The religious book club provides a fascinating location for observing the social construction of reality. This study sets out to discover how religious identities affected reading and how reading affected religious identity through examining social reading. Seven book groups, all in the Boston area, participated. Three groups were affiliated with a church or synagogue, three had no religious affiliation, and the seventh was transitioning away from a religious affiliation. Fieldwork within the groups and individual interviews are analyzed using grounded theory techniques. All readers used reading to pursue aims such as relationships, educational status, and transformations of identity, but only readers within the religiously affiliated groups experienced an "inflection" of those aims. While readers in nonreligious book groups developed friendships, the religious book group members developed a sense of congregational identity. Nonreligious group readers sought to be "well read" religious group members sought to be articulate believers. Many readers sought to transform themselves through books, but religious groups transformed their members through emphasizing boundaries and identities, constructing shared definitions of "religion." Nonreligious group members were unconcerned with tying book club identity to personal identity. Religious groups, through confirming and challenging definitions of religion, developed religious identities that were expected to have deeper relevance to individual lives. Individual religious identity did not inflect the aims of reading, since religious individuals in nonreligious groups did not develop their sense of belonging, status, or identity around religious constructions. Within religious groups, it was not religious doctrines, ethics, or awe that produced the religious inflection of reading's aims. Only the affiliation with a formal religious institution was necessary. This demonstrates that religion functions not as a foundational worldview for its adherents, but as a thin container that offers the opportunity to develop a deeper, more durable identity. Despite reading's construction as a primarily individual activity, these findings also demonstrate how the social infrastructure of reading can have important effects.

The study aims to contribute to the deeper understanding of young Facebook users’ news consumption routines within the platform and to find out how they experience the growing presence of news publishers there. The research is based on 10 semi­structured interviews with international students ­ Swedish Institute scholarship holders from seven different countries. The qualitative data is analysed with the help of the theoretical approach, based on the combination of two modern concepts, that consider user perspective on news consumption: the concept of “perceived worthwhileness” by Kim Christian Schroeder and “spatial turn” by Chris Peters. The research has shown that young users often use Facebook as their primary source of news and, therefore, adopt new routines on this social platform in terms of news consumption. Among them are scanning through personal news feeds, monitoring friends interests, using “likes” for information dissemination and self­expression, chain reading news and “playing” with algorithms. At the same time, the communicational component of Facebook is not ignored and the platform as a whole is experienced rather as a space than a specific medium. In general, young users experience news consumption on Facebook in a positive way and appreciate the opportunity to see their peers’ perspectives on particular issues, show their identity to significant others, be exposed to a diverse range of news without wasting time on searching and choosing, and keep track of their activities and interests. At the same time, the author identified a negative attitude towards the chaotic structure of news feeds and the complexity of the settings.

Tout en se présentant comme la relecture d’un fait divers de l’histoire italienne récente, Romanzo Criminale est un récit qui se déploie par le biais de différents médias : un livre, un film, une série télévisée, ainsi qu’un certain nombre de produits dérivés. On trouve également, dans les espaces en ligne Internet, des déclinaisons de ces produits générées par les utilisateurs eux-mêmes. Les pratiques de transformation ou de remix mises en œuvre par ces derniers, les hommages et autres parodies dilatent l’univers de départ en proposant des lectures alternatives au sein de communautés différentes. La présente étude explore les modalités qui s’offrent au chercheur pour une analyse de ce phénomène : si, dans un premier temps, la notion d’intertextualité peut être employée comme outil heuristique, la présence de véritables usages requiert le dépassement de la perspective narratologique et la construction d’une méthodologie de recherche adaptée au contexte contemporain. Afin de rendre compte de la multitude des pratiques existantes une enquête ethnographique dans les espaces en ligne (blogs, sites de partage de vidéos, réseaux sociaux) s’impose, assortie d’une approche critique de la notion de transmédialité. Enfin, l’une des caractéristiques les plus typiquement contemporaines du phénomène observé, celle qui consiste à faire advenir un univers fictionnel dilatable à souhait par les spectateurs, sera comparée à la mise en œuvre d’un "travail épique". / Presented as a new interpretation of a momentous event in recent Italian history, Romanzo Criminale is a story spread through different types of media; it is a book, a film, a TV series, as well as a number of extra materials. Spin-offs of these products created by users can be found on the Internet as well. Users pay homage to or parody the original media by transforming or remixing its content, thus expanding the story’s universe by putting forward alternative interpretations throughout various communities both on and offline. In this study, we explore the methods available to researchers for analyzing this phenomenon. If, in the first section of the study, the notion of intertextuality can be used as a heuristic tool, in the second, the presence of actual uses requires the researcher to go beyond the narratological perspective and construct a methodology that is adapted to the contemporary context of convergence. In order to understand the multitude of existing practices, it is imperative to carry out an ethnographic investigation of online spaces (blogs, video sharing sites, social networks), and accompany it with a critical examination of the notion of transmediality. In the last section, we examine one of the most typical contemporary features of the studied phenomenon, the one which produces an everexpanding fictional universe created by spectators that will be compared to an "epic work".

This study explores cultural productions in one television genre in Chinese mainstream media: dispute resolution shows. By applying the theoretical frameworks of Hall’s encoding and decoding and Habermas’ public spheres, this study mainly answers two research questions: 1) how does mainstream production convey politically-preferred cultural and social values to viewers; and 2) how do audience members exercise their citizenship in decoding televised social values and cultural norms? In a specific examination of Oriental Pearl Live Newsroom, mixed-methods are adopted, including unsupervised learning of the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), content analysis, thematic analysis, focus groups, and interviews. In the findings, the interviewees admitted that they propagated social and cultural values in accordance with the mainstream political ideology of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in order to maintain social stability and state order. However, my interviewees also suggested that they had an ambition and willingness to promote a civil society in China, which requires a counterbalanced power from the audience’s side. The results of the audience analysis generally indicated that they challenged the power of legitimate authorities, including the nation-state, the elite class, and the media. This study identified five online public spheres: 1) Government is the core; 2) Request for rule of law; 3) Media is a paradox; 4) The elite class is not the boss; 5) The grass is always greener (adoration of foreign countries). In general, this study supports conceptualizing audience members as citizens. It demonstrates how audience members deconstruct the dominant interpretations of social values and their attempts to elaborate less-favorable voices in Transitional Chinese society. This conceptualization suggests the importance of audience members in creating diverse public spheres and promoting a civil society.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate whether there is a trust between social media influencers and their followers, and if so, to what extent. The methodological approach consists of an analysis of interview material, expert interviews and selected comment boxes on social media. By conducting qualitative analysis, this thesis examines audience reception to promotional content produced by social media influencers in collaboration with the Swedish interior design brand Royal Design. Based on the theories of parasocial interaction, two-step flow and opinion leadership, and modes of reception, concepts such as audience advertising response, relationship to influencers and the level of trust are investigated and concluded in order to find common patterns around audience reception to influencer marketing. The analysis shows that there is indeed a certain amount of trust towards social media influencers among the sample group especially if they recognise the influencer, however, the trust is not full and unconditional. The audience reception of influencer marketing content both in the interviews and comment boxes was mostly positive, and some respondents seemed to have developed sympathy towards social media personas featured in the advertisements, praising them for being personal and authentic. The results of the study imply that while the credibility and motives of influencer content are questioned by some, it is generally perceived as a more enjoyable alternative to traditional advertising formats.

This thesis examines the identity of the U.S. military personnel (the Marines) through their perceptions of a war television series, Generation Kill. The thesis sampled 38 respondents through an online questionnaire. The thesis uses the encoding and decoding theory to reveal that the Marine respondents demonstrated multiple interpretations of themes and concepts in the official discourses. The negotiated decoding from the respondents shows an interchangeable nature of the concepts that the official discourses and the informal conducts are integral to each other. The thesis makes use of the details in GK to draw out the grunts’ experience of being a Marine. In the end, it shows the Marine identity experienced by individual members is diverse and multilayered, and the identity could be shaped and negotiated. The research not only contributes to the missing research on professional subcultures in audience reception studies, but also engages an interdisciplinary exploration on issues about the military in democratic societies.

Celebrity gossip blogs have quickly established themselves as a new media phenomenon that is transforming celebrity culture. This dissertation is an examination of the impact of the technological and textual shifts engendered by new media on the use of gossip as a form of everyday cultural production. Broadly, I investigate the historical role of gossip media texts in celebrity culture and explore how celebrity gossip blogs have reconfigured audience engagements with celebrity culture. Following Gamson’s (1994) approach to celebrity as a cultural phenomenon, I separate celebrity gossip blogs into three elements—texts, producers, and audiences—and examine the interplay between them using ethnographic methods adapted to the new media setting. I begin with an investigation of what is being said about celebrity on gossip blogs, supported by my five–week online fieldwork observation of six heavily–trafficked, commercially–supported celebrity gossip blogs. I focus on visual images and blogger commentary as the key elements of gossip blogs as media texts. I supplement these observations with oral interviews of the producers of these texts, the gossip bloggers. I argue that the blogger, as the primary author of the site, retains authority as a cultural producer of these texts. The final component of this study focuses on the reading and cultural production practices of celebrity gossip blog audiences using data gathered online and through a qualitative survey. I examine the various ways these practices support the emergence of community within these virtual spaces. While I claim that gossip is an active engagement with celebrity culture well suited to new media's emphasis on immediacy and interactivity, I conclude that an active audience is necessarily a resistant one. Blogs can be seen as a space for intervention into celebrity culture that allows bloggers and readers to challenge the power of the media industry to define celebrity culture. However, gossip blogs often uphold oppressive norms, particularly around questions of gender, race, and sexuality. Gossip is an important area of inquiry because it reveals the way women, the predominant audience for and participants on gossip blogs, may be implicated in the normative ideologies forwarded by the celebrity media.

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Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / Long-term independent travel is regarded by many commentators as an active quest for discovery, and has long been proclaimed by individuals and organisations, both within and outside the tourism industry, as having a social, cultural and educative role. As independent travel becomes an increasingly popular and important sector of the travel market, the guidebook as cultural text becomes a significant and powerful mediator of experience. Guidebooks have a prevailing capacity to define and represent places, peoples and cultures and, at the same time, present descriptive and prescriptive information that simultaneously constructs the traveller and shapes their perspectives and experiences. Independent travellers such as backpackers, in their quest for the ‘authentic’, often seek out experiences with other cultures and demonstrate a desire to learn about, and interact with, indigenous people and their cultures. This thesis is concerned with the complex process of the dialectic construction of the backpacker (the traveller) as a particular gazing and experiencing subject, and of places, peoples and cultures (the travelled) as objects of the gaze. Central to the thesis is a consideration of the role of the guidebook as an interpretative lens through which the constructed and mediated nature of both the traveller and the travelled can be examined and understood. Drawing on theoretical and methodological insights from the interdisciplinary fields of tourism studies and cultural studies, the thesis seeks to understand relationships between text, audience and culture in tourism. The interpretative method of textual analysis is married with qualitative interviews with a sample of backpackers to Australia to examine the interplay between travellers, guidebooks and experiences. An analysis of guidebooks published by Lonely Planet, Rough Guide and Let's Go reveals that representations of Aboriginal people and their cultures are central to constructing an ‘authentic’ experience for independent travellers to Australia. These representations are, however, not without contradiction, as traveller discourses of authenticity, cultural awareness, cultural sensitivity and responsible travel are mobilised concurrently with popular tourism imagery and stereotypes of Aboriginal Australia. For the backpackers interviewed, the discrepancies between discourses provided in guidebooks means that their engagement with texts is dynamic, and their experiences with, and understandings of, Aboriginal Australia are continuously negotiated and renegotiated throughout their travel experiences. I argue in this thesis that backpackers actively engage with narratives and representations of culture contained within guidebooks, and negotiate these textual contradictions to construct a particular type of experience and traveller-self to make sense of their travels in Aboriginal Australia. The findings of this thesis raise important questions about the role that the text plays as mediator between the traveller and the travelled culture, and the tensions, contradictions and negotiations between text and lived experience.

This article considers the impact of new technologies on the adolescent experience of live, literary theatre. Drawing together the work of theorists in literacies, new technologies and audience studies, together with brain research, and the results of a focus group of four secondary students who have seen four plays at Canada’s National Arts Centre, it examines the consequences of young people’s immersion in digital culture and the new mindset that often results. The expectation of instant access to data, inter-connectivity, stimulation and control can make it difficult for adolescents to decode the metaphorical aspects of a theatrical performance. The article concludes that language arts and dramatic arts educators have a key role in teaching students how to decode—and therefore enjoy and appreciate— a play.