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    Welfare and single Māori mothers in the media : symbolic power and the case of Metiria Turei : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Science in Psychology at Massey University, Albany New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2020) Martin, Ahnya
    This thesis explores the case of Metiria Turei (former Green Party co-leader) who sparked considerable media outrage when she announced publicly that as a single mother receiving welfare decades earlier, she had taken on flat mates without notifying Work and Income New Zealand. Metiria made this announcement in an attempt to highlight current problems in the welfare system and to promote the need for systemic change. The resulting media coverage offers an interesting case of how symbolic power is used within media spaces to shape constructions of issues of poverty and welfare, and the people involved. This study involved two main empirical elements. The first was a systematic analysis of 366 television, radio and online items that made up the media public controversy surrounding Metiria’s admission. The media analysis documents how a hegemonic anti-welfare perspective came to dominate corporate news media coverage, which was contested via various social media platforms. I document how the growing pressure from conservative news commentators worked to silence both Metiria Turei and her supporters who were active on social media in promoting the need for structural changes in the welfare system. In the second element, I selected 12 key items from the media coverage of the controversy and presented these to two focus groups involving eight wāhine Māori (Māori women) who had been recipients of welfare (sole purpose benefit or domestic purpose benefit). The focus group analysis reveals how these participants challenged the narrow neoliberal framing of news coverage of Metiria Turei’s admission. Participating wāhine readily identified and deconstructed the [ill]logic of the hegemonic perspective that was dominating coverage. These participants pointed to considerable problems in the welfare system that needed to be addressed, but which, despite a few notable exceptions, were not covered in any substantive way in the corporate news coverage as a whole. Overall, this thesis showcases the changing power dynamics between corporate news and social media regarding issues of welfare and morality today.
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    The socio-psychological aspects of the personalization of politics : examining the process, conditional factors, and implications of parasocial relationships with political figures : a dissertation presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor in Philosophy in Psychology at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2019) Hakim, Moh Abdul
    Amidst the growing complexity of modern politics, it has been documented that people tend to focus more on individual candidates instead of parties, developing psychological bonds with them personally. Although this phenomenon has been under much discussion recently, the socio- psychological explanation of political personalization in the literature is still largely scant. In addressing this gap, I advocate for the use of parasocial relationship theory to explain the social psychological aspects of political personalization. According to this theory, people have the ability to develop a one-sided feeling of intimacy with popular figures from a distance, as they repeatedly encounter the figures through media (conceptualized as parasocial relationships). To show the utility of this concept, I present a series of evidence showing the validity as well as generalisability of parasocial relationships with political figures as a psychological construct across Indonesia, New Zealand, and the United States in Chapter 2. Interestingly, our analyses also indicated that the type of political systems (presidential vs parliamentary) and the level of democratic maturity of a country play a crucial role in facilitating the formation of parasocial relationships with politicians. In Chapter 3, I demonstrate that parasocial relationships with political candidates are consistently linked to political news consumption. Moreover, this link was found to be largely mediated by experiences of being in imaginary interactions with the candidates during the news exposure situations. In Chapter 4, our analyses suggest that the presence of social media is likely to amplify the personalization of politics. It was revealed that those who frequently use social media are more likely to engage in social media interactions with political figures, leading to the formation of parasocial relationships with them. Finally, in Chapter 5, I elaborate on the theoretical implications of my findings within the broader context of the political psychology literature on political attachments. The practical implications of the findings are discussed in light of the rising popularity of the use of media technologies to cutivate people’s sense of intimacy with political candidates.
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    Interrogating Antipodean angst : New Zealand's non-Muslim majority talk about Muslims : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Psychology at Massey University, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2019) Ash, Eileen Jayne
    This study sought to address Douglas Pratt’s (2010) claim that New Zealand’s non-Muslim majority are experiencing “angst” in relation to a growing Muslim population. To explore this, a discourse analysis was conducted using 12 interviews with non-Muslim New Zealanders to identify how participants construct and maintain ideas surrounding Muslims. Results indicated two discourses, namely, constructing New Zealand society and constructing Muslims. Within constructions of New Zealand society, patterns of talk highlighted that New Zealand was established as a “safe haven”, as well as being tolerant and accepting of different religions and cultures. Tolerance and acceptance were conditional on whether Muslims assimilated, and on participants’ own security and safety. Within constructions of Muslims, gender-based oppression was created as a problematic difference compared with non-Muslims. Further, Muslims were constructed as “not terrorists, mostly” which suggests that there is a default link between Islam and terrorism. Media was also significant in talk, constructed as intentionally presenting a distorted view of Muslims. Also, in relation to media, participants constructed themselves as ignorant. Overall, the major finding of this research was a lack of angst in talk relating to Muslims. Rather, what was found were minor concerns relating to Muslim dress and some concern about safety, as well as conditional acceptance and a desire to retain social and cultural norms of what is considered “Kiwi”. The concept of national identity was used to maintain power relations between those considered New Zealanders, largely Pākehā or New Zealand European, and Muslims. Covert racism, as part of a much broader pattern of talk and not specific to Muslims, was identified in this study.
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    Reading between the lines : is news media in Fiji supporting or challenging gender stereotypes? : a frame analysis of local news media coverage of violence against women during the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-based Violence campaign of 2017
    (Massey University, 2018) Van Baaren, Ellie
    Violence against women is recognised as a global public health issue and an obstacle to development, as ending it is inextricably linked with achieving gender equality. The public relies on and believes in the capacity of news media to present them with a ‘true’ picture of reality and the news media are therefore treated as valuable allies in changing the norms, beliefs and attitudes that perpetuate violence against women. In the production and consumption of news, however, journalists employ frames to condense complex events into interesting and appealing news reports, in turn influencing how audiences view particular events, activities and issues, especially when it comes to attributing blame and responsibility. This study employs a frame analysis to identify whether, and to what extent, episodic or thematic framing is used in news articles on violence against women published in the Fiji Sun and Fiji Times during and around the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-based Violence campaign of 2017. It showed that episodic framing was overwhelmingly used in the sample, thereby divorcing the violence from its social roots and encouraging audiences to blame the individuals involved, both for the violence itself and for remedying it. This directly contradicts the campaign’s central principles positioning violence against women as a social and development issue that requires every member of society to play a part in ending it. The results, therefore, suggest that changes are needed in how organisations engage with the news media to ensure that coverage of violence against women improves in both quantity and quality.
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    Neoliberalization, media, and union resistance : identity struggles in New Zealand education 1984-2014 : a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree in Doctor of Philosophy in Communication and Journalism at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2018) Salter, Leon Alick
    On 13 April 2013, New Zealand’s primary teachers union the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) organized protests across the country, attended by approximately 10,000 members and sympathisers. Protesters held aloft two-sided placards – on one side read “Stand Up For Kids, Save Our Schools” and on the other a grotesque cartoon figure accompanied “Fight the GERM”. The GERM stood for the Global Education Reform Movement and was intended to represent the policy programme of the Government as a threat to New Zealand’s “world class” public education system. Following the launch of their flagship National Standards policy in October 2009, the governing National Party had become involved in a series of struggles with teachers, schools and their unions, contributing to the splitting of the discursive landscape into two antagonistically opposed sides. This situation was then intensified by the introduction of two more controversial policies without sector-consultation: charter schools and an increase to class size ratios. This thesis aims to investigate the underlying discursive ground structuring the three policies. By doing so, it aims to uncover the logics behind them, addressing such questions as why would the National Party, already scarred by previous battles with a powerful and relatively unified education sector, seek to implement policies on the premise that schools were failing the nation and that many teachers were not doing their jobs properly? And, conversely, why would the NZEI seek to represent the Government’s policy agenda through this combative frame? I demonstrate that the three policies, while divergent from each other, are distinctly neoliberal; each emphasizing diverse, overlapping facets of education within neoliberal governance, by setting them within a context of two previous decades of the neoliberalization of education in Aotearoa New Zealand. By employing the discourse theory of Ernesto Laclau, the Government’s and the union’s mediated framings of the policies are understood as a series of interlinked but contingent discursive struggles to fix meaning. Both sides employ a populist articulatory logic, which constructs different symbolic enemies, in order to attempt to make their version of events hegemonic. Through an analysis of diverse texts such as policy documents, speeches, newspaper editorials, blogs and interviews with activists, I argue that definitions of three subject-positions, together with the relations between them, were integral to this struggle: the teacher, the parent and the student. While neoliberal discourse progressively colonized these identities with individualistic, self-centred traits that emphasised entrepreneurial capacities, articulations of a holistic educational ethos contested these meanings, instead emphasising an ethics of care, humanism, democracy, justice, fairness and collectivity. In other words, the level of the subject provided the limits to neoliberal discourse, providing a place of continuous disconnect.
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    From the television : an exegesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Art at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2017) Cartwright, Kevin
    On the Television is presented as an immersive digital video installation that seeks to draw the viewer into the dreamlike world of the televisual. Images derived from iterative practice-based works create metaphorical foci for sociocultural archetypes and a politic of the personal. Drawn from a biographical context and primarily relying on the visual icon of the balloon, this work tests the viewer's relation to the realm of the digital screen, and offers an alternative vision for a mass media of the individual.
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    The effect of public communication campaigns on family communication and behaviour : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Business Studies in Communication Management at Massey University
    (Massey University, 2004) Hopkins, Kane
    This thesis examines how mass communicated messages from a public communication campaign affect interpersonal communication within families. It also considers how interpersonal communication among family members flows on to affect behaviours in the family. The study uses McDevitt and Chaffee's five-stage sequence of behavioural activation within families to examine two pro-environmental campaigns: the Big Clean Up and Clean Up NZ. Seven families exposed to the messages of the communication campaigns were interviewed to gain an understanding of what communication process occurred as a result of these interventions. "Downward" (parent to child), and "upward" (child to parent) flows of communication were examined. The results suggest that communication among family members has a substantial bearing on a family's behavioural response to campaign messages. However, the person who engenders the discussions also plays a major role in the success or otherwise of the communication outcomes. The campaign messages had different effects on children than they did on parents. There were no significant behaviour changes in families where the parent was the initial message receiver; however where the child provided the initial intervention behaviour changes tended to occur. While children received new information, and developed new behaviours based on the campaign messages, parents tended to have existing beliefs and patterns of behaviour endorsed. The relationship between interpersonal family communication, campaign messages and changes in behaviour has implications for communicators developing campaigns that aim to change behaviour.
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    Multi-media literacy practices of year 5-6 children at home : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Educational Psychology at Massey University, Manawatu, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2015) Cummings, Susan
    A child’s literacy development is significantly affected by factors that exist outside of educational settings. In recent decades, children’s life experiences have been transformed through the increased use of technology in their everyday environment. This research project uses a social practice view of literacy to explore the literacy activities of children in everyday settings, with particular attention to how they navigate and follow their interests across different formats, from traditional media such as print to multi-media. Data was collected using a mixed methods design to answer three research questions: 1) the ways children engage in literacy activities across different formats, 2) the types of literacy activities children found engaging, and 3) the reasons children engage in literacy practices in their everyday lives. Results indicate that children engaged in a variety of literacy activities across multiple formats. Findings also indicated watching videos is a popular multi-media format and this format may be influencing the types of literacy skills children value. Children engaged in literacy related activities for a number of different reasons, including: stimulation, family practices, functional reasons, social relatedness, mastery and competence, and social participation. It was concluded that children’s everyday literacy practices are influenced by a number of sociocultural and developmental factors, and that any efforts to support them will require an understanding of their complex nature and embeddedness in educational and social contexts.
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    The iconic news image as visual event in photojournalism and digital media : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Media Studies at Massey University, Manawatu, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2013) Kelly, Samantha Diane
    This thesis shows how the uses and meanings of the iconic news image have changed with the emergence of digital media. Most of the iconic photographs of the twentieth century were produced by photojournalists and published in mass circulation newspapers and magazines. In the twenty–first century, amateurs have greater access to image producing technologies and greater capacity to disseminate their images through the Internet. This situation has made possible the use of iconic news images to support political agendas other than those promoted in the media institutions and beyond the range of censorship imposed by those media. In order to demonstrate the functions and understand this unprecedented situation, this thesis explores how iconic news images produce meaning. I consider formal definitions of iconic news images but adopt Nicholas Mirzoeff's theory of the visual event to explain how the meanings of iconic news images are impacted by historical context, media institutions and viewer responses. This dynamic model of visual communication allows us to see that iconic news images indeed function as events and that there is a political struggle over the creation, staging, publication and interpretation of those events. The thesis develops this argument by analysing a series of historical examples. The images range from the iconic news images of World War II used in the official propaganda for the war effort, through the combination of amateur and professional images used in the 9/11 visual canon, to the activist images of the ongoing Syrian Civil War. The significance of 9/11 is that although some images produced by amateurs did become iconic (for example Holocaust photographs or from the Kennedy assassination) it was not until the 9/11 attacks that the amateur production of the image began to be directly assimilated into mass media. What this means is that the media institutions are no longer the sole arbitrators of the images that represent world events. Instead, using digital media, anyone including the media institutions, activists, military and terrorists create events that are so powerful in their traumatic impact, that they have to be published. Protest and terrorist movements have long understood that their impact depends on media coverage. Now images themselves can be more directly mobilised through digital media to reach viewers. They no longer require the media institutions or their resources.
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    Politely adversarial : perceptions of Japan in New Zealand print media, 1895 - 1942 : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in History at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2014) Bowie, Aaron James
    This thesis focuses on how New Zealanders viewed Japan from the turn of the twentieth century to the outbreak of war in the Pacific Theatre in 1941. The research is based primarily on newspaper articles, editorials and letters to the editor. The goals of this research are to ascertain the self-perceptions of New Zealanders based upon how they viewed a significant foreign power in the Pacific, replete with the general vernacular used to describe the Japanese and the racial and political attitudes that such vernacular represented. Existing scholarship tends to focus on New Zealand‘s official diplomacy with Japan, and this thesis aims to add to this by providing a social history of New Zealand‘s racial attitudes narrated by civilian New Zealanders in their own voices. The three focus questions of the thesis are: How far did New Zealanders‘ attitudes to Japan vary from region to region? How far did racial ideologies impact New Zealanders‘ views of Japan? And how closely were New Zealand‘s perceptions of Japan in line with those of New Zealand‘s First and Second World War allies, as expressed in print media? While New Zealanders‘ written perspectives on Japan may have also been influenced by genders of those who wrote them, a focused consideration of the influence of gender on such perspectives is beyond the scope of this thesis due to the often anonymous nature of contributions to newspaper letters to the editor. The main body of the thesis consists of a prologue and five chapters which progress in chronological sequence. The first chapter covers the turn of the twentieth century. The second chapter focuses on New Zealand‘s reaction to the Russo-Japanese War and the Annexation of Korea to 1910. The third chapter focuses on the Anglo-Japanese Alliance in effect to 1921. The fourth chapter covers the ending of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance and the cooling of relations to 1931. The fifth chapter covers New Zealand‘s reaction to deepening Japanese militarism in China. The sixth and final chapter focuses on the attitudes of New Zealanders toward Japan at the outset of the Second World War.