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Detta arbete inkluderar en undersökning av hur unga förhåller sig till brand content på Sociala medier. Resultaten av denna undersökning har bidragit till två slutprodukter som i sin tur levererats till två olika uppdragsgivare. Målgruppen är unga personer i åldrarna 15-24 bosatta i Sverige. Undersökningen har även inkluderat om målgruppen följer företag/varumärken på Sociala medier, anledningarna till varför de gör det, samt vad för slags innehåll som intresserar dem. Utifrån resultaten kan vi konstatera att ålder och/eller kön inte är avgörande för hur unga personer förhåller sig till, och konsumerar, brand content på sociala meder. Det beror snarare på personlighet och individuellt beteende. Av de data som har samlats in under arbetet har vi skapat två olika slutprodukter, en vardera till de olika uppdragsgivarna. / This project contains an analysis about how young people relate to brand content on Social media. The findings of the study have contributed to two end products that have been delivered to two different customers. The target group is between 15-24 years old and are residents in Sweden. The analysis has also included if the target group follow brands on Social media, reasons why they do, and what kind of content interests them. The report shows that age and/or gender does not correlate to how young people relate to, or consume, brand content on social media. The consumption of and relation to social media content is more dependent on aspects like the consumer’s personality and individual behaviour. From the data collected during the project we have created two different end products, one to each of the different clients.

Social media become a powerful communication medium for effective online social interaction globally. The use of various social networking sites has integrated into people’s daily lives especially among young adults. Problem arises when personal information is used without individuals’ involvement and relevant privacy risks increased. The main focus for the thesis is to investigate privacy perception and risks knowledge of Facebook usage among university students in Sweden. Based on this focus, the research identifies the key reasons that students decide to use and still use Facebook despite of privacy risks. The study also explores how user perspective of privacy affects the utilization of Facebook. The adopted methodology is qualitative research through the methods of interview and Facebook data analysis among ten young adult students at Linnaeus University in Sweden. As result, the research has identified seven concepts and three special outcomes to answer the research questions. Through the analysis, we have recognized weak perception of privacy risks among university students. Although users claim they are privacy concerned yet large amount of private information is shared on Facebook. The findings have shown that users are somewhat willing to accept certain part of potential privacy risks and personal information usage by different parties, in exchange for benefits and needs of online interaction in today’s modern society. Users believe the shared personal information on Facebook is under control and they can prepare for possible consequences. However, we believe that people’s needs for popular online social interaction outweigh privacy concerns. We suggest that it is significantly important for social networking sites’ users to balance benefits and risks, in order to maintain balanced usage and positive effects of online personal privacy. In the end of the thesis, we have suggested two future research directions based on our research topic.

Difficulties in learning and understanding statistics in college education have led to a reform movement in statistics education in the early 1990s. Although much work has been done, there is more work that needs to be done in statistics education. The progress depends on how well the educators bring interesting real-life data into the classroom. The goal was to understand how course design based on First Principles of Instruction could facilitate tertiary-level students' conceptual understanding when learning introductory statistics in a technology-enhanced learning environment. An embedded single descriptive case design was employed to investigate how integrating technology and real data into a tertiary level statistics course would affect students' statistical literacy, reasoning, and thinking. Data including online assignment postings, online discussions, online peer evaluations, a comprehensive assessment, and open-ended interviews were analyzed to understand how the implementation of First Principles of Instruction affected a student's conceptual understanding in a tertiary level introductory statistics course. In addition, the teaching and learning quality (TALQ) survey was administered to evaluate the teaching and learning quality of the designed instruction from the student's perspective. Results from both quantitative and qualitative data analyses indicate that the course designed following Merrill's First Principles of Instruction contributes to a positive overall effectiveness of promoting students' conceptual understanding in terms of literacy, reasoning, and thinking statistically. However, students' statistical literacy, specifically, the understanding of statistical terminology did not develop to a satisfactory level as expected.

During a public health crisis, officials need to communicate with the public quickly and accurately. Social networking sites (SNS) have been identified as an appropriate channel for this type of communication; however, few studies have examined what makes SNS messages effective. Further limiting research in this area is a lack of attention to theoretical constructs that may explain message effectiveness in SNS. In this dissertation, I propose that diffusion of innovations (DOI) be used to understand SNS and message success on SNS. In doing so, I compare traditional message success (persuasion) to message success on SNS platforms (amplification) and provide a brief overview of relevant message design constructs. I then conduct a study to analyze Twitter messages from state and local health departments and federal government agencies charged with communicating to the public during a public health crisis to test these theoretical claims and identify message elements that increase SNS message amplification. The context of the study is the fall 2014 Ebola crisis in the United States. The messages are first classified using content analysis methods to identify message design elements related to content, structure, and style. The success of those elements, in terms of the influence they have on messages amplification, is then evaluated using negative binomial regression. The results suggest that specific content (hazard information, response instruction, and official action), effective structure (word and image graphics), and key style choices (using figurative language, one hashtag or a keyword hashtag, and the first person) improve the amplification value of a message. Other choices, like mentioning another user, reduce the amplification value. These findings add to the evidence that suggests that DOI enhances scholars’ understanding of communication on SNS. In addition, the results demonstrate that messages can be conceptualized as innovations, and, as such, their characteristics influence the likelihood that they will be diffused through SNS platforms. The results suggest that those charged with communicating during a public health crisis use specific message strategies for SNS messages. These strategies include recommendations related to message content, message structure, and message style. Finally, the results suggest that scholars should continue research to understand the relationship between message design and message amplification in order to improve our knowledge of communication on SNS and help practitioners identify effective communication practices on this new and important channel. Research should also examine the relationship between persuasion and amplification in order to understand how amplification influences attitudes, behavioral intentions, and behavior in both those who amplify the message and in those who receive the message as a result of that amplification.

Online services such as e-marketplaces, social networking sites, online gaming environments etc have grown in popularity in the recent years. These services represent situation where participants do not get to negotiate face to face before interaction and most of the time parties to transaction remain anonymous. It is thus necessary to have a system that rightly assesses trustworthiness of the other party in order to maintain quality assurance in such systems. Recent works on Trust and Reputation in online communities have focused on identifying probable defaulters, but less effort has been put to come up with system that make cooperation attractive over defection in order to achieve cooperation without enforcement. Our work in this regard concerns design and investigation of trust assessment systems that not only filter defaulters but also promote evolution of cooperativeness in player society. Based on the concept of game theory and prisoner's dilemma, we model business games and design incentive method, compensation method, acquaintance based assessment method and decision theoretic assessment method as mechanisms to assure trustworthiness in online business environments. Effectiveness of each of these methods in promoting the evolution of cooperation in player society has been investigated. Our results show that these methods contribute positively in promoting cooperative evolution. We have further extended our trust assessment model to suit the needs of a mobile ad-hoc network setting. The effectiveness of this model has been tested against its capability to reduce packet drop rate and energy conservation. In both of these the results show promise.

This thesis aims to explore three pre-teenage children’s text production in online social networking sites. Social networking is a mainstream youth activity in the UK, conducted by (at the time of writing) almost 50% of 10-12 year old internet users (Ofcom, 2011, p.44). While social networking has been the subject of much interest amongst scholars and policy-makers, little has been published that documents the use of social networking amongst pre-teenage children. The literature that does exist is largely concerned with documenting usage (Ofcom, 2011; Livingstone and Haddon, 2010), and children’s safety in these contexts (Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF)/Byron 2010; DCSF/Byron, 2008; Livingstone et al., 2011a). This study aims to explore children’s text production in social networking sites with rightful regard for this concern, but with a focus on how children behave as text producers in these contexts. Working from an interpretive qualitative research paradigm, a purposive sample of three children who used (at the time) the popular social networking site Bebo was selected. The children were interviewed using a semi-structured interview schedule three times between June 2008 and May 2009. Interviews were transcribed using a line by line coding method. To support these data and contextualise analysis, screenshots of the children’s profile pages were also collected at each interview. Using a constructivist grounded theory approach (Charmaz, 2006), these data were analysed within data sets around each interview incident, and then synthesised to build a case study for each participant. This recursive process involved initial and focused coding, where following the construction of key codes for each data set, the codes were organised under thematic headings and finally used to construct tentative categories that described how the children behaved as text producers. Four tentative categories were constructed to describe the participants’ behaviour: text production to achieve social positioning; text production to achieve social control; text production to enact a text producing role; and text production for pleasure. Based upon the elaboration of these categories, a model of text production as mastery is proposed. In this model, children’s text production is regarded in relation two spectrums of mastery: a spectrum of social control and a spectrum of textual crafting. This study concludes by recommending that the social networking context must be recognised by educators as a meaningful context in which children’s mastery of these critical skills can be developed in order that they can they learn to be critical and masterful text producers in the new digital age (Gee, 2011 and Hayes, 2011).

In the last few decades, Internet mediated intercultural competence has received a great attention in the field of applied linguistics and foreign language (FL) education especially with the evolution of web 2.0 technologies and social networking sites that facilitate interaction and communication between different cultural communities and individuals. Research in the field of Online Intercultural Exchange (OIE) is extremely varied and researchers have focused their attention on various aspects of OIE such as promoting intercultural communicative competence (Belz, 2002; O'Dowd, 2003; Schenker, 2011; Muller Hartman, 2000), facilitating online relationship building (Ware, 2005; Thorne, 2003, Jin & Erben, 2007) and improving writing skills (Ware, 2005; O'Dowd, 2003), developing pragmatic competence (Kinginger & Belz, 2005). Despite the plethora of research in this area, gaps in the literature still exist. First, literature lacks studies on language learners of less commonly taught languages (e.g. Arabic), (Thorne, 2006) and more importantly most of the studies are based on western contexts mainly in Europe and the USA. Second, few studies have explored the potentials of social networking sites on OIE projects in promoting intercultural learning (Aoki, 2009; Jin, 2015). In an effort to fill the gaps in the research, this study links English language learners (Saudis) with Arabic language learners (Americans) to investigate to what extent OIE on Facebook between these two groups of learners contributes to their intercultural communicative competence (ICC), specifically, exploring how and what are the components of Byram's model (ICC) manifested in the OIE project. Furthermore, it examined the affordances of Facebook in the OIE project according to students' use, practice and perception. Informed by a sociocultural framework, this study took a constructivist mixed methods approach to analysis of data from learners' online discourse on Facebook, the researcher's journal and observations, pre-survey, semi-structured interviews, and a questionnaire. Data analysis and interpretation revealed that when students' participation were mutually compatible, the students were able to build meaningful relationships, used a range of various questioning techniques, and engaged in genuine dialogue, OIE has a great potential for developing students' intercultural competence, as many objectives of Byram's ICC model were manifested. Findings also revealed that the project has strengthened Saudi students' cultural identity as they found the space to present their culture and country beyond the stereotypical image that dominates the media. As with regard to Facebook affordances, findings showed that the semiotic design and various semiotic resources of Facebook (e.g. multimodal posts, sharing, notification, friending, semi-automated features, etc.) afford students' engagement in intercultural discussion, students' collaboration, and students' interpersonal relationship building. The study also identified some of Facebook's constraints that limited students' participation due to technological, cultural and social factors. In sum this study illuminates the nature of online intercultural communication between Arabic and English language learners, contributing to the scarce research on this population. It also uncovers the unique affordances as well as constraints of Facebook on an OIE project. Based on this study, several pedagogical implications and suggestions are made for future research in the field of online intercultural exchanges.

This diploma thesis deals with the context of two current topics - cyberbullying and behaviour on social networks, in the population of the second grade of primary school, thus in adolescents. In the literary-review part the developmental connections of cyberbullying in adolescence, signs and forms of cyberbullying, its occurrence, cyberbullying actors and risk factors associated with it are presented. The thesis also deals with communication on the Internet and description of social networks. Present researches of cyberbullying and social networks are presented. The empirical part deals with the combined research carried out in 43 pupils at the secondary school. Cyberbullying was measured using a questionnaire and then profiles were analysed on Facebook and Instagram. Key words: Cyberbullying, Social networking sites, Facebook, Instagram, Internet communication, Adolescence