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Feminist media studies theory and intersectionality were used to determine if South African national English daily, weekly and weekend newspapers perpetuated stereotypes when reporting about Helen Zille and Patricia De Lille, both of whom were female political candidates during the 2009 national election. The study explores the nexus between media, gender, race and class representation and political election campaign reporting. In particular, it seeks to find out if the different gender, race and class of two female candidates influenced national newspaper reporters; in either reporting negatively or positively about them as candidates during the elections. Content analysis and critical discourse analysis were used as method to analyse the data collected from newspaper articles. The content analysis findings showed that Zille compared to De Lille received significant coverage and most headlines were referring to her. The findings of the critical discourse analysis indicate that language was sometimes used to perpetuate stereotypes through the use of tone, choice of language in headings, metaphors; puns, oxymorons as well as insinuations. The hypotheses was that the race of the candidates would feature prominently in the findings however there was very little about the race of the candidates. The analysis revealed that there was a focus on the race and class of the audiences and voters addressed by Zille and De Lille during their campaign period. Keywords: Feminist media theory, race, media, gender, elections, Helen Zille and Patricia De Lille. / Dissertation ( MA)- University of Pretoria, 2021. / Afrikaans / MA / Unrestricted

Public service har en uppgift gentemot medborgarna att folkbilda och finnas tillgängliga för alla. Sveriges radio P3 har tidigare klassats som den ”unga kanalen” och har haft en tablå med olika programtitlar utspridda över dagen. I januari 2020 valde Sveriges radio P3 att göra en omstrukturering i tablån där programtitlarna togs bort och målgruppen omdefinierades. Genom semistrukturerade intervjuer med anställda på P3 som har varit involverade i omstruktureringen, söks det svar på hur P3 ser på publiken genom den omstrukturerade tablån, den omdefinierade målgruppen samt synen på publiken i framtiden. I analysen ställs svaren mot teorier om public service, digitalisering, fragmentering, mediekonvergensprocessen och synen på publiken. I teman som hittades bland svaren råder det delade meningar hos intervjupersonerna, exempelvis hur stor påverkan publiken har på innehållet. Resultat som presenteras i studien är bland annat att P3 vill ta sitt samhällsansvar i form av public service-företag samt att de vill nå den publik som faktiskt är intresserad av att lyssna på kanalen. / Public service has a duty towards citizens to educate and be accessible to all. Sweden's radio P3 has previously been classified as the "young channel" and has had a tabloid with various program titles spread throughout the day. In January 2020, the Swedish public service radio channel “P3” chose to restructure a tableau where the program titles were removed, and the target group redefined. Through semi-structured interviews with employees at P3 who have been involved in the restructuring, an answer is sought for how P3 views the audience through the restructured tableau, the redefined target group and the view of the audience in the future. In the analysis, the answers are set against theories of public service, digitization, fragmentation, media convergence and the view of the public. In themes that were found among the answers, there is a shared opinion among the interviewees, for example how much the audience has on the content. The results presented in the study include that P3 wants to take its social responsibility in the form of public service companies and that they want to reach the audience who are actually interested in listening to the channel.

The aim of this study was to examine how digital discourses about eating disorders can be understood from a perspective of gender. Through a qualitative method the study was based of an online forum dedicated to the internet based pro-anorexia community. The study was divided into three categories: beauty ideals, self-fulfilment and the body. How was opposition and conformity exerted? How was femininity created and re-created? The results showed that the members of the community were engaged in discursive work that was mainly oppositional to general societal norms, and ideals and conventions surrounding the female body. The community created alternative meanings to practices such as starving oneself and maintaining a low body weight. Keywords: pro-ana, eating disorders, online communities, feminist media theory, critical discourse analysis

Thesis (S.M. in Science Writing)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Comparative Media Studies, 2013. / "September 2013." Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (page 28). / Though shipwrecks and treasure are deeply seductive to the public, the political, ethical, and scientific geography surrounding these sunken ships is not well publicized, except in cases involving large amounts of money. There is a battle for access rights to these objects with some claiming them as public historical commons, and others as commodity. Written for a popular audience, this thesis explores the history, technology and common sentiments surrounding shipwrecks from the people who have dedicated their lives to them: commercial firms (treasure hunters, salvors, etc.), academics (maritime archaeologists, conservators, educators, historians and cultural managers) and hobbyist SCUBA divers. / by Leslie G. Baehr. / S.M.in Science Writing

Thesis: S.M. in Comparative Media Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Comparative Media Studies/Writing, September, 2019 / Cataloged from the official PDF of thesis. "September 2019." "Figure 17 is missing from p.51"--Disclaimer page. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 138-140). / In this work I seek to show how the lack of nuance in data representation and media practices of the American educational system impedes the design of effective educational interventions for low-income Black youth. First, I argue that data on educational attainment misrepresents race and class thereby masking the educational reality of low-income Black youth. "Data realities" and "Black Hole Data" emerge as hidden phenomena. Next, I analyze a successful transmedia civic initiative, the Ice Bucket Challenge, to illustrate how new media structures and technologies are being used to create new opportunities for social impact. I will then communicate the design process called HIIPE, as well as the work titled Black (w)Hole SC-i52 (Street Cred' iteration 52) that I produced using this process. The goal of this body of work and design approach is to create a new communication system using virtual reality that more clearly articulates the impacts of race and class on educational attainment for low-income Black youth. / by Sultan Sharrief. / S.M. in Comparative Media Studies / S.M.inComparativeMediaStudies Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Comparative Media Studies/Writing

Includes bibliographical references (p. [223]-246). / This thesis examines the agency of marginalised subjects in the context of global capitalism and the information age. The key question that is addressed is whether transnational corporations have appropriated aspects of cultural identity, creative expression and technological innovation for their own enrichment - to the detriment of civil society. Where this is the case, this thesis considers what opportunities exist for issuing challenges to the power of global corporations. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's concept of Empire provides the theoretical foundation for examining cultural, technological and legal conflicts between the interests of citizens and those of corporations. Hardt and Negri theorise the ways in which former imperial powers continue to extend their military, economic and political power in former colonies. The authors argue that former imperial powers no longer compete with each other for the same resources because they now co-operate with each other through multilateral organisations and trade agreements. Ultimately, the key beneficiaries of these modes of co-operation are global corporations that tend to monopolise the production and distribution of technological and cultural products at the expense of the public interest and the functioning of democracy. This work considers the possibilities of responding to Empire and resisting globalisation through strategies that employ some of the same decentralised, network-based techniques that benefit global corporate entities. Hardt and Negri's concept of 'the multitude' as a multiplicity of singularities makes sense of the diverse struggles under discussion in this study, providing the conceptual basis for possibilities of multiple engagements with Empire that are not reductive and that do not exclude certain interest groups. This is an interdisciplinary project that uses case studies to analyse the relationships between law and policy documents, technological development, and the production of cultural texts (such as hip-hop music). Specifically, this work explores the MP3 revolution and Napster (version one); digital sampling in hip-hop; hip-hop activism on South Africa's Cape Flats and these activists' use of new media in their pursuit of social justice. It addresses concerns about the commodification of youth culture as well as debates about intellectual property and the United States' use of trade agreements as enforcement mechanisms that serve the interests of its own corporations. This thesis presents an overview of copyright and trade agreements in order to examine the vested interests that underlie them. In keeping with the focus on globalisation and cultural imperialism, US legislation - such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act - is discussed in relation to alternatives to proprietary approaches toward intellectual property, such as open source software and Creative Commons licenses.

Domestic space and place, as well as how we conceptualise the home, are shifting in response to changes in digital and SNS technologies, and our relationships with such technologies. The home is not only the building in which we live, but a networked assemblage of material and digitally mediated space and place. This study examines predominantly white middle class arrangements of domestic space and place in South Africa, which provides insight into a relatively unexplored aspect of digital culture: the performance of domesticity via SNS, particularly Facebook. Furthermore gendered and racialised power dynamics and privilege in everyday life were investigated through a digital ethnography and critical discourse analysis of posts by 50 Facebook users. This data was supplemented by interviews and in-situ observations of five couples drawn from the broader sample. In combination, these methods revealed how space, place, and domestic responsibilities are secured through narrative practice. Through this study I show how Facebook has emerged as a collaborative platform where storytelling practices are influenced by the site architecture and algorithm. Facebook has opened up the private space of the home allowing domestic space, place, and practice to steadily gain visibility. This visibility, analysed in conjunction with Actor-Network Theory, revealed that homes, and narratives about the homes, are networked and dependent on relationships between actants. The home, and the relationships that stabilise it, are also reflective of discourses and power relations. Human actors negotiated territory and network roles, and these negotiations reveal power and hierarchy. Women remain more tightly bound to the home because of cultural and historical gendered discourses, and as a result the white women participants in this study continue to create place and ascribe space in digitally mediated and material versions of their homes. Furthermore, the resurgence of middle class postfeminist accounts of domesticity have promoted domestic idealism and many women have migrated back to the home spurred on by popular media, and economic privilege that has allowed them to forego paid employment. This study also shows that white, middle class women participants were offered choices to construct their own postfeminist narratives of domesticity. On the other hand, the black women employed as domestic workers by these middle class couples, were largely absent from such narratives and conversations. Findings further suggest that domestic space and place remained the domain of white women participants, and that white men were able to renegotiate their domestic responsibilities because they remained distant from domestic narratives and conversations, where they were largely associated with domestic inadequacy.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 212-225) / This thesi explores two possibilities and relates them to each other: infusions of fantasy (or magic, the dream, the ,marvellous) which undermine realism and the use of disruption as a specific strategy for communicating disorder or elusive experience. It examines the expression of both fantasy and disruption with an emphasis on film editing. This study considers editing as the foundation of narrative structure in film, and explores the effects of alternative articulations of space, time and the body in film that deliberately subvert the norms of continuity editing.

The political and economic crisis that beset Zimbabwe since the late 1990s forms the backdrop to this study which examines the discourses that occupied a position of dominance on the state radio station, Radio Zimbabwe, between March and April 2011. This study moves beyond an analysis of texts and also looks at how some women listeners, who were living in a rural community in Zimbabwe, engaged with the radio and the mainstream discourses in the context of everyday life. The analysis of Radio Zimbabwe broadcasts is informed by Antonio Gramsci's concept of hegemony (1971) as well as ideas from the propaganda model postulated by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky (1988). The audience study draws on some ideas by Carragee (1990) on the critical audience research perspective. This study also takes a poststructuralist approach to language, discourse and subjectivity. Available media scholarship on the post-2000 crisis in Zimbabwe has mostly focused on analysing how the print media represented the land question and the elections. Scholars have neglected to look at hegemonic and counter hegemonic discourses that were broadcast on the most pervasive medium in the country and on the continent, radio during this time. In radio studies in Africa and in Zimbabwe, the exploration of radio content is also largely missing. Also conspicuously absent in research that has been carried out in Zimbabwe and in Africa is an understanding of how audiences interact with mainstream meanings embedded in radio texts. In view of the above-mentioned gaps in literature, this study focuses on radio texts and radio listeners. The study combines a critical discourse analysis of Radio Zimbabwe content with a discourse analysis of narratives of 30 women listeners of the station that were interviewed. Two arguments are made in this thesis. The first is that in the face of waning support, immense opposition at home and abroad and an unrelenting economic crisis, the Zimbabwe African Nationalist Union- Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) government used the discourses on land, the liberation struggle, the father of the nation, Christianity and God to legitimise its continued stay in power. These discourses were also used to delegitimise political opponents inside and outside the country. The second argument that this thesis makes is that women's engagement with Radio Zimbabwe content and hegemonic meanings broadcast on the station is not straightforward and predictable. Though some women said they listened to the news, a programme embedded with dominant ideas, most of them said they did not remember what was contained in most bulletins. Most women recalled news items that were directly relevant to them. While Radio Zimbabwe content was predominantly political in nature, the programmes that women talked about as favourite programmes had nothing to do with politics. The majority of women in the study singled out Kwaziso/Ukhubingelelana and Chakafukidza Dzimba Matenga as programmes they enjoyed listening to. In terms of interacting with mainstream ideas, most of the time many of the women affirmed the dominant discourses. There were, however, instances when some women contested hegemonic ideas. Sometimes mainstream ideas were challenged because what the women heard on the radio and their lived realities were not congruent. Interestingly, there were also times when this disjuncture did not drive women to question what they heard on the station.