By examining viewer reception of female antagonists in traditionally feminine roles on television—particularly the role of wives and mothers who have husbands to answer to and children to look after and are thus expected, in some form, to act as a caretaker or guide for others—we can explore modern societal attitudes towards female agency and gender-based expectations of behavior.

The advancement of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), necessitate optimisation of their algorithms and their performance. More specifically, network coverage and preservation of nodes energy to increase the network's lifetime are among the core objectives of routing and clustering methods. This thesis constitutes of a literature review of WSNs' routing protocols in a categorised manner followed by proposing an energy efficient and QoS aware paradigm (PUSH) for flat network that outperform other similar paradigms in terms of collective delay and energy dissipation within the network. We have proposed a new clustering model, known as Energy Aware and Address Free Clustering (EAAFC) in which, no global addressing is required. In other words, nodes are assigned with an ID, based on local information. EAAFC clusters nodes with minimum number of cluster heads which in turn results in less in network energy consumption. Cluster heads are then re-elected frequently based on nodes' energy and distribution. EAAFC does not require geographical location of nodes nor time synchronisation. We compare performance results of our proposed clustering model, against two of well received algorithms, namely LEACH and EECF to demonstrate the advantages of EAAFC. In chapters 1 and 2, the major routing protocols have been studied over the years of research and strength and weaknesses of each protocol has been scrutinised. Further, objectives, motivation and methodology of the research are discussed. In chapter 3 and 4 the proposed routing paradigm for flat networks (PUSH) as well as the clustering protocol, EAAFC, and its advantages over other protocols is discussed in depth. Several scenarios based on similar well-known routing protocols have been implemented and tested to use as comparison and to evaluate the performance of paradigm and protocol presented in this thesis. These scenarios have been implemented in the simulator environment. The simulation results confirm the theoretic evaluation and support that PUSH and EAAFC outperforms the other protocols in compared criteria as they can achieve less latency, better coverage, preserve more energy and achieve more equally distributed energy dissipation across the network which result in longer network life time and full functionality.

This thesis project examines the way that cinematography can create an emotional connection between the film’s characters and the audience. The main component of the project is a film I wrote, directed, and shot, about a stool that falls in love with a pair of pants, titled “The Window Display.” While it is clear that the typical film relies on the emotional impact of the fictional story, this film attempts to create the same effect but with inanimate objects. Thus, “The Window Display” illustrates the ways in which different visual language, especially images from the silent film era, work together to help a human audience emotionally identify with an inanimate protagonist.

This thesis explores the current status of privacy in the context of the upcoming implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and, more precisely, focuses on the redefined Right to be forgotten as its most controversial component. Norman Fairclough’s three-dimensional model of critical discourse analysis was deployed to show how the Right to be forgotten is reshaping the privacy discourse in the age of big data, digitalization, surveillance and data driven business. Qualitative content analysis was used to serve critical discourse analysis as the first stage of the three dimensions, which built the foundation for the analysis of the broader discursive and societal practices. The digital age requires a rethinking of privacy in terms of the protection of personal data due to the embeddedness of technology in everyday life, big data, easy retrieval and cheap cloud storage. Forgetting and remembering are two facets that constitute human behavior but within the regime of technological advancements, both have lost, or changed their meaning. The new legislative framework aims to enhance forgetting but seems more of a façade to legitimate remembering. Several online blog posts written by experts in diverse fields of knowledge have shown that the current legislative framework is no longer sufficient due to technological change and unequal hegemonic relations, which contribute to reshaping the privacy discourse. The thesis does not give a final answer to the questions raised but contributes to the debate and to a comprehensive understanding of the new legislation in Europe.

This thesis combines analysis of the production of EU news with analysis of EU news texts appearing in the UK national, daily press. It identifies key forces shaping EU news production and seeks to explain how and why they influence the content of EU press coverage. Forces shaping news production are explored through interviews with Brussels correspondents, UK based journalists and EU press officials. Findings emerging from these interviews are then examined, revised and further explored through a combination of the quantitative and qualitative analysis of newspaper texts. The resulting conclusions provide a number of original and substantial contributions to our understanding of the nature and causes of EU press coverage in the UK. First, the thesis provides the most comprehensive study to date of the roles of UK based journalists in the production of EU news. It identifies a number of ways in which these under-researched subjects are crucial in shaping the nature of EU reporting. Second, the thesis provides new findings about the role of the EU Commission in influencing the coverage of EU news, being the first major study to examine recent reforms of the European Commission's communication strategies and their impacts on the way the press service operates. Third, the study produces a new framework for analysing EU news texts in UK newspapers based on the empirical study of their production. In doing so, it is able to provide new findings about some of the causes of EU news in the UK press, about which previous textual studies have only been able to speculate. Finally, this thesis offers a new means of classifying EU press coverage. It will argue that existing means are inadequate, and develop an alternative which better accounts for the complexities and characteristics of EU news production.

No description available.

Introduction (Purpose) - The main purpose of this study is to investigate how participation is differently understood and its effects in the relationship between managers and employees. By answering the research question has the potential to improve more effective participation practices. Theoretical framework – Discourses are considered as sites of power which involve an act of resistance itself. Both concepts co-emerge together in a dialectical relationship. The co-existence of different participation discourses inevitably provides tensions which are understood as a normal condition of the organizational life. Design/methodology/approach - The research setting took place in Uppsala Kommun Vård och Omsorg where the data was collected during 14 weeks. Due to my position as an employee within the organization, an inductive approach was considered as the most suitable reasoning in this research. By taking a qualitative design, interviews and observations were carried out to both managers and employees in three different groups. Findings - The organizational context as well as the different understandings of authority between managers and employees involves tensions which are used to articulate contrasting expectations and participation discourses. Significantly, the employees’ silence at the meetings is not only used by the managers and the group leaders to reinforce their own identities. Furthermore, the absence of a group leader does not eliminate this figure as such. This shows the inefficiency regarding the organizational debate about the appropriateness and maintenance of group leaders (i.e. “samordnares”) within personal assistants’ groups. Conclusions – Contrasting participation discourses reflect how power is differently exercised between managers and employees. Moreover, the intentionality of power and, hence, resistance behaviors is often misunderstood between managers and employees. To improve more effective participatory practices, some of the following examples were found; the requirement of clarify employees and group leaders’ competences within the decisions making processes, the correct organization in advance of the items for discussion, decentralization of responsibilities among the employees as well as conducting group meetings at the clients’ residence, at least once a year.

This thesis examines whether and to what degree the UK media undermine the legitimacy of the European Parliament in Britain. It begins by arguing that in respect of the EP, the concept of legitimacy needs reappraisal. It then offers a definition of "meaningful legitimacy" for the EP and identifies those indicators, which will allow the presence or absence of meaningful legitimacy among the British public to be examined. On the basis of the definition offered and using the indicators identified the empirical evidence for the absence of legitimacy is reviewed. It is found that meaningful legitimacy for the EP is absent among the British public. Media discourse theory is then outlined and a particular application of media discourse theory is used to examine the British media. An empirical examination of the perception of the legitimacy of the European Parliament in the British Euro-sceptic and the British pro-European press respectively is offered. Problems related to bias in its various forms, how to identify it and its impact, are then outlined. The impact on legitimacy of the British broadcast media, especially the BBC, is evaluated through a detailed data analysis. Finally, the thesis concludes that meaningful legitimacy is absent and that the media, although not solely responsible for this, have played a major deliberative role in preventing meaningful legitimacy for the European Parliament being established. At the same time their coverage reflects this absence of legitimacy. Since the EP's meaningful legitimacy in its own right has not been subject to any substantial examination, this has left a growing gap in the literature. By offering a definition of legitimacy which can be operationalised and used in an empirical assessment of the impact of the UK media on the EP's legitimacy, this thesis makes a distinctive contribution to future research in this area.

No description available.

This research explores the portrayals of perpetrators in television broadcast coverage of truth commissions within politically transitioning societies, particularly how these discourses may influence the perceptions and experience of transition out of conflict. It focuses on the narratives constructed around apartheid-era perpetrators who participated in the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) as shown by the South African Broadcasting Corporation's (SABC) weekly broadcast, Truth Commission Special Report. It also considers how this informs perpetrators in speaking about their own histories. The SABC broadcasts aired between the 21st of April 1996 and the 29th of March 1998. It acted as a key news source on the workings of the TRC for a large group of citizens. An average of 1.1 to 1.3 million people tuned in each week for the first year, and an average of 510,000 people tuning in during its second year on air.1 The TRC hearings were recorded and filmed, and parts of these recordings were included in the SABC programme, along with further research by Special Report journalists. This included stories from the apartheid era that were not told through the TRC, further interviews with perpetrators, victims, bystanders, and communities, as well as reference to news and legal documents. As SABC describes it, the Truth Commission Special Report series “contributed to the TRC's pursuit of revealing the truth about, and engendering a deeper engagement with, South Africa's past conflicts.”2 The series was hosted and produced by well-known anti-apartheid journalist and Afrikaner Max du Preez, whose own identity became central to the narrative put forth. His team of journalists and producers included other Afrikaners such as his long-time colleague Jacques Pauw, and the young Anneliese Burgess. Otherwise, “his team of journalists varied over the twenty-three months of the series, generally including five and seven people who were racially, ethnically, and linguistically diverse.”3 As South Africa transitioned out of the apartheid state, transparency of the transitional mechanisms taking place was essential for the transformation of governance and the appearance of accountability.4 This demand acted as one of the driving forces for the intense media involvement in the country's chief transitional process, namely the TRC. This research hinges on the hypothesis that the media's involvement in the South African transitional process went beyond the provision of transparency and may have influenced people's perceptions and experience within the transition per assertions by scholars such as Parver and Wolf, Fischer, Kent, and Mihr, 5 among others. It uses this as a starting point to then investigate the series' narrative as a source of these perceptions and the subsequent experiences of the subjects. This points not only to outcomes, but also their influencing factors with the intent to suggest recommendations for more intentional media coverage of political transitions, with perpetrators being one facet of such.