School of Culture and Communication - Theses

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Start date: 2020 × End date: 2022 × Type: Masters Coursework thesis ×

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    Male Idols in Women’s Cosmetics: The Chinese Fangirl consumer gaze, data labour, data wars and pseudo-feminist consumerism
    LI, Yuzheng ( 2022)
    Within the increasing marketing trend of young male idols endorsing beauty products that target women in China, Chinese fangirls have been demonstrating an impregnable purchasing power in consuming idol-endorsed products. Research by Tian Peng (2020) and Xiaomeng Li (2020) argue that this endorsement marketing phenomenon implies a certain level of women’s empowerment with the transition of power from the male gaze to the female gaze, however this argument fails to consider of the complexity and digital emergence of the Chinese fandom culture and the deeply engrained patriarchal social norms of China. Therefore, using feminist in-depth semi-structured interviews with six Chinese fangirls, this qualitative study analyses the relationship between the fangirls' consumption of idol-endorsed products and their commitment to the para-social relationship with their idol. It also seeks to understand whether women’s equality and empowerment is advanced by the consumption of idol-endorsed products. In contrast to existing research into women’s consumption of idol-endorsed products (Li, 2020; Peng, 2020) the findings of this study indicate that Chinese fangirls’ consumption of male idol- endorsed beauty products does not signify women’s equality and empowerment. Rather, it falls into “consumerist pseudo-feminism”, a phenomenon which superficially mimics some of the notions of feminism while remaining rooted in capitalist patriarchy. Notably, the study finds that fangirls’ consumption may contain exploitative capitalist features and that the gender power balance remains unchanged in this patriarchal setting. The study will give sociologists and marketers new insight into the nature of the fangirl to idol relationships in the male-endorsed beauty industry, which is deeply consumerist in nature, inherently tied to fandom culture, and does not contain feminist or empowering elements, as some scholars have claimed.
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    (Re)defining recovery: exploring poetry as a therapeutic tool in recovery from severe mood episodes and associated suicide attempts in bipolar disorder
    Lacey, Felicity ( 2020)
    The critical component of this thesis explores the value of poetry as a therapeutic tool in recovery from severe mood episodes and associated suicide attempts in individuals diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Through literary analysis of Shira Erlichman’s Odes to Lithium and Jeanann Verlee’s Said the Manic to the Muse, I suggest that poetry allows a therapeutic space for dynamic reclamation of subjective narrative experiences of bipolar disorder from the medical discourse. Poetic devices such as personification and juxtaposition support the decentralisation of narrative in the subjective dialectic, thus creating scope for the productive tolerance of polarities, fragmentation and disorder. In doing so, poetry can facilitate emotional healing whilst eschewing redemptive narrative arcs. This provides valuable alternate readings and renderings of ‘recovery’ as part of an ongoing management of chronic mental illness which prioritises the experiential perspective, and thereby posits poetic process as a dynamic therapeutic tool in bipolar and attempted suicide contexts. The creative component of this thesis is a collection of poetry exploring my own recovery.
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    Conceptual metaphor for COVID-19 in Australian newspapers
    Almutairi, Hend ( 2020)
    It is important to understand how news sources communicate information about pandemics to the public, and a central aspect of news is the use of metaphors. This study analyses cognitive frames and conceptual domains that metaphorically characterise COVID-19 as a concrete reality for the masses. Data were drawn from a corpus of Australian newspapers in the online Coronavirus Corpus (n.d.). Data were filtered, edited, and classified into three cohorts of corpora, each targeting one of three keywords: coronavirus, COVID-19, and virus. Through the KWIC tool and concordances in the cohorts, metaphoric linguistic expressions (MLEs) were identified. The textual analysis showed spreading and moving were the most common MLEs, followed by impede, force, drive, fight, and battle. The contextual analysis of the MLEs helped identify conceptual metaphors, such as COVID AS A MOVING ENTITY, COVID AS A WAVE, and COVID AS A KILLER. Based on the conceptual coherence between conceptual metaphors, four cognitive domains were classified: COVID AS A LIVING BEING, COVID AS A TSUNAMI, COVID AS A CRIMINAL, and COVID AS AN ENEMY. The findings differ slightly from previous research that found the WAR domain was a dominant source domain for disease metaphors, and many framing options for COVID-19 were used in Australian newspaper discourse. More research is required to better understand the representation of COVID-19 in media discourse to improve the government and public response.