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    Patents, pills, the press and the poor : discourse and hegemony in news coverage of the global 'access to medicines' dispute, 1997-2003 : a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Communication and Journalism at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealan
    (Massey University, 2012) Owen, Thomas
    In the mid‐1990s a transnational civil society campaign emerged to advocate greater essential medicines access for the majority world. The campaign mobilised on a variety of fronts, but in particular around the argument that intellectual property protection was the central impediment to equitable medicines access. The campaign argued that strong patent protection created artificially high medicine prices, and that, in the case of global HIV/AIDS, such prices prohibited medicines access for the vast majority of those in need of it. The major pharmaceutical companies disagreed, arguing instead that absolute patent protection was essential for new medicine development. When a coalition of pharmaceutical companies sued the South African government over generic medicines access in 1998, the dispute became crystalised into a dramatic mediatised conflict. This thesis examines press coverage of the medicines access dispute in key United States, British and South African news outlets over the years 1997 to 2003. Adopting Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory as a macro‐theoretical guide, the thesis conceptualises the media space as a field of contestation between opposed political projects seeking to hegemonically articulate their particular discourse. Prior commentary on the medicines access dispute has suggested media coverage was a key driver in publicising the civil society campaign’s message. This thesis contributes previously missing empirical data to such claims, addressing the questions: did the news media discourse on HIV/AIDS medicines transform to better reflect the civil society campaign’s arguments over those of the major pharmaceutical companies? If so, what were the principal factors influencing this transformation? Through corpus‐assisted discourse analysis of a sample of a 1,113 newspaper articles, and consideration of personal testimonies from key journalists and activists, the thesis argues the media discourse did indeed transform in favour of the civil society campaign. However, while the campaign was successful in promoting a patentbased definition of the crisis, the solution most widely adopted was one that increased aid funding and decreased medicines prices, but which left the intellectual property infrastructure largely intact. In this way, the thesis documents both the successful articulation of a counter‐hegemonic discourse within the news media, as well as the process by which this challenge was reabsorbed into pre‐existing power structures.
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    Advertising and the market orientation of political parties contesting the 1999 and 2002 New Zealand general election campaigns : a thesis presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Politics at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
    (Massey University. School of History, Philosophy and Politics, 2006) Robinson, Claire Elizabeth
    This thesis proposes an alternative way of establishing a link between market orientation and electoral success, by focusing on market orientation as a message instead of as a management function. Using interpretive textual analysis the thesis examines the advertising messages of the highest polling political parties for evidence of voter orientation and competitor orientation in the 1999 and 2002 New Zealand general election campaigns. Relating manifest market orientation to a number of statistical indicators of electoral success the thesis looks for plausible associations between the visual manifestation of market orientation in political advertisements and parties' achievement of their party vote goals in the 1999 and 2002 elections. It offers party-focused explanations for electoral outcomes to complement existing voter-centric explanations, and adds another level of scholarly understanding of recent electoral outcomes in New Zealand.While the thesis finds little association between demonstration of competitor orientation in political advertisements and electoral success, it finds a plausible relationship between parties that demonstrated a voter orientation in their political advertisements and goal achievement. The parties that achieved their party vote goals in 1999 and 2002 tended to demonstrate an affinity for their target voter groups by showing images of voters and their environments and images of party leaders interacting with voters. They demonstrated concern for the satisfaction of the needs of existing voters by using words of togetherness and proving they had met their previous promises. They did not change their policy or leadership messages dramatically between campaigns. There was a visual consistency to their television, print and billboard advertising messages which rendered the messages easy to recognise and remember. They were clear about what they were offering in exchange for the party vote and recognised the need to offer something in addition to previous offerings in order to attract new voters.