The purpose of this study was to investigate effective change communication in the workplace by utilizing goal setting theory. Due to potential validity issues with previous organizational communication audit research, a multi-methods study was devised to investigate and construct a new measure for effective change communication in the workplace. Preliminary interviews along with previous research were utilized to construct a survey questionnaire gauging effective change communication in the workplace. Over 1,000 employees at a large, health-services companies participated in the study. The results from the study yield a framework for evaluating effective change communication on individual (i.e. behavior, trait, and knowledge) and organizational (i.e. accuracy, clarity, and availability) levels. Also, the data was divided between males and females, communication sources, and the perceptions of effective supervisory communication. The study’s practical implications, addition to goal setting theory, limitations, and future research are noted.

While previous research into understandings of climate change has usually examined general public perceptions and mainstream media representations, this thesis offers an audience-specific departure point by analysing climate change frames and frame formation in Swedish agriculture. The empirical material consists of Swedish farm magazines’ reporting on climate change, as well as eight focus group discussions among Swedish farmers on the topic of climate change and climate change information. The analysis demonstrates that while Swedish farm magazines frame climate change in terms of conflict, scientific uncertainty, and economic burden, farmers in the focus groups tended to concentrate on whether climate change was a natural or human-induced phenomenon, and viewed climate change communication as an issue of credibility. It was found that farm magazines use metaphorical representations of war and games to form the overall frames of climate change. In contrast, the farmers’  frames of natural versus human-induced climate change were formed primarily using experience-based and non-experience-based arguments, both supported with analogies, distinctions, keywords, metaphors, and prototypical examples. Furthermore, discussions of what constitutes credible climate information centred on conflict-versus consensus-oriented frames of climate change communication along with different views of the extent to which knowledge of climate change is and should be practically or analytically based. This analysis of climate change communication in the Swedish agricultural sector proposes that the sense-making processes of climate change are complex, involving associative thinking and experience-based knowledge that form interpretations of climate change and climate change information. / Den här avhandlingen studerar uppfattningar om klimatförändringar och bidrar med sin målgruppsorienterade utgångspunkt till tidigare forskning kring hur klimatförändringar kan förstås och uppfattas. Avhandlingen studerar klimatkommunikation inom den svenska lantbrukssektorn genom analyser av 10 års klimatrapportering i tidningarna ATL samt Land Lantbruk, samt åtta fokusgruppsdiskussioner med svenska lantbrukare. Analysen visar att medan svensk lantbruksmedia ramade in klimatförändringar som en fråga om konflikter, vetenskaplig osäkerhet och ekonomisk börda, rörde lantbrukarnas diskussioner om klimatförändringar (i) dess orsaker; naturliga eller antropogena, (ii) olika faktorer som påverkar huruvida klimatinformation anses trovärdig. Därtill visar avhandlingen att lantbrukstidningar använde krigs- och spelmetaforer för att gestalta klimatförändringar medan lantbrukarna formade klimatinramningar genom analogier, distinktioner, nyckelord, metaforer och prototypiska exempel. Tillsammans med lantbrukarnas upplevda erfarenheter bildade dessa kommunikativa verktyg olika gestaltningar av klimatförändringar. Lantbrukarna visade på olika uppfattningar kring trovärdighet och klimatinformation. Vanligen efterfrågades ett informationslandskap karaktäriserat av en mångfald av perspektiv. Återkommande i materialet var också uppfattningen att kunskap om klimatförändringar borde vara praktiskt baserad snarare än teoretisk hållen för att öka i trovärdighet. Denna avhandling kring klimatkommunikation inom den svenska lantbrukssektorn pekar på komplexiteten i tolkningsprocesser och visar att associativt tänkande och erfarenhetsbaserad kunskap tillsammans utgör grunden för hur klimatförändringar och klimatinformation uppfattas.

No description available.

Title: Change Communication within organizations – How perceptions differ between managers and employees in an organizational change Author: Emma Ender & Fanny Tesch Tutor: Anne-Marie Morhed Purpose: The purpose of this thesis was to study and compare different perceptions of change communication between managers and employees within two smaller organizations. We wanted to examine how the communication process within the change was carried out. We also aimed to compare the results with change communication models of Johansson & Heide (2008) and Lewin (1951), and also existing concepts, to see if our result differed from earlier research. Our key questions to answer were: How do managers communicate a change to the employees in two smaller companies? How do the managers think that the employees perceive the information about the change? How do the employees perceive the information about the change? How does change models from previous research correspond to, or differ from the change process? Method/Material: The material used in this thesis consists of a total of twelve interviews with both managers and employees at two small companies. Main results: The main results shows that communicating a change is complex, and that it is difficult to create models and theories for the phenomenon, as each change is unique. The main results further show that employees and managers have different views regarding change communication. The managers believe the change communication turned out well while the employees required more information afterwards. Although some of the employees already knew about the change there was a small spread of rumours and anxiety among the employees over all. The managers thought a few of the employees might have sensed that something was going to happen. Number of pages: 55 Course: Media and Communication studies C University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Information Science, Uppsala University Period: Fall 2013 Keywords: Communication, Internal communication, Change Communication, Change, Organizational Change, Perception, managers, employees.

Magister Public Health - MPH / World Health Organisation and UNICEF recommend exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) for the first six months and continuation of breastfeeding for two years and beyond. Despite this recommendation, EBF rates have not been optimal globally, with coverage ranging from 1% - 23% in Europe to 0.3% - 73% in sub Saharan Africa. In Zambia, despite recording an increase in EBF during the first six months of life from 61% (2007) to 73% (2014), there is a rapid decline in EBF as infants get older during the first six months, from 94% among infants aged less two (02) months to 45% among infants aged 4 to 5 months. This study explored mothers’ experiences, perceptions and attitudes towards existing Behavioural Change Communication (BCC) interventions and the possible influence thereof on the adoption of exclusive breastfeeding among mothers of infants under six months in Tazara and Chilonga areas of Mpika district.

One route to fight climate change that is both a strategy in itself and a mediator to other interventions is climatechange communication. Currently, most climate change communication follows the assumption that conveyingthreat and urgency leads to attitude and behaviour change. A number of studies has shown that this type ofcommunication fails to evoke individual change, and instead leads to a phenomenon called ApocalypseFatigue: a numbness resulting from being confronted too many times with too much frightening information.As a result, the message is not implemented in one’s action, but instead rejected, denied and avoided. Thisstudy has investigated the effectiveness of message phrasing, specifically of messages that are phrasing climatechange as inevitable doom and the consequences as happening at a distance. Distance furthermore has fourspheres: geographical, temporal, social and hypothetical. Based on the literature of this study, it is suggestedthat the effect of threatening messages on the message receiver is mediated by the communication of distance:threatening messages are only perceived as threatening, when they are not phrased distant. The effect on thereceiver of the message was measured by assessing two types of responses. First, it was investigated whetherthey changed their climate change attitude after exposure to the message. Second, it was assessed how manymessage details they remembered. The results indicate different mechanisms of message phrasing on attitudechange and recall ability. In this study, doom and distance phrasing did not have an effect on attitude change,but the means and standard deviations indicate that there could be an effect in the proposed direction, namelythat it is beneficial for attitude change to phrase climate change as not threatening and not distant. Whether thiseffect is statistically significant has to be investigated in future studies. In contrast, there were statisticallysignificant effects on recall ability, but in the opposite direction: it is beneficial for recall ability to phraseclimate change as threatening and distant. Therefore, this thesis concludes that AF does not affect recall ability,and that further research is needed to investigate the effect of message phrasing on attitude change. Itconcludes on limitations and recommendations for climate practice and future research.

No description available.

Mergers have become a common feature for South African organisations since the dawn of democracy in 1994. There are several studies completed internationally and locally on how to handle mergers in general. There is limited research however on the role played by communication in this process. In this regard, this study aims to analyse the role of communication during a merger in an information communication technology (ICT) organisation, underpinned by Nudge’s Change Theory, which asserts that employees should be involved in the merger process, thereby making it possible to take their views into consideration. Quantitative and qualitative approaches were employed in this study to gain insight on the role communication plays before, during, and after a merger. Primary data was collected from employees based at the organisation’s Head Office in Pretoria, through online questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. Descriptive statistics and thematic analysis was used to analyse data. Results of the study show that communication with employees before, during and after merger was poor, resulting in high levels of uncertainty among employees. Furthermore, management did not provide adequate feedback to employees during the process. This caused panic among employees and a lack of confidence in the success of the merger. Based on these findings, it is recommended that top management investigates ways of enhancing channels of communication to ensure that communication with employees during mergers is not only meaningful but effective. The findings confirm recommendations made by Nudge’s Change Theory of the need to equip both management and employees during times of uncertainty. In this regard, further research to be conducted with different companies in the sector on the role employee communication plays during mergers to see if similar perceptions are maintained or changed. / Communication Science / M. A. (Communication)

Some types of resource management and simulation games often inadvertently deal with theconcept of resource exploitation which is a natural outcome of emulating real-world systems ina digital environment. Sustainable decision-making is imperative for humanity’s sustainedsurvival and teaching the general populace about sustainability and climate through interactivemedia has proven to be an effective tool in increasing such decision-making. ECO (2018) is agame that deals with a simulated climate that reacts to the player’s actions, this makes it apotential candidate for teaching its players about climate change and sustainable decision-making. This paper looks at ECO (2018) through a close reading with the help of a set ofanalytical lenses to ascertain the player’s relationship with sustainability in the game. The extentto which the game’s simulated climate is interwoven with all other aspects of its progressionshows its potential for being a tool used in sustainability education in spite of the fact that itultimately emphasises innovation over sustainability as the main driver of the player’s decisionmaking.

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.