Sexy Sports: A reception study of the National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) Olympics website coverage of women’s beach volleyball at the 2008 Beijing Olympics involves an examination of the sporting media and its reportage of the female athlete. The thesis will focus on the reception of the NBC Olympics website coverage of women’s beach volleyball at the 2008 Beijing Olympics by viewing groups constituted by the researcher. The reason for this is that it would be difficult to find naturally constituted audiences for this website, but its reception is never-the-less of research interest. My hypothesis is that the nature of the images and text on the website is overdetermined by the construction of women on other popular texts such as men’s magazines etc. In focusing on the meanings obtained from the content of the website (texts and images), the study will investigate how these meanings are naturalised in specific moments of production as well as through their intertextual relationships with similar texts involved in the glamorisation of female athletes. Specifically the study explores the meanings obtained from the content of the website (texts and images) and how in turn these meanings are naturalised by the consumers of the website. The study will utilise a qualitative research design to unpack the content of the website through the use of qualitative content analysis, focus group interviews and individual in-depth interviews. The research will be informed via a theoretical framework that draws from feminist theory, sport feminism, the concept of intertextuality between media texts, ideology and Stuart Hall’s model of preferred reading. Increasingly mainstream media uses the image of a woman’s body to sell almost anything from men’s razors to margarine and in so far as the reporting of women’s sports is concerned this holds true. Through the research I intend to account for the connotative power of other texts i.e. the men’s magazines and pornography, and how this is likely to be carried through into shaping the meanings that are read off the website. Arguably the production of the NBC texts and images are overdetermined by the existence of similar texts already in transmission in the circuit of culture.

This essay examines the body in post-cyberfeminist art to study possible changes in how the body is perceived in the shift from cyberfeminist to post-cyberfeminist art. I have studied the body by examining power and identity in four cases of post-cyberfeminist art, using postmodern feminist theories and concepts such as gender, gender performativity, heterosexual matrix and intersectionality. The essay consists of image, moving image and textual analysis and two shorter comparative analyses. In the first comparative analysis, I have compared the four cases of post-cyberfeminist art with each other. In the second analysis, I focus on a comparative analysis between the four cases of post-cyberfeminist art and earlier cyberfeminist projects. In the discussion, I present my results and elaborate on a possible shift in how the body's materiality is viewed within digital landscapes of post-cyberfeminist art. I argue that the cyborg, central to the earlier cyberfeminist project, might have been replaced by transformable avatars.

[pt] A democracia é um conceito em constante disputa que se reconstrói em torno das relações de poder fundadas com base no poder enraizado de suas instituições. Isto é, a força e a estabilidade da democracia e suas instituições dependem de sua vigência na mente das pessoas (Castells, 2018). Rompido o vínculo subjetivo entre o que os cidadãos pensam e querem e as ações daqueles que os representam, produz-se o que denominamos crise de legitimidade política. Se nos anos 1990 e primeira década dos 2000 há uma confluência nas discussões sobre Sociedade Civil Global e Governança global que apontavam na direção de que a atuação da sociedade Civil Global ampliaria a democracia, aqui propomos um passo crítico a essa abordagem a partir da discussão sobre Capitalismo de Vigilância. Assim, o presente trabalho tem o objetivo de contribuir para a discussão sobre crise da democracia, especificamente contestando a ideia de que a atuação da sociedade civil global levaria necessariamente a ampliação da democracia. Sob essa égide, observamos aspectos que eram base para a utopia da sociedade civil global foram colocados em cheque à medida que a tensão existente entre a horizontalidade da rede e as políticas de controle, vigilância e datificação da realidade foram reveladas. Diante dessa controvérsia, aqui pretendemos explorar o como a atuação da Sociedade Civil tensionou a democracia no século XXI explorando possibilidades de atuação e limites impostos pela disseminação das Tecnologias da Informação e Comunicação no Capitalismo de Vigilância. / [en] Democracy is a concept in constant dispute which is founded on the basis of its institutions. The strength and stability of democracy and its institutions depend on its validity in people s minds (Castells, 2018). Once the subjective link between what citizens think and want and the actions of those who represent them is broken the legitimacy of the system can be questioned. In the 1990s and the in first decade of the 2000s there was a confluence between the discussions on Global Civil Society and Global Governance that pointed in the direction of the expansion of democracy through the Global Civil Society. Conversely, here we propose to give a critical step using the discussion on Surveillance Capitalism. Thus, this work aims to contribute to the discussion on the crises of democracy, specifically challenging the idea that the role of global civil society leads necessarily to the expansion of democracy. We observe how aspects that were the basis for the global civil society utopia were put in check by the tension existing between the horizontality of the network-society and the policies of control and surveillance. In the face of this controversy, we explore how the workings of Civil Society have tensioned democracy in the 21st century. We also explore possibilities of action and limits imposed by the dissemination of Information and Communication Technologies whiting the context of Surveillance Capitalism.

This thesis will be focused on the analysis of the basic types of the female artificial movie characters - the beings connecting "femininity" (humanity) and technology. These characters holds the external female sexual signs or the characteristics stereotypically perceived as female (e.g. cyborg/cyborg woman, android woman, robotess). My issue will be examinated from the perspective of postmodern approach to the process of shaping their bodies and identities in relation to the narrative movie structure. The characters will be divided into categories based on their dominating physical and "social" function in the story. The subsequent identification and interpretation of physicality, identity and relations with other characters of the narrative will be based not only on principles of semiotic analysis, but will take into account especially the approach of postmodernism. The main theoretical basis for this paper will be the theory of poststructuralism and so called post theories - a theory of posthumanism, transhumanism and cyberfeminism.

The thesis focuses on the analysis of the basic types of the film characters portraying artificial women: creatures who combine "femininity" (humanity) and technology, and who show female sexual characteristics or features that are stereotypically perceived as female-like (e.g. female cyborgs, female androids, female robots). The characters are analyzed and approached from the perspective of postmodern philosophy and post-theory studies; the forming of their body and identity is analyzed on the account of the narrative. The aim of the thesis is to explore whether the film representations of female cyborgs are similar to real cyborgs in the sense that they bring liberalization from the point if view of posthumanism and cyberfeminism, or whether they can only be perceived as the prime form of the Foucaltian body-as-machine, i.e. perfectly controllable precise technicist bodies which are created by the current power dispositions. The characters are divided into four categories, based on their predominant physical and "social" functions: a sexbot, a domesticated artificial woman, a destructive artificial woman and an emotional/intelligent artificial woman. The following identification and interpretation of the body, identity, relationships and the narrative structures are based on the theoretical...

The thesis focuses on the analysis of the basic types of the film characters portraying artificial women: creatures who combine "femininity" (humanity) and technology, and who show female sexual characteristics or features that are stereotypically perceived as female-like (e.g. female cyborgs, female androids, female robots). The characters are analyzed and approached from the perspective of postmodern philosophy and post-theory studies; the forming of their body and identity is analyzed on the account of the narrative. The aim of the thesis is to explore whether the film representations of female cyborgs are similar to real cyborgs in the sense that they bring liberalization from the point if view of posthumanism and cyberfeminism, or whether they can only be perceived as the prime form of the Foucaltian body-as-machine, i.e. perfectly controllable precise technicist bodies which are created by the current power dispositions. The characters are divided into four categories, based on their predominant physical and "social" functions: a sexbot, a domesticated artificial woman, a destructive artificial woman and an emotional/intelligent artificial woman. The following identification and interpretation of the body, identity, relationships and the narrative structures are based on the theoretical...