In this thesis project, the phenomenon of news media representation of punitivism has been researched through a methodology of a socio-semiotic discourse analysis framed within a theoretical structure of Durkheimianism and news value components. Articles concerning MetroXpress’ representation of criminal deviance and punishment were located through a buzzwords search within the newspaper’s online data archives. The search granted a total of 702 word-occurrences appearing in 216 separate news articles. The discourse analysis seperated these articles into the five sub-discourses of “Blurbs”, “Verdicts”, “Spectacle”, “Single Agent Focus” and “Cultural Context”. The distribution of articles pertaining to specific sub-discourses were distributed such that the highest concentration of articles was present in the “Blurbs” discourse, closely followed by “Verdicts”, placing “Single Agent Focus” and “Spectacle” in the middle, while the “Cultural Context” discourse was made up of the fewest articles. The methodology granted insight into functional punishment and MetroXpress’ representation of criminal deviance, revealing the newspaper’s discourse to be one of situated timeliness which positively promoted judicial-systemic activity. Presenting an anti-Durkheimian conception of deviance in relation to its supposed manifestation in any society, the newspaper presents the phenomenon as defeatable by the judicial system. In this regard, MetroXpress has positioned itself as the mouthpiece of the justice system, in such a manner that they function as a legitimizing force for the punitive system. Beyond the hierarchy of eliteness which permeates the discourse, a normalization of the conception of criminal deviants as dysfunctional obstacles who prohibit organic social cohesiveness is another facet of the discourse. Consequently, a primary focal point within the narratives center on the functional relationship between the deviant individual, systemic representatives and their relation to social cohesiveness.

This thesis is a critical investigation of the language used in online news headlines to report the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, which took place on February 14, 2018 in Florida, United States. By analyzing 50 online news headlines, published by five of the most popular national and local news outlets, the purpose of this study is to understand how the words chosen by the journalists contribute to creating particular meanings, or representations of the event, and if through these representations any hidden ideologies are put forward. The framework used to carry out the research combined Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis with van Dijk’s sociocultural approach, resulting in the study of three different but interrelated elements of discourse: sociocultural practice, or the social and cultural context of gun ownership in the U.S.; discourse practice, hence the processes behind the production of online headlines and the cognitive processes behind their interpretation; and finally, a linguistic analysis of the text itself. The analysis found that, despite the anticipated neutral stance of news journalists, dictated by professional values such as integrity and objectivity, hidden meanings and ideologies necessarily transpire in the language used to describe the violent event, and to represent victims and attacker.

El texto completo de este trabajo no está disponible en el Repositorio Académico UPC por restricciones de la casa editorial donde ha sido publicado. / Online social media has made the process of disseminating news so quick that people have shifted their way of accessing news from traditional journalism and press to online social media sources. The rapid rotation of news on social media makes it challenging to evaluate its reliability. Fake news not only erodes public trust but also subverts their opinions. An intelligent automated system is required to detect fake news as there is a tenuous difference between fake and real news. This paper proposes an intelligent gravitational search random forest (IGSRF) algorithm to be employed to detect fake news. The IGSRF algorithm amalgamates the Intelligent Gravitational Search Algorithm (IGSA) and the Random Forest (RF) algorithm. The IGSA is an improved intelligent variant of the classical gravitational search algorithm (GSA) that adds information about the best and worst gravitational mass agents in order to retain the exploitation ability of agents at later iterations and thus avoid the trapping of the classical GSA in local optimum. In the proposed IGSRF algorithm, all the intelligent mass agents determine the solution by generating decision trees (DT) with a random subset of attributes following the hypothesis of random forest. The mass agents generate the collection of solutions from solution space using random proportional rules. The comprehensive prediction to decide the class of news (fake or real) is determined by all the agents following the attributes of random forest. The performance of the proposed algorithm is determined for the FakeNewsNet dataset, which has sub-categories of BuzzFeed and PolitiFact news categories. To analyze the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, the results are also evaluated with decision tree and random forest algorithms. The proposed IGSRF algorithm has attained superlative results compared to the DT, RF and state-of-the-art techniques. / Revisión por pares

Fake news has great potential to cause damage to brand reputations and finances. Given the technical challenges of detecting fake news in time, it is inevitable that social media platforms will end up hosting fake news. The competition for attention and advertising revenue is intense. Many consumers read only the headlines. Fake news stories that mention brands in headlines can help news publishers garner social media engagement but can also hurt brands, raising concerns about brand protection. In this research, I focus on the first two stages of the information processing model – attending to information and encoding information (Berk 2018; Miller 1988).In Chapter 2, I investigate whether mentions of human and product brands are associated with news consumption and news retransmission (how brand mentions attract attention; the first stage of information processing). Using data from a news platform that generated both traditional and satirical (fake) news stories, I quantify the effects of brand mentions on social media engagement for both traditional and fake news. The analysis encompasses mentions of popular product brands, such as Apple, and mentions of human brands, such as famous politicians and actors. A framework based on uses and gratifications theory (UGT) aids in variable selection and the interpretation of results. My results imply that human brand mentions generally have a positive effect on news consumption and retransmission for both news formats, and product brand mentions affect engagement of satirical news via an interaction with news categories. Results provide further insights on the roles of sentiment, narrative style, and writing quality of news stories. The high potential of human and product brands in the headlines, especially human brands in satirical news, may be indicative of their potential to be misused by unscrupulous news media publishers. This reminds social media platforms of their responsibility to protect brands and consumers from fake news. Next, in Chapter 3, I examine the effectiveness of before-warnings (BWs) and after-warnings (AWs) in alerting consumers and reducing the persuasive influence of fake news on brand attitudes (how warning timing affects encoding; the second stage of information processing). Results reveal that for both negative and positive fake news, BWs are sometimes no more effective than no-warnings. Although BWs do encourage more critical processing of misinformation, this can distract consumers from the warning message. More importantly, Chapter 3 demonstrates a robust after-warning effect (AWE). Warning consumers after they have read fake news with AWs consistently leads to a higher reduction of persuasive influence (negative or positive) than BWs. AWs are more salient and arouse greater reactance to the false information than BWs. The resulting loss in control over how the news influenced attitudes and increased anger lead to the observed after-warning effect. News valence also matters since positive news is perceived to be more credible and processed less critically than negative news. AWs relative to BWs thus arouse feelings of being tricked when fake news is positive but not when it is negative, also leading to the after-warning effect. The findings have several theoretical and managerial implications. / Business Administration/Marketing

The purpose of the current study was to examine how the media's positive and negative portrayals related to racism impact the viewer's attitudes regarding African Americans. Previous research has shown how misinformation in the media can implicitly affect one's level of racism. Previous research has also shown that gender and one's sociodemographic status can affect the way individuals perceive misinformation. This study aimed to address the relationship between misinformation depicting racist views directed toward African Americans and consumer's attitudes toward African Americans. It was hypothesized that exposure to misinformation will have a significant impact on participants' level of racism. A Series of linear regression analyses were conducted to determine how race, sex, social class, right-wing authoritarianism, religious involvement, political preference, and exposure to real and fake news combined predict the pro-black and anti-black views of participants. Results indicated that exposure to fake news did have a significant negative impact on a pro-black viewpoint. However, the results of the study indicated that real or fake news did not significantly impact anti-black views.

Only a fraction of events make it into Swedish news media. Previous theories on news values and selection agree on the news factors that enhance news value but new digital formats might be putting the relevance for these news values up for discussion. Younger generations primarily consume news through social media and curate their own personalized news feeds and if journalists don’t adjust their news production after this new climate we might look into democratic consequences for society in general and young people in particular. This study explores the relevance of traditional news factors for news on TikTok. Based on a summary of previous research on news value, ten news factors are proposed for studying news in new digital formats. These ten factors are the main part of the theoretical framework of this study. The study aims to investigate the news supply on TikTok and examine the correlation between news factors and news dissemination. 171 TikTok videos from five Swedish nationwide news channels with TikTok accounts were randomly selected. These videos were coded based on views, shares, and the ten news factors. Regression analysis and a correlation matrix were conducted. The study finds that news factors are present on TikTok, but few correlations exist between these factors and dissemination. Notably, views correlate with geographical proximity and surprising elements. This questions the relevance of traditional news values for user interest on TikTok and questions the role of journalists in the future. Future research could explore the news supply on TikTok based on user feeds instead of traditional news values, given that young people are influenced by their personalized feeds.

During recent years a subculture of people who live in “involuntarily celibacy”, so called incels, has received attention in the mainstream media. The definition of an incel has since the 1990s changed from meaning any person who is alone, to being an online-community of hateful, angry and lonely men. The popularity of the term “incel” in the current media debate can be explained by a number of mass murders and violent crimes that have been committed by men who are a part of that community. As of today, no incel-related crimes have occurred in Sweden, however the term is still heavily discussed in the media. The conversation peaked in 2021, when the Swedish psychiatrist and author Stefan Krakowski released a book based on in-depth interviews with Swedish incels. During the same time period, TV4 made a documentary on the subject of incels that contained conversations with three men who fall into the incel spectrum. The purpose of this study is therefore to do a thematic analysis on how incels were portrayed in Swedish news media during 2021, and analyze the result with help of two theories; news values- and framing theory. From this specific time period, 15 articles were selected for analysis. The results showed that there are some themes that dominate the media, for instance the perception of incels as violent or incels as sad and lonely. This study can be scientifically relevant to show a nuanced picture of how incels are portrayed and what frames that can lead to in society. It can bring new perspectives to the discussion about incels and by that further develop the research field of journalism as well as alternative subcultures.

After eighteen years filled with technical evaluation, the European Parliament agreed on a new online copyright directive in 2019. The aim of this directive is to modernize the rules that were last adjusted in 2001, to create a better balance between content providers and online platforms. After the European Commission introduced a proposal for a copyright directive in 2016, caught it the attention of many, mainly due to two articles: Article 11 and 13. The reason for this attention was the practical way in which these articles contributed in reaching the general aim of the new copyright directive. This research focuses on Article 11, which also became known as the ‘’link tax’’. Content creators should, according to this article, get rewarded for their work by other online parties. Within these eighteen years, those who were born in this timeframe, known as Generation Z, grew up in a world where technology is everywhere and at any time. This generation was born in the 90’s, grew up in the 00’s, and is shaped by the presence of technology in which they communicate, interact, and consume knowledge. Because of that, this study presents the effects of the implementation of the new European copyright directive, on Generation Z in Europe. / Efter arton år av teknisk utvärdering så enades Europaparlamentet om ett nytt upphovsrättsdirektiv på nätet år 2019. Syftet med detta direktiv är att modernisera reglerna som senast anpassades år 2001, för att skapa en bättre balans mellan innehållsleverantörer och online plattformar. Efter att Europeiska kommissionen införde ett förslag om upphovsrättsdirektiv år 2016 så fångades uppmärksamheten hos många, främst på grund av två artiklar: artikel 11 och 13. Orsaken till denna uppståndelse var huruvida dessa artiklar bidrog till att nå det slutgiltiga målet av det nya upphovsrättsdirektivet eller inte. Denna forskning fokuserar på artikel 11, som även blev känd som '' länkskatt ''. Innehållsskapare bör enligt denna artikel få ersättning för sitt arbete av andra online-parter. Inom dessa arton år så växte de som föddes inom denna tidsram, känd som Generation Z, upp i en värld där teknik finns överallt och när som helst. Denna generation föddes på 90-talet, växte upp på 00-talet och formas av närvaron av teknik där de kommunicerar, interagerar och konsumerar kunskap. På grund av detta presenterar denna studieeffekterna av implementeringen av det nya europeiska upphovsrättsdirektivet för Generation Z i Europa.

The aim of this study is to examine how a young audience perceives a local newschannel’s radio newscast which has been modified with a jingle. The study is of societaland scientific relevance as journalism should communicate truth and relevance in a waythat gives the audience the ability to independently form an opinion about social issues.The study shows how music is used and can be used in a news context and how itaffects the listener's attention and experience of news broadcasts. The essay’s jingle canbe described as a sound logo, a short melody that is used to draw attention to brands.The essay uses the word jingle synonymously with the word sound logo motivated bythe fact that the term jingle is more established among Swedish media consumers. Byinvestigating the issue on an individual level, the objective is to provide a result that cansupport decisions made during the production process within media companies. Makingthe news content more adapted to promote the attention of the listener can conceivablybenefit the individual listener, the media company that produces the news content andgroups in society that currently do not consume news via radio. The findings may alsoopen up further research on news broadcasting in radio. The reasons people avoid newslay the foundation for the subcategories and themes which answers the researchquestion. News avoidance theories contextualize the current media landscape and whatpeople prefer in their media consumption. The study is conducted with a two-partmethod. The results are mainly based on qualitative interviews done in a semistructured form. GSR-equipment has been used as a triangulation tool to increasecredibility and minimize the risk of faulty or distorted results. The GSR-measurementsshowed the physical reactions of the respondents and created possibilities forsupplementary questions based on these. The measurements only showed when a2respondent reacted and not why, therefore the qualitative interviews were still vital toanswer the research question. The results from the qualitative interviews show that alocal news broadcast modified with a news jingle is perceived as clear and partlycredible. But it is not perceived as entertaining. More specifically, the jingle's role forthe format of the broadcast is perceived as distinguishing news items by highlighting thestart and stop which contributes to clarity. The main reason why the news broadcast isperceived as credible is that it sounds similar to what the respondents have previousexperience with. The study cannot prove that the jingle has any function for theentertainment value.

This study uses a qualitative methodological approach to investigate how core drives from the Octalysis framework can influence news engagement among young adults. This study conducts semi-structured interviews to identify young adults’ core drives and attitudes that influence news engagement, followed by participatory design sessions in order to explore gamification opportunities. The results show that understanding what core drives influence young adults’ motivation, can clarify how gamification could be implemented to increase their news engagement.