Abstract Title: The GI- method –bluff or the path to healthy life? Number of pages: 41 Tutor: Lowe Hedman Author: Annika Westlund Course: Media and Communication Studies C Period: Fall 2006 University: Division of Media and Communications Studies C Purpose/Aim: The aim of this essay was to investigate how the site GI viktkoll describes glycemic index on their website. The intention was also to investigate how the media presented GI through articles and how they used doctors and dieticians to appear trustworthy. Another aim was to investigate what effect GI viktkoll could have on its readers. Method/Material: I have chosen a qualitative method where I did a discourse analysis of the articles which were presented on the GI viktkolls website during a period of three weeks. This was my main method in the essay. I also did two interviews with educated professionals. The articles on the website were thereby the main material I used in the essay. Main results: My result shows that GI viktkoll do have an underlying aim in wanting to influence its readers ina specific way. Therefore my result shows that it is important as a reader, to be aware of that GI viktkoll might not present a critical way of thinking and every aspect of the phenomenon. GI viktkoll also has influence on people because they have power to change peoples mind about the phenomenon GImethod in the society. GI viktkoll only presents the healthy way of living through the GI method, although there still there is a lot of disagreement from other directions such as doctors and dieticians about the actual effects of the GI method on healthy people. Keywords: glycemic index, media culture, encoding/decoding, discourse analysis.

Abstract Title: What TV-glasses do you wear? A study in how party-political people decode the TVshow Scooby Doo (Vilka tv-glasögon har du? En studie i hur partipolitiskt aktiva personer tolkar tv-serien Scooby Doo) Number of pages: 47 (54 including enclosures) Author: Christopher Landstedt Tutor: Amelie Hössjer Course: Media and Communication Studies C Period: Autumn term 2007 University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Information Science, Uppsala University. Purpose/Aim: The aim of this essay is to make a study in how party-political people, 18-25 years old, both female and male, decode the messages in the TV-show Scooby Doo from 1969. Do they decode the show differently because of their political view, their gender or, and their social background? Is there a pattern in the decoding or is it based on a more individual level? Material/Method: A qualitative method containing a total number of 16 individual interviews with young adults, 18-25 years old, half of them female, the other half male, were used. All of the participants are members of political youth parties/organizations, equally divided in left and right wing parties. Scooby Doo was chosen thanks to the lack of political meanings and messages in the show and its objective aura. The respondents got to see a preselected episode from the first season ever of Scooby Doo. After they finished watching the show, the interview took place. The interview contained questions on a deeper lever regardingthe episode. Stuart Hall’s all time classic encoding-decoding theory is used as the main theory with the support from other theories in the same field. Main results: The degree of active reading is overall equal among the young adults that participated in the study. Differences can be found in the way they decode the sender’s messages and what values they put into the message. The leftwing respondents tended to decode the show in more oppositional way than the rightwing people who tended to read the messages dominant. There is an exception to every rule, also in this case. To sum it all up in one last sentence it should be said that some people’s personal values shine through, and aremore obvious than others. Keywords: encoding-decoding, gender, television, interpretation, Scooby Doo, political view, leftwing and rightwing

Under sommaren och hösten 2009 fick Apolivas reklamfilm stor uppmärksamhet av såväl det svenska folket som i media. Uppståndelsen grundades i att en stor andel människor som tagit del av reklamen uppfattade den som skrämmande, medan Apolivas avsikt var att skildra de svenska, något melankoliska, väderförhållandena. Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka tolkningsskedet av Apolivas reklamfilm, hos flickor i nionde klass. Vår specifika frågeställning utvecklades till att ta reda på om den utvalda gruppen tolkar budskapet och känslan som förmedlas i reklamfilmen, på det sätt som Apoliva avsett, med utgångspunkt i Halls (2009) encoding/decoding-teori. Enligt denna modell finns tre olika sätt att tolka ett budskap; dominant, oppositionell eller förhandlande tolkning. I en dominant tolkning godtar mottagaren budskapet, medan den oppositionella tolkningen innebär att mottagaren vänder sig mot budskapet. I den förhandlande tolkningen godtar mottagaren budskapet till viss del i en mix av tvivel. Intervjuerna inleddes med en visning av Apolivas reklamfilm, därefter ställdes frågor med tyngdpunkten på att ta reda på vilka känslor och budskap som respondenterna upplevde av reklamen. Undersökningen genomfördes med hjälp av kvalitativa intervjuer på åtta stycken flickor i årskurs nio. Respondenternas svar analyserades med hjälp av Halls (2009) encoding/decoding-teori, och under arbetets gång kom vi till insikt att modellen behövde modifieras. Detta blev nödvändigt då vi i analysen märkte att en stor del av de intervjuade missuppfattat det inkodade budskapet. Trots att vissa respondenter inte tolkat budskapet som avsändaren planerat, var det inte otänkbart att dessa ändå godtog det uppfattade budskapet till viss del. Således delades modellen in i olika kategorier av egenuppfattningar. Svaret på huvudfrågan som ställdes till materialet; Med utgångspunkt i Halls teori om encoding/decoding, tolkar kvinnliga elever i årskurs 9 budskapet och känslan som kommuniceras i reklamfilmen, på det sätt som avsändaren avser? är att flickorna inte kan anses tolka reklamens budskap och känsla på avsett sätt. Endast en respondent kunde bedömas göra en dominant tolkning av Apolivas reklamfilm. Påtagligt är istället hur många som faktiskt gjort en annan tolkning av budskapet, än vad Apoliva avsåg sända ut.

There are several studies observing the phenomenon of nation branding as political pursuits and as texts. However, the media are generally treated as neutral platforms in branding literature. Also, relatively little has been done to explore how the context of branding affects the level of text production, not least in relation to media events. Deploying a cultural approach, the present study suggests that the production of branding may be examined in terms of cultural codes (Hall, 1982) and dominant or preferred meanings (Hall, 1973/1992). The aim of this study is to explore processes of nation branding, as part of media events, from a media production perspective. This is done through observations of the encoding/decoding of the branding narrative of the Europeanness of Eurovision, as formula for a revised Ukrainian identity, in production and backstage processes of the event 2017. The material consists of qualitative interviews with five agents involved in the branding of Ukraine during Eurovision The analysis is based on the theoretical concepts of, firstly, Hall’s (1973/1992) model of encoding/decoding and, secondly, Ytreberg’s (1999) model for the analysis of text production. Hall emphasises the discursive aspects of audiences’ interpretations, but, with reference to Ytreberg’s idea of text production as a result of negotiated interpretations, it is argued that discursive aspects are just as significant for agents in the production process. Three cases are used to illuminate the tensions in the media production of the branding narrative: The encoding/decoding of a branding concept, of the relationship to Russia, and of a Ukrainian Europeanness. The tensions mainly occur between the agents in the professional position in relation to oppositional readings of the dominant code (Hall, 1973/1992). They can be understood as struggles over the preferred meaning (Hall, 1973/1992) of Ukraine’s Europeanness in the branding narrative, which are enacted in the media production. The two main strategies for negotiating the tensions regard the representation of the categories of time and space. However, I propose that the agents in the media production also perform a third strategy in relation to the tensions that arise, the detached strategy of professionalism, based in the frameworks of knowledge (Hall, 1973/1992) that the agents possess.

The museum of the twenty-first century is operating against the backdrop of ongoing social concerns pertaining to climate change, gender inequalities and racial tensions, and often exhibitions become the contact zones where those expressions are formulated. This research analyses how a democratic and inclusive philosophical perspective such as the Tigens Metod (or method of the thing) is executed by museum professionals. In doing so, Stuart Hall’s model of encoding/decoding is applied as the theoretical framework in investigating the process of exhibition production. It is argued that occasionally resistant positions can emerge from the museum’s ideological discourse and that key actors within the museum field yield different codes according to their own framework of knowledge and relations of production. This challenges the basic assumption in Hall’s model that media institutions yield one singular preferred code into the system. Overall, it is argued that an object-oriented democracy has the potential of challenging power structures, albeit still contingent upon the choices made by museum professionals.

The purpose of this thesis is to find out how young adults perceive gambling companies' video commercials in Sweden. A fast rise of commercials from gambling companies have evolved in recent years. As of January 2021, 102 companies have been approved for a Swedish gambling license. The total number of people gambling has not increased, but the total turnover has increased rapidly. Online casinos are considered one of the most addictive forms of gambling and therefore researchers claim that commercials from online casinos have the largest effect on people compared to other gambling forms. This makes it interesting to investigate video commercials in relation to young adults who are considered to be the biggest risk group to develop a gambling problem. To gain insight, we selected three video commercials and performed an in-depth analysis based on the method multimodal content analysis. Two focus group interviews were conducted with participants between the ages of 18-24 years. The focus groups were shown three commercials from three different gambling companies and were then asked about their opinion and interpretation of the commercials. The results were further analysed by the study’s theoretical framework of Stuart Hall's (1973) communication model encoding/decoding was used to analyse the video commercials and the answers from the focus groups.  The data from the focus group interviews indicated that gambling commercials could potentially have an impact on influencing young adults ages 18-24 years. The respondent's interpretation was generally negative since the majority of the participants disliked the video commercials and thought that the commercials were disturbing. Among the fifteen participants, three of them responded positively to some of the commercials and got more interested in wanting to start playing at online casinos after viewing the three video commercials. This suggests that gambling video commercials could have a negative influence.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how Max Burgers construct themselves as an environmentally friendly company through their video advertisements. Additionally the purpose is to investigate how young, loyal customers can perceive Max’s attempt to portray  themselves as an environmentally friendly company, in the fast food industry through their advertisements. The two research questions are as follows: 1)   How does Max construct their advertisements in the campaign “Climate Positive Burgers”? 2)   How do Max’s young, loyal customers perceive Max’s video advertisements in the campaign “Climate Positive Burgers”?   The chosen theoretical framework incorporated into the study are Stuart Hall’s theory of Encoding/Decoding and Kenneth Burke’s theory of identification.  Data has been collected through an online survey, individual online semi-strucuted interviews and multimodal analysis. The study found that the way Max constructs their video advertisements can vary. With one video being constructed around being relatable and embracing humor, while the other was constructed on seriousness and artistic elements. In addition to this, it was found that all three types of readings according to Hall’s theory were perceived by the loyal customers interviewed. However, oppositional and dominant readings were more frequent. Finally, it was concluded that idealistic identification is present in consumers, due to loyal customers sharing some of the same values that Max are communicating in the video advertisements.

Syfte och frågeställningar: Studiens syfte är att studera hur publiken tolkar budskap och förhåller sig till information från företagen McDonalds och Max hamburgare när de kommunicerar miljömässig hållbarhet. Studiens frågeställningar är följande: • Hur ser publikens attityder gentemot snabbmatskedjorna ut? • Hur värderar publiken informationen från Max hamburgare och McDonalds? • Hur påverkar företagens marknadsföring konsumenters köpvanor och val för att stödja miljön? Metod och material: De metoder som använts i studien är fokusgruppsintervjuer och innehållsanalyser. Det empiriska materialet är genererat från deltagarnas samtal under fokusgruppsintervjuerna. Huvudresultat: Resultatet av fokusgruppsintervjuerna visar att deltagarna hade en negativ inställning till McDonalds, i synnerhet när McDonalds kommunicerar sitt arbete för miljön. Däremot förknippar många av deltagarna Max hamburgare med ett stort engagemang för miljön. Den negativa respektive positiva inställning speglade hur de förhöll sig till reklamfilmerna. Slutsatsen som studien kommit fram till är att publikens attityder och förutfattade meningar har stor betydelse för hur ett budskap från företagen tas emot av publiken, och trots att företagen kommunicerar miljömässig hållbarhet så är det inget som påverkar konsumentens köpbeslut. Köpbeslutet baseras på smak och vad personen i fråga är sugen på.

Studiens syfte är att bidra med ökad kunskap kring varför medlemmarna i Oatlys brand community engagerar sig i communityn och hur de värderar information som kommer från Oatlykontra från externa källor. Studien syftar även till att undersöka om medlemmarnas konsumtionsbeteenden påverkas av negativ information de får om Oatly. Det empiriska materialet bygger på medlemmar i Oatlys brand community på Instagram och samlades in genom två fokusgruppsdiskussioner. Studien har visat att medlemmarna engagerar sig i communityn för att tillfredsställa behov av gemenskap, identitet, och information samt att medlemmarna värderar information från Oatly som pålitlig och positiv medan de värderar externa källors informationsom felaktig och opålitlig. Ännu en av slutsatserna från studien är att deltagarna i communityntolkar budskap utifrån en gemensam tolkningsram. Vidare visade studien att mer lojala medlemmar uppgav att de ökade sin konsumtion i mötet av negativ information om Oatly.

This thesis will explore the concept of cultural citizenship by researching visitor’s responses to five exhibitions across two museums in the Lower Hutt region of New Zealand. The thesis will also examine museum management and staff’s perspectives on these exhibits, and compare these to visitor’s. The aim of the thesis is to understand how museum visitors reflect upon and use museum exhibits as tools in relation to their cultural heritage and cultural citizenship. This approach provides a focus for reflection regarding the cultural importance of museum exhibitions. Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding model will serve as an overall framework for the study, and the theoretical concepts of memory, rhetoric, meaning making and cultural citizenship will further inform the analysis. The results indicate that museum visitors reflect upon exhibits as tools for reminding, and also indicate that exhibits are seen important for learning and representation. Furthermore, the study finds that visitors do not find exhibits particularly challenging or personal. Museum staff provide other perspectives on the importance of museum exhibits, such as their art historical, representational and community-museum relationship building potential, but the study finds that these themes are seldom explicitly recognised by visitors. The concluding discussion reflects on these results, and suggests avenues for future research.