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Bachelor's thesis. / Format: PDF. Bibl.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Wollongong, 2005. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references: leaf 202-213.

New media technology has brought heated debate about its power to transform existing structures and relations in national and international communications. It is expected to either democratize or reproduce current political communication processes. At the same time, new media technology raises concerns that it may promote a global convergence of communication cultures to the American model. Political blogging, online personal publishing of observations and comments about news and politics with frequent links to other Web sources, provides a useful ground to test these competing theses since political blogging emerged as a citizen-based, alternative media in the U.S. and has subsequently been diffused internationally. This dissertation compares political blogs in the U.S., the U.K., and Germany to investigate how national political systems and communication cultures shape the structures and practices of political blogging across the three countries. Based on the media’s relative power in the public sphere and communication processes, political communication culture is distinguished as a mediatized culture in the U.S., a politicized culture in Germany, and a culture-in-between in the U.K. Different systems and cultures are predicted not only to foster political blogging to varying degrees but also to shape different fabrics of relations among political bloggers and other participants in political communication in each country. Using the rankings of political blogs in the three countries, the 106 top political blogospheres and linking patterns of individual political blogs to various websites in the countries. Findings from this dissertation reveal both cross-national commonalities rooted in general human tendencies and national particularities emerging from different structural factors internal to the three countries. Across the three countries, bloggers make more communicative ties to politically like-minded blogs and websites than to those with opposing perspectives. Blogging networks of the three countries represent very unequal spaces, with a few blogs having a disproportional number of incoming links. Also, blogs are highly insulated geographically with bloggers making links mostly to other bloggers and sites within their own countries. There are also notable cross-national differences in network structures and linking patterns. The U.S. blogging network has more dense interconnections among its members compared with British and German networks. Also, America’s mediatized culture increases the probability that political blogs choose to link more to news media sites compared to British and German bloggers. On the other hand, British and German blogs in politicized cultures make links to government websites more frequently than do American blogs. Additionally, the U.S. political blogosphere shows greater segregation between blogs of competing political perspectives, compared with U.K. and German blogospheres. Findings are discussed in light of two key questions about the nature of political blogging (1) as a new technology-enabled medium facilitating cross-national convergence in communication practice, and (2) as a revolutionary venue revitalizing the public sphere and democracy. / text

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Kentucky, 2006. / Advisers: Joachim Knuf, Chike Anyaegbunam. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Marquette University, 2009. / Available for download on December 08, 2011. Heidi Schweizer, William Pink, Cheryl Maranto, Advisors.

Thesis (Ed. D.) University of Missouri-Columbia, 2006. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on August 7, 2007) Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D. (Management)) - Rhodes University, 2008.

There is a numerous of literature on Key Account Management but there is a lack of empirical research supporting the literature, especially regarding the implementation process. This study investigates five companies according to how they manage their customer relationships with main focus on their key customers. The study is based on existing KAM literature and also involves additional factors; change management and global talent management. The purpose of the study is to investigate how KAM can be more successfully implemented in Swedish companies in IT and management industry. The study was conducted with a qualitative approach and the interviews were held with Top management at five Swedish IT and management companies in Växjö. The findings show new insights into KAM implementation; Change management and Global talent management were shown to have a direct effect on the success of an implementation, which the existing theory of KAM is not emphasizing. The result of the study is visualized in a model at the end of the study.

Economic instabilities in our country over the past few decades and improvement in communication technologies, have encouraged Turkish construction firms to utilize business opportunities in foreign countries. However, working abroad brings with it certain risks and problems. The aim of this thesis were to define and clarify problematic factors during the design stages in international design projects (IDP), to collect relevant suggested solutions and to try and determine the sources of these factors. The survey starts with general problems and/or factors which affect international projects and continues to examine whether these problems are the same as those faced in the architectural field. Also, the place of the Turkish construction industry in the world market, the reasons for the increase in international projects and the problems which might be faced while executing IDP have formed the scope of this thesis. To this end informal interviews were carried out with managers and design professionals of architectural firms, based in Ankara, which were involved in international projects, in order to determine types of problems encountered in execution of IDPs. The first questionnaire was based on insight gained from these interviews. Thereafter, the results of the first questionnaire formed the basis of the second questionnaire, which was delivered more extensively. According to the research carried out in this study, the major effective factors in execution of IDPs could be listed as, cultural differences, communication within the project team, information technologies, standards and regulations, client and local authorities and economical situation of target country.