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Commercial advertising often employs stereotyping in order to connect with the intended audience and appeal to the widest possible demographic. The gender binary of male and female is one of the most popular audience segmentations, therefore gender provides an excellent example for the study of stereotypes. This study focuses on the portrayal of male stereotypes in advertising, and seeks to explore how stereotypes of masculinity are represented in androcentric advertising, and understand how these stereotypes are perceived by men. It uses a reception study and Stuart Hall’s (1996) theory of encoding/decoding to discuss the use of stereotypes with male University of Ottawa students, aged 18-25. Participants in the study suggest that the stereotypes portrayed in commercial advertising influence their masculinity in numerous ways, including, but not limited to, the way they dress and the way they act.

Lifestyle blogging has become a vast and profitable domain, with visitors engaging with new content in a variety of ways. The communities that begin to form around these blogs has rarely been analyzed, due to a lack of metrics and a complex definition of virtual communities. Relying on Henry Jenkins work on virtual communities, a set of metrics were used to analyze the depth and breadth of three communities: A Cup of Jo, Wit & Delight, and Cupcakes and Cashmere. The three areas these metrics worked to measure were: awareness, membership, and belonging. Through this audience reception study the clear marker of a community was the direct and systematic blogger engagement with the readership. Many other factors are influential in building a virtual community on a blog, however, what set the three blogs apart was the ways in which Joanna Goddard (A Cup of Jo) and Kate Arends (Wit & Delight) reached out and built relationships with their readers, strengthening their community and allowing it to thrive.

The aim of this master thesis is to contribute to a more profound knowledge of women's magazine reading by giving insights into the readerships’ interpretations of magazine texts. Three different dimensions of interpretation were thereby identified: the relation to the audiences’ own situations in life, the audiences’ reflections on their prior experiences, and the emerging emotions in the interpretation process. Audience and reception theory, as well as feminist media theory, form the theoretical framework of my research. As audience reception concerns the dynamic interaction between text and the audiences’ reception of it, I decided to concentrate on both text analysis and qualitative interviews. With my qualitative, methodological approach – comprising an analysis of three articles concerning texting advice and interviews with six regular readers, I was able to explore nuances and depths of the phenomenon. I identified four interpretative repertoires which the women used for making meaning of the texts: pleasure, rejection, self-reflection, and practical relevance. Pleasure and rejection were found to be the women’s predominant emotions in the interpretation process. Moreover, my research illustrates that women are interpreting the texting advice in a practical as well as in a self-reflexive way. Their own circumstances and prior experiences are thereby variables, which influence the reception. My work strengthens the perspective of readers as being empowered to understand, evaluate, and critique the media content they consume. This is an important finding influencing society at large. As my research outlines, critical readings were found to be superior to possible ideological influences of women’s magazines. Future research should focus on a further in-depth analysis of individual influencing variables in relation to the audiences’ interpretations as I was only able to evaluate some in my study.

Research Problem: The pressure for brands to stand out and at the same contribute to a better world is a constant battle in a competing digital media landscape. Advertising campaigns are ways for brands to separate themselves from their competition. In a recent campaign launched by Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) their advertising campaign What is truly Scandinavian? backfired and caused an active media audience to engage. SAS feared that their campaign got hijacked which resulted in a temporary withdrawal of their film. In light of the rise of online counterpublics and the upswing of so-called cancel culture this essay draws upon these concepts to analyse the reactions to SAS advertising campaign on the Swedish discussion forum Flashback. Aim: The study intends to examine how the reactions to SAS advertising campaign, What is truly Scandinavian?, can be understood as part of a counterpublic and a cancel culture on Flashback. Questions: (1) Which most prominent themes and reading positions can be distinguished among the reactions to SAS's advertising campaign in the selected Flashback thread? (2) How can the studied part of the Flashback thread be understood as a counterpublic? (3) How can the studied part of the Flashback thread be understood as part of a cancel culture? Theories: Active audience theory, counterpublics, cancel culture The empirical material: A specific Flashback thread with a selection of the first 96 posts. Methods: A combination of netnography, qualitative content analysis and reception analysis. Results: Primary themes identified in the thread are Culture and identity, Boycott and other consequences and Negative reactions and emotions. The majority of the Flashback posts are considered to be cynical readings of SAS advertising campaign. Sympathetic and skeptical readings were not as prominent. The reactions in the Flashback thread can be considered a counterpublic where a cancel culture takes place. Significance: Further understanding of an audience reaction and response to a specific advertising campaign in relation to counterpublics and cancel culture. Results on a current case.

This Master’s thesis investigates the matter of relations as a contributing factor to foreign audiences’ interest in, and interpretation of, news events. An explorative designed quantitative study is conducted based on the example of the terrorist attacks in Norway, 2011. First, a questionnaire was created and shared online with audiences from 53 different countries, with the target group of members of the international exchange student organization Youth For Understanding. 318 responses were collected and analysed in SPSS and the thesis then analyses behavioural-, knowledge- and attitude responses through a quantitative content analysis. The findings are discussed in relation to earlier research on news value, psychology, global compassion and cultural studies.   In the results, it is found that foreign audiences’ relationships to the affected foreign country matter to a large extent, both seen to personal relationships such as having friends or family in or around Norway; but also features such as the respondents’ ability to identify with, and relate to, the news. The survey results show that a relation to Norway contributes to more in-depth knowledge and a higher interest rate in the news about the terrorist attacks, and also how relations to Norway affected the respondents’ cognitive and emotive memories of the event. The author recommends further studies with news examples tested on other, larger populations in order to reach a more reliable, valid and generalizable result.

Cette thèse propose une étude inédite sur un auteur négligé par l’Université et la recherche : Marcel Pagnol. À partir de son cas, ce travail interroge les processus de légitimation et déconstruction du canon. Cette recherche, qui s’inspire de la sociologie de la littérature, explore les paradoxes d’un « illustre méconnu » qui relève d’une littérature officielle, classique, patrimoniale, mais se trouve déconsidéré à plusieurs titres. Sa célébrité et ses succès nuisent à son capital symbolique ; son particularisme régional l’empêcherait d’atteindre l’universel. Entre institutionnalisation et discrédit, Pagnol dessine une voie moyenne et réalise un art moyen (middlebrow culture) qui concilie bonne littérature et grand public. Au théâtre, il met d’accord le théâtre commercial, le théâtre de boulevard et une partie de l’avant-garde, démontrant la perméabilité du champ dramatique. Au cinéma, il associe le cinéma d’auteur, le scénario littéraire et l’avant-garde néoréaliste aux mélodrames populaires. Dans ses récits, il met en valeur la continuité entre tradition orale et innovation médiatique. Ce classique-populaire, ce conservateur moderne se tient en équilibre entre régionalisme et parisianisme, entre intellectualisme et pragmatisme, sur une voie moyenne qui hybride cinéma et théâtre, théâtre et music-hall, conte et radio. / This thesis provides a new study on a writer usually neglected by scholarship : Marcel Pagnol. Taking his case as a starting point, this study aims to analyze the processes of legitimation and construction of canon. This research, building on sociology of literature, investigates the paradoxes of an “illustrious unrecognized” who pertains to official, classical and patrimonial literature but that nonetheless remains discredited by several matters. His fame and successes damage his symbolic capital; his regional particularism may prevent him from reaching universality. Between institutionalization and disrepute, Pagnol draws a medium path and carries out a medium art (middlebrow culture) which reconciles goodliterature and general public. In theater, he makes commercial theater, boulevard theater and some of the avant-garde come to an agreement, proving the permeability in dramatic field. In cinema, he combines art-house movies, literary script and neorealist avant-garde with popular melodramas. In literature, he emphasizes continuity between oral tradition and media innovation. This middlebrow author, this modern conservative balances regionalism against parisianisme, intellectualism against pragmatism, in a medium way that makes cinema and theater, theater and variety, tale and radio interact.

FundaÃÃo de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Cearà / Esta pesquisa verificou de que modo cinco receptores dos vÃdeos da TV Janela, projeto da ONG Instituto de Desenvolvimento Social (IDS), se identificam com as representaÃÃes positivas acerca do âmorador do Pantanalâ (comunidade surgida em 1990 na periferia sul de Fortaleza - CE), apresentadas pelas produÃÃes audiovisuais. Os vÃdeos do projeto apresentam, de modo geral, um morador unido, de luta, trabalhador e, por isso, vitorioso e feliz, em contraposiÃÃo ao imaginÃrio de violÃncia e misÃria construÃdo pela mÃdia convencional acerca do local. O objetivo da TV Janela à melhorar a auto-estima das cerca de trezentas pessoas que assistem mensalmente aos vÃdeos, em telÃo montado na rua. A pesquisa buscou compreender uma etapa especÃfica do processo comunicativo (a recepÃÃo) atravÃs dos conceitos de comunidade, representaÃÃes sociais e identificaÃÃes culturais. Ela teve carÃter qualitativo, utilizando-se da etnografia e da entrevista em profundidade como procedimento metodolÃgico, da AnÃlise do Discurso como mÃtodo de anÃlise dos discursos dos receptores selecionados e dos Estudos Culturais como perspectiva teÃrica. Aspectos como o perÃodo no qual o receptor chegou ao bairro, sua histÃria de vida e as relaÃÃes cotidianas com o bairro e seus moradores interferem na sua construÃÃo identitÃria como morador do Pantanal e, consequentemente, no modo como se apropriam das representaÃÃes de morador apresentadas pelos vÃdeos. Mesmo os aspectos mais reforÃados pelos vÃdeos, como a luta histÃria, sà conseguem adesÃo dos receptores quando esses vivenciaram o fato especÃfico ou acessaram-no previamente atravÃs de moradores mais antigos, do seu convÃvio comunitÃrio ou familiar. / This study revealed how five selected recipients (viewers) of the âWindow TVâ videos identified with the positive representations about the "resident of Pantanal" (a community originated in 1990, in the southern outskirts of Fortaleza - CE), presented in the audiovisual productions created under a project from the NGO Institute for Social Development (IDS). The videos of the project show, in general, a participative, hard-working resident, committed to a cause and therefore, victorious and happy, as opposed to the fictional violence and misery built by the mainstream media about the location. The goal of the âWindow TVâ is to improve the self-esteem of some three hundred people who watch the videos monthly on a screen set up on the street. The research aimed to understand a particular stage of the communication process (reception) through the concepts of the community, social representations and cultural identification. It has a qualitative dimension, and used the ethnography and in-depth interview as a methodological procedure; the Discourse analysis as a method of discourse analysis of the selected recipients and Cultural Studies as a theoretical perspective. Aspects such as the time in which the viewers arrived at the neighborhood, their life history and daily interactions with the community and its dwellers interfere with their identity building as a resident of the Pantanal and consequently, in the way they appropriate the representations of a resident presented by video. Even the more emphasized aspects brought by the videos, such as the fight history, can only get support from the receivers when they have themselves experienced the specific fact or learned it previously with the older residents, their living together with the community or family.

Mit Transhumanismus, Migration und Gender werden in dieser Ausgabe von Medienwelten drei aktuelle gesellschaftliche Aspekte thematisiert, die im Rahmen von Filmanalysen sowie einer empirischen Rezeptionsstudie zu den Lieblingsfilmen und Lieblingshelden von Kindern bearbeitet werden.

This thesis discusses the contrasting publication and reception histories of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre (1847) and Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights (1847) and the complex role of Victorian gender norms in shaping those histories. In addition, the thesis examines the interplay between the Brontes’ works and their dialogues with Victorian gender norms and expectations of women on the creation of modern intertextual interpretations such as the Twilight (2005) and Fifty Shades of Grey (2011) novel series. The publication histories of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights can be best understood in relation to the social context provided by the gender norms and pressures that governed (or sought to govern) women’s behavior during the nineteenth century. Emily and Charlotte’s novels both opposed these gendered social norms to varying degrees but received widely different receptions during their lifetimes. Emily’s text was relatively negatively received and Charlotte attained literary success. An analysis and discussion of the interplay between their publication histories, the social norms and pressures that shaped those histories, and contemporary responses to the main female and male characters in their novels, Catherine Earnshaw, Heathcliff, Edgar Linton, Jane Eyre, and Mr. Rochester, can shed light on their opposing receptions. In addition, this thesis explores how a gendered analysis of the effect of Victorian social norms and pressures on these texts and their receptions illuminates how modern appropriations by popular series novels Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey interpret anew the gender tropes the Brontes explored in their narratives. The characters in these novels, this thesis argues, follow a comparably gendered pattern of behavior in comparison to their literary predecessors. This thesis reads the female and male characters created by E.L. James and Stephenie Meyer for the ways they echo both the characterizations in the Bronte novels and the social and gendered pressures to which they conform. The connected characterization highlights female self-consciousness, morality and sexual innocence, and a desire for wealthy dominant male partners with sexual and emotional dysfunction. Finally, it is important to place this discussion within the wider cultural narrative that includes contemporary cultural engagement with these ‘popular’ interpretations of the Brontes’ work as a piece that fits into the larger archive of women’s culture.