Communication

This dissertation focuses on the intersectionality between images posted on social media and social rules in the lives of young people. The findings are based on thirty-four qualitative interviews with young social media users where photo-based methodologies were employed. From these interviews, three key themes emerged: 1) Posting and sharing images are connected to identity exploration and formation, 2) Social rules around embodied emotions affect how youth present their emotions in online photographic material, and 3) The conflation of private and public spaces in the digital sphere complicates how social media users interact with images. While the findings presented are clear, this dissertation aims to take a holistic approach to understanding youth digital culture and avoids coming to conclusions that view social media as "good" or "bad" for youth. This tactic allows the findings to acknowledge the complexities of communicative digital spaces and understand the intricacies of social media in the daily lives of young people (boyd, 2014; Tilleczek & Campbell, 2019). This dissertation discusses both challenges youth face on social media when posting and viewing images, as well as how images can be used to defy social norms.

Author Keywords: Affect, Culture, Image, Social Media, Youth

Prevailing rates of sexual violence have necessitated research on sexual consentcommunication to remedy these issues. Research has found that individuals possess sophisticated knowledge of consent, and that discrepancies between people's attitudes and behaviours are resulting in sexual violence and compliance behaviours. The BDSM community–with its greater diversity and effective consent strategies–possess a model of consent that would be valuable in diminishing rates of adverse sexual outcomes. However, differences in consent between BDSM and non-BDSM individuals have not yet been quantified. 1,118 participants completed measures of consent attitudes, behaviours, and consequences. Results demonstrated negligible differences in consent parameters based on BDSM affiliation; however, BDSM role identity yielded large, significant trends. Dominant individuals were found to have less positive consent attitudes, less consent communication and more instances of sexual compliance compared to submissive or switch individuals. These results highlight the strength of cultural norms in dictating beliefs and behaviours.

Author Keywords: BDSM, Consent, Power, Sexual Scripts

Sexual health education (SHE), specifically formal SHE, can play a key role in offering individuals the necessary information, motivation, and skills needed to maintain and improve their sexual health. This study used a survey-based approach to explore the relationship between Canadians' (N = 675) perceived quality of SHE and their feelings and behaviours related to sexual consent and communication, at two time points. This study was informed by two theoretical approaches: sexual script theory and the theory of planned behaviour. Hierarchical regressions were employed to determine how much the participants' education and demographics explained their attitudes, feelings, and behaviours. Perceived quality of SHE predicted consent feelings, and consent and communication behaviours during participants' first sexual experience, and only verbal communication during their most recent sexual experience. This research has furthered our understanding of the long-term impacts of SHE on feelings and behaviours related to sexual consent and communication.

Author Keywords: first sexual experiences, sexual communication, sexual consent, sexual health education, sexual script theory, theory of planned behaviour

This dissertation sought to examine how reactionary influencers on YouTube are able to create 'gateways' towards audience tolerance and even desire to enact violence against marginalized groups, particularly those groups relating to gender performance. for the purposes of YouTube moderation. This dissertation uses the perspectives of affect theorists Ahmed, Berlant, and Tomkins, and the gender theories of Connell and Butler to divide the examined influencers into two categories, gurus and prophets. Prophets, such as Tucker Carlson or the Prager U platform, presented already existing hegemonic narratives about gender norms as ontological truths that were key to the coherence of both society and individual identity. Meanwhile, gurus like Andrew Tate presented themselves as teachers whose ability to embody hegemonic masculine norms gave them both the wisdom and authority to convert loyal viewers into successful men like them. Both categories of reactionary influencer were examined with a focus on both rhetoric and modelling of masculinity and the performance thereof. While both categories worked to align viewers with fascist ideology through emphasizing hatred, fear, and anger towards real-world events while connecting feelings of hope, joy, and desire to quasi-gnostic mythic perspectives around masculine sovereignty, they presented significant differences in method and target audience. This has significant implications for attempts at deradicalization and resistance to the increasing tide of fascism in mainstream society. Another significant finding was that affective connections to reactionary beliefs were almost all found to originate with mainstream narratives around gender norms, particularly with regards to masculine success and authority under capitalism. Overall, this dissertation's findings strongly counter mainstream assumptions that extremist reactionary ideology comes from a discrete fringe source rather than as a direct result of existence within a vicious capitalist social system that prioritizes White male comfort over the ability of ethnic and gender minorities to express any shred of agency.

Author Keywords: Affect, Extremism, Fascism, Internet, Masculinity, Performativity

This dissertation focuses on the intersectionality between images posted on social media and social rules in the lives of young people. The findings are based on thirty-four qualitative interviews with young social media users where photo-based methodologies were employed. From these interviews, three key themes emerged: 1) Posting and sharing images are connected to identity exploration and formation, 2) Social rules around embodied emotions affect how youth present their emotions in online photographic material, and 3) The conflation of private and public spaces in the digital sphere complicates how social media users interact with images. While the findings presented are clear, this dissertation aims to take a holistic approach to understanding youth digital culture and avoids coming to conclusions that view social media as "good" or "bad" for youth. This tactic allows the findings to acknowledge the complexities of communicative digital spaces and understand the intricacies of social media in the daily lives of young people (boyd, 2014; Tilleczek & Campbell, 2019). This dissertation discusses both challenges youth face on social media when posting and viewing images, as well as how images can be used to defy social norms.

Author Keywords: Affect, Culture, Image, Social Media, Youth

Sexual health education (SHE), specifically formal SHE, can play a key role in offering individuals the necessary information, motivation, and skills needed to maintain and improve their sexual health. This study used a survey-based approach to explore the relationship between Canadians' (N = 675) perceived quality of SHE and their feelings and behaviours related to sexual consent and communication, at two time points. This study was informed by two theoretical approaches: sexual script theory and the theory of planned behaviour. Hierarchical regressions were employed to determine how much the participants' education and demographics explained their attitudes, feelings, and behaviours. Perceived quality of SHE predicted consent feelings, and consent and communication behaviours during participants' first sexual experience, and only verbal communication during their most recent sexual experience. This research has furthered our understanding of the long-term impacts of SHE on feelings and behaviours related to sexual consent and communication.

Author Keywords: first sexual experiences, sexual communication, sexual consent, sexual health education, sexual script theory, theory of planned behaviour

This thesis explores access to feminist zine culture and community, specifically if, and how, access has been altered in the age of digital technologies and increased access to digital spaces. Results from a questionnaire completed by 8 young feminist zine-makers and readers of marginalized genders indicated that though the modern boundaries of what a zine is has been expanded to include e-zines, there remains a preference toward print zines in zine-making and reading practices. Results also revealed that while there is a preference toward accessing feminist zine culture and community in-person in theory, participants were more likely to access feminist zine culture and community online in reality. This project found that digital technologies and the Internet have affected feminist zine culture in multiple ways, ranging from the Internet creating a new access points to community, to the Internet making it easier to find, purchase, and distribute zines.

Author Keywords: Digital Media, Feminism, Feminist Zine Culture, Feminist Zines, Materiality, Print Media

Justice Weekly was a tabloid published in Toronto from 1946 to 1972. The popular narrative is that it was an unremarkable, obscure, and pornographic paper which was co-opted by gay and homophile voices in the 1950s. But why did a magazine best remembered, as Mordecai Richler put it, as "the pervert's new statesman" publish this material? This thesis argues that Justice Weekly really was primarily about Justice, rather than titillation. The paper explored justice through topics such as juvenile delinquency and spanking, which allowed sexualized material to appear, as well as conversations surrounding gay men, race, criminality, and punishment. While the paper outed gay men and often argued for harsher prison conditions, it also published material from Canada's earliest gay activists and prisoner presses. Justice Weekly's focus on equitable justice allowed both sex and advocacy to emerge from its content.

Author Keywords: Delinquency, Homosexuality, Jim Egan, Pornography, Pulp, Tabloid

This thesis explores the seemingly innocuous call to "grow up," which is never simply a biological imperative. It is also a moral one. Demanding that one should "grow up" is not demanding that one grow older, but that one transform into a specific kind of subject – the "grown up." In the reading advanced here, The Little Prince thermalizes the suppleness of the figure of the grown up through a series of fantastic encounters. In particular, perception and corporeality will be taken up as the two interlocking ways we are often pushed towards an understanding of adulthood that is coextensive with an Enlightenment conception of subjectivity. Perception, having emerged from a sedimented economy of looking, produces norms and practices of attentiveness where much of our perceptual field is consigned to infrastructural obliviousness. This intensification of attention, in turn, coincides with a broader project of corporeal discipline that began with the body's sedation through the chair. The chair is itself an element of the disciplinary machine that regulates attention, where the pedagogical injunction to "pay attention" is often accompanied by the postural injunction to "settle down" and "sit up straight." The chair, then, not only individuates and renders those individuated bodies docile, but also readies them for an entry into the world of grown-ups.

Author Keywords: Attention, Enlightenment, Maturation, Saint-Exupery, Sedantariness, Subjectivation

The present thesis entails a qualitative investigation of the unique notion to transition media change from the current paper-based system to the potential use of information technology innovation for communication between health care providers and employers during return to work. Stakeholder perspectives on relevant communication phenomena were gathered from workers, employers, and health care providers with experience in return to work. Methods for analysis involved critical realist grounded theory, as well as the use of a prototype innovation, named the Return to Work Expert App, as a platform for participant evaluation and discourse. The study's findings provided comprehensive and in-depth understanding of return to work communication, beyond its empirical regularities. The generative mechanisms of common communication problems that were discovered included situated reasoning, media as information ("the medium is the message"), epistemological disjuncture, egoism-altruism-collectivism quandary, and perspective taking. A novel theoretical framework based on ecological psychology was also advanced to offer a coherent and systematic understanding of the situated nature of health care providers' reasoning and information development. Media change via the Return to Work Expert App was argued to be limited in handling and resolving many of the communication problems that can occur. However, the app had perceptible value and benefits to prospective users that suggested a distinct advantage over current paper-based practices. Opportunities for further development and research exist to address relevant challenges, most notable of all being the need to address the app's burden of proof. For the interested reader, this thesis advances research and knowledge of provider-employer communication to a state that is truly fitting of the importance acknowledged of it in the field of return to work.

Author Keywords: critical realism, ecological psychology, media change, return to work, stakeholder communication, technological acceptance