This thesis explores discourse of the Sweden Democrats around the issue of immigration and provides an overview of changes that occurred in Sweden Democrats’ rhetoric and argumentation from National election in 2010 until the election in 2014. The study offers an analytical contribution to the field of media and communication and provides readers with the insight of right wing online activism. Qualitative in its core, and based on the theory of framing, the study analyzed video material uploaded by the Sweden Democrats on their official Youtube channel. Results are organized thematically in the way in which party framed the issue of immigration (threat to a national identity, the cause of criminal actions, unemployment and welfare abuse). The Sweden Democrats use their YouTube page as a tool for alternative political communication. The findings indicate a major shift in their rhetoric about the issue of immigration from sharp criticism of mass immigration on religious and cultural grounds toward criticism based on economical and financial grounds. On their journey towards more democratic norms, the Sweden Democrats sought to give an impression of new, changed party, distant from racial roots by employing ‘softened’ rhetoric and blowing a ‘dog whistle’.

Research on faith based organisations involvement in public service provision neglects to consider the personal faith convictions of those working in this field. Using a social constructionist epistemology I investigate if and how faith convictions of employees and volunteers working for Christian based service providers impact on the work they do. Data were collected in two stages using semi structured interviews. Stage one obtained a broad overview of the role of Christian service providers from the perspective of elite Christians representing Christian organisations that have a direct connection to welfare provision in the UK. Stage two took an in-depth look at the issues raised in stage one, seeking to understand them from the perspective of ordinary Christians who work for Christian based service providers. Findings from this thesis further sociological understanding of Christian involvement in religiously plural public spheres, and argues that faith is an intrinsic part of the delivery of public services by people working for faith-based organisations. Drawing on the theoretical concept of Individualised Religiosities as proposed by Luckmann, Bellah, Davie, Beck and others, and the concept of Lived Religion as developed by McGuire and Ammerman, this thesis examines participants constructed understanding of the Christian God and its connection with public service provision. It develops a complex, three fold sociological conceptualisation of Christian perceptions of the God figure as: 1) the Supreme Being, 2) as a parental figure, and 3) an embodied God. This broad conceptualisation illustrates how participants combine institutional activities, such as attending church sermons, with more autonomous religious activities, such as personal conversations with God, to construct a multidimensional understanding of the figure. The embodied God position takes on further significance when understanding that participants use public service work as a form of church . Public service can be viewed as a form of private worship, but by embodying God, they also take God to people that may not practice Christianity. These findings challenge assumptions that the practice of religion in public projects has declined in recent years and that faith organisations are reticent to push their faith when providing services. Religious pluralism results in political expectations that faith groups are religiously neutral when delivering public services. Using Framing Theory this thesis demonstrates that participants are framing faith discourses so that they resonate with discourses deemed acceptable in the public realm. It conceptualises these discourses in two action frames, the Love, and Inclusivity Frames. There are indications of a shift towards using profane terms instead of sacred terms to explain and indirectly promote aspects of the Christian faith. Moreover, Christian teachings of love, compassion and belonging are amplified to counter criticisms that Christianity is a threat to liberal rights and beliefs. These frames, which demonstrate the accommodation of Christian discourse to a religiously plural and/or neutral discourse, have implications for how we understand Christian involvement in the public sphere.

It is through the material that is presented to us by the media, that we form our perception of the world and our opinions about it. Therefore the framing of news is important to study, especially in our globalized world where the economy, politics and communication has a strong connection. Earlier studies have shown that there is a general fascination in Sweden for the United States, which not only have influenced popular culture, but also other parts of the Swedish society like news coverage. Some even say that Sweden is the most americanized country in the world. The purpose of this study was therefore to examine if Swedish news are being more americanized than news coverage in other parts of the world. Through a qualitative framing analysis this study examines which frames that occurs in news articles related to the american elections Super Tuesdays in newspapers from Sweden, Kenya and Singapore. The result of this study shows that the news coverage in many respects portrays the election in a similar, entertaining way, which can be assumed to be due to the americanization of news. However, there is no clear evidence that the Swedish news coverage would be more americanized than the Kenyan and Singaporean.

The purpose of this study was to study how metaphors are used in sports chronicles . As a complement, we also chose to study whether there are gender differences in the use of metaphors. We also wanted to take a look at whether journalists tend to mythologize sports stars with the help of metaphors. We have been using a qualitative study in our work. We chose to examine four sports journalists who writes sports chronicles for the newspaper Aftonbladet. Two males and two females.  In our results, we concluded that metaphors are very common in sports chronicles. We used a metaphor analysis in our study of the chronicles. We also found that gender differences in the use of metaphors is not so big. When we examined the differences between women and men, we started mainly from British Hultén's theory that men are abstract and women concrete in their texts.

Membership in a social movement organization (SMO) and membership discourse provide space for participants to name and reconstitute their experiences, bodies, and self-images through an embodiment of organizational frames. This reconstitution is especially affirmed in the interaction of marginalized groups, such as individuals with disabilities, whom make up disability focused organizations and social movements. As a group with multiple intersectionalities, as well as an even smaller subsection of various marginalized populations, individuals with blindness face unique barriers when consideration of participants' identities and self-understandings is central in understanding entry as well as ongoing participation in organizations. Disability based organizations, represented by the National Federation of the Blind (NFB), must carefully frame the organizational membership of certain individuals whom could threaten cohesion through differing understanding of identities, not revolving around disability. This thesis is an examination of the organizational discourse and the "membership meetness" of participating persons in the NFB. Goffman’s notion of “breaking frame” theoretically informs this analysis of organizational discourse produced by the 'collective blind' in one of the oldest American disability social movement organizations to date. The NFB’s attempt to mitigate the “broken frame” introduced by the incorporation of members whom are not seemingly suitable and do not self identify as blind, into an overwhelmingly blindness based enterprise is to strategically mend existing frames to reinterpret extant social norms. The purpose of this thesis is to use a grounded theory approach, to tease out how membership is framed. In the NFB, frame alignment is accomplished by: framing blindness through allies transformed as friends, framing blindness as a characteristic, framing blindness as respectability, and framing blindness through rhetorical humor in narrative. The above four frames to disability based social movements offers researchers the opportunity to understand how groups attempt to integrate into their activities members who lack “membership meetness” while simultaneously garnering support and advancing interests within the larger movement. / text

No description available.

I den här kandidatuppsatsen har vi undersökt hur arbetslöshet framställs i tidningarna Aftonbladet, Dagens Industri och Dagens Nyheter under olika ekonomiska kriser i Sverige under åren 1993, 2000 och 2009. Vi undersökte främst hur skuld och lösningsansvar delades ut i texterna samt vilken roll tillfrågade experter hade. Vi använde oss av teorier om framing och språkliga grepp. Undersökningen gjordes genom en kvantitativ innehållsanalys av olika sorters artiklar och urvalet bestod av 225 analysenheter. Tidigare forskning har visat att mottagare av nyheter, publiken, påverkas i olika grad av  hur händelser gestaltas och vinklas i olika medier. Denna studie undersöker inte publikens reaktioner, utan hur tre svenska tidningar väljer att skriva om arbetslöshetsfrågan under olika svenska ekonomiska kriser. Vidare forskning skulle kunna vara att undersöka hur läsare av dessa tidningar själva uppfattade kristiderna. Resultaten visade att rapporteringen var särskilt dyster 1993, mer optimistisk 2000 och som mest negativ 2009. Texterna präglades av liknelser och metaforer som beskrev krigs- och konflikttillstånd (särskilt i Aftonbladet), människokroppen, hälsa och död samt natur och växtlighet. Andra resultat visade att skuldbördan mest frekvent lades på de politiker som var verksamma under de olika perioderna, oftast sittande finansminister, regering eller opposition. Även de som förväntades lösa problemen är politiker. Den globala aktuella krisen 2009 ansågs ansvara särskilt mycket för den svenska finanskrisen under samma tid, medan  man under år 2000 delade ut väldigt lite ansvar. Experterna bestod främst av män från en myndighet, med politisk bakgrund, eller en bank eller privat bolag.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, with China's remarkable success in economic developments and greater openness to the outside world, two sharply opposing views of China have appeared in the Western perception of China - a rising superpower as well as a threat to the West, economically, militarily and environmentally. The West, particularly the US and Britain fears that China is likely to take advantage of its growing economic and geopolitical influence in order to change the world's power pattern. Within such a social context, this thesis sets out to explore if the old concepts of Orientalism on China has ever changed in modern times and how the modern images China and the Chinese are framed in the contemporary British news media. It is carried out through four cases – Chinese migration, Hong Kong handover (1997), Tibet issue and Sichuan Great Earthquake (2008). More specifically, the thesis examines: how the two dominating masterframes – ethno-nationalist and liberal individualist masterframes coexist or compete with each other in the reporting; and what the differences are between newspapers in terms of frame choice and the ratio of struggle between two frames. The study implies that the old Orientalist stereotypes, such as ‘Yellow Peril', which were used to describe China and the Chinese have not often appeared in the recent British news media representations in the selected four cases. Instead, the liberal individualist views have been widely and deeply embedded in the British news reporting, criticising China being essentially a Communist dictatorship as opposed to Western democracy. Additionally, the relations between two masterframes appear in three forms – coexistence or intertwining, supporting each other, and struggle.

Seminario para optar al grado de Ingeniero Comercial, Mención Administración / Los procesos mentales bajo los cuales las personas toman decisiones, han sido durante décadas motivo de amplio estudio, tanto por psicólogos, sociólogos, economistas, científicos y hasta matemáticos. Todos los campos se han visto involucrados en descubrir una interrogante, que al parecer aún no tiene respuesta absoluta. Lo que sí se puede observar, es que el ser humano no siempre responde a las normas racionales de conducta, siendo más bien impulsado mayormente por aspectos subjetivos como percepciones, intuiciones y atajos mentales. De esto, es que nace nuestro interés de conocer y entender, cómo este tipo de aspectos influye en el proceso de toma de decisiones, específicamente como el framing, aplicado a la forma en la que se plantean distintas ofertas, puede afectar la percepción que los consumidores tienen de éstas. Siguiendo con lo anterior, los principales objetivos de esta investigación fueron los de comprobar que las ofertas expresadas en porcentajes dificultan el entendimiento de lo que realmente implican, además de evaluar el error u omisión de cálculo del precio unitario propuesto por las ofertas, en la percepción de conveniencia y preferencia. Para el desarrollo de lo anterior, el trabajo se divide en dos partes, un pre test y un test final. Este último cuenta con 3 experimentos, mediante los cuales se buscó comprobar los objetivos antes planteados, a partir de una comparación entre dos tipos de ofertas (oferta en cantidad vs oferta en precio), ambas expresadas en porcentaje, fueran estas económicamente equivalentes o no (en términos de precio unitario). Mediante dos tipos de análisis, se midieron variables como la conveniencia percibida e intención de compra. Los resultados lograron, en gran parte, confirmar las hipótesis generadas. A grandes rasgos, se pudo evidenciar que bajo escenarios tanto positivos como negativos, los individuos presentaron dificultades para advertir el efecto de las ofertas en el precio unitario de los productos asociados, y que además, al enfrentarse a ofertas económicamente equivalentes (mismo precio unitario) expresadas en porcentaje, estos tendían a basar su elección en la magnitud del porcentaje. Este estudio, muestra el impacto que tendría el framing, tanto en la toma de decisiones de las personas, como en la forma en que las empresas, como supermercados y retail, presentan sus ofertas para manejar las ventas de ciertos productos y marcas. Finalmente, es importante mencionar la existencia de ciertas limitaciones de este estudio. Dentro de éstas, se incluye el hecho de que la naturaleza de la muestra fue no probabilística por conveniencia, los participantes eran muy similares entre ellos, el contexto bajo el cual se desarrolló el experimento difería del real escenario en el que las personas se enfrentan a decisiones y además se testeó sólo un tipo de producto. Aún así, esto no invalida la investigación, logrando entregar un primer acercamiento a lo que podría ser un estudio más amplio.

Existing literature on consumer behavior has argued that an individual’s regulatory orientation interacts with message framing. If there is a match between regulatory orientation (promotion versus prevention) and message framing, this results in positive attitudes toward a given advertisement. Conversely, if there is a mismatch, the effect is opposite, i.e., attitudes toward that advertisement are less positive and less favorable. This research extends the term of compatibility by examining how regulatory focus moderates the impact of two aspects of message framing (attribute framing and risky choice framing) on customer perceptions. It also examines whether regulatory fit is created when there are interactions between individuals’ regulatory orientation and message framing and how the fit changes customer perceptions about a message. Specifically, this dissertation provides answers to the following questions: (1) does regulatory fit take place when regulatory focus is compatible with two aspects of message framing (attribute and risky choice)?; (2) does regulatory fit take place when one aspect of message framing (attribute) is compatible with the other (risky choice)?; and (3) how do customer perceptions change if customers experience regulatory fit? The results show that the effects of utilitarian attributes and national brands are dominating and that both promotion- and prevention-oriented customers have higher perceptions of these attributes and brands. The findings of this study have both theoretical and practical implications. Theoretically, this study should enhance our understanding of regulatory focus theory. Practically, the results should provide marketers with more insights into the correlation between message framing and regulatory orientation and the effect of fit on message persuasion, enabling them to develop more effective marketing strategies.