In the cultural anthropological tradition, we study how people in a group think about things that somehow go together. Using hashtags, we introduce a series of methods to trace the conceptual contours in social media conversations. Hashtags align ideas and reveal the latent structures and symbolic boundaries within the conversation, detecting the domains, features, and sources of tension in the network of diverse perspectives and experiences conveyed in the conversation. We demonstrate how distinctive and affiliated hashtags, Hashtag Network Maps, and ImageQuilts can connect and aggregate concepts and render the shared and divergent meanings that structure the space. This research features a case study of #homegym tagged messages posted at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Gym closures disrupted established exercise regimes, while lockdown and work-at-home orders blessed others with newfound time to work out – inciting a spike in demand for gym equipment sales. First, we demonstrate our approach using a sample of Twitter posts with the #homegym hashtag, gathered between March 15 to April 16, 2020, from a COVID-19 database and a selection of Instagram photos. Next, we study the people, messages, and images to map the subgroups, social dynamics, and ideologies that constitute the #homegym leisure space. Finally, we draw methodological and practical implications to assist marketing researchers and practitioners in harnessing social media conversations to derive timely insights.

With the social media platforms leading the internet in terms of user base and the average time spent, significant amount of data is being generated by these platforms every day. This makes social media platforms a go-to place to understand the reviews, trends, and opinions of the people. Any regular search for a popular topic would result in an abundance of information and thus it is impossible to go through these large amounts of data manually to understand the trends. This thesis discusses techniques for the intra-topic clustering of such social media data and discusses how social media noise increases the redundancy of the search results. Our goal is to filter the amount of redundant information an end-user must review from a regular social media search. The research proposes clustering models based on two string similarity measures Jaccard word token and T-Information distance. Evaluation parameters are introduced and the models are evaluated on clustering a set of current and historical topics to determine which techniques are the most effective. / Graduate

abstract: Attack of the Fake Geek Girls: Challenging Gendered Harassment and Marginalization in Online Spaces applies feminist, gender, and rhetorical theories and methods, along with critical discourse analysis, to case studies of the popular online social media platforms of Jezebel, Pinterest, and Facebook. This project makes visible the structural inequities that underpin the design and development of internet technologies, as well as commonplace assumptions about who is an online user, who is an active maker of internet technologies, and who is a passive consumer of internet technologies. Applying these critical lenses to these inequities and assumptions enables a re-seeing of commonplace understandings of the relationship between gender performativity and digital cultures and practices. Together, these lenses provide a useful set of tools for methodically resisting the mystique of technologies that are, simultaneously, represented as so highly technical as to be opaque to scrutiny, and as ubiquitous to everyday life as to be beneath critical examination. Through a close reading of the discourses surrounding these popular social media platforms and a rhetorical analysis of their technological affordances, I documented the transference of gender-biased assumptions about women's roles, interests, and competencies, which have historically been found in face-to-face contexts, to these digital spaces. For example, cultural assumptions about the frivolity of women's interests, endeavors, issues, and labors make their way into digital discourse that situates the online practices of women as those of passive consumers who use the internet only to shop and socialize, rather than to go about the serious, masculine business of making original digital content. This project expands on existing digital identity and performativity research, while applying a sorely needed feminist critique to online discourses and discursive practices that assume maleness and masculinity as the default positionality. These methods are one approach to addressing the pressing problems of online harassment, the gender gap in the technology sector, and the gender gap in digital literacies that have pedagogical, political, and structural implications for the classroom, workplace, economic markets, and civic sphere. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation English 2015

This thesis, The Influence of Media on the Message: A Case Study of Kvinnobyrån’s Communication and Media Distribution, is written by Anna-Evelina Dahlström and Linnea Ljung. To gain insight into Kvinnobyrån’s current situation, and add to the understanding of the problem with the ethical aspects of communication for NPOs. Based on the following research questions -What is  communicated via Kvinnobyrån’s media channels?, - How is Kvinnobyråns media channels utilised today and how should they be utilised, according to Uppsala Stadsmission and Kvinnobyrån?, - Does the ethical aspects of Kvinnobyrån’s communication affect their communications practices? And if so, how? The theoretical framework consists of Mediation Theory, Communicative Constitution of Organisations (CCO) and Seven building blocks of social media. The methods utilise triangulation of qualitative and quantitative methods. The material consists of interviews, social media posts and statistical data from Kvinnobyrån. The results had three main characteristics, informative, donations, and storytelling. Storytelling is the main communicative strategy and the ethical aspect is limiting Kvinnobyråns communication. The field lacks an extensive research base on ethical considerations about vulnerable people and for NPOs communication. This thesis contributes with a new perspective to the field, by examining the effect of ethical limitations on communication by mapping the problems to add insight into the phenomena. The paper has 62 pages and is published by the department Media and Communication studies: Department of Informatics at Uppsala University during the fall term of 2020 supervised by Martina Ladendorf.

Social media has become an integral part of the lives of many young people around the world, and has also brought new technical tools, partly in terms of the communication that takes place when publishing images. Researchers have recently become concerned about the potential negative impact that social media use can cause.This is based, among other things, on the fact that social media and its technology enable people to use applications that show a falseself-presentation. The technical means of socialmedia are mentioned to be increasingly accessible and attractive to use, as people want to show a more idealized version of them selves, which also communicate sa self-chosen "image". This is the basis of our willingness to carry out this study. The purpose of this study is to examine young adults's alientemotions, motivations, and relationship to socialmedia's impactonpeople's appearance, specifically through the use of beauty filters and beauty retouching on digital platforms. The results are drawn from three focusgroups with four participants in each focusgroup and three semistructured interviews with users of these social media tools. The focus groups and interviews have been recorded and transcribed and the material has then been analyzed to answer our researchquestions. The study's theoretical framework consists of impression management, gender, uses and gratification social comparison theory and cultivation theory. The results of this study shows that young adults' relation ship to different resources to modify appearance onlinec ould be analyzed based on their prominent emotions towards the use, the ideal that subsistson social media and their general thoughts and opinions about gender and digital beauty tools. The results also indicated that the motivation for using these digital beauty tools is based on satisfaction, belonging, entertainment and availability. Finally, the results showed that participating respondents who use or have used beauty filters and beauty retouching feel that these digital beauty tools had an impact on their ownself image and impression. Furthermore, did participants of the focusgroups perceive that these resources for modifying the appearance on social media contribute with an impact on an individual's self-image.

The ever-growing digital takeover of society fosters new platforms for opinion formation, transforming the traditional way of interacting and practising activism. However, while online activism has been successful in western parts of the world, its importance has not been as widely acknowledged in places such as Central Asia in relation to feminism. Consequently, this study aims to draw attention to the online activism on feminism within the context of Tajikistan and, through attitudes expressed on Instagram, examine the present-day obstacles that women face. Coloured by patriarchal values and limited space for feminism, Tajikistan provides an interesting case for studying the former and situation of activism on gender equality in general. This study was carried out through the qualitative content approach where 38 Instagram posts containing various aspects of women and gender, were analysed through the lens of patriarchy and women's empowerment. The findings revealed attitudes condemning patriarchal norms and calling for greater gender equality and empowerment of women. Said implied a distressing situation for women in Tajikistan, suggesting very few transformative steps, while the prevalence of online activism insinuated, minor, but significant steps for the feminist struggle in Tajikistan.

Se muestra cómo en la nueva era digital aparecen nuevos canales de promoción y venta de bienes y servicios tales como el Marketing Digital. Se describe en qué consiste, conceptos de tecnología relacionados y un paso a paso para identificar cuál sería la mejor estrategia y cómo elegir el canal indicado.