| 1. |
- Ezz El Din, Mahitab, 1972-
(författare)
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Beyond Orientalism and Occidentalism : Identity constructions in Arab and Western news media
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This study examines how the media construct the identities of the Other by creating various ‘us’ versus ‘them’ positions (Othering) when covering non-violence-based intercultural conflicts in Arab and Western news media. Othering in this study is understood as an umbrella concept that in general terms refers to the discursive process of constructing and positioning the Self and the Other into separate identities of an ‘us’ and a ‘them.’This process is analysed using a mixed method approach. A content analysis is used to map the data, and then a closer examination of the discourse is conducted using a qualitative approach inspired by critical discourse analysis. Two empirical studies are conducted based on this analysis: 1) the case of the Swedish newspaper Nerikes Allehanda’s publication of caricatures of the Prophet Mohamed in 2007 and 2) the media coverage of the headscarf ban in French state schools in 2004. This study also employs Galtung’s Peace Journalism model as a frame of reference in the conclusions to discuss how this model could contribute, if applied in journalistic texts, to more balanced constructions of intercultural conflicts.The results show that Othering is a central discursive practice that is commonly adopted in both Arab and Western media coverage of non-violent intercultural conflicts, but it appears in different forms. Many of the previous studies have devoted considerable attention to rather conventional dichotomous constructions of Eastern and Western Others. The present study, in contrast, brings to the fore more non-conventional constructions and, while recognizing the occurrence of the conventional constructions, goes beyond these binary oppositions of ‘us’ and ‘them’. Variations in the types of identity constructions found in my study can be attributed to the mode of the article, the actors/voices included, the media affiliations and the topic and its overall contextualization.The different types of identity constructions in the media coverage may bring about a less black and white understanding of an event and help bring forth a more nuanced picture of what is going on and who is doing what in a conflict situation. Their occurrence in the media can possibly be linked to a new vision of a global society that does not necessarily constitute homogenous groups with the same characteristics, but rather is more consistent with a hybrid identity.This research is timely, as with the recent arrival of large groups of migrants from the Middle East, the ‘fear of Islam,’ and the right wing propaganda regarding Muslims as a threat is increasing. Islamophobia can be seen as a new form of racism used by elites to serve particular agendas. If media practitioners applied a more critical awareness in their writings so as not to reproduce culturally rooted stereotypes, which can inflame conflicts between people and nations, we might see less hostility against migrants and achieve a less racist world.
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| 2. |
- Al-saqaf, Walid, 1973-
(författare)
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Breaking digital firewalls : analyzing internet censorship and circumvention in the arab world
- 2014
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation explores the role of Internet censorship and circumvention in the Arab world as well as Arabs’ views on the limits to free speech on the Internet.The project involves the creation of an Internet censorship circumvention tool named Alkasir that allows users to report and access certain types of censored websites. The study covers the Arab world at large with special focus on Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen.This work is of interdisciplinary nature and draws on the disciplines of media and communication studies and computer science. It uses a pioneering experimental approach by placing Alkasir in the hands of willing users who automatically feed a server with data about usage patterns without storing any of their personal information.In addition to the analysis of Alkasir usage data, Web surveys were used to learn about any technical and nontechnical Internet censorship practices that Arab users and content producers may have been exposed to. The study also aims at learning about users’ experiences with circumvention tools and how such tools could be improved.The study found that users have successfully reported and accessed hundreds of censored social networking, news, dissident, multimedia and other websites. The survey results show that while most Arab informants disapprove censoring online anti-government political content, the majority support the censoring of other types of content such as pornography, hate speech, and anti-religion material.Most informants indicated that circumvention tools should be free of charge, fast and reliable. An increase in awareness among survey respondents of the need for privacy and anonymity features in circumvention solutions was observed.
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| 3. |
- Berglez, Peter, 1973-
(författare)
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The materiality of media discourse : on capitalism and journalistic modes of writing
- 2006
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The purpose of the study is to analyse the relationship between the capitalist hegemonic order and the mass media, with the latter restricted to two elite newspapers (Swedish DN and Slovenian Delo) and the selection of news materials from three bodies of international media coverage: NATO’s military intervention in former Yugoslavia, 1999, the political demonstrations against the IMF and the World Bank in Prague, 2000, and 9/11, 2001. There are two sub-purposes, one theoretical-methodological and one political-democratic. The first sub-purpose is to accomplish an integrative kind of media analysis (Williams 1977) in which the approaches of political economy (emphasising the economic/material) and cultural studies/discourse analysis (emphasising the symbolic/discursive) are supposed to interact. The hypothesis is that such a ‘third way’ approach is possible to achieve through the qualitative analysis of journalistic modes of writing. The second sub-purpose (the political-democratic one) takes an interest in the modes’ political dimensions. In what manners do the identified modes counter-act, or co-produce, miscellaneous political struggles? In addition, the purpose of the study also includes a more practical dimension. In the light of the results, how should one nowadays imagine an emancipating kind of journalism that tries to explain, unmask, or even counteract the mechanisms of the contemporary global capitalist system?The news media material consists of 438 items (articles, photos etc.), which are analysed by means of a cultural materialist CDA (critical discourse analysis). An identified journalistic mode is analysed as: (1) a practice with certain cognitive, discursive and linguistic characteristics, (2) a structural product (as constituted by underlying social and material structures), and (3) a dialectical force, being a potentially active part of an ongoing mode of production (the capitalist or another mode). The last analytical moment is the central one.Two categories of journalistic modes are identified. To begin with, the modes of de-permanence (The Remote control mode, Differentiation, Semiotic compression), which comprises modes that are part of the ‘new economy’, of reflexivity, individualism, consumption, mobility, and flexibility. The political dimension of these modes is that they counteract radical (leftist) politics by reducing emancipation, freedom, justice etc. to a matter of individualism and privatisation. The second category is the modes of permanence (Disconnection, Cognitive recycling), which involves an opposing structural dimension of the capitalist system: the production of reification, i.e. the repression of the complex nature of reality – how seemingly autonomous ‘things’ (spaces, objects etc.) are de facto interwoven with a ‘complex whole’ of various social, material, cultural, economic relations that are in constant motion. More precisely, the here identified modes reify and eternalise an explanatory structure (the modern division of explanatory labour), a particular power (the US) and a particular territory (the nation state), generating the impression that social reality works ‘as usual’ while repressing the complex network-like development of global capitalism and its impact on our lives. By sustaining these increasingly archaic structures, what is politically counteracted is the emergence of ‘the new’: transnational politics and democracy (Beck 1998).The analysis of modes (in total 8) furthermore demonstrates that Swedish DN is more integrated with the capitalist system than Slovenian Delo. The study emphasises the democratic importance of creating new journalistic modes endowed with a transnational journalistic epistemology that decisively include the reality of global capitalism in everyday (local) news reporting when covering and explaining social, political, cultural etc. issues.
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| 4. |
- Olausson, Ulrika, 1964-
(författare)
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Medborgarskap och globalisering : den diskursiva konstruktionen av politisk identitet
- 2005
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This study takes as its point of departure the theorizing on citizenship and globalization. Today it is common to discuss a “flexible” citizenship beyond the paradigm of the nationstate, which, besides its legal aspects of rights and obligations, also includes identification with and participation in various communities, primarily political ones. “Politics”, in this context, is considered to be constituted on the micro-level, discursively between individuals (e.g. Laclau and Mouffe 1985). The aim of the study is to, through the study of collective meaning making, contribute to the theory building about citizenship and globalization. The study consists of three cases, each of which attracted much media attention, with varying degrees of proximity and distance. The construction of political community, on various levels on the globalization scale (subnational, national, transnational) within the collective meaning making, is studied. The aim of the study also includes the analysis of the discursive resources that are used for the making of meaning. “External” discourses such as media messages and interpersonal communication are analyzed as well as “internal” ones: e.g. values, norms, identifications and experiences. In addition, the study aims at localizing the construction of meaning and community within the structural context , and relating it to current structures of power. The thesis is concluded with a suggestion of how to relate the discursive construction of political identity to deliberative democracy theory. The empirical material is collected by means of focus-groups interviews, including 2–5 people, with a total of 133 respondents. The transcribed material is analyzed by means of critical discourse analysis, CDA. The study identifies two different types of identity constructions: processes of nationalization, where the experienced Swedish identity and community function normatively in the making of meaning, and processes of subnationalization, among those groups that somehow felt excluded from and mistreated by the national (Swedish) environment. The thesis concludes that the collective making of meaning within an assumed national community contains ideological elements and works to a large extent in the service of power. However, the subnationally compressed communities create meaning in an oppositional manner, compared with the nationalized community and in relation to structures of power. Active citizenship is thus best located in conflict, among groups that experience exclusion and oppression in different situations (Mouffe 1995b). If this is right, the focus must shift from consensus to communication, efforts to open up discursive bridges between the hegemonic community and dissident voices should be made (c.f. Aronowitz 1995). An important space for transgressing communication is of course the media. However, the study shows that the media must deal with some problems before they are ready to serve as discursive bridges, for instance the tendency to make the factual antagonisms subordinate to homogenizing emotional reporting. In addition, there seems to exist a need for the political institutions to move beyond the paradigm of the nation-state, and find other frameworks for the democratic processes, not least at the subnational level. Thus, instead of discussing either a global or a national citizenship one could, with Habermas (2001), reflect on a postnational citizenship relating to the reflexive transformation of national civic sovereignty into subnational and supranational citizenship.
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| 5. |
- Andersson, Linus, 1979-
(författare)
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Alternativ television : former av kritik i konstnärlig TV-produktion
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation analyses social critique, communication critique and aestheticalcritique in television produced by artists. Theoretically it draws on researchon alternative media, TV studies, especially genre analysis and narratology,and media aesthetics. It conducts a text-production study of three examplesof alternative television from the period 2004-2008: ContemporaryArt Center TV (CAC TV): A show produced by the CAC in Vilnius, Lithuaniaand aired on a commercial TV-channel; Good TV who aired video art ona local public access channel in Stockholm, Sweden; and Candyland TV, apirate transmission from an art gallery in central Stockholm.Empirically it builds on TV-texts, web sites and documents, as well asinterviews with participants. Through a study of form and stylistics, relationto conventional genres and modes of narration, it engages in a discussionabout the features of a critical, alternative media text.The study shows how these televisions work in a tradition of alternativetelevision and connects them to tactics and aesthetical forms as found inhistorical examples, but also how this type of formalist media critiquemight inform an understanding of alternative media. From the analysis ofrelations between social and formalist aspects of alternative television, adistinction between alternative as ”alternative worldview” and as ”alternativeexpressions” is suggested, a distinction that contributes to the developmentof theory in the study of alternative media.
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| 6. |
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| 7. |
- Norén, Mikael, 1975-
(författare)
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Designing for democracy : end-user participation in the construction of political ICTs
- 2008
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The Internet and related Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have been proposed as a way to vitalise (western) political democracy, currently marked by a decline in traditional forms of participation. Even if the Internet has established itself as a potential source of power and social change, the lack of clear results for democracy has left the initially mainly optimistic research community disappointed. Recognising the general lack of innovative ideas and successful examples of how to use technology for democratic purposes in the public sector, this thesis frames the notion of a ‘democratic Internet’ as a design endeavour that involves users of technological applications. The purpose of the thesis is two-fold: 1) to explore the possibility of engaging end-users, citizens and others, in the construction of public sector ICTs; 2) to identify a set of design recommendations for such applications, where promoting democratic participation is a central objective. It employs a qualitative methodology, and theories of participatory democracy, republican citizenship, critical theory, and Human-Computer Interaction, applied in a three-part study dealing with the production and usage of public sector ICTs. Three applications are investigated: a decision support system, a municipality’s external web site, and a central government web portal.Results show that there is a high level of awareness and concern for users and their needs among producers, which is for example reflected in the regular application of user tests. However, user-oriented design work is not always prioritised in terms of resources, formal knowledge, and expertise. Initiatives to promote usability and user-centred development are typically driven by civil servants rather than political directives. Motives for involving users in design have more to do with gaining acceptance for and improving existing solutions than innovation or democratic participation.The kinds of applications citizens participating in the study request to enhance political engagement partly coincide with what is offered by the examined public organisations. Still, it is clear that more remains to be done in terms of providing information, and even more so making public institutions open and receptive to the citizenry. Citizens, among other things, ask for accessible information on political institutions and actors, and dialogic uses of technology. Design considerations include the need to account for the fact that citizens-as-users represent diverse needs, recognise that levels of political and technological knowledge vary, enhance opportunities for exchange and mutual learning between citizens and public representatives, and aim for flexible solutions that can incorporate additional and changing needs over time.In general, participants gave proof of a critical distance to technology as well as an ability to contribute as both innovators and evaluators in a design process. A broad contextual approach to shed light on everyday political and technological practices, as applied in this study, is useful for exploring the needs users have regarding ICTs. However, future research has the task of investigating methods to facilitate creativity as well as citizen representation in public sector design work.Civil servants and representatives, using a decision support system in municipal planning and decision-making, are largely satisfied in terms of operation and structure of the application. However, timelier data delivery and other types of contents, for example opinion data on citizens, are requested. Wishes of this kind may not be easy to satisfy because of prevailing institutional and organisational priorities. The same is true when it comes to the employment of statistical data in municipal decision-making, which is not always well received by political actors. Design recommendations include taking closer heed of local municipal needs and non-expert users. It is also recommended that initiators and producers of decision support technology promote a pragmatic view of statistical data to increase its acceptance.
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| 8. |
- Eriksson, Mats
(författare)
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Från ingenjörskonst till informatörskonst : studier av PR och riskkommunikation
- 2003
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis discusses the external risk communication of industrial companies. Such risk communication is here viewed as a division of the companies’ PR operations. There are some central weak points in current risk communication research. Up to now, this research has been dominated by a psychometric perspective and is to a great degree perception-oriented and lacking in a wider organisational perspective. A means for reaching a deeper understanding of the importance of organisational aspects in risk communication is to seek theoretical influences outside the traditional risk communication research. In this study, the two adjacent research areas of risk communication and public relations are thus cross-fertilised for the purpose of making such a knowledge contribution.The aim of the study is to examine the importance of the organisational conditions for the management of risk communication as well as to study how risk communication is developed over time. This is effected in the form of a critical analysis by the productivity of Grunig’s PR theory for the risk communication field, applied on empirical findings collected from four companies in the risk management industry (Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Co., Rohm and Haas Nordiska, Preem Raffinaderi and Skandinaviska Raffinaderi). The study uses qualitative and comparative case studies, where the empirical data has been collected through interviews and document studies.To summerise the result of the different case studies, I make the following conclusion: (1) The internal-organisational conditions are of great importance to the way in which PR and risk communication is managed and developed. (2) A more mechanical structure and authoritarian attitude towards employees and the public give primarily asymmetrical techniques, methods and strategies (3) A more organic structure and egalitarian attitude give both asymmetrical and symmetrical communication in the proactive work. (4) When development of PR and risk communication is underway, messages are changed longitudinally from being based on facts and positive arguments to more obvious offers of exchange, ethical appeals and invitations to dialogue. (5) When PR and risk communication make for higher levels on the risk communication ladder, prevailing notions and structures in the organisation are also renegotiated.The thesis concludes that Grunig’s theory in some way is productive for risk communication, but it also points out several weak things in Grunig’s concept. Among other things, these concern the fact that the causal thinking about the link between the organisational conditions and the communicative strategies to a high degree appear as circular reasoning. The theory’s division between authoritarian and egalitarian oriented cultures is also debateable as it to a great degree only focuses on instrumental values in the organisation. Even the distinction between asymmetrical and symmetrical communication can be criticised, among other things due to vague operationalisation and its one-dimensional character.In order to develop the organisational dimension of risk communication, a more symbolistic perspective is proposed. The symbolistic perspective signifies, among other things, a more distinct integration of the internal and the external as well as the informal (imaginary) and formal (physical) within the organisations. In addition, the symbolistic perspective reduces the importance of the causal thinking in the Grunig theory and its central distinction between asymmetry and symmetry becomes less important. Instead, the focus is increasingly on the rhetoric and symbolism with leaders, communicators and in information material etc.
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| 9. |
- Kleberg, Madeleine, 1942-
(författare)
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Skötsam kvinnosyn : hem- och familjereportage i svensk TV åren 1956-1969
- 1999
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Television established itself in Swedish households at about the same time as Swedish women began to abandon the role of housewife in favour of work outside the home. Regular television transmissions started in1956; until late 1969, Sweden had only one channel. This is also the period of most rapid economic growth in modern Swedish history. Parliament debated about whether to satisfy manpower needs by importing labour or by drawing on the nation's so-called "labour reserve", i.e., bringing Sweden's housewives into the labour market. The present dissertation aims, in the dual perspective of women's history and media history, to cast light on how television programmes contributed to public perceptions of gender, and of married women in particular.Over seventy programmes that explicitly raised issues relating to married women's conditions in the home and in working life were produced between 1956 and 1969. Most of these were produced by the "Home and Family" desk within the Public Affairs Department of the television company.These programmes are analysed in the light of feminist theory concerning perceptions of the similarity or dissimilarity of the sexes, of the relationship of the home and domestic life to the rest of society, and of the demarcation of the private and public spheres. In terms of media theory, the point of departure is constructionist in the sense that programme output as such is conceived of as an artefact, and the programmes as a discourse. The choice of narrative technique is related to the thematic content, which in turn is considered in relation to other contemporary discussions of women's conditions.Common to all the programmes, whether they dealt with the family and the home or with working life, is a basic distinction between the spheres of responsibility of married women and men, respectively. Should women choose to take employment outside the home, it would have to be done within the existing socio-economic framework, and without shirking their prime responsibility for managing the home and caring for the children. This "ideology of conscientiousness" may be seen as a strategy that enabled television to deal with married women's employment outside the home-then a highly controversial issue-in the first place. Toward the end of the period of study, the production unit's focus shifted increasingly to consumer issues, in relation to which class issues supplanted issues of gender.
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