Mass media and culture

Theresa Marie Schiavo died March 31, 2005. The 41-year-old's human and
communicative faculties were so deficient that a feeding tube was necessary to
nourish her and she had been silent for 15 years. In her final month, Ms. Schiavo's
health, the dispute between her husband and parents concerning the removal of her
feeding tube, and her subsequent death were covered extensively by American
broadcast, online and print media. As she lay silent in a Florida hospice, the U.S.
Congress, the president and the courts intervened, and those who spoke about her
matter and the news media propelled her human tragedy toward the top of the public
agenda. News stories, reports and analyses of the case from Time, Newsweek, The
New York Times, The Washington Post and St. Petersburg Times are analyzed using a
critical-qualitative approach to framing.

Mass Effect is a Science Fiction/Action Role Playing/Third Person Shooter video
game series that takes place in the year 2183, in which the player assumes control of
Commander Shepard. Players can choose to customize the character based on his/her
gender, appearance, sexual orientation, background origin and occupation. The
choices that show up in the game are also based on how the player wants their version
of Shepard to interact with other characters and allows players some leeway to shape
their own narrative. The series also discusses and acknowledges issues of race, gender, subjecthood and sovereignty, politics and sexual orientation within its narrative. This analysis
focuses on the text of the series and its implications concerning hegemonic reinforcement and/or resistance in terms of race, gender, sexual orientation, politics, and warfare tactics.

This thesis is an exploration of popular media texts that influence veganism, with either explicit representations or implicit messages that implicate vegans. Research focuses on the question: How does the gendering of food in popular media texts implicate veganism? Theories used include a combination of cultural, film, and feminist studies, including Stuart Hall’s audience reception, Laura Mulvey's male gaze, R.W. Connell’s hegemonic masculinity, Carol Adams' feminist-vegetarian critical theory, and Rebecca Swenson's critical television studies. A print and television advertisement analysis demonstrates the gendering of food, and subject-object relationship of meat, women, and men. A film analysis of texts with vegan characters and horror film texts with implicit vegan and feminist messaging follows, thus revealing interesting trends and developments in the characterization of vegans on films, and hidden messages in the horror films studied. Lastly, an examination of competitive and instructional cooking shows ends the analysis, with interesting challenges to hegemony present in these television texts. The thesis concludes with examples of modem media feminizing veganism through food associations, the problematic imagery of women and meat as fetishized objects, along with challenges to hegemony that exist in some explicitly vegan texts.

This thesis focuses on the continuous misrepresentations that appear throughout different
outlets of popular culture and the negative impacts of these misrepresentations. In the
first chapter, the focus will be on the films The Last of the Mohicans and The Mission and
the origins and implications of the misrepresentation of Indians in film. The second
chapter uses rap music videos such as 50 Cent’s In Da Club, Nelly’s Tip Drill, LMFAO
and Lil John’s Shots, Where Da Hood At, Tupac’s Hit ‘Em up, and N.W.A.’s Straight
Outta Compton as primary texts to demonstrate the one dimensional and problematic
representations of African American Identity in the rap music industry. The third and
final chapter uses the video games Grand Theft Auto III and Gun as examples of the
negative representations that occur and are repeated quickly in the rapidly improving
world of video games. While the misrepresentations are achieved and perpetuated
differently in each medium, their ubiquitous presence in popular culture calls for
discussion.

A new trend of unscripted, reality television programming chronicling the real-life childbirth experiences of American women and families has gained considerable ground in recent years. These programs, especially Discovery Health's BirthDay and The Learning Channel's A Baby Story, record, edit and broadcast the prenatal, childbirth, and postnatal health care of "everyday" women volunteers, including their physical, social, and emotional concerns. This research study focuses attention on the authoritative, technological and therefore, medically hegemonic perspective of this type of programming, illuminating through content, textual, focus group, and survey analyses the abundance of medically hegemonic meanings in both the discursive and visual aspects of these texts as well as the negotiations of their target audience.

This thesis emerges from the realization of the paradox that lies beneath online technology which promises to change the way we think, yet penetrates our lives by employing a systematic simulation of our most basic cognitive skills. In order to understand this paradox in terms of space and time, the research examines the ways in which time and space are communicated on two disparate Internet websites. The assembled data are analyzed using an interdisciplinary approach that leads to a textual analysis based in theories of semiotics. The study finds that the Internet is fundamentally framed in spatial terms. The space bias is ideologically significant; commercial websites use it to produce a textual environment that assimilates the user and, thus, enables the promotion of conspicuous consumption.

This qualitative study examines whether microblogging illustrates or contradicts the longstanding notion that the Internet allows for greater public participation in important issues, thus potentially expanding public sphere. The study analyzes 5 years of tweets about climate change between ExxonMobil and Greenpeace USA using a new hybrid, or blended methodology that combines Kenneth Burke's rhetorical analysis of cluster-agons with eight physical attributes of the Internet that Marshall Poe identified as influential in pushing societies and ideas in new directions. Clusters are also examined using Grace Poh Lyn's reflexive analysis. Additionally, the analysis also considers the use of agitative and control strategies, discursive tensions between freedom and domination, and the rhetorical use of public vernaculars. Analysis of the tweets reveals that business organizations that at first glance or in theory seem to be at odds actually share common discursive practices. They communicate about the same issues at the same or similar times using the same language for the same primary purpose-survival of the organization-while giving the impression that they are working for the good of their respective publics for environmental causes or the bottom line, or even both. The researcher concludes that although there are specific cases of microblogging in which the public benefits to some extent, those gains are either very short-lived or are more likely to exist in theory rather than practice due to the fluid nature of microblogging as well as continued organizational missteps which I call "corporate ejacking."

RuPaul's Drag Race is one of the few realilty television shows focusing on QLGBT (queer, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) identified individuals that has made it into mainstream consciousness. Drag Race provides a unique perspective on the ways that gender identity, sexuality, size, class, race, and ethnicity intersect and interact in people's lives.The television show augments many of these intersedtions and the challenges related to these identities while still reflecting the daily struggles that people experience.The show works to promote messages of self-love and acceptance ; however, it also promotes many problematic and damaging stereotypes. This thesis conducts a feminist analysis in order to answer the question: How does RuPaul's Drag Race relate to hegemonic and oppressive stereotypes and roles associated with gender identity, sexual orientation, size, class, race and ethnicity? Does it challenge or reinforce such hegemonies? In order to answer these questions, this thesis examines visual imagery, narrative, and dialogue in the show, utilizes theories from cultural and women's studies, English and communications. It concludes that although Drag Race does engage in some subversive behavior, it ultimately reinforces harmful hegemonic stereotypes.

This dissertation uses a multiperspectival approach that analyzes production, text, and audience consumption to explore representations of gender and ethnicity in The Home Box Office, Inc. (HBO) original program The Sopranos. I first present the social, political, and economic factors that contributed to the continued critical and commercial success of the show. The hybrid genre of the show - an intermingling of the gangster and soap opera genres - proves particularly significant in its representation of gender and ethnicity. Both textual and audience analyses allow me to respond to the question central to this dissertation: Does The Sopranos reinforce or challenge hegemonic notions of masculinity, femininity, and ethnicity? My textual and paratextual analysis identifies the embodiment of hegemonic masculinity in the male characters, including the ways in which that hegemonic behavior leads to male violence, as depicted in the narrative, and reveals the performances of emphasized femininity and pariah femininities, class, and Italian/Americaness at play amongst the female characters in The Sopranos. Audience analysis reveals that The Sopranos broadly appeals to many Italian/Americans and self-proclaimed feminists, yet the vast majority of fans, particularly those who create fan fiction and frequent chat rooms, are drawn to the show for its violence, sexist imagery, and macho male characters. Thus, the multiperspectival approach of this dissertation proved particularly useful in determining that The Sopranos, in its entirety, ultimately repackages, but yet still reinforces hegemonic notions of gender and Italian/Americaness.

Reality television programming chronicling the daily workings of multiple birth families within American culture has gained notoriety in recent years. Such programs, especially Discovery Health and TLC's 17, 18 Kids and Counting and TLC's Jon and Kate Plus Ei8ht, film, edit and broadcast the "everyday" life of these families. This research study focuses attention on hegemonic ideologies surrounding family values, motherhood, gender roles and religious faith, illuminated through textual and audience analysis. Working from an interdisciplinary approach combining feminist media and cultural studies, this study finds that hegemonic notions of family values, gender representations, religious faith and conceptions of motherhood are evident to varying degrees in the television texts and accepted by fans who negotiate their meanings online.