Recent studies have shown an increasing impact of online social networks such as Twitter on sports media. The following study aims to provide insight about communication patterns of athletes during the Olympic Games 2012 in London. Drawing on literature from traditional fields such as social capital (Field 2003), the 'uses and gratifications' approach (Katz, Blumler and Gurevitch 1974), self- presentation (Goffmann 1971) and recent studies about social media in sports (Kassing and Sanderson 2012), a Twitter-analysis of ten athletes was conducted during the Olympic Games 2012 in London. Following a content analysis of 1042 tweets (including 246 pictures), the research findings of this study reveal that athletes predominantly use Twitter as a platform for self- presentation. Furthermore, the analysis showed the possibility for fans to use Twitter in order to overcome the parasocial orbit (Kassing and Sanderson 2012) of virtual space and engage in actual social interaction with athletes. It is concluded that linkages of athletes with various stakeholders and the official framework of social media guidelines by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), result in self- restricting communication patterns of the athletes during the Olympic Games 2012.

The following study explores two separate yet intimately related aspects of the nature documentary, as film and as television production. It first provides a context in which to understand and appreciate the vast amount and variety of material that has been produced in this unique segment of the mass media, a segment still underrepresented in mass communications studies. The context is established by performing an original historical survey of the nature documentary genre, a genre which the survey dates to some of the very first images recorded as motion picture film. The survey then follows the course of the genre to the present time. In turn, the survey provides a chronological and contextual framework for exploring mythologies that have informed the nature documentary since its inception. The study advances the thesis that, as with fictional media, the nature documentary has been the instrument of mythopoeic force. It endeavors to identify, type, and analytically deconstruct a number of the operating mythologies, as well as to trace their evolution and/or stasis over the course of the genre's history. The ultimate goal of this study is to initiate scholarly dialogue and additional historical and critical research about this largely overlooked and under-appreciated form of mass media. Indeed, the nature documentary has had a long history of communicating to an ever less rural population perceptions of an increasingly distant natural world. The study offers a point of departure for productive further investigation of subject matter that in itself serves as a distinct lens through which to view the development of mass media and its relationship to modern western culture.

This dissertation seeks to offer a revision of the Lacanian film theory, which was prevalent during the 1970s but declined in the 1980s. The revision is an attempt to establish a Lacanian interpretation of film spectatorship by means of a new focus on Lacan's "real" to which the contemporary theorists paid limited attention. Underpinned theoretically by the concepts situated in Lacanian psychoanalysis, a discursive approach to locating the spectator in the film is applied to answer the following two questions: Why people love to watch movies and how movies make people "different." By means of Lacan's master discourse, the spectator now has two different roles in watching a film: producer and reader, which have different goals. While the former looks forward to a unified symbolic order, the latter seeks the jouissance. These two different roles cause a conflict within the spectator because of the film. Hollywood cinema is a special form of film designed to deal with this conflict by suppressing the spectator's role as the reader while maintaining his/her role as the producer. On the contrary, Avant-garde film is another form of film which seeks to satisfy the desire of the spectator as the reader by offering him/her the jouissance. The devices and techniques adopted by these two types of film are discussed and analyzed in this dissertation. The finding suggests that not only Hollywood movies, but also most of Avant-garde films, are failed to provide the jouissance to the spectator. Following Barthes's "the third meaning" and Heath's "excess," I argue that the author's style can help the spectator to obtain the jouissance while watching a film. The dissertation concludes that Lacan's film is a film with style.

The advancement of technological innovations and global reforms for improving early warning systems as a key risk-reduction principle is transforming modern practices in risk communication. However, in the global context, this transformation varies greatly among regions, especially in less-resourced areas. The result is uneven preparedness that leads to unnecessary and major losses of life and infrastructure and property damage. How well governments in less-resourced regions are adequately prepared to achieve this technological and global homogenization is the vital question. Communication research on media innovations lacks examination of how well integrated disaster warning services are performing as critical components of public service. This dissertation takes these observations as its starting point and seeks to elaborate differential elements of governance that may influence capabilities of public agencies’ function in the communication of disaster warnings. One goal of this research is to fill the gap in disaster and communication scholarship and study the characteristic elements and uses of innovation by examining the accompanying challenges in less developed regions. Applying the concepts of governance and public service in studying disaster warning undermines the traditional bias that the challenges inherent in risk and crisis communication are primarily organizational. The other more important purpose is to offer specific insights in three principal areas of innovations in the communication of warnings by: (a) understanding the dynamics of how media innovations occur in disaster communication practices; (b) elaborating the factors that promote or inhibit the development of such innovations; and (c) generating theoretical and practical propositions for improvements in public service delivery of disaster warnings through innovations. In the process of achieving these goals, a more specific understanding of the warning communication process among the various organizational units of public service systems in disaster management of the region studied was achieved. In this study, theoretical and methodological decisions were made on the basis of the central proposition guiding this evaluation: the communication of disaster warnings is a public service. Although global governance actors guide risk-reduction policy initiatives, they are enacted at the national and sub-national levels. The study explores the dissemination system of disaster warning in Pakistan, and Sindh. Its southern province is examined as a sub-national level and as a less-resourced, disaster-prone region. The insights from this case study can be applied to guide evaluative research further for similar regions where limited resources and capabilities to innovate warning systems exacerbate the situation and result in a substantial increase in losses. This study used a sequential mixed method evaluative research design. Initial findings were analyzed and integrated for holistic representation of findings. The study draws conclusions from two key aspects in the uses and adoption of media innovation development in public service. The first is the variant approaches to innovations across each level of government. It found that, at the policy level, and considering the limited capabilities vis-à-vis the scope of transformation, the approach to innovation development is transitional. In view of the extent of discretionary authority and available support at the managerial level, the approach to adopting new technology is driven by each disaster experience. Depending on the expertise and resources available within the context of local agencies and communities, a hybrid form of innovation development is approached at the operational level that utilizes technology in the communication of warnings. Secondly, the aspect of a more balanced and unified policy design and the implementation of innovations. The study found that a risk-based and audience segmented approach in nationally defined policy imperative guides the transition from linear to a non-linear, or non-hierarchical, communication system; from traditional to networked communication modes; and from traditional (one-way) to advanced (two-way/interactive) communication tools in the communication of warnings. The study found that the policy and planning measures as well as managerial decision-making for innovation is geared only towards those risks that occur frequently in the region, such as floods and cyclones. For other risks, the managerial decision-makers develop new protocols and strategies to utilize new media and technology tools only when the risk is manifested and damages occur, such as the heat hazard in summer 2015. Importantly, the study observed that for emergency managers at the local district level, besides floods, and cyclones, the emerging risks also include civil conflicts, terrorist attacks, and other extreme natural hazards such as droughts, heat hazards, and flash floods for which no planning or new practices have been developed by the provincial authorities. The study observed three major factors that affect both the approaches to develop an innovation and the kind of change it brings to the system. These are: cost, climate change, and contextual factors. The important implications of these findings suggest that while various cost variables and climate changes affect policy, plans, and subsequent practices adversely, the constantly advancing media and technological context of the region offers great opportunities to adopt potential media innovations for effective service delivery of disaster warnings. The study also observed that role of both global and sub-national level actors in governance is significant in characterizing policy design and implementing specific plans for innovation in a warning system. While global actors have a key role in defining specific policy design and initiatives, regional actors at the sub-national level play a fundamental role in implementing plans. Given the meta-inferences, this dissertation proposes a scarcity-abundance framework as an extension of innovation scholarship in less-resourced regions for more even adoption of media innovation. It contends that context variables that characterize “abundance” can address the challenge of scarcity. The expanding outreach of media and telecommunication based industries in the region offer possibilities for government sector to counter the limitations towards successful innovations. For practical implications, policy adaptation to constantly changing media, climate-change, and technology for the viable adoption of media innovation can bridge the current gaps in innovation adoption. / A Dissertation submitted to the School of Communication in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester 2016. / May 10, 2016. / Disasters, disaster warnings, evaluative research, innovation in governance, media innovation, public service innovation / Includes bibliographical references. / Stephen D. McDowell, Professor Directing Dissertation; Ralph Brower, University Representative; Jay Rayburn, Committee Member; Mia Liza A. Lustria, Committee Member.

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This dissertation analyzes the modes of social emergences and the transformations in Taiwanese oppositional movements during Japanese rule from 1895 to 1945 and the KMT's rule from 1945 to 1987 on the basis of Deleuze and Guattari's theorizations. Five types of multiplicity of States, of towns, of primitives, of bands, and of nomads developed from Deleuze and Guattari's theories were used to provide the genealogical interpretation of the seventeen oppositional events and their sub-events from five significant periods in the actualization of imperial and capitalist stratification from 1895 to 1987. Each oppositional event was analyzed as it was presented as the individuated modes of social emergence and transformation which were directed respectively by the quality of its will to power or desire produced from its oppositional machinic assemblage through the interactions with multiplicities deterrotorializing from the complex of state-form at its specific time and space. In my finding, the modes of social emergences of Taiwanese oppositional events were shown as expressions reflecting phenomena in a manner of bi-polarization, especially when the multiplicity of oppositional assemblages encountered the multiplicity of colonial nation-states. In the first part of my dissertation, the research objective, the scope of research, and the research method accompanying a molar entity of Taiwanese history from the sixteenth century on were introduced. In the second part, Deleuze and Guattari's philosophy and the relevant theories to my study were discussed. The third part analyzed in detail the oppositional events occurred during Japanese rule. The fourth part analyzed in detail those oppositional events during KMT rule. In the fifth part, five types of multiplicity were used to offer a genealogical interpretation of the modes of social emergences and the transformations of Taiwanese oppositional movements. In the conclusion, the shortcomings of previous approaches as well as my analysis were addressed.

A Kenneth Burke Lexicon is a lexiconographical study of select terminology in Kenneth Burke's nine major works published during the period from 1931 to 1972: Counterstatement, 1931; Permanence and Change: An Anatomy of Purpose, 1935; Attitudes Toward History, 1935; The Philosophy of Literary Form, 1941; A Grammar of Motives, 1945; A Rhetoric of Motives, 1950; The Rhetoric of Religion: Studies in Logology, 1961; Language as Symbolic Form: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method, 1966; and Dramatism and Development , 1972. This study is intended to be used as a pedagogical tool to assist in the teaching and reading of Kenneth Burke. It is comprised of a lexicon of 755 terms and their definitions derived from 4236 textual references. The terms have been selected on the basis of the degree of difficulty they present to the reader. The definitions of these terms are largely composed of Burke's own words in order to more objectively and authentically elucidate and define his complex terminology. In addition to defining terms, the lexicon has employed a methodological approach suggested by Dr. Jane Blankenship of “charting terms.” Such charting provides a fourfold definition: (1) after a summary definition, it (2) undertakes an extended definition to (3) present a history of definitions which (4) charts the evolution of the term over time. By so doing, the lexicon allows the reader the opportunity to look up any given term encountered in reading Kenneth Burke and contextualize it in relation to all of Burke's other major works.

The development of literary journalism has, in part, been a reaction to the strictures on employing the writer's own voice in conventional journalism. A number of students of the genre have identified voice as a characteristic of literary journalism, but voice has not been viewed—or used—as an important object of critical investigation. The neglect of voice is due partly to its confusion with point-of-view but mainly, this thesis argues, to an overriding emphasis on the analysis of the use of fictional techniques by writers of literary journalism. Tom Wolfe argued famously in The New Journalism that four techniques distinguished the work of literary journalists: the writing of scenes, the capturing of dialog, the use of third-person point-of-view, and the reporting of “status” details. Subsequent students of literary journalism have tended to focus on the use of those techniques in the works they analyze. This study of Tracy Kidder's work illuminates the gradual maturation of technique in one of the most successful practitioners of literary journalism. Kidder's voice developed over the course of a writing career that had, at the time of this writing, produced seven books. From a halting first-person narrative to a narrative that employed the first person rarely and unobtrusively, Kidder moved in this third and subsequent books until his last to an authoritative voice that permitted him to deepen his narratives and explore the broader implications that resonated in the particular subjects he chose. Close examination of his books also reveals a voice that, in many places, employs in description and characterization a metaphoric imagination generally associated with the poet rather than the journalist. Most readings of Kidder's work have focused on his achievement in exhaustively researching a subject, in rendering scenes with accurate dialog and vivid description, in portraying characters in rich detail, and in adopting points-of-view that offer illuminating perspectives. This study denigrates none of that achievement but contends that the analysis of his narrative voice leads to both increased understanding of journalistic technique and richer readings of the individual works.

Social theorist Jürgen Habermas describes the public sphere as a network for communicating information and perspectives that creates public opinion, a network which is neither of the state, nor of private economic and household life. The ideal public sphere is a rational communicative process allowing participation in political and scholarly debates towards finding agreement, where speakers and addressees need not talk about themselves. Habermas does not blur the line between public and private; the two complement each other instead. Intersubjectivities reach consensus---or achieve what journalism calls "professional objectivity". Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork conducted from 1999 to 2003 and contextualized with historical sources, this dissertation explores these Habermasian ideals with data from the everyday life of Croatian journalists, important participants in transforming their post-socialist, post-war nation-state. Using broad strokes, the public sphere model is useful to describe transitional Croatia, but, when we look at the fine grains of the everyday lifeworld and put the newsroom in the wider context of culture, the communicative rationality of the journalistic milieu is not just the complementarity of the public and private, but the complicative, as well. The concept of the public sphere is a useful analytic descriptor for institutional creatures with a "monolithic" identity as "journalist". Ethnography, however, shows us journalists as individuals---individuals with sanguine and affinal ties, with organizational and associative pulls, with overt and covert identities. As I tell the stories of Croatian broadcast reporters and consider their ever-evolving subject matter (in this case, the Croatian presidency), I describe molecular variables of the journalistic field within wider cultural articulations. I find the concept of the public sphere needs to include a rhizomic model of communication, where uncentered connections are made or broken at any given spot, with interruptions and new networking happening at any occasion. As planes of communication mediate between structured orderly thinking on the one hand and the chaos of chance happenings and the complexity of their ever-shifting origins and outcomes on the other, Habermas' modernist attempts to find the normative place in communicative rationality are fleeting when working from the ground up in the Croatian journalistic milieu.

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