Student Research

Typewriter Keys The following doctoral theses have been completed by students in the PhD in Media Studies program to date.

( Note: hyperlinks are included for theses that were submitted to Scholarship@Western and are now available through Western's Electronic Theses & Dissertation Repository. Those without hyperlinks are not currently available through the e-repository).

 

Guignion, David. Witnessing Conspiracy Theories: Developing an Intersectional Approach to Conspiracy Theory Research.
Phd in Media Studies, August 2023
Supervisors: Tim Blackmore and Alison Hearn
Pope, Amara. Canadians Redefining R&B: The Online Marketing of Drake, Justin Bieber, and Jessie Reyez.
Phd in Media Studies, August 2023
Supervisor: Keir Keightley
O'Meara, Victoria. Influencer Engagement Pods and the Struggle Over Measure in Instagram Platform Labour.
Phd in Media Studies, August 2022
Supervisor: Alison Hearn
Netherton, Jason. Heavy Metal Fundraisers: Entrepreneurial Recording Artists in Platform Capitalism.
Phd in Media Studies, April 2021
Supervisors: Matt Stahl and Edward Comor
Gosse, Chandell. More barriers than solutions: Women's experiences of support with online abuse.
Phd in Media Studies, February 2021
Supervisor: Jacquie Burkell
Steinhoff, James. Critiquing the New Autonomy of Immaterial Labour: An Analysis of Work in the Artificial Intelligence Industry.
Phd in Media Studies, November 2019
Supervisor: Nick Dyer-Witheford
Sukhan, Tiara. Watching and Working Through: Navigating Non-being in Television Storytelling.
Phd in Media Studies, April 2019
Supervisor: Sharon Sliwinski
Bertuzzi, Robert. Hone the Means of Production: Craft Antagonism and Domination in the Journalistic Labour Process of Freelance Writers.
Phd in Media Studies, June 2018
Supervisor: Nick Dyer-Witheford
Kim, Kyunghee. Cultural Hybridity in the Contemporary Korean Popular Culture through the Practice of Genre Transformation.
Phd in Media Studies, June 2018
Supervisor: Tim Blackmore
Chakraborty, Indranil. Invisible Labour: Support-Service Workers in India's Information Technology Industry.
Phd in Media Studies, May 2018
Supervisor: Nick Dyer-Witheford
Freier, Amy J.. Exhibiting Human Rights: Making the Means of Dignity Visible.
Phd in Media Studies, May 2018
Supervisor: Sharon Sliwinski
Hambleton, Jennifer. Industrial Stagecraft: Tooling and Cultural Production.
Phd in Media Studies, May 2018
Supervisor: Tim Blackmore
Hoad-Reddick, Kate. Pitching the Feminist Voice: A Critique of Contemporary Consumer Feminism.
Phd in Media Studies, November 2017
Supervisor: Romayne Smith Fullerton
de Laat, Sonya. Regarding Aid: The Photographic Situation of Humanitarianism.
Phd in Media Studies, October 2017
Supervisor: Sharon Sliwinski
Mitra, Saumava. Local-Global Tensions: Professional Experience, Role Perceptions and Image Production of Afghan Photojournalists Working for a Global Audience.
Phd in Media Studies, October 2017
Supervisors: Jacquie Burkell and Susan Knabe
Taschereau Mamers, Danielle. Settler Colonial Ways of Seeing: Documentary Governance of Indigenous Life in Canada and its Disruption.
Phd in Media Studies, May 2017
Supervisor: Sharon Sliwinski
Cruz, Trent. Creative Management: Disciplining the Neoliberal Worker.
Phd in Media Studies, October 2016
Supervisor: Alison Hearn
Thom, Jessica. Believing the News: Exploring How Young Canadians Make Decisions About Their News Consumption.
Phd in Media Studies, October 2016
Supervisor: Jacquie Burkell
Jackson, David. Becoming Sonic: Ambient Poetics and the Ecology of Listening in Four Militant Sound Investigations.
Phd in Media Studies, September 2016
Supervisor: Tim Blackmore
Kjosen, Atle Mikkola. Capital's Media: The Physical Conditions of Circulation.
Phd in Media Studies, September 2016
Supervisor: Nick Dyer-Witheford
Davila, Richard. No Hay Sólo Un Idioma, No Hay Sólo Una Voz: A Revisionist History Of Chicana/os and Latina/os in Punk.
Phd in Media Studies, March 2016
Supervisor: Norma Coates
Schmalz, Michael. Limitation to Innovation in the North American Console Video Game Industry 2001-2013: A Critical Analysis.
Phd in Media Studies, December 2015
Supervisor: Nick Dyer-Witheford
Fresco, Estee. Impassioned Objects and Seething Absences: The Olympics in Canada, National Identity and Consumer Culture.
Phd in Media Studies, November 2015
Supervisor: Daniel Robinson
Arnott, Luke. Narrative Epic and New Media: The Totalizing Spaces of Postmodernity in The Wire, Batman, and The Legend of Zelda.
Phd in Media Studies, August 2015
Supervisor: Nick Dyer-Witheford
Lohman, Eric. When [S]He is Working [S]He is Not at Home: Challenging Assumptions About Remote Work.
Phd in Media Studies, July 2015
Supervisor: Nick Dyer-Witheford
Thorburn, Elise. Human-Machinic Assemblages: Technologies, Bodies, and the Recuperation of Social Reproduction in the Crisis Era.
Phd in Media Studies, May 2015
Supervisor: Nick Dyer-Witheford
Young, Liam Cole. What's in a list?' Cultural Techniques, Logistics, Poeisis.
Phd in Media Studies, December 2014
Supervisor: Bernd Frohmann
Benoit, Andrea. Face Value: Beyond the Surface of Brand Philanthropy through Cultural Production of the MAC AIDS Fund.
Phd in Media Studies, August 2014
Supervisor: Daniel Robinson
Preston, Jeffrey Michael. Fantasizing Disability: Representation of Loss and Limitation in Popular Television and Film.
Phd in Media Studies, August 2014
Supervisor: Sharon Sliwinski
Richardson, Gemma. (Un)covering Suicide: The Changing Ethical Norms in Canadian Journalism.
Phd in Media Studies, August 2014
Supervisors: Carole Farber and Romayne Smith Fullerton
Svec, Henry Adam. If I Had a Hammer: An Archeology of Tactical Media From the Hootenanny to the People's Microphone.
Phd in Media Studies, August 2013
Supervisor: Nick Dyer-Witheford
Manzerolle, Vincent. Brave New Wireless World: Mapping the Rise of Ubiquitous Connectivity from Myth to Market.
Phd in Media Studies, April 2013
Supervisors: Edward Comor and Sandra Smeltzer
Livermore, Owen. The Academic Grind: A Critique of Creative and Collaborative Discourses Between Digital Games Industries and Post-Secondary Education in Canada.
Phd in Media Studies, February 2013
Supervisor: Nick Dyer-Witheford
Meier, Leslie. Promotional Ubiquitous Musics: New Identities and Emerging Markets in the Digitalizing Music Industry.
Phd in Media Studies, January 2013
Supervisor: Jonathan Burston
Toledo Ramirez, Gerardo . Because I am Not Here, Selected Second Life-Based Art Case Studies. Subjectivity, Autoempathy and Virtual World Aesthetics.
Phd in Media Studies, December 2012
Supervisor: Carole Farber
Brown, Brian. Will Work for Free: Examining the Biopolitics of Unwaged Immaterial Labour.
Phd in Media Studies, July 2012
Supervisor: Nick Dyer-Witheford
Richardson, Christopher. Communicating Crimes: Covering Gangs in Contemporary Canadian Journalism.
Phd in Media Studies, July 2012
Supervisor: Romayne Smith Fullerton
Feliciano Ortiz, Raul. Watching the games: Critical media literacy and students' abilities to identify and critique the politics of sports.
Phd in Media Studies, April 2012
Supervisors: Carole Farber and Romayne Smith Fullerton
Martin, Jenn. Keeping Up with the Virtual Joneses: The Practices, Meanings, and Consequences of Consumption in Second Life.
Phd in Media Studies, March 2012
Supervisor: Nick Dyer-Witheford
Asquith, Kyle. Aren't They Keen?" Early Children's Food Advertising and the Emergence of the Brand-loyal Child Consumer.
Phd in Media Studies, November 2011
Supervisor: Daniel Robinson
Daubs, Michael. Immediacy and Aesthetic Remediation in Television and Digital Media: Mass Media’s Challenge to the Democratization of Media Production.
Phd in Media Studies, September 2011
Supervisor: Sasha Torres
Arntfield, Michael. Hypertext Epitaphs: The Digitization of Police Memorials and Funerary Writing.
Phd in Media Studies, July 2011
Supervisor: Tim Blackmore
Ting, Elle. Pax Americana : September 11 memorialization and nation-building mythologies.
Phd in Media Studies, August 2009
Supervisor: Tim Blackmore