This study aims to investigate the phenomenon of influencer marketing within the context of the media and communication industry. The research focuses on understanding the perspectives and experiences of professionals working in this field. The study adopts a qualitative approach, utilizing semi-structured interviews as the primary method of data collection. Based on the six interviews conducted, it can be concluded that influencer marketing is perceived as a complex process that requires careful planning and analysis. A crucial aspect of the process is finding the right influencer who aligns with the company's brand identity and target audience. It was revealed that influencer marketing requires effective communication and clear guidelines to ensure that the influencer's content aligns with the company's vision. Overall, this study offers valuable insights into the perceptions and experiences of media and communication professionals regarding influencer marketing. It highlights the need for continued awareness and understanding of this marketing strategy among both marketers and consumers. By providing a deeper understanding of the subject matter, this research aims to contribute to the literature and stimulate further investigations in the field of influencer marketing within the media and communication industry.

In my master{\crq}s thesis I focused on problems of protection of consumer in travel agencies related sale tours, offering information, guaranties and at last but not least on situations in the case of bankruptcy. The main regulation in this thesis is the article 159/1999 Coll. and follow norms. The study is divided into three chapters and consists of 11 tables, 16 graphs, 7 schemes and 4 appendices.

The topic of this diploma thesis is Temporary agency work in the Czech Republic. Diploma thesis is logically divided into two main parts. The first part is predominantly theoretical. Within this topic the basic definitions and its mutual relationship are analyzed in detail. The thesis is mainly focused on analysis of current legislation and its history from 2004 till present. The second part of the diploma thesis is based on the survey published through questionnaire. The questionnaire has logical structure and therefore it is possible to deduce the position and experience of the respondents with the held topic. In conclusion, there are proposals to improve the current regulation of temporary agency work which could contribute to an increase of positive attitudes towards agency employment in the Czech Republic.

In 2012, there was a 70% increase in online travel booking, resulting in small traditional brick-and-mortar travel agencies having serious difficulties with obtaining and retaining customers. The purpose of this case study was to explore online marketing strategies that leaders of small traditional travel agencies have used to successfully obtain and retain customers. Technology disruption theory was the conceptual framework of this study. Using criterion sampling, the population for this study consisted of 3 leaders of small traditional travel agencies located in the state of Maryland. Data collection consisted of interviews, observations, and review of documentation, such as displays, websites, business cards, and email campaigns. Data were analyzed using methodological triangulation through inductive coding of phrases and words. The following 4 themes emerged: company threats, online marketing strategies, various marketing strategies for improvement, and ways to compete with Internet-based travel agencies. Results indicated that 66% of participants believed that Internet-based travel agencies were threats. All of the participants used a form of online marketing and believed that customer loyalty helped to compete with Internet-based travel agencies. Positive social change may result when leaders of small traditional travel agencies increase their knowledge of online marketing strategies to obtain and retain customers, thereby leading to greater access to online travel opportunities for all, including physically challenged individuals often confined to their living areas.

Relations between music education structures and teacher agency are under-researched and under-theorized, and scholars have indicated that the traditions and competitions of school bands in the U. S. may constrain educator agency. The need for research on teacher agency in competitive environments is compounded by policy trends toward administrators' use of festival scores in music educator evaluations. The purpose of this instrumental case study was to investigate band teacher agency in a highly competitive music education environment. I used the chordal triad of agency as the primary theoretical framework. Participants were four mid-career band educators in Texas, and I collected data through interviews, observations, journal entries, website review, and email correspondence. Throughout the data, participants' agency largely reproduced existing structures. Findings coalesced around (a) participants' core values of music, students' development, hard work, and competition, (b) an inductive, cohesive collection of band teaching norms despite participants' employment in schools of varying urbanicity and student demographics, (c) power sources that transmitted values and directed teachers' agency, and (d) a compelling story of one participant's generative agency that contrasted with the rest of the data. I provide directions for further research on music teacher agency and suggest implications for band educators, professional music education organizations, and music teacher educators.

This research focuses on the transition of Bahraini students to a Western medical university which has been ‘transplanted’, with its values and context of practice, to the culture of Bahrain. A socio-cultural model of Communities of Practice was adopted as a theoretical framework in this research for it linked in well with the personal context of this study which suggested that students’ transition could be related to the practices in Bahraini schools associated with science and English education, as well as general school pedagogy. Therefore, the aim of this study was to explore how different participants perceive the role of school practices, as well as science and English education in transition. In order to explore these different understandings, a case study methodology was adopted and insights into the practices of students’ school and university community were gained through the use of focus group and individual interviews, as well as a descriptive questionnaire. The data from the qualitative investigation was analysed deductively under the three themes of science background knowledge, the English language and school pedagogy, while the questionnaire data was subject to univariate analysis based on mean responses. The key findings indicated high levels of confidence in students’ science base and approaches to study, which enabled the students to take a number of strategic actions in order to move through the educational outcomes of the university programme. In terms of the English language, a compromised foreign language (L2) proficiency caused by inadequate school practices was perceived not to play an important role in the transition process, which suggested a diminished role of L2 in transitions in the context of language change. As far as school pedagogy is concerned, whilst all participants at the secondary level agreed that general memorisation-based pedagogy in secondary schools could play a negative role in the transition, the participants at the university revealed that rote-based approaches to study formed in school could also be strategically used at university. Hence, the findings from this research have specific implications for the model of Communities of Practice and suggest future work within this theory regarding the role of students’ individual agency. These findings also suggest a new understanding of transitions in the context of language and culture change.

In this paper the relation between managerial ownership and conservatism is examined. Managerial ownership decreases agency problems caused by the separation of ownership and control. Managerial ownership increases the time horizon of managers and decreases expropriating behaviour. Conservatism is hypothesized to have the same effect on managers due to the asymmetric timeliness of earnings. This suggest that in firms with lower managerial ownership a demand for conservatism arises to substitute for the alignment function of managerial ownership. This paper test this with two approaches. The first replicates the methodology of previous literature. The findings provide no evidence for substitution between managerial ownership and conservatism. Because the estimators of the first methodology are biased a second method is used applying fixed effects. Consistent with the first approach no supporting evidence is found. However, it finds that firms in the sample have conservative accounting. The main implication of this paper is that rewarding managers with shares is not decreasing their conservative behaviour.

The relevance of the Swedish alcohol monopoly has been widely debated for years in Sweden. In 2015 Systembolaget celebrates 60 years as the only actor on the alcohol market. To celebrate this, Systembolaget launched a campaign where the commercial The Expert is included, in which contrasts between the Swedish and the American ways to sell alcohol is addressed. In my essay I’m examining the commercial through a narrative analysis to find out how Systembolagets self image is created. In particular, how the narrative works in order to create this self image. Rhetorical agency is a way for me to reach my conclusion. Through my narrative analysis and the use of the rhetorical situation as well as rhetorical agency, I reach the conclusion that Systembolagets (self constructed) self image is a positive one where Systembolaget is to be viewed as experts in their area, in contrast to the American “expert” who is ridiculed. Systembolaget is portrayed as a responsible actor with sole rights and the implicit argumentation suggests they wish to maintain that position in Sweden.

This PhD thesis explores issues around acquired brain injury, focusing particularly on changing relationships between patients and carers and the trajectories they follow from the point of injury or diagnosis as a reconstructed life unfolds. Patients are identified as having strategies of adaptation and carers as taking on levels of agency, both of which shift according to time, context and other complex interactions. Each impacts on the other to produce an internal dynamic, the functionality of which is explored. Issues of care delivery are also raised, including the effects of mismatched expectations and of sharing or restricting information. This research is qualitative and based on the principles of grounded theory. 62 interviews were conducted involving 82 people (52 patients and 30 carers) and additional evidence was gathered from professional records, media reports and personal diaries. Themes were developed that can be linked together to form a trajectory of care, inside of which there is a finely balanced ecology. It is proposed that this trajectory although developed around data from people with brain injury is also applicable to other chronic conditions.

This dissertation attends to the figurative device of personification, or prosopopoeia, in the writings of three late-medieval English authors, Geoffrey Chaucer, William Langland, and John Lydgate. Situating my study between three coordinates -- the lineage of rhetorical anthropomorphism stretching back to Quintilian, the medieval political context that drew on figurative personification, and recent theoretical work in political ecology and philosophical sociology (actor-network theory) -- I argue in the introduction that the redistributions of agency from abstract terms to personified figures performed in prosopopoeia entail an intrinsic politicization; the personifications of non-humans deployed by Chaucer, Langland, and Lydgate hinge on and exploit the anthropomorphic qualities of speech and embodiment, which late-medieval theories of political representation see as essential prerequisites for political agency. The affinities between literary and legal-political discourses are even thicker; more sophisticated instances of personification refract in fictive narrative the part-whole dynamic between unity and multiplicity that undergirds representative government in its negotiation between delegated sovereignty and deliberative conciliarity, or, put differently, between actors and the networks within which their action becomes intelligibly institutional. Prosopopoeia thus emerges in my texts of interest as not only a multifaceted catalyst for democratizing debate about matters of concern to vernacular publics – from female agency to royal reform -- but also as a moving target for imaginatively theorizing -- and experimenting with the limits of -- the ethical imperatives that govern the proper practice of equitable governance: participation, answerability, reconciliation, common profit. In the discursive culture of late-medieval England, literary prosopopoeia animates simulations of non-human polities for heuristic, humanistic purposes. / Graduate / 0297