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This thesis aims to portray the professional challenges for journalists in the private Ethiopian media sphere during a time of historical political change. Several liberal reforms have been enacted since the inauguration of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in 2018. Journalists have been released from prison, numerous websites have been unblocked and government intervention of independent media actors has declined. However, these changes are not without new challenges. The study uses qualitative, in-depth interviews with several key actors in the private media sector as the method of data collection and numerous findings that describe the new situation for journalists surfaced. While the interviewees commonly perceived an increase in media freedom and decrease in government threats, other challenges remain, and new ones have appeared. The data indicate that there are still considerable difficulties in accessing government information, as well as a significant uncertainty as to whether the transition will occur, as new media laws have yet to be put in place. The most prevalent finding was, however, the distinct and unanimous shift in perceived threats towards journalists. As government intervention has declined, public unrest and intimidations have increased to the point where several of the respondents no longer felt safe reporting from to certain geographical areas in the country. The investigation concludes that there is a need for further research into the often profound impact that political developments have on journalistic practice in sub-Saharan countries, as well as the impact of sudden increases in freedom of expression in countries with a history of heavily censored authoritarian leadership.

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Marketers have come to realise that an abundance of potential customers can be reached through Facebook advertising. Although a new player, Instagram is quickly catching up to Facebook’s success with its native ads. Despite this, there is a scarcity in the amount of academic literature that explores the use of them. This thesis aims to rectify that, by contributing to the academic discourse surrounding Instagram ads. Shownight, a live event promotion company, had yet to run ads on Instagram. Using split-testing, this thesis was aimed to figure out which ad features generated the highest click-through-rates. The tests were carried out through Facebook’s ad manager. Although a unique platform, functioning with both drawbacks and benefits, it provided this study with an efficient tool to split-test ads. The results from this study demonstrated Instagram to be a suitable platform on which to advertise live events. Furthermore, the findings revealed targeting through lookalikes as well as behaviour, results in the highest click-through-rate. Moreover, using a video with 4 hashtags for lookalikes targeting, and an image with up to 3 hashtags for behaviour targeting, were the best ad set combinations. A call-to-action, portraying some degree of urgency, should also be employed within the caption. Nevertheless, this study has its limitations. Including being restricted demographically, as well as being confined to Shownight’s target audience, and advertising content. Furthermore, Facebook’s ad manager poses its own limitations as a split-testing platform, in terms of even audience distribution. / Marknadsförare har insett att ett överflöd av potentiella kunder kan nås via Facebook-reklam. Även om Instagram är ett förhållandevis nytt företag kommer det snabbt ikapp Facebooks framgång med sina integrerade annonser. Trots detta finns det en brist i mängden akademisk litteratur som undersöker användningen av dem. Denna avhandling syftar till att förbättra detta genom att bidra till den akademiska diskursen kring Instagram-annonser. Shownight, ett PR-företag för live-events, hade ännu inte annonserat på Instagram. Med hjälp av så kallad split-testing hade denna avhandling som syfte att ta reda på vilka annonsfunktioner som genererar högst klickfrekvens. Testerna genomfördes genom Facebooks ad manager, och även om det är ett unikt verktyg med både fördelar och nackdelar var det effektivt för split-test-annonser i den här studien. Resultaten från denna studie visade att Instagram är en lämplig plattform för att göra reklam för live-evenemang på. Resultaten visade att inriktning på lookalikes samt behaviour resulterar i högst klickfrekvens. Video med fyra hashtags med inriktning på lookalikes, och bild med upp till tre hashtags för behaviour var de bästa annonskombinationerna. Annonserna bör även ha någon form av call-to-action. Studien är begränsad demografiskt och till Shownights publik och reklaminnehåll. Även Facebooks ad manager har begränsningar som en split-testing-platform när det gäller att annonsera jämnt över den givna publiken

In today’s knowledge based economy information is a company’s most valuable resource. The technology industry in particular demands vast amounts of knowledge for innovation and development. Software development requires constantcommunication, exchange and collaboration. Although there is a variety of business collaboration and communication tools on the market, from a rather basic social intranet to a full-fledged digital workplace, most organization cannot manage to harvest their full potential and benefits for their business’s performance. By means of a case study carried out at an internationally operating Swedish game development studio this report aims to investigate what technological andcultural factors influence the result of an organization’s communication ecosystem. Based on the findings the goal is to better understand how to implement collaborative tools that add value to employees’ work with a focus on knowledge sharing. A literature study to identify common factors that are intertwined with the success of an organization’s collaboration tools ecosystem was performed. Thereafter a number of selected employees were involved in qualitative research in the form of interviews, focus groups and contextual inquiries at their workplace. The literature revealed 10 recurring factors that are inseparable from the success or failure of an internal communication ecosystem. The main findings include that a well functioning digital workplace initiative by all means can improve overall performance, not only increasing work efficiency but also by positively influencing employees’ relationships. Digital workplace tools have become an essential part of modern business operations and will most likely become even more important in the near future. Businesses must learn much about themselves, their employees and how to make knowledge accessible without hindrances if they want to stay competitive in the world of tomorrow. / I dagens kunskapsbaserade ekonomi är information ett företags mest viktigaste resurs. Speciellt teknikindustrin kräver en ofantlig stor mängd kunskap för innovation och utveckling. Mjukvaruutveckling kräver konstant kommunikation, utbyte och samarbete. Även om det på marknaden finns en stor variation av samarbets- och kommunikationsverktyg för företag, från grundläggande sociala intranät till fullfjädrade digitala arbetsplatser, så kan de flesta organisationer inte nå sin fulla potential gällande deras verksamhets prestation.Genom en fallstudie som genomförs vid en internationell spelutvecklingstudio i Sverige ämnar den här rapporten att undersöka vilka tekniska och kulturella faktorer som påverkar resultatet av en organisations kommunikations ekosystem. Målet är, baserat på fallstudiens resultat, att få en bättre förståelse hur samarbetsverktyg ska implementeras för att addera värde till de anställdas jobb, med fokus på delande av kunskap. För att identifiera faktorer som är kopplade till en organisations framgång och deras samarbetsverktyg så genomfördes en litteraturstudie. Därefter var ett flertal av de anställda involverade i en kvalitativ studie med intervjuer, fokusgrupper och kontextuella frågor gällande sin arbetsplats. Litteraturstudien avslöjade tio återkommande faktorer som är oskiljaktiga för framgång eller misslyckande i ett internt kommunikations-ekosystem. Huvudsakliga resultatet inkluderar att ett välfungerande digitalt arbetsplatsinitiativ för all del kan förbättra den övergripande prestationen. Inte bara gällande ökad arbetseffektivitet utan även de anställdas relationer. Digitala arbetsplatsverktyg har blivit en viktig del av modern affärsverksamhet och kommer sannolikt att bli ännu viktigare inom en snar framtid.

COVID-19 hit the world causing global health, social and political problems. Exceptional misinformation about the pandemic has been circulating through social media and contributed to the public panic and confusion about how to deal with the crisis. In addition to fake news and rumors, conspiracy theories are among the most common type of COVID-19 infodemic.Given the prevalence of misinformation in the context of COVID-19 and the harmful effects of conspiracy theories on the people’s behavior, the purpose of this study is to investigate the following question: “How is the discourse about COVID-19 conspiracy theories, as presented through popular videos in the Arabic social media, structured to negotiate identities, and construct ideologies?The study applied the Van Dijk CDA framework to analyze the text, context, and worldviews. Empirically, it is based on a sample of the 13 popular conspiracy videos that circulated through Arabic social media.At the textual level, the analyzed conspiracy videos constructed conspiracy theories by narrating major themes:1) depopulation of the world to reach the target of the golden billion; 2) dismantling the existing economic system and establishing a new one; 3) genetically modifying the COVID-19 virus in the lab.Conspiracy theory videos presented five forms of conspirators to support the conspiracy structure: abstract conspirators (secret cult, elite); individual and family conspirators (Gates, Trump, Rockefeller, Rothschild, Tedros); organizational conspirators (WHO); corporation conspirators (Pfizer, BioNTech, and Moderna); and state conspirators (USA, UK, China).The conspiracy videos used several semantic and discursive practices including access, setting, lexical style, metaphor, rhetorical, and denial. Ant-Semitism, anti-western and Ismailism ideologies reflected in the videos, affected the world views and promoted the conspiracy narratives.The study suggests that the existing ComDEv strategies have to be revised and equipped with a thorough analysis of the conspiracy theories taking into consideration the proliferation of conspiracies in the post-truth era and its association with fake news and alternative facts