Uppsatsen undersöker och exemplifierar hur innehållsskapare, influencers, kommunicerar med sin publik på plattformar där huvudinnehållet är tidsbegränsade videor med en tidsgräns på några minuter, till exempel TikTok. Huvudfrågan är om, och i så fall hur, innehåll som är sponsrat skiljer sig från innehåll som inte är sponsrat. Genom en narrativ analys och med hjälp av visuell analys diskuteras två innehållsskapares videor, vilka likheter och skillnader som finns mellan det sponsrade och det icke-sponsrade innehållet. Slutsatsen som nås är att det sponsrade och icke-sponsrade materialet kommuniceras på mycket lika sätt, där beteendet runt den sponsrade produkten är den enda konkreta skillnaden.

No description available.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine popular male characters trending on the social media app TikTok under the hashtags “booktok” and “bookboyfriends”, with a focus on understanding the construction of their masculinity and determining the qualities that make them highly appealing to a female audience. This will be done by researching the six most popular male characters on #bookboyfriend. Then by close reading the novels which the characters derive from.  This thesis theoretical framework is a mix between romance research, masculinity studies and a female gaze perspective. The thesis draws upon a variety of studies, including but not limited to the works of Raewyn Connell, Laura Mulvey, Janice Radway and Jonathan Allen. The novels researched in this thesis are all heterosexual, written by women and mostly by American authors. These are: Elle Kennedy’s The Deal (2021), Colleen Hoover’s It Ends with Us (2016), Krista & Becca Ritchie’s Addicted to You (2020), Ali Hazelwood’s Love Hypothesis (2021), and Ana Huang’s Twisted Love (2021) and Twisted Lies (2022).  To analyze the male characters, I divided the analysis into two main parts: physical depiction and sexual content. The book boyfriends are portrayed in a way that is traditional to the romance genre, they are tall, handsome, and rich. However, now they are more extreme in everything, instead of just being tall they are massive. Furthermore, they are also more violent than their predecessors especially in the sexual content of the novels. This is mixed with the inclusion of sexual consent which now exists in all the novels. Lastly, the book boyfriends are all male heroes typical to the romance genre but work as a scale where some behave more as alpha males and others as soft boys.

This thesis investigates how queer women on the social networking site (SNS) TikTok are expressing their cultural identity and building community. Previous research has shown that self-expression and self-presentation are important parts of defining one's identity and building community for queer individuals, and this study analyzes details specifically within the unique platform of TikTok. Its popularity and success as an SNS that utilizes an advanced algorithm justifies its examination and highlights its multifaceted benefits, such as ease of community building and accessibility to diverse content. In a thematic analysis of 66 TikTok videos using the song "girls" by Girl in Red, and consisting of female-presenting individuals, two themes were revealed and defined: color combinations communicating identity and viral trends as queer confirmation or communication. These themes reveal two ways those in the queer community are embracing small content details to find each other and practice cultural identity expression. Study findings outline the social and technological advancements of online community building, while also illuminating how stigma symbols defined by previous studies are continually employed in the TikTok videos examined in this study. Results also support previous TikTok research suggesting that queer users are developing self-organized practices in response to algorithmic functions. / MACOM / This study examines strategies employed by queer women on TikTok to express their identity and build community with one another. The mobile app, which allows users to post short video clips accompanied by audio, often songs that are popular or coordinated with the message of the video, has become an increasingly important channel of communication for members of various communities. For gender and sexual minorities, self-expression and self-presentation are important parts of defining one's identity and building community. Inspired by the growing popularity online of the Norwegian singer-songwriter Girl in Red, this study analyzes the contents of 66 videos using her song, "girls." The study illustrates how online community building has advanced since early social media, the influence of the innovative TikTok algorithm, and provides context for a popular trend on the app. Results show that queer women recognize and utilize TikTok affordances to their advantage, such as participating in trends or liking specific content to encourage cultural identity connections via the algorithm.

Denna studie undersöker hur unga vuxnas TikTok-användning relaterar till deras upplevda uppmärksamhetsspann under senmoderniteten. TikTok är ett intressant fenomen vars användning är karaktäristiskt för det nuvarande senmoderna samhället och appens tillväxt, samt popularitet, stiger ständigt. Trots detta, har nästintill inga studier gjorts kring TikToks påverkan på dess användare. Med tanke på appens revolutionerande innehållspresentation är det därför av intresse att i denna studie undersöka hur appens användning relaterar till dess användares upplevda uppmärksamhetsspann. Studien förhåller sig till ett teoretiskt och begreppsligt ramverk utifrån Anthony Giddens förklaring av senmoderniteten och epokens abstrakta system, livsstilsval samt epokens medföljande collageeffekt och Erving Goffmans interaktionistiska begrepp: intrycksstyrning, främre och bakre region, i kombination med Giddens individualiseringsbegrepp för att förklara den nutida individens identitetskonstruktion. Dialogiska intervjuer enligt den hermeneutiska metodansatsen genomfördes med fem intervjupersoner vilkas TikTok-användning översteg sex timmar per vecka. Studiens resultat presenterar en huvudtolkning som centrerar kring att TikTok-användning har en negativ påverkan på unga vuxnas upplevda uppmärksamhetsspann genom tre olika faktorer. Dessa faktorer kan sammanfattas som användarnas maktlöshet i att förändra den individualiserade och enformiga TikTok-algoritmen och flödet, skroll-funktionens beroendeframkallande och svårkontrollerbarhet samt Tiktoks tongivande roll i användarnas verkliga liv.

Misinformation and desinformation is a big problem in the social media landscape. It has been recently discovered that a Swedish political party has been spreading hate and desinformation through anonymous social media accounts to gain votes and to act against minorities in Sweden. To combat the issue with desinformation the media users need to have the ability to locate false facts and underlying motives from the source.This study's aims to discover how Swedish media students describe and reason about source criticism on TikTok with a qualitative interview study. The study has three research questions that is how Swedish media students describe the characteristics of TikTok, how they describe their strategies for being source critical on TikTok and how they reason about the connection with their education and their ability to be source critical on social media. The theoretical framework is media literacy and social media literacy that helps to analyze the interviews and to make relevant conclusions of the material. The study discovers that the media students are aware of TikTok´s characteristics and how to deal with them and they show a great ability to be media literate on social media. But they also witness a difficulty to be critical to content on TikTok because of the great exposure of information and the eternal scrolling on for you page.

Deinfluencing trend started in January 2023 on TikTok, and aims to challenge overconsumption norms. However, deinfluencing has received a variety of definitions as trend and term, which has led to misunderstanding or misuse of the term. This research is examining 28 TikTok videos with the deinfluencing hashtag from January 2023 to March 2024, as well as 34,180 comments left on these videos. The videos have been selected using purposive sampling, and are analyzed using Critical Visual Methodology (Rose, 2023). The comments are analyzed using qualitative text analysis. Due to the unclear definitions, the paradox of sustainable trend on a global capitalist platform as well as  algorithmic and influencer imaginaries, the trend has turned into a self feeding deinfluencing-influencing loop, where the trend is losing its sustainability ethos. In conclusion, the influencers and audience are seen to be caught too deeply in this loop, that this research does not see any significant changes towards more sustainable adaptation of the term to be in the future of the trend.

This essay aim to study the hashtag and trend #MedievalTikTok, popular on the TikTok mobileapplication starting late summer 2020. The trend will get looked at through concepts like use of history (historiebruk). Some of the main ways the trend uses history is for entertainment, socialization and commercialization. Michael Nordberg’s book "Den dynamiska medeltiden" is also central for the text and works as an academical and theoretical basis. Nordbergs workquestions the idea of the ”dark middle ages”, disproving many unfavorable misconceptions about the period. #MedievalTikTok centers on users acting out the middle ages through simple costumes, shakespearean language, TikTok’s in-app editing features and medieval style covers of pop songs. Bardcore, as this genre of music is called, exploded in popularity in early summer2020. Artist Stantough’s cover of Shakira’s ”Hips don’t lie” is particularly significant in relation to the trend. #MedievalTikTok tends to replicate the same ideas that Nordberg questions. For example the prevalence of witch hunts is greatly exaggerated as well as the absolute rigidity of gender roles and class. The middle ages depicted in the trend is also very geographically limited, with Western Europe being the centerpiece. Northern Europe and vikings are for example overlooked. Other signifiers of the trend is a compression of time and mixups with preceding and following eras such as the early modern period. Popculture, limited school hours dedicated to the middle ages and comedic overstatements influence the trends dated portrayal of the medieval period.

Internetutvecklingen har skapat nya arenor för utövande av våld. Syftet med studien är att undersöka hur det digitala våldet mot minderåriga flickor kan gestalta sig på TikTok. Materialet består av kommentarsfält tillhörande minderåriga flickor. Studien intar ett radikalfeministiskt perspektiv vars utgångspunkt är att det sexuella våldet är en konsekvens av patriarkatet och mannens makt över kvinnans sexualitet; studien utgår även från ett makt-kontrollperspektiv. Metoden för arbetet är Faircloughs kritiska diskursanalys, denna appliceras för att analysera hur diskursen gestaltas i kommentarsfälten. Resultatet visar att det digitala våldet tar sig uttryck genom att sexualisera och på andra sätt kränka flickorna, där det främst utmärkande för diskursen är objektifiering av flickorna samtidigt som en social diskurs identifierats som upprätthåller och reproducerar patriarkala strukturer och könsmaktförhållanden. Det finns tendenser till en subkultur som bidrar till gemenskap mellan personer som utsätter flickorna för digitalt våld; då samma uttryck och termer används av olika personer. / The development of the Internet has created new arenas for utilizing violence. The purpose of this study is to investigate how digital violence against underage girls can manifest itself on TikTok. The data consists of comment sections belonging to underage girls. The study uses a radical feminist perspective which has the initial belief that the widespread sexual violence against women is a consequence of patriarchy and men's power over women's sexuality; thus, the study has also adopted a power-control perspective. The method for the study is Fairclough's critical discourse analysis, which has been applied to analyze how the discourse manifests in the comment sections. The results show that the digital violence expresses itself by sexualizing and in other ways violating and offending the girls, where the main distinguishing pattern of the discourse is the objectification of the girls as well as a social discourse being identified which maintains and reproduces patriarchal structures and gender power relations. There are tendencies towards a subculture that contributes to a cohesion between people who utilize digital violence against the girls; where the same expressions and words are used by different people.

The increasing trend towards digitalization has resulted in social media marketingbecoming a common practice among companies today. This new trend has openedup new opportunities for SMEs, which typically have less resources than largercompanies. One platform which has become popular amongst businesses isTikTok, and it was therefore of interest to investigate how SMEs are currentlyusing this platform in their marketing strategy. The purpose of this thesis was toinvestigate a number of SME operations in order to understand and suggest howthey can improve their current strategy on TikTok. This thesis is based on previous research on SMEs, consumer behavior, socialmedia marketing, TikTok as a marketing tool, content marketing, viral marketing,and paid advertising. Additionally, a qualitative research approach was usedwhere semi-structured interviews were conducted with a total of elevenrespondents. The respondents consisted of a number of Swedish micro, small andmedium-sized firms from a B2C context currently operating on TikTok. The results of the study indicate that SMEs are present on TikTok due to sellingpurposes, interaction opportunities and because of its large reach. The maincharacteristics of the platform were the personal content, the short format videos,and the young audience. However, despite the growing presence of SMEs onTikTok the study suggests that few have a clear strategy on the platform,indicating a potential need for increased efforts to improve their success.