How do global health advocacy networks seek issue attention? The role of actor-power and communications in the women's and children's health network during the Millennium Development Goal era

This dissertation aims to understand how global health advocacy networks seek issue attention. It focuses particularly on how network actors use communication campaigns to exercise power for that aim. This study is guided by Shiffman and Smith’s framework on the determinants of health policy prioritisation (2007). The framework proposes actor-power, ideas, political context, and issue characteristics as interdependent categories to analyse how and why certain health initiatives gather attention, and why others fail to gain priority. To expand on Schiffman and Smith’s framework, the thesis applies social theories concerned with competition and conflict to examine the role of network-led campaigns. Processes of power and competition among network actors offer rich scope for analysis. These are examined in this study through the integration of complementary theories from Sabatier and Bourdieu. This study found that campaigns are both a driver and product of actor-power. Campaigns unite heterogeneous actors through the production of shared messages and normative claims; they promote visibility for network messages and goals; and they contribute to network growth and replication by linking actors across different scales, from local to global, and vice versa. Therefore, greater attention to how network actors compete, negotiate and communicate through campaigns, and to how they acquire and use network capital at multiple scales, will enrich any future use of the Shiffman and Smith framework. Qualitative methods in this thesis included historical process-tracing of network and campaign development; document analysis; and in-depth interviews with network actors to reveal patterns of social relations. This was triangulated by longitudinal participant-observation methods. Once revealed and examined, how network power is legitimated and held to account is an important question for the future study of the political determinants of global health priorities

Canadian media and the developing world: a critical mapping of key issues, events, and actors.

This study has identified a number of features of Canadian news coverage of developing countries. • First, as the literature review shows,international events may attract considerable attention from the Canadian news media, but the proportion of international stories that take up questions relating to development are very small. Moreover, the closure of foreign bureaus and thinning of editorial resources over the past decades has led to more heavy reliance on wire services and a decline in what National Geographic’s Paul Salopek called “deep journalism.” For Salopek, deep journalism “is informed by deep immersion in the story at ground level… revealing the texture of lives of people… who live within front-page stories, but normally don’t make the news themselves” (Bishop, 2015). • In the sample examined here, newspapers, when compared to digital and broadcast media, included more coverage of issues and events in the developing world (but also more news stories in general). In the English media, the Toronto Star had the highest volume of all international news coverage of the developing world, both in terms of development and non-development stories. In the French media, Le Devoir had the highest volume of all coverage. National newspapers generally had more development-themed coverage, although the Calgary Herald and Montreal Gazette had a higher volume of non-development coverage than The Globe and Mail and National Post. • Terrorism and war were the major drivers of the news coverage of the developing world in both English and French. Not surprisingly, countries like Iraq and Nigeria, where conflict was very high in 2015, were the main focus of the non-development-themed coverage. • When looking at the amount of development-themed coverage of the 18 selected countries across all news platforms, we see very little reporting in general and therefore it is important to be cautious in the conclusions that are made about it (other than the conclusion that development stories are largely invisible). Overall, multiple country stories in English and French were the most predominant, as opposed to stories dealing with development issues in single countries. • In English language media, the individual countries of Haiti, Kenya, and Nigeria had the most amount of coverage and, again, traditional print coverage had more coverage than the digital or broadcast media; in French, Haiti, Iraq, and DR Congo had the highest volume. • The English national papers generally had more development-themed coverage than the regional papers, although the Ottawa Citizen and Calgary Herald were third and fourth respectively in this type of coverage. As noted above, the Toronto Star had the highest proportion of stories about developing countries in general as well as the highest proportion of development-themed stories. The Globe and Mail, while having fewer stories about developing countries generally, had the second highest number of development-themed stories. 34 • In French, Le Devoir had the most development-themed coverage, followed by La Presse. Considering the number of media included in the study, the proportion of development-themed stories in French-language newspapers seems comparatively higher to the English-language sample. The number of stories is similar for Radio-Canada and CBC. • The largest proportion of development-themed stories were hard news rather than opinion, although the French coverage did have a higher proportion of news coverage when compared to the English. In English, the most common development themes of these stories were about infrastructure, education, and gender, while in French, the most common themes were economic development, human rights, and governance. • Most of the coverage that was identified with an author was written by staff at the news organizations, although French stories were more likely than English stories to have used wire services (nearly all from AFP). • In English, almost half of the stories were prominently placed on the first four pages of the publication while in French the stories were more likely to be found after page four. • The stories in English were generally shorter when compared to the French stories. Approximately 20 percent of all stories (English and French) were 1,000 words or more. Only 47 percent of English stories and 54 percent of French stories were more than 750words. • NGOs were the most quoted sources with over 40 different NGOs identified in the English and French.Fondation Aga Khan (Canada

The construction of the decline of children’s outdoor play as a social problem in the UK

The past three decades have seen a substantial growth of interest in children’s play in scholarly and popular writing, the mass media and government policymaking. Implicit and explicit in this growing interest is the idea that children’s play, or more specifically, a decline or lack of children’s outdoor play, represents a serious problem in the UK and other western societies and that it therefore requires the intervention of a range of professional and political powers. The rapid and widespread affirmation that claims about children’s play have received deserves critical examination. This study examines the construction of children’s play as a social problem in four major UK newspapers. Focusing on the period from 1985 to 2016, it draws on theoretical and conceptual tools from the constructionist study of social problems and methodological tools from Qualitative Media Analysis to examine the roles played by various claimsmakers in the construction of the problem and the rhetoric used in support of their cause. It hence offers important insights into the prominent position children’s play holds on the public agenda and identifies some of the underlying cultural currents from which claims about children’s play draw

An examination of the Children’s Rights Alliance (CRA) as a new social movement (NSM) utilising Habermas’ communicative rationality and core periphery theories

The passing of the Children’s referendum in 2012 is viewed as a landmark moment in the continuing evolution of Children’s Rights in Ireland. Following a prolific period since the publication of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in 1989 the insertion of Article 42A,’Children’ into the Constitution signalled a key moment in legitimising children’s rights in Ireland. This thesis will examine the role of the Children’s Rights Alliance (CRA) in children’s rights discourse as well as child rights based policy and legislation in Ireland. Utilising the theories of New Social Movements (NSM), the thesis will first examine if children’s rights advocacy as evidenced in the work of the Children’s Rights Alliance can be considered a new social movement. Further, utilising Habermas’ theories of communicative rationality and Peters’ core periphery, this thesis will interrogate how the CRA moved from a position of little or no influence (outer periphery) to a position of influence (inner periphery) where it became a ‘supplier’ of information to the State (core) on issues relating to children’s rights. A qualitative research strategy was adopted for this thesis. This included an extensive literature review and collection of secondary data comprising policy documents, legislation, Dáil Debates, newspaper articles and research documents produced by the CRA. The researcher undertook an elite interview with the Children’s Rights Alliance Policy and Legal Advisor. An elite interview felt to be appropriate as it allows access by the researcher to an experienced and skilled policy and advocacy professional member of staff in a senior role within the organisation. The data gathered from the interview is analysed using an interpretive approach. This is best suited to this research as it allows the researcher to identify the subjective meaning of the data. In short, it seeks to not only explain the Children’s Rights Alliance as a New Social Movement but also to understand how it became a key influencer in children rights policy and legislation in Ireland