School of Culture and Communication - Theses
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ItemForecasts of the past: globalisation, history and contemporary realism( 2008)This thesis takes issue with Fredric Jameson’s suggestion that contemporary science fiction is sending back “more reliable information [about current political and economic organisation] than an exhausted realism” and it develops an alternative Marxist defense of contemporary realist fiction. Can realism's techniques adequately represent the complexity of contemporary political organization? The thesis presents readings of key realist texts — by Pat Barker, Maurice Gee, Kerstin Hensel, James Kelman and David Peace — testing their potential to produce the knowledge of history, industrial politics and the metropolis traditionally central to literary realism’s concerns. (For complete abstract open document).
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ItemMarketisation in 'transboundary networks': a comparative study of public service media in Australia and Germany( 2012)Public service media are in a process of change, attempting to balance the challenges of the increasing global interconnectivity of media environments. Digital communications technologies make content available on-demand via various ‘access points’ such as satellite and broadband television, tablet computers, smartphones and video game consoles, multiplying and diversifying content choices. As a result the use of media is no longer a communal but a highly individualised and fragmented activity. Furthermore, the myriads of ‘access points’ created by digital communications technologies empower individuals to directly choose what content they consume when, where and how. Media users’ empowerment significantly challenges the capacity of public service media to strengthen the democratic values and social cohesion of national societies by gathering and engaging civic communities in discourses of shared public interests. To continue to be a relevant fragment in individuals’ relationship with content, public service media organisations are inevitably drawn into multidimensional networks of marketisation involving competition and cooperations with other public service and commercial, national and transnational content providers. Built on Sassen’s (2006) approach of ‘transboundary networks’, this study investigates new models of transnational ‘commercialisation’ of public service media in Australia and Germany. The thesis explores in particular the emerging microsphere of marketisation where ‘national’ public purpose goals and ‘global’ market forces converge. These ‘transboundary’ trajectories are further examined through semi-structured interviews with corporate executives of the ABC and SBS in Australia and ZDF and Deutsche Welle in Germany. Results reveal that while marketisation relates on the surface to strategies implemented to remain competitive, at a deeper level it constitutes a means to protect and reinforce public purpose values. The leveraging of these public purpose values, which are what makes public media services marketable, constitutes a key brand advantage enabling public service media to remain competitive in complex networks of ‘coopetition’ (Küng, Leandros, Picard, Schroeder, & van der Wurff, 2008).
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ItemRelational 'glocalities': a study of 'cartographies' of media and migration through the approach of 'glocal' cosmopolitanism( 2012)In this thesis, I explore constructions of social spaces in experiences of media and migration. In particular, I focus on the interweaving of the ‘global’ and the 'local' in a distinctive, Singaporean context of contemporary globalised media and migration. This study involves a hermeneutical analysis of phenomenological interviews with twenty-one Singaporeans who are university students in Melbourne, Australia. While this thesis is primarily positioned in media and migration studies, I develop a conceptual framework that draws and builds on related discourses of mediated globalisation and cosmopolitanism, as well as mediated social spaces. In particular, I expand existing conceptions of 'relational space' to a tripartite conception. I conceptualise three dimensions of what I view as 'relational spaces': spaces as constructed through social relations (social spaces), relations between social spaces, and relations to social spaces. I argue that social spaces are constructed in experiences of media and migration as 'cartographies' (see Brah, 1996, p. 145) characterised by 'relational glocalities'. I define 'relational glocalities' as 'glocal' (R. Robertson, 1995) social spaces that are locally and unequally differentiated in relation to one another within 'global fields' (Glick Schiller & Çağlar, 2009; R. Robertson, 1992). Drawing on Beck’s (2006) approach of 'methodological cosmopolitanism' and Robertson’s (1992, 1995) conception of 'glocality' as a 'universalism-particularism nexus', I introduce the concept of 'glocal cosmopolitanism' to examine the construction of 'relational glocalities' through dialectical negotiation between 'universalism' and 'particularism'. The notion of 'relational glocalities' challenges the established approach of 'methodological nationalism' (Beck, 2006; A. Wimmer & Glick Schiller, 2003) that informs existing research on media and migration. It contributes to the reconceptualisation of sociospatial experiences of media and migration through the approach of 'methodological cosmopolitanism' (Beck, 2006; Beck & Beck-Gernsheim, 2009; Beck & Grande, 2010; Georgiou, 2007b; Jansson, 2009). This study finds that a multiplicity and diversity of countries and cities of migration are apparent in and across macrostructural constructions of what I describe as 'biographical geographies'. 'Biographical geographies' are differentiated by stages of migration, the relevance of close personal relations for experiences of migration, as well as first-hand and second-hand experiences of migration. Expanding the view of social spaces beyond (particular) countries and cities, this study finds that a much broader variety of 'relational spaces' are relevant in microstructural constructions of 'cartographies'. I identify distinct 'relational spaces' that emerge as configurations of media, social relations, place, and space. In the final chapter, I discuss the broader potential of 'glocal cosmopolitanism' as a framework to examine sociospatial experiences of media and migration in a global environment of networked communication (Castells, 2010).
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ItemUniversal visual communication: developing a multidisciplinary paradigm for visual communication in a globally changing world( 2011)The universal visual communication paradigm (UVCP) proposed in this thesis responds to the conceptual and empirical gap in studying the universal aspects of visual communication within the context of the globally changing visual culture of the twenty-first century. The creative contribution of this study comprises the development of the holistic and multidisciplinary UVCP concept, which also involves an original definition of global visual culture and the design of novel visual methods. The UVCP is supported by empirical findings from a cross-cultural comparative study based on fieldwork ethnography, as well as surveys and experiments designed for the purposes of this research and conducted with 130 participants from major urban areas in Argentina, Australia, China, Germany and Poland. Unlike previous constructs, the UVCP recognises the importance of addressing the universals of both the neurophysiological (vision) and socio-cultural (visuality) aspects of visual communication in a comprehensive and multidisciplinary manner. Visual communication is of critical importance for both human nature and culture and particularly for personal and mass interactions in a visually intense world culture. However, the idea of universal ways of seeing and communicating visually is controversial and little explored, especially across socio-cultural studies and the humanities. The objects of study are not clearly defined, while methodologies pay next to no attention to the exclusively visual aspects of communication as experienced by individuals across cultures. Against this backdrop, the UVCP deals holistically with the universal aspects of vision and visuality and addresses the relationship between them in today‟s globally changing visual environment. Additionally, the original definition of global visual culture proposed here – namely, the visualscape – extends beyond the mainstream historical-symbolic approach to culture to involve the structural-functional and evolutionary perspectives. Within this framework, the idea of visualscape is combined with globalisation theories to offer an adequate research context and pool of study objects. Methodologically, this study develops a set of innovative visual research tools that minimise verbal expression and interpretation and instead explore the explicitly visual aspects of communication, as experienced by research participants at the perceptual and active-creative levels of interaction. The combination of innovative methods (e.g. visual associations, drawing-based experiments and affective perception of visuals) is put to the test in a cross-cultural comparative study which supports the UVCP empirically while opening up new avenues for further research. In this sense, the new UVCP developed in this thesis has the potential to explore other universal aspects of human communication in the context of a globalising world culture.
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ItemSex and power in Australian writing during the culture wars, 1993-1997( 2009)I address a selection of texts published in Australia between 1993 and 1997 which engage with feminist debates about sex and power. These texts are important, I argue, because they signpost the historical moment in which the culture wars and globalisation gained force in Australia. A key word in this thesis is ‘framing’. The debates which my texts engage with have (much like the culture wars in general) commonly been framed as conflicts between polarised political factions. These political factions have, in turn, been framed in terms of generations; that is, an ‘older’ feminism is pitted against a ‘newer’ feminism. Each generation of feminists supposedly holds quite different views about sex. I argue that my texts actually provide an insight into how various feminist perspectives on sex diverge and intersect with each other, as well as with certain New Right discourses about sex. My selected texts also suggest how the printed text has helped transport feminism within and outside Australia My texts fit into two broad genres, fiction and scholarly non-fiction. The texts are: Helen Garner’s The First Stone (1995), Sheila Jeffreys’ The Lesbian Heresy (1993), Catharine Lumby’s Bad Girls (1997), Linda Jaivin’s Eat Me (1995) and Justine Ettler’s The River Ophelia (1995). I engage with various critical responses to these texts, including reviews, essays and interviews with the authors. I draw also from a range of theoretical sources. These include analyses of the culture wars by the American theorist Lillian S. Robinson and the Australian scholars McKenzie Wark, David McKnight and Mark Davis. Davis has provided a useful overview of how the metaphor of ‘generational conflict’ circulated in Australian culture during the 1990s. I draw on Arjun Appadurai’s model of “global cultural flows” and Ann Curthoys’ history of feminism in Australia. I engage with research into the increasingly ‘globalised’ nature of Australian writing, as well as a number of feminist works on the relationship between sex and power