1,720,990 research outputs found
Discursive manoeuvres and hegemonic recuperations in New Zealand documentary representations of domestic violence
No full textThis paper examines three television documentaries--entitled Not Just a Domestic (1994), Not Just a Domestic: The Update (1994), and Picking Up the Pieces (1996)--that together formed part of the New Zealand police ‘Family Violence’ media campaign. Through a Foucauldian, feminist poststructuralist discourse analysis, the paper examines how these texts assert and privilege particular understandings of domestic violence, its causes, effects and possible solutions. The analysis illustrates the way in which five discursive explanations of domestic violence--those of medical pathology, romantic expressive tension, liberal humanist instrumentalism, tabula rasa learning and socio-systematic discourse--are articulated and hierarchically organised within these documentaries, and considers the potential hegemonic effects of each text’s discursive negotiations. It is argued that the centrality of personal ‘case studies’ and the testimonies of both battered women and formerly violent men work to privilege individualistic rather than socio-political explanations of domestic violence. Additionally, the inclusion of extensive ‘survivor speech’ means that women are frequently asked to explain and rationalize their actions as ‘victims’ of domestic violence, while fewer demands are placed on male perpetrators to account for their violent behaviour. Consequently, the documentaries leave the issue of male abuse of power largely unchallenged, and in this way ultimately affirm patriarchal hegemonic interests
The Representation of Gender in Contemporary Chinese Television Advertising: An Analysis of Content, Meaning, and Production
No full textThis thesis examines how gender is portrayed in Chinese television commercials and how these representations reflect the social and cultural contexts of their production and the institutional practices of advertising production personnel. To date, while there have been a plethora of studies on gender representation in advertising in western contexts only limited attention has been given to Chinese advertising portrayals of gender. This study, therefore, explores particular ways in which femininity and masculinity are discursively constructed, and how this process, in turn, contributes to reinforcing and/or challenging certain gender ideologies, in particular those found in Chinese Confucian culture. The study is unique in its approach to Chinese television advertising in that it combines methods from textual analysis (quantitative content analysis, semiotic analysis and critical discourse analysis) and empirical research (interview). A sample of 679 television commercials was collected and analysed in this investigation. Content analysis was initially applied to identify recurrent patterns and characteristics of gender representation which, in turn, formed the basis for in-depth semiotic and discourse analysis. Specific signs, images, codes, discourses and myths were subsequently discussed. The study also included semi-structured interviews with 26 Chinese advertising personnel in order to understand their multiple dispositions toward gender and their actual experiences of depicting female and male characters in the creative process. Several main findings emerged from this study. The portrayal of gender in Chinese television commercials is complex because it embodies a series of simultaneously conflicting and complementary discourses on what constitute femininity and masculinity. The results of the content analysis revealed that the representation of gender in this study’s sample still remains stereotypical in terms of the different distribution of the sexes across product category, role, dress, age, credibility and voice-over. By focusing on the constructs of gender in domestic, occupational and recreational contexts, the use of semiotic and discourse analysis revealed that Chinese television advertising not only portrays women and men in line with the significant aspects embedded in both Chinese and western patriarchal traditions, but is also constitutive of cultural shifts in gender ideologies through highlighting modern (western) values. In addition, the interview findings yielded support for the conclusions of textual analysis, demonstrating that the process of advertising production is significantly influenced by traditional and modern gender values, the restriction of advertising regulations, client expectations, and the professionals’ divergent perceptions of gender and their assumptions about the audience
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Narrating The Body Shop: A story about corporate identity
No full textThe narrative turn in organisation studies locates organisations as authors of their own identities. Organisations in all sectors are talking about values, engaging in ongoing conversations with the larger society and telling their story to multiple audiences in their never-ending construction of meaning. Today, modern organisations are entwined in a constant struggle to remain distinctive from their competitors and articulate their identities in the marketplace of discourse and images. While some organisations work to personalise their identities through visible characters, others position themselves in terms of values such as environmental awareness and social responsibility.
The purpose of this research was to examine how the identity of The Body Shop has been expressed and transformed through an ongoing corporate narrative of which the founder, Anita Roddick, has been the primary storyteller. Specifically, the thesis examined the relationship between the founder’s (charismatic) leadership and the organisation’s identity in a value-driven company. Within this context, the founder’s narrative, as well as supporting and competing narratives by other characters, were crucial to understanding the development of a corporate identity so closely tied to the values, goals and identity of a person. In this study, narrative is treated as a perspective on human communication that emphasises the story as more than merely an artefact of language but as a dominant mode of appeal and influence. In relation to the ‘narratives’ examined in this thesis, I adopt Czarniawska’s (1995) use of the term to refer to a sequential account of events, usually chronologically, whereby sequentiality indicates some kind of causality, and action-accounted for in terms of intentions and deeds and consequences and is commonly given a central place. From an organisational communication perspective, stories reinforce the development of identity and create meaning for the organisation. In this way, organisational identity has a narrative character that persists - usually through the leader or founder's ability to narrate the organisation's life. The analysis of organisational stories thus serves to provide a better understanding of the influence of individuals in the construction and management of corporate identity.
Data for this chronological case study consisted of narratives which were collected through extensive documentary analysis and an-depth interview with Anita Roddick and the two New Zealand Body Shop Directors. The narrative analysis then progressed through three distinct levels, beginning with a thematic analysis and moving ultimately to a critical-interpretive approach that drew especially on concepts from rhetorical criticism and critical discourse analysis.
The findings from this research highlighted the influence of Roddick's personal identity and values on the identity of The Body Shop, which resulted in the organisation personifying its founder. The unity and uniqueness of The Body Shop's identity was achieved through the process of narrativity as Roddick conceived her own, as well as The Body Shop's existence, as a special story.
In the early years of The Body Shop's history, Roddick linked her own personal identity to the corporate identity of The Body Shop through the retrospective narrative construction of the self in autobiography and other Body Shop texts. Roddick used her first autobiography, Body and soul, in 1991, to document the organisation's evolution, and to connect the past to the present. This idea of the Self as socially constructed – in interactions between individuals within the social worlds relevant to them – is exemplified through Roddick's storied reactions to those who questioned the authenticity of The Body Shop's identity. Roddick's (2000a) second autobiography, Business as unusual, saw Roddick reinvent both her personal and organisational identity against alternative plots, augmenting the existing epic as constructed by Roddick in Body and soul. Her discursive strategy involved reconstructing the original characteristics that set The Body Shop apart from the others and revisiting her original stories which negotiated boundaries for, and with, the rest of the business community.
In 1998, traces of a more conventional business discourse found its way into The Body Shop narrative, augmented with the arrival of a new management team. Consequently, several authorised and unauthorised versions of the corporate story coexisted at The Body Shop, all of them struggling for dominance and recognition. More recent Body Shop narratives actually expose a significant fracture in the relationship between individual and organisational identity, signalling the end of the founder's era. In fact, the irony only confirms the linkage of individual and organisational identity in that as Roddick distanced herself from The Body Shop, the organisation no longer spoke through her voice. Roddick's conversations with the larger community no longer served to affirm the identity of The Body Shop but her own. What was once one, unified identity (‘Anita Roddick of The Body Shop’) became two distinctly separate identities (‘Anita Roddick and The Body Shop’)
Organisational identities and rationalities: A rhetorical and discourse analysis of organisational communication about genetic modification in the New Zealand kiwifruit and dairy industries
Full text linkThis thesis examines how two of New Zealand's largest primary producer industries negotiated their relationship with the highly controversial practice of genetic modification. This was in an effort to maintain their dominance in export markets, at a time when genetically modified foods were on the one hand regarded as a possible liability in the marketplace, and on the other hand offered the apparent potential for innovation and economic gain.
The two case studies featured in this thesis-the dairy industry and the kiwifruit industry-both earn significant export incomes and are seen as national icons as well as major institutions for New Zealand. However, these two industries take differing positions in the debate about genetic modification. The kiwifruit industry has urged extreme caution while the dairy industry has argued for rapid involvement in genetic modification.
The research takes a critical-interpretive perspective on the two cases. The study is both issue- and case-driven, and uses a combination of rhetorical criticism and discourse analysis to examine the social construction of meanings about genetic modification. The research focus is on the intersection of public relations and organisational communication, including issues management, and especially on the ways in which rhetoric is used as a means of managing multiple organisational identities.
The research findings indicate that the positioning of these two industries on genetic modification is largely market-driven. The differences in their policies result from contrasting industry products, industry markets, and industry cultures. The values and values-related tensions, expressed explicitly and implicitly in the research data, indicate that there is a dynamic interplay between the rationalities used by the industries to justify their positioning on genetic modification and the multiple identities that need to be managed by each industry. In the kiwifruit industry, environmental concerns are highlighted by an emphasis on 'soft' pest management and organic production, and kiwifruit become a luxury raw product sold mainly to markets in Europe and Japan. In the dairy industry, commodity milk products compete on the basis of low-cost, efficient production, and the major markets are in South East Asia and Latin America.
This thesis contributes to recent work on corporate identity and organisational communication. Significantly, it demonstrates how the blurring of boundaries between internal and external organisational communication has increased the need for a more complex understanding of how organisations manage multiple organisational identities, particularly where broader socio-political issues, including national identities and international markets, are concerned
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