In the final days leading up to elections, many major newspapers in Canada and around the world depart from the principle of media neutrality and openly support a particular political party. Do these overt attempts at persuasion by trusted institutions actually affect the vote choice of their readership, and are these effects felt evenly across the population? In this thesis, I examine the 2011 and 2015 Canadian federal elections using data from the 2011 Canadian Election Study and the 2015 Making Electoral Democracy Work project. I find voters to be significantly influenced by their newspaper’s endorsement in the 2015 sample, and find that this influence primarily influences those who identify with no party. Although the influence is modest in size, with the geographic concentration of newspaper readership it is potentially large enough to influence outcomes in individual ridings. Combined with my finding that newspaper endorsements are far from evenly distributed across parties, this has troubling implications for Canadian democracy.

The purpose of this bachelor thesis was to examine how traditional news media vis-à- vis alternative news media in Sweden portrayed the Quran burnings and the riots which followed during august in the summer of 2020. With the basis in framing theory and intermedia agenda setting we examined these research questions: How do the news papers frame the Quran burnings? What discourses are reproduced? How do the traditional news papers and the alternative news papers framing of the Quran burnings differ from each other?  The qualitative methods used in this bachelor thesis were Robert Entmans framing theory combined with Rens Vliegenthart &amp; Stefaan Walgraves intermedia agenda setting theory. Also, we used different theories regarding populism, clash of civilizations and freedom of speech in order to find various themes in the reporting. For instance, the study applies Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of the carnivalesque to examine how the alternative news paper Samnytt framed the Quran burnings.  Through examining news articles, we discovered several preexisting frames and some additional ones. The results showed that the traditional news papers framed the Quran burnings in a laconic way as an intolerant act against Muslims, while the alternative news papers framed the Quran burnings as a clash of civilizations and simultaneously as an act of freedom of speech. In relation to the alternative news papers overly dramatic and sensationalistic discourse, the traditional news papers discourse was more moderate. In this way the populist discourse in the alternative news media and their focus on the “man on the street” is an example of how the alternative news media defines itself as an opposition to the hegemonic “elite” news media institutions. In the alternative news papers, we also found one specific frame concerning anti-Semitism in Malmö, which was not given the same amount of attention by the traditional news papers.  The result of this study shows differences in framing, in line with previous research regarding alternative news media and populism, that could be an example of how the alternative news media is born and defines itself as an alternative to a narrative they deem wrong or lacking in traditional news media. This is primarily an effect of the fact that the traditional news papers lacked diversity in their interviewees since they mostly relied on authority sources, or in one case their own opinion piece writer, to tell the story. The results of this study highlights processes and effects that lies at the core of several phenomenon in this sphere, therefore it should be used to further the research on framing, alternative news media and populism. / <p>En kvalitativ analys av traditionella kontra alternativa nyhetsmediers gestaltning av koranbränningarna i Malmö 2020. </p>

Despite the accessibility of online news and availability of sophisticated methods for analyzing news content, no previous study has focused on the simultaneous examination of news coverage on human trafficking and audiences' interpretations of this coverage. In my research, I have examined both journalists' and commenters' topic choices in coverage and discussion of human trafficking from the online platforms of three British newspapers covering the period 2009–2015. I used latent semantic analysis (LSA) to identify emergent topics in my corpus of newspaper articles and readers' comments, and I then quantitatively investigated topic preferences to identify convergence and divergence on the topics discussed by journalists and their readers. I addressed my research questions in two distinctive studies. The first case study implemented topic modelling techniques and further quantitative analyses on article and comment paragraphs from The Guardian. The second extensive study included article and comment paragraphs from the online platforms of three British newspapers: The Guardian, The Times and the Daily Mail. The findings indicate that the theories of "agenda setting" and of "active audience" are not mutually exclusive, and the scope of explanation of each depends partly on the specific topic or subtopic that is analyzed. Taking into account further theoretical concepts related to agenda setting, four more additional research questions were addressed. Topic convergence and divergence was further identified when taking into account the newspapers' political orientation and the articles' and comments' year of publication.

During the Covid-19 vaccination in Croatia, there were inconsistencies and irregularities with the surplus vaccine and its recipients. Media coverage of the affair was extensive. The details were broadcasted in traditional media and social media. Like many other spheres of social life, the media system has progressed under the baton of technological and communication changes. The destabilisation of traditionally conducted communication required the adaptation and reshaping of all its actors. This study argues that we live in a hybrid media system, where traditional media and social media are in symbiosis (Chadwick, 2013) and are interconnected. The study aims to investigate what makes online content viral and discuss findings in a hybrid media context. The study conducts a content analysis, examining articles posted on media organisation web pages and their Facebook pages covering the vaccination affair. The variables in the analysis are based on the virality concept (taken from the field of marketing).

The diploma thesis "Tabloidization of Czech dailies before and after the death of Karel Svoboda" focuses on suicide of popular Czech songwriter and composer and analyzes the way in which Czech dailies covered this event - including tabloids and also quality papers. This diploma thesis is a case study, with brief theoretical introduction about tabloidization and framing and detailed analysis of framing in three important Czech dailies, which contributes to the description of some of the aspects of tabloidization of Czech newspapers.

This graduation thesis: Influence of press agency ČTK on the economical columns of Czech dailies Právo, Hospodářské noviny and MF Dnes deals with press agency ČTK news influence on the national dailies. The first two months of the year 2006 of three dailies Právo, Hospodářské noviny and Mladá fronta Dnes were being observed. The author features basic excursus into particular stages of research, basic theses and agenda setting principles as a theoretical base. The final part of the work deals with news selection into news service and affinity between resources and editorial staffs. The result of the research, which used content analysis as the researching method, describes the way how editors work with services of press agencies. In which form ČTK news appear in newspapers and how much space they are given there by editors and to which degree they mention authorship while taking news from agencies.

Diploma thesis "Different approach to mediation in the blogosphere and the mass media" deals with the means blogs and mass media use to mediate news topics and expert topics to their audiences. In addition this study deals with the relationship between blogosphere and mass media. In the theoretical part this study brings depiction of the development of blogs through the scope of democratic media and democratization of the public sphere. Theoretical part furthermore discusses different approaches to the blog definitions and its basic characteristics. On the basis of this discussion it divides blogs into different types. Finally, this part offers summary of the former studies concerned with blogging. This part creates the base for the construction of research questions and hypotheses. The practical part is concerned with carrying out the content analysis of the articles connected to two different topics. As news topic was chosen the topic of placing the US radar on the Czech Republic territory. This topic was covered between years 2006 and 2008. As expert topic was chosen the introduction of the new micropayment service Paysec. Individual findings are interpreted with the help of statistical methods. Conclusion discusses generalized findings and theoretical implication of the study.

This Diploma Thesis, called Three years after the Brexit referendum: Analysis of the "Leave EU" and the "People's Vote" Twitter accounts examines communication of two Twitter accounts of the interest groups Leave.EU and People's Vote. Through quantitative content analysis, the thesis analyses the communication of both accounts, agenda setting and framing of content. The goal of this thesis is to examine the behaviour and profiling of both accounts and to find out to what extent is the content created based on reactions of the followers and how is this content framed.

The Swedish Defence bill of 2015 demonstrated a rapid change in policy objectives, consequently moving away from an expeditionary force and converging into a territorial defence force. Previous research has attributed and explained the quick shift to the geostrategic unbalance that followed after the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014. Yet, major policy changes are often years in the making, indicating that there must be additional explanations to the rapid shift. By applying a modified version of John Kingdon’s (2011) Multiple Streams Framework on the case of Sweden changing its security and defence policy, this thesis examines the policy process that preceded the official policy decision. The thesis provides further explanation to why the rapid policy change occurred by utilising qualitative content analysis. The analysis shows that the new policy was adopted due to several factors: one being the attention brought to several problems pertaining to the previous policy, another one was found in the timing between focusing events and the on-going work process of the Swedish defence commission, and lastly, strong actors within the policy field were in favour of a change in policy. The thesis concludes that the presence of several factors within the processes of politics, policy and problems enabled the rapid policy change.

Uppsatsen syftar till att med den så kallade dagordningsmodellen inom ramen för beslutsteori förstå varför det nätverksbaserade försvaret, NBF, aldrig realiserades. Uppsatsen visar hur konceptet Revolution in Military Affairs, RMA, under namnet NBF blev en central del av ominriktningen, dvs. reformarbetet i Försvarsmakten kring millennieskiftet och fanns med i försvarsbesluten 2001 och 2004 men ändå försvann det före 10-talets början. NBF som var ett modernt nationellt försvarskoncept trängdes ut helt av ett antal faktorer: den rådande tidsandan som präglades av en vision om evig fred, interna stridigheter i försvarssektorn, Sveriges ambition att bli en ledande nation i den europeiska utrikes- och säkerhetspolitiken genom att leda en EU-stridsgrupp och minskade ekonomiska ramar. Sammanfattningsvis var RMA idén som ominriktningen inledningsvis skulle bygga på. Samtidigt introducerades begreppet insatsförsvar som ett övergripande koncept för försvaret. RMA fick så småningom namnet NBF varefter dess popularitet minskade och konceptet ersattes av EU-stridsgruppskonceptet. I uppsatsen aktualiseras den klassiska relationen mellan aktör och struktur. Agerandet från ÖB Owe Wiktorin och generalen Johan Kihl kan i förstone uppfattas som det mest avgörande för händelseutvecklingen, men i det långa loppet var Försvarsmaktens strukturer med dess urgamla försvarsgrensorganisering sannolikt minst lika avgörande.