This thesis deals with visual communication in the form of photography. Explaining the theories of Roland Barthes and Vilém Flusser we point out the tight relationship of this medium with reality that obscures its constructive character. The witness role of photography seems to be essential in the context of journalism, where we are offered a story by the pictures that is however mistaken for reality itself. The thesis tries to present practices of media discourse that make us perceive an event as newsworthy. It draws on the theory of news values and the methods of social semiotic analysis and applies these to the winning photos of the contest Czech Press Photo (2006-2015). We highlight the semiotic resources used in the meaning-making process in relation to each picture. The results show that the preferred constructed news values are negativity, aesthetic appeal, proximity and personalisation and that the winning photographs mostly strengthen their semblance of being strictly informative.

The main aim of this thesis is to find out how the Christmas holidays are represented in products of Czech visual culture. This representation could have changed in times, based on cultural influences and ideologies and in terms of particular product where Christmas was represented. We'd like to evaluate if the constant representations of Christmas which are anchored in our culture still exist. In theoretical part of the thesis we focus on historical development of displaying Christmas in Czech region. The analytical part of thesis analyses television broadcast of four Czech area-wide channels during Christmas time in 2017 and observes which cultural influences are contained in. Other part of thesis looks into visual culture and pictures. For we mainly focus on television in analytical part, another part of thesis includes information about this media and about particularity of mass media in general. For analysis of media information we've chosen a combination of two type of research: quantitative content analysis and semiotic analysis.

On screen we can find different types of leadership styles and film has a great potential to influence our view on leadership. In this essay we have analyzed how the filmmakers have portrayed different leaders and styles in movies. Northouse defines leadership as a process in which an individual influences a group to achieve a common goal. He highlights that it is possible to define three different main perspectives of the concept, focus on the group process, focus on behavior and focus on personality. We wanted to analyze how and to which extent the leader communicates with the subordinates and what type of leader this makes them. By looking at organizational communication in the films we can contribute to media and communications research. Our main question is “How is the leadership portrayed in three big award-winning movies from the 2000s?”. The purpose of this study is to analyze how formal leaders and their leadership are portrayed in modern American movies. Big American movies have a large audience and therefore have big potential to affect our view on leadership. That's why it's relevant to analyze how movies portray leaders in different situations. We have used a qualitative content analysis method in our essay. This is because we have been striving to achieve a comprehensive description of the studied area. We have also used a semiotic analysis for the studied area. We have analyzed how the leaders talk, what they say and how they behave. We have come to the conclusion that leadership can look very different. Based on previous research and our analysis of the movies we have also come to the conclusion that communication is a very important part of a functioning leadership and an organization. The choice of semiotic resources such as gestures, words and symbols can affect the leadership. A leader does not always have to have a specific style, it's possible to adapt different styles to different situations and people and you can also use a mix of different traits from different styles. We have also realized that it is possible to develop and change the leadership to what suits the organization and to what the followers are motivated by. A certain leadership style may not work in one organization but work in another.

The purpose of this reception study is to increase the understanding of how perceptions correspond between communicators and recipients regarding which feeling is perceived to engage the most in the context of sustainability communication. The theoretical frame stretches from Sara Ahmed's theory about how actions are reactions of feelings, the green gap, living in denial, Tim Jensen’s theory about environmental guilt and theories in politics that include subactivism and Chantal Mouffe's theory about the importance of an “us and them” in opposition political movements. The study also includes theories within semiotic analysis, reception analysis and Stuart Hall's encoding/decoding model. The reception study is divided into two methods. The first method is a visual semiotic analysis that made it possible to find the preferred reading of the commercials. The second method is qualitative interviews which made it possible to analyse the way recipients interpret the message of the commercials. Analysing tools within reception analysis were applied to the material from the interviews with the recipients. The study also utilized a comparative analysis of interview responses between the communicators and recipients to locate possible differences in perceptions of sustainability communication.   The study's results show that positive emotions encourage recipients to maintain the already sustainable lifestyle they consider themselves to have but it also make them feel skeptical to the message. The negative emotions encourage them to make a behavior change but it also makes the recipients feel hopeless. The analysis however shows that the target group do not believe that they will make any further changes as they already believe that they are acting sustainably. The study has also identified some of the challenges that communicators face when it comes to sustainability communication. One is that the recipients respond best to the communication that they tend to avoid and another challenge is to find the balance between positive and negative emotions so that the recipient feels that the message is trustworthy. The study has also shown the importance of giving the recipients sustainable tools they feel they can act on. Dissonance between recipients and communicators regarding the sense of community has been located.

This diploma thesis titled "The Style and Language of Sport News and Journalism, Moderators, and Commentators in Czech Television (Focused on Petr Vichnar)" describes and analyses the speech of Petr Vichnar (of Czechoslovak Television fame) from the station's inception up to the present day. The thesis is divided into six main parts. The first part deals with general stylistic elements, the second focuses on the style and language in the contemporary speech of Petr Vichnar. Part three deals with the style and language of this author in the past whereas the fourth section shows the transformation of speech. The fifth and sixth parts deal with work in television and sports langure and a semiotic analysis respectively. Everyone changes in thein profession, and sports journalists are no exception either. Petr Vichnar began his career in sports journalism at the time when Wi-Fi networks, which allow rapid acquisition of information, were not in common usage. He began to moderate, though not yet using a teleprompter / auto-cue, and so he either had to keep everything in his head or use notes on paper. All this and more contributed to a change of expression of this most important sports commentator and the programs or matches on which he commentated. This thesis aims to discover the style of his speech, shows, and...

ABSTRAKT-aj The aim of thesis is semiotic analysis of chosen audio-visual commercials of children's products. The thesis will contain introduction, ending, theoretic part and empiric part. I introduce semiotics and its classification like subject of science in theoretic part, explain concept of sign, semiosis and conception of sign by three representative of semiotics-Ferdinand de Saussure, Charles S. Peirce and Roland Barthes. Next I will focus on commercial. I will describe commercial discours, communication and marketing mix and classification of commercials. I'll introduce television as medium of commercial and come to the psychology of commercial where I will apply of methods gaining attention of consumers. Next I will apply children's consumer, children's marketing, children's and television commercial, how perception of television commercial influences children of different age, how to eliminate influence of commerical to children and in the end regulation of commercial. In empiric part I will do semiotic analysis of chosen audio-visual commercials of children's products. I introduce method of research and I will make efforts to confirm hypothesis, that commercials use as method gaining attention of children's primarily emotions, but when it is commercial of children 's product aim at adults...

The master thesis focuses on the topic of the media construction "toy as a product" in the television commercials. The main reasons for choosing this topic is mapping of means of media construction of a toy in television commercials, defining semantic structures which the toy is situated in and identify concrete meanings that are usually linked to the toy in commercials. The field of investigation interest was defined in the theoretical part and was situated into a narrower connection in the context of this work. Both the role of a toy in society and its interpretation within culture, ideology and advertisement are defined. We work on the findings in the theoretical part where we identify dominant semantic frameworks which the toy is put into, based on the cultural-semiotic analysis of the contents of television commercials. We also try to discover whether the "toy as a product" in commercials is represented as a socially integrating means. Further we survey whether the television commercials represent "toy as a product" as a pro-family means and what communicative strategies the commercials mostly use for that. All these findings help us to reveal this problematic of media construction "toy as a product" and its socio-cultural dimension.

Around the globe, sensitive nature destinations suffer from media-mediated mass tourism. Especially, the social media network Instagram is often made responsible for these events as its emphasis on visuals is claimed to foster people’s ambition to reproduce photographs of themselves in the epic sceneries they see online. Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs) face a particularly big challenge in using Instagram. While they aim at attracting enough tourists to satisfy the local tourism industry’s needs, they need to apply a careful promotion to avoid attracting more tourists than the natural environments can cope with. Focusing on Sweden as case study, this thesis aims at identifying and exploring how Swedish DMOs currently promote vulnerable nature destinations on Instagram and what significance these economically driven communication agencies thereby attribute the protection of the natural resources. Theoretical implications from sustainable destination management and environmental psychology are employed to develop different communication strategies that enhance the destination’s sustainable image as well as attempt to encourage pro-environmental behavior among tourists. A mixed method design is applied which is dominated by an extensive quantitative content analysis and complemented by a more limited qualitative semiotic analysis. The findings reveal that the implementation of sustainable communication strategies is of varying importance for the six Swedish DMOs considered in this study. In general, their effort of using communication tools to enhance sustainable nature-based tourism is still very low. Future research is advised to investigate in the production as well as audience site to gain further insights in how economic interests might hinder a more sustainable branding and to examine how effective the developed communication strategies actually are in influence people’s behavioral intentions.

My study contains a semiotic analysis of three screen captures of still lifes from the music video PrettyBones by the artist Yeule, directed by Joy 秀 Song. The music video depicts several scenes with inspiration from the Dutch great power era and it’s still life painting. The visual elements of the music video have a focus on the course of life and one's own mortality, themes that have long been addressed through still life painting. My study is based mainly on David Petit’s (1988) studies about the symbolism and meaning of 16th-17th century Flemish still life painting. The study also contains segments of Fanny Ambjörnsson’s (2011) studies about the color pink. The purpose of the study is to investigate what the still life communicates through the context of 16th-17th century Flemish iconography and through acontemporary semiotic reading. Results of the study shows that there are similarities between the themes that are present in the still life with contemporary objects and the more traditional still lifes. It also touches on morals and societal norms about feminine identity.

This thesis investigates reactions of young people in Malmö-Sweden about the proposed Facebook Metaverse. Gauging young people’s association/reactions about Facebook Metaverse before its practical existence is the study's main focus. The thesis assesses Web 2.0 as a pivotal mark that enabled development of social networks and virtual worlds like Facebook Metaverse. Through qualitative interviews and semiotic analysis in data collection, three main themes became noted as both theoretical perspectives and findings of the study that entails the young people's opinions on the soon to be launched Facebook Metaverse. The 3 themes are; Connectivity & interactivity, Anonymity and identity, and Datafication, privacy & commercialisation. The results highlight pros and cons with the Facebook metaverse that encompasses risks of intrusive data collection, possibilities for self-empowerment through avatars and new ways of communicating. The thesis concludes with a created artifact/altered video that presents a critical aspect of Mark Zuckerberg’s version of the Facebook Metaverse informed by the research. / Young adults’ perception of Facebook Metaverse in less than 11 minutes