Catching a Catfish: Constructing the ‘good’ social media user in reality television

This article interrogates the cultural work of ‘old’ media texts which take social media use as a narrative focus. Employing the MTV reality show Catfish: The TV Show as a case study, I argue that, in this program, the specific conventions of reality television - authenticity, confession and self-realization – work to produce and circulate normative scripts of “appropriate” and “inappropriate” ways to articulate the self on social media, which align with reality TV’s established investment in the concept of the ‘authentic’ self. Further, I argue that the show’s representations of social media use valorize the primacy of connecting with and accepting one’s ‘real’ self, making legible a subject position which speaks particularly to young people – the program’s target demographic – in the contemporary juncture of 2010s ‘crisis’ neoliberalism, by transposing political questions into personal crises

Interrogating the politics of LGBT celebrity in British reality television

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, reality television has been one of the most prolific spaces of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) visibility in British popular culture. Yet, in almost two decades of scholarship on reality TV, very little academic work has addressed the representation of LGBT identities within this medium, outside of a small set of makeover programmes. Where LGBT visibility in non-makeover reality shows has been analyzed, these representations have been approached as largely indistinguishable from fiction texts, their status as reality TV passing largely unaddressed. This thesis critically interrogates the relationship between reality television as a form, and the representations of LGBT identity found within reality programmes. Focusing on British reality shows broadcast between 2000 and 2014, this study explores how the generic specificities of reality television have shaped the ways in which LGBT identities have become visible within reality formats. This thesis argues that, in the figures of LGBT reality TV participants, tropes of authenticity, self-realization, celebrity and democracy bound to reality television itself have functioned as the discursive frameworks through which a series of normative scripts of LGBT subjectivity and LGBT life have been produced and circulated through British popular culture. This thesis examines the representations of LGBT identity in a range of different reality formats, including Big Brother, The X Factor and The Only Way is Essex, amongst others, alongside the discussions and depictions of LGBT participants in extra-textual media like magazines, newspapers and blogs. Through these materials, this study interrogates how different reality formats enable LGBT subjectivities to become visible in different ways, the divergent ways in which British reality television has represented different kinds of queer identities, and how British reality shows have mobilized the conventions of reality TV to construct and delineate cultural hierarchies of “acceptable” and “unacceptable” formations of queer subjectivity

‘Not just for gays anymore’: men, masculinities and musical theatre

This thesis explores how the changing masculinities of the 21$^s$$^t$ century have affected how young men connect to musical theatre as a genre that has been stereotypically seen as gay. The investigation is first located in the theoretical framework of masculinities, utilising the concepts of the male sex role, hegemonic masculinities and inclusive masculinity to chart how the performance of the male gender has changed over the past century. The project then adopts an empirical approach to a group of 161 men and 25 women, establishing a methodological framework for correlating sexual orientation with attitudes towards musical theatre. There is a further honing of this methodology through the adoption of Jenifer Toksvig's $The$ $Fairytale$ $Moment$ exercise, which identifies how each participant connects to narrative through a core emotional drive. Finally, this data is tested through three case studies of how individual participants connect to $Les$ $Misérables$, $Wicked$ and $Soho$ $Cinders$, concluding that the emotional content of musical theatre is now as desirable to straight men as it is to women and LGBT men

Fingerprinting blue carbon: Rationale and tools to determine the source of organic carbon in marine depositional environments

Blue carbon is the organic carbon in oceanic and coastal ecosystems that is captured on centennial to millennial timescales. Maintaining and increasing blue carbon is an integral component of strategies to mitigate global warming. Marine vegetated ecosystems (especially seagrass meadows, mangrove forests, and tidal marshes) are blue carbon hotspots and their degradation and loss worldwide have reduced organic carbon stocks and increased CO2 emissions. Carbon markets, and conservation and restoration schemes aimed at enhancing blue carbon sequestration and avoiding greenhouse gas emissions, will be aided by knowing the provenance and fate of blue carbon. We review and critique current methods and the potential of nascent methods to track the provenance and fate of organic carbon, including: bulk isotopes, compound-specific isotopes, biomarkers, molecular properties, and environmental DNA (eDNA). We find that most studies to date have used bulk isotopes to determine provenance, but this approach often cannot distinguish the contribution of different primary producers to organic carbon in depositional marine environments. Based on our assessment, we recommend application of multiple complementary methods. In particular, the use of carbon and nitrogen isotopes of lipids along with eDNA have a great potential to identify the source and quantify the contribution of different primary producers to sedimentary organic carbon in marine ecosystems. Despite the promising potential of these new techniques, further research is needed to validate them. This critical overview can inform future research to help underpin methodologies for the implementation of blue carbon focused climate change mitigation schemes

Financial incentives for large-scale wetland restoration: beyond markets to common asset trusts

Wetlands provide $47.4 trillion/year worth of ecosystem services globally and support immense biodiversity, yet face widespread drainage and pollution, and large-scale wetlands restoration is urgently needed. Payment for ecosystem service (PES) schemes provide a viable avenue for funding large-scale wetland restoration. However, schemes around the globe differ substantially in their goals, structure, challenges, and effectiveness in supporting large-scale wetland restoration. Here, we suggest wetland-based PES schemes use common asset trusts (CATs) to build investment portfolios of wetlands across landscapes that sustain and enhance overall provision of multiple ecosystem services. CATs can meet the needs of multiple investors, permit bundled payments, and provide flexibility to invest in the restoration of numerous services/values, all using a coordinated, highly collaborative, prioritized, and transparent process. CATs would support financial viability, facilitate efficiency to reduce administrative burdens, and enable credibility and social licence building to restore wetland values and services globally

Critical Habitats and Biodiversity: Inventory, Thresholds and Governance

The High Level Panel for Sustainable Ocean Economy (https://oceanpanel.org/) has commissioned a series of “Blue Papers” to explore pressing challenges at the nexus of the ocean and the economy. This paper is part of a series of 16 papers to be published between November 2019 and October 2020. It addresses how multiple human impacts will impact biodiversity underpinning ecosystem services such as marine fisheries, aquaculture, coastal protection and tourism. The paper examines the distribution of marine species and critical marine habitats around the world; analyses trends in drivers, pressures, impacts and response; and establishes thresholds for protecting biodiversity hot spots, and indicators to monitor change. From this scientific base, it assesses the current legal framework and available tools for biodiversity protection, current gaps in ocean governance and management and the implications for achieving a sustainable ocean economy tailored to individual coastal states grouped by social indicators

Effects of antiplatelet therapy on stroke risk by brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases: subgroup analyses of the RESTART randomised, open-label trial

Background Findings from the RESTART trial suggest that starting antiplatelet therapy might reduce the risk of recurrent symptomatic intracerebral haemorrhage compared with avoiding antiplatelet therapy. Brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases (such as cerebral microbleeds) are associated with greater risks of recurrent intracerebral haemorrhage. We did subgroup analyses of the RESTART trial to explore whether these brain imaging features modify the effects of antiplatelet therapy