University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of Communication

This dissertation investigates the role of media in the identity construction of minority language speakers in Botswana, with a focus on the Bakalanga. The study is informed by debates around the degree to which the media can be seen to play a central role in the way the Bakalanga define their own identity. As part of this, it considers how such individuals understand their own sense of identity to be located within processes of nation-building, and in particular in relation to the construction of a national identity. It focuses, more particularly, on the extent to which the absence of particular languages within media can be said to impact on such processes of identity formation. The study responds, at the same time, to the argument that people’s more general lived experiences and their broader social environment have a bearing on how they make sense of the media. As such, it can be seen to critique the assumption that the media necessarily play a central and defining role within processes of socialisation. In order to explore the significance of these debates for a study of the Bakalanga, the dissertation includes a contextual discussion of language policy in Botswana, the impact of colonial history on such policy and the implications that this has had for the linguistic identity of the media. It also reviews theoretical debates that help to make sense of the role that the media plays within the processes through which minority language speakers construct their own identity. Finally, it includes an empirical case study, consisting of qualitative interviews with individuals who identify themselves as Bakalanga. It is argued that, because of the absence of their own language from the media, the respondents do not describe the media as central to their own processes of identity formation. At the same time, the respondents recognise the importance of the media within society, and are preoccupied with their own marginalisation from the media. The study explores the way the respondents make sense of such marginalisation, as demonstrated by their attempts to seek alternative media platforms in which they can find recognition of their own language and social experience. The study thus reaffirms the significance of media in society – even for people who feel that they are not recognised within such media.

This study investigated the nature of opinions and attitudes expressed in letters to South African newspapers regarding selected incidents of interracial controversy, namely the Botes (2010) and Forum for Black Journalists (FBJ) (2008) incidents. A qualitative and quantitative content analysis of these letters was conducted to gauge the attitudes that writers displayed towards members of their cultural group (ingroup) and members of other cultural groups (outgroups). The results of the qualitative analysis indicated that individuals in a racial group have different perspectives of in- and outgroup members. The results of the quantitative analysis, however, showed that the majority of writers tend to display positive attitudes towards ingroup members and negative attitudes towards out groups. The dominance of positive attitudes towards ingroups and negative attitudes towards outgroups can be attributed to myths and discourses circulating in postapartheid South Africa and the current social climate in general. The study concluded that although individuals’ attitudes may differ from the stark negative attitudes displayed towards outgroups during the apartheid era, negative attitudes towards outgroups persist. / Communication Science / M. A. (Communication Science)

Cette dissertation doctorale entend contribuer au renouveau des sciences de l’information et de la communication (SIC) et plus particulièrement de la construction du « public » dans un contexte caractérisé par une remise en question des savoirs théoriques et méthodologiques associée à l’émergence d’internet. <p>Cette problématique est développée en trois temps. Dans un premier temps, nous effectuons une synthèse des constructions du public dans la recherche sur les médias classiques. Les multiples « publics » repérés dans la littérature scientifique en information et communication (infocom) sont organisés à deux niveaux. D’une part, nous distinguons les constructions du public comme « acteur collectif » et comme « acteur assistant ». D’autre part, à un niveau plus fin d’analyse, les concepts de public comme « groupe » et comme « collectivité » permettent de distinguer deux types de public comme « acteur collectif » tandis que les concepts de public comme « récepteur » et comme « coproducteur » renvoient à deux catégories différentes de public comme « acteur assistant ».<p>Dans un deuxième temps, nous examinons plusieurs ajustements des constructions du public apportés (ou à apporter) par la recherche en infocom à propos d’internet. En ce qui concerne la construction du public comme « groupe », celle-ci recouvre désormais une grande variété de groupes dont les processus de communication interne deviennent un objet d’étude à part entière. De plus, la construction comme « public exposé » (une catégorie de public comme « récepteur ») s’articule à la problématique de l’accès aux informations. Enfin, la construction du public comme « coproducteur » voit son champ d’application considérablement élargi.<p>Dans un troisième et dernier temps, nous réalisons une méta-analyse de la construction du public d’internet. Le corpus est composé de 186 articles issus de six revues scientifiques en infocom. Les variables examinées sont :l’origine culturelle des auteurs, l’orientation éditoriale des revues, les thématiques de recherche, les constructions du public, les constructions d’internet et les méthodes de recherche. Les résultats révèlent notamment que les ajustements nécessaires des constructions du public sont peu représentés dans le corpus. Si la construction comme « groupe » est plus fréquente que la construction comme « collectivité », la première est toutefois concentrée dans deux revues et semble peu diversifiée. De plus, le public comme « coproducteur » est rarement étudié alors qu’internet facilite la participation à la production des messages et favorise l’appropriation des contenus. <p>Par ailleurs, la construction du public d’internet est culturellement marquée :les chercheurs européens le construisent plutôt comme « acteur collectif » tandis que les chercheurs américains privilégient la construction comme « acteur assistant ». De plus, les constructions du public ne sont pas associées aux mêmes constructions d’internet :le public comme « acteur collectif » est associé à une construction d’internet comme « medium » tandis que le public comme « acteur assistant » est associé à une construction d’internet comme « support », « média » ou « contenu ». Enfin, les constructions du public d’internet donnent lieu à des méthodes de recherche distinctes, le public comme « acteur collectif » étant articulé aux méthodes qualitatives et le public comme « acteur assistant » aux méthodes quantitatives. /<p>This doctoral thesis aims to contribute to the revival of the information and communication sciences (ICS) whose theoretical and methodological tools are being called into question by the emergence of information and communication technologies. This study focuses on the construction of the “audience” in the age of internet and develops this issue through three chapters.<p>The first chapter synthesizes the constructions of the audience in the research on traditional media. The numerous “audiences” identified in scientific literature from ICS are organized at two levels. On the one hand, we distinguish the audience as “collective actor” from the audience as “attending actor”. On the other hand, and more precisely, the “group” and the “collectivity” are considered two different kinds of audience as “collective actor” while the construction of the audience as “attending actor” is broken up into two constructions: the “receiver” and the “co-producer”.<p>The second chapter discusses (some of) the alterations to the constructions of the audience that ICS have made (or should make) because of the properties of the internet. With regard to the audience as “group”, it covers henceforth a wide range of groups whose internal communication processes become an object of study. Moreover, the construction of the audience as “exposed audience” (a category of audience as “receiver”) is linked up with the issue of information access and the construction of audience as “co-producer” sees its sphere of validity considerably enlarged. <p>The third and last chapter develops a meta-analysis of the construction of the internet audience. The corpus is composed of 186 articles published in six scientific journals from ICS. The variables examined are: the cultural origin of the authors, the editorial influence of the journals, the research subjects, the constructions of the audience, the constructions of internet and the research methods. Among other results, it appears that the “new” constructions of the audience are not much studied in the corpus. The construction as “group” is more frequently encountered than the construction as “collectivity” but is restricted to two journals and is little diversified. Moreover, the audience as “co-producer” is rarely constructed whereas internet facilitates the participation in message production and the appropriation of contents. Furthermore, the construction of the internet audience is a culturally defined process: European researchers rather construct the internet audience as “collective actor” while American researchers tend towards a construction of the internet audience as “attending actor”. Those constructions are associated with different constructions of internet: the audience as “collective actor” is linked up with the construction of internet as “medium” while the audience as “attending actor” is associated with the constructions of internet as “device”, “channel” or “content”. Finally, the constructions of the internet audience are methodologically different: the audience as “collective actor” is studied through qualitative methods while the audience as “attending actor” tends towards quantitative methods.<p> / Doctorat en philosophie et lettres, Orientation information / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

This study intends to discover distinctions between two minority groups, Mormons and Orthodox Jews, compared to a mainstream Protestant group, the Methodists, in terms of newspaper behavior. It intends to probe for differences in newspaper readership frequency and uses (Berelson, 1949) between religious minority group members and majority group members. It originated with the belief that religion (type) and degree of ingroup identification in the minority communities (stronger) would lead to greater newspaper avoidance and limit newspaper use primarily for information/public affairs, rather than Berelson's (1949) other categorizations of socialization, respite, entertainment. Indeed, minority-majority distinctions did not hold. Important differences emerged between religious and more secular individuals in all communities. It was the degree of religiosity that most deeply impacted newspaper use, not denominational ties. The more individuals scored highly on a "religion-as-spiritual-quest" factor, the less they read newspapers, particularly the business newspaper. For "spiritual questors" of all denominations, the house of worship, with its myriad activities, served as a leisure-time base and, for them, recreational use of the newspaper was minimal. / Communication Science / D. Litt. et Phil. (Communication)

In my earlier work, ‘First steps towards a rhetorical hermeneutics of literary interpretation’ (2006), I argued that academic reading takes the form of an argument between readers. Four serious weaknesses in that account are its elision of the distinction between reading and discourse on reading, its inattention to non-academic reading, its exclusive focus on ‘interpretation’ as if this constituted the whole of reading or of discourse on reading, and its failure to theorise the object of literary reading, ie. the work of literature. The current work aims to address all of these problems, together with those created by certain other approaches to literary reading, with the overall objective of clearing the ground for more empirical studies. It exemplifies its points with examples drawn primarily from non-academic public discourse on literature (newspapers, magazines, and the internet), though also from other sources (such as reading groups and undergraduate literature seminars). It takes a particular (though not an exclusive) interest in two specific instances of non-academic reception: the widespread reception of Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses as an attack on Islam, and the minority reception of Peter Jackson’s film trilogy The Lord of the Rings as a narrative of homosexual desire. The first chapter of this dissertation critically surveys the fields of reception study and discourse analysis, and in particular the crossover between them. It finds more productive engagement with the textuality of response in media reception study than in literary reception study. It argues that the application of discourse analysis to reception data serves to problematise, rather than to facilitate, reception study, but it also emphasises the problematic nature of discourse analysis itself. Each of the three subsequent chapters considers a different complex of problems. The first is the literary work, and its relation to its producers and its consumers: Chapter 2 takes the form of a discourse upon the notions of ‘speech act’ and ‘authorial intention’ in relation to literature, carries out an analysis of early public responses to The Satanic Verses, and puts in a word for non-readers by way of a conclusion. The second is the private experience of reading, and its paradoxical status as an object of public representation: Chapter 3 analyses representations of private responses to The Lord of The Rings film trilogy, and concludes with the argument that, though these representations cannot be identical with private responses, they are cannot be extricated from them, either. The third is the impossibility of distinguishing rhetoric from cognition in the telling of stories about reading: Chapter 4 argues that, though anecdotal or autobiographical accounts of reading cannot be taken at face value, they can be taken both as attempts to persuade and as attempts to understand; it concludes with an analysis of a magazine article that tells a number of stories about reading The Satanic Verses – amongst other things. Each of these chapters focuses on non-academic reading as represented in written text, but broadens this focus through consideration of examples drawn from spoken discourse on reading (including in the liminal academic space of the undergraduate classroom). The last chapter mulls over the relationship between reading and discourse of reading, and hesitates over whether to wrap or tear this dissertation’s arguments up.

This study intends to discover distinctions between two minority groups, Mormons and Orthodox Jews, compared to a mainstream Protestant group, the Methodists, in terms of newspaper behavior. It intends to probe for differences in newspaper readership frequency and uses (Berelson, 1949) between religious minority group members and majority group members. It originated with the belief that religion (type) and degree of ingroup identification in the minority communities (stronger) would lead to greater newspaper avoidance and limit newspaper use primarily for information/public affairs, rather than Berelson's (1949) other categorizations of socialization, respite, entertainment. Indeed, minority-majority distinctions did not hold. Important differences emerged between religious and more secular individuals in all communities. It was the degree of religiosity that most deeply impacted newspaper use, not denominational ties. The more individuals scored highly on a "religion-as-spiritual-quest" factor, the less they read newspapers, particularly the business newspaper. For "spiritual questors" of all denominations, the house of worship, with its myriad activities, served as a leisure-time base and, for them, recreational use of the newspaper was minimal. / Communication Science / D. Litt. et Phil. (Communication)