MARTINA HYNKOVÁ: ‚JINÉ SVĚTY' ŽEN JAZZOVÉ SEKCE V OBDOBÍ TZV. NORMALIZACE ABSTRACT This master thesis deals with the Jazz section of the Musicians' Union in the normalization period. It was an amateur organization which existed from 1971 until 1986. It took an active part in the area of jazz and united an extensive jazz community. The thesis aims at gender aspects of female Jazz section's activities and roles. The research question can be formulated as follows: Which strategies of living did female members of the Jazz section choose during the normalization? The thesis is based on a biographical method consisting of six interviews with former female members of the Jazz section. Those interviews were made via an episodic narrative interview. The author revealed the following strategies of living: accession to the Jazz section community, being an active member of the community, going abroad to visit cultural events, contact with dissent and living in two worlds. Making of these other worlds by female members of the Jazz section thus became strategies of living on their own.

This thesis deals with problematic of public space at the edge of modernity in Kramerius newspapers in Czech. The first part gatheres together the results from existing research literature, discusses the question of the relationship between modernity and postmodernity that leads to the theoretical and methodological background of authors approach. The second part deals with the influences that shape the final content of Kramerius' Newspapers. Newspapers are seen as part of a broader discursive network. It is also the reader, who gets a word in a process of establishing the final content. Among other, this chapter focuses on the issue of creating a community of readers and the public sphere in Bohemia in the late 18th century as a preconditon for ethnic or even the national identity. The last part concentrates on specific topics in Kramerius' Newspapers, the reporting and processing techniques, which aim is to shape the reader and his view on observed events. The work ends with a statement that Kramerius' Newspapers by the content as well as form created a wider readership community, which maintained a certain social ties and also shared a certain form of the public sphere. However, the analysis of themes and data processing techniques revealed the boundaries of this community. The community can not...

Cancel culture is a debated phenomenon both in social and traditional media. The aim of this study is to contribute to the ongoing conversation and discussion regarding cancel culture using semi-structured interviews with informants of the generation millennials. The study depicts the informants’ options of cancel culture including both the positive and the negative consequences. In order to reach a broader sense of understanding and a better insight in how the phenomenon affects society, cancel culture is put in a context of freedom of speech. Keith Tester's theory about the social thought as well as Jürgen Habermas theory regarding public sphere is used in order to fulfil the study's aim and answer related issues. The study’s conclusion demonstrates how the millennials have in general a negative perception of cancel culture and how the phenomenon generates destructive consequences such as hate online. Apositive outcome of cancel culture is the possibility to elucidate and reform structural social problems. Furthermore, knowledge of cancel culture to get a vast understanding of the phenomenon and its effects is established in the discussion of the study. / Cancel culture är ett modernt fenomen som är omdiskuterat både i sociala och traditionella medier. Syftet med studien är att bidra till den pågående diskussionen kring cancel culture genom semistrukturerade intervjuer med informanter ur generationen millennials. Studien skildrar informanternas åsikter kring cancel culture samt dess positiva respektive negativa konsekvenser. Cancel culture sätts även i relation till yttrandefrihet för att få en bredare förståelse av fenomenets inverkan på samhället. Tidigare forskning redovisar olika perspektiv av fenomenet, som använts för att öka förståelsen av denna studie. Keith Testers teori om den sociala frågan och Jürgen Habermas teori om det publika rummet bidrar till att studien uppnår sitt syfte och besvarar frågeställningarna. Slutsatsen visar hur studiens millennials har en generellt negativ uppfattning av cancel culture och hur cancel culture genererar destruktiva konsekvenser i form av hat online. En positiv följd av cancel culture är det ges möjlighet att belysa och förändra strukturella samhällsproblem. Ytterligare kunskaper krävs för att förstå fenomenet och dess effekt i samhället, något som tas upp i diskussionsdelen.

Thesis (Ph.D. (Communication Studies)) -- University of Limpopo, 2021 / This thesis explored the narratives of Soviet survivors of the Soviet-Afghanistan War that lasted from 1979 to 1989. The purpose of this exploration was to gain an understanding of the individual arguments that these survivors were making in a published work by Belarussian literary journalist Svetlana Alexievich, in her book Zinky Boys: Soviet voices from the Afghanistan War, that was originally published in 1989, and translated into English in 1992. The thesis purpose was to determine the central public moral argument that the published work is making at the close of the Soviet-Afghan War. The body of literature reviewed and discussed in Chapter 3 helped frame the interpretative context for the study. The themes that emerged and captured there are all external in origin to the core text of Zinky Boys, and served a triangulatory purpose to some of the emic data that emerged in the process of analysis of the core text. One of the major influencers of the study is JC Behrends (2015b) who associated the concept of the Gewaltraum with the Soviet-Afghan War. The notion of agency that was advanced by Giddens in 1984 is equally of importance, as well as Milgram’s (1984) ideas of the agentic state and Obedience to Authority Theory. As theorists, Habermas’ (1991) advancement of the Theory of the Public Sphere and Fisher’s (1984) Narrative Paradigm, contribute to and influence the theoretical grounding of the study. The study followed the methodology of a textual analysis within the narrative turn, and utilised Fisher’s fidelity and probability tests as proposed within his narrative paradigm to construct a set of thematic intertexts, which provided compelling good reasons to accept the narratives of the survivors. In addition, Fisher’s (1984) differentiating features that set the public moral argument aside from reasoned discourse of the type used in more formal settings were applied to ensure that the public moral argument as derived from the text of Zinky Boys meets the requirements of a public moral argument. As a published work, the public moral argument emerging from Zinky Boys is a matter for the public sphere as Habermas (1991) envisages the sphere as a public space for public reasoned discourse in conflict with the political state. In this instance, it is specifically the Soviet public sphere, which is historically important as the Soviet-Afghan War concluded shortly before the dissolution of the Soviet Union. This thesis positions Zinky Boys as portraying the public moral argument of the Soviet survivors in the public sphere. The major findings of the thesis indicate that the Soviet Limited Contingent in Afghanistan were exposed to extreme levels of violence which is portrayed as a Gewaltraum (violent space). Secondly, the thesis finds that the agency of the Soviets in Afghanistan was often of a violent and abusive nature. A third finding indicates that participants in the war and their immediate family members, notably mothers, become victims of the psychological and physical impact of war. Finally, the finding is presented that the matter of the Soviet engagement in Afghanistan had become a matter for discussion in the public sphere. The resulting public moral argument positions the survivors of the Soviet-Afghan War as victims of the Soviet State due to their agentic state and psychological changes that they underwent in the Gewaltraum of Afghanistan, as well as the Soviet media campaign of disinformation and victimisation, and its effect on their standing as Soviet citizens and their inability to reintegrate successfully back into society. Key words Textual analysis; Intertextuality; Narrative journalism; Narrative paradigm; Phenomenology; Public Moral Argument; Public Sphere.

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Abstract The central argument in this MA research report is that arguing for a compromised or depleted political culture or space is extremely difficult if we consider the complexity of the public sphere. This involves firstly arguing that by re-interrogating the concept of the public sphere underpinning orthodox critical perspectives on democratic functioning from deliberative democratic theorists, we find notions of the critical public sphere have been corrupted by the idealism that accompanies this nonetheless important concept. By illuminating this flaw in the orthodox critical democratic perspective and applying it to critiques of South African democracy, I argue that critiquing South African politics and policy making should in general be done with more care, since what is under-contemplated in these critiques by way of the actual nature of the public sphere, is not negligible. Critics, who often start by characterising the political space as dominated by one party which allegedly renders the political space unfit for its critical purpose, ought to be fairer in their accounts. The end result of this increasingly consensual critical position is that we inhabit only a relatively meaningless formal democracy. The exploratory case study of the Human Sciences Research Council which I go on to consider was chosen on the basis of the considered guess that it was likely to throw up evidence of interesting illustrative tendencies in what I argue may constitute a ‘new’ public sphere. The theoretical possibilities I aim to highlight are arguably deserving of more focused appraisal in themselves, but the aim of this dissertation is to introduce the theoretical possibility of an under-theorised public sphere through highlighting how that situation came about, and less so, what would constitute evidence of the nascent theory’s correctness.

This project investigates how youth in San Salvador, El Salvador define and participate in the co-creation of safety in their neighborhoods. For many years, El Salvador topped the rankings of most dangerous countries because of street gang violence and homicides. As the homicide rates have fallen in recent years, due to mass incarceration of street gang members, trust in state authority to effectively participate in the co-creation of safety has empowered young Salvadorans to also participate in that co-creation through reclaiming space. By painting over gang graffiti, the youth are participating in discourse in a public sphere, making claims to safety in their communities. Feelings and understanding of safety are also influenced by the representation and reputation of a place, thus this project included the creation of a participatory documentary for the youth to be a part of the representation of their country and communities. The documentary shows the painting over of gang graffiti and includes participant responses to questions about safety and representation. The video along with the interview responses show that the youth’s feelings of safety are tied to their physical environment, including the presence of gang graffiti, and that they are eager for their country to overcome the historical representation of being a dangerous place.

Participatory democracy depends on formations of community and social relations, places and spaces for critical discourse, and the organizational and technical capacity for collective action. This study seeks to better understand how these processes are at work in the virtual realm, and more broadly examine the changing nature of political information and discourse in the online context. Toward this end, I examine two sites that embody different yet highly successful models of user participation, collective content production, and increasingly, political action: the political blogging community of Daily Kos and the social news site Reddit. This study is based on three broad theoretical frameworks of community, discourse, and action. I use work by Michele Willson (2006) to explore how community exists in the virtual realm. Drawing upon the scholarship of Jurgen Habermas (1991) and more recent adaptations and extensions of Habermasian public sphere theory from Aaron Barlow (2006), I ask can online communities set the foundation for a public spheres, and if so, how do they function as virtual public spheres? Building upon understandings of online community and virtual public sphere(s), I utilize work by Manuel Castells (1997) and Jeffrey Juris (2005) to understand how community and discourse can enable collective action. These lines of analysis provide the structure through which I examine Daily Kos and Reddit. Using ethnographic methods, I place the voices and perspectives of users within this theoretical structure to produce a comprehensive look at the function of collaborative online political information communities.

[pt] Esta tese analisa as celebrações do primeiro centenário de nascimento do escritor português Eça de Queirós (1845 - 1900) realizadas em 1945, em Portugal, durante a ditadura fascista de António de Oliveira Salazar. Na medida em que a obra de Eça é entendida nesta tese como uma obra ficcional especificamente pensada para produzir impactos na esfera pública, a celebração do centenário passa a ser um caso de estudo a respeito das relações entre ficção e esfera pública, especificamente no momento em que a segunda encontra-se suprimida ou interditada. Analisa-se de que modo o departamento de propaganda do Estado Novo salazarista procurou se apropriar da figura de Eça de Queirós, e os problemas que enfrentou ao tentar realizar esse intento. Analisa-se também de que forma a oposição antissalazarista aproveitou-se do centenário para trasnformar a obra de Eça de Queirós em um instrumento de resistência específico, a saber: uma esfera pública alternativa. / [en] This thesis analyses the celebrations of the first centennial of the Portuguese writer Eça de Queirós (1845 - 1900), that happened in 1945, in Portugal, during the fascist dictatorship of Antonio de Oliveira Salazar. Since Eça s work is seen in this thesis as fiction specifically thought to produce impacts in the public sphere, the centennial becomes a case study about the relationship between fiction and public sphere, specifically when the second is suppressed or restricted. The thesis studies how Salazar s propaganda department tries to co-opt Eça s figure, and the problems it faced in this attempt. Also, it studies how the antifascist opposition took advantage of the centennial to transform Eça s work into a specific instrument of resistance: an alternative public sphere.