This project explores how musical improvisational processes come into being through interacting discursive power relationships that are embodied and enacted through performance. By utilizing the concepts of framing and performativity I am able to show how discursive power constitutes the performance of improvisational music. To exemplify this theory, the project presents a case study examining a Grateful Dead cover band named Uncle John's Band that performs at Skipper's Smokehouse in Tampa, FL. Using an ethnographic methodology, the project articulates the dominant discursive power relationships that constitute Uncle John's Band's improvisational performances. The dominant discursive power relationships revolve around the lived philosophies and performance style of the Grateful Dead as embodied and communicated through performance by the members of Uncle John's Band. Dominant discursive power relationships also form among audience members as well as the staff at Skipper's Smokehouse. All of these power relationships constitute the performance of improvisational music. In a reflexive turn, the project also offers a re-articulation of ethnography through the tenets of improvisation. Finally, the project presents conclusions concerning the nature of researching improvisational music performance and some future directions for this study.

Within the growing field of surveillance studies, national identity cards and related issues have become an important research topic. Most research in this field, however, does not consider the role of media in the development of surveillance. This research examines the history of mediated public debates about identity cards in the U.K. In the U.K, since the Identity Cards Bill 2004, National Identity cards have been widely debated across the British national newspapers once again after several heated historical debates in WWI, WWII, and the 1990s. It is this thesis s purpose to analyze the role of the British national newspapers in generating support and resistance in the development of British national identity cards in the past one hundred years, respectively in 1915, 1919, 1939, 1951, and from 1994 to 2008. This thesis also seeks to find out the continuities and changes in the way British national newspapers influence the repeated introduction and withdrawal of identity cards over time. Specifically, by employing the methods of content and frame analysis, the thesis examines the actors involved in the mediated debate of British national identity cards, their argumentation, the frames underlying the argumentation and the themes appeared in the debates, in order to find out to what extent the British print media supported or opposed the identity cards over time.

This study investigates how five secondary students think mathematically and process information in a technology-supported environment while solving mathematics problems. In the study, students were given open-ended problems to explore in an online dynamic learning environment and to solve the problems in computer environments. Given that all the work was done in the computer environments, both online and offline, students’ work was recorded by using screen capturing software. A new method, the frame analysis method, was used to describe and analyze students’ thinking processes while they were interacting with mathematical objects in the dynamic learning environment and solving mathematics problems. The frame analysis method is a microgenetic method based on information processing theory and is developed to analyze students’ work done in computer environments. Two reasons make the analysis method used in this study unique: (a) collecting data with minimized disturbance of the students and (b) analyzing students’ artefacts through researcher’s (teacher) perspective, meaning that integrates teachers within the analysis process. The frame analysis method consists of multiple steps to observe, describe, interpret, and analyze students’ mathematical thinking processes when they are solving mathematics problems. I described each step in detail to explain how the frame analysis method was used to monitor students’ mathematical thinking and to track their use of technology while solving problems. The data emerged from this study illustrates the importance of using dynamic learning environments in mathematics and the potential for transformation of mathematical representational systems from symbolic to visual. Moreover, data suggest that visual representation systems and linked multi-representational systems encourage students to interact with mathematical concepts and advance their mathematical understanding. Rather than dealing with the grammar of algebra only, students may benefit from direct interaction with the visually represented mathematical concepts. It appears that recording students’ problem-solving processes may engage teachers and mathematics educators to seek opportunities for implementing process-oriented assessment into their curriculum activities. Furthermore, students may benefit from sharing their work through peer collaboration, either online or offline, and metacognition and self-assessment. Suggestions for further studies include using audio and video recording in the frame analysis method.

Understanding the dynamic relationship between culture and structure is a fundamental sociological question. Since the founding of the social sciences -- when Marx explored the connection between the 'macrostructure' and popular culture or Weber studied the development of the 'protestant ethic' -- to the present, the structure-culture dynamic has motivated and puzzled researchers. This thesis joins this longstanding conversation by focusing on social science research on poverty, or what is also called poverty knowledge. Despite the tremendous size and breadth of poverty research, historians of poverty suggest that poverty knowledge demonstrates a frame. That is, a coherent, consistent understanding (and thereby study) of poverty. Building on prior research, the thesis seeks to: (1) verify whether poverty knowledge indeed does demonstrate a frame; (2) and if a frame is present, map the contours and shape of a poverty frame. I do so by focusing on social science research focused on urban poverty published from 1960 to 2010. Conducting a content-frame analysis of 50 journal articles randomly sampled from a universe of 781 eligible articles reveals that poverty knowledge does demonstrate elements of a frame. In particular, the sampled articles understand urban poverty as primarily an individual issue, and moreover, demonstrate an ambivalent evaluation of the urban poor's behavior and culture. The pressing question that arises from this research, and which has continued to drive research on the structure-culture dynamic, is: how do existing social practices ('society') - especially systems of inequality such as racism and patriarchy -- influence our cultural understanding of urban poverty specifically and inequality generally. This is an important question for the social sciences in general, but especially for the areas of critical theory, framing research, poststructuralist discourse studies, the sociology of knowledge, and status construction theory.

Situation Awareness (SA) is the aviation term for the construct describing how actors extract meaning and make sense of their dynamically changing environment. Within the aviation domain, it is broadly acknowledged that SA plays a crucial role for pilots in coping with hazardous situations and its loss is cited as a significant factor in aircraft accidents and incidents. A broad range of psychologically based theories has been applied to conceptualise SA. The aim of this research thesis is to develop an alternative, sociologically based approach, largely drawn from Erving Goffman??s (1974) Frame Analysis, and assess whether it can be used to effectively describe, analyse and discuss SA. An open observation method was used to collect data in the flight deck during ten commercial international flight sectors conducted in an advanced wide-body aircraft. A running narrative of flight activity and associated context was recorded from a purposeful sample of flights operated by consenting flight crews. Data was managed in the NVIVO?? qualitative software analysis program. Strips of activity associated with the establishment or maintenance of SA were identified and examined in accordance with key concepts derived from frame analysis. The results show that key concepts drawn from Goffman??s (1974) frame analysis are able to be applied to the coding and discussion of data. Several emergent themes describe distinct SA behaviours relating to frame establishment and maintenance. These behaviours include; frame confirming, questioning, seeking, setting, proposing, clearing, accepting, reviewing and anticipating. Some unique modifications are made to Goffman??s underlying concepts in order to address specific contextual issues emergent in flight deck operations. SA is supported as a meaningful construct in the aviation domain. This thesis establishes that Goffman??s (1974) general theory of frame analysis supports the major underlying concepts of the specific SA construct. Additionally, a method derived from frame analysis is used to examine and analyse the observed intersubjective SA processes. This analysis also develops several unique perspectives concerning flight crew task performance that have wide ranging implications in procedural design, training and airspace integration. Lastly, practitioner based notions of SA are shown to be equivalent to that of ??frame.??

Situation Awareness (SA) is the aviation term for the construct describing how actors extract meaning and make sense of their dynamically changing environment. Within the aviation domain, it is broadly acknowledged that SA plays a crucial role for pilots in coping with hazardous situations and its loss is cited as a significant factor in aircraft accidents and incidents. A broad range of psychologically based theories has been applied to conceptualise SA. The aim of this research thesis is to develop an alternative, sociologically based approach, largely drawn from Erving Goffman??s (1974) Frame Analysis, and assess whether it can be used to effectively describe, analyse and discuss SA. An open observation method was used to collect data in the flight deck during ten commercial international flight sectors conducted in an advanced wide-body aircraft. A running narrative of flight activity and associated context was recorded from a purposeful sample of flights operated by consenting flight crews. Data was managed in the NVIVO?? qualitative software analysis program. Strips of activity associated with the establishment or maintenance of SA were identified and examined in accordance with key concepts derived from frame analysis. The results show that key concepts drawn from Goffman??s (1974) frame analysis are able to be applied to the coding and discussion of data. Several emergent themes describe distinct SA behaviours relating to frame establishment and maintenance. These behaviours include; frame confirming, questioning, seeking, setting, proposing, clearing, accepting, reviewing and anticipating. Some unique modifications are made to Goffman??s underlying concepts in order to address specific contextual issues emergent in flight deck operations. SA is supported as a meaningful construct in the aviation domain. This thesis establishes that Goffman??s (1974) general theory of frame analysis supports the major underlying concepts of the specific SA construct. Additionally, a method derived from frame analysis is used to examine and analyse the observed intersubjective SA processes. This analysis also develops several unique perspectives concerning flight crew task performance that have wide ranging implications in procedural design, training and airspace integration. Lastly, practitioner based notions of SA are shown to be equivalent to that of ??frame.??

This paper set out to find out how actors have framed Sweden's tax on aviation, and compared the debates around the two times the tax has been enacted, 2006 and 2018. Connecting the specific issue of the aviation tax to the broader narrative on climate change, the framing process was formulated as a two-level game with both issue-specific frames and general master frames that have wider cultural resonance. The framing analysis was conducted observing the debates as a framing contest between frame sponsors (focusing on framing efforts from the aviation industry and the Green Party) in interaction with news journalists and opinion writers. The best way to describe the 2006 debate is that it was dominated by discussion of the tax from an economic standpoint, latching on to a master frame of economic consequences with regional impact. The 2018 debate focused on the environmental aspects of the tax, mostly disregarding the explicit effects of the tax and focusing on the harm of flying, connected with a moral frame together with a responsibility frame towards the individual. As I interpret the debates, the actor who effectively connected their issue frame to a master frame had control of the narrative, which meant for example that the Green Party did not get to discuss environmental aspects in 2006, and that they did not need to discuss economic aspects in 2018.

The overarching aim of this essay is to chart how Swedish news papers have framed refugees and the refugee crisis during 2013, 2015 and 2017 and if there has been a shift in the usage. The paper searches to do so by examining editorial articles from two of the biggest newspapers in Sweden, Aftonbladet and Svenska Dagbladet. The two papers have opposite ideological views; however, they are both independent from political parties. Drawing on an analytical framework elaborated in earlier studies the study uses frame analysis to examine the different usage made during each year. The study finds that the most dominant frame during the time is the responsibility frame, focusing on the responsibility and/or lack of responsibility taken by the government in relation to the refugees. It is also observed that the shift in usage of the human interest-frame and the economical frame is the most distinguishable, where the use of the first-named decrease while the other increase in 2015 compared with 2013. It is also observed that the content of these frames varies among the examined years. The conclusion of the essay is that the framing of refugees has changed not only under the researched years but over all and that the usage is in constant movement.

This thesis analyzes the framing of the economic policies of American populists Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders in American quality newspapers during the 2016 primary elections. This is done with the intent of investigating if the common assumption that the economic policies of pop-ulists are irresponsible could be observed in the news media. By analyzing two newspapers oppo-site each other on the political spectrum – The New York Times to the left and The Wall Street Journal to the right – and their coverage of the policies of two candidates opposite each other on the political spectrum, a complex comparative study is achieved. An inductive frame analysis yielded six different frames used when discussing the economic policies of the candidates: dam-aging, ignorant, unpredictable, unorthodox, status quo and positive change. While none of the frames fit into a binary “irresponsible” or “not irresponsible” category, the frequent use of the damaging and ignorant frames suggests that the assumption of populist irresponsibility is alive and well.

This study analyzes the framing processes of the Indignados movement in Barcelona, as an exemplar of the latest wave of protests, and argues that it expresses a new ecological-economic way out of the crisis. It finds that the movement was not just a reaction to the economic crisis and austerity policies, but that it put forward a metapolitical critique of the social imaginary and (neo)liberal representative democracy. The diagnostic frames of the movement denunciate the subjugation of politics and justice to economics, and reject the logic of economism. The prognostic frames of the movement advance a vision of socio-ecological sustainability and of "real democracy", each articulated differently by a "pragmatist" and an "autonomist" faction within the movement. It argues that frames are overarching outer boundaries that accommodate different ideologies. Ideologies can nevertheless also be put into question by antagonizing frames. Furthermore, through the lens of the Indignados critique, the distinction between materialist and post-materialist values that characterizes the New Social Movement literature is criticised, as "real democracy" is connected to social and environmental justice as well as to a critique of economism and the "imperial mode of living".