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University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences / Department of Communication

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences / Department of Communication

Since the establishment of Venezuela's democratic arrangement in 1958 with the signature of the Punto Fijo Pact the country democratic practises have been marked by the dependency of the exploitation of crude oil and the overt involvement of the private mass media as guard of the interest of the political elites. Although the Punto Fijo Pact represent the Venezuela's first step towards democratisation, it paved the way for the institutionalisation of clientelism as feature of the country's political tradition. By the late 1980s the population grew tired of inability of the political elites to redistribute evenly the country's oil revenues, thus starting a period of political reconfiguration that saw the decline of the traditional party system and rise of the Bolivarian movement as major political force that pledged the reconstruction of Venezuela's democratic system under a participatory arrangement. The election of Hugo Chávez as the Bolivarian movement candidate in 1998 saw the realignment of Venezuela's political forces, in particular the withdrawal of traditional political parties and the emerge of the private mass media, in particular the television networks, as a major political actor. The main argument of this dissertation is that from 1998 up to the parliamentary elections of 2010, the private television stations in Venezuela took on the role of opposition providing the population with the means to voice their criticisms of the Bolivarian government policies. The stand taken by the private television networks, as the de facto political party, was possible due to the deterioration of the Venezuelan party system and the constriction of the liberal rights of the citizenry, producing, amongst other things, the enactment of the Ley Resorte, to restrict the involvement of the private television networks in the political sphere as well as to control the flow of information. To be able to study why the private television networks were perceived by the Bolivarian movement as de facto political party and why the Bolivarian movement introduced legislation to constrain its participation in the political sphere, this thesis will examine from a historical perspective the role that the private mass media have had in Venezuela's political system and to what extent the Bolivarian movement perception that they were the de facto opposition was an adequate characterisation of the role that private television networks had up until 2010 when the opposition political parties presented themselves again to election to the Venezuela National Assembly after a hiatus of more than five years without representation in the legislative branch.

The purpose of the study was to determine the possible influence of particular television imageries of African-Americans on the self-perceptions of selected young adult African-Americans, ages eighteen to twenty-five. The focus of the study was on specific aspects of self that are addressed by particular television imageries of African-Americans and the possible influences that particular television imageries have on self-perceptions of selected young adult African-Americans. For the design of the study, a qualitative methodology was deemed most useful. Three African-American judges participated in the study: a social psychologist, an anthropologist, and a psychiatrist. The judges were asked to identify and analyze the positive and/or negative imageries that they thought may influence the self-concept of African-American young adults. Thus, the judges provided data for the study. Additionally, in-depth interviewing was determined to be the most useful method for gathering data from ten young adult African-Americans. The interview sessions included the viewing of nineteen episodes of a popular television show featuring African-American actors/actresses. Afterwards, the interviewees were asked to express their perceptions of the African-American television imageries. Profiles of the interviewees were established from a personal history form, and data from the interviews were analyzed. The judges' data explain that the television images are likely to have negative influences on self-perceptions of the young African-American viewers. Moreover, the judges overwhelmingly agreed that degrading stereotypes are the major likely influences on self. Thirty hours of interviews with ten African-American adults revealed that the subjects differed in their perceptions of the possible influence of the television programming on their self-perceptions. Although differences in perceptions existed, only one respondent perceived all television episodes to have negative influences, except for the hybrids. Many of the episodes were viewed as having the potential for positive and negative influences. The judges perceived the television imageries to be negative. Yet the young African-Americans who were interviewed tended to see the same imagery as being positive. This difference in perception among different generations of African-Americans may be attributed to thoughts about humor and ridicule. Also, the limited life experiences of those being interviewed may influence their critical consciousness and thus contribute to the tendency to be more tolerant of the possible negative impact the images may have on their views of themselves. The television industry must join the effort to make education a more positive and powerful means for equality in our democracy.

This dissertation explores historical notions of resistance alongside contemporary playful forms of rebellion. This analysis is centered on the relationship of play to social protest encompassing why we play, how we play, and what this can mean to academics studying social movements, as well as specific contributions for engagement as activists and artists. I propose the need to re-invest in the possibilities of social protest given the absurd nature of certain contemporary political situations and the negative exposure of “somber street protest” by the mainstream media. I rely on play research, performance studies, folktales of tricksters and clowns, sociological research on dissent, analysis of consumerism and identity, and activist publications. This examination includes the work of Erich Fromm, Albert Camus, the Situationist International, Victor Turner, and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Social protest needs to be dynamic to attract participants, inviting participation and enjoyment. My dissertation develops a philosophical structure furthering how we can conceive of dissent within the current political and cultural framework in the United States and investigates actual sites of innovative social movements, including the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army, the Ministry of Reshelving, Tape Babies, Detroit Demolition, guerrilla gardening, and the Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping.

This study is a description and interpretation of mass media appropriations (or media references) in social interaction in US American culture. Two research questions guide the study: One, how, if at all, do cultural members appropriate texts from mass media in their ongoing, socially interactive lives? And two, what are the functions and meanings of mass media appropriations (MMAs) so enacted? The study is situated within the Ethnography of Communication research program and uses Cultural Discourse Theory as its main theoretical frame. The study employs ethnographic and cultural discourse analysis methods including participant-observation, interviewing, cultural description and interpretation to formulate a native theory of mass media appropriations as they are patterned and practiced in US American culture. This theory is then compared to similar practices in Western Apache, Zambian, German, and Dominican American cases. The major descriptive findings include a sequence that MMAs typically follow in social interaction including a trigger, reference, and response; the essential, typical, and possible parts of MMAs, various combinations of which are formulated into types and subtypes of MMAs; the frames typically involved in MMAs including performance, play, and quotation and how they are cued, maintained, and terminated; and a set of dimensions upon which MMAs vary. The major interpretive findings include MMAs being performed for the humor, pleasure, play, shared identity and bonds that they create, these being necessary to diffuse the focus in the culture on self, serious talk and work.

This study describes the cultural discourses in the communication and meta-communication among Finns about the mobile phone. The overall task at hand was to find out how mobile phone communication is described and discussed in speech and writing about mobile phoning, and what the underlying premises are in play on communication, personhood and social relations in these descriptions. Mobile phone communication was approached from the theoretical and philosophical perspective of ethnography of communication, and from cultural discourse analysis in particular. The analyses were conducted through the main theoretical constructs of terms for talk, myths, positioning, and the discursive force of norms. The analysis of interview talk, newspaper, magazine and other media texts, official documents, reports, and books suggested a number of different findings: Pragmatic communicative actions on mobile phone were described with several cultural terms (Carbaugh, 1989) referring to both oral and written communication. Mobile phone talk was discussed by using descriptive terms for talk. 'Idle talk' on the mobile phone was found to vacillate with asiallinen (matter-of-factly) style of communication. The comments about kännykkäkansa (the mobile phone nation), and more generally about Finnishness and mobile phoning were seen as contesting as well as re-creating the almost 150 year old myth of Finnishness. Reachability and disturbance via mobile phone were examined as paradoxical universal. Reachability was found to be related to positive face needs. Disturbance or a threat to one's negative face needs, in turn, was also an inherent feature of the mobile phone, and the need to reach others and respond could count as disturbance. As the model of discursive forces (Hall 1988/1989) was deployed, it was found that the demand or norm of reachability was criticized and challenged in many ways, and the expectation of not disturb others and not being disturbed by them was negotiable. A value of being in peace was considered more important for some Finns than being reachable or disturbing. The analyses provided insights to the Finnish cultural discourses about Finnishness, social relations, communication, and culture and technology.

Two studies explored the associations between media consumption, partner/relationship ideals and beliefs, and relationship satisfaction. Study 1 assessed participants' total television consumption as well as total romance/relationship-oriented and total erotic media consumption. Total television consumption (regardless of content) showed little evidence of cultivating effects on relationship beliefs. However, the more romance/relationship-oriented media participants consumed, the more idealized their partner/relationship ideals, the stronger their belief that mind-reading is expected in a relationship, that disagreement in a relationship is destructive, and that fate brings soul-mates together. For men, a negative relationship between erotic media consumption and relationship satisfaction was mediated by their perception of a discrepancy between their ideal and actual partner/relationship. Study 2 used an experimental design to explore the temporary effects of viewing a popular film that strongly emphasizes the idea that destiny determines relationships. Compared to participants exposed to the control film, those exposed to the manipulation endorsed significantly stronger beliefs in relationship destiny directly after viewing. These findings are an important first step in showing how media messages influence people's relationship attitudes but will need to be replicated and extended.

In contradistinction to social scientific theories of communication, this dissertation poses the philosophical question of why humans communicate to begin with. Drawing on the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan (1966/2006), it is argued that human being communicates not merely due to a need to overcome its separation from other human beings. Rather, it is argued that because language splits it into self and other, human being communicates due to an unconscious desire to overcome its separation from itself. The self-alienating cause of the subject of communication is explained via Lacan's theory of the dialectic of identification and the effect of symbolization. Three studies of visual communication are offered (on evil, ethics, and the event of being) to illustrate how the symbolic content of expressive media is tied irrevocably to the question of what it means to be human. In so doing, the direct relevance of psychoanalysis to the study of media and communication is demonstrated.