This thesis argues that orthodox social constructionist and culturalist explanations of the mutation of interpersonal violence in the Anglo-American world over the past three decades need to be challenged. Macro-patterns of interpersonal violence appearing over historical time and social space indicate a direct correlation with changes in political economy. It is argued here that specific forms of physical and sublimated symbolic violence were functional to the development of mercantile and classic industrial capitalism, and thus they were cultivated and harnessed in complex forms across this time period. This suggests that the 'civilizing process' formulated in terms of evolving social relationships and emotional sensibilities is inadequate as an explanation for the decline in the murder and serious violence rates in Europe, and this concept needs to be reformulated in a direct relationship with political economy. The new concept of the 'pseudo-pacification process' arose from an attempted reformulation, which represents the internal pacification of the population as an accidental and rather fragile by-product of capitalism's functional requirements. Current rises in the rates of murder and serious interpersonal violence in vortices appearing in the shift from the classical productivist economy managed by interventionist state politics to a consumer/service economy managed by neo-liberal politics suggests that indeed the aetiological connection between political economy and violence rates needs to be returned to the foreground of criminological theory. The putative 'sensibilities' at the heart of the civilizing process are more likely to be emotional attachments to the rules and affectations that evolved as protective insulation for the brutally competitive practices that energise the capitalist economic project, and they are in danger of disintegrating as the pseudo-pacification process loses much of its functional value in the consumer economy and begins to break down.

Postfeminism is not an ideological position or coherent theoretical framework that can be applied externally to the analysis of texts. Indeed popular postfeminism – as distinguished in this thesis from academic postfeminism – is knowable only through its workings in culture, specifically in the representation of gender in “postfeminist” media texts. Therefore, this thesis does not adopt a postfeminist position or approach to analyse the source texts, but rather seeks to identify and deconstruct a postfeminist sensibility within them. This sensibility became apparent in 1990s depictions of characters such as Bridget Jones (Renée Zellweger) and Ally McBeal (Calista Flockhart); however, it prevails in texts created in the current moment and inflects their representation of women. This thesis seeks to identify the themes and characteristics of this sensibility at the site of their creation – media texts representing women – expose the reasons why they are problematic, and show that the same traits exist in the texts considered here. In so doing it seeks to demonstrate that postfeminist ideals are still informing representations of women in the media. Furthermore, it seeks to demonstrate that this postfeminist sensibility, despite being a product of 1990s postfeminism and the current post/post-post-feminist moment, inflects representations of women from different time-periods, specifically from the Second World War and immediate post-war period. Because of the media’s (and specifically television’s) central role in the formation of cultural memory, this creates a lens through which women’s history and women’s historical identities are viewed in the present day. This postfeminist lens, or sensibility (Gill 2007), is thereby dehistoricised as an aspect of essential femininity. In this way the politics of the present are cast onto the past. Through this process, the events of the past are drained of any independent meaning and repurposed/redeployed to meet the needs of the present. The centrality and ubiquity of such postfeminist visions of the past is such that postfeminist discourse has become a central component of what this thesis terms, the Historical Sensibility which informs and structures historical drama on television.

Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on Feb 26, 2010). The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file. Dissertation advisor: Dr. Esther Thorson. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Limited research has been conducted with regards to the applicability of topic extraction techniques in Sociology. Addressing the modern methodological opportunities, and responding to the skepticism with regards to the absence of theoretical foundations supporting the use of text analytics, I argue that Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA), complemented by other text analysis techniques and multivariate techniques, can constitute a unique hybrid method that can facilitate the sociological interpretations of web-based textual data. To illustrate the applicability of the hybrid technique, I developed two case studies. My first case study is associated with the Sociology of media. It focuses on the topic extraction and sentiment polarization among partisan texts posted on two major news sites. I find evidence of highly polarized opinions on comments posted on the Huffington Post and the Daily Caller. The highest polarizing topic was associated with a commentator’s reference on Hoodies in the context of the Trayvon Martin’s incident. My findings support contemporary research suggesting that media pundits frequently use tactics of outrage to provoke polarization of public opinion. My second case study contributes to the research domain of the Sociology of knowledge. The hybrid method revealed evidence of topical divides and topical “bridges” in the intellectual landscape of the British and the American sociological journals. My findings confirm the theoretical assertions describing Sociology as a fractured field, and partially support the existence of more globalized topics in the discipline.

There has been significant academic criticism of the international news coverage of Africa, but little or no first-hand research on the forces that create this news. This thesis draws on 51 semi-structured interviews and ethnographic work with practicing foreign correspondents in Sudan, Kenya and Uganda to explore the question: how can we explain and theorise the production of international news on East Africa? The thesis argues that Pierre Bourdieu’s Field Theory, and its analytical toolbox of ‘field’, ‘capital’ and ‘habitus’, can be meaningfully used to examine international journalistic practice. Field theory has been widely and productively used to understand domestic news production, but it has not yet been employed to empirically investigate journalistic production in the global sphere. The analysis is presented in three sections, each of which focuses on a different ‘layer’ of the international news system: the global field, where newswires compete for clients and capital; the national field ‘back home’ where traditional, nation based news outlets are based; and, finally, the local and immediate site where foreign correspondents work. Each of these layers is explored through an in depth case study of a major news producer/group of producers working in East Africa. The first and most substantial section examines the global journalistic field, and the position and practices of the Reuters newswire within this field. The second examines the foreign correspondents who report on Africa for print outlets in the UK. The final section presents two case studies of correspondents at work, negotiating a local news ecology: the election violence in Kenyan (2007-8), and the international coverage of the Darfur crisis. The discussion explores the fluidity between these three layers. Each analysis section stands alone as an investigations of major news producers in Africa today, and the forces that influence their work. Together, they build the argument that field theory is a useful approach to conceptualising the contemporary global news system, and examining journalistic practices within this. The main strengths of the theory lie in its notion of habitus; the extent to which it can incorporate and explain change; and its ability to link macro level phenomenon with micro level practice. The theory is ideally suited to capture and study the way in which foreign correspondents negotiate a complex and fluid global news system.

This thesis deals with the subject of correspondence between the media and the public agenda. It is based on previous studies , where the relationship between the media and the public agenda confirmed sociologist McCombs (Dearing a Rogers 1996: 6). On the sources it is trying to establish a linkage on the specific topic of the church restitutions , which discusses in particular the development and opinions both in the media and in the public agenda. In contrast to previous pieces I try to penetrate deeper into the linkage between media and public agenda and investigate their mutual correspondence. For analyzing the media agenda, the author uses the method of content analysis of newspaper articles in selected printed media. Then the result is compared to a secondary analysis of survey data Naše společnost, that realized the Center for Public Opinion Research, which represents the public agenda in this case. The main results of the analysis is verified that the media and the public agenda influenced each toher in the particular case, the issue of restitution of churches . First, it is managed to identify similarities between the frequency of occurrences of each media reports and public interest in the topic. It is also discovered a connection between opinions on the topic in the media and public...

Considérée comme une question prioritaire en 2007, lors des campagnes présidentielles en France, l’immigration devient un thème tenu par l’Etat et les médias comme de plus en plus grave ou non négligeable. L’intérêt étatique et médiatique porté à cette question relève de conditions sociales liées aux structures des champs politique et journalistique et aux relations que ces acteurs entretiennent avec les univers sociaux concernés par la question. Le travail de recherche que nous proposons s’appuie sur les visions des acteurs politiques et des professionnels des médias dans la constitution de la « question immigrée » en tant que « problème». La recherche propose ainsi de saisir les pratiques et les stratégies qui encadrent les champs et leur diversité (les sous-champs). Cette étude porte une attention particulière aux configurations qui relient les acteurs participant à la mise en évidence de la question. Il s’agit d’envisager l’émergence d’un « problème immigré » liée à des mutations ayant trait à la communication publique, au développement de la communication territoriale et aux pratiques journalistiques. Etudier la mise en forme de ce « problème » à travers des pratiques info-communicationnelles revient à utiliser celles-ci comme des prismes pour comprendre le fonctionnement de la sphère publique puisque cette dernière dépend, entre autres facteurs, des interactions et des échanges médiatisés. / Considered a priority in 2007 during the presidential campaign in France, the question of immigration has become viewed by the State and the media as increasingly serious or significant. State and media interest shown in this matter has identified social conditions associated with the structures of political and journalistic domains and with the relationship that those involved in these domains have with the social environments concerned in this issue. The research that we have undertaken is supported by the views of political figures and media professionals in the formation of the “immigrant question” as a “problem”. The research thus offers a grasp of the practices, strategies and standards which regulate these domains and their diverse sub-groups. This study focuses in particular on the configurations linking those actors involved in reporting on the topic. It considers the emergence of an “immigrant problem” linked with changes relating to public communication, the development of the local communication and journalistic practices. This study has used news reporting practices and the way in which they have shaped this “problem” as a means to comprehend the functioning of the public sphere, since this depends, along with other factors, on how interactions and exchanges are reported in the media.

The Great Recession that followed the financial crisis of 2008 had a devastating impact on workers, leading to high levels of unemployment and underemployment, increased job insecurity and stagnant or declining wages. While the legitimation crisis of neoliberalism could be viewed as a turning point for labour internationally, the immediate response by political parties across the spectrum was one of austerity measures and cuts to welfare. As the largest collective representatives of workers, trade unions are at the forefront of mobilisations attempting to challenge this consensus. Simultaneously, they are engaging in new activities to enhance public awareness and understanding of the crucial role that trade unions play in the labour market. Thus, the 21st century crisis is creating both challenges and opportunities. Each trade union movement’s response depends on the different forms of power they possess and choose to deploy, their strategies and allegiances, and the specific socio-economic and political context in which they are situated. Questions concerning what constitutes union power and the ways in which it is being exercised and revitalized therefore represent fascinating lines of enquiry to explore. To do so, however, requires a new perspective on trade union power that recognises the significance of the media which has been overlooked in industrial relations theory. Drawing on insights from industrial relations, the sociology of media and social movement studies, this thesis proposes the concept of communicative power to trace how trade unions produce and circulate discourse through the media (either union-owned or corporate) to a mass audience. Methodologically, it uses the tripartite approach which focuses our attention onto three key communication processes involved in trade union attempts to exercise communicative power: the production of union discourse, the circulation of union discourse, and the reception of union discourse. This is applied to four cases involving seven union organisations in the UK and Denmark over a five-year period 2010-2015. Data was gathered using 40 semi-structured interviews with union officials and activists, content analysis of newspapers, union media outlets and social media, and secondary survey data. In sum, this thesis argues that the media is, and always has been, central to how trade unions exercise and revitalize power in society. And within the context of accelerating digital capitalism, it looks set to becoming an increasingly important determinant of their future trajectory.