This thesis project seeks to answer the question of how visual rhetoric put forward in social media content by pro-life and pro-choice organizations may persuade their audiences’ perspective on abortion. Using Sonja Foss’s guidelines for analysis of visual rhetoric, I analyze 24 selected examples of Facebook content posted by two pro-life organizations (Human Coalition and Feminists for Life) and two pro-choice organizations (Planned Parenthood Action and NARAL Pro-Choice America) in 2017. My analysis found that the visual rhetoric posted by both organizations on social media can and does function as a form of visual metonymy. Because of this, these visual strategies can stand in for more complex arguments in dramatic ways. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2018. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Social media is valuable when searching for information or to ease communication but what about the health risks, loss of productivity and physical activity, imaginary ideals and addiction? One third of women 16-29 years old suffer from a lower mental health and according to a large number of studies, social media has a big part in it. This study investigates how Instagram can be modified in order to reduce the nega- tive effects on young women caused by the app. Through interviews and a workshop, five concepts were produced and tested. The preferred solution for the users was to add a symbol if the image has been retouched, this was made to be able to separate the fake from the authentic uploads in Instagram. Totally removing the phone from the process was not an option since it is used in more situations like communication. Another concept that was instantly popular was the option to keep follow or unfollow recently added accounts. This makes the user aware of the content and is given the possibility to evaluate the accounts. Along with these concepts, it could be suggested that people need to be more aware of the problems caused by social media. It could also be suggested for users to work on their self-compassion, to not critique oneself too much, since fitspo-accounts affect users substantially. It is not the time spent on social media that matters but what people are actually engaging with.

There has been a digital transformation of the political public sphere. The political conversation is now taking place on multiple social media platforms and information is filtered through a new kind of gatekeeper, the influencer. The aim of this thesis is to describe how the public political conversation is framed in the Youtube-series Partitempen, and if deliberative discussion is taking place in the comment section. And whether the deliberative discussion is derived from the conversation in Partitempen or not. To answer the research questions two methods are used. A deductive qualiative tematic analysis, which applies the theory personlization of politics on the conversation between party leader and influencer in Partitempen. As well a content analysis based on the concept of deliberative discussion is used to research the comment section. To conclude, the conversation in Partitempen is framed around the themes in described in personalization of politics. New dimensions between themes appear by using the qualitative resarch approach. One of them is ’the role of the party leader’ which focuses on the change of private life when beeing a party leader. The other is that the ’private life is used as a benchmark for the party leaders’ own political stand. The result from the content analysis show that deliberative discussion is taking place in the comment section. The most common topic is substansive questions reagarding politics, and that those often derives from the conversation in Partitempen.

Engineers Talk Be it through conversations, meetings, informal discussion, phone calls or E-Mail, Engineering Design Communication is the main tributary for the sharing of knowledge, thoughts and ideas, and therefore, fundamental to Engineering Work. An engineer spends a significant portion of their day communicating as they 'fill in the gaps' left by formal documentation and processes. It is thereby, an inherent source of explicit design rationale that relates to (and very often supplements) Engineering Records and their generation. Engineering Design Communication is not only central for Engineering Work and Records but also offers potential - through aggregation - to reveal underlying features, patterns and signatures that could aid current and future Engineering Project Management. As Engineering Design Communication plays such a pivotal role, it comes as no surprise that there is much extant research. The majority of this is descriptive and has focused on identifying patterns in engineers' communication behaviour as well as analysing the utility of currently employed communication tools/mediums (such as, E-Mail and meetings). However, little prescriptive research - through either a tool or process - has been undertaken. This may be due to the considerable challenges facing research in this field such as the need to maintain a high-level of Engineering Context, ensure the right engineers are able to participate and associate the communication with its respective Engineering Records. All of which, has to be achieved within an Engineering Context where teams are becoming larger, more mobile, multi-disciplinary & distributed, and often performing variant or incremental design. Although, it is argued that Social Media has the potential to militate these challenges through the use of technologies that provide agile development, support for ubiquitous computing and sharing of multimedia. Therefore, this thesis investigates how Social Media can be used to support Engineering Design Communication. This is achieved through the elicitation and synthesis of the requirements for supporting Engineering Design Communication, and consideration of the effective application of the Social Media. This forms the basis from which a Social Media approach to support Engineering Design Communication is created and then instantiated within a tool called PartBook. PartBook has been developed iteratively and involved an industrial study to evaluate and improve functionality. It has since been used within an eleven week Formula Student project involving thirty-four students from multiple engineering disciplines in a distributed working environment. The analysis of which addresses the validation of the requirements that has led to amendments and generation of new requirements as well as evaluation of the Social Media approach that has led to insights into the potential impact such a tool could bring to Engineering Work, Records and Project Management.

Background: This study examines longitudinal associations of frequency of social media use, cyberbullying involvement, and online social network characteristics with depressive symptoms, social anxiety symptoms, and mental well-being at one year follow-up in a multi-ethnic sample of early adolescents living in areas of East London characterised by high levels of deprivation. Studies of the impact of adolescent social media use on mental health have primarily used cross-sectional data; longitudinal research is needed to investigate temporality and lasting mental health effects. Method: Longitudinal analyses (n=2480) of data from the NIHR funded Olympic Regeneration in East London (ORiEL) study examined the impact of baseline (aged 12-13) social media use including: frequency of instant messaging (IM) and social networking site (SNS) use, cyberbullying, and online network characteristics (network size and communication with strangers); on adolescent mental health outcomes including depression (measured using the Short Mood and Feelings Questionnaire), social anxiety (measured using the Mini Social Phobia Inventory) and well-being (measured using the Warwick Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale) one year later. Results: After adjustment for gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, school and baseline mental health, cybervictims (13.6%) and cyberbully-victims (20.4%) had greater odds of reporting symptoms of depression (victims: OR=1.44, 95% CI [1.00, 2.06]; bully-victims: OR=1.54 95% CI [1.13, 2.09]), and symptoms of social anxiety (victims: OR=1.52, 95% CI [1.11, 2.07]; bully-victims: OR=1.44 95% CI [1.10, 1.89]) than their uninvolved peers. Communication with strangers (24.7%) was also associated with increased odds of depression (OR=1.35, 95% CI [1.04, 1.76]) at follow-up. Conclusions: Poorer mental health outcomes were reported by students who encountered risks online (i.e. those using IM at high frequencies, those who communicated with strangers online, and those victimised by cyberbullying). Given the prevalence of these risk factors, clinicians and public health practitioners should address social media activity when assessing adolescent mental health.

This thesis explores how participatory online rituals of mourning serve to mediate public death events that are collectively experienced as forms of social injustice, and the modes of collectivity they engender. I introduce the term Social Media Memorialising (SMM) to describe this phenomenon. The mediated deaths of SMM are experienced as a transgression of the sacred, and in the process reveal societies' constant negotiation with death, virtuality and memorialising online. SMM entails appropriating the processes of public mourning such that the means of symbolic production shifts away from media and political gatekeepers and towards networked publics. In analysing SMM on YouTube, this thesis employs a mixed-methods research design premised upon a multimodal approach to discourse, system-network mapping, and thematic analysis. I present two case studies for comparative analysis: those of Neda Agha-Soltan in Tehran in 2009, and that of Lee Rigby in London in 2013. Both constitute emblematic examples of 'public death events': the death of individuals considered to be exceptional, morally significant, traumatic and worthy of public mourning and grief. This framework captures the complex forces involved in the mediation of death online, and the modalities and mechanisms of virtual space as ritual space. SMM manifests through innovative, strategic and performative forms of grieving that hybridise online and offline practices, highlighting the conditions of the death event as integral to the modes of grieving that follow. What emerges is a platform-specific vernacular that reflects the form, function and terms of engagement for online grieving. SMM coalesces the commemorative with the performative, shaping both the social significance of the death event and the attitudes regarding the death and its causes.

Magister Artium - MA / The theory of multimodality (Kress 2010; Kress and van Leeuwen 2006) has impacted major research fields like Linguistics and Education by significantly extending our understanding of what is meant by communication through different modalities and media. More recently, scholars have been paying attention to multimodality in the world of advertising (Lick, 2015; Enli, 2014). Drawing on the work from multimodality scholars like Machin and Mayr (2012), Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) and others, this study explores the multimodal choices that were strategically made by a major multinational beverage company, Coca Cola. Specifically, these choices relate to its health-related television advertisements that were created in response to health-related criticisms of its products by consumers and health institutions over the years. The purpose of this study is to examine whether the beverage company is ‘spinning the truth’ in response to health-related criticisms by using certain multimodal strategies in its healthrelated television advertisements posted on the YouTube website. The study also critically reviews the reactions of consumers to these specific television advertisements on YouTube and the issues they raised in their on-line comments. The findings of this research study illustrate that Coca-Cola did not admit to its contribution to obesity in its health-related television advertisements and it did not address health-related criticisms in the comment sections on YouTube. Instead the brand’s common message and stance in all of the health-related television advertisements was that consumers need to lose the calories that they gain from consuming Coke by eating well, being active and exercising in order to avoid obesity and other health issues.

With the explosion of social media platforms in the interactive digital media realm and companies increased comprehension of the importance of having loyal customers, the question of social media usage in developing customer loyalty has become more and more prominent. Since social media allows firms to engage directly with the end‐consumer at a relatively low cost and with a higher level of efficiency, it is particularly important for small online branded retailers with limited marketing and PR budgets. The purpose of this study is to research how the use of social media can enhance customer loyalty on the Internet. A both qualitative and quantitative approach to data collection and interpretation form the methodological basis of the study. An in‐depth interview was conducted with small online branded retailer L’Homme Rouge to get an understanding of the brands current social media usage as well as future goals and aspirations. An online survey was conducted with L’Homme Rouge’s customers to examine their opinion concerning brands and social media as well as L’Homme Rouge’s social media usage. A total of 82 questionnaires were collected from customers in the age 20‐30 years. The findings indicate that small online branded retailer L’Homme Rouge has a good understanding of what their customers want to see on their social media platforms. This provide them with the possibility to post and upload content that the consumers value. However, the retailer to a certain extent lack knowledge of which factors are important for customers to be loyal and consequently how social media can be used to enhance customer loyalty. The study has found that gaining trust as well as getting customers to recommend a brand, are two important factors in terms of establishing customer loyalty on the Internet. Due to its interactive nature, which is useful for establishing relationships as well as sharing content, the study further provides compelling evidence that social media is an effective tool when it comes to trust and recommendations. The study concludes by presenting various suggestions that small online branded retailers can use to develop and maintain customer loyalty on the Internet. The fact that only one small online branded retailer was examined means that the exploratory findings need to be investigated more rigorously. A larger sample, including more online branded retailers, would permit a more detailed exploration of customer loyalty and social media and further strengthen and extend the results. / Program: Master Programme in Fashion Management

This research aims to describe and analysis consumer behaviour and engagement on Social Media regarding the three following categories: sportswear products, sportswear brands, and lifestyle related to sports, in three different markets: Brazil, China and Sweden. This research has conducted a quantitative approach through an online survey with 363 valid responses. This research contributes to previous studies of consumer engagement on Social Media, with a highlight of how the engagement is performed differently regarding products, brands and lifestyle and how it varies among markets. It also helps the sportswear industry to develop marketing strategies on Social Media according to consumer engagement patterns in different markets. / Program: Textile Management, Fashion Management

How can a company decrease their return rates? And can be this conducted by integrating more with the customer via social media? These two main research questions are the core of this Master-Thesis and are related on the mail-order company BON’A PARTE. The focus on the target markets is Denmark, Germany, and Sweden.Fitting problems, different expectations of the order, and inadequate price-performance ratio are the most return reasons for BON’A PARTE customers. In the fashion industry it is very important to satisfy the customer, especially meeting their demands. Due to the straightforwardness of the Internet it is difficult for mail-order companies to build customer loyalty since Internet users can change via one click to the competitors.In order to reach the study purpose, research question related to e-commerce, returns management, and consumer interaction via social media were focused on.The used methodology during the work was literature, a survey, and a case study. For the theory part literature was used and the survey gave an important overview of the return reasons within the company. By ordering garments from the company a qualitative analysis could be developed which reflected the customers’ expectations.By minimizing the gaps between the customers and the company, which involves keeping the company’s promise the return rate can be decrease and BON’A PARTE can build up a personal relationship to their customers. Social media, like the networks Facebook and Twitter are good possibilities to reach new customers and keep their loyal ones. Through interacting with blogs BON’A PARTE can communicate in a better way with their consumers. / Program: Magisterutbildning i Applied Textile Management