Swazi media and political journalism: a textual analysis of the representation of political parties in elections coverage

A research report submitted to the school of literature, language and media, faculty of humanities, University of the Witwatersrand in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in journalism and media studies by combination of coursework and researchWhen Swaziland went to the polls in 2013, the world cast its eyes not just on the elections being free and fair, but more importantly if they were democratic. Responding to a wave of protests from banned political parties and civil society, the international community called on Swaziland to allow for political inclusion. King Mswati III’s response was to rename the system of governance a “Monarchial Democracy”, which he described as a marriage drawn between the monarchy and the ballot box. The media is central to society, not least for deepening democracy, but also for the role it plays in the political process – a primary reason freedom of the press has been thought a necessary safeguard in a democratic society. This study analysed the representation of political parties in the media, assessing whether or not the Swazi press legitimises royal hegemony through its coverage of political party issues and to what degree it is independent from state influence. A qualitative research method was used, employing a meta-analysis approach to contents obtained from both the Times of Swaziland and the Swazi Observer of the coverage of the 2013 national elections. The general findings of the study indicated that the print media privileged the ideology of the ruling regime’s Monarchial Democracy, while marginalising alternative or counter political ideologies. It concluded that there was not much difference between the commercial independent media and state-owned media and that the usual critical political economy and liberal pluralism debates and analysis don’t really apply to countries such as Swaziland where there is no complexity of the economy of developed nations.MT 201

Philosophical pragmatism and the pursuit of perfection: an intellectual history of Barack Obama’s foreign policy

This thesis explores the role played by philosophical pragmatism in shaping Barack Obama’s approach to foreign policy. Extending the efforts of James Kloppenberg’s Reading Obama into the foreign policy sphere, the thesis posits that such an approach is more fruitful for understanding Obama’s foreign policy presidency than previous efforts which have tended to employ conventional IR categories to situate Obama. This is a work of intellectual history, taking seriously the notion that we can draw understanding of actors in the past through the ideas and contexts which shaped their modes of thinking. This effort will thus place key Obama-era foreign policy issues in their proper intellectual context. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars, crises in Libya and Syria, the “Pivot to Asia,” and the controversial use of drone technology in a continued counterterrorism effort will each be examined. Obama’s engagement with philosophical pragmatism will not be argued as being a Deus ex machina - that which explains all - but instead forms an explication for a mode of thought that is complex and varied, but crucially, also best captures the essence of the central Obamian effort at reconciling those same contradictions. The logic of Obama’s foreign policy will thus be found as having greater coherence at its heart than prior critiques nominally allow. Philosophical pragmatism will be examined as an imperfect vessel for Obama’s own search for perfection in America’s approach to the world

THE DISCOURSE OF CHANGE AND CONTINUITY: The International Politics of Turkish National Identity Formation (2002-2017)

The Turkish society and state have been subjected to significant and complex social, economic and political transformations since the Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in 2002. These seismic and puzzling changes also projected themselves in the national self-perception and foreign affairs of the Turkish nation-state. Turkish foreign policy (TFP) has gradually deviated from its traditional trajectory and has displayed a salient change in certain international issues and areas. In order to make sense of the transformation in Turkey’s external state actions, this thesis aims to provide an account of the discursive transformation of the Turkish national self-image. It responds to the question of ‘how’ the discursive (re-) formation of the Turkish national identity took place between 2002 and 2017, and made certain paradigmatic changes in the field of foreign policy ‘conceivable’. Turkey’s political relations with the Kurdistan Regional Government, the European Union and Egypt within the given time span are employed as case studies. This study has two main theoretical and empirical objectives designed to make original contributions to International Relations (IR) and TFP literatures with a theory-driven perspective. Firstly, the thesis proposes a ‘modular’ post-structural constructivist approach. It invokes nationalism and discourse theories and embeds them in an IR framework in order to theorise the national identity-international relations nexus. Secondly, this research combines analysis of AKP discourses on Turkish national identity with historical/institutional analysis of TFP. Even in the most constructivist IR works on Turkey, scrutiny of national identity narratives appears to be lacking. Rather than scrutinising the identity transformation process, change (mostly and simply from ‘pro-Western to pro-Islamic’) is accepted as an axiomatic assumption before applying an identity-driven analysis to TFP. This study gives equal empirical weight to national identity construction and international relations aspects, allowing the reader to follow both analyses separately and shedding light on the interplay between them

Listening To Saudi Women’s Voices In Their Life Writing

This thesis relies on feminist and postcolonial theory, to explore through life writing: I Tear the Burqa ... I See, by Huda Al-Daghfaq (2011); Memoirs of a Saudi Woman, by Samia Al-Amoudi (2015); Past, Single, Masculine, by Omaima Al-Khamis (2011); and Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman’s Awakening, by Manal Al-Sharif (2017) how Saudi women constructed themselves and deployed their right to speak. I explore the narratives that they employed to justify their writing and their perspectives and the different types of authority they used to give themselves the right to speak out. Through these texts, I argue that Orientalist discourse is not simply internalized; rather, these women positioned themselves in and used Orientalist framework to interpret or make claims to speak. In doing so, they reproduce Orientalism but also reframes it

A "Wind of Change" - Shaping Public Opinion of the "Arab Spring" Using Metaphors

How does mass media affect the way we think about controversial topics such as the “Arab Spring”? What persuasive role do metaphors play especially in opinion pieces? We analyze how the political events of the years 2010–2011 in the Middle East and North Africa Region (“Arab Spring”) are categorized and assessed using metaphorical constructions in newspaper opinion pieces. We show ways in which particularly the use of metaphors reveals how the media tried to achieve acceptance for the events based on our cultural models (Quinn and Holland, 1987), which are grounded on our western knowledge. To this end, we constructed a pipeline that automatically detects (and filters) metaphors appearing within certain grammatical constructions, before clustering them by presumed source and target domains (Conceptual Metaphor Theory, Lakoff and Johnson, 1980). The results give us insights into how the “Arab Spring” is metaphorically structured by semantic clusters in opinion pieces

Observing conflict escalation in world society

How do conflicts escalate? This is one of the major and overarching questions in conflict research. The present study makes a contribution in order to offer further answers to this question. Therefore, it has a tripartite agenda: First, it develops an empirical research strategy including a contructivist methodology for the study of conflict escalation. This strategy is embedded in a Luhmannian systems theoretical world society perspective; argues that conflicts can be understood as social systems in their own right; looks at the process of conflict escalation by analysing communication; follows a reconstructive approach informed by grounded theory and the documentary method. Second, to probe the plausibility of the approach, this study analyses two processes of conflict escalation prior to violent conflict within the framework of two systematic case studies (Maidan protests/Ukraine 2013-2014; Mali’s crisis/2010-2012). Third, on the basis of the case study insights gained and the experiences made with the empirical research strategy developed here, the present work gives some impulses and ideas on how this kind of systems theoretical research can further on be beneficial for Peace and Conflict Studies and conflict analysis in general

Beyond Afro-pessimism? British and French Print Media Discourse on Africa

Western media have come under intense scrutiny over the past 20 years for their propensity to marginalise Africa and to rely on colonial stereotypes, images and narratives. Both within and outside academia, commentators appeal to the concept of ‘Afro-pessimism’ to qualify and condemn this phenomenon. And yet, the notion is under-theorised and existing empirical studies insufficiently analyse and explain the phenomenon. Drawing on journalism, critical/cultural and postcolonial studies, this thesis seeks to answer the following questions: What is Afro-pessimism? Is it an adequate characterisation of media coverage, and if so, to what extent? Is media coverage moving beyond Afro-pessimism? In order to answer these theoretical and empirical questions, this thesis develops a conceptualisation of Afro-pessimism and provides a Critical Discourse Analysis of British and French print media. The analysis focuses on British and French broadsheet newspapers and news magazines. I critically analyse the visual and linguistic features of media texts against the background of their context of production and through interviews with foreign correspondents based in South Africa and Kenya. There are two sites of investigation: (1) the press coverage of the 50th anniversaries of independence (2007-2012); (2) the news magazines’ front covers dedicated to continental Africa (2011-2015). In site 1, I assess three recurring claims about Western media coverage of Africa, and investigate the discursive nature of the coverage in relation to Afro-pessimism and postcolonial memory. In site 2, I explore the emergence of an Afro-optimist discourse in media coverage of Africa. Finally, I offer a critical appraisal of the accounts of journalists at the heart of the production of Africa’s media image

Blogging the hyperlocal : the disruption and renegotiation of hegemony in Malta

This thesis examines how blogging is being deployed to disrupt institutional hegemony in Malta. The island state is an example of a hyperlocal context that includes strong political, ecclesiastical and media institutions, advanced take-up of social technologies and a popular culture adjusting to the promise of modernity represented by EU membership. Popular discourse is dominated by political partisanship and advocacy journalism, with Malta being the only European country that permits political parties to directly own broadcasting stations.The primary evidence in this study is derived from an analysis of online texts during an organic crisis that eventually led to a national referendum to consider the introduction of divorce legislation in Malta. Using netnography supplemented by critical discourse analysis, the research identifies a set of strategies bloggers used to resist, challenge and disrupt the discourse of a hegemonic alliance that included the ruling political party, the Roman Catholic Church and their media. The empirical results indicate that blogging in Malta is contributing to the erosion of the Church’s hegemony. Subjects that were previously marginalised as alternative are increasingly finding an online outlet in blog posts, social media networks and commentary on newspaper portals.Nevertheless, a culture of social surveillance together with the natural barriers of size and the permeability of the social web facilitates the appropriation of blogging by political blocs, who remain vigilant to the opportunity of extending their influence in new media to disrupt horizontal networks of information exchange. Blogging is increasingly operating as a component of a hybrid media ecosystem that thrives on reflexive cycles of entertainment: the independent newspaper media, for long an active partner in the hegemonic set up in Malta, are being transformed and rendered more permeable at the same time as their power and influence are being eroded. The study concludes that a new episteme is more likely to emerge through the symbiosis of hybrid media and reflexive waves of networked individualism than systemic, organised attempts at online political disruption

Observing Conflict Escalation in World Society: Ukraine's Maidan and Mali's Breakup

How do conflicts escalate? This is one of the major questions in conflict research. To offer further answers, Richard Bösch follows a tripartite agenda: First, he develops a constructivist methodology for the study of conflict escalation embedded in a Luhmannian systems theoretical world society perspective. Bösch argues that conflicts can be observed as social systems and he looks at the process of conflict escalation by analysing communication. Second, this analysis offers two case studies: the Maidan protests in Ukraine 2013-2014 and Mali's crisis 2010-2012. Third, it gives insights on how systems theoretical research can be beneficial for Peace and Conflict Studies