This study focuses on how the internal communication within Region Uppsala and their administrations has been conducted and perceived during 2017 as the organisation went from being the county of Uppsala to becoming Region Uppsala. The goal and the research questions have been to understand how internal stakeholders interpret the strategic change communication from the management of Region Uppsala and how the management also interpret their own communication. The study relies on three main questions which has been - What goals have the management of Region Uppsala had with the communication during the change? - How has the management of Region Uppsala interpreted the communication during the change? - How has internal stakeholder interpreted the communication during the change? The study uses Laurie K. Lewis (2011) studies of organisational change as a theoretical framework while the study also has a perspective on communication as sense making and constitutive of the organisation, which has helped to clarify the meaning of strategic communication. The methods being used has been qualitative interviews as well as a qualitative content analysis of printed material. The results from the empirical data shows that it is within the interpretation of communication that meaning is created and that meaning can differentiate depending on the interpretation. This study contributes to the field of strategic communication and strategic communication during change.

The study of climate change communication has become a vital research field. It has evolved into being an essential translator between the scientific community and the public. The Conference of the Parties (COP) met in December 2015 to discuss the basis of a 54-page document on how the world will proceed with the challenges of climate change in the future. Throughout the conference the media was an important tool in spreading opinions and information about the on-going negotiations. This study analyzes how the COP21 was framed by the British newspaper the Guardian. Therefore, the empirical material consists of online newspaper articles from the period of the conference. A qualitative research approach was used to identify four frames and formulate themes. The findings mirror the central discussion points from the past 20 years of climate change negotiations: mitigation, adaptation, leadership, scientific proof of climate change and the urgency of change. In addition, the study identifies the politics of climate policy.

I denna studie undersöks en mediebyrå som befinner sig mitt i en branschförändring.  Mediebyråns förutsättningar har sedan 2014 förändrats i och med intåget av ett nytt, automatiserat sätt att köpa medieutrymme, vilket kallas för programmatiska medieköp. Detta nya köpförfarande riskerar att förändra, och har redan förändrat många av byråns anställdas roll och branschförändringen ligger i fokus för studien. Studien syftar således till att undersöka hur organisationen ställer sig till intåget av programmatiska köp, samt hur förändring förstås genom  kommunikation inom organisationen. Tidigare forskning kring förändring och förändringskommunikation har identifierat att ett förändringsmotstånd ofta uppkommer i samband med större förändringar. Denna studie fann dock att det inte förekom några tydliga tecken på förändringsmotstånd i samband med branschförändringen. Flera olika förklaringar till bristen på förändringsmotstånd upptäcktes under studiens gång. Företagets organisatoriska kontext är en huvudsaklig anledning till den positiva inställningen till förändring. Företaget befinner sig i en organisatorisk kontext som är utsatt för konstanta förändringar, något som gör att företagets medlemmar är mer öppna till förändring. Genom meningsskapande, kommunikativa processer försöker företagets anställda hela tiden skapa mening av förändringarna genom intern och externt influerad kommunikation, i form av utbildning och informationsspridande. Studien fann även att en bidragande orsak till bristen på förändringsmotstånd är att de anställda tillåts delta i förändringsprocessen på olika sätt, och detta leder till att de blir mer informerade och redo att ta till sig förändring. / Aim: The aim of this study is to research how organizational change is communicated and accepted in a media organisation. This is done by analyzing different strategies of change communication and sense making strategies in uncertain environments.  Contribution: The papers contribution to the field is mainly empirical. A lot of studies have been done on change resistance, but not as many has been done on reasons for lack thereof. This paper strives to bring clearness to how a company manages to prevent change resistance in a ever changing environment.  Results and conclusion: The study found that one of the biggest challenges in the studied organisation was a business wide emergence of a new way to buy advertising space. Although the change is likely going to effect a lot of employees in the organisation, a lack of resistance towards the change was found in the initial period of the observations conducted at the company. The aim was thereafter to find out how this could be. The findings was that several aspects could explain the phenomenon. The company’s organizational context was a main reason for the positive attitudes towards change. The company operates in a context that is largely affected by constant changes, and this makes the members of the organisation more open to change. Also, through sense making mechanisms, the company constantly strives to make sense of the changes by internal and externally influenced communication. A second reason to the lack of resistance is found to be the fact that the employees are allowed to participate in different ways in the change, leading them to become more informed and ready for the emerging change.

This study examines communication about global warming with an emphasis on encouraging a change in a viewers behavior, and how this can be practically visualised on websites. The study first gathers research from the fields of climate change communication, marketing and psychology, then a survey is sent out and an overview of websites about global warming is made. The findings from all this is then applied to a Hi-fi prototype of a website. The study aims to answer the question: How could visualized messages and information about global warming encourage change in a viewer’s behavior? User tests of the finished prototype gave mixed results. The results suggest that the site succeeded in creating a positive tone and emotional impact, but were not as successful at encouraging change and raising perceived self-efficacy. It may have been successful at encouraging hopefulness, and informing, but it is a bit unclear due to contradicting results from quantitative personal ratings and qualitative interview answers. / <p>Examensarbetet är utfört vid Institutionen för teknik och naturvetenskap (ITN) vid Tekniska fakulteten, Linköpings universitet</p>

Much work has been done in communicating environmental messages about climate change to promote pro-environmental beliefs and behaviours, yet individual-level behavioural changes are not occurring rapidly enough to make meaningful reductions in environmental harm. Studies have shown that although information-based and scientific means of communicating about climate change are the most common strategies, they are largely ineffective in encouraging pro-environmental behaviour. As an alternative to these fact-based narratives, stories are proposed as effective tools for environmental communication and promoting behavioural change. To determine the impact of the narrative structure of climate change communication on behaviour, this study examined how exposure to fact-based and story-based narrative structures of environmental messages differentially influence the extent of engagement in pro-environmental consumption behaviour. The Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) was used as a framework to examine the attitudinal and behavioural responses to the story-based and fact-based communication conditions. Specifically, we examined the relationship between non-consumption attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioural control, behavioural intentions, and non-consumption behaviour, and explored how narrative structure influences the TPB processes for non-consumption. Participants (n=291) were randomly assigned to read a story or factsheet about the environmental consequences of overconsumption of material goods, or a non-relevant text. Pre- and post-test measures of pro-environmental consumption behaviour were conducted 14 days apart. Post-test attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioural control, and behavioural intentions towards practicing non-consumption were also measured. Results demonstrated that both story-based and fact-based narratives were effective tools for promoting pro-environmental consumption behaviour, providing some support for the information deficit theory. Four domains of pro-environmental consumption behaviour were determined as non-consumption, reuse, activism, and green shopping behaviour. The story-based narrative was more effective than the fact-based narrative and the control narrative in increasing non-consumption and green shopping practices, while activism and reuse behaviour were not influenced differently by narrative structure. The TPB was found to be a useful model for assessing non-consumption, such that non-consumption behaviour was predicted by attitudes, perceived behavioural control and subjective norms through the mediating role of behavioural intentions. Non-consumption attitude was the strongest predictor of intentions, and subjective norm was the weakest predictor of intentions. Narrative structures did not have significant effects on the participants’ reported non-consumption attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioural control or intentions, nor on the relationships between the TPB constructs. The findings suggest that story-based narrative structures are effective tools for delivering climate change information to broad audiences and encouraging pro-environmental behaviour. However, the role of information-based communication should not be discounted. The findings also contribute to the body of research on pro-environmental consumption behaviour by providing a deeper understanding of the psychological mechanisms of non-consumption, an essential yet understudied domain of sustainable behaviour. / Graduate / 2023-01-12

There is a considerable gap between what scientists argue is necessary to avoid the most dramatic consequences of climate change and what governments around the world are currently achieving with their mitigation strategies and national pledges. This is partly due to the general inability to communicate solutions to climate change in a desirable way. Strategic narratives have been found to be a great tool to improve the effectiveness of climate change communication. Common narratives in climate change communication are the “Gore” narrative, “End of the World” narrative, “Climate Target” narrative and the “Green Living” narrative. Sweden has been considered a leading country in the field of sustainability in recent years. However, the newly formed government does not seem to be overly concerned with improving environmental sustainability, considering that their proposed policies would lead to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions for Sweden for the first time in decades. The Swedish Climate Policy Council has been formed in order to evaluate whether Swedish policies are aligned with Sweden’s national climate targets on an annual basis. This thesis examines recent reports of the Swedish Climate Policy Council through a document analysis in order to estimate the effectiveness of their climate change communication. The reports were coded using framework analysis and corresponding narrative statements were identified and categorized in the above mentioned narrative categories. Relative frequency of different types of narratives is analyzed and, based on recent climate change communication research, recommendations for improvements are given. It has been found that the Swedish Climate Policy Council should create a strategic narrative for climate change communication, based on the values of the current government.

This study has evaluated how Tanzania Food and Nutrition Centre (TFNC), a government institution overseeing nutrition, uses social media to enhance the nutrition literacy of caregivers and parents of children under the age of five years. The study contributes to knowledge on how Tanzania’s resource-constrained health sector’s nutrition communication can benefit from social media by answering the following research questions: Which social media platforms and features does TFNC use to share nutrition knowledge pertaining to children under the age of five years? What kinds of nutrition knowledge pertaining to children under the age of five years does TFNC share on social media? How is nutrition knowledge pertaining to children under the age of five years posted on TFNC social media pages packaged? And, how frequently is nutrition knowledge pertaining to children under the age of five years repeated on TFNC social media pages? These questions have been answered from a social-behavioral change communication perspective that has combined the Media Ecology Theory and the Theory of Planned Behavior. This quantitative study has gathered data on TFNC’s social media activities (posts containing nutrition knowledge pertaining to children under the age of five years) between May 2020 to April 2023. The posts were manually extracted from the center’s pages into Microsoft Excel for coding before exportation to SPSS version 20 for analysis. The study has found that TFNC actively uses Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube to share nutrition knowledge on its pages and video format is the most used. The shared educative nutrition knowledge during the observed period, the use of social media features in sharing the knowledge, and the frequency of repeating nutrition messages are limited. Overall, the center’s nutrition social media-based knowledge-sharing needs improving to optimally contribute to nutrition literacy pertaining to children under the age of five years.

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The purpose of this analysis is to investigate how communication can convey its messages inorder to convince. Climate change is a multi-faceted problem with unique challenges, onekey challenge being the disconnect of opinions between the public, scientists and the politicalsphere. One part of this challenge is effectively communicating the scientific consensus to thepublic. To better understand how visual rhetoric can be deployed in climate changecommunication this essay analyzes a WWF campaign from 2010, which consists of 6 images.The theoretical basis for this analysis is primarily visual rhetoric but also includes theoriesfrom comics and sequential storytelling due to the nature of the images being analyzed.Through its analysis this essay concludes that visual rhetoric is an important and powerfultool for graphic designers amongst others that can be used to reframe and include the viewerin the meaning making process to persuade them, which is especially important in thequestion of climate change.

In today’s turbulent business environment, an increasing number of businesses and organizations are finding themselves confronted with a crushing pressure to constantly reinvent themselves. Given such a business environment, coupled with high stakes and fierce competitiveness, it is quite unsurprising that most change efforts are reported to fail. Change communication, or rather the lack thereof, has been pointed out as one of the most important reasons. In recent years, many scholars have started to differentiate between participatory and programmatic change communication, elicited by a reconceptualization of change as continuous and emergent rather than episodic and planned. Participatory and programmatic are two diametrically different ways to approach change communication, and thus, they each require different tools, techniques and strategies. Several scholars have called attention to the shortage of tools, techniques and strategies suitable for participatory change communication in particular, however, empirical research remain scarce. At the same time, the data revolution is right upon us. Businesses that fail to harness the true potential of their data see themselves outcompeted by those who do. Even though data since long has been prophesied to transform management altogether, it is only in recent years that its application within the various subfields of management research has received serious attention by academia. However, the application of data in change management in general, and change communication in particular, has largely been left unaddressed.  In this thesis, we are exploring the role of data in the context of change communication through a case study at Skanska Rental, one of Sweden’s largest construction equipment rental companies. We delimit our study to only treat one of the most important aspects of data-driven communication; namely, data visualization. Our findings indicate that data visualization can facilitate change communication by encouraging it to be participatory. In particular, we find that data visualization has the merit of enthusing its audience, aligning the perception of the current state of affairs, reinforcing a data-driven culture, and facilitating interpersonal communication. We also call attention to three important considerations; (1) the democratization of data requires transparency trade-offs, (2) data visualization cannot replace interpersonal communication, but at most facilitate it, and (3) communication, although one of the most important, is not the sole precursor of successful change. We conclude our thesis by addressing the practical and theoretical implications of our conclusions, and lastly, by suggesting directions for future research in data-driven change communication. / I dagens turbulenta omvärld utsätts företag och organisationer för ett ständigt förändringstryck som inte visar några tecken på att avta. Givet ett sådant klimat, där mycket står på spel och där konkurrensen är förkrossande, är det inte förvånande att de flesta förändringsinitiativ misslyckas. Förändringskommunikation, eller snarare bristen därav, har ofta pekats ut som en av de viktigaste orsakerna till detta. På senare tid har många forskare börjat göra skillnad mellan två olika typer av förändringskommunikation: deltagande respektive programmatisk. Att betrakta förändringskommunikation genom denna dikotomi har föranletts av en ny syn på förändring i stort; snarare än att se förändring som episodisk och planerad har många forskare istället konceptualiserat förändring som kontinuerlig och framväxande. Olika tekniker, verktyg och strategier lämpar sig olika väl för de två olika typerna av förändringskommunikation. Många forskare har varnat för en bristande förståelse för i synnerhet de tekniker, verktyg och strategier som lämpar sig för den deltagande typen av förändringskommunikation. Under de senare åren har det förändringstryck många företag och organisationer står inför snarast ökat i styrka på grund av den datarevolution vi befinner oss mitt upp i. Trots att det sedan länge har förutspåtts att data har potentialen att vända spelplanen för företagsledning upp och ner, så är det bara på senare år som ämnet har åtnjutit företagsledningsforskningens fulla uppmärksamhet. Däremot finns det fortfarande ett underskott på akademisk forskning som adresserar hur data kan användas inom förändringsledning i allmänhet och förändringskommunikation i synnerhet. I denna masteruppsats utforskar vi den roll som data kan spela inom förändringskommunikation. Vårt empiriska material inhämtar vi genom en case-studie hos Skanska Rental, ett av Sveriges största uthyrningsföretag inom byggbranschen. Vi avgränsar vår studie genom att endast behandla en utav de viktigaste aspekterna av data-driven kommunikation, nämligen datavisualisering. Våra resultat indikerar att datavisualisering kan underlätta förändringskommunikation genom att göra den deltagande. I synnerhet finner vi att datavisualisering har potential att entusiasmera dess publik, linjera bilden av nuläget, förstärka en data-driven organisationskultur och fungera som en utgångspunkt för mellanmänsklig kommunikation. Vi identifierar också tre viktiga reservationer mot denna slutsats; (1) demokratisering av data fordrar ställningstagande gällande transparens, (2) datavisualisering kan inte ersätta mellanmänsklig kommunikation, och (3) kommunikation, om än viktig, är inte den enda förutsättningen för framgångsrik förändring. Vi avslutar vår uppsats med att adressera de praktiska och teoretiska implikationer som vår slutsats resulterar i, samt föreslår inriktningen för framtida forskning inom data-driven förändringskommunikation.