Browsing by study line "Media and Democracy"

This thesis sets out to investigate how the ideas of what it means to be a woman and femininity are constructed and propagated through the film Raya and the Last Dragon, the latest Disney Princess film, in the form of stereotypes. Previous studies show that Disney Princess films, from The Walt Disney Company, produce effects on the behaviour and thoughts of children when it comes to gender roles. As propaganda became associated with totalitarian regimes, studies about media effects rarely coin said effects as caused by propaganda. Therefore, propaganda as a field of analysis lacks a body of literature and a consensual set of analysis rules. This thesis contributes to the establishment of propaganda as a field of analysis, by defining it under Jacques Ellul’s categorisation. The study relies on a qualitative analysis based on the propaganda analysis model proposed by Garth Jowett and Victoria O’Donnell. The empirical material consists of the film Raya and the Last Dragon, and it is available on Disney+, the streaming service of The Walt Disney Company. The findings of this thesis illuminate how the ideas of a woman and of femininity are constructed in Raya and the Last Dragon and allow to understand, against the literature review, if these constructions have changed and evolved when compared to previous Disney Princess films. The results indicate that the film presents a world where women and men are seen as equal, leading it to break previous stereotypes associated with women and femininity. By presenting a female-centric story, with independent characters who have diverse personalities and clothing, who fight and have no romantic interests, the film subverts the trope of a passive woman in a dress waiting to be rescued by a man from a powerful evil woman. Additionally, the film rotates around the relationship between Raya and Namaari, using the patriarchal trope of plotting a woman against a woman to focus on female friendship. Yet, as the filmmakers are conditioned by their positionality, some stereotypes are still oriented by patriarchal logic and a western perspective, namely the omnipresence of a patriarchal figure that guides the protagonist. In the end, besides its contributions to the field of propaganda analysis, the thesis updates the tradition of studies done on the gendered stereotypes present in the Disney Princess films.

Online disinformation has been identified internationally as a concerning phenomenon due to its potential effects on communication, democracy, and the very conceptions of truth and reality. This thesis aims to examine the question of what factors may make societies resilient to disinformation. Based on the theoretical framework originally outlined in Humprecht et al.’s (2020) cross-country ranking of 18 Western democracies, this thesis analyzes how structural environmental factors at the country level may strengthen resilience to online disinformation in two countries: Finland and Poland. Based on longitudinal mixed methods analyses informed by international indices, reports, and national scholarship, this thesis analyzes the political, media, and economic environments of Finland and Poland to consider how these environments—colored by cultural, historical, and societal contexts—may contribute to each country’s respective resilience to disinformation. This within-case analysis shows the challenges of quantifying and ranking resilience to disinformation and to develop the theoretical framework further. While Finland has historically been found to perform well in resilience studies, its examination alongside the Polish case demonstrates the necessity of nuancing each factor, informed by questioning what each factor actually entails as well as the impact of country contexts. Indicators such as populist communication, public service media, and trust in news were revealed to be more complex than originally outlined in the framework when applied to two different country contexts. This thesis also identified two novel additions to further contribute to the framework: journalistic standards, roles, and ethics and media literacy. By proposing additions to the framework and critically discussing the interactions between factors, this thesis also identifies key areas of future research to contribute to the field of disinformation studies.

China’s rise in the 21st century has been a widely discussed phenomenon inside and outside the academia. There is a debate on whether China is a status quo or a revisionist state and the impact its influence might have on the world as a whole. One area of China’s rise has not been widely researched in relation to these questions – technology. China’s technological development has increased during the past decades to a level where its technology competence competes with other technologically advanced countries. The fourth industrial revolution has brought about new technologies, such as artificial intelligence, 5G or cyberspace. These technologies also bring forth new questions and challenges, and they require research not only from the technological perspective but also from a social science perspective. This research investigated the Chinese technology policies by looking at materials that included five speeches, two State Council notices, one journal article, and a journal commentary. The themes of the researched materials revolved around overall technology policies, artificial intelligence, cyberspace, and data. This study employed content analysis as its method. The categorization of the social identities derived from the theoretical framework of Chinese social identity strategies which included five different social identity strategies: Globalist China, Sovereign China, Unified China, Sino-centric China, and Rising China. The materials were analyzed by combining two theoretical frameworks – the social identity theory with a particular Chinese social identity theory framework, and constructivism. The social identity theory was originally invented within the field of social psychology but has been used in the study of international relations to understand rising powers. Chinese technology policies were revealed to employ Rising China strategy as their main strategy. Three other social identity strategies – Sino-centric China, Globalist China, and Sovereign China – were also found in the materials, and these revealed interesting points concerning the overall technology strategies. China was found to be balancing between the status quo and a revisionist state status, and the technology themes and the regions they aim to influence seemingly have an impact on which strategies they employ and how these strategies are implemented.

A healthy democracy requires citizens to be sufficiently informed in order to be able to vote on the basis of valid information. From the perspective of a Twitter analysis of the 2018 US midterm election, this study is an examination of the relationship between social media and the concept of informed citizens. In the study a hashtag ethnographic method was applied by analysing 350 tweets from the seven days before the election day on the 6th of November, 2018. The tweets were chosen by searching for the hashtag #Midterms2018 on Twitter’s Advanced Search. Both quantitative and qualitative elements were employed in the analysis in order to evaluate whether the tweets about the US midterm election showcased that Twitter can function as a platform for the betterment of informed citizens. Based on the analysis it can be said that Twitter provides citizens many opportunities that allow them to take part in the political arena in ways that were previously unavailable to them. On Twitter citizens have the potential to reach a larger audience, challenge narratives established by traditional media, respond directly to politicians, spread their own political views and encourage others to take part in the democratic process.

Portugal seems to stand out among colonial empires – besides being the first European colonizer, Portugal was the last European empire, since its decolonization process unfolded later than in other European colonies. Only 20 years after the formal end of its empire, this study exposes how Portugal discusses its own colonial past today, how colonialism is framed in the current public debate and whether certain colonial narratives are still present in this discussion. Based on the findings, this thesis also discusses the impact of the debate on racism and immigration attitudes. The theoretical basis hinges on previous studies on Portuguese colonial narratives and myths, including Gilberto Freyre’s Lusotropicalism, research on the formation of national identities and theories on the construction of racism. The goal is to contribute to the existent research on Portuguese colonialism, providing a recent account of the public debate; to serve as a base for future studies on post-colonial attitudes; and to discuss the legacy of colonialism in Portugal, particularly, on racism. A media analysis is conducted. Two Portuguese newspapers were selected, Público and Observador. Only opinion articles were analyzed, and a case was chosen to represent this public debate – a controversial proposal on the construction of a museum in Lisbon about the colonial period, in the time frame from May to July 2018. Using frame analysis, the content of the opinion articles is examined, the characteristics of the authors are discussed, and frames are identified. The findings assert that colonialism is mainly framed today in two ways: as the pride of the nation and as a shameful event for the country. Fragments of a third, mixed frame could also be identified. Predominantly, it is framed as the national pride, as a key event in the history of the country. Portuguese colonization is largely described as a soft, intercultural encounter, while the atrocities tend to be dismissed. This thesis denounces the persistence of colonial narratives, myths and stereotypes and reveals their renewal into new terms. It also exposes the usage of colonialism as the foundation of the current Portuguese national identity, constituting one of its most long-lasting legacies. Finally, the thesis reveals a connection between colonialism and the dismissal of racism today. The study discusses how colonialism, the myths and narratives serve to construct a false image of tolerance of the Portuguese, which affects racism and immigration attitudes in the country. The legacy of colonialism is discussed to impact other areas, such as electoral results and the success or failure of far-right populist parties.

Following the development of effective vaccines against COVID-19, a global access gap has emerged, with wealthier countries receiving the vast majority of vaccines and therapeutics. The governments of several lower-income countries have since identified a major cause of this gap to be intellectual property arrangements governing the development of pharmaceutical products. In response, these countries submitted a proposal within the World Trade Organization’s TRIPS Council to waive specific elements of the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights in relation to COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics. Since then, a small number of wealthy countries where most major vaccine producers are located have resisted calls to pass the Waiver, thus maintaining intellectual property restrictions and limiting access to vaccines. This thesis explores the discursive nature of the arguments put forward against the Waiver within the institutional context of the WTO TRIPS Council from October 2020 to December 2021. It applies the Critical Discourse Analysis approach to identify several discourses that characterise the nature of opposition to the TRIPS Waiver, to explain how these shape political outcomes and delimit courses of effective action and resistance. These discourses are interpreted through the theoretical lens of Achille Mbembe’s necropolitics, which posits that sovereign power is increasingly based on the ability to decide who is worthy of life and who can be subjected to death, with racism and neoliberal market logics being the twin technologies of necropolitical violence. The thesis relies on primary material sourced from hundreds of pages of meeting minutes from the TRIPS Council, where opponents to the Waiver lay out their arguments and discursively construct their opposition in ways that are consistent with the necropolitical reading of global politics and structural violence. This thesis analyses this primary material in conjunction with secondary material from the pharmaceutical industry, uncovering discursive parallels that unveil the neoliberal logics that fuel opposition to the TRIPS Waiver. This thesis concludes that opposition to the TRIPS Waiver is both a driver and a symptom of a planetary renewal of colonial relations, in which neoliberal discourses around health have served to keep lifesaving treatments out of reach to those who cannot afford them during a deadly pandemic. The implications of necropolitical discourses around healthcare access for both democracy and for the future of the pandemic are fatal.

The use of emotion is becoming increasingly relevant in the fields of international relations and political communication. While new research has been attentive to the use and dissemination of emotion, it has failed to establish emotion as an individual category of study, thus mostly neglecting its role within political discourses. This thesis argues that emotion is key to understanding why some discourses are more appealing than others, using the theories of Ernesto Laclau, Jacques Lacan and Simon Koschut as theoretical framework. By combining the qualitative methods of Emotion Discourse Analysis and Pragmatics of Emotive Communication, this thesis studies how emotion is embedded within the Manifesto “The Programme of Change”, published by Podemos at the beginning of 2015 with the objective of inspiring the political campaigns of the multiple elections that were going to take place that year. My analysis is specifically focused on two topics. First, it aims to understand how emotions were used within the Manifesto to create the antagonistic groups “the people” and “the elite”. Second, it aims to expose the new feeling rules that the party proposed to challenge the narrative of the status quo. The results of my analysis show that Podemos created an image of a corrupted, self-serving and extravagant elite, while defining the people as a group of honest, trustworthy and capable citizens. The antagonism between both groups is sustained by a sense of unfairness and humiliation of the latter towards the former and it is built through a political discourse that puts forward five new feeling rules that challenge the elite’s power. The first feeling rule appeals to unfairness, turning it into anger towards the elite. The second appeals to anxiety, stressing the need for a quick change. The third evokes frustration, converting it into strength to gain power. The fourth relies on hope to draw and image of an optimistic future. The last evokes self-awareness to create a new order where ordinary people feel recognised and represented. The findings of this thesis add value to existing literature on Podemos, while also proving that emotion needs to be considered a valid unit of analysis in discourse analytical methodologies. It defines emotion as key to uncovering patterns in international relations, and it defends its role in sustaining and challenging structures of power.

This thesis studies the discourses of power and anti-violence activism related to feminicides in Mexico. Feminicides are defined as killings of women because of their gender. Although feminicides have existed throughout the history of Mexico, the issue became a focus of attention among the masses nearly 30 years ago because of the wave of violence in Ciudad Juárez. Today, according to the official data of the State, three women are victims of feminicides in Mexico daily. However, the number is most likely substantially higher given the underreporting of feminicides and that some states still do not distinguish them as separate crimes from homicides. It is estimated that approximately ten women are killed as victims of feminicides in Mexico every day. The theoretical framework for this study is rooted in the Foucauldian scholarship of power. More precisely, Michel Foucault’s theory of power as relational or productive and the idea of power being everywhere but nowhere, in particular, imposes the principal understanding of how violence is implicated in multiple structures of power relations. The study was conducted in the form of semi-structured interviews, with data being gathered by interviewing six feminist activists who are working against feminicides in Mexico. After this, the interviews were analysed with methods of discourse analysis. The study finds the total of five main discourses with their sub-discourses: 1. Structures (Patriarchal culture and Deficient understanding), 2. The State (Politics and Impunity), 3. Truth (Bending truth and Clash of genders) 4. Pervasive violence, and 5. Women’s networks. The results of the analysis suggest that the power related to violence against women comes indeed from everywhere: power comes from structures of the society, from education, from the State and the law (and impunity), from the truth (or what we accept as truth), from non-State agents such as criminal organisations and women themselves. They are all connected so that even criminal organisations and politicians are interweaved in the same network of power, and in the case of Mexico, not even very far from each other. Women themselves exercise power through relations, networks and cooperation and this is the dimension of power that women consider their most important asset. To keep themselves secure in a potentially hostile environment, activist women maintain a set of safety rules and regulations that they follow in their everyday lives. In conclusion, power influencing violence against women is located deep in the patriarchal structures and practices in Mexico. This is why it is challenging to tackle the problem of continuing gendered violence in Mexico: it does not have any centre. This means that also globalised networks of organised crime, as well as the overall patriarchal culture, influence on discourses that power and gender-based violence are given. Also, it is noteworthy that power should not be considered only oppressive or dominating as that interpretation would give women only the role of passive victims. Women also possess power that they exercise through social relations and collective activist networks. In sum, this research contributes to a deeper understanding of feminicides and violence against women in Mexico. Furthermore, through the unique interview data, the results collect valuable information on all the main challenges that are hampering the activists’ work against violence.

This thesis sets out to investigate what frames are used in the U.S. media to discuss responsibility for climate change. Particularly, the study seeks to identify what frames are used to discuss action for climate change mitigation. The normative framework for analyzing responsibility is established by the social connection model by Iris Marion Young, which presents a forward-looking approach for addressing responsibility for issues of structural injustice. The theoretical framework of this thesis derives from existing literature on climate change, the media, and media framing. The study was conducted using a qualitative method of frame analysis. Data for the study was collected from the digital contents of three popular news media outlets in the United States: CNN, Fox News Channel, and The New York Times. The data consists of news articles that were published online in December 2019. The results of the study indicate that responsibility for climate change mitigation is rarely approached directly in the media. Rather, it is implied through discussions about what actions should be taken. The study identifies four main frames of responsibility. The first frame emphasizes the conflict between the younger and older generations and deems that collective efforts are required to address the situation. The second frame accentuates the political division over the issue of climate change by casting blame upon Asian nations while downplaying the respective responsibility of the United States. Similarly, the efforts of the Democratic party are ridiculed. The third frame emphasizes consumer action through practical efforts but does not promote buying less as a possible solution. Lastly, the study identifies a frame, in which corporate responsibility is approached in two ways: to hold highly polluting industries accountable and to promote green business as a solution. The study finds that the framing employed by Fox News Channel emphasizes the economic disadvantages of climate change mitigation and sees it as an issue of causal responsibility for Asian nations. On the other hand, the findings of the study suggest that the media coverage of the youth protests against climate change often yield notions of collective responsibility and frame the issue of responsibility in a more contextualized setting. The findings of the study support existing research of how media frames the issue of climate change and how polarization affects the framing. Through the application of the social connection model, the findings of this study contribute to the literature of news framing of climate change by demonstrating how the issue of responsibility is framed.