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City image advertising has become one of the most used means for Chinese cities to promote their images inside and out of China. This thesis aims to investigate city image adverts as a type of advertising from the perspective of media and communication, gain a better understanding of the subject from the production practitioners, and further link the domains of content and production. This thesis takes a sequential research design from a mixed-methods approach and employs three research methods, drawing on the data of the video city image adverts issued in Guangzhou, China, in 2017-2018. By using content analysis, the study examines the city imagery (the visual, verbal and aural representations) and city imaginaries constructed in the adverts. This study is then complemented with a multimodal analysis of the meanings and ideologies carried in the city imagery and city imaginaries. Lastly, semi-structured interviews with production practitioners were conducted to investigate the definition of city image adverts from the practitioners' perspective, the production process, and most importantly, the influential factors on the content in the production process, which links these two important domains. The central contributions of this thesis are the definition of city image adverts in China, from both the perspectives of academic research and production practitioners; a hierarchical system of the constructed different places' identities from the lens of 'self' and 'other'; a model to link the city imagery, city imaginaries and the influential factors on them in the production process; and a linear model of power relations among the three main agents (advertisers, creative and production teams).

This dissertation thesis titled "Sociotechnical imaginaries of safety and reporting technologies in US higher education" examines how reporting technologies reconfigure the ecosystem of campus safety in US higher education. Reporting technologies refer to case management systems for incident reporting developed by third-party vendors and implemented by campus administrators for use by students. In this thesis, I apply Jasanoff and Kim's (2015) concept of sociotechnical imaginaries to argue that product vendors, campus administrators, and students' sociotechnical imaginaries of safety mediate how they articulate and experience campus safety. The central contention of this thesis is that ideas about sexual violence and technology mutually shape sociotechnical imaginaries of safety that mediate how vendors, campus administrators, and students perceive and experience campus safety. This thesis is organized as follows: (1) a brief cultural, sociopolitical, and legal backdrop of campus safety policies and practices through which ideas about sexual violence and technology co-produce safety imaginaries; (2) two case studies of reporting technologies-LiveSafe and Callisto-that trace the sociotechnical imaginaries that mediate the design process; and (3) ethnographically informed examination of how each reporting system operates on campus grounds to mediate the relationship between campus authorities and students. The concluding chapter considers directions in gender and sexuality studies, human-computer interaction (HCI), and science and technology studies (STS) for future scholarship.

This thesis examines public relations in Saudi Arabia as an occupational group. The thesis investigates the knowledge public relations practitioners possess, and how Saudi culture and public communication factors affect public relations practitioners. The thesis offers insights into the cultural background of the country, public communication and public relations practice in Saudi Arabia. Moreover, it provides an analysis of theories of the profession and the relationship between the profession and public relations occupation. For the purposes of this research, in-depth unstructured interviews were used to collect data from 27 practitioners. A constructivist paradigm was utilised to examine the Saudi practitioners’ perceptions of knowledge, culture, public communication. Moreover, the thesis has followed a socio-cultural approach and theories of the profession to investigate the empirical data. The thesis has several contributions to knowledge. Firstly, it brings an understanding of the role of the state in the process of professionalization. Using Vygotsky’s theories the thesis has found that educational institutions influence PR practice and this results in lack of progress and limited opportunities for change, learning and career movement. Secondly, the thesis found that there is disconnection between theories that are taught in universities with PR programmes and PR practices. The thesis found that there is a problematic nature of abstract knowledge, which determines the disconnection between communication theories and PR practice. Moreover, there is a disconnection between the practice immersed in culture and that cultural practices are stronger than professional practice. Finally, the thesis has contributed to the literature by finding out that ethics in Western countries are regarded as something that is developed by a professional body in a way that relates to society, however in Saudi Arabia the Muslim values and ethics are implemented directly in the work context and ethics is not developed by a professional body.

This thesis employs a discursive methodology to analyse the policy problem of cultural non-participation. In so doing it seeks to answer the questions of what the problem is, why a problem exists, and what the existence of the problem does ‘in the real’ (Bacchi, 2009). The study draws on primary data generated in the form of policy texts, speeches and 42 in-depth qualitative interviews with individuals working in or for publicly funded cultural organisations in Scotland. Employing the methodological approach of problematisation (Foucault, 2003a [1981]), the study offers a close analysis of the discursive logics upon which the construction of the problem relies. In so doing it is asserted that the problem construction functions as an articulatory practice (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985) that not only constitutes and organizes social relations but also supports asymmetric relations of power and allows inequality in society to be represented as both inevitable and sensible (Rancière, 2004). Beginning with a discussion of how cultural participation has been constructed as an object of enquiry, the thesis moves on to consider how cultural non-participation is constructed as a problem across the discursive planes of politics and professional practice. Having made visible the discursive logics of the problem construction, the discussion then examines the contingent historical conditions under which the existence of certain subjects, objects, and the intelligible relations between them became possible. Arguing that the Arts should be understood as a discursive institution, it is proposed that the subject identity of the non-participant is not only a necessary part of the discursive logic of this institution, but also provided the ideal boundary object (Star and Griesemer, 1989) around which the legitimacy of the relationship between the Arts and the state could, in part, be based. Drawing on the work of Jacques Rancière (1991; 2004; 2004), it is argued that the manner in which those labelled as non-participants are subjectified obscures their agency and in so doing suppresses their capacity to speak within the field of cultural policy. As such, the field of cultural policy remains characterized by asymmetric relations of power and dominated by those who lay claim to the discursive identity of cultural professionals. The result is state subsidised practices that while doing little to influence individual patterns of behavior, through performing inclusion and equality contribute to the maintenance of a status-quo in which state support will only be provided to individuals who accept the values of those who exercise the most power in the field.

Drawing from an extensive and unique data set acquired by combining a cross-national comparative approach and a mixed methods methodology, this thesis examines the contributions of Facebook to citizens’ political participation in Italy and the UK. In the last decade there has been a proliferation of academic studies investigating the links between digital technologies and citizens’ political participation, with an increasing number of publications focusing on social networking websites (SNSs). Within this specific sub-field, research has produced contrasting evidence. Some scholars stress the positive impact of the Internet and SNSs on political participation (i.e., optimists), while others minimise their mobilising power, emphasising their tendency to reinforce existing participatory trends (i.e., normalisers) or highlighting their limited or even negative influence on political participation (i.e., pessimists). The present research differs from the majority of investigations in this area in three ways. Firstly, the data for this study were gathered mostly in a non-electoral period and thus the contributions of Facebook to citizens’ political participation were assessed independently of the electoral process, which usually occasions a rise in political participation. In addition, this research tackled two conceptual weaknesses characterising many Internet and political participation studies: the failure to consider political participation as a multidimensional phenomenon and the over-generalised approach to Internet and SNS usages. It did so by differentiating between political communication and political mobilisation activities, and three Facebook non-political usages, i.e., information, interpersonal communication, and social recreation. Thirdly, in response to the lack of cross-national comparative studies in this subject area, the contributions of Facebook to citizens’ political participation were examined in the different contexts of Italy and the United Kingdom. This thesis makes four main contributions to the field of political communication, and more specifically to the strand of research examining the impact of digital technologies on political participation. The first contribution is the Particularised Model of Facebook Political Participation. The model identifies a number of factors mediating the links between Facebook and political participation, demonstrating the relevance of both external, context-related factors related to the British and Italian media and political landscapes, and more personal, subjective ones such as self-presentation, pre-existing levels of political engagement, and the nature and size of the Facebook network. Secondly, this study sheds light on the ways that Facebook functions as a political platform, establishing that dynamics typical of both new and traditional media are in action on this SNS, and that Facebook holds the capacity to activate a virtuous circle, thereby generating an information-led mobilisation. The third contribution is the Dual Routes of Exposure Model which offers clarification on the alleged tendency of digital technologies to promote selective exposure and, consequently, political fragmentation and polarisation, and shows that Facebook can operate as a potential antidote to such trends. The fourth contribution is to the polarised debate between optimists, normalisers, and pessimist, with the present research further highlighting the sterility of such a debate and indicating potentially fruitful approaches for the development of the field.

This study explores specific thematic pre-occupations in the works of selected eight women writers from two different geographical and cultural milieus (West Africa and Scotland) with a specific focus on similarities in which these writers use language as a means of exploring women’s positions within their respective societies. The second layer of the study’s enquiry lives within the realm of exploration of womanist discourse, as originally developed by Alice Walker, and a possibility of applying this discourse beyond African American and African shores, as a transracial and transcultural model for creating new readings of dramatic discourse by women writers who come from different generational, racial, cultural and geographical environments. In total, sixteen plays ranging from 1970 to 2008 have been examined by means of close reading and comparative analysis, and against the backdrop of Alice Walker’s womanist theory. The study’s focus has been on the ways in which language is employed in these plays to develop womanish characters, to use Walker’s term, capable of overcoming limitations of their position in societies that confine and silence them within domestic realms. This study shows that while womanist theory per se may be seen as confined to African American discourse, some of its elements such as audaciousness, community, spirituality and capability may find successful application in such two different cultural models as West Africa and Scottish shores.

This thesis examines gender in the popular cinema of post-revolutionary Iran. It argues that a distinctly feminine discourse gradually emerged in post-revolutionary Iranian cinema and became very visible in the reformist period (1997-2005). This research covers the period between the establishment of the Islamic Republic and the end of the reformist period (1979-2005). Drawing on Stuart Hall (1981), this thesis considers popular culture, and popular cinema by extension, as a site of cultural struggle and focuses on gender representation as a major locus of post-revolutionary socio-political negotiation. Reading Iranian cinema in terms of an art/popular spectrum, the thesis examines four case studies from films that have been commercially successful, and have mobilised generic or formal conventions through their controversial gender representations. Three of these case studies, The Bride (1992), Red (1999) and Hemlock (2000) examine femininity in post-revolutionary popular cinema, while The Snowman (1995) has been included for its transgressive representation of masculinity.

I offer a critical exploration of tensions experienced by disabled people in the construction of positive identities in everyday contexts in which self-understanding is shaped both by social structural relations of inequality and unique individual experience. The empirical evidence I use to develop and support my thesis involves data I have generated using a variety of data collection tools, through a series of interviews, conversations and observations carried out with sixteen disabled people across Scotland and England. I argue that while certain barriers to participation in ordinary community life may be being removed, perceptions of impairment as something ‘wrong’ with the bodies of disabled people remain embedded in dominant disability discourse. There is a structural purpose underlying the continued representation of impairment as misfortune, involving the ascription of a negative role – the disabled role – to those whose bodily configurations pose a challenge to requirements of conformity. Drawing on insights generated in my research, and building on an idea originally proposed by John Swain and Sally French in 2000, I have developed a clarified affirmative model of disability. This I intend as a tool to be used by people with impairments in making sense of the disabling social relations they encounter in everyday contexts, to be used alongside the social model in gaining knowledge to unsettle mainstream assumptions which can only recognise impairment as personal tragedy.

Childhood ADHD is a contested yet rising public health phenomenon, due to greateruse of inclusive American diagnostic classification. In the UK ADHD is considered to be ‘incompletely medicalised’ with rising incidences predicted. A critical approach was adopted in this thesis, based on a number of social constructionist assumptions in order to examine the emergence and increased use of the construct and to contribute to broader critical debate in the field. Parents and teachers are key adults in childhood ADHD as they may identify and care for diagnosed children yet they have been relatively neglected in the literature. How such adults account for children’s difficulties was the focus of an empirical analysis. A ‘critical discursive psychology’ approach was adopted using Edley’s (2001) framework in order to examine culturally available talk by parents and teachers about ADHD, from semistructured interviews in Scotland. Analysis highlighted how parents deployed contradictory interpretive repertoires in talk using a Biological repertoire as a genetic explanation and an Environmental repertoire in relation to various parenting issues. Such talk was organised to attend to the ideological dilemma of parental moral adequacy and accountability and which sought to accomplish the ‘good parent’. Further analysis considered how parents accounted for competing versions of the difficulties and their positioning in relation to controversial medication talk. Teacher accounts of children’s difficulties deployed an ADHD repertoire as a medical condition and a Not ADHD repertoire as due to temporal difficulties. Through the ‘cases I know’ device, teachers managed their own experiential knowledge and thereby negotiated agency and control for childhood behaviours. Analysis considered accounts of (mis)diagnosis and (mis)treatment as alternative explanations for ADHD. This innovative focus on how health policy for children’s difficulties as ADHD were socially produced by lay parent and teachers accounts, highlighted the limitations for agency in ADHD diagnoses and implicated further critical debate about this topic. Parental talk which drew on current biopsychosocial models for ADHD was largely reductionistic and fragmentary. The reliance on discursive efforts about the ‘good parent’ identity meant that this was a temporal accomplishment in talk rather than achieved by a diagnosis. Analysis of teacher accounts originating from a Scottish context highlighted how they differed from a North American context and provided greater understanding of how teachers succeeded in offering robust alternative explanations to ADHD. The implications for health and education policy of ADHD efforts aimed at the ‘education’ of teachers may be limited in the face of the teacher talk. Finally, within methodological debate in discourse analysis, this work contributes to further arguments for an eclectic discourse analysis as applied to the field of ADHD.

The research presented in this thesis is an investigation of the views of commercial home owners within Scotland. The thesis is designed to deepen understanding of the commercial home sector, and more specifically, the relationship the host has with the commercial home. The host’s relationship with their commercial home contributes to the provision of commercial hospitality within a home setting. The review of the literature points to a number of conceptual gaps in our understanding, notably that there has been no study directly focusing upon the host perspective of the commercial home and how this relationship with the home might potentially impinge upon the guest experience. The specific aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between the host and their commercial home and its influences on product construction. As the hospitality product is more of a total sensory experience than has perhaps been acknowledged to date, it is appropriate to seek to understand the host perspective. Prior studies have very largely focused on readily accessible ‘objective’ issues, rather than below the surface issues accessing the inner self, the intangible dimensions of self, which may determine aspects of the hospitality product. The field research involved the researcher taking photographs of the commercial home properties and then using the photographs as prompts to interview the hosts and explore intangible elements such as memories, emotions and senses. A conceptual framework was developed from the data, identifying the main components of the host home relationship, and was revised as each commercial home was analysed. The framework is divided into three sections; Home, Host, and Business. In relation to the Home section themes that emerged include, Meanings of Home, Décor, and Artefacts. In relation to the Host section, themes include Family and Lifestyle. With regards to the Business section, themes include Feelings, Space, Guests, Performance, Target Market, Tourist Board and Competitors.

This thesis focuses upon a distinctive form of ‘feminine-gendered’ fiction, that of the British female ensemble drama, that has proliferated across televisual schedules since the late 1970s and which has received little academic attention. Although not a discrete genre, the female ensemble drama is nevertheless identifiable as a distinctive form of ‘feminine-gendered’ fiction that is largely written and/or produced by women, which diegetically focuses on particular communities of female characters and which is predominantly aimed at female audiences. The purpose of this text-based analysis of the female ensemble drama is to engage with a central concern of feminist television criticism, that of the gendered identity of this particular media form and the constructions of gender within it given its association with women at these three sites of production, text and audience. While I provide a historical overview of the development of this form of drama in relation to its textual precedents I isolate a particular moment in the history of this form of drama, that of the late 1990s, for closer analysis. Firstly I isolate the late 1990s to provide knowledge and understanding of the way in which the ‘feminine’ identity of this form of drama has contributed to its academic neglect within this socio-cultural period. Secondly I provide a close textual analysis of the constructions of ‘women’ within three female ensemble dramas in order to engage with and explore the textual negotiations they embody surrounding discourses of feminism and post feminism, de- and re-traditionalization in this particular period. While these themes have begun to be addressed in feminist television criticism they have largely been explored in relation to constructions of femininity in American dramas. This analysis then, allows for an exploration of these discourses in relation to a regional form of British drama. It is through investigating the academic neglect of this form of drama; providing a historical, thematic and aesthetic overview of the female ensemble drama as well as a detailed analysis of three of the female ensemble dramas of the 1990s that I contribute knowledge and understanding of this particular regional form of ‘feminine-gendered’ fiction to the field of Feminist Television Studies.

Since its inception in 1989, the World Wide Web has grown as a medium for publishing first text, then images, audio, and finally, moving images including short films. While most new media forms, in particular, hypertext, have received scholarly attention, research into moving image on the Internet had been limited. The thesis therefore set out to investigate webfilms, a form of short film on the WWW and the Internet, over a period of 9 years (1997-2005). The thesis was theoretically embedded in questions regarding new media as new field of research, since the increasing visibility of new media had resulted in the emergence of the discipline of ‘new media studies’. This context raised issues regarding the configuration of new media studies within the existing academic disciplines of media and cultural studies, which were explored in depth in the literature review. The case studies of the thesis explored and analysed webfilms from a vantage point of actor-network theory, since this was arguably the most appropriate methodology to a research object considerably influenced by technological factors. The focus was on the conditions of webfilm production, distribution, and exhibition, and the evolution of webfilm discourse and culture. The aim was to seek answers to the question ‘How didwebfilm arise as (new) form of film?’ In the process of research, a number of issues were raised including the changing definition and changing forms of webfilms, the convergence of media, and the complex interdependency of humans and their computers. The research re-evaluates the relationship between human and non-human factors in media production and presents a fresh approach by focusing on the network as unit of analysis. The thesis as a whole not only provides new information on the evolution of webfilm as a form of film, but also illustrates how the network interaction of humans and nonhumans lies at the heart of contemporary new media and convergence culture.

This thesis is an examination of six films adapted between 1993 and 2000 from novels by Henry James and Edith Wharton: James's The Wings of the Dove, The Golden Bowl, The Portrait of a Lady and Wharton's The Age of Innocence, The House of Mirth and The Buccaneers. All six films have been claimed as part of the costume drama/literary adaptation/heritage genre. The analysis of this cycle of adaptations focuses on the visual expression of four key themes: wealth, desire, decorum and social mobility. Dress and art are deployed within the visual fabric of these adaptations as symbolic objects that make up what Wharton termed the "hieroglyphic world" of society. In this cycle of films, the use of art and dress constitutes a new way of viewing costume and art as elements of the adaptation process. Barthes's aspect of the third meaning, "the passage from language to significance" is conveyed through dress and art as sites of visual meaning, a concept that is also deployed by James and Wharton in their fiction. The mise-en-scene of these six adaptations draws inspiration from a variety of artistic influences, ranging from the paintings of John Singer Sargent and James Tissot to the influence of early cinema and photography. Clothing plays an intrinsic role in both the novels and the film adaptations, in terms of displaying consumption, social class and character, and it also makes up the iconic images created by stars who take on key roles, such as Helen Bonham Carter's portrayal of Kate Croy as a "heritage noir" (cf. Church Gibson, 2000) femme fatale in the film of The Wings of the Dove. James and Wharton's narratives represent an expression of the 'transcultural aesthetic' making their fiction particularly apt for cinematic adaptation in an era of increased global mobility. This concept of the transcultural aesthetic is vital in attempting to widen the debate on 'heritage' cinema. While these films and novels share textual themes rooted in settings ranging from the late 1870s through to the early 1900s, the narratives are adapted in ways that make James and Wharton relevant to contemporary cinema audiences, while also reminding us of the timelessness of James and Wharton's narratives.

This thesis is a study of emerging learning cultures. Its focus is on students and teachers who are engaged in using internet technologies for learning in higher education in the United Kingdom. The thesis provides an exploration of theoretical approaches to the cultural impact of new technologies, drawing on cultural, cybercultural and educational theory. It applies these theoretical insights to interview texts generated through discussions with learners and teachers. Its contribution lies in the originality of its empirical material and of the insights applied to their analysis, and in its application of cultural and cybercultural theory to the area of online learning and teaching.

The thesis examines the animated sitcom, from 1960 until present, and attempts to locate its development within the genre of situation comedy. Television animation has long been regarded among film, television and animation theorists as a 'lower cultural form' than its theatrical, or 'live action' counterparts. This thesis seeks to establish a pattern of generic development, in a form which has been critically and theoretically neglected over that time. A lack of a consistent definition within critics and theorists has subsequently led to a lack of a coherent canon of theory. It is for this reason that animation is approached from several areas including film theory and cultural studies. Through original empirical research, the thesis examines the animated series in terms of its generic status, and contributes to the debates surrounding definitions of animation and the question of genre in animation. The thesis charts the development of the series, and presents the term 'anicom' to convey the unique nature of the form, its contribution to the sitcom genre and the larger form of animation as a whole.

The Ladies's Edinburgh Debating Society met on the first Saturday of each month between 1865-1936 to discuss the books they were reading and to debate prearranged issues. For the first fifteen years its members produced a magazine which carried fictive and general interest articles. This thesis will study the archive of the Society and the magazine that it produced to arrive at an understanding of the women's reading practices, their intellectual lives and their attitudes to the society in which they lived and how these experiences impacted upon them. At a time when women's societal role was limited and access to education was based on wealth or the philanthropy of others, these women were able (through their privileged place in the middle and upper classes) to construct their own canon of improving reading and to set guidelines for the education of others. Working against the hegemonic discourse of the time, yet seeking to exert some controlling influence over others, the women's attempts at self culture throw into rellief the context of their cultural experiences and the correlation between self improvement and women's emancipation. This thesis argues that prevailing ideas about Victorian women's existence in 'separate spheres' needs to be revised. It argues that the members of The Ladies' Edinburgh Debating Society make a move from the private to the public sphere through their utilisation of culture. Moreover, they are able to blend this notion of spheres to make society their concern through collective and individual action; improving themselves and the community in which they lived.