This thesis attempts to better understand the importance and application of the personal influence model in relationship building between organizations and public decision makers. The personal influence model was added by Sriramesh and Grunig (1992) as a potential fifth model to Grunig and Hunt's (1984) four models of public relations practice (as cited by Grunig in Heath, 2007); however, this essential relationship building approach has not been examined in the public relations literature as it could have been. Scholarly research since the addition of the personal influence model has mostly occurred in Asia and India. Studies on the topic have been published in just a few instances in the United States. Furthermore, the studies have largely focused on internal communication or on exclusively domestic contexts, with no attempts to extend the examination to organizations that necessarily practice relationship building across national boundaries. This study seeks to contribute to the public relations literature based on the personal influence model by examining the practice of this model outside of Asia, in a global, non-profit religious organization that is headquartered in the United States, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (hereafter referred to as LDS Church). For three decades this global organization has implemented and emphasized the building and nourishing of one-on-one relationships with civic leaders and key decision makers across nations. This research will also examine the impact of such practices. The method chosen for this study is a qualitative exploration through personal interviews with ten public affairs practitioners of the organization, from both domestic and international arenas. The practitioners of this entity have accumulated decades of combined experiences in cultivating the personal influence model.

Influencers are the new opinion leaders, especially for young people in today's mediated society. Young women tend to follow beauty-oriented influencers, who are often using feminist messages in their content. The aim of this study is to investigate how young women, aged 16-19 years, feel that they are influenced by following beauty-oriented influencers and how they perceive the relationship between influencers, feminism and beauty. The study is also aimed to investigate the possible paradox that may arise in the relationship between beauty focus and feminism. This leads up to the following two research questions, RQ1: How do young women feel they are influenced by following beauty-oriented influencers in social media? RQ2: How do young women perceive the relationship between influencers, feminism and beauty in social media? The theoretical framework is based on a constructionist paradigm and consists more specifically of feminist media theory and theories about postfeminism, combined with theories about personal influence and representation. To conduct the material we are interviewing four focus groups. The material is analyzed through a thematic analysis. The results show that these young women are more positively affected by content they perceive as genuinely feminist, such as norm-breaking content, and more negatively affected by content they perceive as less feminist, such as norm setting content. The focus group participants also see a paradox in using feminist messages in beauty-related marketing. These insights can contribute to an increased awareness of what content in social media is more or less developmental for young women, and underlines the importance that influencers talk about feminism in a way that does not diminish the word.

Partant du constat de la progression expresse des sports de nature dans nos sociétés et de leur décontextualisation aux zones urbaines, nous cherchons à traduire en un modèle les évolutions de ces équipements dédiés. L’objectif est double : une logique de recherche appliquée et une logique scientifique. La première motivation est d’apporter des clefs de lecture aux professionnels et élus afin de bien anticiper sur les équipements de demain et leur gestion. Le deuxième objectif est d’apporter une modeste contribution à la théorie de la diffusion de Rogers, sur les produits de loisirs, catégorie de produits à forte sensibilité inter individuelle. À travers une approche comparative internationale,opérée sur 3 disciplines aux ancrages distincts (escalade, eau vive et parcours acrobatique en hauteur),nous appréhendons les relations entre les paramètres liés à la demande et à l’offre, et ce aux différents stades du cycle de vie des produits. Dans cet environnement complexe et multidisciplinaire, nous cherchons ici à mieux comprendre les déterminants du processus de diffusion des activités sportives et des équipements liés. Il nous importe, également, d’évaluer comment ce modèle de diffusion ressemble aux modèles reconnus dans d’autres secteurs d’activité et enfin, de vérifier deux hypothèses: H1) La demande guide l’innovation et la diffusion plus que l’offre ; H2) L’ artificialisation des sports de nature contribue à développer la pratique. / Based on the observation that lifestyle and nature sports did evolved drastically over the past decades,to such a point we can see them moving to new settings among urban areas, we will try to translateinto a model, these evolutions of purposed build facilities. The aim is dual : on one hand it is obvious that those findings will help decision makers belonging to private and public domains, forecasting the future of such facilities and their management. On the other hand, it is interesting to see how the diffusion theory model of Rogers does apply to products and services, with such a dependence topersonal influence, as leisure and tourism products can be. Looking through three different sports(indoor rock climbing, artificial white water activities and urban acrobatic parks), we will analyze the combination of demand and supply factors at each stage of the product life cycle, in order to find outwhich one influences the other. Among this environment with multiple entries and prospectives, we aim at gaining a better understanding of the diffusion process of sports services and facilities among urban areas, evaluating how the diffusion process matches existing diffusion models of technological innovation and checking, in the meantime, two hypothesis: H1) Demand guides the innovation and its diffusion ; H2) Artificialization contributes to developing the sport itself.

Abstract In the modern era of social media influencers have assumed a more prominent role and become a wellknown phenomenon. Many companies today choose to enter in to marketing programs of influencers promoting the company`s products through their own social channels e.g. on Instagram or blogs. Influencers are exposed in most contexts on all social media, where the content is reachable for both young and adult people. This study is viewing how young, respectively adult women relate to influencers on social media. The aim of the essay is to illuminate the attitudes and relations of different generations towards the phenomenon. Furthermore the study investigates why people consume, or desist to consume contents of influencers. The questions formulated after the purpose are: • In what way do the respondents experience consumption pressure from influencers? • What role do influencers play in the daily media use of the responders? • What drives women to follow influencers? • How does the attitude towards influencers differ between the two age categories? To survey the attitudes of young and the adult women in this context it was imperative for us to talk to them. Thus the study assumes a reception perspective, to obtain a reliable interpretation of the reality of the respondent. Hence we decided to carry out six quality interviews with women ranging in age between 31 and 39 years and two group interviews with young women, all of them above 18 years of age. This study is based on the theories of recognised researchers, which are adequate to answer our purpose and questions. The most substantial theory is the uses and gratifications theory and the theory of the two-step hypothesis, which is crucial to understand how influencers are created. Furthermore the user model is elaborated, understood as how people use media, and how opinion leaders are created. Then it emerges how the new media are from a point of view of the uses and gratifications theory, how social media can induce problems when it comes to a persons wellbeing. This study is established on substantial researcher's theories which are relevant in order to provide answers to our purpose and questions. The most extensive theories are uses and gratifications theory and two-step flow, which are central components that provides the understanding on how people supply their needs and how opinion leaders are created. Subsequently, the new media is viewed through uses and gratifications theory, how social media may cause problems regarding the well-being of a person.    4 To summarize, based on the results of the study, we may conclude that influencers tend to affect all respondents. The first group interview of the younger had a negative attitude because of how they were influenced by them. The second group as well as the older women had almost frequently a positive attitude on how they were influenced by them as they received valuable inspiration from the influencers in return. Finally our conclusion is that the influencers have an impact on the great masses, and not because of different ages. The distribution of gratuities is an motivation to follow influencers and that they are always a part of their consumption of media. / Sammanfattning I den nya tiden av sociala medier har influencers tagit en allt större plats och blivit ett välkänt fenomen. Många företag väljer idag att marknadsföra sig genom influencers som marknadsför företagets produkter på deras sociala kanaler, exempelvis på deras blogg eller Instagram. Influencers syns i de flesta sammanhang på alla sociala medier, där både unga och gamla människor tar del av deras innehåll. Den här studien undersöker hur unga kvinnor respektive vuxna kvinnor förhåller sig till influencers på sociala medier. Uppsatsen avser att se hur olika generationer förhåller sig till influencers och vilken attityd de har till fenomenet. Studien undersöker även varför man konsumerar eller inte konsumerar innehåll av influencers. De frågeställningar som har utformats efter syftet är: • På vilket sätt upplever respondenterna att de påverkas av influencers? • Vilken roll har influencers i vederbörandes medievardag? • Vad är det som gör att kvinnor följer influencers? • I vilken mån skiljer sig synen åt gällande influencers i förhållande till de två olika åldersgrupperna? För att få reda på unga kvinnor samt vuxna kvinnors attityder till influencers var det viktigt för oss att prata med dem. Följaktligen har studien utgått ifrån ett mottagarperspektiv, för att få en trovärdig tolkning av personens livsvärld. Således valde vi att genomföra sex kvalitativa samtalsintervjuer med kvinnor som var mellan 31-39 år. Samt två fokusgruppsintervjuer med unga kvinnor där samtliga var 18 år fyllda. Den här studien grundar sig i ansedda forskares gedigna teorier som är väl väsentliga för att ge svar på vårt syfte och frågeställningar. De mest omfattande teorierna som ligger som grund är användningsmodellen och tvåstegshypotesen, som är centrala delar för att förstå hur människor tillgodoser sina behov och hur opinionsledare skapas. Därefter grenar det ut sig i hur de nya medierna är utifrån användningsmodellen, hur sociala medier kan medföra problem beträffande en människas mående. Sammanfattningsvis kan vi utifrån studiens resultat konstatera att samtliga respondenter som studerats tar del av influencer-innehåll samt påverkas av dem. Den ena fokusgruppen av de yngre hade en negativ inställning på grund utav hur de påverkades av dem. Den andra fokusgruppen samt de äldre kvinnorna hade nästan alltid en positiv inställning i hur de influerades av dem, då de i gengäld fick värdefull inspiration från influencers. De slutsatser vi kan dra av den här studien är att influencers alltid påverkar människor och att det inte beror på ålder. Utdelning av gratifikationer och identifikation är motivationer för att följa influencers och de har alltid en roll i deras medievardag.    2

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The objective of this master's thesis is to examine the concept of opinion leadership-to define it, to describe where it originated from, how it has developed over time, and finally, to apply this phenomenon to the Czech journalist community and its current members. Based on relevant international literature, the author of this paper assumes that opinion leaders exist in every social group or community around the globe, possessing an extraordinary personal influence on the decision-making and opinion-forming process of the people within their social network. Simply put, opinion leaders are the individuals to whom others look for guidance, credible and accurate information and context when they are in doubt or experiencing indecisiveness. For journalists, the possibility to have someone to whom they can turn for all the above-mentioned is crucial, the author believes, for it is a daily part of the profession to handle information cautiously, to evaluate news critically and objectively, and to get acquainted with a confusing topic in a relatively short period of time. Firstly, the paper offers a thorough theoretical framework for understanding the concept of opinion leadership, which is followed by a practical part consisting of a two-phase research examining opinion leaders in the ranks of Czech...