During centuries, places and cities have made efforts to make their land more attractive, efficient, democratic and secure. This aspire has accelerated due to globalization and other external factors. Today, there is fierce and global competition between cities and nationalities to create arenas for more investments, productive inhabitants and vibrant culture. The place brand has been a good tool and a key for success. Nevertheless, place branding is challenging; it includes the investment of all stakeholders – possessing different agendas and target markets – and at the same time their coordination and collaborations to ensure there would be no conflicting messages, misusing the place and harming the brand. Therefore, strong collaboration among stakeholders and consistent perceptions – about the city potentials – is substantially important. There are debates among scholars to choose the best initiative for involving all the groups, cultures, interests of a society into branding a city and exploit the potential of the city simultaneously. Place branding is a relatively new but growing field of research. The topic is multifaceted and therefore is considered advantageous to study place branding from a stakeholder perspective. In this current study, the stakeholders are viewed as the actors that are engaged in the act of presenting Umeå based on the cultural potential of the city during its hosting the European Capital of Culture event in 2014. Based on the purpose and research problems of this thesis, it is aimed to provide a framework to examine the gaps between the stakeholders’ perceptions about their city cultural potential during a cultural event. For this qualitative research, a single case study design is used and eight stakeholders – divided in two main groups – are identified for the data gathering by using in-depth interviews. The identity-reputation gap model is used as an analytical tool and gives guidance to the research. This study fills other research gaps by contributing with an understanding of the stakeholder’s role by studying place branding in the context of a mid-size city. With regard to the empirical contribution, this study offers a range of insights for Umeå – the image and the branded potential of the city – and findings can be regarded as a starting point for brand managers as well as cultural coordinators working to develop the place brand identity consistently in other contexts.

Purpose/aim: The purpose of this thesis is to examine if, and in that case how, the municipality of Umeå worked strategically with its communication during 2014 when Umeå was chosen as ”European Capital of Culture”. The research is mainly focused on the outlines of their communication plan, main goals, what  communication strategies the municipality has chosen to and their choice of media channels. Material/method: Two methods are used for this research; qualitative interviews with four employees within the communication team during Umeå2014 and a text analysis of three formal documents which provide the framework of communication policies and media strategies during Umeå2014. Results: The results clearly indicate a well structured, strategic planning outlined in the formal documents. The four people intreviewed all had a good knowledge of the policies and strategies in the documents, they also described their work in accordance with these.

En av EU:s största största satsningar för att sammanföra européerna är det årliga utnämnandet av en europeisk kulturhuvudstad. Målet med projektet är att lyfta Europas kulturella mångfald och rikedom. Men i dessa kulturhuvudstäder som ämnar att främja den lokala kulturen finns en trend där gräsrotskulturen gör motstånd, ett sådant exempel finns i Umeå som var kulturhuvudstadsår 2014. Denna uppsats undersöker med stöd av T.V. Reeds teori om sociala rörelser samt med Laclau och Mouffes diskursanalys den motdiskurs och kulturella aktivism som bildades inom Umeås gräsrotskultur. Därtill utreds vikten av det gemensamma skapandet av kulturella produkter som ett verktyg för bildandet av rörelser. Resultatet av undersökningen är att två huvudsakliga teman kan identifieras inom motdiskursen samt en bekräftelse på att de kulturella produkter som skapades hade en förenande effekt på en annars heterogen gräsrotskultur.

The Cultural Capital of Europe project aims to highlight and promote culture of a specific region in Europe during a calendar year. Umeå was chosen to become the Capital of Culture in 2014 and highlight the northern corner of Europe. A new “Open source” approach with the objective to increase participation and co-creation of different actors in the cultural capital year was introduced. This study examines media descriptions of the Samis and alternative cultural groups’ participation in the Cultural Capital year. Both quantitative and qualitative methodological tools were used to analyse descriptions of these groups’ in digital articles from local newspapers. The findings indicate of widespread discontent with how these groups were represented in the Cultural Capital year. The Samis were described as being excluded from planning but included in the implementation of the programme. The alternative cultural groups were instead described as being included in the planning but excluded from participation in the programme year. The relations between these groups and the organisers were analysed in terms of hegemony. The results indicate the relations being in balance at the beginning of the year but started to weaken at an early stage.

This essay is about the issues between minorities and the media in the present day, with a focus on the conflicts in northern Sweden involving the Sami-people. This essay uses quantitative content analysis to examine news articles published between 2002 and 2016 to investigate changes in how the Sami minority is depicted in local media. This topic is influenced due to the Culture Capital event of 2014 that took place in the city of Umeå, located in northern Sweden. The event involved a lot of Sami culture, tradition and performances which might have had an effect on the type of news that local newspapers published. The results show that articles that involve news about conflicts, discrimination and other negative attributes have lowered throughout the years since 2002. The biggest change can however be seen in the period after 2009 where the negative articles lowered to a much higher degree than the years before. This essay has found a possible correlation between the event and media portrayal in local newspapers.