Designing online usability strategies for multicultural Australia

The research found that multicultural societies need to acknowledge the importance of online usability as a social justice, access and equity issue. For effective usability, government public access websites need to be informed by the language and cultural needs of the diverse target groups, best realised through a user-centred design methodology. Utilising the thesis' research an accompanying website "The women of Scylla : a digital odyssey" was designed and included via the enclosed CD-ROM.

Lorne story : reflections on a video postcard

In the imaginary and reflexive space of video storytelling, one story generates another. As an autobiographical video memoir, Lorne story is fashioned as a hybrid form of postcard and director's video notebook: it examines the stories we tell ourselves, and the stories we tell others - in the presence of video.

Culture clash : artistic production and the school environment

Artists-in-schools programs involving contemporary art practices can be transformational for the participants when environmental considerations are integral to the planning and structure of the project and both the form and content of the program are reflected upon critically.

The philosophical notion of property

This thesis reveals the Being of man through the conditions which man creates for his own existence as the result of his level of apprehension of himself embodied in the social structure of society.

Integrating affect and cognition : a test and developmental program

This thesis ratifies a tool for assessing affective-cognitive integration and techniques for affective-cognitive integration. It contributes to theories regarding responses to emotions triggering events, humanistic psychology and the field of emotional intelligence and provides a model of the psychology of the integration of affect and cognition.

The meaning of information

This thesis explores the effects of Western culture on information about 'Asian-ness' in film. The findings demonstrate that, in the American films, 'Asian-ness' is constructed as being everything that the West is not. Western culture plays an important role in the representation of information about 'Asian-ness'.

Factors influencing acceptance, use, continued use of electronic services system

This study found that user experience and perceived ease of use are the most important factors in considering the user acceptance of e-Services and that there is no significant relationship between user acceptance and continued use of e-Services. The Electronic Services Acceptance Model (E-SAM) explains user adoption of e-Services.

Third-generation responses to holocaust video-testimony

This research investigated responses of grandchildren of Holocaust survivors ("third generation") to Holocaust video-testimony. The analysis revealed that video-testimony can transmit memories of survival experiences to viewers, enabling them to "work through" their positions as witnesses and make active decisions relating to remembrance.

Communities constructing knowledge

The research consisted of narrative writing and reflective practice to promote the construction of new understandings between the Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples of Australia. The research findings propose exemplars of knowledge and practice and approaches to learning that are community centred, immersed in social practices and which include systematic narrative formation.

Genre theory and language change in a community of practice

Business letters are complex sites of interaction. Discussions of genre theory from different disciplinary perspectives (psychology, applied linguistics, rhetoric) highlight tension between stability and change in writing as a social activity. The research extends the use of ethnographic methodology and Communities of Practice in examining writing and a writing community.

Dutch Indonesians in Australia : second-generation identity in the diaspora

Exploring "local" and "transnational" relationships, this research shows that second-generation relationships with the homeland and with other members in the diaspora are less important regarding (diasporic) identity formation than realities of sedentary diasporic life (in Australia) and that "locality" and diaspora are not opposing concepts but theoretically and practically interconnected.

Beyond Habermas

Jurgen Habermas suggests an equitable society through the revitalization of an ideal public sphere and rational discourse. This is called into question, on the basis of the vast phenomenon of anti-Semitism and counter-capitalist violence, which is argued to stand beyond rational discourse and have its roots in a mythic consciousness.

Race, place and self

This thesis examines, interrelates and contextualizes concepts of race, place and self by employing an amalgam of autobiography, interviews, literature, political analysis, infant research and psychoanalytic theory. Although the examples and narratives are South African based, principles that emerge have universal implications. Scars of apartheid mark oppressed, bystanders and beneficiaries.

Disentangling the layering of HIV/AIDS-related stigma

This thesis highlights the complexity of the inter-relationships between the disease stigma of HIV/AIDS and common modes of HIV transmission, such as injecting drug use, among health professionals in Asia. New ways of deconstructing disease-related stigma were explored. The findings pose challenges for the conventional approaches to HIV/AIDS stigma intervention.