After World War II, Europe has only experienced two wars, in the 1990s when Yugoslavia dissolved and now in 2022 when Russia went to war with Ukraine. Regardless of the outcomes of wars, it is clear that wars continue to recur in a continent that prides itself on its peaceful aspirations. During the breakup of Yugoslavia, the war in Bosnia was, in terms of scale,  the most terrible of all wars in the Balkans. In addition, it was the war that received extensive media coverage. This affordance has not been fully utilized. After the war ended, the Bosnians went a long way in rebuilding their devastated community. Based on a semiotic analysis of media representation of war-torn reality in this community, it was found that community subjectivity built up at a similar rate to the media's representation of their reality. The results show the five most commonly used terms to describe Bosnians in connection with the Bosnian War. These terms are 1. Genocide 2. Crime 3. Tragedy 4. Invaders 5. Victims. And,  results show that realistic depictions of war presented in the media reduce victim identification in war-devastated communities.

Online sports betting is an industry that has seen a huge surge in popularity in the US since 2018, and the companies behind this surge have enjoyed exponential increases in profits. Accompanying the increased interest in and profits of online sports gambling is a large spike in advertisements created by companies that offer online sports betting services. Although gambling is an activity that is recognized as highly addictive and potentially destructive for certain individuals, the companies that offer sports gambling services in the US face little to no government regulation in how they advertise their services. This study aimed to investigate the advertising narratives deployed by the four most popular online sports betting companies in the US (FanDuel, DraftKings, Caesars Sportsbook, and BetMGM) in terms of their frequency, using the precision afforded by the method of qualitative content analysis. Additionally, this study deployed semiotic analysis with the constructionist approach to representation and the concept of myth to examine how the most frequently used narratives in online sports betting advertisements draw on broader systems of meaning in order to persuade audiences. This study found that FanDuel, DraftKings, Caesars Sportsbook, and BetMGM most frequently used narratives of online betting and celebrity feature in their advertisements. Using semiotic analysis, this study found that the narratives of online betting and celebrity feature often translated to mythologized and often unrealistic depictions of sports betting which represented it as an activity that allowed sports bettors to align themselves on the same hierarchical level as professional athletes and Hollywood celebrities, while largely ignoring the risks that are inherently attached to gambling. The findings of this study stand as an exploratory accounting and examination of the currently unregulated advertising practices of the largest sports gambling companies in the US.

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This essay aims to explore the use of neolocalism and social terroir by small-scale, independent breweries in Sweden. This will be achieved through a collection of quantitative data, semiotic analysis and discourse analysis of a selection of beer labels from breweries located in Skåne. A total of 22 beer labels are analysed through quantitative analysis and four are further analysed through semiotic- and discourse analysis. The results show that neolocalism and social terroir is used by a few of the researched breweries. These breweries use graphic elements such as images, product names and text with a local, historical and cultural connection in order to appeal to their targeted market.

This thesis examines how Boohoo, Shein, and Zara communicate their sustainability efforts on Instagram and how users react. Despite increased global awareness of sustainability, the fast fashion industry's rapid trend turnover, driven by social media and influencers, fuels consumption and environmental harm. Guided by theories of strategic communication, organizational legitimation, CSR communication, and transparency, the research used critical visual methods, including semiotic and qualitative text analysis. The analysis found that these companies use visual content to appear transparent, shift environmental responsibility onto individuals and the industry, make vague sustainability claims, and partner with influencers for legitimacy. User comments reveal concerns about worker treatment, skepticism towards sustainability efforts as greenwashing, and criticism of influencer partnerships. However, some users legitimize these practices, believing all businesses are equally culpable. The study concludes that while fashion companies recognize the risks they pose and attempt to address them, users are unimpressed by superficial efforts. The gap between companies' staged transparency and users' demand for real change highlights the need for genuine commitment to sustainability. Companies must be transparent and accountable to avoid greenwashing accusations and maintain consumer trust. This growing consumer awareness and empowerment suggest that critical examination by users and authentic sustainability efforts by companies are essential for future legitimacy.

The subject of the thesis is the problem of portrayal of the elderly in Vecernicek animated cartoons for children. Content analysis is conducted on twenty-two selected animated Vecernicek stories that portrayed older characters (371 cartoons for a total of 2974 minutes). The objective of this paper is to examine the depiction of the elderly in Vecernicek cartoons and to point out age stereotypes. The first part of the paper consists of a theoretical framework necessary for the subsequent analysis, particularly media depiction, media representation, construction of reality, the relationship between media depiction, reality and stereotyping, which are then accompanied by characterization of the stories, their meaning and also by definition of old age. Next, all twenty-two analyzed cartoons are briefly introduced. Quantitative content analysis is conducted to examine the frequency and context of depiction of male and female elderly characters, and the overall message. Using qualitative content analysis, six coherent groups of media depiction of the elderly are created, then using semiotic analysis, six specific examples of age portrayal in Vecernicek cartoons are introduced.

This diploma thesis on the "Non-Parliamentary Political Parties in Media Communication Process. Communication Behaviour of Non-Parliamentary Parties in the Czech Republic prior to the Parliamentary Elections of 2006" suggests that political parties wishing to succeed in the dynamically changing media environment today need to present themselves through the refection of contemporary trends in the development of political communication. Based on the hypothesis that the non-parliamentary (i.e. small) political parties fail to master these principles of media and political communication, which is one (but not the single) reason why they fail to reach spectacular results in elections, this diploma thesis investigates four Czech non-parliamentary political parties participating in the parliamentary elections of 2006. The theoretical part of this diploma thesis introduces the current phenomena of political communication, including the mediatisation and personalisation of politics and the concept of politics as entertainment, with a focus on the examples of professionalization of political communication, political marketing and the importance of public opinion. In the practical part of this diploma thesis, the fundamental definitions are used and the method of semiotic analysis applied to the media...

This diploma thesis discusses modern myths that appear in the selected audiovisual commercials. The commercials are part of the advertising campaign for a Galaxy Note 3 device produced by Samsung Company. The campaign was launched in the fall of 2013 and continued through the spring 2014. As Samsung is also one of the official partners of the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, some of the analyzed content is dedicated to the relationship between the two. Semiotics and marketing communication provide a broad theoretical framework for the later semiotic analysis. The chapter on semiotics discusses the modern perspective on the sign theory, offering Ferdinand de Saussure's and Charles Sanders Peirce's points of view. The main focus of the thesis is, however, on the process of the so-called secondary signification and modern myths creation introduced by Roland Barthes in his Mythologies. The marketing communication chapter then introduces several theoretical starting points in the field, various marketing models, and the communication mix with the focus on advertising, its components and potential psychological effects. In the final part, selected commercials are introduced along with the plot description and a semiotic analysis of the environment, characters, individual elements, images, colors and the...

Main focus of my Master's Thesis is to conduct a research of mythological elements and themes that appear within the narrative structure of selected episodes of BBC television series Doctor Who, deriving from the initial hypothesis that such mythological patterns are still recurring and repeating even in the structure of stories produced by modern show-business industries, which renders their content intrinsically more attractive for any audience. We analyse selected episodes from both arks of the Doctor Who's story individually - the old one, which began in the sixties, and the new one, which is considered to be a reboot of the original series and aired in 2005. The originally intended educative element of the series and its sudden disappearance is also a part of our research. Main analysis of our paper consists of a semiotic analysis of the text of the television series utilizing the point of view of the critical reader that was introduced by Umberto Eco, and deriving from the definition of modern myth that appears in works of Roland Barthes, archaic myth, studied for example by Carl Lévi- Strauss, and Jungian archetypes.

The erotic website SuicideGirls.com can be viewed in the context of striptease culture. The term was coined by the sociologist Brian McNair in 2002 in order to describe the tendency to openly theme the human sexuality within media content. Simultaneously with the metaphorical and literal exposing, the intimacy is being constructed within the discourse as an expression of true self and, as Feona Attwood develops McNair's claims speaking about sexualization of culture, the representation becomes the selfrepresentation. The SuicideGirls present themselves especially on soft-pornographic photographs through a significant alternative stylization, mostly tattoos and piercing. While for example Megan Jean Harlow (2009), a feminist critique representative, considers the style-creating elements of tattoo as an expression of distinctive practices, according to Shoshana Magnet (2007) the soft-pornographic mode of representation reduces the distinctiveness of SuicideGirls to a certain form of standard pornography. The semiotic and psychoanalytical interpretation of SuicideGirls.com focuses on softpornographic symbolic of the distinctiveness perceived by the community. Jacques Lacan's mirror stage concept explains the principles of subject's identification with his or her specular image. It is also important to...