This dissertation asks how the structure of moral authority and media viewership in America has changed over the course of the 20th century. In order to address this question, I examine the ways in which American films are, and have been, labeled inappropriate or appropriate for public viewership. I ask how censorship, regulation and rating systems work to create and manage moral ambiguity, and what types of ramifications moral ambiguity is thought to have on viewers. I also address the types of problems associated with American cinema over time, and propose several analytical dimensions to capture and unpack the processes of censoring cinema. This framework is built on the notions of filth and moral ambiguity, moral repercussion, a process of responsibilization, and the telos for cinema, all of which influences how an organization interacts with movies and morality. In lapses of symmetry between on- and off-screen worlds, moral ambiguity arises in ways that responsibilize either content controllers or audiences themselves. I show the links between these articulations and how the moral repercussions of exposure to cinema are defined. I also argue that where in the past moral ambiguity was commonly perceived as a dangerous aspect of cinema, especially by censors and Hollywood film production regulators, contemporary movie raters present a film’s moral ambiguity as a resource to the viewer. Moral ambiguity, if probed the right way, can lead to greater awareness of one’s moral boundaries, enabling viewers to effectively censor their viewership practices themselves. Greater responsibility of the viewer is also linked with more transparency and less rigid definitions of filth, moral repercussion, and the overall purpose of media consumption. Censoring cinema was a way in which state censors attempted to shape a “good” civil society, but the notion of how such a society might be achieved through media shifted over the 20th century. By examining the work of Hollywood’s Production Code Authority, New York State censors, pioneering sociologists and educators of the 1930s, the Film Estimate Board of National Organization’s monthly film classification decisions, and contemporary movie ratings at Common Sense Media, I develop several sub-arguments that support the larger argument that moral ambiguity has become a resource as opposed to a danger. In doing so, I expose the connections between the efforts of earlier censors and industry regulators to contemporary constructions of moral authenticity in movie reviews, and highlight in particular the responsibilization of parental audiences. To date, parents are charged not only with monitoring what their children watch, but also with instilling critical viewing skills among their children. This contrasts with previous content control techniques, wherein parents were responsibilized to make decisions for their children but were not expected to foster any specific values or skills in them, and earlier techniques, wherein parents were not responsibilized at all. I end by noting that the contemporary approach to pollution management relies on two conflicting discourses, which have influenced strategies to managing media morality throughout the 20th century. The first focuses on media research and its alleged effects on social behavior, the second on free and intelligent choices by children consumers themselves – but as this dissertation also exemplifies, both registers have echoes in earlier sites and examples of cinematic censorship and efforts to clean the screen.

¡@¡@¡@This study aimed to examine the third-person effect of product placement in the television news, for clarifying the effect of persuasiveness of news with product placement and comparing the assessment of the impact on others and themselves. The study also concerned about the media literacy if it can help the audience to identify the messages of persuasive intention, to evaluate the impact of product placement in the television news is greater on others than on themselves, and to support the government to prohibit product placement in the television news. ¡@¡@¡@In this study, the main research method was questionnaire survey, and the research participants were junior high school students from three sections in Kaohsiung. There were 476 valid questionnaires totally. Data were analyzed by methods of independent t-test, paired t-test, correlation and hierarchical regression analysis. The results found that product placement of television news would cause the third-person effect: messages of product placement of different levels would result in different intensities of third-person perception. Compared to implicit-style placements in the television news, obvious ones triggered strong media impact on others, but did not trigger third-person perception differential. It meant people tend to view product placement in the television news had impact on others as well as on themselves. ¡@¡@¡@Another focus of this study was personal media literacy ability. Analytic results showed that literacy ability was a better predictor of the third-person effect perception. The result of the study was similar to the findings of the past research: media literacy could assist in identifying the purpose of product placement in the television news, and could avoid the perceived effect of media messages on themselves (Cohen, 1982; Rucinski & Salmon, 1990; Wei, Lo & Lu, 2008). ¡@¡@¡@Most importantly, this study contributed to the growing literature on behavioral component of the third-person effect by demonstrating that the third-person effect perception was a great predictor of support for restriction of product placement in the televiton news than the third-person perception differential. The reason was that the third-person perception differential could not distinguish perceived effects of product placement in the television news on others as well as themselves (Wen-Hui Luo, 2000b). As research result of Xu and Gonzenbach on the behavioral component of the third-person effect, third-person perception differential was the most significant predictor of support for media censorship. Therefore, this study suggests that future research could probe into the mechanisms through which the third-person effect of product placement in the television news occurs.

The commercialization and global transformation of the Chinese film industry demonstrates that this industry has been experiencing drastic changes within the new social and economic environment of China in which film has become a commodity generating high revenues. However, the Chinese government still exerts control over the industry which is perceived as an ideological tool. They believe that the films display and contain beliefs and values of certain social groups as well as external constraints of politics, economy, culture, and ideology. And, ironically, the films censored in China often gain great fame outside of China becoming worldwide blockbusters. This study will look at how those films are banned by the Chinese film censorship system through analyzing their essential cinematic elements, including narrative, filming, editing, sound, color, and sponsor and publisher. The study will also analyze how the combination of government control and market forces influence the Chinese film industry and its production.

Research into the citizen political participation via social media is dominated by two grand narratives. In the first, new media are seen as empowering society, while the second portrays the Internet as the State’s ultimate tool for manipulating citizens. This research employed content analysis, critical discourse analysis and interview to compare and contrast the nature of political participation and deliberation on Weibo in [Hong Kong and mainland] and by [VIPs and causal users] on 2012 Hong Kong Chief Executive Election, and how the online censorship shaped their political participation and deliberation regarding this case. Mixed methods used with theoretical framework (e.g. democracy, digital democracy, deliberative democracy, e-participation and citizenship) in this research has demonstrated the role of Weibo both ‘tool’ ‘forum’ and ‘object’ to understand deliberative democracy while citizens used for political participation and deliberation. Dynamic forms of self-censorship demonstrated how the online censorship shaped the citizens’ political participation and deliberation through dynamic explicit or implicit ways on Weibo in this case.

This thesis examines the extent to which the BBC was able to shape the output of popular culture on radio in Britain, according to its own system of beliefs, between the years 1933 and 1967. This research will show that from the outset, the BBC was an institution with a mission to inform, educate and entertain the nation. While it was not opposed to entertainment, its focus was didactic and supported a mission to improve its audience both culturally and intellectually. This policy was not always welcomed by the audience but, with the exception of the war years, persisted into mid 1950s. The Variety Department was formed in 1933 to produce all forms of light entertainment and this research will examine how its policies shaped the production of popular culture over the period concerned. This study looks not only at the workings of the Variety Department but also the topics of Americanisation and vulgarity, the two areas in which the BBC had particular sensitivities. It analyses the BBC's strategies to counteract the American effect on popular music and spoken-word programmes and how it provided its own particularly British form of entertainment in order to produce programmes it considered suitable for British audiences. It also investigates programme censorship imposed by the BBC to mitigate vulgarity in programmes, so as to produce those it considered suitable for its audiences. This thesis will contend that for over 40 years the BBC Variety Department produced popular entertainment programmes on radio which became an integral part of people's daily lives until, within a few years radio was superseded by television as the nation's principal provider of domestic entertainment. There has been no discrete study of the BBC Variety Department and it is intended that this research will add to the existing scholarship in BBC history and contribute to the analysis of radio's place in domestic popular culture in the period examined.

During the Angolan War of 1975-6, whilst South African troops were actively engaged on the side of the Unita/FNLA alliance, news media in South Africa were prohibited from disclosing information about the country's role in the war. Under Section 118 of the Defence Amendment Act of 1967, no information about SA troop movements or plans could be published without the permission of the Minister of Defence or his nominees. This case study shows how the Government used the Defence Act to censor certain news while releasing other news which suited its political outlook and objectives. The study documents the history of the Defence Act and of the military-press liaison machinery which grew out of it. The introduction defines propaganda as a technique of ideological control designed to supplement the control of society by means of repression. The study sets in context the Government's propaganda strategy before, during and after the Angolan War, arguing that the structures of white domination, including the newspaper industry, are being drawn into the Government's scheme of total co-ordination to fight a total war.

This thesis is an examination of the influence and impact of the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland, post 1968, on the practice of Irish history, on southern Irish broadcast media and on the southern Irish modernisation process. I will examine the uneasy and contested transition in systems of hegemony in a society where the state is not coterminous with perceptions of nationhood, where society is anxiously suspended between conservation of its existence and popular nationalist aspirations, where southern economic dependency interacted uneasily with northern political instability and sectarianism. The thesis examines the ‘Ulsterisation’ of the War of Independence by some historians and its aftermath as an ideological project. It pays particular attention, using the case-study method, to the imposition of a sectarian character on republican forces during the war of independence by the highly influential Newfoundland historian Peter Hart, and will explain why this research is ideologically problematic within Irish historiography. I will link this to (in a second case-study) the project undertaken in the early 1970s by Irish government minister (also an academic historian and political scientist) Conor Cruise O’Brien to undermine and eradicate from popular awareness secular anti-imperialist aspects of Irish nationalist consciousness, primarily through, in case-study three, the imposition of broadcasting censorship and support for repression. I question O’Brien’s positing of a ‘Catholic nationalism’ as an overarching basis for Irish statehood by, in case-study four, an examination the largely unexplored socio-economic position of Protestants in southern Ireland and the forms of social control imposed on and within that community. The thesis examines how official reaction to the conflict combined repression and broadcasting censorship during the 1970s to revise popular perceptions of Irish history and Irish society. Control of understanding of the present was combined with attempts to take control of perceptions of the past, in order to circumscribe the parameters of what is feasible in the present, so as to preserve the socio-economic status quo. It specifically explores the impact of the post 1968 Northern Ireland conflict on: • The attempt by proponents of Irish revisionist historiography to portray Irish resistance to British rule as ‘Catholic nationalism’ and as a mirror image generally of Ulster unionist sectarianism; in the context of • The simultaneous transformational change of economic direction in the southern Irish economy and society, which imparted to this project increased impetus, opportunity and political scope.

This comparative study investigates the media representation of YouTube-based news about the #MeToo campaign, feminism, and sexual harassment accounts in three BRICS nations: China, Russia and Brazil. The situation of women in the Global South was at the centre of discussions during the 2018 BRICS summit. While their security remains a persistent issue, officials declared that women should not feel unsafe while participating in economic activity. Although the bloc flagged gender disparities as a significant concern, media outlets perceive Russia, Brazil and China's responses to sexism and gender-based violence as inadequate. Various mechanisms also compromise activism for women's rights. This research focuses on the YouTube representation of conditions which gave rise to the campaign and the process of #MeToo in BRICS. This study considers the level of inclusion of women in economic activity, the procedures established for their safety as well as the extent of media freedom, including tools available for feminist advocacy. In addition to revealing gaps in depiction and proposing solutions for improved media framing, this research is significant because the role and repercussions of this viral campaign must be comprehended better in BRICS economies. Academics focused mainly on the impact of the movement in the West. However, the innovative feminist trend rapidly spread to non-western nations that are dominant emerging economies, showing the gravity of sexual harassment and gender disparities globally. Furthermore, the extent to which #MeToo had influenced localised iterations of anti-assault movements in these emerging countries suggests that the BRICS became sites where sexual abuse and gender inequalities unfold singularly in comparison to other nations. The study presents findings from primary research done on the BRICS, this online social movement #MeToo and related gender dynamics issues. After a presentation of the selected study design, the research provides results from a content analysis of thirty YouTube news reports (October 2017-March 2019).

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