Personal branding on social media is a growing and expanding field. The present research works to uncover the processes and practices of womenpreneurs and the ways in which they utilize social media, specifically Instagram, to build and maintain their personal brands. Grounded theory is used to underpin the research and provide a basis of which the study is conducted. The review of literature provides the context necessary to support the methods of a content analysis and semi-structured interviews. There is a gap in research as it pertains to the conceptualization of personal branding practices on Instagram and the present study works to build a bridge to understanding these practices. Online presentation of the self is an expanding body of research in academia, and the present research works to contribute new knowledge surrounding the exploitation of the most popular visually based social media platform Instagram to create and maintain successful personal brands.

This thesis examines the motivation of players of video games for their playing, and the strategy of these players for overcoming feelings of depression, using the methods of grounded theory. The first part deals with the approach of sociology and selected studies towards the issue of video games and mental disorders, to which I then relate the findings of my own research at the final chapter. In the second part of this work I present what methodology has been used and how. In the final part I lead a discussion about the findings and outcomes of my research.

Background: In Canada, failure to disclose HIV+ status before sex can result in incarceration and status as a registered sex offender for life. In 2012, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that there is no legal mandate for HIV disclosure before sex if (i) a condom is used and (ii) HIV viral loads are extremely low. There is very little known about how the legal mandate for HIV disclosure might inequitably affect the health and safety of sex workers. Purpose: This study critically interrogates the interplay between the legal mandate for HIV disclosure and the routine health-conscious practices (e.g., HIV testing, condom use) of HIV-negative survival sex workers, with particular attention to inequitable health and safety outcomes. This study also qualitatively investigates the structural and social forces that mediate vulnerability to HIV infection and transmission among sex workers, their clients, and their non-commercial, intimate partners. Method: This study employed an adapted grounded theory approach to conducting and analyzing (n=9) open-ended, in-depth interviews with a convenience sample of currently working and recently exited sex workers who were clients at PEERS, an NGO offering services and support to sex workers in Victoria, Canada. Findings: The criminalization of HIV nondisclosure had no discernable influence on behavioural HIV risk factors or HIV testing. Participants lacked accurate knowledge of the legal mandate for HIV disclosure. HIV-related health literacy was low. Participants strongly supported HIV disclosure as a legal obligation – but only for exacting justice, and not for reliably offering protective health benefits. The uptake of high-risk sexual practices was driven almost exclusively by (i) extreme needs when servicing clients (e.g., drugs, childcare, money) and (ii) the rich symbolism of condomless sex in non-commercial, intimate partnerships. Participants reported differential degrees of entrenchment in the sex trade at various times in their working lives due to extreme needs. Participants emphasized the importance of ongoing HIV testing as a personal responsibility in order to monitor and maintain their sexual health. Participants identified increased uptake of HIV-related knowledge as affording the most significant protective health benefits against HIV infection. Implications: Lower levels of HIV-related health and legal literacies in the sample call for greater scrutiny of the impacts of initiatives such as ‘Seek and Treat for Optimal Prevention of HIV/AIDS’ (or STOP HIV/AIDS®) which target vulnerable populations across British Columba [BC]. Deeply entrenched sex workers have little recourse to exit the sex trade immediately upon receiving an HIV+ test result, especially in under-resourced social assistance milieux. Targeting this population for HIV testing facilitates the creation of a new caste of HIV+ potential criminals, despite the well-established, beneficial health outcomes at the individual and population levels from early commencement of antiretroviral treatment. Conclusion: Survival sex workers require special considerations in HIV pre-test counselling. The empowerment of sex workers can come firstly through the enhancement of HIV-related health – and legal – literacies. Full knowledge of the advantages and disadvantages of HIV testing will allow the consent for HIV testing to be truly informed. New HIV testing guidelines make BC the first province to recommend regular HIV screening for all adults. These guidelines also recommend exclusion of discussions of the criminalization of HIV nondisclosure in pre-test counselling for all patients. Re-thinking the consent for HIV testing among sex workers is crucially important for their immediate health and safety. / Graduate

The aim of the diploma thesis is to survey characteristics in the experience of people with bipolar disorder. The choice of the topic is based on the lack of research of the experience of people suffering with bipolar disorder in the Czech environment. The aim of this thesis is to comprehend the life of people with bipolar disorder. The theoretical part of the thesis is focusing on the description of the historical and contemporary concept of bipolar disorder including the so-called bipolar spectrum. This part presents treatment options as well as comorbidities which are often a part of the clinical course of the disease. The aim of the theoretical part is to introduce the reader to the issue of bipolar disorder which allows a better understanding of the empirical part. In the empirical part, six respondents were interviewed to collect data. The grounded theory method was chosen for data processing and the Atlas.ti software was used for coding purposes. As a result of the data processing a process of learning how to live with bipolar disorder has emerged. The process of learning how to live with bipolar disorder is an active process that leads to a deeper understanding of the disease and skill gains mitigating manifestation of the disease. At the beginning of the learning, there are motivation...

This thesis reports on an evolution of the media image of major athletics competitions, concretely of the World Athletics Championships and the European Athletics Championships. Using grounded theory methodology, the thesis seeks to examine which topics are used by Czech sports journalists publishing on sport.iDnes.cz, iSport.cz, and Sport.cz news websites. This paper aims to uncover the media's agenda and its eventual gradual changes based on articles dedicated to five chosen championships. The qualitative content analysis covers the period from 2009 to 2018. All the detected topics are divided into categories and subcategories, the findings are exemplified by quotations of relevant journalistic texts. The results of this analysis demonstrate the media image of the athletics. Besides that, the thesis also shows how the Czech online media worked with several sporting events. The final part of this paper includes a comparison of observed championships and a description of categories' development. The findings are also represented in a chart.

The pervasive nature and use of social media has transformed society and this transformation has attracted significant attention from both industry and academia. The organisational implementation and use of social media are plagued with many challenges, leaving managers frustrated at not achieving the desired results. This emergent and complex nature of the social media phenomenon requires researchers to consider novel approaches when conducting social media research. As the number of Information Systems (IS) researchers conducting research on the social media phenomenon increases, so too does the need to develop relevant and rigorous social media theories. This challenge must be addressed by IS researchers who are contemplating, or are busy conducting research on the social media phenomenon. My PhD thesis responds to the call made by academics and practice for the development of relevant and rigorous social media theories, with the aim of providing a better explanation than what is currently found in the social media literature on social media use within an organisational context. Owing to the emergent nature of the social media phenomenon, the grounded theory method (GTM) is used to develop a substantive theory that increases understanding of this particular phenomenon. Two organisations are selected as the case studies. Both are industry leaders in South Africa, with one being a prominent retailer with a very visible social media presence and the other, being a leading university in South Africa, which is actively growing its social media presence. The results show that organisations enter into a collective storytelling process with their online community. Risk to reputation and the need for online community engagement are identified as reasons for this. Organisations using social media need to be aware of the following conditions that impact on social media use: (1) the social media landscape, (2) the characteristics of social media for use, (3) the relationship between content and social media, (4) content quality, (5) the online community-organisation power dynamic, and (6) the provision of a seamless online experience for the community. Challenges during the collective storytelling process lead to organisations experiencing social media use failures. To overcome these failures, organisations implement education interventions. An evolving supportive social media strategy that provides formal guidelines for social media use ultimately leads to a reduction in the organisational risk to reputation and an improvement in online community engagement, initially identified as the reasons why organisations decide to use social media. The main theoretical contribution is the development of a holistic theoretical framework using the GTM to better explain social media use within organisations when engaging with their online community.

There are many situations during information system development (ISD) where there is a need to do modelling on a business level before more detailed and robust modelling are done on the technical system level. Most business level modelling uses some form of natural language constructs which are, on the one hand, easy to use by untrained users, but which are too vague and ambiguous to be used in subsequent systems level modelling by systems analysts, on the other hand. The goal of this study is to develop an integrative modelling technique that is easy enough to be used by most business users with little training, but robust and structured enough to be used in subsequent ISD modelling. The term “integrative” in the title refers to the fact that this technique attempts to bridge the current gap between modelling on a business level and modelling on a technical level. The research consists of two major phases. During the first phase, an integrative modelling technique is developed using a grounded approach. The data that is used for analysis is a representative example of the major ISD modelling techniques used currently. For instance, to represent all the UML techniques, the UML 2 standard is used. The purpose of this first phase is to understand what the fundamental concepts and relationships in ISD are and to develop an integrative technique based on that. During the second phase, the resultant artefact created by the first phase is evaluated and improved using the design science research approach. This artefact is used in a representative set of business modelling situations to evaluate its applicability and suitability as an integrative modelling technique between business and ISD. The integrative modelling technique is evaluated from three perspectives: how it represents business rules, how it handled various aspects of ISD and how it represents requirements expressed as use cases. These evaluations used the two main design criteria of ease of use for users and at the same time adequate levels of expressive power so that the model can be easily translated into existing ISD modelling languages. The integrative modelling technique developed identified the following three levels of modelling entities and their relationships: • Base entities (corresponding to the morphological level in linguistics) • Structure entities (corresponding to the syntactical level in linguistics) • Role entities (corresponding to the semantic level in linguistics) The contribution of this research is to provide a better understanding of the fundamental entities in business and ISD modelling and their relationships in order to improve informal, mostly textual, business modelling. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Informatics / unrestricted

New ways of working with a flexibilization in time and space are characteristics of today’s office world, but at the same time stress-related health problems are on the rise. Nature contacts is shown to be a resource for health, and outdoor offices were invented to combine both flexible working and health resources at the workplace. As outdoor office work (OOW) is quite new and little is known about its usage, the aim of the study was to deepen our understanding about what circumstances lead to the consequence, that employees do not conduct office-related work tasks outdoors, even if they have access to outdoor spaces and green areas. Following research question was about to be answered by a grounded theory study: What factors hinder office workers to conduct office-related tasks outdoors? The data collection was conducted in 9 semi-structured online interviews and 3 phones calls with participants from Sweden, the Netherlands and Germany. The theoretical model was constructed through a process of coding and memo writing. The results show a theoretical model that entails one core category, Norms, and three main categories, Personal Factors, Organizational Factors and Practical Issues. The categories act interdependent, whereas existing norms have the most powerful impact. Work is perceived as something that should be conducted indoors at a desk, and as something that is stressful and can be inconvenient. The existing norms of how to conduct office work are influencing personal, organizational, and practical factors that lead to the consequence that employees do not conduct office work outdoors. The findings of the study provide useful knowledge for further research in the field of OOW, as well as for organizations that want to implement an outdoor office.

Despite the existence of extensive literature regarding risk management, there still seems to be lack of knowledge in identification of Critical Success Factors (CSFs) in this area. In this research Grounded Theory is implemented to identify CSFs in Risk Management Systems (RMS). Factor analysis and one-sample t-test are then used to refine and rank the CSFs based on the results of a survey which has been performed among Risk Management practitioners in various types of Swedish corporations. CSFs are defined from three different perspectives: (a) the factors that have influence on the inclination and readiness of corporation for implementing RMS. (b) the factors that are important during the design and implementation of RMS in corporation and can significantly affect the success of RMS design and implementation and (c) the factors that are crucially important to successfully run, maintain and administrate RMS after the closure of the project of RMS design and Implementation. This systematic approach towards understanding the taxonomy of the success dimension in RMS is important for re-enforcing effective risk management practices.

This thesis examines the role of religion for Ukrainian immigrants in Sweden and its connection to their subjective well-being. The aim of the study is to explore the experience of Ukrainian immigrants by collecting their stories. The data of the study is based on eight semi-structured interviews with Ukrainian immigrants who belong to the Eastern Orthodox Church. This qualitativestudy is guided by the grounded theory approach drawing upon cultural identity theory and theory of third place. The theories are applied in order to understand the meaning of religion, faith, and church-attending in the Ukrainian immigrants’ lives in Sweden. Guided by the grounded theory methodology, the results of the study reveal that for those Ukrainian immigrants, who consider themselves religious, religion and faith play a significant role in life, affecting their choices, decisions, shaping their world-view. It is found that religious beliefs and rituals, and attending church affect their subjective well-being positively. However, for those participants, who do not consider themselves as religious, some religious rituals still take place, serving them as a connectionwith their cultural background, which is also positively impacting their subjective well-being. Furthermore, this study analyses the role and functions of cultural identity and its connection with immigrants’ subjective well-being and provides recommendations for future researchers.