Watching Foreign TV in an Age of Online Sharing: The cultural implications of cross-border television experience

In recent years, unofficial and/or illegal forms of online file sharing have been increasingly used by audiences worldwide to consume foreign TV programmes which would not previously have been available to them at the time when such shows were first broadcast in their original regions. This form of consumption shortens the time-and-space gap between foreign broadcast and local consumption, highlighting audiences’ desires for borderless, transnational viewing. Taking Taiwanese audiences as an example, this research studies the implications which transnational foreign television consumption via online sharing may bring. Based on in-depth interviews with thirty-six audience members conducted from 2010 to 2011, I focus on two issues: 1. The meaning of television for its audiences: This research examines how and why audiences employ online sharing to bypass temporal, spatial and legal constraints on consuming foreign programmes, and elaborates the ways in which such consumption is becoming an emerging norm of television experience. It sheds light on how our existing understandings have changed, regarding what is meant by “watching TV”, and what television’s role is in providing a sense of liveness, shaping audiences’ sense of social togetherness and their cultural identity. 2. Transnational media flows and cultural power relationships: This research looks at the implications of this cross-border Taiwanese consumption of television for transnational media flows in the post-colonial East Asian contexts. It examines cultural power relationships between East Asian countries, as well as those between the East and the West. Furthermore, by elaborating how audiences’ sense of co-temporality with (and understanding of) other cultures develop via their consumption, this research analyses how such consumption shapes the direction of media flows and cultural power relationships of Taiwan with other countries and thus offers a contemporary understanding of what television means as a cultural form, and what features television audiences have, in the post-network era today

TV or not TV? Contemporary experiences of digital television as a medium and technology for parents and children living in mediated homes

This thesis is an empirical study of digital television viewing and the use of media technology in the home in the context of contemporary parenting in the UK. It is concerned with the current diversity and complexity of the ways of accessing and viewing television content in the home, and how they are understood, experienced and practiced by parents in the context of family everyday life: the domestic space, daily routines, family communication and relationships, and most importantly, the practice of parenting. The thesis significantly expands the discussion of television consumption in the home by including wider aspects of digital television, such as the discussion of its diverse technologies - devices, services, applications and formats - and complex ways, in which these are negotiated, chosen and used by parents as a specific audience group on a daily basis. The study introduces the life course approach to the research into everyday media consumption, and examines parenting as a unique stage in the life course that alters multiple aspects of individuals’ everyday lives, including television viewing and other media practices. The findings of this study thus offer an original contribution to both the field of television studies, and the field of parenting studies. On the one hand, this study reveals that the role that television and media technology play in audience’s everyday life is specific to the stage in audience’s life course, with audiences appropriating television and media technology to suit their particular circumstances and experiences. And on the other hand, this study positions television and media technology as central to how parents experience, negotiate and deal with the everyday tasks of parenting, and to how they construct and manage their sense of parental identity

"Live Better Where You Are": Home Improvement And The Rhetoric Of Renewal In The Postwar United States

While sinuous rows of new suburban ramblers remain the predominant symbol of post-World War II housing in the United States, the upgrading of existing homes was an equally essential component of the era's popular and building culture. Businesses, government agencies, academia, mass media, designers, and homeowners promoted postwar home improvement-sometimes in collaboration, often in competition for market share, consumer dollars, and professional authority. Negotiating realignments of expertise, these groups saw renewal as a national imperative, a moral virtue, and social reward. They reinterpreted traditional notions of the home as symbol of stability and security, not through timeless permanence but through perpetual change. This study examines residential architecture as a temporal space, repeatedly reconfigured as a vehicle for self-expression and in response to shifting cultural priorities. It argues that home improvement, marketed and advertised, embraced and co-opted, drew rhetorical potency from established American attitudes toward personal reinvention and a privileging of the new. The dissertation does not attempt to offer a complete history of postwar home improvement. Rather, it identifies specific episodes and interpretive lenses that offer insights into the depth and breadth of postwar remodeling activities and the ways in which a nation's culture can provide a rhetorical foundation for reshaping its built environment

Escaping the honeytrap: representations and ramifications of the female spy on television since 1965

My thesis interrogates the changing nature of the espionage genre on Western television since the middle of the Cold War. It uses close textual analysis to read the progressions and regressions in the portrayal of the female spy, analyzing where her representation aligns with the achievements of the feminist movement, where it aligns with popular political culture of the time, and what happens when the two factors diverge. I ask what the female spy represents across the decades and why her image is integral to understanding the portrayal of gender on television. I explore four pairs of television shows from various eras to demonstrate the importance of the female spy to the cultural landscape. These shows represent the female spy's birth in the era of the sexual revolution, her rise as a feminist career woman, and the post-9/11 restrictions on who is allowed to serve the country. I argue that the conflation of nation and family that occurs in each show serves to elevate the primacy of the heterosexual reproductive unit, challenging the outwardly-progressive representation of the apparently feminist spy figure. Analyzed in concert, these shows reveal the conservative bent of the espionage genre despite the higher visibility of its female protagonists

Situating documentary film in a speculative future: an exploration in multi species entanglements

This practice-based research is a formal experiment in situating documentary film in an immanent future and, by doing so, puts forward propositions on what it means to be human in an entangled multispecies world. The research consists of A Terrible Beauty, a feature length documentary, and this dissertation. The film was largely shot in Yiwu, home to one of the largest wholesale markets in the world and an important node in the New Silk Road. Set in the world of anthropomorphic goods and objects, including dolls, mannequins and androids, the film follows two timetravellers as they confront questions of time, mortality and what it means to be human in the Anthropocene. The dissertation describes the practice methodology that I developed in the course of the research and reflects on the propositions that the film offers for the future. The research poses the question of how documentary film practice may be situated in a quotidian future and what the value of such a future orientation may be. At the methodological level, I suggest that there are extremely productive overlaps between science fiction and documentary film, and the dissertation reflects on the conceptual journey and experimental routes that I took to arrive at the idea of “speculative fictioning” as a method for documentary practice. The research is in conversation with – and also contributes to – critical concepts from science and technology studies. In particular, I draw on the work of Donna Haraway and extend her insights on human-animal relationalities (“companion species”) to the world of anthropomorphic objects and develop the idea of “companion copies” as a way of rethinking human-nonhuman interactions. If to be human has always entailed being human with other species, I ask what would it mean to discover our humanity with our companion copies such as robots and androids? The research serves as an invitation to think about how an ontological regard for things may allow us to cultivate a better regard for fellow humans as well

Shanzhai Online Videos in China: Governance and Resistance through Media

This dissertation explores the production, circulation, and regulation of Shanzhai online videos in order to understand how people's everyday lives are governed and how the governing power is resisted through the media system in contemporary China. This research is situated in the specific socio-cultural and historical context where Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) have proliferated among various social strata, where the media are both the propagandistic mouthpiece and a profit-oriented industry, and where people are encouraged to pursue their life goals under a neoliberal rationality that is pervasive in media. I use a Foucauldian framework to examine the power modalities and power relationships manifested in the Shanzhai practices. I argue that both disciplinary power and the power of governmentality are found in this cultural practice. It is through the production, circulation and regulation of Shanzhai videos that power is exercised on different parties involved in this process as governance and resistance. This power relationship, I argue, is explicated through a ritualistic view of the reality presented in the trans-media, trans-genre narratives that people internalize in order to develop specific ways of using media to pursue their life goals. Meanwhile, people also employ various strategies to negotiate for resources to achieve these goals. In these negotiations, power relationships manifested themselves as their actions upon each other. Ordinary people are disciplined through patterned uses of media to live their lives and governed by a neoliberal mentality to pursue their life projects on the Internet. However, there is more than one set of discourses with a claim to the "truth" about Shanzhai in Chinese media. Thus, people are also empowered to take advantage of this discrepancy to gain symbolic as well as material favors. This study examined a nuanced and dialectic power relationship in contemporary Chinese society. First, it is found that people are both empowered and subjected to the ways they use media to pursue personal goals. Second, the resistance in the Shanzhai practices not only brought them symbolic power as much previous literature suggests, but also material resources such as media access and sponsorship. Last, the holistic view of the media system helps us situate Shanzhai online videos in the convergent media environment and draw a better picture of the web of power relationships

Campaigning for authenticity

In the fall of 1976 Jimmy Carter wanted to be an American President... who is not isolated from our people, but a President who feels your pain and who shares your dreams. With humble, hopeful, homey images of Plains, Georgia, campaign advertisements sold Carter as a fresh-off-the-farm, peanut-picking Cincinnatus---an authentic American to whom voters could relate. Authenticity became increasingly important to candidate selection in the late twentieth century for multiple reasons. As a priority of the Babyboom Generation, the value of authenticity informed Americans\u27 relationships to own another and evaluations of their cultural products. Political and cultural upheaval resulting from Vietnam and Watergate challenged Americans\u27 trust in politicians and campaign politics; resulting structural reforms transformed presidential nomination and election processes. The growth of soft news, human interest, and television talk shows required candidates to become personally available in order to connect with voters intimately. This dissertation examines the role of candidate image in recent American presidential elections, focusing on the dominant cultural vocabulary of authenticity. While partisan affiliation, ideology, and economic trends were all essential determinants of election outcomes between 1976 and 2000, no one theme permeated campaign discourse more than authenticity. The bulk of this dissertation is devoted to analyzing the ways in which symbols of authenticity operated during specific election cycles. Although cultural vocabulary evolved between 1976 and 2000, several core themes dominated campaign rhetoric: colloquial language and dress, personal narrative and self-disclosure, and anti-elitism. In defining these authenticities, the project also explores negative constructions of inauthenticity associated with the flip-flop, the Beltway elite, the Ivy League, and the Northeast. Each chapter examines a single general election season to uncover the ways in which Americans assimilated candidate images during that cycle. By examining televised and printed news, commentary, and comedy, along with political polls, campaign documents, manuscript collections, and political advertisements, this dissertation argues that Americans privileged campaign narratives that were authentically representative of themselves and their country

TikTok and everyday life: making sense of the meanings and politics of scrolling

Every day, millions of people take out their phones, open apps such as TikTok, and start scrolling. They watch videos, ‘like’ them, leave or read comments, and occasionally share the content they discover with others. A lot is being said about scrollers in debates. Yet, their stories, voices, and lived experiences rarely stand in the foreground. Without these millions consuming content on a daily basis, digital platforms like TikTok would not exist. Their popularity and commercial viability rest on continuous consumption, meaning, the formation of an audience attracting creators and advertisers alike. This thesis takes TikTok as a case and investigates it from an audience studies perspective. It ethnographically enters the world of scrollers in an attempt to unpack what it means to consume content online. To do so, the thesis draws on data collected over one and a half years of fieldwork. During this period, the TikTok consumption of 30 young adults based in the United Kingdom was studied using methods such as interviews, media mapping techniques, participant observations, and digital fieldwork. Through the collected data, an ethnographically situated account of online content consumption was developed. This account outlines how scrollers engage with the TikTok “For You” page as an everyday technology and resource generative of pleasure, relaxation, stimulation, inspiration, and social connection. It discusses how scrollers navigate TikTok as a commercial online space and the challenges they experience in that process. In that course, the thesis confronts concerns about the addictive design of apps like TikTok and the growing personalisation of media environments. Participants were found to appropriate TikTok in creative ways as an escape site to manage their degrees of social connectedness. TikTok enabled them to momentarily disconnect and withdraw from social pressures or obligations. Simultaneously, the app provided a resource for meaningful reconnection through sharing content. Using TikTok was not unproblematic, however. Participants got carried away scrolling, and in response to that actively developed tactics to break the endless flow of the “For You” page. Likewise, they negotiated concerns about TikTok’s surveillance practices in a way that rendered their relationship with the app tense and fragile. Their trust in TikTok was conditional and continuously put to the test. Unravelling these dynamics of online content consumption, the thesis contributes to our understanding of social media like TikTok, digital everyday life, and their politics