This research sought to understand the differences in framing used by alternative media outlets and traditional or mainstream media outlets. Researchers used a sampling of articles about the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks from alternative media publications and traditional media publications to conduct this study. Computer software analyzed these articles to determine themes and concepts within both data sets. The analysis revealed traditional media was less varied in themes than was alternative media, with the latter clearly showing an effort to be analytical of different aspects surrounding the Sept. 11 attacks. Traditional media largely provided routine coverage of commemorative services and very little critical analysis.

This research sought to understand the differences in framing used by alternative media outlets and traditional or mainstream media outlets. Researchers used a sampling of articles about the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks from alternative media publications and traditional media publications to conduct this study. Computer software analyzed these articles to determine themes and concepts within both data sets. The analysis revealed traditional media was less varied in themes than was alternative media, with the latter clearly showing an effort to be analytical of different aspects surrounding the Sept. 11 attacks. Traditional media largely provided routine coverage of commemorative services and very little critical analysis.

This thesis intends to establish whether and to what degree possible explanations for the Visegrad Group´s response to the 2015-2016 migration crisis can be provided by Postfunctionalism and Intergovernmentalism. The purpose of this study is not to explicitly test the two theories but to use them as tools to better understand the case under analysis, by applying a non-competitive approach. Based on the elaboration of 21 official statements released by the Visegrad Group between 2015-2016, findings show that both theories could (partially) confirmed my initial hypotheses. I conclude that security matters (as Intergovernmentalist suggests) consisted in the lion´s share in the statements, while economy matters (as also suggested by Intergovernmentalism) did not. When it comes to identity matters (as Postfunctionalism suggests), I conclude that those were used in connection to security matters, with the aim of forging a common European response to the crisis and to justify the partisan reaction of the Visegrad Group.

The aim of this bachelor thesis was to examine how the Swedish- and American daily press portrayed the young activist Greta Thunberg in their news coverage between the period of August 2019 and October 2019. Our research questions purposely intend to define how Greta Thunberg gets depicted, and to which extent the daily press insinuate her to be the face the climate movement through personation. By defining these aspects, we can therefor highlight and compare any similarities and differences presented. In order to fulfill the purpose of the study, we used a framing analysis to a selection of 66 news articles in total. These were divided by two different newspapers from each country; 21 articles from Dagens Nyheter, 24 articles from Svenska Dagbladet, 11 articles from The New York Times and 10 articles from The Washington Post. Each article was coded and categorized using a coding scheme until no more patterns or themes could be detected. Our study shows that both the Swedish- and the American daily press portrayed Greta Thunberg as a leading figure and the face of the new global climate movement. Both countries also portrayed those in power as the main cause of the problem and Thunberg and her advocacy as the resolution.

Due to new technological affordances, such as the internet and social media, people are more exposed than ever to actions or statements that may be perceived as moral violations. Consequently, moral outrage has become a prevalent feature in the online sphere. While it is well-known how moral outrage arises and what kind of practices it motivates, little is still known in regards to how moral outrage is experienced by the individuals who are at the receiving end of such outrage. The purpose of this study was thus to explore how individuals understand their experiences of being subjected to moral outrage online. Drawing on a theoretical framework comprised by interactionist and symbolic interactionist concepts, the study analysed interviews conducted with twelve individuals who have been subjected to moral outrage online. The findings show that the individuals understand their experience as being characterized by a sense of being in the hands of others once their action or statement had been reframed into a moral violation. The moral outrage is furthermore understood as having wider social consequences that contributed to, solidified or, by contrast, mitigated the experience of becoming an outcast, while also predominantly being understood as having a negative impact on the individuals’ sense of self. Accordingly, by taking these individuals’ understanding of moral outrage online into account, rather than problematizing their actions or statements, the study opens up for a discussion in regards to how moral outrage expressed online may itself be problematic and worthy of critical reflection.

This thesis looks into the online news representation of the #MeToo movement, started by actress Alyssa Milano in October 2017, in the two biggest German newspapers, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung between October 2017 and January 2017. The purpose of this study is to examine how the online editorial departments of the two biggest German newspapers frame and represent sexual harassment in the light of #MeToo. Additionally, I want to determine how the news coverage developed from when Harvey Weinstein first was accused of sexual misconduct in October 2017, touching upon the occurrence of the now famous hashtag roughly two weeks later and another three months later when German TV director Dieter Wedel faced similar allegations. To do so, I conducted a Critical Discourse Analysis of 19 online newspaper articles. The analysis is divided into three parts: Text level, discursive practice and social practice. Resulting from the analysis, one can see that sexual harassment in Germany still is not recognised as an issue of gender inequality but rather a matter of individual responsibility and systemic structures in certain industries, especially when German stakeholders are involved.

Since 2009, International Relations scholars have researched the role of big advocacy groups in giving access to the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots in the United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW). To further these studies, the focus of this thesis is on the progress of negotiations for the 6-year period since the issue has been adopted, asking the question – How has the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots chosen to frame lethal autonomous weapons systems, and how successful has that framing been for the period of 2013 to 2019? I argue that advocates undertook a normative securitisation process to frame the existential threat lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS) pose to human beings. This argument is supported by a dual method research approach of 1) semi-structured elite interviews; and 2) qualitative content analysis of reports. The findings of this research show that, while the advocacy group has not achieved success in the form of a legally binding agreement at the CCW, they have successfully developed a process of moral stigmatization of LAWS that contributes to the creation of a new humanitarian security regime.

The increasing presence of sustainability in multiple contexts of today’s societies has led to the phe- nomenon of proliferating representations of the term. A lack of consensus towards the terminology within theory and media representations formed the base for uncertain understandings in public. Corre- spondingly, this supports the argument for investigating the public’s representation of sustainability to contribute knowledge about the current understanding of the term in public. As a platform for open and globalized communication, social media, Instagram in specific, is considered as the research field for investigation. In detail, this analysis aims to investigate large-scale user-generated data with the ‘#sus- tainability’ on Instagram as the research context, to provide knowledge on the users’ representation of the phenomenon. A mixed-method approach of computational and human-driven qualitative and quan- titative content analysis enriched the scope of the analysis to an amount of 50.000 Instagram posts. Correspondingly, the analysis of over 770.000 co-occurred hashtags within the posts allowed a contex- tualization of the phenomenon to key themes represented by the platform’s users. According to framing and agenda-setting theory as theoretical frameworks of this thesis, the findings reveal a dominant fram- ing of sustainability from an environmental perspective, in correlation to the current media agenda. Moreover, the results disclose four key meta-frames, indicating dominant patterns of representing sus- tainability in the context of Eco-Efficiency, Accountability, Consumerism, and Identity. In addition to that, the findings revealed primarily positive framing towards sustainability by the public.The theoretical contribution is an analytical investigation of sustainability representation on Insta- gram, whereby co-occurred themes help to guide further initiatives to improve behavior change and the shift towards a sustainable future.

Sweden is often viewed as one of the most egalitarian countries and many countries look to Sweden for policy-models or tools to implement gender equality within their institutions and organisations. This thesis contains two purposes, where the first one is to explore the background for Handbok Gender a handbook created by the Swedish Defence Forces to discover if it is something independently created by the organisation or a result of international and national directives. Through exploring this, we will determine if the view presented in the Handbok Gender is the one of the Swedish Defence Forces or just a concept to look good externally. The second part aims to compare how H Gender frame gender differently compared to two separate handbooks on gender created by Nato and the United Nations. The first part shows that although Handbok Gender is a product based on international and national directives, it is built on the experiences of the Swedish Armed Forces and can therefore be seen as their perspective on gender. Furthermore, the second parts demonstrate that the UN’s handbook shows a traditional feminist point through putting the woman as a focus point, while Nato’s handbook more presents the woman as a victim. Although, because H Gender does not specify how gender affects men and women differently it results in the H Gender not treating the problem of gender in the same extent.

This study is set out to conduct a comparative analysis of mainstream and alternative media to understand how The Cape Times mainstream newspaper and GroundUp alternative online media outlet framed the 2017 “service delivery protests” in Cape Town, South Africa. Scholarly literature has demonstrated that the mainstream media marginalises the voices of certain communities and that the alternative media can fill this gap. Often, marginalised communities use protests to attract media coverage, as a way of reaching both the public and elected officials. Ultimately, numerous protest groups find it difficult to get the attention they desire, while news coverage of the social conflict is framed within a protests paradigm. The study analyses differences in the two media outlets’ coverage of social conflict, including the use of delegitimising devices such as the prominent use of official sources for quotes, while using dramatic frames that tend to ridicule protest action and portray them as violent. Qualitative and quantitative methods were used in a multimethod approach. The data was found in the SA Media news clippings database, supplemented by searches on Google and the GroundUp search engines. Coverage of the protest in GroundUp was in line with the literature, which states that the horizontal nature, bottom-up and fluid traditions of alternative media may be a more appropriate conduit for protest communications and social movement (Van De Donk et al, 2004; Dahlberg, 2007). The key finding of this study was that the mainstream Cape Times deviated from the protest paradigm, using the protesters as sources in preference to officials. This finding is a departure from the reviewed literature, which indicated that the mainstream media has a habit of following the protest paradigm when covering protests events, marginalising and dehumanising protesters and relying on official sources (Mcleod & Hertog, 1999). It also links to previous scholarship that has established a strong connection between the commercialisation of the media and the robust representation of official sources in the media.