In the four decades since Stanley Cohen (1972) first theorised the ‘moral panic’, there has been immense technological change in the field of communications and media. Whilst Cohen’s original model relies on elite-driven mediated narratives, I argue that moral panics have taken on a memetic quality in the convergent and participatory mediascape. In other words: in an age of social media, moral panic discourses are increasingly open to contestation, reinterpretation, and recirculation by multiple actors and groups. In this thesis, I examine one such group – the web’s largest white nationalist (WN) forum, Stormfront. To do so, I trace three racialized media events as they circulate on and through the Forum. Here, I show how the mechanics of the moral panic have fundamentally shifted in the digital age. I explore the means by which Stormfront users exploit this semi-democratised mediascape in an attempt to ‘manage’ and exploit moral panics surrounding episodes of racialized violence. To this end, I explore the topologically entangled shuttling back and forth of ‘online’ and ‘offline’ lives and spaces to argue for a more-than-digital geography of computer mediated communication. Here, I show how the Forum’s ‘collective voice’ is often given expression through selective quotation by mainstream media surrounding racialized moral panics. This process of remediation, I argue, allows explicitly racist groups fugitive access to mainstream discourse, and turns mainstream media outlets into unwitting nodes in a white nationalist broadcast network. However, I argue that this public-facing process, opens WNs up to increased scrutiny, leading to strategic and contingent deployments of contradictory repertoires of race. In doing so, I examine repertoires of race in such WN interventions - highlighting their flexible and contingent construction of racialized categories in the negotiation of contemporary structures of feeling (Williams 1977; Anderson 2014). I contend that a digitally-inflected antiracism must attend to the contingent, translocal, and assembled nature of racism online if it is to be effective.

Authors: Edina Hrustic & Maria Iverbo Title: Facebook – a virtual meetingplace and a gossipcave Level: BA Thesis in Journalism Location: Linnaeus University Language: Swedish Number of pages: 72 Abstract The aim of our study was to examine the meaning of the social media Facebook for young people who are in the age of 16 to 25 years. We wanted to gain an understanding in the youths´ thoughts and beliefs of how Facebook exists and plays a role in their lives. As a result from this research, we discussed how social media might affect the future of journalism. We formed our thesis based on research of the digital network society, social networks, the youth culture, and how the target group; the young people use and experience social media. We made a questionnaire for 36 high school students, and three of these participated in a focusgroup-discussion. We combined and analyzed the response from the questionnaire and the focus group in our final result, and discussed patterns and relations between the youngsters´ answers. Our result shows that Facebook mostly is regarded to be a virtual meetingplace, where these young people can interact and communicate with each other. They mostly communicate with their friends from the real-life, and youths´ use Facebook as a tool when they want to find out what people in their surrounding do. The questionnaire result also shows that Facebook can be seen as an information channel, where the young people can get gossip and offer each other invitations to common events. From this study, we can point out that the social network is practically of great importance in young peoples’ lives. The questionnaire of Facebook and how young people´s habits are affected implies that it is important to use the social network discussion while analysing the convergence between so called; "old" and "new media". Young people steer and direct the use of media, and that is the reason why the understanding about their thoughts of social media is significantly important. One could practically say that youngsters can affect the future of journalism, and the design and development of media. Key words: young people, Facebook, social media, virtual communication, the convergence of media, digital network society, journalism

<p><p><strong>Authors: Edina Hrustic & Maria Iverbo Title: Facebook – a virtual meetingplace and a gossipcave Level: BA Thesis in Journalism Location: Linnaeus University Language: Swedish Number of pages: 72 </strong></p><p><strong>Abstract </strong></p><p><strong>The aim of our study was to examine the meaning of the social media Facebook for young people who are in the age of 16 to 25 years. We wanted to gain an understanding in the youths´ thoughts and beliefs of how Facebook exists and plays a role in their lives. As a result from this research, we discussed how social media might affect the future of journalism.</strong></p><p><strong>We formed our thesis based on research of the digital network society, social networks, the youth culture, and how the target group; the young people use and experience social media. We made a questionnaire for 36 high school students, and three of these participated in a focusgroup-discussion. We combined and analyzed the response from the questionnaire and the focus group in our final result, and discussed patterns and relations between the youngsters´ answers.</strong></p><p><strong>Our result shows that Facebook mostly is regarded to be a virtual meetingplace, where these young people can interact and communicate with each other. They mostly communicate with their friends from the real-life, and youths´ use Facebook as a tool when they want to find out what people in their surrounding do. The questionnaire result also shows that Facebook can be seen as an information channel, where the young people can get gossip and offer each other invitations to common events.</strong></p><p><strong>From this study, we can point out that the social network is practically of great importance in young peoples’ lives. The questionnaire of Facebook and how young people´s habits are affected implies that it is important to use the social network discussion while analysing the convergence between so called; "old" and "new media". Young people steer and direct the use of media, and that is the reason why the understanding about their thoughts of social media is significantly important. One could practically say that youngsters can affect the future of journalism, and the design and development of media.</strong></p><strong>Key words: young people, Facebook, social media, virtual communication, the convergence of media, digital network society, journalism</strong><p> </p></p>

In my dissertation I survey the historic progress of the reality TV and the reality show, focussing on the specific genre of the talent shows, which stands for the current phenomenon of the entertainment industry in TV broadcasting. Using the method of the oral history I'll explain in detail the principals of running these shows on chosen formats and point out how different or same strategies can appear in shows all over the world. Further I'll focus on the structure and the level of a production, main features of the audience personality and behaviour, for example forming the relationship between the viewer and the participants on the basing on personal stories or praising and idealising the competitors. The next step of my analysis will be a depiction of the economic thesis and rules, which run the talent shows, which give them a direction and drive them on the TV market. I'll give an insight into the terms as the affective economics, building lovemarks or an inspiring fan, which are characteristic for the era of the convergence of media, which are considerably covered by talent shows. In the end my work depicts also the role of the jury and their specific trail, which are necessary for the viewer ratings and potential success of the certain show. Further my work will point out the typical marks...

Debates concerning the veracity, ethics and politics of the documentary form circle endlessly around the function of those who participate in it, and the meaning attributed to their participation. Great significance is attached to the way that documentary filmmakers do or do not participate in the world they seek to represent, just as great significance is attached to those subjects whose participation extends beyond playing the part of eyewitness or expert, such that they become part of the very filmmaking process itself. This Ph.D. explores the interface between documentary practice and participatory culture by looking at how their practices, discursive fields and histories intersect, but also by looking at how participating in one might mean participating in the other. In short, the research is an examination of participatory culture through the lens of documentary practice and documentary criticism. In the process, however, this examination of participatory culture will in turn shed light on documentary thinking, especially the meaning and function of ‘the participant’ in contemporary documentary practice. A number of ways of conceiving of participation in documentary practice are discussed in this research, but one of the ideas that gives purpose to that investigation is the notion that the participant in contemporary documentary practice is someone who belongs to a participatory culture in particular. Not only does this mean that those subjects who play a part in a documentary are already informed by their engagement with a range of everyday media practices before the documentary apparatus arrives, the audience for such films are similarly informed and engaged. This audience have their own expectations about how they should be addressed by media producers in general, a fact that feeds back into their expectations about participatory approaches to documentary practice too. It is the ambition of this research to get closer to understanding the relationship between participants in the audience, in documentary and ancillary media texts, as well as behind the camera, and to think about how these relationships constitute a context for the production and reception of documentary films, but also how this context might provide a model for thinking about participatory culture itself. One way that documentary practice and participatory culture converge in this research is in the kind of participatory documentary that I call the ‘Camera Movie’, a narrow mode of documentary filmmaking that appeals directly to contemporary audiences’ desires for innovation and participation, something that is achieved in this case by giving documentary subjects control of the camera. If there is a certain inevitability about this research having to contend with the notion of the ‘participatory documentary’, the ‘participatory camera’ also emerges strongly in this context, especially as a conduit between producer and consumer. Making up the creative component of this research are two documentaries about the reality television event Band In A Bubble, and participatory media practices more broadly. The single-screen film, Hubbub , gives form to the collective intelligence and polyphonous voice of contemporary audiences who must be addressed and solicited in increasingly innovative ways. One More Like That is a split-screen, DVD-Video with alternate audio channels selected by a user who thereby chooses who listens and who speaks in the ongoing conversation between media producers and media consumers. It should be clear from the description above that my own practice does not extend to highly interactive, multi-authored or web-enabled practices, nor the distributed practices one might associate with social media and online collaboration. Mine is fundamentally a single authored, documentary video practice that seeks to analyse and represent participatory culture on screen, and for this reason the Ph.D. refrains from a sustained discussion of the kinds of collaborative practices listed above. This is not to say that such practices don’t also represent an important intersection of documentary practice and participatory culture, they simply represent a different point of intersection. Being practice-led, this research takes its procedural cues from the nature of the practice itself, and sketches parameters that are most enabling of the idea that the practice sets the terms of its own investigation.

近年來傳播科技快速變化，不但社會型態因此產生鉅變，新科技更也打破了媒體界線進而產生科技滙流，使得平面媒體、廣電媒體、共同載具、有線電視及網際網路的藩籬、角色、定位都逐漸模糊。 而當平面媒體處於麥克魯漢所說的「淘汰」螺旋後，自一九九九年開始整體廣告盈收呈現負成長，二○○六年台灣報紙一口氣有六家熄燈打烊，數以千計的記者失業。受此影響，記者專業角色嚴重貶值，從監督社會的無冕王淪為商業化與科技化雙重衝擊下的現代報業媒體工人，大量遭解雇的記者形成「流浪記者」現象。 本文訪談八位記者發現，一旦對媒體產業的未來失去信心，連帶也對自己失去信心，喪失了新聞工作的認同與熱情，「一輩子當記者」成為遙不可及的夢想，選擇以生存作為工作心態。這樣的氛圍型塑出平面媒體記者「集體灰暗時代」，嚴重影響其專業角色。 然而以「媒體四大律」分析，紙張形式的報紙雖逐漸遭到網路媒體之「淘汰」卻不會消失，而是需要「轉化」。記者創作撰寫新聞「內容」的能力不因報社倒閉而消失，社會對記者的需求更將永無止境，記者應隨社會環境與新科技改變進而轉變並提升自身核心能力。 / The media landscape in Taiwan has been greatly changed because of the emergence of new communication technologies and transition of market-driven journalism globally. For one thing, the newspaper industry’s circulation and readership continue to decline and advertising revenues keep on shrinking since 1999. As a result, since the beginning of this century, many newspapers have experienced huge deficits; six were shut down in 2006 alone and thousands of journalists lost their jobs. Based on the literature review and in-depth interviews of eight so-called “jobless journalists” who left or considering to leave the newspaper industry, this study finds many of these professional reporters are experiencing a crisis of confidence, no longer believing in themselves as well as the professional training. Most of all, they predict that the fate of newspaper has been doomed and journalism is hopeless and futureless. The study records their true stories of how to rebuild confidence while facing the hardship both of the career and the profession.