This is a comparative study of how four countries –Canada, United States of America, England and Wales, and Australia –have developed youth crime related parental responsibility laws. In particular, I explore how governments have responded to calls for making parents more responsible for the criminal behavior of their children by relying on methods of governing that seek to incorporate the concept of “responsibilization” into legislation and practice. In doing so, I show how governments in a number of countries have ostensibly moved toward less state intervention in the prevention of youth criminality and have come to rely more on parents by enacting laws that acknowledge parental accountability for the criminality of children. In addition, this study uses the concept of policy transfer to examine how those responsible for developing youth criminal justice policy look to policies or laws in other jurisdictions for ways to prevent youth criminality. Despite the fact that there are similarities in legislation across the four countries examined in this study, only minimally do governments in these countries make reference to policies found in other countries. The thesis also looks at specific national and state–level government debates surrounding parental responsibility laws, and the perceptions governments elected officials have of youth criminality and parental responsibility.

This is a comparative study of how four countries –Canada, United States of America, England and Wales, and Australia –have developed youth crime related parental responsibility laws. In particular, I explore how governments have responded to calls for making parents more responsible for the criminal behavior of their children by relying on methods of governing that seek to incorporate the concept of “responsibilization” into legislation and practice. In doing so, I show how governments in a number of countries have ostensibly moved toward less state intervention in the prevention of youth criminality and have come to rely more on parents by enacting laws that acknowledge parental accountability for the criminality of children. In addition, this study uses the concept of policy transfer to examine how those responsible for developing youth criminal justice policy look to policies or laws in other jurisdictions for ways to prevent youth criminality. Despite the fact that there are similarities in legislation across the four countries examined in this study, only minimally do governments in these countries make reference to policies found in other countries. The thesis also looks at specific national and state–level government debates surrounding parental responsibility laws, and the perceptions governments elected officials have of youth criminality and parental responsibility.

This dissertation examines reputation as a regulating force in online and offline relationships and transactions, arguing that reputation requires protection through the promulgation of new laws. Using John Locke’s “under-labourer” approach as its central method, this dissertation ultimately sets out a series of conclusions, which form a preliminary framework upon which appropriate reputation regulation might be built. Part I of this dissertation studies offers an interdisciplinary study of reputation. Chapter 1 examines the ways that reputation is created and maintained, the purposes for which it is used, and its role in risk management and trust. These understandings are then applied to reputation in process. Chapter 2 explores formal reputation systems and the ways in which user investments and desires become written into reputation such that multiple levels of “dominant” norms may be simultaneously operant. Chapter 3 shows this normative force also operating on social network sites, shaping identity performances. Finally, having established these intersections and the regulating power of norms upon reputation, the effect of such performances is examined in chapter 4, which identifies reputation’s gatekeeper role in offline and online spaces and the risks this can create when information is accessed or employed without an understanding of the norms which have shaped that information. Thus reputation is shown as a socially negotiated and co-created process which exerts an unseen hegemonic force, with dominant political, economic and ideological interests embedded in seemingly social norms. These norms are enforced via reputation, which takes on a gatekeeper role, regulating access to a variety of spaces, information, and economic opportunities. Part II begins with an examination of the current forms of legal and quasi-legal regulation of reputation that exist, ultimately finding that none of them is fully applicable to the complexity of reputation. Having established this complexity and shown that current approaches are inadequate, chapter 6 moves on to examine and then reject the neoliberal approach currently applied to these issues, finding its focus on individual responsibility to be inadequate and inappropriate, calling instead for a mode of regulation that understands reputation within its social context.

This dissertation examines reputation as a regulating force in online and offline relationships and transactions, arguing that reputation requires protection through the promulgation of new laws. Using John Locke’s “under-labourer” approach as its central method, this dissertation ultimately sets out a series of conclusions, which form a preliminary framework upon which appropriate reputation regulation might be built. Part I of this dissertation studies offers an interdisciplinary study of reputation. Chapter 1 examines the ways that reputation is created and maintained, the purposes for which it is used, and its role in risk management and trust. These understandings are then applied to reputation in process. Chapter 2 explores formal reputation systems and the ways in which user investments and desires become written into reputation such that multiple levels of “dominant” norms may be simultaneously operant. Chapter 3 shows this normative force also operating on social network sites, shaping identity performances. Finally, having established these intersections and the regulating power of norms upon reputation, the effect of such performances is examined in chapter 4, which identifies reputation’s gatekeeper role in offline and online spaces and the risks this can create when information is accessed or employed without an understanding of the norms which have shaped that information. Thus reputation is shown as a socially negotiated and co-created process which exerts an unseen hegemonic force, with dominant political, economic and ideological interests embedded in seemingly social norms. These norms are enforced via reputation, which takes on a gatekeeper role, regulating access to a variety of spaces, information, and economic opportunities. Part II begins with an examination of the current forms of legal and quasi-legal regulation of reputation that exist, ultimately finding that none of them is fully applicable to the complexity of reputation. Having established this complexity and shown that current approaches are inadequate, chapter 6 moves on to examine and then reject the neoliberal approach currently applied to these issues, finding its focus on individual responsibility to be inadequate and inappropriate, calling instead for a mode of regulation that understands reputation within its social context.

Social discourses about cybersafety -the ways we teach people about protecting themselves from and reporting risks in new media- reveal a heightened focus on the part of those who work with girls regarding their risk in cyberspace. This thesis investigates the concern as part of a reoccurring moral panic towards girlhood, drawing from critical feminist, girlhood and child and youth care theories to inquire into how girlhood is being discursively produced through cybersafety education. Study findings from a small sample of Canadian cybersafety materials suggest the phenomenon of cybersafety is dominated by fears of girls’ exploitation online by strangers, peers, the media, and even themselves. Themes of girlhood invisibility, shaming, blaming and sexualization are identified as prominent in the curricula. Universal, essentialized notions of girlhood and sexual double standards are promoted, simultaneously constructing girls as victims incapable of managing their own risk while also holding girls legally and morally responsible for their experiences with cyberviolence. Discussion considers the influence of neoliberal and surveillance discourses on responsibilizing girls for their choices online, as well as how the focus on girls’ choices negates the systemic nature of cyberviolence and its intersection with issues of homophobia, racism, classism, colonialism and ableism among others. Implications underscore the need for alternative approaches that offer critical pedagogy and tools to challenge gender ideologies in cybersafety work with girls, as well as to consider the needs of girls from marginalized backgrounds. / Graduate / 0453 / 0630 / cbrand@uvic.ca

Academics, practitioners and media agree that the topic of work-life balance is on the agenda and valued by the new business generation. Although Sweden might be considered a working friendly country, the management consultancy industry is not recognized to be the same. With an institutional perspective we will through a discourse analysis investigate the communication on Swedish management consultancies web pages in order to explore how consultancies relate to the work-life balance discourse. In this study we look at work-life balance communication as a continuum with abstract and concrete as two opposites where the level of concreteness will decide the level of responsibility dedicated from the organizations regarding employees` work-life balance. Our findings suggest that the discourse is mostly composed of abstract descriptive talk, which indicates that the communication exists as a legitimizing result of institutional pressures, and might not be an essential matter for the concultancies` everyday practice. A big part of the responsibility to achieve a work-life balance is put upon the individual employee and even though initiatives are presented they are seldom followed up by concrete targets or supported with results.

This thesis explores the subject positions available to users of genetic tests for bipolar disorder in the United States. In advanced liberal societies, tests for genetic susceptibility to complex disorders may be promoted and used as means of performing responsible citizenship through the consumption of health care services. In the context of mental illness, however, key assumptions about the characteristics of consumers may not be met. The research found that because the category of “potential test user” substantially overlaps with the category of “mental health care user,” both the rationality and autonomy of these individuals is subject to question. Test users are framed in relational terms: as family members, as patients, and as consumers – but the last of these relational frames is considered problematic. Therefore, while the tests are framed as tools for proactive health management, responsibilities surrounding their use are largely allocated to family members and doctors.

This thesis explores the discourses that surround psychopharmacological stimulant use in the online forum on reddit.com. The focus is on the negotiations of variable effects that people ascribe to the medication use. In the collective search for explanations and remedies, individuals become responsible for different aspects of their life in order to reach a balanced state. This state is constantly at flux and dependent on many variables, that are to be taken under control. Users thus have to monitor themselves and acquire self-knowledge, that is a based on listening to their embodied experience, and they have to adjust their bodies and daily routines. The idea of finding the right balance, that is informed by the embodied experiences, is closely connected to the ancient humoralist forms of governmentality. However, unlike in ancient humoralism, where balance necessarily meant adapting to the environment, biotechnologies have expanded the horizon of posssible modulations of bodies and selves, that may be achieved by the individuals themselves.

Background, Problem Statement and Gap - Political agendas informed by the negative impacts of increasing consumption (including fashion consumption) have allocated major parts of the responsibility to contribute to sustainable development to individual consumers. These agendas subsequently highlighted the need to provide more information, including through media and social media, about the negative impacts of fashion consumption - and consumption at large - to the consumer. Within our paper, this depicted approach, which is sometimes criticized by scholars, is conceptualized as ‘Consumer Responsibilization’ and viewed through the theoretical lens of discourse. However, despite consumers having increased access to information, products, and services related to sustainability and sustainable fashion (SF), changes of consumption habits are stagnant. This phenomenon, which is a serious problem hindering sustainable development, is widely defined as the knowledge-to-action-gap (KAG) within the literature. Scholars whose studies were limited to the offline world have criticized Consumer Responsibilization and have linked this approach to the KAG. There exists a gap in knowing which role the social media platform Instagram, plays for the Consumer Responsibilization approach in SF communications and it’s potential to expedite the KAG. Consumption from the perspective of culture is understood in this research as socially integrated, complex, and not always rational. Purpose - Our research purpose is to fill the identified gap and investigate the Consumer Responsibilization discourse on Instagram used within SF communications. We want to find out which actors are taking advantage of this discourse, the way it is represented and how users of Instagram react. We also investigate how the unique affordances of Instagram and its potential as a site for discourse affect the discourse in question and could influence the KAG. Method - Multimodal discourse is the theoretical perspective used to detect and understand the representation of consumer responsibilization on Instagram. Meaning that we, informed by literature, see discourse as not only communicated through entities of text but also through other semiotic elements called modes. We adopted a culturalist perspective situated within qualitative marketing research and followed passive and immersive netnographic procedures, whereby ethnographic approaches are adapted to observe social media data. Our ontological and epistemological framing of this research is within interpretivism and constructivism, as we acknowledge that our role as researchers involves constructing meaning through subjective analysis. Through exploratory and iterative understanding, we followed abductive logic and hermeneutic philosophy to produce knowledge. We followed exploratory and selective sampling to find publicly accessible Instagram posts that used SF-related hashtags and communicated Consumer Responsibilization. Triangulation developed through the quantification of follower counts, likes and comments, reinforced patterns in our findings. Additionally, each researcher contributed an immersion journal of rich descriptions of our experiences navigating Instagram as users. Through multimodality, all the different elements of a post were analyzed as contributors to the discourse (e.g., text, image, and engagement). An iterative combination of Descriptive coding, Initial coding and Axial coding were applied for analysis and synthesis of themes from patterns that emerged in the data (Saldaña, 2009). Findings - Consumer Responsibilization discourse is being represented by SF communications on Instagram by various actors, through posts following the logic of rationalization, sharing call to actions, compelling imagery and self-auditing tools (such as checklists or bullet-point step-by-step guides). We identified categories of prominent account types, namely individuals or groups of individuals with the status of Opinion Leaders, Brands/Businesses, NGOs / Activist Organizations, and News or Media accounts. The majority of collected posts address consumers with a call to action to contribute to SF, through multimodal elements, and they follow either an Information Approach, Activism / Charity Approach or Consumption Approach with their suggested actions. According to the literature, Instagram's unique affordances as a social media platform favors visual content, which is deemed more effective with persuasion and gaining attention among users (Laestadius, 2016; Russman and Svensson, 2016; Schroeder and Borgerson, 2005). While we found patterns of visual communication which are typical of an account type, there are other patterns of engagement from users observed throughout the data which indicate the tone and intended message of a post influences the public’s response. Discursive polyphony and confusion, terms coined by Markkula and Moisander (2012), seem to arise from varying conflicting messages and SF principles, highlighting the ambiguity of SF discourse. This can, according to Markkula and Moisander (2012), be a contributor to KAG. Our data, based on the responses found in the comments, hints towards users experiencing feelings of conflict and confusion when being confronted with the different SF discourses. Users typically respond to SF posts framed by Consumer Responsibilization and rationalization with resistance, defensiveness, justification, support, gratitude, criticism, or skepticism. While reacting to SF discourses, users also replicate and further contribute to them. Practical implications and Theoretical limitations - Our thesis contributes to research of cultural forces that contribute to KAG, by locating our observations from Instagram, which is a compelling site to observe SF discourse. Previous research in this field has been conducted offline, with primary input from consumers, whereas our research gathered deep cultural insight from secondary data posted publicly online. As such, our findings are limited by users who post publicly not being representative of the public who are not active on Instagram, are unfamiliar with SF discourses or have set their accounts to be private. Our findings contribute to cultural marketing and SF research and elaborates on criticisms of Consumer Responsibilization. In future campaigns, social media managers, marketing managers and policy makers must consider the complex, overlapping and contradicting messages with SF discourse, and how they contribute to KAG. Discursive confusion, few suggestions of manageable solutions, and limited scope of information are risks to worsening the KAG. Our findings indicate that consumers also require public support from businesses and governments to tackle collective systemic issues.

This thesis’s purpose was to study differences between the Scandinavian countries’ crisis management during the coronavirus pandemic based on theories of responsibilization and individualization. The thesis investigates how Sweden, Denmark, and Norway communicated individual and state responsibility during the pandemic and see if the discourse has changed from spring to fall in 2020. The design is comparative, where the method consists of a qualitative text analysis that is used to analyze the Scandinavian countries’ prime ministers’ introductory speech at press conferences regarding the pandemic. The thesis conclusions are that there are noticeable differences in the countries' communication. Sweden communicates a significant state responsibility throughout, but what is characteristic is the extensive individual responsibility. Denmark communicates extensive state responsibility with significant and partly mandatory measures throughout 2020. The individual responsibility is also significant but not as extensive. Norway also communicates a significant state responsibility, but the individual responsibility is communicated primarily in a collective way where everyone together must get through the crisis. There has also been a shift of responsibility from the state to the individual from spring to fall during 2020 in Norway and Sweden where the individual's responsibility increases over time, whereas the same shift cannot be discerned in Denmark. In Sweden the individual responsibility is thus more comprehensive than Denmark and Norway who show more state responsibility.