Crowdfunding is a relatively new addition to the entrepreneurial range of funding options. It has been considered a “game changer’ and an “equalizer” for entrepreneurs seeking to finance new ventures. However, it shares several attributes with traditional funding methods as well as many of the same investor concerns. Since research is still scant on both crowdfunding as whole and on its fast-developing sub-categories this study endeavored to analyze two related topics in this area. Understanding how close this new paradigm is to the old is a focus of new research. In the case of this study perceived self-confidence of the crowdfunding project founder to the successful outcomes is examined. Additionally, to see if gender bias plays a part in this new era it is included as a control to determine if women need to project greater confidence than men to overcome these and achieve the same goals. Kickstarter.com is one of the oldest and most successful rewards based crowdfunding sites in the world. A sample of 9050 completed campaigns from here were used for this analysis. In the methodology qualitative coding was used to identify the linguistic symbols of confidence. To empirically investigate the research questions statistical analysis was carried out to seek the relationships between confidence signaling and successful crowdfunding performance as well as if gender bias has a moderating effect. The two hypotheses were not supported by the results of this study. Self-confidence was not a predictor of crowdfunding success and gender did not have a significant influence on the outcomes.

The aim of this thesis is to explore the social media-communication between the E-sport team Team Allliance and their fans, and doing so with the perspective of Jenkins basic theory on Convergence Culture, also called Participatory Culture, and within this theory-concept, researchers J. Sanderson and J.W. Kassings’ research article from 2011 concerning Tweets and blogs in sports media.   Data was gathered by two kinds of methods: qualitative semi-structured interviews with members of the Swedish E-sport team Alliance together with a quantitative textanalysis of Tweets published by the interviewed. The data showed that the purposes of the teams communication by Twitter posts, to a large extent consisted of providing news and updates and to interact with their large fanbase, actively working for establish a good relationship with their fans.

I augusti 2010 inträffade en olycka i San José-gruvan i Chile. Olyckan resulterade i att 33 gruvarbe-tare blev fast i ett skyddsrum i över två månader innan de kunde räddas. Händelsen fick ett stort utrymme i media världen över. I vår studie har vi utmanat medielogiken genom att testa tre ny-hetsvärderingsteorier utifrån aftonbladet.ses och dn.ses nyhetsrapportering kring gruvolyckan. Tidningarna valdes därför att de är Sveriges största kvälls- respektive morgontidning. Vi undersök-te vilken av teorierna som bäst kunde appliceras på rapporteringen och även på skillnader mellan tidningarnas rapportering sett utifrån teorierna. De nyhetsvärderingsteorier vi testat kommer från Håkan Hvitfelt, Tony Harcup & Deirdre O’Neill samt Pamela J. Shoemaker, Tsan-Kuo Chang & Nancy Brendlinger.Vid analysen utförde vi en kvalitativ textanalys och analyserade artiklarna hermeneutiskt genom åtta dimensioner i ett analysschema. Under studien kom vi fram till att det endast finns små skill-nader mellan tidningarna i deras rapportering. De skiljer sig bara åt i två av de åtta dimensioner vi analyserade. Ingen av teorierna stämde helt överens med rapporteringen, men Hvitfelt är den teo-retiker vars teorier stämmer bäst överens med hur tidningarna skrev. Tätt därefter följer Harcup & O’Neill och därefter Shoemaker et al. Det bör dock understrykas att teoriernas kriterier i många fall var vaga och svårtolkade, vilket ledde till att vi själva fick tolka vad teoretikerna menade. Fast-än teoretikernas idéer skiljer sig åt finns det alltså ingen som lyckats skapa en teori som är fullstän-dig. Det är först när teorierna konvergerar som de visar en godtagbar väg till hur en artikel blir nyhetsvärdig i dagens medielandskap. / In August 2010 an accident occurred in the San José mine in Chile. 33 miners were trapped in a shelter at a depth of 700 meters for over two months before they were rescued. The accident got a lot of media cover-age worldwide. In our study we have challenged the media logic by testing three news value theories from the content of aftonbladet.se:s and dn.se:s news articles regarding the mining accident. The newspapers were selected because they are the largest evening and morning newspaper in Sweden. We looked at which of the theories that best could be applied to the newspapers articles and also the differences between the newspa-pers' reporting from the perspective of the theories. The news value theories that we tested are from the theorists Håkan Hvitfelt, Tony Harcup & Deirdre O'Neill and Pamela J. Shoemaker, Tsan-Kuo Chang & Nancy Brendlinger. In the analysis we made a qualitative text analysis and analyzed the articles hermeneutically through eight dimensions in an analytical framework. During the study we concluded that there are only small differences between the newspapers in their reporting. We only found differences in two of the eight dimensions we analyzed. None of the theories fully consists with the newspapers reporting, but Hvitfelt is the theorist whose theory is most consistent with how the newspapers were written. He is followed closely by Harcup & O'Neill, then Shoemaker et al. It should be emphasized that the factors in the theories in many cases are vague and difficult to interpret, which led us to make our own interpretations in those cases. Although the theorists’ ideas differ, none of them has succeeded in creating a theory that is complete. It is only when the theories converge that they demonstrate an acceptable way of how an occurrence becomes news worthy in today's media landscape.