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    Rethinking female representation in superhero(ine) media through audiences’ digital engagement : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Media Studies at Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2024-09) de Meneses, Bruna Maria
    In recent years, debates about gender and feminism have become more easily accessible due to digital platforms such as social media. These debates often intertwine with films and television series that attempt to present characters and stories in consonance with claims for better representation. Superhero(ine) live action films and television are one example of this, with the representation of gender in this media becoming a topic of online discussion. But how are audiences engaging with these representations and this online discussion? In this study I undertook qualitative research with two groups of fans of the superhero genre from Brazil and New Zealand, using a combination of methods: digital diaries, interviews, and focus groups. Through this research, I sought to understand more about their experiences with such texts, and how they interpret them. I argue that the participants’ engagement with superhero(ine) media and related online discussion leads to questioning, critiquing, and learning about gender representation and feminism. This starts with superhero(ine) media, but exceeds it, reaching participants’ own life experiences. In this sense, the online culture surrounding superhero(ine) media acts as a form of digital feminism, providing a platform for consciousness-raising. This digital feminism has a transnational dimension, whilst also being inflected slightly differently by the national contexts in which the participants are situated, including their experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic. Simultaneously, any consciousness-raising comes with the caveat that the participants cannot completely escape the neoliberal logics and postfeminist sensibility underpinning the production and promotion of superhero(ine) media.
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    Binge-scrolling behaviour on user-generated media based on uses and gratification theory : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Information Sciences at Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2023) Wang, Shaojun
    Recent advances in User-Generated Media (UGM) and short-form video applications (apps) have led to the emergence of a phenomenon known as binge-scrolling. Engaging in long periods of unconscious scrolling through short videos is a common practice that resembles binge-watching series. Uses and Gratification Theory (UGT) is often used to explain the relationships among user motives, needs and gratifications and the consequences of media interactions. Previous research has rarely explored the binge watching behaviour of users with regard to short videos. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impacts of engagement with UGM (short video platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, and WeChat channels) on binge-scrolling, addiction and mental health. Data (N = 606) were collected using an online survey and analysed using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). The results show that 1) motivation is positively related to binge-scrolling as an antecedent, which is consistent with UGT, and informational motivation is one of the primary motivations for using UGM; 2) binge scrolling is positively associated with addiction and mental health; and 3) user engagement has a moderating effect on the relationship between binge-scrolling and problematic binge-scrolling. The findings of this study contribute to UGT research on binge-scrolling with regard to short videos and provide useful information to support the prevention of binge-scrolling addiction and mental health disorders as well as relevant interventions.
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    Body, positive? : how New Zealand women in young adulthood make sense of body positivity content on Instagram : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment for the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Psychology at Massey University, Wellington Campus, Aotearoa New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2022) Campbell, Portia
    Mass media has played an integral role in establishing societal norms around women and their appearances. Feminists have argued that media exposure have has had a negative impact on the way women view their bodies, creating narrow, unattainable bodily ideals and contributing to body image disturbances (Sarkar, 2014). The development of the body positivity movement intended to counter these ideals, rejecting homogenized Western centric standards of beauty, and promoting inclusive, bodily acceptance. Proliferated across social media platforms such as Instagram, the movement has been both celebrated as a reclamation of diverse definitions of beauty and criticized for its fragmented messaging; co-option by commerce and slim, white women and its continuation of the objectification of women. This study considers how 11 New Zealand millennial women make sense of body positive content on Instagram and how these interactions impact their lived experiences. Through a critical realist informed phenomenological thematic analysis, it analyses qualitative semi-structured interview data using an inductive thematic analysis framework. Four themes were generated. One theme considers body positivity as accepting and normalizing difference, whilst another suggests that body positivity doesn’t have enough empowerment power. Another theme analyses how body positivity reproduces normative appearance ideals and the final considers how Instagram facilitates problematic looking. When combined, the study’s findings suggest that body positivity is complex and is full of emotion and nuance. As a movement, it has the potential to challenge stereotypical definitions of beauty but is limited in a variety of ways. The results contribute to growing literature demonstrating the multifaceted nature of sense making of body positive content on Instagram. The study’s limitations and suggestions for future research directions are included.
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    Always on, always on-screen : blockbuster event cinema and the mediation of post-2005 digital cultures and experience : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Media Studies at Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2020) Muirhead, William D
    This research explores the extent to which novel formal practices displayed in the contemporary effects-driven blockbuster can be shown to reflect wider developments in contemporary digital capitalism. It argues that the recent blockbuster features recurrent visual and thematic elements uniquely tied to our current techno-cultural context, and that these elements can be read as a mediation of changing social behaviours in the world beyond the movie screen. The research marks an intervention into two distinct and established bodies of literature: a large body of work on blockbuster cinema and an equally significant body of work on digital capitalism. Despite the significance and urgency of this argument, neither branch of scholarship has fully probed into the blockbuster's mediation of, and sporadic attempts to redress, the cultural and behavioural impacts of what Mark Deuze (2012) calls "a life lived in media." Taking a broadly allegorical approach, as outlined by Fredric Jameson in The Political Unconscious (1981), and employing close textual reading as its primary method of analysis, the research draws out the recent blockbuster's expression of "collective thinking and collective fantasies" unique to the cultural dominant of digitality. Each of the three substantive chapters explores a specific formal quality of the films in question, and locates a correlating cultural development: shifting conceptions of what constitutes public or private information; digitality's displacement of traditional temporalities; the diminishment of basic physiological needs such as sleep, food and procreation in a world increasingly experienced through the online avatar. Through analysis of over two dozen films, spanning from 1996 to 2019, this research tracks what Scott McQuire terms a "passage of negotiation," from early suspicion and fear over digital technology to its comprehensive cultural assimilation, "[having] entered the dominant social habitus to such an extent that it can ground new forms of abstract knowledge and social practice" (2008, x). This work contends that in the changing form of the Hollywood blockbuster, a mode of cultural production rarely analysed against the critical horizon of contemporary informational capitalism, can be charted digitality's recent reconfiguration of nearly all aspects of personal and political life in advanced capitalist nations.
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    Baring it all : Hot Girls' representation of workers' experiences in internet pornography production : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Media Studies, Massey University, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2019) Tatton-Brown, Meg-Ellen Sarah
    This thesis uses the Netflix feature documentary, Hot Girls Wanted (2015), and Netflix TV series, Hot Girls Wanted: Turned On (2017), as a lens for exploring the issues and challenges faced by workers in the contemporary internet pornography industries. It analyses connected representational concerns, both in terms of how these individuals’ workplace experiences are framed in the documentary and TV series, and in terms of the representational implications in online pornography and broader ‘pornified’ culture. The documentary and the TV series episodes (including “Money Shot”, “Take Me Private”, “Owning It”, and “Women on Top”) have been utilised as case studies to focus the discussion in each chapter around the representational issues they raise, including those related to gender, race, violence, coercion and mediated intimacy. I have examined interviews with the subjects, mise-en-scène, and cinematography and editing techniques chosen by the filmmakers, to highlight the ways in which Hot Girls represents the various emotional and physical struggles experienced by workers in the pornography industry. I then compare and contextualise this close scene analysis with what academic literature evidences about the experiences and representations of these workers, arguing that along with the proliferation of opportunities in the expanded internet pornography industries, there has also been an expansion of workplace and representational concerns.