Over the past decade, researchers have increasingly become interested in studying the potential harms of social media use. As a result, a large and rapidly growing body of research has emerged investigating how social media use can negatively impact users’ psychological functioning and wellbeing. Numerous studies have found evidence that some individuals can develop a maladaptive psychological dependence on social media resulting in a problematic pattern of excessive social media use. This maladaptive use has many similarities to the pattern of behaviour demonstrated by individuals with pathological gambling and Internet gaming disorder. Researchers have adopted various theoretical approaches to investigate the factors that contribute to this problematic pattern of social media use. The present program of research investigated personality factors associated with problematic social media use and applied theories of addictive behaviour to investigate important psychological factors that contribute to the development of problematic social media use.

A total of four studies were conducted. Study 1 was a meta-analysis of studies investigating the relationships between the five-factor personality traits and problematic social media use. The study found that high neuroticism, low conscientiousness, low openness, and low agreeableness were significantly associated with problematic social media use. Study 2 was a meta-analysis of studies investigating the relationship between trait mindfulness and problematic social media use. The study found that low trait mindfulness was associated with problematic social media use. Studies 3 and 4 applied theoretical models of addictive behaviour to investigate problematic social media use, operationalised as social media addiction. Study 3 investigated whether social media engagement and social media reward expectancies (i.e., expectations that social media use will result in positive and negative reinforcement) are associated with social media addiction. The study found that social media engagement and social media reward expectancies serially mediated the relationship between psychological distress and social media addiction. Study 4 investigated whether the relationships between social media addiction and various psychological predictors of social media addiction are mediated by positive and negative metacognitions regarding social media use. Metacognitions are beliefs about the effectiveness of using social media for cognitive and emotion regulation (positive metacognitions) and beliefs about the danger and uncontrollability of social media use (negative metacognitions). Results of the mediation analyses suggested that depression, anxiety, fear of missing out, loneliness, and trait mindfulness have indirect effects on social media addiction that are mediated by positive and negative metacognitions about social media use.

This thesis contributes to evidence regarding the personality traits associated with problematic social media use and the psychological factors associated with social media addiction. The results of this research suggest that individuals who are predisposed to experiencing psychological distress may be at risk of developing problematic social media use. Additionally, the results are consistent with theories of addictive behaviour which posit that using social media as a means of cognitive or affective regulation may reinforce the behaviour of coping with distress by using social media which, over time, can lead to the development of social media addiction. The findings have implications for future research investigating the psychological factors that play a key role in the development of social media addiction. For example, cognitive biases like metacognitions that relate to using social media for mood regulation may have a significant influence on the mechanisms underlying the development and maintenance of problematic social media use. Additionally, the findings have implications for treatment research by identifying key psychological factors, such as metacognitions, that could be targeted in interventions to prevent or treat social media addiction.

Background. A growing body of Australian research is examining public attitudes towards crime and punishment (punitive attitudes) and consistently finding that the Australian public typically express high punitive attitudes. Punitive attitudes are multifaceted and intricate, necessitating research to understand how various factors contribute to the development of high punitive attitudes.

Methodology. To being understanding these attitudes, this thesis comprises of three empirical studies that draw on original survey data from a sample of the Australian public (N = 520).

Study 1. Study 1 examined the relationships between punitiveness and various factors (demographics, crime salience, perceptions of offenders, sociocultural factors, and racial attitudes) to create the most sophisticated model to predict punitive attitudes in Australia to date. The overall findings suggest that many Australians express some degree of punitive attitudes which are most strongly predicted by internal attribution of crime, perceptions of rising crime rates, a lack of belief in redeemability, geographic location (specifically residing in a rural location), low interpersonal trust and a lack of support for multicultural principles.

Study 2. Study 2 narrowed its scope to focus on the relationship between racial attitudes (racial essentialism and attitudes towards Indigenous Australians) and general punitive attitudes. Further, this study examines specific punitiveness through a vignette experiment where respondents indicate their punishment preferences in a particular case where the offender differs by race (Aboriginal vs Australian). The results indicate that while racial attitudes are associated with punitive attitudes, internal attribution of crime and perceptions of crime accounted for the most variance in punitive attitudes among the Australian public. Moreover, the vignette experiment found no differences between the preferred sentences nor sentence length for a First Nations offender compared to a non-Indigenous offender.

Study 3. Study 3 focused on the relationship between geographic location (rural vs urban) and punitive attitudes and considers what factors may contribute to this observed difference. The findings identified that rural residents expressing significantly stronger punitive attitudes, with fear of crime and a lack of confidence in the criminal justice system accounting for a significant amount of the observed difference.

Conclusions. Broadly, many Australians express some degree of punitiveness. These attitudes are most strongly predicted by rising perceptions crime in the community and perceptions of offenders. The findings also indicate that racial attitudes also play a role in predicting high punitiveness. However, these attitudes do not necessarily translate to preferences for harsh punishment when respondents are presented with a specific case and offender. In fact, more respondents primarily opted for non-custodial sentences in the vignette experiment irrespective of the offender’s race. Additionally, the level of punitiveness differs across rural and urban contexts, with people residing in rural areas being significantly more punitive than people living in urban areas. While there is still much work to do in understanding the mechanisms that foster punitiveness among the public and the implications of these attitudes, this thesis contributed to bridging a number of gaps in the literature where no pre-existing studies have previously examined.

This practice-led research thesis consists of a memoir about my lifetime experiences of working with horses and an exegesis espousing an underlying phenomenological ontology. In this thesis I aim to problematise utilitarian instrumental valuing of horses, with its underlying positivist-Cartesian ontology, in relation to equine welfare—due to its relationship with ‘learned helplessness’— and worker occlusion within the horseracing industries of Australia and New Zealand. In the creative work, Something Else, vignettes detailing lived experience are combined with theoretical inclusions, hybridising the memoir form to provide myriad external perspectives of ethical considerations pertinent to horse-human relationships within working, equestrian, and racing contexts. More particularly, the memoir, through its inherent requirement for subjectivity, both reflects and supports situated and tacit knowledges further explored in its exegetical counterpart. Methodologically, I draw on practice-led research and the intersectionality of feminist theory and animal studies to facilitate a contestation of the horseracing industry’s backstage hierarchal structure, which marginalises horses and humans as commodities. Life phenomenology informs both the memoir and exegesis to support a more nuanced understanding of interspecies intersubjectivity and equine agency.

Italian Fascism exercised a powerful influence upon the imaginations of ultranationalists in the interwar German-speaking world. Recent advances in transnational historiography foreground processes of transfer and ideological entanglement, allowing historians to explore the “travelling potential” of fascism through the appeal of the Italian model, or elements thereof, in international contexts. Building on this trend, this thesis investigates the intellectual reception and use of Fascism in five German-speaking, non-Hitlerian ultranationalist groups: the Gesellschaft zum Studium des Faschismus (GSF); the Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten; the National Bolsheviks, in particular Ernst Niekisch’s Widerstand circle; the Strasser circle; and the Spann circle in Austria. These groups all proved receptive to Italian Fascism and can therefore be said to inhabit the “fascist sphere.”

The ways in which the groups interpreted Italian Fascism — a discursive, subjective exercise by nature — resulted in each of the groups internalising features of Fascist ideology, whether actively or passively. This was achieved through two principal vectors, or “ideological emissaries”: the concept of the “fascist war veteran” and corporatism. The fascist war veteran appealed to broader trends of soldierly nationalism, which had a strong presence in German Conservative Revolutionary circles. Corporatism, the praxis of which emerged by degrees in Italy over the interwar period, likewise had broad intellectual, international precedents. Fascism found fertile ground for entry into the Germanic ultranationalist imagination, and its emissaries interacted in a mutually supportive manner, particularly after years of perceived success of the Fascist system. For example, for the Stahlhelm, enthusiasm for the fascist war veteran encouraged the adoption of corporatism; for the Spann circle, the reverse was true. Thus, through the vehicles of the fascist war veteran and corporatism, the ultranationalist movements became more fascist over time. Perpetuating associations with soldierly nationalism and corporatism with fascism, the groups also contributed to an intellectual synthesis of the concepts, further entrenching associations with fascism as a generalist political ideology.