Aim: This study examines the discursive construction of medical cannabis in Swedish newspapers, with the aim of understanding how the news media recontextualise the medical potential of cannabis.

Design: The study is centred on the concept of recontextualisation, which focuses on how discourses are reinterpreted and reshaped when moving from one context to another, with a special focus on recontextualisation in relation to the media. Methodologically, the study uses critical discourse analysis to qualitatively analyse 134 articles of different subgenres, published in four Swedish newspapers between 2015 and 2020.

Results: The study shows that medical cannabis is constructed around myriad topics and contexts, ranging from news that focuses on the medical potential of cannabis to articles where medical cannabis is mentioned in passing and constructed in a more abstract form. The media have difficulties retaining a conceptual boundary between medical and recreational cannabis. Moreover, the study shows that the medical potential of cannabis is discursively constructed using three different discourses: patient discourse, strong science discourse, and weak science discourse.

Conclusions: The study suggests that there is a widening of the debate on cannabis in the Swedish public sphere, giving more recognition to the potential medical use of cannabis. The media, however, show difficulties in refining discourses on medical cannabis, which results in an altering between constructions that are strongly connected to science, and those that are not.

This study examines the reporting on legal cannabis in order to explore the operation of neoliberal ideology in journalistic discourse. Cannabis legalisation is here understood as a way for capitalism to create new market opportunities, besides being a turn away from the so-called ‘war on drugs’. The study understands neoliberalism as operating via market-based logics that are interrelated with other social logics, such as those pertaining to journalism (Phelan 2014). Critical discourse analysis is used for studying Swedish newspaper reporting on legal cannabis between 2013 and 2018. The study shows that a struggle between market-based logics and journalistic practices is visible, where journalism has difficulties in challenging core tenets of neoliberal ideology. The article concludes with a discussion of how the current conditions of journalism limit its ability to challenge neoliberal perspectives.

Following in the celebrity trajectory of mommy bloggers, global micro-microcelebrities, and reality TV families, family Influencers on social media are one genre of microcelebrity for whom the “anchor” content in which they demonstrate their creative talents, such as producing musical covers or comedy sketches, is a highly profitable endeavor. Yet, this commerce is sustained by an undercurrent of “filler” content wherein everyday routines of domestic life are shared with followers as a form of “calibrated amateurism.” Calibrated amateurism is a practice and aesthetic in which actors in an attention economy labor specifically over crafting contrived authenticity that portrays the raw aesthetic of an amateur, whether or not they really are amateurs by status or practice, by relying on the performance ecology of appropriate platforms, affordances, tools, cultural vernacular, and social capital. In this article, I consider the anatomy of calibrated amateurism, and how this practice relates to follower engagement and responses. While some follower responses have highlighted concerns over the children’s well-being, a vast majority overtly signal their love, support, and even envy toward such parenting. I draw on ethnographically informed content analysis of two group of family Influencers on social media to illustrate the enactment and value of calibrated amateurism in an increasingly saturated ecology and, investigate how such parents justify the digital labor in which their children partake to produce viable narratives of domestic life.

This chapter discusses the emerging practices of social media Influencers. In focus are six influential Instagram Influencers who were ‘exposed’ for involving themselves in campaigns aiming to discredit telecommunications providers in Singapore. In the absence of enforced legal boundaries and industry norms regarding advertising formats and advertising ethics, brand scandals are frequent, causing concern among regulators, brand managers, and platform owners. When starting to accommodate commercial brands and contents in social media posts, Influencers are constantly at risk of breaching their contract of trust with their followers. The case study shows how Influencers, followers, and eventually also the brand clients, are sensitive to what they experience as deceptive and unethical behaviours that will put normative pressures onto the Influencers to conform to certain ethical standards.

Current changes in the media industries not only provide a range of new business opportunities for entrepreneurial start-ups, they also force legacy media firms to engage in corporate entrepreneurship and (re-)develop their entrepreneurial orientation as part of their strategic renewal. In recent years, media entrepreneurship has emerged as an area of study within media business studies, but it still lacks theoretical anchoring. While in mainstream entrepreneurship research entrepreneurial orientation (EO) has developed into a highly prominent theoretical concept, it has been largely overlooked for the study of media firms to date. This paper introduces entrepreneurial orientation to media business studies. It characterizes EO’s different dimensions and reviews relevant studies, and then illustrates the dimensions of the EO concept by drawing on the case example of a European online publisher. The case shows how different dimensions of EO are at play in the media firm and how the relevance of these dimensions is not stable over time, but in constant flux. Such process perspective on EO is outlined as a major future research opportunity for media entrepreneurship studies.

This editorial reviews current research about media entrepreneurship and introduces the four papers published in this special issue. These papers move the emerging academic field of media entrepreneurship forward by outlining the relevance of context for enhancing our understanding of entrepreneurial phenomena, by introducing the theoretical concept of ‘entrepreneuring as emancipation’, by analyzing the institutionalization of media entrepreneurship education, and by categorizing different investment types in corporate entrepreneurship. The editorial concludes by calling for continuing efforts to theory-building to further develop the field.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Social media use has become increasingly popular among Internet users. Given the widespread use of social media on smartphones, there is an increasing need for research examining the impact of the use of such technologies on sexual relationships and their constructs such as intimacy, satisfaction, and sexual function. However, little is known about the underlying mechanism why social media addiction impacts on sexual distress. This study investigated whether two constructs (intimacy and perceived social support) were mediators in the association of social media addiction and sexual distress among married women.

METHODS: A prospective study was conducted where all participants (N = 938; mean age = 36.5 years) completed the Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale to assess social media addiction, the Female Sexual Distress Scale - Revised to assess sexual distress, the Unidimensional Relationship Closeness Scale to assess intimacy, and the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support to assess perceived social support.

RESULTS: The results showed that social media addiction had direct and indirect (via intimacy and perceived social support) effects on sexual function and sexual distress.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS: The findings of this study facilitate a better understanding of how problematic engaging to social media can affect couples' intimacy, perceived social support, and constructs of sexual function. Consequently, sexual counseling should be considered an essential element for assessing individual behaviors in the context of social media use.

The Television Studies Reader brings together key writings in the expanding field of television studies, providing an overview of the discipline and addressing issues of industry, genre, audiences, production and ownership, and representation.

The Reader charts the ways in which television and television studies are being redefined by new and 'alternative' ways of producing, broadcasting and watching TV, such as cable, satellite and digital broadcasting, home video, internet broadcasting, and interactive TV, as well as exploring the recent boom in genres such as reality TV and docusoaps. It brings together articles from leading international scholars to provide perspectives on television programmes and practices from around the world, acknowledging both television's status as a global medium and the many and varied local contexts of its production and reception. Articles are grouped in seven themed sections, each with an introduction by the editors:

• Institutions of Television
• Spaces of Television
• Modes of Television
• Making Television
• Social Representation on Television
• Watching Television
• Transforming Television

The development of social media applications, such as blogs, Facebook and Twitter, has offered new participatory opportunities to everyday media users. In some respects, this also marks a transformation of public space, as the broadcasting era’s “audiences” nowadays also can take on the role as participating “co-creators”. Or to put it slightly differently: Contemporary media landscape allows for new forms of coexistence between producer and user generated content. For traditional media companies, this transformation has brought both challenges and opportunities. User generated content has always played a part in media production, but the current media situation has certainly made it a more salient feature. Among online newspapers, specifically, the new opportunities to include users’ participatory practices have taken different forms. For instance, they nowadays allow for convenient Facebook-liking and users linking blog posts to articles. They also spend both time and energy on making it easier for readers to get in touch with them in order to provide pictures, information, corrections, etc. Within this context of offering new, participatory opportunities to the previous “readers”, online newspapers have also come to adapt to and develop on one specifically salient strategy: To allow readers/users to comment on articles online. Media research has already paid attention to user comments as a participatory practice. These studies have typically looked into what technological features for participation that are offered and how they enable and limit users’ participatory practices (cf. Domingo et al., 2008; Hermida & Thurman, 2008). In this paper, we take on a slightly different approach. Firstly, the paper looks into the conditions for participation in terms of topics: What content are users allowed to comment on? How do content characteristics differ between news that are made available and news that are withheld from comments? After having mapped these conditions for participation we – secondly –analyze how users actually navigate within this (conditioned) space: What news are they interested in commenting on? How does commenting vary between different kinds of articles? These questions are answered by help of an analysis of 1.100 news items and their adjacent user interface in an online news site (affiliated with a professionally produced, local newspaper). In terms of methodology we apply quantitative content analysis. Our analysis reveals that the participatory space offered to the readers is geared towards light news, whereas users themselves have clear preferences for commenting news concerning changes in their local environment, about general national politics and welfare issues. The paper concludes with a discussion on potential explanations as to why this discrepancy exists and it also further reflects on its potential implications for users’ participatory practices.

This study examines how three types of extreme events (heat waves, droughts, floods) are mentioned together with climate change on social media. English-language Twitter use during 2008–2017 is analyzed, based on 1,127,996 tweets (including retweets). Frequencies and spikes of activity are compared and theoretically interpreted as reflecting complex relations between the extreme event factor (the occurrence of an extreme event); the media ecology factor (climate-change oriented statements/actions in the overall media landscape) and the digital action factor (activities on Twitter). Flooding was found to be by far the most tweeted of the three in connection to climate change, followed by droughts and heat waves. It also led when comparing spikes of activity. The dominance of floods is highly prevalent from 2014 onwards, triggered by flooding events (extreme event factor), the climate science controversy in US politics (media ecology factor) and the viral power of celebrities’ tweets (digital action factor).

Background: To win the “war for talent” and recruit highly skilled candidates, employers need to distinguish themselves from their competitors by securing employer-of-choice (EOC) status. In competitive industries such as information technology (IT), companies focus on shaping unique employer branding (EB) strategies to help find or retain top talent and the indispensable edge or advantages that come along with them. At the same time, diverse IT employees are contending with different forms of prejudice and discrimination within the industry, making it essential for companies to clearly present their agendas of diversity and inclusivity through EB that communicates a “great place to work” for employees.

Purpose: While there are various bodies of EB-focused research, few studies have empirically explored how diversity and inclusion are communicated across industries. Accordingly, this study explores the use of external digital communication for promoting EB inclusivity deployed by the human resources (HR) and marketing departments of IT companies.

Method: This study uses exploratory research within a qualitative research design, along with an abductive approach, preexisting theories, and empirical data gathered from seven semi-structured interviews and digital communication materials from three IT companies: CGI, Nexer, and Toxic. The data is analyzed using the Gioia method and content analysis. Finally, a revised conceptual framework is developed.

Conclusion: The results of this study show that a range of external digital communication channels are needed to effectively communicate EB inclusivity. This can be achieved by portraying diversity and inclusion in different dimensions, in addition to successful diversity- and inclusion-driven projects, initiatives, and storytelling. It is essential to highlight different demographics within the company, for instance, from junior and senior, to male and female employees, as well as individuals from underrepresented groups. Furthermore, the results demonstrate that the IT industry is in a state of continuous innovation and evolution while also being highly competitive in terms of securing top recruits who can choose between their prospective employers. There is also a need to gain wider perspectives when creating IT solutions for diverse groups worldwide and there is a clear shortage of women in the industry. Therefore, it is important for IT companies to communicate their EB with diversity and inclusion in mind — and in practice through using the revised framework that presents relevant actors, tools, communication channels, and dimensions of D&I. On a managerial level, local and international actors are recommended to work in close collaboration, utilize modern technology, and follow up their external communication to attract potential employees who may one day become ambassadors for the company.

Syftet med studien var att genom en statistisk analys och ur ett riskkommunikationsperspektiv undersöka informationens roll för riskuppfattning och upplevelse av oro kring pågående dödligt våld (PDV) hos studenter vid lärosäten i Sverige. I studien innefattar informationens roll beteenden kopplade till informationssökning, information som trygghetsskapande faktor och informationsbehov. I studien genomfördes en enkätundersökning som 120 studenter vid ett lärosäte besvarade. Genom en statistisk analys analyserades studiens forskningsfrågor utifrån aspekter kring informationskonsumtion, riskuppfattning, tillit och oro för att undersöka informationens roll. Studiens teoretiska ramverk bestod av teorier och begrepp från riskkommunikationsforskning (riskuppfattning) samt teorier och begrepp relaterade till informationskonsumtion (informationsundvikande, uncertainty reduction theory och risk information seeking and processing model).

Resultatet i studien visade att de studenter som är oroliga och som söker information kring PDV är de studenter som i störst utsträckning anser sig ha kunskap om ämnet, däremot fanns det inte ett enskilt samband mellan ökad oro och att söka information. Individer som förväntas besitta kunskap om PDV, söker i större utsträckning mer information om ämnet. Studenterna i studien har inte fått information kring PDV från sitt lärosäte, men vill generellt få mer information och tror att information kan göra dem tryggare. Studenterna känner generellt tillit till lärosätet, trots att de inte fått någon information om PDV. De som känner tillit till lärosätet skulle vilja söka information om PDV hos dem, medan de som inte känner tillit söker mer information på egen hand. Vidare uppmuntras forskning där det undersöks vilken roll andras förväntan på individens kunskaper om risker spelar för individens informationskonsumtion.

Den här studien undersöker hur representationen av hemlöshet ser ut i två svenska gatutidningar: Faktum och Situation Sthlm. Syftet med studien är att bidra till teoretiseringen av mediers representation av hemlöshet, samt att utöka förståelsen för gatutidningar som medium och som plattform för utsatta människor. För att uppnå syftet utgår studiens teoretiska ramverk från kritisk diskursanalys (CDA) och representation av klass. Studiens metod grundar sig på begrepp från CDA, tillsammans med begrepp från van Leeuwens taxonomi för representationer av sociala aktörer. Ett urval av texter från Faktum och Situation Sthlm har gjorts för att kunna studera representationen av hemlöshet i gatutidningar.

Resultatet visar att hemlösa representeras utifrån fem olika diskursiva teman. I det första konstrueras hemlösa som aktiva individer med mänskliga egenskaper. I det andra förekommer den motsatta bilden där hemlösa ses som anonyma passiva grupper. Hemlösa representeras också som missbrukare och kriminella. Ett av temana innefattar representationen av externa problem som orsaker till hemlöshet, däribland droger och brott. Slutligen konstrueras ett “vi” och ett “dem” där hemlösa ses som motståndare till icke-hemlösa.

Showing a dream life on social media where everything must be nice, glamorous, and perfect has become the norm. The problem with this is that it creates pressure to show a fun and eventful life, which have shown that it can lead to comparisons. In 2020, the new app BeReal was launched whose basic idea is to break this norm. This study aims to investigate how users present themselves on BeReal and examine their experiences of the app in comparison to other social media platforms. 

As it has shown that girls are affected most by comparisons, the study's sample is girls aged 18-25. The study has been carried out through ten qualitative conversational interviews which have then been analysed through a thematic analysis. The theories that have been used in this study is Goffman's two concepts, front stage and backstage, uses and gratification theory and the theory of social comparison. Additional previous research that is used to answer the purpose of the study are studies made on comparison on social media, self-presentation, how images are managed, social media structure and norms on social media.

The thematic analyses have identified five main themes which are: Social media satisfies needs, Presentation differs on different social media, comparisons on social media, BeReal is more realistic and Perfect picture. The results show that the app does not show an accurate representation of the user’s life, but that the image is more accurate than the representation shown on Instagram. One conclusion that can be drawn is that BeReal's users take advantage of the features that have been designed into the new app. This is done by strategically publishing content that shows one's life as better and more eventful than it really is.

After the attacks by Hamas on Israel on October 7th and the offensive on Palestine that followed, a group of young Palestinians have taken the role of sharing witness of the ongoing genocide through social media. This thesis investigates how these citizen journalists are bearing witness to the ongoing genocide and how social media audiences are reacting to these images. By analyzing the discourses present in their posts through a Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA) and systematically observing the comments under said posts through a thematic analysis, this thesis demonstrates that there is a relation between shared discourses and audience reactions. The study argues that vulnerability is being used as an act of resistance, and that discourses involving vulnerability and eye-witnessing are common in these posts and inspire emotional reactions and sentiments of resistance in the audiences, and further demonstrates how the analyzed citizen journalists seem to share similar discourses and feelings while using several modes of address in variating ways from post to post. All these findings show that the current Palestinian conflict may be contributing to changes in the ways war and conflicts are mediatized due to their use of social media to create a more connective citizen journalism where audiences become closer with the distant suffering. 

Studien ”Nu stannar vi på marken” ämnar analysera hur företaget SJ konstruerar sin hållbarhetskommunikation och om greenwashing-fenomenet ses i deras reklam och iså fall i vilken grad. Greenwashing anges när ett företag sprider vilseledande information för att få företaget att framstå mer hållbara än vad de egentligen är, för att locka konsumenter. Företag har ett ansvar att inte bara presentera en miljömässigt ansvarsfull bild, utan även agera i praktiken. SJ har vunnit pris för att vara ett av Sveriges grönaste varumärken, men samtidigt blivit fällda för att visa sig grönare än de verkligen är. Studien har utifrån teorierna semiotik, greenwashing, reklamteori och bildretorik via en kvalitativ semiotisk analys besvarat studiens syfte. Resultatet påvisar att SJ skräddarsyr sin hållbarhetskommunikation utifrån känslor som ska locka och framkalla relationer och gemenskaper, snarare än att de lyfter sin tjänst utifrån problem och lösningar.  Konnotationerna visade en dominerande användning av naturbilder, igenkänningsfaktorer och ett sensoriskt budskap för att i syfte få mottagarna att känna. Genom SJ:s genomgående patosargument i deras kommunikation som bygger på en närhet och emotionell känsla, framstår reklamen i första anblick som hållbar i kontext till de nämnda konnotationerna. Etos påverkar det visuella materialet med hjälp av SJ:s starka position i transportbranschen och en välkänd logga. Textslogan “framtidens sätt att resa” representerar kommunikationens koncept och ett logosargument som stämmer överens med SJ:s arbete med hållbarhet. Dessa aspekter tyder på tendenser till greenwashing och den så kallade “green product advertising”.

Background: LANs are popular due to the unique social features where gamers share the samepassion, meet, and compete with like-minded gamers. Further, a LAN forms new and unexploredfeelings and impressions for gamers; therefore, it should be further explored. Therefore,understanding the gamers' motivations will allow for a better understanding of the unexploredbenefits gained.

Purpose: By studying the phenomenon of LANs, this research aims to explore the motivationsfor attending a LAN by discovering and understanding the connection between benefits andmotivations.

Method: To fulfil the purpose of this thesis, being of exploratory nature, qualitative research wasused. The empirical data was accumulated through fifteen semi-structured interviews. The datahas been analysed and interpreted using an abductive approach incorporating a thematic analysis.

Conclusion: This study explored the motivations and benefits of LAN attendance from a U&Gperspective. The findings showed three motivations for attending a LAN competition, diversionand social interaction. Furthermore, the gained benefits are rewards, information, skills, escape,entertainment, relationships, socialisation and finding new teammates. The analysis resulted indeveloping a conceptual model illustrating the motivations and benefits.

The article examines Al Jazeera’s internal guidelines. It focuses attention on the broadcaster’s editorial policies and practices, how they are created, the way they shape news content, and whether they are documented or not. It attempts to shed light on the role of external stakeholders and regulatory devices with a say on the editorial line and subsequently the type of internal editorial policies and practices journalists are required to pursue. It presents a comparative study and analysis of the network’s two major and most influential channels, namely Al Jazeera Arabic and Al Jazeera English, the arguments in support of their editorial policies and practices, and the arguments opposing them. It scrutinizes how different forms of internal guidelines and regulatory frameworks affect the network’s discourse, ties with its financiers, and relations with the outside world. Finally and based on the findings obtained through interviews, and linguistic discourse analysis, the article outlines how internal guidelines come into being in the case of Al Jazeera and how they eventually influence the final product. 

The construction of news is not haphazard. It is institutional in the sense it is a fundamental part of the content media organizations churn out in accordance with certain standards, styles, rules, and rituals. As such, organizational discourse, whether news or any other genre, according to Fairhurst (2009, p. 1608), would represent “a constellation of perspectives united by the view that language does not mirror reality, but constitutes it”. Thus news discourses organizations employ are a “structured collection of texts embodied in the practices of talking and writing (as well as a wide variety of visual representations and cultural artefacts) that bring organizationally related objects into being as these texts are produced, disseminated and consumed”. Phillips et al. (2004, p. 636) assert that the unravelling of social reality of an organization entails “the systematic study of texts—including their production, dissemination, and consumption—in order to explore the relationship between discourse and social reality.” This paper is an inquiry into the news discourse of a global, multilingual broadcaster with the aim of presenting a method on how to investigate news from a postfoundational discourse analysis perspective (henceforth PDA). Despite its popularity as a discourse analysis tool, PDA still “suffers from a quite considerable methodological deficit”. The paper demonstrates that the deficit PDA suffers from can be overcome with recourse to other approaches, specifically critical realist discourse studies (RDS). The following section presents an outline of the major tenets of PDA and then it shows how its combination with RDS can help remedy some of its shortcomings.

Hacked and leaked content has become a major source of information for the mainstream news, particularly in the years since Donald Trump snatched the official Republican presidential nomination in 2016. This chapter seeks to identify some salient policies and practices the news media have adopted in their coverage of the rise of Trump to power. Indeed, there is a plethora of literature on the role hackers and leakers as well as news fakers play in today’s journalism (Eggen, 2006; Gunkel, 2005; Jaworski, Fitzgerald, & Morris, 2004; Lievrouw, 2011; Roberts, 2012; Son, 2002; Vegh, 2003). We even have a new theory with a set of principles designed to test, interpret, and predict the phenomenon. Called “haktology,” the theory examines the processes of gaining illegal and unauthorized access to information, its subsequent disclosure to reporters and activists, its transmutation into news reports, and the impact such reports leave on public opinion.

Critical Discourse Analysis dwells at length with news stylebooks which mainly advise journalists on how certain words are to be written, policies on confused spelling or transliterating [c.f. Richardson, J. (2007). Analyzing newspapers: An approach from critical discourse analysis. Basingstoke: Palgrave], things with little bearing on issues of ideology, power, and dialogism. And if the ideological effects of the internal guidelines are acknowledged [c.f. van Dijk, T.A. (1988). News analysis: Case studies of international and national newsin the press. Hillsdale: Erlbaum and Cameron, D. (1996). Style policy and style politics: A neglected aspect of the language of the news. Media, Culture and Society, 18(2), 315–333], it is seldom backed by textual or ethnographic evidence. The paper attempts to fill in this gap in the literature by highlighting the role internal guidelines play in structuring and patterning the news discourse. It investigates, textually and ethnographically, the part internal guidelines assume in shaping the Middle East narratives of the BBC and Al-Jazeera English (AJE). In the investigation of their role, the paper relies heavily on interviews, observations and access to large portions of the contents of BBC and AJE's internal guidelines. The paper's ethnographic angle helps illustrate how the two news giants use their organizational power for the sake of disseminating and inculcating their ideology and viewpoints vis-à-vis the Middle East conflict. It shows that the way voices in news are represented is not wholly the work of the reporter in the field. Finally, the paper reveals that news institutions have different ways of interfering in how ideas and viewpoints are to be expressed both socially and discursively and how voices are to be ‘tamed’, with the internal guidelines as their main discursive and social tool.

Managing a scientific journal is a critical and challenging service for academics and practitioners. There must be a way for journal editors to gain a clear picture of their publication's performance and gain insight into how they can make improvements to expand the journal's impact. Knowing the journal's performance and its leading contribution to a particular field can be useful for journal managers readers, authors, and science policymakers. This article presents a management framework informed by scientometrics and bibliometrics as a science that uses statistical techniques to analyze information distribution models, to help journals contribute more to the field by optimum engagement of editorial knowledge and expertise and expanding the boundaries of what is known. We examined one prominent journal as a case study in this paper. The outcomes are used to assess the feasibility of the proposed framework. The top contributions of the case journal are identified systematically, and strategies for potential growth are proposed accordingly. Based on the findings, this study not only provides an overview of the benefits of scientometrics-based journal management but also provides recommendations to strengthen the journal's impact on the field as a contribution to practice. As a result, this article is intended to benefit publishers, journal editors, readers, and policymakers. 

This thesis investigates the framing of the Israel-Hamas conflict in two of Sweden’s leading newspapers, Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet, during the first month following the significant escalation on October 7, 2023. Employing a qualitative content analysis of 49 news articles, the study examines the specific framing strategies, language choices, and source attributions used in the coverage, with a particular focus on the representations of Palestinians and Israelis. The analysis reveals that Dagens Nyheter predominantly framed the conflict through a security lens, emphasizing Israel's right to defend itself against perceived threats, while Svenska Dagbladet more frequently highlighted the humanitarian consequences of the conflict, focusing on the impact on Palestinian civilians. The findings demonstrate how these editorial choices contribute to different portrayals of the conflict in the Swedish press and reflect underlying biases in the representation of the parties involved. This research enhances the understanding of media framing by illustrating how major Swedish newspapers navigate and construct narratives around complex international conflicts, ultimately shaping public perception.

The purpose of this article is to contribute a critical theoretical understanding of cross-professional relations on social media, focusing on politicians, journalists and PR practitioners. It is well known that these professional groups establish personal and close relations in offline contexts, but more attention needs to be paid to the role of social media. Here, it is argued that in the context of digital media use, semi-private chatting, humour, and mutual acknowledgment, including the use of likes, smileys, heart symbols, etc., are evidence of a ‘neoliberalisation’ of cross-professional relations. The underlying idea is that the common practice of self-branding undermines representations of professional belonging and exacerbates the blurring of professional boundaries. The critical conceptualisation of such ‘transboundary’ interaction between politicians, journalists and PR practitioners, which is guided by a culturalmaterialist approach, includes the presentation of examples deriving from the Swedish Twittersphere, and suggestions for empirical research.

Syftet med denna studie är att få en fördjupad förståelse för hur TikTok-användare uppfattar reklam på TikTok, samt att få en insikt i hur användarna uppfattar att deras medieanvändning har förändrats av reklamen på plattformen. Uppsatsens resultat utgår från en kvalitativ metod där åtta intervjuer har genomförts. Materialet som samlats in har analyserats utifrån begreppet medieanvändning och teorin om uses and gratifications samt utifrån tidigare forskning. Studien grundar sig på hermeneutiken som metodteori, där samtliga svar från informanterna har tolkats. Detta skapar en helhetsbild om hur informanterna uppfattar reklam på TikTok samt hur deras medieanvändning har förändrats av den.  Digital reklam har under de senaste åren utvecklats och detta kan uppfattas på olika sätt, dels beroende på motivationsfaktorer och personliga preferenser. Informant-gruppen använder TikTok och exponeras för reklam på plattformen dagligen. Digital reklam är ett sätt för företag på sociala medieplattformar att nå ut och engagera sina målgrupper. Informanterna uppfattar reklamen som målgruppsanpassad, kreativ, intressant, naturligt inbakad och lätt att skrolla förbi. De uppfattar även att deras medieanvändning är i princip oförändrad av reklamen. 

Syfte: Studiens syfte är att undersöka om Jönköpings-Postens övergång till tabloid haft någon inverkan på tidningens innehåll. Frågeställningen som arbetet bygger på är om Jönköpings-Posten uppvisar tendenser på tabloidisering i sitt innehåll i samband med formatförändringen den 7 november 2013.

Material och metod: Materialet utgörs av sex tidningar, totalt 12 delar, i tryckt format från Jönköpings-Posten kring tiden för formatbytet. En kvantitativ innehållsanalys har använts som metod där begreppet tabloidisering operationaliserats.

Resultat: Sammantaget går det inte att utläsa en entydig ökning av tabloidiseringstendenserna. Det är först vid en närmare granskning av resultatet som det går att upptäcka tendenser på tabloidisering i tidningens innehåll. Resultaten är många gånger tvetydiga och skulle utifrån tidigare forskning och teorier tala både för och emot en tabloidisering på samma gång. En slutsats som dras gällande Jönköpings-Posten är att tidningen endast i viss mån uppvisar tecken på tabloidisering i sitt innehåll i samband med övergången till tabloid. Studien stödjer endast delvis den tidigare forskningens uppfattning om att ett förändrat format också innebär ett förändrat innehåll. 

Studiens syfte är att förstå hur nyhetskonsumenter med olika nivå av institutionaliserat kulturellt kapital uppfattar innehållet i traditionella medier, högerpolitiska alternativmedier och högerextrema alternativmedier för att se hur dessatolkningar kan ge upphov till annorlunda sätt att se på en och samma företeelse med skilda vinklingar. Tidigare studier inom fältet har fokuserat på vilka typer av medier nyhetskonsumenter med olika bakgrund konsumerar men inte så mycket på hur innehållet uppfattas. Det är något som denna studie bringar klarhet kring. Studien är en kvalitativ intervjustudie där sex nyhetskonsumenter med olika bakgrund, beroende på utbildning och yrke, fått läsa och svara på frågor om tre olika nyhetsartiklar som behandlar samma händelse, attacken mot Notre-Damekatedralen i Nice den 29 oktober 2020. Intervjuerna har sedan analyserats utifrån encoding/decoding-perspektivet och ett klassteoretiskt perspektiv.

Resultatet visar att den allmänna uppfattningen av artiklarna är relativt likartad respondenterna emellan. Resultatet visar även att varken traditionella medier eller alternativa medier uppfattas som objektiva eller trovärdiga. Det klassteoretiska resultatet visar att respondenter med ett högre kulturellt kapital applicerar ett mer kritiskt förhållningssätt genom att i större utsträckning applicera sina egna åsikter på de iakttagelser som görs. 

Background:

It is evident that fake news has become more common since the world transitioned into a more digital age. Previous research on the topic of fake news has usually been done on different generations and often by comparing them to one another in order to highlight differences between age groups. However, there are no studies to be found on Generation X alone in Sweden. 

Purpose:

The purpose of this study was to examine Swedish Generation X-ers and their relation to news posts found on Facebook, in order to find out how they interact with it and what they would do to make sure a news post is valid before sharing it with their network of contacts. With a focus on exploring their experiences and finding patterns among the different answers we collected, the goal with this thesis was to present an overview of how Swedish Generation X-ers relate to news posts on Facebook. 

Method:

The research conducted in this paper was done by a set of semi-structured interviews. The transcriptions and data were analyzed by using a thematic approach, which allowed us to find themes and codes in the material, and in turn to be able to draw conclusions. 

Findings:

The results showed that Swedish Generation X-ers generally tend to avoid interacting with news posts on Facebook. This is because they worry about accidentally sharing fake news, think news is too private to share with others, and do not like the presence that comes with presenting themselves online. However, if they were to share a news post, even hypothetically, the majority of our participants would take measures to ensure validity beforehand. This thesis can be used as a groundwork for similar studies in other countries to get a comparative view.

Further research:

Suggestions for further research include doing the same kind of research in a new and bigger context, in order to see if the results from this thesis are recurring throughout the population at large. Another suggestion would be to combine a larger qualitative study with an additional quantitative approach, in order to present a more mathematical overview. Lastly, further research could be done to see if Generation X-ers are as private with their political views in real life as they are on Facebook. This in order to see if the behavior is something they have brought from their disconnected life to Facebook, or if it is just an online behavior.

Kvinnliga yrken är yrken som domineras av kvinnor, exempelvis barnmorska,

tandhygienist, sjuksköterska och förskollärare. Men det finns även män som har

dessa yrken och det skrivs också då och då om dem i tidningar. De är ovanliga, men

blir vanligare då det görs satsningar för att få in fler män på dessa arbetsplatser.

Att undersöka hur de framställs i media och se vilka varianter av manlighet som

förmedlas är syftet med denna undersökning. Materialet kommer från svensk

dagspress och innefattar både lokala och rikstäckande tidningar.

För att svara på frågeställningarna gjordes en kvalitativ innehållsanalys. Materialet

omfattar tolv artiklar med intervjuer med män i kvinnodominerade yrken.

Resultatet visar att de flesta männen inte tänker så mycket på manligt och kvinnligt

och känner inte att deras manlighet är hotad av det kvinnliga yrket. De män som

känner en motsättning mellan manlighet och yrket var äldre. I artiklarna framhålls

det att männen trivs med yrket, att de är ovanliga på arbetsplatsen och är

omvårdande som personer.

This feature article applies the concepts of 'make-believe' and 'make-belief' formulated by performance theorist, Richard Schechner, in a study of two role-play communities, Midian City and Gor in the online 3D environment Second Life. With make-believe fantasy role-play at their core, members of the two communities negotiate the social and political norms, the goals of the community and as well as the boundaries of the virtual role-play. The article explores the innovative forms of interaction at play in these negotiation processes, using (cyber)ethnographic methods and the analysis of various textual sources, Goffman's theories of social performance as well as various types of performance discussed by Schechner and Auslander. The innovative forms of interaction are analysed in the light of the new technology and as performances and make-belief strategies directed towards realizing performative utopias, towards influencing the direction in which leaders and residents of this digital context want the role-play to develop, and towards shaping the emergent social and cultural rules and the political framework of the role-play.

This paper explores the implementation of service-orientated strategies within newspapers using SDL and servitisation as theoretical departure points. This perspective helps to interpret the advancements and barriers in the current marketing innovation activities in the industry. Based on the exemplary case of the award-winning Svenska Dagbladet, we show that use is made of servitisation and SDL to the extent allowed by some strategic determinants of institutional nature. While some components of SDL have been implemented successfully others–customisation, resource development and coordination, and dialogue-based marketing communication–present managerial opportunities to increase value co-creation. But for this to happen the industry may need to consider changes in some of the institutional components of qualitative news that today act as institutional limits to innovation.

It is impossible to think about the role of local journalism out of its context. In the United States of America, as in many other Western societies, this context is of increasing precarity. This chapter analyses observations made at key industrial and academic events, which are complemented by interviews with local players and articles, reports and studies produced by prominent actors in the field of news. Despite the significant changes brought by the digital, the core ideas that organise the business of providing local journalistic content in the regional press remain virtually unchanged from the analogic age. By the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, the technological disruption brought by the internet had already syphoned advertising revenue from local newspapers to a reduced number of big technological players. Print advertising is collapsing and collective actors, increasingly aware of the inability of newspapers to compete with SMP for digital advertising, take issue with the sustainability of advertising as a revenue stream.

Följande studie granskar kommunikationen från tobaksfria nikotinföretag på Instagram. Syftet är att inom forskningsfältet marknadskommunikation, undersöka den visuella kommunikationen och kompletterande textuella element på Instagram och vilka kommunikativa strategier företagen använder sig av. Vår studie granskar den visuella kommunikationen på Instagram och utgår från företagen Vont, Volt och Zone X 20 senast publicerade bilderna på Instagram. Uppbyggnaden av visuell kommunikation inom tobaksindustrin undersöks för att se vilka komponenter som bidrar till bildens estetiska uttryck och varumärkets identitet. Resultatet från studien önskar bidra med ett nytt perspektiv för att få en bredare förståelse för hur den visuella kommunikationens uppbyggnad kan vara en bidragande faktor till varför konsumtion av tobaksfria nikotinprodukter ökat bland kvinnor. Detta genomförs med hjälp av en semiotisk bildanalys med kompletterande textanalys och med förankring i teorier om identitetsskapande, Symbolic brand strategies, trender och färgpsykologi. Med hjälp av ovanstående metod och teori visar studiens resultat att den visuella kommunikationen innehåller komponenter som kan kopplas till aktuella trender samt till strategier som bygger på att skapa en emotionell anknytning till mottagaren. Resultatet visar även att produkten som marknadsförs porträtteras som en del av ett sammanhang eller som en accessoar. Vidare kunde man se att den visuella kommunikationen var mer grundad i storytelling eller att vara estetiskt tilltalande, istället för att framhäva produktens funktionalitet eller vara informativ. Sammantaget gick det inte att dra några generella slutsatser om att den visuella kommunikationen hos samtliga företag var mer riktad till en kvinnlig målgrupp. 

Interactive television (iTV) has the potential to revolutionize the way we consume broadcast media, but users still find both the notion of iTV and the services currently available problematic. This paper describes a project that investigates a representative group of users' aspirations, and barriers to iTV service engagement in the UK. This primary research informed the development of new User Interface (UI) and service solutions that addressed these barriers. Specifically, a second screen solution was developed to remove the need for iTV services to use on-screen graphics, dramatically improving the possibilities for effective interaction and navigation for iTV interfaces and services. The effectiveness of these solutions was evaluated through the testing of these new iTV services in a representative group of family homes.

Written with media students in mind, this accessible book provides both students and researchers with a new perspective on how to research engagement, not as a metric but as a marker of power relations.

This book navigates the reader through a tighter analytical notion of engagement within an understanding of media, culture and democracy. Dahlgren and Hill offer a new definition of engagement as an energising internal force, and as such a powerful means to further human agency. From this definition, the book builds a generative theory of engagement as a nexus of relations we make and break with media on a daily basis, with examples from political activism, news and disinformation, and the global pandemic. Dahlgren and Hill identify five parameters of engagement in order to understand the relations we have with media across changing public and mediated spheres. This new perspective offers students and researchers pathways for investigating the meaning of media engagement as a resource for living.

It will be particularly useful for undergraduate courses on media audiences and publics, political communication and democracy, media and cultural theory, journalism, and for media, communication and sociology studies more broadly.

In this article, we investigate how Twitter's switch from a reverse-chronological timeline to algorithmic content selection in March 2016 influenced user engagement with tweets published by German newspapers. To mitigate concerns about omitted variables, we use the Facebook postings of these newspapers as a counterfactual. We find that the number of likes increased by 20% and the number of retweets by 15% within a span of 30 days after the switch. Importantly, our results indicate a rich-get-richer effect, implying that initially more popular outlets and news topics benefited the most. User engagement also increased more for sensationalist content than quality news stories.

Virtual Reality is rapidly growing in popularity. This new medium offers manypossibilities for those who wish to explore what the technology provides in the 3Denvironment. However, the design principles that have been used for decades revolvearound 2D surfaces and applying them in the 3D space can cause severalincompatibility issues that diminishes the user experience.This study aimed to help highlight what aspects of virtual reality need to be improvedcompared to non-virtual reality platforms to enhance the user experience. To do this,VRChat, a virtual reality platform was chosen, which can be used by both VR, and nonVR headset users alike. By comparing these two user bases it could help highlight thepros and cons of the current system and help give guidelines on how to create futureVR platforms. During the test period, 58 people participated who did specific tasks onthe platform and filled out the quantitative data gathering survey, based on the UserExperience Questionnaire (UEQ) test.After comparing the two user bases, the result shows that there is no significantdifference between using VRChat either way allowing both user bases to enjoy theplatform equally. However, because of these results, the work failed to highlight whataspects of a VR platform need to be changed to fit the needs of VR headset users. Itimplies the need for further research and experimenting with the medium. In the future,further research, testing and experimentation are needed to improve the current designmodels and make the systems more pleasant for VR headset users.

Studien “Att överväga integriteten på sociala medier” ämnar belysa och problematisera hur den äldre generationen förhandlar med sin integritet samt hur den påverkas av dataövervakning. Uppsatsen undersöker den äldre generationen i åldrarna 60–80 år om hur de uppfattar integritet och dataövervakning på Facebook. Under det senaste decenniet har internetanvändningen bland äldre ökat samtidigt som oron över integriteten online har blivit ett alltmer diskuterat ämne, där händelser som Cambridge Analytica och Brexit ökat medvetenheten om integritet och dataövervakning. Den snabba utvecklingen av digitala medier har bidragit till en stark gemenskap som de äldre vill ta del av men har svårt att vara en del av. Den äldre generationen saknar den digitala kompetens som krävs vilket skapar ett gap mellan de äldre och samhället. Studiens teoretiska ramverk utgår från Internet Privacy Concerns (IPC), Integritetsparadoxen och Westins teori. Med hjälp av metoden tematisk analys har vi studerat de kvalitativa intervjuerna, för att sedan finna teman som bidrar till analysen av det empiriska materialet.  

Analysen visade att de äldre saknar kunskap om hur sociala medier fungerar och hade svårt att förstå vad dataövervakning på Facebook är. Okunskapen gjorde att respondenterna hade svårt att uttrycka sig om de var positivt eller negativt inställda till dataövervakning. Utöver detta, fann vi att de äldre värderar sin integritet olika beroende på vilken roll de har och hur de känner att de bidrar till samhället. De äldre måste göra en avvägning mellan att vara med i det digitala samhället och därmed riskera sin integritet online eller att avstå från sociala medier och riskera att hamna i ett utanförskap men inte utsätta sin integritet för risker. Utifrån respondenternas svar visade det sig att de värderar den sociala gemenskapen som finns på Facebook framför att skydda sin integritet.