Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / The theme of this research includes two main theoretical notions: public communication and digital democracy, delimited to the study of the digital public communication strategies in the government portals of the municipalities from RS State with a population exceeding one hundred thousand inhabitants. The issue of the research is structured around the following question: what are the strategies that the portals of municipalities of RS State, with a population exceeding one hundred thousand, contain and how are they established facing the theoretical assumptions of public communication and digital democracy in the mediatized context of society¿ The overall objective is the analysis of communicative strategies on the government portals of the municipalities from Rio Grande do Sul State, with a population exceeding one hundred thousand, under the theoretical assumptions of public communication and digital democracy and; the specific objectives are: a) identify the theoretical thought on the relationship between the topics: mediatization, internet, public communication and digital democracy; b) verify how (and if) the municipal governments of RS work the communicative potential of the internet for public communication; c) identify regulative evidences of digital democracy of each portal; d) analyze, tangentially, in the portals, the use of the public communication strategies for purposes related to the visibility of politic agents. The assumptions considered are: incorporating the mediatized logic, the portals are the stage to the politic visibility of mayors and other political actors of the administrative sphere, valuing the shape and the image over the relevant public content; the informative and unilateral emphasis is prevalent, accountable as Constitutional required and the other contents published are defined by the rulers, according to what they judge to be important for the citizens; the possibilities of bilateral flows of information between governments and civil society are scarce; the opinions, questions, and criticals are not published in the portals; and finally, the contents are not segmented and the access is difficult, ignoring the inequality of access to digital technologies. The methodological approach includes: definition of empirical corpus; literature review on the subject addressed; data collection and municipal portals in the classification of each portal ranks of digital democracy, according to the Silva s (2005b) spreadsheet. Finally, and comparing the data with the theories studied. The results point to the most elementary levels of digital democracy, whichever the informative emphasis, with few opportunities for discussion and debate about the topics of civil interest; and the portals are the stage to the politic visibility of mayors and other political actors and their accomplishments, to achieve recognition; furthermore, the results suggest that the communication portals needs to converge with the theoretical assumptions of public communication and digital democracy. / A temática da pesquisa contempla duas noções teóricas centrais: comunicação pública e democracia digital, delimitando-se ao estudo das estratégias de comunicação pública digital nos portais governamentais dos municípios gaúchos com população superior a cem mil habitantes. A problemática de pesquisa é representada pela questão: Quais estratégias os portais dos municípios gaúchos, com mais de cem mil habitantes, contêm e como se estabelecem diante dos pressupostos teóricos de comunicação pública e de democracia digital no contexto social midiatizado? O objetivo geral é analisar as estratégias dos portais governamentais dos municípios do Estado do Rio Grande do Sul, com população superior a cem mil, sob os pressupostos teóricos de comunicação pública e de democracia digital e; os objetivos específicos são: a) identificar os referenciais teóricos sobre a relação entre os temas: midiatização, internet, comunicação pública e democracia digital; b) verificar como (e se) os governos municipais do RS empregam as potencialidades comunicativas da internet para a comunicação pública; c) identificar indícios graduantes de democracia digital de cada portal; d) analisar, tangencialmente, o uso das estratégias de comunicação pública nos portais para fins ligados à visibilidade dos agentes políticos. Consideramos como pressupostos: incorporando a lógica midiatizada, os portais são palco para a visibilidade política dos prefeitos e demais atores políticos da esfera administrativa municipal, valorizando-se a forma e a imagem em detrimento do conteúdo de relevância pública; há a prevalência da ênfase informativa e unilateral, prestando contas conforme exigência constitucional e os demais conteúdos publicados são definidos pelos próprios governantes, a partir das impressões que têm sobre o que os munícipes querem receber; são escassas as possibilidades de fluxos bilaterais entre município e sociedade civil; as opiniões, questionamentos e críticas não são publicados nos portais; e, por fim, os conteúdos não são segmentados e o acesso não é facilitado, desconsiderando-se a desigualdade de acesso às tecnologias digitais. O percurso metodológico contempla: delimitação do corpus empírico; revisão bibliográfica sobre a temática abordada; coleta de dados nos portais municipais e classificação de cada portal em graduações de democracia digital, conforme a planilha de Silva (2005b). Por fim, é realizada a análise crítica interpretativa dos dados a partir das teorias estudadas. Os resultados indicam a predominância da ênfase informativa, com escassas possibilidades de discussão e debate acerca das temáticas de interesse civil e que os portais se constituem em palco mais autônomo para a visibilidade de atores políticos e suas realizações, na busca por reconhecimento; além disto, sugerem que a comunicação dos portais analisados carece de convergência com os pressupostos teóricos de comunicação pública e de democracia digital.

The Swedish television series “Kalifat” premiered on January 12th, 2020 and quickly became heavily debated in the Swedish media for its portrayal of Islam and Muslim people. The aim of this research is to study the arguments and attitudes found in this debate and relate them to the theoretical framework of media dissemination and mediatization. The theoretical perspectives creating the foundation for this study is the formative, reflexive and representative media dissemination as presented by Hodkinson (2017). The mediatization theory will also be used to situate the debate and the series itself within a broader context. The empirical material used in this study consists of 10 Swedish debate articles published between January 19th and February 18th 2020.  A qualitative argumentation analysis has been used to identify the attitudes and arguments in the debate. In addition, these have been coded, categorized and structured in accordance with a systematic text condensation. The analysis shows that there are both positive and negative attitudes towards the series, with most of the arguments in the debate conveying a negative attitude towards the series and its portrayal of Muslims and Islam. These arguments are mainly related to stereotypification, prejudices and negative representation. Arguments related to a more positive attitude towards “Kalifat” is connected to the journalists view of what the series is trying to impart upon the audience, and its realistic representation of an important topic in society.   In relation to the three concepts of media dissemination the study has concluded that the different arguments relate to the interconnectedness of media and religion. The study shows that most of the arguments put forward can be understood in this context by implementing the understanding of media as conduits, language and environments. The study also concludes that both the debate and the series itself can be interpreted and understood in relation to all these media functions. The results found in the study also correlate with previous research on the subject.

This thesis analyses the negative and positive effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the religious practices of the pentecostal Hillsong church in Malmö, Sweden. To do so it draws on theoretical concepts of affordance, mediatization of religion, and media effects, in order to explore what emerged through digital ethnographic research that included church event observations, interviews, and qualitative surveys. It is argued that the digital form of communication among believers during the pandemic constrained religious practices in terms of service, congregational worship and connection with fellow worshippers. However, this kind of communication has also made it possible to maintain church fellowship in a creative and simultaneously safe and feasible way. The virtual space created through video streams, Zoom meetings and other online activity impacted the way people worship and engage with the preaching and the congregation as a whole. Thus the purpose of this study is to explore the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic requirement for online worship on religious practices in a Nordic location of the Hillsong church, examining ways in which online and offline religious practices were isolated from, integrated into and influenced by one another to accomplish individual and corporate needs and goals.

By applying ethnographic method this study sought to explore how football’s mediatization is inviting the digital displacement of fan culture by social media-based communities. It also aimed to understand how contemporary football fans engage online as part of identifying themselves as supporters of a football club. This research was motivated by the global resonance of fandom which is due to the media becoming part of the experience of being a fan, resulting to the formation of transnational communities. The two-way online communication has enabled supporting from afar, forming digital fans. Liverpool FC’s Greek fans official group on Facebook was used as the case study for content analysis, along with in-depth interviews. The results have shown that social media have been the facilitators of football’s mediatization, digitalizing fan habits that used to be parts of the social life. Self-identification as a fan has taken a much more cosmopolitan outlook, which prioritizes participation. The dimensions of participation are though mediatized, resulting to highly engaged communities regardless of locality. To deal with the redefinition of fandom expression, this thesis has contributed with an end-result protype of a service addressing the process of doing digital fandom. As media technology develops, football’s mediatization will only exponentially increase and this study can offer insights to the better understanding of the different dimensions that digital fan culture adds to the sport.

AbstractThe importance of technological progress is hard to downplay, and it becomes even moreobvious in the times of the crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic has been changing the normalflow of everyday life: a lot of countries have closed their borders, unnecessary travel isreduced to minimum, online grocery shopping breaks any possible records, we live withthe feeling of uncertainty what tomorrow may bring...But despite all that, life is goingon. Work processes have not stopped, on the opposite, “home office” has become the newnormal; universities still provide knowledge to students thanks to distance learning. Allkinds of technological tools help us keep different processes running – we areexperiencing a rapid turn to a more digital and sustainable future.Long before the coronavirus and its effect on the mankind in general, the Communicationfor Development programme at Malmö University (Malmö, Sweden) has demonstratedan example of the use of information and communication technologies in practice. Theprogramme has been running for almost 20 years already (September, 2020, marks its20th anniversary), and its distance learning format has been one of the main attractivefactors for students with other commitments, such as family, job, voluntary work, etc.More than that, an innovative and interdisciplinary nature of the programme has made itpossible for people from all around the world, with different backgrounds and lifeschedules, participate in it.On the one hand, it looks like ICT and new media have created a perfect ground for thestudying process. But on the other hand, probably it is quite early to be too optimisticabout it.This paper tries to look deeper into the role that the pedagogical approaches,communication, media and digital channels play for the ComDev students and alumni.The current work also aims at investigating the impact of ComDev on their alumni’s pathsand practical use of the acquired theoretical knowledge in the field of social change.Survey research in the form of an online questionnaire and semi structured interviews areused as a quali-quantitative methodological approach in the body of the paper.I would like to carry out this study as action research for optimization of the learningprocess and finding more efficient ways of promoting social change, that could be helpfulin the future for ComDev.

The aim of this study is to investigate how religious symbols have been used in marketing historically and how the use of religion in advertising may reflect different conceptions of religiosity. In this study, we look at which religions are used in marketing, whether it is possible to see a change in usage over time, and what it is about the religious symbols that makes them favorable to use in advertising. Three newspapers have been selected for this study because they represent three different types of newspapers during the period November 1901 to November 1906. The evening paper Aftonbladet, the morning paper Svenska Dagbladet and the weekly magazine Idun.  For the collection of advertisements, I have used the concept of banal religion from mediatization theory, which together with mediatization constitutes our framework for interpretation of the collected material.  The advertisements where then compiled and analyzed through multimodal discourse analysis. The results show that there are several different religious symbols in the advertisements from different traditions. It is also possible to observe small changes over time during the study's focus period. In an analysis of the material, several different reasons have also emerged why religion in advertising acts as an effective sales tool, including by highlighting properties valued by the present society.

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Independent confessional schools have been a heavily discussed subject in Sweden in recent years. At the same time, the spread of information is shifting more and more from the religious institutions themselves to be controlled by the media according to the mediatization theory. This paper aims to investigate what arguments are used, and which themes can be identified in the discussion about confessional schools in Sweden in two large newspapers using qualitative thematic analysis. Moreover, the investigation is using a quantitative approach to find out if the question about confessional schools have gained more or less attention during recent years, looking at the number of publications from Swedish newspapers. The findings show that the number of publications has risen quite drastically in the last 15 years, and the years with the highest peaks correlate with the election years in 2018 and 2022, which both were election years in Sweden. Moreover, the paper aims to gain a better understanding about how we can relate that discourse to mediatization theory. Meaning that the media plays a big part in controlling the narrative, together with the audience. The results in this investigation are quite similar to previous research concerning what type of themes that can be identified in the discussion and debates about confessional schools. The investigation also highlights some difficulties in the legislation and decisions made to control how confessional schools in Sweden are being run.

The aim of this study is to examine how two Sunni Muslim social media influencers depict and represent Shia Islam through their YouTube videos. To aid the research two questions were formulated:  1. How are Shia Islam and Shia Muslims represented by Imran Ibn Mansur and Mohammed Hijab? 2. How can these representations be interpreted according to the theory of Othering? To answer the questions and the purpose of this study a qualitative method of argumentative analysis was used. Their display of Shia Islam is examined according to Edward Said’s theory of Othering together with discourse analysis. A table was also used to organize the statements and arguments that were used by the influencers. The interpretations of the influencers’ discourse also studied how it can affect young Muslims’ views on Shia Islam. Their YouTube comments are used to back up the influencers’ claims and argument about Shia Islam. The study shows that Ibn Mansur’s view of Shia Islam is based on the Salafist school of thought, where he believes Shia Muslims are non-Muslims and apostates. Hijab’s view of Shia Islam differs in the sense it is not as extreme as Ibn Mansur but still amplifies the general and questionable view of Shias as being the “Other” foreign and deviant followers of Islam. Their respective view of Shia Islam was widely supported by their viewers, who were sharing strong opinionated statements about the Shias. This study shows that Ibn Mansur’s and Hijab’s views and presentations of Shia Islam and Shia Muslims are very critical, even hostile, which could enhance young Muslims’ view of Shia Islam as an inadequate and unreliable branch of Islam, and in some cases a religion separate from Islam.

In an increasingly mediatized society, there are only a few aspects of our lives that remain absent online. The purpose of this study was to gain an understanding of which role the mediatization of the discourse about ADHD has in the lifeworlds of individuals with the diagnosis. The aim was to comprehend how individuals diagnosed with ADHD experience content that claims to represent the diagnosis. The study adopted a phenomenological theoretical framework with a focus on the process of mediatization. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews using an interview guide and stimulus material. The results indicate that all participants perceive ADHD-related content on social media as generally portraying a misleading and unbalanced image of the diagnosis. They feel the depicted image is solely characterized by gender-stereotypical symptoms and excluding individuals who deviate from that description. Furthermore, the results show how the misleading portrayal directly affects participants negatively, making them feel diminished, ridiculed, and, in some cases, causing doubt about their own diagnosis. Nevertheless, participants share that there are positive aspects of the increased online presence of the diagnosis. Humorous depictions and recognition create a sense of community, reducing the feeling of being alone with their issues. In conclusion, it is evident that mediatization has played, and continues to play, a significant role in how individuals with ADHD perceive both their own experiences with the diagnosis and the diagnosis itself.