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    Home and away : blogging emotions in a Persian virtual dowreh : a thesis presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics and Second Language Teaching at Massey University
    (Massey University, 2011) Zare, Samad
    This study explores the creation of a virtual dowreh (family/social circle) via Persian language weblogs among a group of Iranian migrants in Australia. The motivation and inspiration for this study arose from my own experience as a migrant. I became interested in looking at how the new generation of Iranian migrants use weblogs to form digital diasporas and why they publish their emotional experiences online, thereby adding to the understanding of a relatively under-researched community. The study draws upon a sociocultural approach in order to bring to light the role of weblogs in the context of the most recent Iranian migration and the way Iranian migrants use them to replace dowrehs disrupted by the migration experience where they could perform cultural identities and express and share their emotions. Using a grounded theory approach and discourse analysis to blog posts, the study investigates the expression of emotional challenges, expectations, and cultural performances of a group of Persian diasporic bloggers. The exploration of a diasporic virtual dowreh produced several interesting results. The findings suggest the possibility of online community formation via weblogs where Iranians could meet and perform cultural identities which are not available to them in the host society. Two characteristics that marked the virtual dowreh were the type of Persian language used and the interaction between the bloggers and their audience. The analysis demonstrated that interactions between the bloggers and their audience via commenting functions were noticeably governed by Iranian notions of politeness and other Persian rules of decorum and cultural practices. The analysis also illustrated that the language used in the virtual dowreh was a combination of written and spoken Persian, Internet jargon, weblog terms, and concepts from the host society. Furthermore, the exploration of the emotional challenges of the bloggers revealed that certain emotions such as homesickness and self-conscious emotions were among the major sources of emotion in the diaspora and indexed the bloggers‟ Iranian diasporic identities online. The study concludes with the importance of weblogs for Iranian migrants in creating virtual dowrehs where they could practise/perform cultural identities and express and thereby share their emotional experience.
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    Blogs, political discussion and the 2005 New Zealand general election : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PhD in Communication at Massey University
    (Massey University, 2009) Hopkins, Kane
    Communication technologies have altered the way people engage in political discourse. In recent years the internet has played a significant role in changing the way people receive political information, news and opinion. Perhaps the most significant difference as a result of advancements in communication and internet technology is how people participate in discussions and deliberate issues that are important to them. The 2005 New Zealand General Election fell at a time when functionality and access to fast and affordable internet allowed people to develop their own information channels and also determine how, where and to what level they participated in debate and commentary on election issues. The aim of this thesis is to examine how blogs were used to discuss political issues during the 2005 New Zealand General Election campaign period through the use of three inter-related methodologies. The methodologies used in the research are content analysis, interviews and a case study. Four blogs and the comments sections are analysed by way of content analysis for adherence to the rules of communicative interaction within the public sphere. Interviews were conducted with a number of people who blogged during the 2005 election campaign, to develop an understanding of their experiences and perceptions of the role blogging played in the election. A case study of politician and blogger Rodney Hide examines the role blogs play as a communication tool for politicians and the how they change the relationship between politician and voter. An explosion of academic literature in recent years has looked at the participative and deliberative nature of the internet and blogs as having opened new spaces and what implications that may have for democracy. Jurgen Habermas' seminal book, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, provides the theoretical basis for this thesis and the foundation for academic writing in this area. Habermas developed the normative notion of the public sphere as a part of social life where citizens exchanged views and opinions on matters of importance to the common good, so that wider public opinion can be formed.