After 1918, radio broadcasting was an important example of the wide range of technological developments which greatly influenced British society. Previously, very little detailed attention has been devoted to the social consequences of the enormous increase in listening to broadcast programmes which occured before 1939. This analysis commences with an investigation of the growth, distribution and structure of the radio audience. It also establishes the main economic and technical influences on the pattern of transmission and reception. The response of the audience to the medium is displayed by reference to the comments and activities of listeners' pressure groups, whilst the views of a rival medium - the national press - are collected by means of a content analysis. The work of inter-war social surveyors is used to place broadcasting in the context of other important social changes which were occuring. The reaction of the BBC is analysed to discover the evolution in the relationship between the two sides of the microphone, whilst an examination of BBC listener research material provides detailed evidence on audience tastes and habits. Finally, three localities are examined to expose the important facets of grassroots behaviour and verify other findings. Throughout the period, the dominance of economic and technological influences on broadcasters and listeners alike is very clear, particularly in the context of an emerging consumer society. Some of the changes in social behaviour attributable to broadcasting were predictable, some unexpected: others depended on the circumstances of listeners and there were many variations in the rate and extent of these changes. Some themes stand out: broadcasting brought immediacy to the reporting of national issues, creating a greater sense of national identity and involvement. Listening also changed the pattern of leisure activity, modified the structure of the family and helped to create a more knowledgeable population.

This dissertation draws on a wide range of sources (including motion pictures, film journals, and essays) in order to analyze the debate over the social and aesthetic role of cinema that took place in France from 1909 to 1930. During this period, as the new medium became the most popular form of entertainment, moralists of all political persuasions began to worry that cinematic representations of illicit acts could provoke social unrest. In response, four groups usually considered antagonistic -- republicans, Catholics, Communists, and the first film avant-garde known as the Impressionists -- set out to redefine cinema by focusing particularly on shaping film viewers. To do so, these movements adopted similar strategies: they organized lectures and film clubs, published a variety of periodicals, commissioned films for specific causes, and screened commercial motion pictures deemed compatible with their goals. Tracing the history of such projects, I argue that they insisted on educating spectators both through and about cinema. Indeed, each movement sought to teach spectators of all backgrounds how to understand the new medium of cinema while also supporting specific films with particular aesthetic and political goals. Despite their different interests, the Impressionists, republicans, Catholics, and Communists all aimed to create communities of viewers that would learn a certain way of decoding motion pictures. My main focus is on how each group defined its ideal spectator, on the tensions manifested within their pedagogical projects, and on the ways in which these projects intersected. Ultimately, the history uncovered here sheds new light on key questions about cinema's impact that marked the twentieth century.

In "Heterodox Drama: Theater in Post-Reformation London," I argue that the specific working practices of the theater industry generated a body of drama that combines the varied materials of post-Reformation culture in hybrid fantasies that helped audiences emotionally negotiate and productively re-imagine early modern English religious life. These practices include: the widespread recycling of stock figures, scenarios, and bits of dialogue to capitalize on current dramatic trends; the collaboration of playwrights and actors from different religious backgrounds within theater companies; and the confessionally diverse composition of theater audiences. By drawing together a heterodox conglomeration of Londoners in a discursively capacious cultural space, the theaters created a public. While the public sphere that emerges from early modern theater culture helped audience members process religious material in politically significant ways, it did so not primarily through rational-critical thought but rather through the faculties of affect and imagination. The theater was a place where the early modern English could creatively reconfigure existing confessional identity categories, and emotionally experiment with the rich ideological contradictions of post-Reformation life.

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This thesis presents a workbook for creating a course that combines researching both theatre for young audiences and devised theatre to create a touring production and company. Devised theatre is a form of theatre where the script originates from collaborative creation, improvisation, and physical movement. This course explored the past, present and future of theatre for young audiences both domestically and abroad. Students worked in a collaborative effort devising and producing a TYA piece based on Hans Christian Anderson’s The Snow Queen and studied the child audience through reading assignments and practical experience. This thesis is intended to showcase the value of teaching college undergraduate how to perform TYA productions as well as to show how devised theatre can help foster the actor’s creativity and help to reach a whole new generation.

A combination of experimental and empirical studies investigate the assumption that musical expression is communicated in marimba performance through at least two channels – sound and action. A parallel is drawn between the bodily movements and gestures occurring with expressive musical sound, and gestures produced in concurrence with speech. Experiment 1 investigated the assumption that bodily movements and gestures can enhance or diminish the perception of expression and interest in solo marimba performance when presented audio-visually compared to presentation in audio-only form. Body movement is of particular relevance here as the expressive capabilities of the marimba are relatively restricted, and the movements required to play it are visible. Twenty-four musically-trained and 24 musically-untrained observers rated auditory-only and auditory-visual presentations of 20th Century solo marimba excerpts for perceived expressiveness and interest. Performances were given by a male and a female professional musician in projected (public performance expression) and deadpan (minimised expressive features) performance manners. As hypothesised, significantly higher ratings were recorded in response to projected performances than to deadpan. The hypothesised interaction between modality and performance manner was observed. Higher expressiveness ratings were observed for projected performances, and lower ratings were observed for deadpan performances when the presentation was audio-visual compared to audio-only. Higher interest ratings were observed for projected performances when the presentation was audio-visual. Musically-trained participants recorded higher ratings than musically-untrained observers upholding the final hypothesis. The results suggest that expressive functional bodily movements and bodily gestures play an important role in marimba performer-audience communication. Findings are relevant for both performers and educators. The aim of Experiment 2 was to investigate whether the results of Experiment 1, conducted in laboratory conditions, would generalise to an ecologically valid setting – a real concert. Experiment 2 investigated audience continuous self-report engagement responses from 21 participants collected using the portable Audience Response Facility (pARF). The stimulus material was a solo marimba piece performed in a live concert. A female musician performed two musically similar sections within the piece in two different performance manners (deadpan and projected). The second order standard deviation threshold method was used to analyse signal reliability. As hypothesised, mean engagement responses were greater in the projected sample than the deadpan sample. Reliable signal was only observed in the projected sample. Differences between deadpan and projected sample mean engagement responses may be due to expressive bodily movement from the performance manner manipulation; alternatively, serial order effect, necessitated by the concert setting, may be responsible. Such experimentation in ecologically valid settings enables understanding of audience perception of live music performance as it unfolds in time. Expressive qualities of marimba players���� bodily gestures, witnessed in several projected and deadpan marimba performances in the stimulus material from Experiment 1 were analysed in Study 1. Laban Movement Analysis (LMA) observation techniques, involving embodied thinking and kinaesthetic mirroring, enabled analysis of force. Force is the third element of motion additional to temporal and spatial aspects for which technology measuring only kinematics can not account. Effort-shape analysis and notation described and recorded expressive qualities of marimba players’ bodily gestures at specific locations on the musical score. With basic training, professional percussionist performers were able to understand and apply effort-shape analysis and notation. This inspired confidence that effort-shape analysis and notation has potential as an analytical tool for performers, teachers and students. The results of Experiments 1 and 2 and Study 1 lead to the formation of a theory of bodily gestures in marimba performance. This theory accounted for functional bodily movements and bodily gestures in marimba performance based on an embodied interpretation of the musical score. Combined experimental and empirical results indicate that bodily movements and gestures can enhance perception of expressive marimba performance and therefore warrant focussed attention in pedagogy and practice. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The objective of this thesis is to examine and analyze the presentation of spaces, figures, and the processes of judgment in afterlife films. American and foreign titles as well as television series are assessed as afterlife films by two criteria: (1) A character has clinically died yet continues to exist and (2) a living character finds his or her self in an afterlife space. Films with characters that have near-death experiences (NDEs) are included in relation to the above three qualities. After screening nearly one hundred and thirty titles, I have found there is a basic formula structure that has been expanded and transformed into seven other structures, plus those that are combined for a unique narrative. The afterlife corpus is divided into five distinct eras by the quantity of releases that fluctuate in accordance with 20th and early 21st century cultural anxieties and technological advances. A secondary argument proposes why the afterlife story is perfectly suited to the film medium plus why the industry and audiences are incessantly drawn to the afterlife film premise. The afterlife film perpetuates universal and age-old questions on the significance of life and death in the guise of enticing sights and stories. Each afterlife film may have its own identifiable design and theme but they are connected to higher concerns of mortality and second chances.

The media environment have changed constantly in the nowadays. Even though audiences can use a variety of the media, the ratings of watching programs by TV is still the mainstream, and the classification of the drama is the highest of program types in average audience rating. Recently, the concept of brand marketing is more and more important in the company, however, with the brand concept exploring audience viewing behavior is still rarely in the media research. This study used questionnaires, and structural equation modeling (SEM) as a data analysis. The research focus on drama programs and channels to investigate in Taiwan so that we can understand how the brand equity affect audience viewing behavior. The research focuses on drama programs and channels, and explores the audience viewing behavior in the perspective of customer-based brand equity. The research not only explores the brand equity of the drama programs, but also investigates the relation with the brand equity of drama programs, channels and audience viewing behavior. Even more, adding two factors in model including the types of audience and the drama types of audiences¡¦ preference, and explore the impact with among the three. The results showed that brand awareness of programs affect audience viewing behavior on a positive significantly, however, the brand image of programs can¡¦t affect the audiences viewing behavior. The brand equity of drama programs can affect the brand equity of the channels and the brand equity of the channels can affect the audiences viewing behavior. In addition, because of the difference between of the types of audience and the types of drama, the brand equity of drama programs has an impact on the viewing behavior.

In recent years, the men's fashion magazine has become a new media genre that attracts lots of attention. The sales, advertisements, and publications of the men's fashion magazine have reached a remarkable performance. Most important of all, men's fashion magazines not only provide the male readers with content about appearance beauty but also mold the male readers into a new kind of masculinity called ¡¥New Man¡¦. The ¡¥New Man¡¦ masculinity means that men can feel more comfortable to take some gender practices to improve their appearance beauty, such as putting on make-up, applying skincare products and so on. Researches about men's fashion magazine in Taiwan mostly focus on market performance, and the notion and practice of male readers are ignored. This present study drawn on the audience in everyday life theory, also employed the masculinity theory based on the sociologist R. W. Connell and the view of fluid identity (multiple subjectivities) based on the poststructuralist feminists. This study applied a methodology of qualitative in-depth interview with 6 male participants, tried to find the relation between men¡¦s fashion magazine and everyday gender practices of the readers. The study found that when the male readers interpret the ¡¥New Man¡¦ image in the men's fashion magazine, they do negotiate the mainstream masculinity discourse in their everyday life. Their negotiation involves their unequal investment in multiple subjectivities in everyday life. The study also found that men's fashion magazine is a text that can mediate the masculinity discourse, so the everyday gender practices of readers regarding the magazine text are their negotiation of masculinity as well. The male readers read men's fashion magazine and take ¡¥New Man¡¦ gender practices (ex. applying skincare products, putting on make-up, and taking care of figure) to create their own unique masculinity which exclude from femininity. In conclusion, the new version masculinity (New Man) does overlap the old one (mainstream or traditional masculinity), which not only shows the diversity of masculinity but also provide the male readers with some space to exert their agency and negotiate the meaning of ¡¥what it means to be a male¡¦.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Open University. BLDSC no. DX231422.