Student Number : 9201317D - MA research report - School of Journalism and Media Studies - Faculty of Humanities / Johannesburg has seen a significant increase in its Ethiopian born population since the end of apartheid, which mirrors global patterns of cities being the primary destinations of international migrants. In addition the city is considered instrumental in shaping South Africa’s media landscape. It is this juncture between media and migration which forms the theoretical basis of this study, as they both recognise the work of the imagination. This study explores the local particularities and stylistic features of media consumption patterns of Ethiopian migrants in Johannesburg and the relationship this has with articulating their self-understanding. It argues that South African media informs the bulk of the Ethiopian migrant media experience and as a result it contributes in assisting their integration into Johannesburg society. On the other hand, South African media also plays an active part in enforcing the respondents’ sense of social exclusion, as the media highlights South African behaviours which they find offensive (such as xenophobia). In this way, Ethiopian migrant narratives and the ways in which they consume media serves both to rationalise their choice of leaving ‘home’ and the state of permanent transit in which they live.

acase@tulane.edu / Abstract Future racial socialization (FRS) is a future-oriented concept that speaks to how adolescents intend to racially socialize their own children. This future-oriented parenting decision has been associated with the existing racial socialization messages that adolescents receive from their own caregivers prior to becoming parents themselves. Research has posited that parental racial socialization is arguably one of the most important developmental processes for African American youth (Hughes, 2006), and has been largely conceptualized as a process between parents and children. However, a new force called Social Networking Sites (SNS) has entered our ecological world over the last 20 years; possibly catalyzing a shift to occur in the racial socialization processes of adolescents, especially the African American adolescents of today known as being a part of the Generation Z or as the iGeneration (approximately born 1995-2012). It is important to understand how SNS are altering the adolescent development processes so that we can understand its benefits and risks. This study is a secondary data analysis of archived data that examines the relation of Parental Racial Socialization to Future Racial Socialization (FRS) as moderated by SNS and Racial Identity (RI), in African American Adolescents. In the current study, the participants are 300 African American high school students in a large southern urban city. The students ranged in age from 13 to 19 years old and attended a predominately (98%) African American high school in the United States. Findings demonstrate that racial identity plays a significant role in the relation between PRS (cultural socialization type) and FRS, and when specifically examining African American girls, racial centrality (a subcomponent of racial identity) and SNS play a significant role in moderating the relation between two types of PRS and FRS. / 1 / Ashlee Yates

Magister Artium - MA (Women and Gender Studies) / The aim of this study was to explore representations of gender, race and sexuality in a select group of South African magazines - Men's Health, FHM, Blink, True Love, Femina and Fair Lady - between 2003 and 2005. From a feminist poststructuralist perspective, it was argued that these magazines presented particular subjectives as normative; privileging and centerig one pole within dichotomies of gender, race and sexuality. / South Africa

Organizational research about the autonomy paradox –the discrepancy between workers' increased level of autonomy in carrying out their work and their increased self-imposed constraints– is limited in two ways. First, our understanding of the role of technology in perpetuating the paradox of autonomy is limited to the influence of relatively simple features of technology (e.g., email devices' portability and ubiquity) in amplifying the expectations of near-constant availability. However, human-computer interaction research and practice increasingly show that design features of advanced technology, too, can play an important role in cultivating the culture of constant connectivity. Second, organizational research on the autonomy paradox has primarily focused on organizational shared expectations and has not examined social forces and cultural images that might contribute to the autonomy paradox in the individualized context of independent work. Thus, our understanding of socio-cultural processes that might contribute to the tension between autonomy and discipline in the context of platform work is incomplete. In this dissertation, I explore these issues through a review study and two empirical studies that draw on 50 semi-structured interviews with Instagram content creators, four years of participant observation, and a walkthrough analysis of the platform’s features. The first study integrates the literature on sociomateriality, identity control, and autonomy paradox to explore the interconnected cultural, social, and material mechanisms that contribute to the autonomy paradox. I discuss how we can extend our understanding of autonomy in technology use by attending more explicitly to material features of digital technology and how mechanisms identified in organizational contexts can guide our understanding of platform workers’ autonomy. In so doing, this study maps out pathways for examining autonomy and discipline outside traditional organizational contexts. The second paper examines how through a recurring process that I label identity baiting, evaluative metrics provided by digital platforms function as habit-forming identity affirming opportunities for desired identities which motivate work effort and sustain underpaid future oriented labor. By attending to workers’ desired identities rooted in cultural ideals of independent work, this study sheds light on entanglement of cultural ideals and technological features in shaping the tensions of autonomy and self-imposed constraints in platform work. Finally, the third study explores how people navigate the tensions arising from the collocation of externally prescribed authenticity in the discourse of personal branding with the internal desire to be and feel authentic in contemporary work. I find that tensions arise from the consistency required to maintain a personal brand and the inconsistency of the authentic self over time. Further, practices induced by the rhetorical invocations of authenticity sometimes contradicted workers’ internal needs for a strategic balance between authentic and image management. This study shows that tensions of autonomy remain even if the external prescription demands individuality and authenticity rather conformity and collective assimilation. / Thesis / Candidate in Philosophy / How and why might workers (choose to) constrain their own autonomy in the context of platform work? Animated by this overarching research question, this thesis explores the tensions between autonomy and self-imposed constraints through three essays. The first essay integrates multiple streams of organizational research to portray the constellation of three structural forces (social norms, cultural discourses, and material features of technology) that interact with workers’ identity to shape the autonomy paradox. The second essay demonstrates how evaluative metrics provided by digital platforms function as habit-forming identity baits that control workers’ behavior and sustain underpaid labor. Finally, the third essay demonstrates how prescribed authenticity (e.g., the ethos of ‘just be yourself’) prevalent in the discourse of personal branding ironically constrain workers’ autonomy by turning the once protective fender of personal brand into a system of radical self-revelation. The second and third essays draw on an inductive qualitative inquiry of Instagram content creators.

The aim of this research is to examine the identities of youth from different cultural background in Malaysia that has been formed through consumption of media. The forces of globalisation reportedly have de-centred the self from the core, leading to multiple, fluid and contradictory identities. Individuals have been displaced from their backgrounds, and have emerged as individuals, in contrast to past collective identities. People are self-reflexive in constructing their sense of self, with the media playing a role in nurturing one s quest for self-identity (Thompson, 1995). This issue is of particular relevance to young Malaysians. Within this locality, young people s lives are deeply embedded in the collectivities of ethnicity, religion and national identity. At the same time, Malaysia has adopted an open economic market. The de-regulation of Malaysia s broadcasting services enables a mass penetration of the global media to influence young Malaysians. This study is interested in examining how these conditions have affected young Malaysians identities through media consumption. While other studies have explored identity through the consumption of the global media by local audiences, such studies have focused on hybridised cultural practices. This study takes into account de-centred identities by examining shifts in values among different ethnicities, as reflected in consumption of global and local television programmes, differentiating this from previous research works. This study draws on Giddens (1990) concept of reflexivity in examining this issue. This study found that the global media plays a significant role in young Malaysians questioning tradition against modernity. They admire life outside Malaysia, and view it as more modern and liberating, compared to the perceived closed life of Malaysian culture. Yet, this does not conclusively show that young Malaysians have completely abandoned local cultures and values. Rather, it shows they can fully adopt values they admire into their lives while continuing to live within the bounds of their parents and community. Young Malaysians have appropriated the various forms of global cultures derived from media consumption as a means of forging their sense of self, which articulates a need to project an individual self rather than emerging from their collectivity. Although religion and ethnicity remain important in their lives, these young people do not see themselves solely restricted by these identity markers alone. Their cultural identity contains characteristics of other global cultures as well. It is an intersection of various forms of identities, negotiated between religion and ethnicity within global youth cultures, diaspora, gender, lifestyles and taste. Young Malaysians can best be described as having in-between identities - global - local subjects borne out of the hybridisation of values from both sources. Ethnic minority Malaysians display two identities, due to their consumption of international programmes. First, overseas Chinese and Tamil television programmes enable youth to hybridise their youth identity into Western-Asian popular youth cultures instead of drawing solely from one or the other. Second, this type of exposure leads young Malaysian-Chinese to have feelings of cultural superiority over the local Malay films and drama.

This dissertation in Middle Eastern Studies explores the creation of national identity through visual media in the contemporary United Arab Emirates. Within a framework of cultural and media studies the thesis analyses how forms of representation are negotiated by Emirati media producers. The research tests the applicability of cultural theories developed by Appadurai and Eickelman in the context of the Gulf Region. The UAE media industry is considered within a network of global media companies. The local industry's interaction with global media production companies illustrates a constructed divide between local and global identities. This creates specific patterns of media making and influences local audience perceptions of different narratives and representations. The research uses qualitative methods, based on interviews and focus groups conducted between September 2009 and April 2010 in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. The interviewees were Emirati media professional and Students of Media Communication. They discuss how media producers and television presenters try to reconcile their notions of what a national media should be with the restrictive structure of the industry. The interviews demonstrate the challenges of a government-controlled national media for the development of a public dialogue on national identity and confirm that the state-controlled television and film industry, does not account for the diversity of the Emirati community of nationals. The criticism of Emirati representation in the media is accompanied by a feeling of stagnation and inability to change the existing patterns. It results in their turning away towards commercial media. Going beyond an analysis of restrictive media praxis, the research provides an inside perspective on the complex issue of contemporary Emirati identity.

This research seeks to address the issue of media consumption and the formation of diaspora identity within second and third generation British-born residents of Pakistani origin. In recent years there has been much debate centred on this group within the context of domestic and wider international geopolitics of winning hearts and minds, the ‘war on terror’ and the rise of the internet and social media as unrestricted spaces of self-expression. This has had a profound impact on the sense of belonging that transcends national boundaries and becomes a more transnational experience creating new communities of interest. The role of the media and other forms of communication may be a key or important determinant in how these groups, represented by the Pukhtoon and Punjabi in this study, not only see themselves but view representation of their identify and sense of self to a wider public arena. The perceived relationship between Islam and the ‘war on terror’ as formed by the media has had a profound impact on perceptions and mindsets of many of the diaspora. New technology has created a new smartphone generation able to reassess and reaffirm their emerging hybridity set within a new discourse of equal rights and respect for cultural and religious values within a transnational context.

This research seeks to address the issue of media consumption and the formation of diaspora identity within second and third generation British-born residents of Pakistani origin. In recent years there has been much debate centred on this group within the context of domestic and wider international geopolitics of winning hearts and minds, the ‘war on terror’ and the rise of the internet and social media as unrestricted spaces of self-expression. This has had a profound impact on the sense of belonging that transcends national boundaries and becomes a more transnational experience creating new communities of interest. The role of the media and other forms of communication may be a key or important determinant in how these groups, represented by the Pukhtoon and Punjabi in this study, not only see themselves but view representation of their identify and sense of self to a wider public arena. The perceived relationship between Islam and the ‘war on terror’ as formed by the media has had a profound impact on perceptions and mindsets of many of the diaspora. New technology has created a new smartphone generation able to reassess and reaffirm their emerging hybridity set within a new discourse of equal rights and respect for cultural and religious values within a transnational context.

This final thesis is looking for ways social networking site users understand their virtual image, online identity and the way online identity is made. It also deals with the way users view the use of social networks and the fact that their virtual profiles reflect their personalities and opinions. It also handles a study on how users perceive the closeness of "Facebook world", whether as a world made up of real people contacts or just a cold virtual space. Social network users leave a digital trace behind. In addition, this thesis follows its impact on online reputation. Also it follows effect it has on user's virtual contacts. It considers attitudes towards social networking sites based on age and gender. It mentions certain effects that accompany user and his presence on internet and social network in general: disinhibition effect, flaming, trolling or spiral of silence theory. It describes evolution of the communication on social networks. In the final stage it focuses on commercial potential: marketing opportunities on Facebook, ways to exploit users' data and what will be the benefit for both parties.

(in English): The diploma thesis analyzes special historical and social themes, which have been published in two most significant newspapers of Polish minority from Teschen Silesia - Głos Ludu and Zwrot. The theoretical part of this thesis is focused on problematics of Polish press in Teschen Silesia since 1848, especially on a history, contens and editors of first Polish- language newspapers. This part is also dedicated to the development of Polish press in Teschen Silesia in the 20th century, primarily to advancement of Polish press in the first half of the century, but also to the reaction to partition of Teschen Silesia after the First World War. This part put emphazis on Czech-Polish relations. The diploma thesis is also focused on the historical development and content of Głos Ludu and Zwrot (in the period of communism). Except for content analysis the thesis is dedicated to newspeak. The main purpose of the practical part of the thesis is to introduce a Polish perception of themself and perception of Czech majority through the minority press in the first six years after the fall of the communist regime (1990-1995). Using the Critical discourse analysis (CDA), the thesis examine a snippets of articles, which are divided into the following socio-historical thematic units: position of Polish...