USA

The purpose of this thesis is to contribute to the growing literature of constitutive rhetoric, originally coined by Maurice Charland. Through a case study of the US/Mexico border fence, I ilustrate that the communicative tactics of articulation, appropriation and image events have the potential to act as interpellative strategies of identity construction. Through my analisys, i show how these strategies function in constitutive rhetoric in both verbal discourses and in visual rhetoric through image events. I also note that lack of discourses in an argument may have implications that are equally significant to those that are present.

Australia

This thesis examines the use of video technology as an alternative communication medium within a dialogic framework. It explores multiple dialogic encounters and different meanings of dialogue. It analyses dialogues within and around video technology and dialogues with contemporary events in Mexican history. I argue that these dialogic encounters are contributing to an ongoing process of transformation in Mexican consciousness. The thesis’s theoretical framework draws on Mikhail Bakht in’s theory of dialogism and employs a dialogic method that emphasise s diversity. In the thesis, I conduct an in-depth analysis of multiple series of dialogues between key people, events, and discourses. These dialogues are complex. I explore their complexities and the varied relationships that emerge from them, including my own. As researcher and writer, I am a part of the dialogues I explore in the thesis.

Gran Bretaña

Since the eighties, the political face of Mexico has been changing gradually. There has been a shift from the hegemony of the official Institutional Revolutionary Party to a more egalitarian distribution of power, in which the other two main parties (Natio nal Action Party and Democratic Revolution Party) have gained salience at national, state and local levels (Camp 1999, Eisenstadt 2003, Hiskey 2003, Hiskey and Bowler 2005, Elizondo 2006 and Escalante 2006). Nonetheless, it is still not clear the impact of this reconfiguration on news organizations: in their studies on Mexican journalism, Lawson (2002) and Hughes (2003 and 2006) perceived a general trend towards modernization. By taking certain news outlets located in the most important cities (mainly in Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey), they considered that, indeed, Mexican media are undergoing progressive change. However, looking at other places like Morelia -makes evident that the situation in the rest of the country is different. Therefore, this research will argue that, despite the arrival of diverse political parties to the national, state and local administrations, the relationship between reporters and high rank political authorities remains the same. That is, the exchange of favours – economic most of the times – still determines the way news organizations and politicians interact.

USA

Grounded in the theory of intra-media agenda -setting, this research will analyze the dynamic process among the Mexican national television networks during the 2006 presidential election campaign period. Specifically, what were the intra-media agenda-setting effects between the Mexican television media Televisa and TV Azteca during the 2006 presidential election campaign? The television content analysis data set is from a systematic random sample of national Mexican prime time television news programs broadcast during the official Instituto Federal Electoral's (Federal Electoral Institute) presidential campaign period, which runs from January 19 to June 28, 2006. The Mexican television newscasts that were analyzed are Televisa's El Noticiero con Joaquín López Dóriga, and TV Azteca's Hechos de la Noche . Overall, the results indicated that television news strongly influences a presidential candidate’s television political spots.

USA

The 1994 Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, Mexico, created a rupture with a series of neoliberal policies implemented in Mexico and on a global scale over the last few decades of the 20th century. In a moment when alternatives to neoliberal global capitalism appeared to have disappeared from the world stage, the Zapatista Army for National Liberation (EZLN) initiated a movement and process that would have significance not only in Chiapas and for Mexico, but for many struggles and movements around the world that would come to identify with a kind of “alter globalization” project. This dissertation examines the historical moment of neoliberal globalization, what the EZLN calls the “Fourth World War,” the Zapatista initiative to construct an alternative political project, and the importance of this process of rupture and construction for our understanding of social organization, political participation, struggle and subjectivity.

USA

The 2006 Mexican presidential election and the 2008 U.S. presidential election are valuable opportunities for cross-cultural comparative research. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, a woman and an African American man, were two candidates in the United States. Patricia Mercado, a woman and strong defender of minorities’ rights, was one of the candidates in Mexico. This dissertation used a comparative ethnographic analysis of these candidates’ political advertisements to identify the framing devices that female and minority candidates utilized in their self-presentations to audiences. The findings show that candidates in both countries use similar frames and tend to emphasize personality traits over issues and policies.

USA

This dissertation examines Mexico City’s material politics of print —the central actors engaged in making print, their activities and relationships, and the legal, business, and social dimensions of production — across the nineteenth century. Inside urban printshops, a socially diverse group of men ranging from manual laborers to educated editors collaborated to make the printed items that fueled political debates and partisan struggles in the new republic. By investigating how print was produced, regulated, and consumed, this dissertation argues that printers shaped some of the most pressing conflicts that marked Mexico’s first formative century: over freedom of expression, the role of religion in government, and the emergence of liberalism. Printers shaped debates not only because they issued texts that fueled elite politics but precisely because they operated at the nexus where new liberal guarantees like freedom of the press and intellectual property intersected with politics and patronage, the regulatory efforts of the emerging state, and the harsh realities of a post colonial economy.

España

La presente investigación tiene como tema principal la revisión del estado de la opinión de la población mexicana en el marco de la elección federal del año 2012. Puesto que la mayoría de los estudios llevados a cabo sobre las elecciones se basan en las teorías democráticas, el marco legal o bien en las estrategias de campaña, se creyó necesario abordar un enfoque distinto. Por lo tanto ésta investigación pretende conocer los problemas que más preocupaban a los mexicanos como sociedad en el contexto de un año electoral, en el que previsiblemente el PRI, volvería a ocupar la presidencia, como finalmente pasó. Para el análisis de las agendas se empleó la teoría de la agenda setting propuesta por Maxwell McCombs. En ella se establece que los medios de comunicación fijan la agenda ciudadana, es decir, a través de la cobertura de noticias y la transmisión de mensajes influyen en la gente, quien adopta esa agenda. Por su parte los políticos intervienen en los medios de distintas maneras, una de las cuales es la publicidad de las campañas electorales, con lo cual fijan sus temas en la agenda mediática.

España

En las últimas décadas, México se ha provisto de los instrumentos más seguros y confiables para captar la voluntad de los ciudadanos que acuden a votar en los procesos electorales, algunas de las herramientas empleadas en las jornadas para elegir a sus legisladores y gobernantes, son: padrones con fotografía, boletas con medidas de seguridad similares a las del papel moneda y tintas indelebles entre otras. Paradójicamente la confianza en el Sistema Electoral Mexicano, no es coincidente con sus medidas de seguridad. Ya entronizado en el poder, el gobernante encuentra en la comunicación gubernamental el instrumento idóneo para lograr su legitimidad. Estamos de acuerdo con Habermas en que el Estado no puede concebirse sin legitimación.

España

Esta investigación analiza uno de los escándalos mediáticos más importantes de los últimos años en México, en el cual la agenda pública se orientó hacia la discusión de una presunta violación de los derechos humanos de la periodista Lydia Cacho por el Gobierno del Estado de Puebla para favorecer a un empresario señalado como protector de una red internacional de pornografía infantil. Pese a la presión de partidos políticos, algunos medios de comunicación y distintos grupos sociales, la Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación evidenció la carencia de instrumentos jurídicos para culpar a los responsables y evitar una evidente acción de impunidad. El estudio se fundamenta en la teoría del establecimiento de agendas (agenda setting) y otras relacionadas, las cuales brindan las metodologías necesarias para comprender la construcción e incidencia de interés en la opinión pública y sus implicaciones en la cultura política ciudadana.