis are in three aspects. Firstly, in order to facilitate the operation of new businesses, the strategic management of QNC and NNC are changing in three aspects: corporate expansion, organisational re-structuring and cultural adaption. Secondly, the production activities of QNC and NNC are simultaneously affected by the practices of digitisation and commercialisation, which is reflected by the special content products – promotional articles. Lastly, with the changes of organisational activities, the industry practices of QNC and NNC are consistent to the inclination of certain state policies on the one hand, and conflict with some established government regulations on the other. In summary, the practice of new business in QNC and NNC is the miniature of the transition in the Chinese newspaper industry, which inherits the features formed in the decade of evolvement. Meanwhile, as the two publishers are pioneers in the Chinese newspaper industry, their practices lead the trend of novel exploration in the future.

Dans ce travail nous voulons analyser comment les représentations de la pauvreté étaient construites dans des organes de la presse écrite en Turquie. Le but du travail est de comprendre quelles représentations culturelles, sociales sont mobilisées par les medias turcs autour de la pauvreté comme phénomène social. La pauvreté c’est - à - dire le fait que certaines personnes ont du mal à assurer leur existence a existé en Turquie à toutes les époques. Mais la pauvreté a pris ces dernières années d’autres formes avec la mondialisation, le processus néolibérale qui domine la politique turque et des dynamiques sociales propres à la Turquie- telle que l’inégalité des revenus, un chômage chronique, le conflit turc-kurde dans le sud-est et l’émigration intérieure de l’est vers l’ouest du pays. Cette classe sociale de pauvres qui a de plus en plus de mal à s’intégrer à la structure sociale est à la fois l’acteur et la victime de problèmes qui concernent toutes les couches de la société. Dans ce travail on essaiera de mettre au jour le discours tenu par la presse écrite turque au sujet de cette classe pauvre. Dans ce travail, on n’utilisera pas le concept de pauvreté mais toutes les informations et les chroniques ayant pour sujet la pauvreté ou y touchant tant soit peu, seront considérées comme matière sur la pauvreté. Dans les médias turcs l’on se réfère souvent aux concepts de gecekondu (genre de bidonvilles propres aux grandes villes), varoş (banlieue), enfants des rues, voleurs à la tire, dépandants, « garibanizm » (du Turc « gariban », pitoyable) », ‘l’autre Turquie’ qui suggèrent la pauvreté. Il ne s’agit pas seulement de personnes à bas revenus mais aussi d’un certain espace et d’un certain milieu culturel. Nous voulons analyser comment en Turquie la représentation culturelle des pauvres était construite dans des organes de presse au discours politique différent. Nous avons donc choisi pour notre recherche des journaux de diverses tendances / In this work we analyze how the representations of poverty were built in the print media in Turkey. The aim of this work is to understand how cultural, social representations are mobilized by the Turkish media concerning poverty as a social phenomenon. Being a prominent issue from the country’s establishment, poverty in Turkey, has taken different forms in recent years. Both neoliberal process that dominates Turkish politics, as well as the social dynamics specific to Turkey- such as income inequality, chronic unemployment, the Turkish-Kurdish conflict in the southeast and internal emigration from the East to the West. Poor people have more difficulty in integrating into the social structure because both the actors and the victims of the issues affecting society. In this work, we will try to expose the discourse of the Turkish press about this poor class. We want to analyze how Turkish cultural representation of the poor was built in press organs in different political discourses. So, we chose for our research newspapers of various tendencies

On 7 July 2005, Britain suffered its first ever suicide attack. Four young British-born Muslims, apparently well-educated and from integrated backgrounds, killed their fellow citizens, including other Muslims. The incident raised the vision that British Muslims would be seen as the ‘enemy within’ and a ‘fifth column’ in British society. To examine how this view emerged, this thesis investigates the representation of British Muslims in two major British broadsheets, The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph, over a two-year period (7 July 2005-8 July 2007). A corpus of 274 news items, including editorials, comments, interviews, and news reports on the London bombings, has been collected and analysed using the inductive approach based upon thematic analysis. The thesis asks a significant question: How did these broadsheets present British Muslims in the wake of the London bombings? This thesis aims to present a narrative of how the London bombings (hereafter 7/7) emerged in these broadsheets based on their reaction to an interpretation and perception of the 7/7 event. This research indicates that the two broadsheets shared a similar cultural approach in combating Islamist terrorism, by encouraging the embracing of British values, although their different political orientations led to them differing attitudes over the precise manner in which this should be achieved. The Guardian was more concerned about individual liberty and human rights, while The Daily Telegraph emphasised the adaptation of tough legislation to combat terrorism. Given modern Britain’s secular moral fibre, the supremacy of British values dominated the debates on British Muslims which somehow reflected a manifestation of a systematic campaign to redefine Islam as a religion that fits into secular Western society, validating terms such as ‘Moderate Muslim’, ‘Islamic terrorists’, ‘Islamic extremists’, ‘Islamic militants’ and ‘Islamic terrorism’. Although both newspapers argue that radicalisation is a foreign-imported dilemma that has its roots in “Islamic ideology”, they differ in their attitudes on how to deal with it. This thesis uses Cohen’s (1972) text, which suggests that the media often portray certain groups within society as “deviant” and “folk devils” and blames them for crimes. This research into the reactions of two broadsheets permits a contemporary discussion of the London bombings and British Muslims in the light of Cohen’s concept. It aims to locate the presence of a nexus of the four Ps - political parties, pressure groups, the press, and public bodies - that influence reporting and shape the debates (Ost, 2002; Chas, 2006, p.75). It is evident that the reporting of the two broadsheets blends three significant components: the views of self-proclaimed Islamic scholars, experts and hate preachers; the use of out-of-context verses of the Quran; and the use of political language to represent British Muslims. Arguably, the press transformed the 7/7 event, suggesting that it was driven by religious theology rather than being a politically motivated act.