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In 1968 a number of Chippewa Indians met in Minneapolis, Minnesota to discuss some of the problems they faced in their communities. This meeting gave birth to the American Indian Movement. From 1968 to 1974, the American Indian Movement embarked on a series of radical protests designed to draw attention to the concerns of American Indians and force the Federal government into acting on their behalf. Unfortunately, these protests brought about a backlash from Federal law enforcement agencies that destroyed the American Indian Movement's national power structure.

This study explores the theory of prosocial public relations as proposed by Wakefield, Burnett, and van Dusen (2011). The propositions put forth by the theory are that in gaining visibility and support for prosocial causes, an organization will engage in non-confrontational (prosocial) public relations by building up internal resources, reaching out to target publics, and making connections with those publics related to the cause. This single-case study explored the public relations and communication tactics of a nonprofit organization whose mission is to provide aid and service to the poor. A Council of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul located in the Western United States served as the case. Observations from this study were made through analysis of documentation and archival records and were supported through interviews with key staff members of the Society and field observations. The findings support the theory of prosocial public relations in that communication and public relations are vital aspects in the work of the nonprofit as it strives to gain visibility and support for the cause. Observations from the case study support that the Society builds up, reaches out, and connects with key publics. In addition, based on data, a fourth element of prosocial public relations, nurturing relationships, is proposed. This study begins to establish some of the public relations methods of how a successful prosocial nonprofit organization can build up, reach out, make connections, and nurture relationships through communication.

Whilst gender equality has moved forward in recent years in Scandinavian countries like Norway and Sweden, there are still significant financial gaps between the genders. According to several scholars, women tend to invest less than men, which leads to consequences such as women having less financial capital wealth and lower pensions. The perception of investing and the banking and financial industry are still perceived as male-dominated by society. Linked to societal perceptions, advertisements have been discussed to influence consumers' perceptions of norms and stereotypes in society. Femvertising is a recently emerged advertising concept that empowers women and challenges concurrent norms and stereotypes about the female gender in society. Furthermore, organizations taking a stance for a social cause through advertisements has become a trend in recent years, where brand activism has been encountered in the context. However, taking a stance for a social issue can be a risky action from a brand, as corporations jeopardize harming their brand image if consumers do not appreciate the message they are trying to communicate.  The academic research on femvertising in the context of male-dominated industries has been surprisingly scarce, where previous scholars suggest further studies in this context is needed. Little to no research has investigated the usage of femvertising in advertisements for the banking industry, nor its influence on female consumers and their image of the brand. This study’s purpose is to investigate how the commercial bank DNB's use of femvertising influences female consumers and their image of the brand. We aim to fill the discovered research gap through studying a Norwegian bank that tries to empower women and take a stand in their advertisements for financial gender equality. For that reason, semi-structured interviews were conducted with one manager from the Norwegian bank DNB and nine female consumers with a solid connection to Norway. The manager from DNB was chosen for his expertise and knowledge of the bank’s campaign #huninvesterer. The other respondents were purposely sampled based on their female gender and strong connection to Norway, as we wanted respondents who already knew of DNB from before the interviews.  The thematic analysis presented several similarities between the female respondents' perception of DNB’s brand image and the manager’s description of the bank’s desired brand identity. The use of femvertising was mostly perceived as something positive and inspiring due to its empowering elements and challenging of female stereotypes, presenting a diversity of women, but had downsides of being too female focused, where several female respondents expressed certain skepticism to the campaign’s exclusive focus on women. In common for all respondents was how they perceived the bank’s stand on the socio-political issue as eligible for a large bank. The overall opinion of the influential effect on the bank’s brand image was suggested to be strengthened, although the results varied to a certain extent.  The study provides requested empirical data and better knowledge and understanding of femvertising used in a male-dominated industry. Nevertheless, further studies are needed to nuance the results as the perspectives of males and a more diverse age span among females could enrich the findings of this thesis.

With modern communication technology advancements, activist expression has become more common on social media platforms. Especially susceptible to these expressions is the millennial generation, whose lives are greatly permeated by media technology. This thesis aims to explore in what ways the social media platform Facebook inuences millennials’ motivation to engage in substantial prosocial behaviours that are intended to benet other people or society as a whole. Through mixed-method research design, participants’ attitudes towards Facebook as a platform for activism and its inuence on prosocial motivational aspects, was explored. Results indicated that previous habits of supportive engagement and the cost of the supportive action inuenced how the likeliness and motivation to engage in substantial supportive actions was aected by Facebook interaction. More precisely, higher levels of previous engagement, as well as engagement in costly, prosocial actions contributed to an increased motivation to engage further in such actions. Furthermore, social and contemporary aspects showed to play a large part for participants’ motivation to engage in costly and substantial prosocial actions.‌ / I samband med dagens kommunikationsteknologiska framsteg har aktivistiska uttryck blivit allt vanligare på plattformar för sociala medier. Särskilt mottagliga för sådana uttryck är millenniegenerationen, från engelskans ’milliennials’, vars liv till stor del genomsyras av medieteknik. Denna studie har för avsikt att utforska hur den sociala plattformen Facebook påverkar motivationen för individer tillhörande millenniegenerationen att engagera sig i konkreta prosociala beteenden som har som syfte att gynna andra människor eller samhället som helhet. Genom kombinerade kvalitativa och kvantitativa forskningsmetoder utforskades deltagarnas attityder gentemot Facebook som en plattform för aktivism, och dess inverkan på prosocialt motiverande aspekter. Resultaten visade att tidigare vana av engagemang samt kostnaden av den välgörande handlingen påverkades av Facebook-interaktion. Närmare bestämt, högre nivåer av tidigare engagemang samt engagemang i kostsamma, prosocial handlingar bidrog till en ökad motivation till fortsatt engagemang i sådana handlingar. Vidare påvisades sociala och samtida aspekter spela en viktig roll för deltagarnas motiatt engagera sig i kostsamma och konkreta prosociala handlingar.

Due to the public turn in Composition and Rhetoric, many teachers look beyond the academy in order to give students a "real" writing experience for social change purposes. However, as Bruce Horner notes, this denigrates the real work that is done within the classroom. In this dissertation, then, I argue that we can find ingredients for writing for social action in our courses, and we can do so by studying activist students who are already writing for just change. Using a case study methodology, I learn from activist students at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. I find that these students' activist positionalities are co-constructed by their work as students and as activists. Rather than a political space as opposed to an academic space, these students combine them. We can reconceptualize a reductive "student writer" position to an "activist student writer position" where students have agency to make rhetorical decisions to support their activism and use activist practices to strengthen their academic work. With this finding, we can re-conceive of academic space as political and open to "real" writing for social action. My major finding is that of an affective writing process as necessary for social action writing. This complex textual production takes material life experience and affective investments into account as they interact with students' writing choices to construct a rhetorical situation where change is possible. It is the writing process itself that allows students to make the necessary decisions to reconstitute their emotions to form a socially active text that they take satisfaction in and would want to circulate. I suggest that students writing outside of the classroom can engage in this process and arrive at a sense of affective agency. However, students inside the classroom do not have access to the full affective writing process due to their sense of being more limited in the academic rhetorical situation. This contrast indicates that teachers may support students' social action writing by creating conditions for students to craft their own rhetorical situations to engage with the full affective process that gives rise to social action.

This thesis argues that through an examination of the variable market successes of Fashion Fair Cosmetics and Fenty Beauty, racial and gender intersectionality continues to negatively impact the experience of black beauty consumers in the US today. Through influential black feminists, including media theorist bell hooks, and critical race and gender theorists Kimberlee Crenshaw, and Patricia Hill Collins, this paper will discuss how black women historically and presently have been marginalized in relation to the needs and interests of white women. Drawing on the notable anthropologist Soyini Madison’s Critical Ethnography: Method, Ethics, and Performance (2022), I utilize a critical ethnography to analyze how one’s racial and gendered background can affect the relationship between beauty brands and consumers and how this impacts the experience of black and brown women as beauty consumers. This paper will also engage with the rise of historic and contemporary social justice activism and current Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs in the wake of Black Lives Matter Movement and the impact that this has had not only on industries but on the experience of black and brown cosmetics consumers. In addition, this paper will note how a speedy and superficial increase in DEI programs across service industries and cosmetics has led to a shallow understanding of the importance of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in all spaces. Lastly, I will deploy an autoethnographic approach to discuss how social media has strongly impacted and influenced the industry Fashion Fair is relaunching in. The autoethnography will discuss the social media strategies that drive a successful makeup brand in the contemporary beauty industry and, importantly, how contemporary consumers of color experience the beauty industry. This paper will close by speculating on the manner in which the legacy brand Fashion Fair, might in the current practice of Fenty, sharpen its appeal and engage the kind of social media strategies that will successfully reintroduce the brand to a new generation—and thereby more successfully resume its mission to deliver care to long-alienated beauty consumers in the US. / Media Studies & Production

In the last fifteen years, conflict resolution, a collaborative, problem-solving approach to social conflicts, was introduced to new democracies in an attempt to develop civil society¿s capacity for conflict management (Mayer, 2000). Conflict resolution provides people with an opportunity to advocate effectively for their own interests in a non-violent, constructive manner through systematic educational efforts, skills trainings, dialogue initiatives, and mediation practices (Mayer, 2000). It empowers people to address, manage, and transform difficulties and antagonism into a source of positive social change and, thus, change people¿s negative psychological responses to conflicts (Bush & Folger, 1994). In this view, conflict resolution in new democracies¿ civil society provides citizens as well NGO practitioners with the skills and opportunities to practice how to express and resolve differences in a safe and constructive environment (Shonholtz, 1997). In an effort to provide additional information about civil society¿s conflict resolution practices and their affect in new democracies, this dissertation examines the existing efforts of South Korean civil society organisations to promote conflict resolution methodologies. Specifically, three organisations are examined to understand better South Korean civil society¿s response to PCR issues. Furthermore, by closely examining these three civil society organisations, this dissertation aims to explore what affect increased awareness and engagement in conflict resolution methodologies have on the democratic quality of civil society.

Through the life story narratives of Ethiopian women activists, this research explores the journey of Ethiopian women activists during three political and historical periods (1955–1974; 1974–1991; 1991–2015). Thus, the study proposes a new perspective on the forms of Ethiopian women’s activism and subsequently the different types of feminism emerging from their narratives. Through examination of how the activists reflect on, reconstruct and give meaning to their life stories, this research unravels that their activism is informed by feminist principles. It also exposes that it is shaped by a long history of resistance to patriarchy, which enabled women in traditional Ethiopia to negotiate a certain level of “autonomy and liberty”. Contrary to the general expectation, the research demonstrates that the process of modernization (read: westernization) came with its own structure based on western patriarchy, and reinforced local patriarchy. In this new, formalized patriarchy, the rights that women had negotiated through their resistance in earlier times were diminished. This study on women activists, categorized for the purpose of this research as pioneers, revolutionaries and negotiators, suggests that Ethiopian women activists have since adopted different forms of engagement that tend to improve the social, cultural, economic and political conditions of Ethiopian women. Consequently, I argue that, while Ethiopian women’s activism and feminism is firmly embedded in the history of resistance of previous generations of Ethiopian women, the form of activism varies according to the political and historical context in which the activists negotiate and adapt the way they act.