This qualitative study intends to identify how the military profession is represented on the Swedish Armed Forces’ Instagram account from March 1 to September 1 2017. The method used is Multimodal CDA, which enables the investigation of both linguistic and visual elements. Ten Instagram posts are analyzed in order to examine how representations are formed linguistically and visually, as well as how language and images interact to form the picture of the Swedish soldier. The study focuses on concepts such as power and ideology, but strategic narrative also plays an important part in the analysis. The results show that the Swedish Armed Forces mainly tells a story in which values such as collectivity, functionality, challenges and personal growth are highlighted. Meanwhile, stories of combat, conflict and war are absent.

This research aims to explore the dissemination of strategic narratives around Lithuania through the set of news articles of the Russian state-funded media agency RT. As an international media platform, RT has been previously identified by scholars as an important structural element of Russian information warfare strategy. To identify the strategic narratives, this research follows the procedures of thematic analysis informed by the strategic narrative framework. The findings of this study indicate that RT, through the strategic narratives of Lithuania, seeks to criticize Western leadership and indirectly promote a positive image of Russia as an alternative to the West. While at the national level, the goals of RT’s strategic narratives on Lithuania include creating an image that Lithuanian governmental institutions are broken; showing the Lithuanian government as incompetent, and associating it with a fascist regime; presenting Lithuania not only as Russophobic but as a failing state as well. Further research could contribute to elaborating the strategical framework of the Russian information warfare effort in the post-Soviet countries.

This article uses the theory of strategic narrative to study the way Brazil presented its conditional cash-transfer program Bolsa Família abroad. More specifically, it studies where and how that message was received under both Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff from 2003- 2014. Previous academic work on the Bolsa Familia has not addressed how it fits within the larger Brazilian foreign policy strategy of the 21st century to increase autonomy in its international relations, especially with developing countries in the \"Global South.\" As such, this article attempts to address this deficit by using text analysis of twenty-seven countries\' English- speaking media coverage of the program to hypothesize that Brazil used the program as an extension of its activist foreign policy to create a larger international role for itself. The timeframe for the article begins with Lula\'s expansion of the program during his first term in 2003, at a time when Brazilian foreign policy shifted towards greater insertion of national autonomy into a Western-dominated international system. Whereas Lula\'s foreign policy worked to reignite Brazil\'s long-held ambitions for international relevance, Dilma\'s administration oversaw the end of Brazil\'s \"ascension\" moment, based on a decline in foreign investment, administrative malfeasance, a declining economy, and an abandonment of previous insertion strategies such as \"activist\" foreign outreach and a commitment to exerting political capital abroad. Even though the Bolsa Família remained a constant throughout both Lula and Dilma\'s administrations, the findings from this article suggest a change in international perception between the two leaders\' administrations, giving credence to the idea that for Brazil, the figure who drives the narrative is important. From the \"Global North,\" the American, Australian, Canadian, and English media generally trended from positive to negative sentiment between Lula and Dilma\'s term, while developing countries such as Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Pakistan, India, and Ghana reacted gave a warmer reception to it. These findings suggest that Brazil\'s strategic narrative was best received by partners in the Global South, suggesting a correlation with Lula\'s ambitious foreign policy approach that expanded a foundation present in the Fernando Henrique Cardoso administration to attract Southern allies. / Este artigo usa a teoria da narrativa estratégica para analisar o modo como o Brasil utilizou no exterior a ideia do Bolsa Família, o programa do país de transferência de renda condicional. Mais especificamente, estuda-se onde e como a mensagem do programa foi recebida, tanto na era Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva como na era Dilma Rousseff (2003-2014). Trabalhos acadêmicos anteriores não avaliam como o Bolsa Família se encaixa no amplo quadro estratégico da Política Externa Brasileira no século XXI para aumentar a autonomia do Brasil nas relações internacionais, especialmente com países em desenvolvimento do Sul Global. Assim sendo, este artigo tem por objetivo preencher essa lacuna fazendo uma análise de texto da cobertura midiática sobre o programa em vinte e sete países com pelo menos um jornal que publica em inglês. Enquanto a política externa de Lula trabalhou para reacender antigas ambições brasileiras de relevância internacional, a administração de Dilma teve que lidar com o fim do período de ascensão, com um declínio no investimento estrangeiro, corrupção na administração pública, declínio econômico e um abandono das estratégias de inserção prévias, como um amplo e ativo escopo de ação internacional e um comprometimento em investir capital político no exterior. Apesar da continuidade do Bolsa Família em todo período dos mandatos de Lula e Dilma, os achados deste artigo sugerem uma mudança na percepção internacional entre os governos dos dois líderes, deixando robusta a ideia de que, para o Brasil, a figura que conduz a narrativa é importante. Para o Norte Global, a mídia americana, australiana, canadense e inglesa tenderam de um sentimento positivo para um negativo entre os mandatos de Lula e Dilma, enquanto que países em desenvolvimento como Nigéria, Zimbábue, Paquistão, Índia, e Gana reagiram de forma mais aberta no mesmo período. Os achados sugerem que a narrativa estratégica brasileira foi melhor recebida por parceiros no Sul Global, sugerindo também uma correlação entre a mudança para uma política externa de maior escopo de Lula para atrair aliados do Sul.

This article uses the theory of strategic narrative to study the way Brazil presented its conditional cash-transfer program Bolsa Família abroad. More specifically, it studies where and how that message was received under both Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff from 2003- 2014. Previous academic work on the Bolsa Familia has not addressed how it fits within the larger Brazilian foreign policy strategy of the 21st century to increase autonomy in its international relations, especially with developing countries in the \"Global South.\" As such, this article attempts to address this deficit by using text analysis of twenty-seven countries\' English- speaking media coverage of the program to hypothesize that Brazil used the program as an extension of its activist foreign policy to create a larger international role for itself. The timeframe for the article begins with Lula\'s expansion of the program during his first term in 2003, at a time when Brazilian foreign policy shifted towards greater insertion of national autonomy into a Western-dominated international system. Whereas Lula\'s foreign policy worked to reignite Brazil\'s long-held ambitions for international relevance, Dilma\'s administration oversaw the end of Brazil\'s \"ascension\" moment, based on a decline in foreign investment, administrative malfeasance, a declining economy, and an abandonment of previous insertion strategies such as \"activist\" foreign outreach and a commitment to exerting political capital abroad. Even though the Bolsa Família remained a constant throughout both Lula and Dilma\'s administrations, the findings from this article suggest a change in international perception between the two leaders\' administrations, giving credence to the idea that for Brazil, the figure who drives the narrative is important. From the \"Global North,\" the American, Australian, Canadian, and English media generally trended from positive to negative sentiment between Lula and Dilma\'s term, while developing countries such as Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Pakistan, India, and Ghana reacted gave a warmer reception to it. These findings suggest that Brazil\'s strategic narrative was best received by partners in the Global South, suggesting a correlation with Lula\'s ambitious foreign policy approach that expanded a foundation present in the Fernando Henrique Cardoso administration to attract Southern allies. / Este artigo usa a teoria da narrativa estratégica para analisar o modo como o Brasil utilizou no exterior a ideia do Bolsa Família, o programa do país de transferência de renda condicional. Mais especificamente, estuda-se onde e como a mensagem do programa foi recebida, tanto na era Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva como na era Dilma Rousseff (2003-2014). Trabalhos acadêmicos anteriores não avaliam como o Bolsa Família se encaixa no amplo quadro estratégico da Política Externa Brasileira no século XXI para aumentar a autonomia do Brasil nas relações internacionais, especialmente com países em desenvolvimento do Sul Global. Assim sendo, este artigo tem por objetivo preencher essa lacuna fazendo uma análise de texto da cobertura midiática sobre o programa em vinte e sete países com pelo menos um jornal que publica em inglês. Enquanto a política externa de Lula trabalhou para reacender antigas ambições brasileiras de relevância internacional, a administração de Dilma teve que lidar com o fim do período de ascensão, com um declínio no investimento estrangeiro, corrupção na administração pública, declínio econômico e um abandono das estratégias de inserção prévias, como um amplo e ativo escopo de ação internacional e um comprometimento em investir capital político no exterior. Apesar da continuidade do Bolsa Família em todo período dos mandatos de Lula e Dilma, os achados deste artigo sugerem uma mudança na percepção internacional entre os governos dos dois líderes, deixando robusta a ideia de que, para o Brasil, a figura que conduz a narrativa é importante. Para o Norte Global, a mídia americana, australiana, canadense e inglesa tenderam de um sentimento positivo para um negativo entre os mandatos de Lula e Dilma, enquanto que países em desenvolvimento como Nigéria, Zimbábue, Paquistão, Índia, e Gana reagiram de forma mais aberta no mesmo período. Os achados sugerem que a narrativa estratégica brasileira foi melhor recebida por parceiros no Sul Global, sugerindo também uma correlação entre a mudança para uma política externa de maior escopo de Lula para atrair aliados do Sul.

This PhD thesis examines the status of ‘expert knowledge’ in the history of U.S. asymmetric, or ‘counterinsurgency’ (COIN), warfare during the last century. The historical rise of expert influence has so far been neglected in the study of wars within the field of International Relations and the thesis will give us an indication of the importance and utility of expert knowledge. With a specific focus on the campaigns in the Philippines (1899-1902), Vietnam (1954-75) and Iraq (2003-11), the central research question guiding the project is as follows: “What were the conditions for the evolution, the constitution and the use of ‘outside’ expert knowledge in U.S. counterinsurgency campaigns?” The thesis claims that military and academic ‘experts’ had a key role in framing and implementing the problem-sets and solutions to these conflicts. They have, in Iraq in particular, played an important part in developing the campaigns’ ex-post-facto justification of success. Within the framework of organisational knowledge production, this knowledge does not necessarily play an instrumental role for the military. Instead, it can also serve a merely symbolic function, demonstrating to the audience and stakeholders within the political environment that the organisation is willing to solve the problems the insurgents pose, but without any interest in long-term utilisation of the knowledge. This thesis argues that across time, from the beginning of the Philippine-American War in 1898 to the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq in 2011, ‘counterinsurgency’ has developed from a tactical and operational tool, used instrumentally to fight insurgencies, to a strategy or even ‘ideology’ in its own right. Whilst the methods or techniques of counterinsurgency remain basically the same, expert knowledge is increasingly used in modern – that is post-World War II – campaigns to support a politico-strategic narrative.

In a global media environment characterized by change and conflict, narratives are especially useful to understand how the media form and distribute shared understanding of how the world works and who the important actors are. As the borders between local and global politics are blurred in the digital media landscape, protesters are in increased rate turning their placards to global broadcasters’ cameras, especially when political movements such as the U.S.-based Black Lives Matter movement get international counterparts. The scholarship concerned with the framework through which the media report protests argue the protest paradigm offers useful variables for the study of protests, while problematizing the lack of research on global broadcasting media. Global broadcasters, International Relations scholars argue, need to be understood as resources of soft power that distribute strategic narratives, but they have yet to develop a methodology for how broadcasts can be empirically studied. With this research gap as a point of departure, the chosen case study is the unrest in Ferguson in August 2014. A quantitative mapping and a comparative narrative analysis focusing on the narrative structure were conducted on 16 days of news bulletins from Al Jazeera English, BBC World News and RT. The results show several differences in the reports, the first concerns the amount of attention that was given to Ferguson by each broadcaster, where RT gave almost twice the amount of attention as the other two broadcasters. Further differences were found in the sources each broadcaster used and how they used violence as an entry-point to what their narratives where about, which in the case of AJE was the effects violence has on a society; BBCW’s narrative was of a political issue of high importance that concerns people of color; whereas RT’s narrative was about the militarization of the U.S. police force. The results imply the global broadcasters offer distinctive narratives, which through different storytelling techniques convey different attitudes and morals.

The purpose of this study is to examine Russia's foreign and security policy towards Sweden, as bordering practices, in the state-controlled media's international news reporting on gender equality. To achieve this goal the following two questions were formulated: 1) which narratives about gender equality can be read from English-language news articles about Sweden from the Russian state-controlled news company Sputnik News? and 2) in what ways do these narratives function as bordering practices? Utilizing critical border theory and both narrative analysis and strategic narrative analysis this study's results confirm previous research in several ways. The identified narratives have a predominant majority of negative angles to Sweden's disadvantage and there is use of ridiculing language with the intent to diminish Sweden's international position. I have been able to distinguish four main narratives that all touches upon gender equality in some way. These narratives,1) a polarized Sweden, a country in free fall, 2) extreme gender equality /feminism, 3) gender equality as a mirage, and 4) an elite that pursues an extreme agenda, are created by Sputnik by "harvesting" domestic media and then translating and repackaging the content to portray a negative image of Sweden. These narrative themes function in a normative way by highlighting the unusual and that which stands out, and through performative repetition, these foreign policy motivated narratives acts as bordering practices that constantly produce and reproduce the nations' borders, identity and sovereignty. This study concludes that the strategic narratives on gender equality in the Russian state-controlled media identified in this study function as a weapon in Russia's political war towards Sweden. / <p>2021-06-02</p>

This bachelor’s thesis examines the narrative about the Swedish Women’s Volountary Defence Organization (Svenska Lottakåren) in Aftonbladet, Dagens Nyheter, Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfartstidning, and Svenska Dagbladet during the preparedness period (beredskapstiden) through a qualitative narrative analysis. Drawing from Lawrence Freedman’s theory of strategic narratives, the research sheds light on the newspaper’s role in shaping perceptions of Lottakåren and its efforts during the period. Furthermore, it investigates the narratives implications on a strategic level. The study concludes that the narrative may have influenced public perceptions of Lottakåren, serving specific strategic aims, such as creating support for the organization within society, fostering unity withing the organization, encourage volunteering and recruitment of new members. In doing so, this research fills a gap in knowledge on the subject while emphasizing the press’s vital role at a strategic level in times of war and crisis. / Denna uppsats undersöker narrativet om den svenska Lottakåren i Aftonbladet, Dagens Nyheter, Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfartstidning och Svenska Dagbladet under beredskapstiden genom en kvalitativ narrativanalys enligt uppsatsens syfte att undersöka narrativet om Svenska Lottakåren i dessa tidningar under beredskapstiden. Genom att tillämpa Lawrence Freedmans teori om strategiska narrativ belyses tidningarnas bidrag till formandet av uppfattningen om Lottakåren och dess insatser under beredskapstiden, samt betydelsen av narrativet i ett strategiskt sammanhang. Undersökningens resultat är att ett positivt narrativ om Lottakåren kan ha haft en påverkan på allmänhetens uppfattningar om Lottakåren och fyllt specifika syften såsom att öka stödet för organisationen hos allmänheten, skapa samhörighet, uppmuntra till frivillighet och rekrytera nya medlemmar. Därmed bidrar resultatet till att fylla en kunskapslucka och belysa pressens viktiga roll på en strategisk nivå i krig och kris.

Taking the form of a case study on an interpellation on ‘youth crime and street gangs’ and its consideration in plenary debate in the Finnish Parliament in December 2022, the purpose of this study is to examine how politicians narrate the Finnish community of value and its boundaries. The methodological framework of this study consists of strategic narrative analysis, poststructural and critical research theoretical underpinnings, and the operationalization of the concept of ‘community of value’. The findings of the study show that the strategic narratives on the Finnish community of value are diverse but return to similar points of boundary-making problematizing the ‘Migrant’ as part of a ‘suspect population’. The character of the community of value is simultaneously defined through the ordinary actions of its ‘Good Citizens’ and Finland as ‘not-Sweden’. Ultimately, the role left to play for the ‘Migrant’ is one of a ‘Tolerated Citizen’. These findings add a contribution to the field of critical migration and integration studies, as well as to the field of Finnish and Nordic political discourses.

The purpose of this thesis is to identify the reasons for Israeli and Palestinian religious objections to peaceful co-existence in a two-state solution to the conflict over the land between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea. Developing an understanding of the basic religious requirements and precedents, while consistently considering religious impact in politics, may help to open dialogue between Jewish Gush Emunim and Muslim Palestinian Hamas, strong opponents to land compromise. Arguments by Gush Emunim and Hamas from the two major religious works, the Jewish Tanakh and the Muslim Qur’an, and associated commentaries, the Jewish Talmud and Muslim Hadith, are compared and evaluated for religious insights into the disputed areas. Contemporary interpretations of each major writing and political objections based on religious argumentation create a strong context for modern conflict. The requirements and precedents for peace that come from religious texts also promote open dialogue. This thesis suggests ways to open dialogue between the Israeli and Palestinian cultures, comparing religious texts, interpretations, and concepts, in an effort to promote peaceful co-existence and build an effective strategic narrative.