A research report submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the field of Cultural Policy and Management, 2016 / Without an audience, theatre is meaningless; however, getting that audience to the theatre can be challenging; especially for small scale independent theatre organisations that often don’t have access to the necessary skills and budgets. This research report considers the potential place of Facebook in audience development. It investigates whether Facebook, as a social networking platform, can function as an effective tool to help small scale independent theatre organisations to broaden, deepen and/or diversify audiences. Additionally, it explores audience motivations, key drivers and barriers, and how they influence theatre attendance especially in a South African context. The research report follows a mixed method approach which includes in-depth interviews, focus group discussions as well as an online (Facebook) survey to try and find ways to curb the issue of declining audiences. It concludes that audience development requires a thorough understanding of audience needs, drivers, trends and barriers as well as commitment from the entire organisation and sector; that developing audiences is about building on-going and mutually beneficial relationships between audiences and organisations, and that appropriate monitoring and evaluation systems need to be put in place. The report also concludes that Facebook can be effective in helping organisations to reach new audience segments, providing a platform for communication between organisations and their audiences, and for marketing; but proposes that Facebook should be included as one aspect of the holistic audience development plan. / MT2017

The thesis begins by acknowledging the writer's status as a fan. The stimulus for the enquiry emerges from the discrepancy the writer encounters between his fan experience and the ways in which the academy conceptualises fandom. Such theories serve to position the fan at extremes of the field of reader response: as either a passive, cultural dupe or as a radical, textual freedom fighter. By contrast, this thesis aims to take the diversity of fan response into consideration, and situate its analysis in very real concepts of people's lives. In the first of three parts, a typology is developed that examines the contested and disputed nature of fandom. Reference points are drawn from academic writing, popular media and a focus group session with fans of diverse interests. The second part is devoted to fieldwork. Fan conversations, observations and reflections are combined to create six intimate pen-portraits that convey differing ideas of fandom. Topics covered include fans of Doctor Who, The Adventure Game, Sheffield Wednesday football club; the users of archive TV website The Mausoleum Club; attendees at a Kirsty MacColl get-together;Panopticon( a Doctor Who convention); Forbidden Planet (a collector's shop). The final part, `Fandom and Modem Life', draws together the ideas of the thesis to propose a series of maxims on how fandom operates that emphasise complexity, diversity, the significance of emotional attachment, and fandom's interrelation to capitalism (of it, but not about it). Fandom's role is considered in relation to notions of religiosity and sexuality. Fandom is defined ultimately as a form of social identity possible in contemporary western society. The thesis concludes by speculating on how fandom may evolve in the future.

This is a revisionist audience study examining the everyday media cultures of twenty-four young teenage girls from Melbourne in Australia. It argues that in an era of proliferated and convergent media, audience studies cannot restrict its vision to a single media text, technology, or genre. / It takes a broad approach to girls’ media culture and considers the full range of media that girls engage with on a daily basis. It identifies a hegemonic discourse about girls’ media use which it calls “(feminist) new media effects”. This anxiety takes as its key concern the proliferation of media and mediated representations of girls across the spaces of everyday life. (Feminist) new media effects discourse renders girls passive and unable to cope with such media presence without the guidance of adults to teach them how to correctly engage with the media. In order to challenge this construction, the thesis examines participants’ engagements with a range of convergent media texts and technologies, including Internet social networking, repeat DVD spectatorship, young female celebrities, and discourses of moral panic. It shows how mediated representations of girls across these sites are embedded in the fabric of participants’ everyday lives. Apart from highlighting the challenge that this poses to the practice of conducting audience research, it demonstrates the ways that girls both resist and incorporate mediated constructions of femininity within their everyday negotiations of teenage girlhood. It argues that the representation of girlhood constructed in (feminist) new media effects discourse – the vulnerable girl overwhelmed by toxic media messages – is key to girls’ media culture. My findings indicate that participants are primarily invested in resisting this construction of youthful femininity.

<p>Background:</p><p>During the last years, the boom of the Internet has carried along with it new possibilities for communication, in addition, other technological developments of society together act to form a new reality in which companies have to rethink their means for com-municating with consumers.</p><p>Problem and Purpose:</p><p>In a new reality where consumers seem to reap all the benefits of the technological changes, how then, should companies adjust to the changing environment? The authors first investigated the modern media environment and found some trends in how it is evolving, and after listening to what some experts within the field think about the future and of what should be done, they them-selves endeavoured to generate some guidance for companies in this matter.</p><p>Method:</p><p>This thesis is somewhat of a Delphi study, which means that it heavily relies on the statements of experts. What they have said has played a crucial role in the authors’ own formulation of guid-ance. The experts were interviewed either face-to-face, or through the exchange of e-mails.</p><p>Conclusions:</p><p>Major trends in how the media environment is transforming are; technology as an enhancer to rather becoming a determinant, segmentation to fragmentation, decreasing- to increasing returns to scale, an opening for entirely new business concepts and an in-creasing value of intangible assets as a complement to traditional, tangible assets. The authors then presented some elements that would be of crucial significance in this new environment, and they also formulated some more specific guidance in how these ele-ments could be instigated in companies. They were; Speed and flexibility, customization and sustainability. Advice in how they could be instigated where then summarized and illustrated in the “New Digital World Market Communication Diamond”, which basically emphasizes the need for updating the values and the cor-porate culture, the need for streamlining supply chains, the need of truly finding and using information about consumers, and fi-nally, the need for adaptive experimentation.</p>

Sentiment Analysis has been researched in a variety of contexts but in this thesis, the focus is on sentiment analysis in Twitter, which poses its own unique challenges such as the use of slang, abbreviations, emoticons, hashtags, and user mentions. The 140-character restriction on the length of tweets can also lead to text that is difficult even for a human to determine its sentiment. Specifically, this study will analyze sentiment analysis of bilingual (U.S. English and Spanish language) Tweets. The hypothesis here is that Bilingual sentiment analysis is more accurate than sentiment analysis in a single language (English or Spanish) when analyzing bilingual tweets. In general, currently sentiment analysis in bilingual tweets is done against an English dictionary. For each of the test cases in this thesis’ experiment we will use the Python NLTK sentiment package. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.S.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2017. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Background: During the last years, the boom of the Internet has carried along with it new possibilities for communication, in addition, other technological developments of society together act to form a new reality in which companies have to rethink their means for com-municating with consumers. Problem and Purpose: In a new reality where consumers seem to reap all the benefits of the technological changes, how then, should companies adjust to the changing environment? The authors first investigated the modern media environment and found some trends in how it is evolving, and after listening to what some experts within the field think about the future and of what should be done, they them-selves endeavoured to generate some guidance for companies in this matter. Method: This thesis is somewhat of a Delphi study, which means that it heavily relies on the statements of experts. What they have said has played a crucial role in the authors’ own formulation of guid-ance. The experts were interviewed either face-to-face, or through the exchange of e-mails. Conclusions: Major trends in how the media environment is transforming are; technology as an enhancer to rather becoming a determinant, segmentation to fragmentation, decreasing- to increasing returns to scale, an opening for entirely new business concepts and an in-creasing value of intangible assets as a complement to traditional, tangible assets. The authors then presented some elements that would be of crucial significance in this new environment, and they also formulated some more specific guidance in how these ele-ments could be instigated in companies. They were; Speed and flexibility, customization and sustainability. Advice in how they could be instigated where then summarized and illustrated in the “New Digital World Market Communication Diamond”, which basically emphasizes the need for updating the values and the cor-porate culture, the need for streamlining supply chains, the need of truly finding and using information about consumers, and fi-nally, the need for adaptive experimentation.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2000. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 59-62). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2000. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 59-62). Also available on the Internet.

Not available / text

School children have often been regarded as lacking competence when it comes to using media texts. Some researchers refer to them as less active audience or uncritical media users because of their short attention span and because they often perform other activities while using the media. They are not considered as the critical media users a democratic society requires. Children's access to the media has also raised a lot of questions like what and which media they have access to and who selects for them. Their selection and access to the media will relate to their social, economic and cultural background and their race and gender. This research explores the type of media school children have access to and what media texts they select from the range they have access to. This research is premised on a belief that a knowledge of the selection and access of media texts is immediately relevant to education and critical literacy. This will help media educators to assess what learners already know. This research is not intended to judge any learner in relation to their access and use, it aims to get better insight into the types and genres of media learners engage with depending on the race, social class and gender of the learner. I examine the topic against the theoretical understandings of audience reception theory. This discusses how theorists have considered whether the audience are passive or active or critical. The research process involves participation by learners between the ages of 15 and 18 from three different schools of Crawford College in La Lucia, Rossburgh High School in Rossburgh, and Clairwood Secondary School in Clairwood and investigates the nature of media engaged with over a short period of time. Research findings reveal that the type of media accessed by various learners varies in relation to background factors of the learner such as economic background, race and gender. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2001.