Bakgrund: Det har i tidigare forskningar bevisats att privatpersoner har en tendens att vilja få hög avkastning på kort tid och därför väljer de ofta att investera i aktier. Detta leder till att aktierekommendationer har en stor påverkan på de privatpersoner som vill investera i aktier utan att ha en god kunskap inom ämnet. Det har även visats i olika undersökningar att privatpersoner i majoritet har lägre tillit för affärstidningar än för banker. Syfte: Syftet med denna undersökning är att undersöka banker och affärstidningarnas utfall av aktierekommendationer på den svenska aktiemarknaden. Genomförande: En kvantitativ undersökning genomfördes, där vi valde fyra olika banker och fyra olika affärstidningar. Tidsperioden var tre år, mellan 2010-01-01 och 2012-12-31. Totalt undersöktes 617 köp- och säljrekommendationer under fyra olika perioder; en dag, fem dagar, tio dagar och 30 dagar efter publiceringsdatumet. Resultat: Resultatet av undersökningen antyder på att det finns en skillnad mellan banker och affärstidningar gällande träffsäkerheten på dess publicerade aktierekommendationer. Affärstidningarna har högre antal träffar än bankerna, både när det gäller säljrekommendationer och köprekommendationer. / Background: It has been shown in previous researches that individuals have a tendency to want to get high returns in a short time and therefore often choose to invest in stocks. Stock recommendations have therefore a large impact on the individuals who want to invest in stocks without having good knowledge of the subject. It has also been shown in various studies that the majority of individuals have lower trust in business magazines than for banks. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the banks and the business magazines outcome of the stock recommendations of the Swedish stock market. Method: A quantitative study was conducted, in which we chose four different banks and four different business magazines. The time period was three years, between 2010-01-01 and 2012-12-31. A total of 617 stock recommendations were investigated during four different periods; one day, five days, ten days and 30 days after the date of publication. Conclusion: The study results indicate that there is a difference between banks and business magazines regarding the accuracy of the published stock recommendations. Business magazines have a higher number of hits than the banks, both in terms of sales recommendations and purchase recommendations.

Media are powerful agents of socialization; mediated images affect individual and group behavior as well as inter-group attitudes. In the case of the Hispanic/Latino community in the U.S., frequently underrepresented and stereotyped in mainstream media, identity politics and perspectives of self-representation are complicated by the vast diversity of this membership. This project analyzed the current discourse on Hispanic/Latino ethnic identity proposed by Latina magazine and its social standing in relation to the mainstream culture. A quantitative content analysis that compared Latina’s visual portrayals of women to the female portrayals found in the mainstream magazine Glamour suggested that Latina constructed a homogenized and non-conflictive identity for Hispanic/Latino women; an identity that supports U.S. dominant discourses on ethnicity and race and is subjugated to marketing practices.

In Swedish shops today there are a lot of magazines aimed at teenagers, which fight for young girls’ attention. These teenage-magazines are one of the most important sources for young girls to get information about sex and love-relationships; therefor it’s important how these magazines portray it.  We have examined how the magazine Frida has portrayed sex and love-relationships from 1991 until today. The way sex and love-relationships are portrayed in Frida’s articles affect the young readers in their process of building an identity.  Using a combined rhetoric- and discourse analysis we found that the main focus in Frida is for the reader to have a love-relationship with a guy, instead of a physical sex-relationship. Frida uses all the rhetorical tools to convince their readers that what they are telling them is the right way to think and behave.

The growing cultural commodity of celebrity news and its increasing focus on celebrities' families is examined by this project to determine what consequence communications about celebrity pregnancy and parenthood have on readers most likely to identify with the stories – new mothers. While gossip magazines are not meant to provide parenting advice, their editorial focus on parenting may position celebrity parents as role models for audiences. Guided by theories of media effects, this project sought to understand why and how that might happen. Using narrative thematic analysis, two complementary data sets were analyzed: 36 issues sampled from the leading gossip magazines, People and Us Weekly, during 2007-2009, and five focus groups with recent mothers. Gossip magazines positively framed celebrity family life, idealizing the experience by avoiding talk of parenting's daily challenges. Resources such as nannies and personal trainers define celebrity parenting by affording celebrities, especially women, the ability to continue work while maintaining the identity of primary caregivers. A gendered act, consumption was intrinsically part of good celebrity parenting. Expectations for celebrity postpartum weight loss communicated that bigger bodies are a work-in-progress rather than an acceptable new body type. Fathers were visually depicted more often than in conventional parenting media, though these images similarly showed parents performing normative, gendered behaviors. Participants reported escapism as their main reason for reading gossip magazines and parasocial relationships existed with both liked and disliked celebrities. For liked celebrities, a parasocial dialectical tension emerged defining role models as both special and ordinary. For disliked celebrities, negative frames portrayed their parenting behavior as unacceptable and served as the strongest form of social learning from gossip magazines as readers internalized media criticism. Celebrity role models were selected based on feeling similar, serving as fantasy role models whose parenting lifestyles were simultaneously interpreted as aspirational and unattainable. Participants' social comparisons usually evaluated their own parenting experience as preferred to the demands and media environment faced by celebrities. Situations interpreted as incomparable attributed celebrities' success to external factors rather than internal characteristics. Overall, gossip magazines do provide parenting information that expands and impacts the real experience of mothers.

The purpose of this research was to determine if there is a model of ideal femininity communicated through advertising in girls’ and women’s magazines. To assess the representations of women in magazine advertisements, a content analysis of advertisements appearing in three top-selling, demographically-defined women’s magazines (Girls’ Life, Seventeen, and Cosmopolitan) was conducted. Using feminist theory and hegemony theory as critical lenses, advertisements were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. Each advertisement was assessed using five criteria: physical characteristics, social context, personality and attitude, and subtext. Using this data to establish the dominant representations of women, it was determined that there is a model of ideal femininity which is developed through establishing common ideals shared by all three magazines and by gradually introducing new ideals which correspond to shifts in real-world interests and experiences of women. It was concluded that a model of ideal femininity is developed through advertising in girls’ and women’s magazines, this model is used as a guide to direct girls and women towards specific ideal preferences, attitudes and behaviours, and this model continues to emphasise traditional cultural values and gender ideals which are not necessarily reflective of the range of roles women assume in today’s society.

The HPV vaccine (Gardasil) is a significant advancement in women’s health that garnered both positive and negative media coverage. Since public opinion and population uptake of the vaccine can be influenced by media coverage, the purpose of this study was to assess the discussion and presentation of risk information about HPV, cervical cancer and the HPV vaccine in Canadian and U.S. newspapers and news magazines. Using directed content analysis, the reporting of fear-inducing messages about HPV, cervical cancer and the HPV vaccine were compared between Canadian and U.S. top-circulating national newspapers between January 2006—December 2007. Significant differences between countries were found in the number of fear messages about cervical cancer (p < 0.05) but not for HPV or the HPV vaccine. Readability was higher than recommended for the public and emotional tone of the articles was progressively negative. Directed content analysis was also used to assess the discussion of risks, fear-inducing messages about HPV, cervical cancer and the HPV vaccine in four high circulating North American news magazines from January 2006—December 2007. Risk messages about HPV and cervical cancer focused on threatening illness or injury and reporting on the HPV vaccine emphasized it being poorly understood by science. Newspaper and news magazine articles on HPV, cervical cancer and the HPV vaccine included fear-inducing messages. Public health officials and health educators need to be aware of media reporting of fear based risk messages in order to alleviate public anxiety and concern about the HPV vaccine.

The HPV vaccine (Gardasil) is a significant advancement in women’s health that garnered both positive and negative media coverage. Since public opinion and population uptake of the vaccine can be influenced by media coverage, the purpose of this study was to assess the discussion and presentation of risk information about HPV, cervical cancer and the HPV vaccine in Canadian and U.S. newspapers and news magazines. Using directed content analysis, the reporting of fear-inducing messages about HPV, cervical cancer and the HPV vaccine were compared between Canadian and U.S. top-circulating national newspapers between January 2006—December 2007. Significant differences between countries were found in the number of fear messages about cervical cancer (p < 0.05) but not for HPV or the HPV vaccine. Readability was higher than recommended for the public and emotional tone of the articles was progressively negative. Directed content analysis was also used to assess the discussion of risks, fear-inducing messages about HPV, cervical cancer and the HPV vaccine in four high circulating North American news magazines from January 2006—December 2007. Risk messages about HPV and cervical cancer focused on threatening illness or injury and reporting on the HPV vaccine emphasized it being poorly understood by science. Newspaper and news magazine articles on HPV, cervical cancer and the HPV vaccine included fear-inducing messages. Public health officials and health educators need to be aware of media reporting of fear based risk messages in order to alleviate public anxiety and concern about the HPV vaccine.

<!--StartFragment-->The purpose of this thesis was to study how four swedish lifestyle magazines: Veckorevyn and Cosmopolitan for women, King and Café for men, represent three groups of people and how often these people appear in the magazines. These groups are HBT, homosexuals, bisexuals and transsexuals, disabled and immigrants. The years we studied were 2007 and 2008. Our main questions were: How often do the three groups appear in the four magazines? How are the groups represented? In order to answer these questions we used a qualitative analysis. We used tools from semiotics, narratology and discourse. We also used a quantitative analysis in order to find out how often the groups appeared.  We based our study on theories about representation, stereotypes, social construction, identity and masculinity. We chose these theories because the magazines used this to present their stories about the groups, in a social constructed world. These theories helped us to analyze our results and gave a deeper meaning to our conclusions. Our results showed that all groups appear very little in the magazines. We found that all groups except for immigrants are stereotyped in well-known patterns. Disabled persons are often represented as heroes. We also found that HBT- persons often are stereotyped and appear in articles where sex and relationships is the main subject. Many of the immigrants are famous and they are portrayed as themselves and as “one of us”. <!--EndFragment-->

The intention of this study is to find out how the female celebrity is portrayed in women’s magazines directed at women of different age groups. The magazines that I have chosen to analyse are Frida, Veckorevyn and Damernas Värld. My aim is to find out what kind of celebrity appears in the magazines in terms of occupation and topics in the articles. Furthermore, the aim is also to determine whether the celebrity is portrayed in a different or similar way depending on the target group. This thesis is done from a gender perspective in order to elucidate what distinguishes the celebrity in the context of the celebrity being female. The frameworks of theories are the following: culture theory, ideology, stereotypes, homo-sociality and connotation and denotation. The methods used to analyse the texts were content analysis and qualitative discourse analysis. Since images of the female celebrities have also been of importance, I have used the method of semiotics for picture analysis. I discovered that there are both differences and similarities in how the female celebrity is portrayed, in relation to different age categories. It appears there are more types of women celebrities in Damernas Värld in-comparison to Frida and Veckorevyn, as not only do the celebrities in Damernas Värld have more varied occupations, they also engage in more topics in their interviews. I found that the celebrity woman is not always portrayed in exactly the same light. However, I could identify the average woman which appears most frequently in all the magazines. The portrayal of the celebrity woman is usually built on contrasts and stereotypes. The occupation is typically an actress or a singer; she is usually white, heterosexual and rich. Her traits are typically being tough and independent, yet in conjunction considerate and friendly. She is also glamorous but ordinary, sexy but sweet. The underlying preconceptions of femininity are never challenged by the journalist’s way of portraying the celebrities.

This study has an aim of exploring how a Turkish architectural magazine, Arredamento Mimarlik, communicates itself to the reader by its cover designs. Since, representation is a tool for architects to transmit ideas and express positions in the discipline of architecture, usage of representation in architectural media has a critical role to promote the communication in architecture. The theoretical framework of the research based on the photographic image investigation of Roland Barthes. In the light of this investigation, the study cites that photographic images with accompaniment of texts transmit messages which construct the communicative role of magazine covers in architectural media. In the realm of predefined identity of a magazine, the interpretation of cover concept confronts with a critical position which identifies magazine&rsquo / s approach to both architecture and its mediatic character. Since Arredamento-Mimarlik is a significant magazine which has a discursive approach on cover concept, the publication history and critical position of the magazine is investigated elaborately in the light of B&uuml / lent Erkmen&rsquo / s, the designer of the covers, and Ugur Tanyeli&rsquo / s, the managing editor, citations. Through this survey on Arredamento Mimarlik covers, the representation of architecture in media through a significant representative tool-magazine cover- is studied in terms of signification character of image and text. In this sense, the critical role of magazine which orients the comprehension of architecture in society is emphasized as a discursive value in addition to magazine&rsquo / s informative character.