Researchers have taken a particular interest in children’s drawings as a means of representing and communicating knowledge and perspectives but a review of literature reveals that researchers routinely use drawings as a way of obtaining data without considering their function or value. This ESRC-funded research aims to explore drawing as a method of accessing children's perspectives and has three central research objectives which consider methodological and analytical factors relating to the use of children’s drawings as a research tool. These are: to develop a principled approach to analysing and interpreting children’s drawings, to create guidelines for the use of drawing as a research tool, and to gather children’s perspectives on play through the method of drawing. The research objectives were achieved by asking the following three questions: How can children’s drawings be analysed using a principled approach? What are the major factors to be considered when using drawing as a research tool? What can drawings reveal about children's perspectives on play? The study involved two visits to the homes of eight preschool children aged four. The sample included four girls and four boys from central and north-east Scotland with half of the families being categorised as being of low socioeconomic status. Visits were flexible and unstructured allowing the child autonomy regarding our level of interaction and the types of activities (such as free play and conversation) with which they wished to engage. The second visit included a prompted drawing activity in which I invited children to express their perspectives on play. The topic of play was chosen (i) to offer children a meaningful research activity to investigate the issues surrounding the method, (ii) to explore the task of representing an abstract, yet familiar, concept and how this may influence children’s drawings and representations of play, and (iii) as an extension of the ESRC project Young Children Learning with Toys and Technology at Home (Plowman et al., 2012) by giving greater emphasis to children's own perspectives on play and exploring the ways in which this can be achieved. My theoretical approach is not to consider drawings as reproductions of reality, but to value and attempt to understand children’s drawings as a semiotic vehicle in which messages are created and conveyed during the drawing process through representation and signification. Informed by social semiotics (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996) the research presents an innovative four-step approach to analysing children's drawings (4-SASA). The protocol, a key contribution of the research, was developed to promote a more systematic analysis, involving (i) isolating signs within drawings through manual annotation, (ii) documenting the child’s understanding of signs and the significance attributed to them, (iii) organising signs using specific categories of social semiotic analysis (mode, size, colour, salience) and identifying the child’s motivation and interest for specific sign production, and (iv) synthesis of the child’s perspectives from steps 1-3. Post hoc methodological examinations elucidated the following four key factors to be considered when using young children’s drawings: (i) contextual sensitivity of the drawing process, (ii) children’s perceptions of the research task, (iii) the complex task of representing an abstract and elusive concept such as play, and (iv) whether there is a fundamental difference between drawing spontaneously (non-commissioned) and drawing on request. Evidence from the study supports previous literature in demonstrating the potential of drawing as a method of accessing children’s perspectives. However, findings suggest that rather than routinely selecting drawing as a method for representing children’s perspectives, researchers need to be more thoughtful about the ways in which factors such as the social and contextual framing of drawing and approaches to data collection can affect research outcomes. The thesis concludes by discussing how these emerging issues impact research outcomes, along with implications for future implementation and analysis of drawings.

Den här uppsatsen undersökte hur medielogiken uttrycks i Rädda Barnens och Sverige för UNHCR:s videomaterial under flyktingkrisen september 2015. Då majoriteten av den medialiseringsrelaterade forskningen i Sverige har intresserat sig för partiledardebatter och politisk kommunikation finns det en kunskapslucka kring hur medielogiken formar andra sfärer i samhället. Denna studie avsåg att genom semiotisk analys och mulitmodal analys undersöka videomaterial i dessa två ideella organisationer, för att identifiera mediernas berättartekniker i dem. Sammanlagt analyserades fyra videoklipp i två ideella organisationers Facebook-sidor under september 2015 utifrån teorin om semiotik och medielogik. Två tydliga teman i videoklippen framträdde ur resultatet. Dessa benämnde vi som Flyktingkrisen som empati och Flyktingkrisen som verklighet. Ur dessa framkom fyra underteman. Dessa benämnde vi som dramatisering, dokumentering, reklamformat och nyhetsformat. Studiens resultat visade även att medielogiken personifiering förekommer starkt i samtliga av våra studieobjekt. Utifrån detta resultat kunde vi dra slutsatser kring genom vilka stereotyper personifieringen framkom i.   Vår studie bidrar därmed till forskningsfältet med kunskap om stereotyper av flyktingar. I tidigare forskning av Ylva Brune (1998) urskiljs två sorters stereotyper av flyktingar: offer eller hot. Vidare menar Urban Ericsson (2001) att stereotypen den duktige flyktingen tenderar att förekomma i media endast på individnivå. I vårt material fann vi att en flykting gestaltades annorlunda än de stereotyper vi fann i vår tidigare forskning. Vi valde att kalla den här kategorin flyktingen som målmedveten då denne är fast besluten att ta sig fram trots omständigheterna. Vi fann även en icke tidigare dokumenterad framställning av flyktingar som likartad publiken när det gäller välfärdsbakgrund. / The aim of this paper was to examine how media logic’s are expressed in Save the children’s and Sweden for UNHCR’s video material during the migrant crisis. Since the majority of the mediatization research in the Swedish context has focused on the party leaders and political communication, there is a lack of awareness regarding how media logic shapes other spheres in the community. This study’s objective was to examine video material through semiotic and multimodal analysis, to identify media logics. In total four videos from two nonprofit organizations, that were published in September 2015, were analyzed based on the understanding of media logics.  Two distinctive themes appeared in the results. These were titled migrant crisis as empathy and migrant crisis as reality.  From these, four subthemes appeared. These were titled dramatization, documentation, advertising formats and news format. The result shows that personalization occurs strongly in all of our study.  Our study contributes to the research field with knowledge about stereotypes of refugees. We found a new kind of stereotype that we have chosen to call the determined refugee. The choice of name for this category is based on our interpretation of a refugee as determined to survive. In addition to the study’s contribution of how the representation of refugees among nonprofit organizations now take a new form, we also found a not previously documented representation of refugees like the crowd when it comes to the welfare background.  Our study contributes to knowledge about how mediatization is expressed in strategic communication.

<p>Today, we live in a consumption society. We buy products to soothe our needs and desires. Thru material things we can express our own personal identity and shopping is seen more as a pleasure than a need to survive.</p><p> </p><p>With the background media- and communication studies, the reason of this study was to explore how blogs as a social medium can influence the consumption ideal in society<strong>. </strong>With dialogical analysis and semiotic analysis we wanted to see if we could find a specific consumption culture in the content of six blogs we did our studies on. We found that the blogs showed us that there is normal to have everyday luxury and spoil oneself with expensive things. However, some of the result clearly shows that there is a difference between the Swedish and the international blogs.</p>

Denna studie har genomförts med syfte att undersöka hur kroppsaktivister artikulerar kropp och kroppspositivitet genom bilder och texter på deras Instagramkonton. Studien syftar även till att undersöka om, och i så fall hur, artikulationerna av kroppspositivitet skiljer sig mellan olika kroppsaktivister. Slutligen syftar studien till att studera hur kroppsaktivisterna artikulerar syftet med rörelsen. Det teoretiska ramverket består av tidigare forskning och etablerade teorier i postmodern feminism, fat studies, aktivism och objektifiering. Studien har genomförts med ett kvalitativt förhållningssätt och utförts genom en diskursanalys och semiotisk bildanalys av text och bild från tolv svenska kroppsaktivister på Instagram. Resultatet av studien visade att det finns olika åsikter kring vilka kroppar som får vara med i den kroppspositiva rörelsen. En del för en diskussion kring att den endast är till för personer med normbrytande kroppar, medan andra menar att den är till för alla kroppar. Studien visade även att kroppsaktivisterna visualiserar sina kroppar på olika sätt. En del tar bilder som liknar hur kvinnor porträtteras i reklam medan andra tar bilder som bryter mot normer genom val av vinkel och posering. Slutligen visade studien att kroppsaktivisterna ser olika på vilket syfte rörelsen har. Vissa för en diskussion kring att rörelsen ska få andra att må bra i sin egen kropp, andra om att medierna ska visa upp fler kroppstyper. Andra talar om att kroppspositivismen finns för att kvinnokroppen ska sluta utstå objektifiering. / This study has been conducted with the purpose of examining how body activists articulate body and body positivity through imagery and text on their Instagram accounts. This study also aims to investigate if the articulations of body positivity differ, and if so how. Finally, the study aims to examine how body activists articulates the purpose of the movement. The theoretical framework of this study is based on past research and established theories about postmodern feminism, fat studies, activism and objectification. The study has had a qualitative approach and is based on discourse analysis and a semiotic analysis of texts and images from twelve swedish body activists on Instagram. The result of the study showed that there are different opinions regarding which bodies that can be included in the body positive movement. Some of the participants argued that the movement includes all body types, while some argued that the movement should only include norm-breaking types of bodies. The study also showed that the body activists articulates their bodies in different ways. Some of the participants have taken pictures similar to how women are portrayed in advertisements while others have taken norm-breaking types of pictures by the choice of angle and pose. Finally, the study showed that the body activists have a different point of view regarding the purpose of the movement. For some of the body activists the aim of the movement is to make others feel good about their own body while others wants to see more body types in the media. Some of the participants feels that the purpose is to stop objectification of the female body.

This diploma thesis deals with semiotics (the study of signs) in audiovisual commercials. In its theoretical part it is engaged in the field of semiotics. At this point it investigates mainly the problems of a sign, the key element of semiotics. Furthermore it follows the development of the knowledge acquired through semiotics to other areas of research which help to detect the meanings of communication. Those areas are the levels of signification, thus denotation, connotation and myth. This chapter especially draws on Roland Barthes and his publication Mythology, which inspired this diploma thesis. The theoretical part continues by explanation of the main problems of commercial. It gives out the definition of a commercial, explains commercial as a communication process, but also depicts the strategies used in a commercial. Furthermore it tells about conceptualization of a commercial by Jean Baudrillard. Since the thesis analyses audiovisual commercials, it also deals with the sound and picture of a commercial. In its practical part the thesis continues with the analysis of seven audiovisual cosmetic products' commercials itself. Semiotic analysis is done according to Barthes' model. The thesis describes each commercial's story, scene, and sounds, and then analyses those elements as well as the...

This thesis focuses on the ways of depicting female beauty in ELLE magazine. In the theoretical part, the concept of beauty is defined and the development of the ideal of beauty and the influence of the media on people are described. The attitudes and research on beauty in the media are mentioned and primarily the emphasis is put on depiction of female beauty in the media. The reasons for women accepting the ideal of beauty presented by the media, the real nature of beauty in the media and the possible influence on women's self-esteem are dealt with, as well. The thesis also introduces the development of female magazines and their current role on the Czech market. At the end of the thesis, the campaigns aiming at unreal ideal of beauty in the media are critically evaluated. Mixed research method is used in the thesis; by means of the content analysis the photos of women (in advertisements as well as other pictures) are investigated with emphasis on their characteristics and in connection with the topic of the articles. The semiotic analysis examines the front pages and the message they convey. The aim of the analysis was to determine the most frequent depiction of women and to establish the proportion of articles dealing with appearance.

Today, we live in a consumption society. We buy products to soothe our needs and desires. Thru material things we can express our own personal identity and shopping is seen more as a pleasure than a need to survive.   With the background media- and communication studies, the reason of this study was to explore how blogs as a social medium can influence the consumption ideal in society. With dialogical analysis and semiotic analysis we wanted to see if we could find a specific consumption culture in the content of six blogs we did our studies on. We found that the blogs showed us that there is normal to have everyday luxury and spoil oneself with expensive things. However, some of the result clearly shows that there is a difference between the Swedish and the international blogs.

The Diploma thesis The Semiotic Analysis of campaign spots of parliamentary election in 2013 uses the semiotic analysis to analyse campaign spots broadcasted by the Czech Television before the elections in 2013. With regards of the purpose of this paperwork we chose the spots of victorious political parties, the ones who have exceeded the minimal level of 5% of total votes to gain the mandate, thus ČSSD, ANO, KSČM, Top 09, ODS, Úsvit and KDU- ČSL. We emphasise signs and means of expression used in chosen campaign spots. The aim of this paperwork is to answer the question what message campaign spots address to voters. Moreover, the diploma thesis tries to answer the question, if all victorious campaign spots contain the same signs and means of expression which could help them to influence the result of elections. The hypothesis of this diploma thesis suppose that all campaign spots will contain the same signs and that they will ask people to vote. Furthermore, we expect that none of the campaign spots will directly criticize other political parties or their policy. The theoretical part of the paperwork presents the basic concepts of political communication, political advertisement and its regulation in the Czech Republic. The paperwork introduces the electoral system of the Czech Republic and current...

This diploma thesis, called Hyundai commercials from the semiotic point of view, deals with audiovisual commercials and their meanings, which can be hidden in them. The thesis is inspired by the book Mythologies which was written by Roland Barthes. The first part of the thesis is a chapter about the car manufacturer Hyundai, its background in the Czech Republic and also the reason for the choice of this brand is stated here. This part is followed by a chapter about advertising. Advertising is a type of persuasive communication, it is a part of mass media and is connected to other sciences such as psychology, social studies, linguistics and others. Relevant knowledge of these fields is used as well. The theoretical background of the thesis is extended in the next chapter which focuses on the science of semiotics. Key terms such as semiosis, sign, denotation, connotation, primary and secondary semiological systems and myth are defined. Also the method of semiotic analysis is explored. In connection with the terms mythology and ideology a subchapter on Roland Barthes follows. In the methodology chapter the research design is stated and research questions are formulated. The analytical chapter consists of the denotative parts of analyzed commercials (the plot together with the scene and sound is...

The study's purpose is to use qualitative methods to analyze the image FRIDA conveys of reality through textual and visual communication. The study is interested in the ideals that are produced, how femininity, masculinity and sexuality are presented as well as how the content is mediated. The theories used in the study are mainly regarding representation, stereotypes and gender. This study involves the methods critical discours analysis based on Faircloughs threedimensional model and a semiotic analysis using expressions like denotation, connotation and myth. In summary, the study has shown that the magazine FRIDA hasn´t followed the objective that’s being conveyed as goals for its content. That to oppose normative values in society and to strengthen their readers. Instead, the mediated message is consistently lined with hegemonic thoughts and values regarding gender as well as sexuality.