Despite the research interests generated among the concept of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) by many, my study has uniquely taken the role of the media to facilitate the implementation of R2P. This was done by examining the nature and gravity of practice of Human Rights Journalism (HRJ) in the international press during the humanitarian crisis in Sri Lanka amidst the overrunning of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) by government forces in May 2009. This study inter-disciplinarily explored the fields of media, human rights and conflict transformation to understand the nexus between R2P and HRJ. Based on the findings on quantitative and qualitative reporting analysis, it was revealed that the international press failed to play its watchdog role to expose the human rights violations and mass atrocity crimes during the humanitarian crisis in Sri Lanka. Besides it also found how the international press failed to draw the international community to consider R2P options on the distant suffering. In Spite of the threats, intimidation and difficulties (whether it was expressed or not) they faced while reporting, majority of the Indian Journalists openly acknowledged the parallel policy with regard to the final war between the governments of India and Sri Lanka. It was that the terrorist label on the LTTE influenced their reporting given their own conceptions and relied on the elite sources for information. While Shaw proposed HRJ as a solution to report physical, structural and cultural violence within the context of humanitarian intervention, from the analysis of the articles on the newspapers and the interviews it was very much evident that the international press did not let the journalists practice HRJ to a satisfactory level and establish a prima facie case to construct the reality of the humanitarian crisis. As supported and corroborated by the two independent yet mutually supportive methodologies, the analysis of this study found that the framing of the news stories is either decided by the editorial policy in accordance with internal guidelines, or by the news sources. Thereby the variety of ideological, political, geographical and cultural contexts of framing establishes a discourse which leaves us with a controlling media power. On the whole this study contributes uniquely towards the development of an epistemological grounding for the practice and research of HRJ within the just-peace framework and development of Frame Analysis Matrix, and Multimodal Discourse Analysis Matrix. In addition, also proves the fact that failing to contribute to the moral responsibility in a truthful and justifiable manner of the victim, rather than via influence will not contribute towards the real human rights practice.

The development of journalism studies has generated increasing interest in researching for a more advanced journalistic role in local and global contexts, where the theory of Human Rights Journalism (HRJ) rises in response in a timely fashion. This PhD study contributes to the development of the theory of HRJ in the following three ways. First, it expands the theory of human rights journalism beyond universal human rights with a focus on individual rights (Western countries) to group rights with a focus on the community (China); According to the findings from the content analysis, interviews and survey, the 5 core elements of the HRJ model (diagnostic reporting, interventionist, proactive, peace journalism, and empathy/critical frame), informed by the universal human rights ethics, need to be adapted to the Chinese political, economic, social and cultural contexts informed by group rights to ensure its smooth practice in China. Unlike the human rights journalists in the Western context, this extended HRJ model argues that the Chinese and foreign human rights journalists must handle the power of negotiations carefully with the state, market and society in China. Second, the Chinese media landscape is too restrictive to allow for the smooth practice of HRJ. HRJ was developed for the global context. However, according to findings mostly drawn from the interviews with Chinese and foreign journalists, there are obstacles such as press censorship, the focus on the ideology of social order over liberalism, and the lack of public interest in the liberal interpretation of human rights that stand in the way of HRJ practise in China. This Chinese context was not captured in earlier studies on HRJ by Shaw (2012) and on Krumbein (2014)’s study on human rights in China, and is therefore seen as a major contribution of this thesis to the knowledge of human rights reporting in the world. Finally, according the survey and interview findings, the Chinese public and elite have a negative perception of the topic of human rights because they only see it in the Western lens of individual rights, and not their own preferred lens of group rights. Due to such negative perception, the unwillingness to talk and discuss ‘human rights’ is strong. This causes obstacle not only for both the Chinese and the foreign journalists to access the views on human rights from the Chinese public, but also deepen the cultural miscommunication on human rights between the Chinese public and elites on one hand, and the Western journalists on the other. This findings further extends Shaw’s (2012b) study on the nexus between cultural miscommunication and human wrongs journalism from a Muslim and Islamic context into the Chinese cultural context. Different from the stereotypical issue that is closely related to culture and civilisation in Shaw’s study, this PhD shows that the clash of cultures could also be encountered when the perception of human rights is negative. Eventually, this causes constraint on the practice of HRJ in the context of China. Overall, this study is a unique contribution, both theoretically and empirically, to the understanding of HRJ globally, and in the context of China, in particular with the consideration of social-political constraints, as well as a mounting challenge on the implementation of the practice.

“Phenomenology is the place where hermeneutics originates, phenomenology is also the place it has left behind.”(Ricoeur ). In this thesis I shall examine possibilities for bringing into dialogue the practice of social documentary photography and the conceptual resources of the post-Structural and critical philosophical hermeneutics of text and action developed by Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005) from the 1970’s onwards. Ricoeur called this an ‘amplifying’ hermeneutics of language, defined as ‘the art of deciphering indirect meaning’ (ibid). Social documentary photography is an intentional activity concerned with the visual interpretation, ethics and representation of life, the otherness of others, and through them something about ourselves. The narratives form social histories of encounters with others. They raise challenging questions of meaning and interpretation in understanding the relations of their subjective agency to an objective reality. Traditionally the meaning of such work is propositional. It consists in the truth conditions of bearing witness to the direct experience of the world and the verifiability of what the photography says, or appears to say about it. To understand the meaning of the photography is to know what would make it true or false. This theory has proven useful and durable, although it has not gone unchallenged. The power it has is remarkable and new documentary narratives continue to be formed in this perspective, adapting to changing technologies, and reverberate with us today. A more subtle way of thinking about this is given by a pragmatic theory of meaning. This is what I am proposing. The focus here is upon use and what documentary photography does and says. A praxis that I refer to by the act of photographing: a discourse of locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary utterances in whose thoughtful and informed making are unified theories of visual texts within the theories of action and history. The key is the capacity to produce visual narratives made with intention and purpose that in their performative poetics and their semantic innovations attest to the realities of 1 Ricoeur, P. 1991: From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics II. trans. Kathleen Blamey and John B. Thompson. 2nd Edition 2007: with new Forward by Richard Kearney. Evanston. NorthWestern University Press. experience and sedimented historical conditions witnessed, and communicate those to others within a dialectic of historical consciousness and understanding. The narrative visualisations disclose a world, a context in which the drama of our own life and the lives of others makes sense. In their interpretations of an empiric reality can be found ethical concerns and extensions of meaning beyond the original reference that survive the absence of the original subject matter and the original author of the photography whose inferences our imaginations and later acquired knowledge can meditate upon and re-interpret. Thus in the hermeneutic view, the documentary photographic narrative is a form of text that comes to occupy an autonomy from, a) the author’s original intentions, b) the reference of the original photographic context, and c) their reception, assimilation and understanding by unknown readers-viewers. Ricoeur argues that hermeneutic interpretation discloses the reader as ‘a second order reference standing in front of the text’, whose necessary presence solicits a series of multiple and often conflicting readings and interpretations. Consequently Ricoeur’s critical, philosophical hermeneutics brings us from epistemology to a kind of ‘truncated’ ontology that is only provisional, a place where interpretation is always something begun but never completed. Interpretation according to Ricoeur engages us within a hermeneutic circle of explanation and understanding whose dialectic is mediated in history and time. For Ricoeur this implies that to be able to interpret meaning and make sense of the world beyond us is to arrive in a conversation that has already begun. His hermeneutic wager is, moreover, that our self-understandings will be enriched by the encounter. In short, the more we understand others and what is meaningful for them the better we will be able to understand ourselves and our sense of inner meaning. The central thesis of his hermeneutics is that interpretation is an ongoing process that is never completed, belonging to meaning in and through distance, that can make actively present to the imagination what is objectively absent and whose discourse is undertood as the act of “someone saying something about something to someone” (Ricoeur 1995: Intellectual Autobiography).

In this paper we use the conditional Value at Risk (CoVaR) and CoVaR variation (ΔCoVaR) proposed by Adrian and Brunnermeier (2008, 2011, 2016) to estimate the Peruvian stock market risk (through the IGBVL) conditioned on the international financial market (given that the S&P500) and conditioned on three of the main commodities exported by Peru: copper, silver and gold. Moreover, the CoVaR measures are compared with the VaR of the IGBVL to understand the differences using conditional and unconditional risk measure estimators. The results show that both CoVaR and ΔCoVaR are useful indicators to measure the Peruvian stock market risk. / En este trabajo utilizamos el Valor en Riesgo condicional (CoVaR) y la variación CoVaR (ΔCoVaR) propuestos por Adrian and Brunnermeier (2008, 2011, 2016) para estimar el riesgo bursátil peruano (a través del IGBVL) condicionado en el mercado internacional (dado por el índice S&P500) y condicionado en tres de los principales comodities exportados por el Perú: cobre, plata y oro. Además, las medidas CoVaR son comparadas con el VaR del IGBVL para entender las diferencias al utilizar medidas de riesgo condicionales e incondicionales. Los resultados muestran que ambas medidas CoVaR and ΔCoVaR constituyen indicadores útiles para estimar el riesgo bursátil peruano.

Minorities hold a significantly smaller percentage of executive positions in companies within the S&P500. However, whether these minorities are under compensated relative to their non-minority counterparts has not been previously investigated. Using Compustat data, this paper documents the differences in compensation between minorities and non-minorities as a whole, minority and non-minority CEOs, and the differences in compensation for minorities and non-minorities within industries. I show that there is no minority/white wage gap overall, and in some cases, minorities earn a premium compared to non-minorities.

[pt] Este trabalho mostra que o VIX e sua versão de mais curto prazo tem poder preditivo sobre a variância realizada do S e P 500 em dias de FOMC (reuniões do Banco Central do Estados Unidos – FED). Apesar disto, o resultado não persiste quando utilizamos o Índice de Volatilidade do S e P 500 de Longo Prazo (3 meses). / [en] This work shows that the VIX and its shorter-term version have predictive power over the variance of the S and P 500 on FOMC days (meetings of the United States Central Bank - FED). Despite this, the result does not persist when we use the Long Term S and P 500 Volatility Index (3 months).

This thesis examines the application of neural networks in the context of option pricing. Throughout the thesis, different architecture choices and prediction parameters are tested and compared in order to achieve better performance and higher accuracy in option valuation. Two different volatility forecast mechanisms are used to compare neural networks performance with Black Scholes parametric model. Moreover, the performance of a neural network is compared also to more advanced modular neural networks. A new technique of adding rational prediction assumptions to neural network prediction is tested and the thesis shows the importance of adding virtual options fulfilling these assumptions in order to achieve better training of the neural network. This method comes out to increase the prediction power of the network significantly. The thesis also shows the neural network prediction outperforms the traditional parametric methods. The size and number of hidden layers in a neural network is tested with an emphasis to provide a benchmark and a structured way how to choose neural network parameters for future applications in option pricing. JEL Classification C13, C14, G13 Keywords Option pricing, Neural networks, Modular neu- ral networks, S&P500 index options Author's e-mail vach.dominik@gmail.com...

This study, which seeks to contribute to the shared-body of knowledge on media and war crimes jurisprudence, gauges the impact of the media’s coverage of the Civil Defence Forces (CDF) and Charles Taylor trials conducted by the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) on the functionality of civil society organizations (CSOs) in promoting transitional (post-conflict) justice and democratic legitimacy in Sierra Leone. The media’s impact is gauged by contextualizing the stimulus-response paradigm in the behavioral sciences. Thus, media contents are rationalized as stimuli and the perceptions of CSOs’ representatives on the media’s coverage of the trials are deemed to be their responses. The study adopts contents (framing) and discourse analyses and semi-structured interviews to analyse the publications of the selected media (For Di People, Standard Times and Awoko) in Sierra Leone. The responses to such contents are theoretically explained with the aid of the structured interpretative and post-modernistic response approaches to media contents. And, methodologically, CSOs’ representatives’ responses to the media’s contents are elicited by ethnographic surveys (group discussions) conducted across the country. The findings from the contents and discourse analyses, semi-structured interviews and ethnographic surveys are triangulated to establish how the media’s coverage of the two trials impacted CSOs’ representatives’ perceptions on post-conflict justice and democratic legitimacy in Sierra Leone. To test the validity and reliability of the findings from the ethnographic surveys, four hundred (400) questionnaires, one hundred (100) for each of the four regions (East, South, North and Western Area) of Sierra Leone, were administered to barristers, civil/public servants, civil society activists, media practitioners, students etc. The findings, which reflected the perceptions of people from large swathe of opinions in Sierra Leone, appeared to have dovetailed with those of the CSOs’ representatives across the country. The study established that the media’s coverage of the CDF trial appeared to have been tainted with ethno-regional prejudices, and seemed to be ‘a continuation of war by other means’. However, the focus groups perceived the media reporting as having a positive effect on the pursuit of post-conflict justice, good governance and democratic accountability in Sierra Leone. The coverage of the Charles Taylor trial appeared to have been devoid of ethno-regional prejudices, but, in the view of the CSOs, seemed to have been coloured by lenses of patriotism and nationalism.

Political cartoons as headline representation are in effect a combination of artistic licence and a critical version of the truth. Linley Sambourne and Jean Veber’s 1901 cartoons on the Boer War for Punch and L’Assiette au Beurre create tensions and dialectic not only on British and French feeling about foreign policy in South Africa and at home, but also indicate fine points on each publication’s editorial remit. This comparative study is a mirroring synthesis of these approaches that sets the Boer War forty five cartoons in context. Whereas Punch’s cartoons are set within a text layout and L’Assiette’s are the text themselves, both transmit set ideas on The Boer War as ‘sight bite’ news and opinion pieces. Veber’s cartoons offered swift knee-jerk reactions against the ruling elite and the horrors of British cruelty toward Boer prisoners as coverage of the war escalated in 1901. His extreme capturing of the zeitgeist followed the magazine’s editorial bent, but they also reflected his brave counter-hegemonic stance towards a French government seeking an alliance with its British counterpart. With this in mind, Antonio Gramsci’s theory on hegemony as applied to journalism allows the scholar to look at the media from a cultural perspective. This focus is used to show cartoons as representative of conflicts in the fight for power, but this time publicly conveyed to the readership. Thus, types of truth enhancements in each set of cartoons indicate the cartoonists’ respective entrenchment with, or detachment from, Imperial institutions, thereby signalling emerging attempts of the attitudinal persuasion of the reader toward Punch or L’Assiette’s political leanings. The inclusion of political cartoons in editorial pages was part of the cult of visual attention-grabbing news values that had become professionalised, industrialised and popularised by the early Twentieth Century. Cartoons can be decoded using Ernst Gombrich’s six-point filter in order to identify the cartoonist’s method of compressing messages about people and events. A publication’s politics are reflected in the telescoping of exaggerated opinions – an effective way to pass on an authoritatively saturated message to the readership. Gombrich recognised the power of conveying messages to the audience through seemingly incongruous placement of figures in odd situations within cartoons. His methodology acts as visual shorthand for images designed to elicit a desired response to a reported situation as the publication saw it. In the context of the history of journalism, his psychologically analytical approach is appropriate in the appreciation of cartoons’ extremes, often made more acute by the partisan politics of war.

This dissertation sets out to investigate the role of the press in effecting political and socio-economic changes in the Bahraini society prior, during and after the Reform Act which was issued by King Hamad Bin Issa Al-Khalifa in February 2001. To this end, the author has used qualitative and quantitative research methods. This was carried out through content analysis of archival data, questionnaires and in-depth structured interviews. The population was randomly selected from journalists, intellectuals, women in key positions as well as media specialists. Qualitatively, the results point to some dramatic changes in varied areas. The press has brought about enhancing the margin of freedom of expression which is depicted in both the coverage and discourse of newspapers discourse. More importantly, the press has a remarkable role in women political empowerment which had been almost absent prior to the Reform Act. Quantitatively, a wider range of topics and issues, some of which are quite sensitive, are now addressed with relative transparency. Another significant change is the increasing number of newspapers. Before the Reform Act there were only two Arabic newspapers, now there are seven Arabic and two English newspapers. Despite such promising changes, some informants continue to believe that the margin of freedom of expression is somewhat restricted and there are some topics and issues that cannot be approached adequately. In light of the results of this study, it can be concluded that the press has effected some major political, social, economic, educational, etc. changes in Bahrain, albeit not quite satisfactorily.