På Instagram postar idag svenska partiledare bilder som är av vardaglig karaktär och föreställer situationer och miljöer man vanligtvis inte brukar se en partiledare i. Vi ser dem spela pingis inför publik, vi ser dem ta promenader i skogen med familjen och vi ser dem iklädda supporterkläder på en landskamp. Den här studien undersöker hur svenska gymnasieungdomar tolkar svenska partiledares visuella självpresentation på den sociala plattformen Instagram. För att undersöka detta har bilder valts ut från tre partiledares Instagramflöden: Stefan Löfven, Ulf Kristersson och Annie Lööf. Bilderna är representativa för hur partiledarna framställer sig själva på den sociala plattformen. Utifrån teori om semiotik, relationsbyggande arbete, självpresentation, personligt varumärkesbyggande och autenticitet, undersöker studien hur gymnasieungdomar tolkar och upplever bilderna. Detta genomförs genom kvalitativa intervjuer och receptionsanalys som metod. Genom semistrukturerade samtalsintervjuer har vi talat med tio olika ungdomar i Söderköping, Karlstad och Uppsala om hur de uppfattar partiledarnas självpresentation. Oavsett ungdomarnas politiska ståndpunkt går det att urskilja gemensamma kulturella associationer hos dem. Genom meningsbärande tecken, tillsammans med partiledaren som symbol för partiet, uppfattar ungdomarna olika politiska budskap i bilderna. Partiledaren fungerar som ett centralt tecken för att denna tolkning ska kunna göras. Respondenterna är av åsikten att bilder av vardaglig karaktär kan vara viktiga för väljare för att kunna relatera till, och känna igen sig i partiledarna. Genom en vardaglig självpresentation tror respondenterna att motivet till publiceringen av bilderna är att stärka relationen till en redan befintlig väljarkår, eller möjligen vinna över väljare utan stark politisk ståndpunkt. Respondenterna kan också urskilja en dramaturgisk uttänkt roll när partiledarna presenterar sig själva på ett vardagligt vis. Detta kan ge en skymt av vem partiledaren egentligen är, vilket skapar en sammansmältning av Goffmans två regioner och skapar en mellanregion på Instagram. I denna mellanregion påpekar respondenterna vikten av att partiledarna måste uppfattas som äkta. Vad respondenterna anser kännetecknar autenticitet går att särskilja till fyra faktorer: bilden ska inte uppvisa ett för tydligt politiskt motiv, bilden ska ge sken av ett spontant ögonblick, bildens kvalitet får inte vara för god, samt att bilden ska vara förenlig med respondentens egen uppfattning av partiets profil. Överlag spelar dessa fyra faktorer som skapar äkthet stor roll för hur gymnasieungdomarna tolkar bildernas autenticitet, vilket verkar avgörande för hur de tolkar bilderna på ett mer allmänt plan. Den här studiens resultat kan ge implikationer för hur olika samhällsinstanser, yrkesliv, liksom privatpersoner kan arbeta för att skapa förtroende på sociala medier genom att framstå som äkta. / Today, Swedish leaders of political parties post everyday life photos on Instagram, just like the rest of us. The posts show the politicians in situations and environments that you wouldn’t normally imagine a politician in. On Instagram, they post photos of themselves playing ping-pong, strolling in the forest with their family, cheering for their nation at a soccer game wearing supporter merchandise; photos that illustrate everyday life of an ordinary citizen. This study aims to look into how Swedish adolescents interpret the party leaders’ visual self-presentation on the social media platform Instagram. To do this, we have selected photos that represents the general self- presentation of three swedish party leaders: Stefan Löfven, Ulf Kristersson and Annie Lööf. Drawing on research and theory concerning semiotics, relationship theory, self-presentation, personal branding and authenticity, this study analyzes how adolescents read and interpret the photos. Using semi-structured qualitative interviews and reception theory, we have talked to ten adolescents from three different cities of varied population: Söderköping, Karlstad and Uppsala. The result of this study was that we found common cultural associations among the adolescents, regardless of their political preferences. Through meaningful signs, the adolescents found political messages in the photos. An important sign for this reading is the belief that the party leader is a symbol of their political party. According to the respondents, a strategic everyday life self- presentation can be an important tool to create a feeling of identification between the party leaders and the voters. Furthermore, the respondents think that these kind of photos can strengthen the relationship between a party leader and their existent voters, or attract voters that are indecisive. The adolescents do see the party leaders as actors in a dramaturgical performance, who want their audience to perceive them as one of the people. However, the respondents think this kind of self- presentation can be important, because it can still give a glimpse of the true self of the party leader. This coalition of the public and the private creates a kind of middle region, which takes place on Instagram. In the middle region, authenticity is key, according to the respondents. In the way the respondents talk about what is authentic and what is not, we identify a pattern. This pattern consists of four factors that creates authenticity: the photo cannot be too political, the photo must look spontaneous, the photo quality must not be too perfect, and the photo must coincide with the respondents view of the political party’s image. These factors are critical for how the adolescents perceive the photos and the party leaders portrayed in them overall. This study’s result could implicate how social facilities, organizations and citizens can use social media to create trust and authenticity concerning their personal brand.

Em uma conversa com Hans Kaufmann, publicada sob o título de Subjektive Authentizität (1973), Christa Wolf afirma a necessidade de se encontrar um tipo de escrita que alcance um alto grau de realismo na apresentação de temas relevantes, mas polêmicos para o indivíduo e seu grupo. Na ocasião da entrevista a autora já trabalhava em Kindheitsmuster, publicado pouco depois (1976). Este trabalho parte da hipótese de que as novas técnicas narrativas exigidas pela autora, a qual se posiciona na ocasião contra a política cultural da RDA e o realismo socialista, seriam visíveis não apenas no romance mencionado, mas em toda sua trajetória a partir de então, e mais decididamente retomadas em Stadt der Engel oder The Overcoat of Dr.Freud (2010), o qual se aproxima muito do livro da década de setenta tanto por sua estrutura e recursos narrativos adotados, quanto por tratar-se novamente da narração de experiências autobiográficas cruciais em sua trajetória. Por meio da comparação dos livros citados procura-se analisar alguns dos recursos estilísticos e estratégias literárias utilizados para configurar a experiência em dois momentos temporais bastante distintos, bem como o modo pelo qual acontecimentos pessoais e da história contemporânea são apresentados em estreita ligação. Por meio de diversas técnicas literárias e de uma determinada posição diante de si e do público, a autora cultiva uma escrita ao mesmo tempo objetiva e subjetiva, a qual traria o indivíduo para o centro do texto e produziria um tipo especial de realismo e de autenticidade por ela almejados, devendo-se, contudo, atentar para as especificidades de cada contexto. Do jogo entre subjetividade e objetividade presente nos dois textos deriva-se ainda um outro, entre a factualidade e ficcionalidade, de modo que os textos da autora se aproximam de uma tendência surgida nos anos setenta: a da autoficção. Trata-se de um conceito bastante versátil e polêmico da teoria literária, o qual deve ser primeiramente definido, para assim ver como se configura no caso específico de Wolf, cujos textos são declarados pela autora como ficcionais, mas recebidos por público e crítica como autobiográficos. O caráter ficcional de seus textos estaria antes no emprego de técnicas metaficcionais, de encenação de processos de escrita e de rememoração na obra, que na ficcionalidade dos episódios. / During conversation with Haus Kaufmann published under the title Subjektive Authentizität (1973), Christa Wolf affirms the necessity of establishing a mode of writing with the purpose of reaching a high degree of Realism and combining social polemic with thematic literary presentation. At that moment, Wolfs Kindheitsmuster was already in progress; it would be published three years later, in 1976. This dissertation has as its claim that Wolfs new narrative techniques, vindicated at the same time of the authors rupture with Socialist Realism and GDR cultural politics, are visible not only in Kindheitsmuster, but also through her entire career thereafter. In order to demonstrate that, we propose the evaluation of Kindheitsmuster in comparison with Wolfs 2010 novel Stadt der Engel oder The Overcoat of Dr. Freud. In this novel, Wolf recovers some of the narrative techniques first developed in the 1970s, and, following the example of Kindheitsmuster, plunges herself into important autobiographic material. By the way of this comparison, our aim is to analyze some of Wolfs stylistic devices and strategies put in use so as to present close interconnection between historical moment and personal experience in two quite different moments. Through those devices and strategies, combined with Wolfs own public position, the author blurs the traditional boundaries between fictionality and factuality, subjectivity and objectivity, by bringing into attention her concept of subjective authenticity and a new idea of Realism as well. Behind Wolfs achievement, there is a quite specific understanding of autofictionality, based upon metafictional techniques and the mingling of literary representation and recollection processes, and which is our task to interpret.

Submitted by Silvana Teresinha Dornelles Studzinski (sstudzinski) on 2016-10-11T16:17:07Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Mariana Rost_.pdf: 1317779 bytes, checksum: 370b5784aeb1c758e3cac3a3342974f6 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-10-11T16:17:07Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Mariana Rost_.pdf: 1317779 bytes, checksum: 370b5784aeb1c758e3cac3a3342974f6 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-08-30 / CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Esta dissertação focaliza as interações no CAM4, uma plataforma de pornografia live streaming, que consiste em transmissões ao vivo via webcam feitas por pessoas que se apresentam em atividade sexual com a possibilidade de quem as assiste interagir com elas e entre si através de um bate-papo alocado ao lado da caixa de vídeo. As práticas sexuais são negociadas por quem se apresenta e por quem assiste mediante o pagamento de gorjetas que operam desde metas distribuídas em torno de práticas particulares. Através de uma etnografia dos usos das mídias digitais, analiso o lugar da sexualidade, as noções de erotismo e a circulação de atributos de gênero nas negociações feitas nas transmissões do site. Interessa compreender as dinâmicas desse ambiente que produz e circula material pornográfico em um contexto de novas possibilidades tecnológicas e de busca pelo autêntico. Assim, identifico os mecanismos através dos quais a pornografia live streaming se organiza e como eles se articulam e concorrem na produção da diferença e das tecnologias de gênero e sexo. Também busco examinar como o dinheiro, os sex toys e os artefatos tecnológicos mobilizam formas específicas de obter prazer. Finalmente, procuro compreender como essa modalidade de pornografia pode se distribuir em investimentos políticos no campo das relações de gênero e sexualidade. / This Master's theses focuses on the negotiations on CAM4, a live streaming pornography website. This type of pornography consists of sharing live sexual activities over a webcam with the possibility of interaction between those who watch and the person on the video through an online chat beside the video box. The sexual practices are negotiated with tips that participants pay in exchange for specific activities. Through an ethnography about the use of digital media, I analyze the role of sexuality, the notions of eroticism and the circulation of gender attributes on the negotiations made in the transmissions on the website. I am interested in the dynamics of this environment that produces and circulates pornographic material in a context of the pursuit of the authenticity and new technological possibilities. Thus, I identify the mechanisms by which live streaming pornography is organized and how they compete in the production of difference as well as gender and sex technologies. I also aim to examine how money, sex toys and technological artifacts mobilize specific ways to have pleasure. Finally, I seek to understand how this type of pornography can be distributed in political actions in the field of gender relations and sexuality.

Immigration reform in 1965 enabled a large number of Chinese immigrants to settle in the United States. Chinese restaurants expanded quickly both quantitatively and geographically. This thesis researches the interactions between Chinese restaurant employers and employees and their customers. I focus on several Chinese restaurants in a mid-size Southeast U.S. city with a university and I analyze their methods for attracting culturally distinct groups of customers—local Americans and Chinese students or immigrants. I conducted participant observation in two Chinese restaurants and in-person interviews with 14 people from four restaurants whose roles are owners, managers, or servers. I found that Chinese restaurants in my sample shifted their cuisine to accommodate local American customers. I also found that they provided unofficial services for Chinese customers. By operating as quasi cultural centers and information hubs, the restaurants I studied cultivated loyal Chinese customers and maintained their claims to ethnic authenticity.

Wild Abandon traces a literary and cultural history of late twentieth-century appeals to dissolution, the moment at which a text seems to erase its subject’s sense of selfhood in natural environs. I argue that such appeals arose in response to a prominent yet overlooked interaction between discourses of ecology and authenticity following the rise and fall of the American New Left in the 1960s and 70s. This conjunction inspired certain intellectuals and activists to celebrate the ecological concept of interconnectivity as the most authentic basis of subjectivity in political, philosophical, spiritual, and literary writings. As I argue, dissolution represents a universalist and essentialist impulse to reject self-identity in favor of an identification with the ecosystem writ large, a claim to authenticity that flattens distinctions among individuals and communities. But even as the self appears to disintegrate, an “I” always remains to testify to its disintegration. For this reason, dissolution performs a primarily critical function by foregrounding an unsurpassable representational tension between sense of self and ecosystem. Each chapter explores a different perspective on this tension as it conflicts with matters of gender and race in works by Edward Abbey, Peter Matthiessen, Toni Morrison, Margaret Atwood, and Jon Krakauer. Assuming an anti-essentialist stance, all the texts I study acknowledge ecological interconnectivity as a universal condition but maintain the necessity of culturally mediated and individually constructed identity positions from which to recognize that condition.

This thesis explores parliamentarians’ emotional labour in their workplace, and argues the enactment of passionate rationality is crucial to how parliamentarians accomplish vocational authenticity. The New Zealand parliamentary workplace is characterised by an elaborate set of feeling rules and a complex emotional culture. On entry to parliament, parliamentarians go through a period of identity transformation akin to a moral career. Parliamentarians must manage emotion to achieve their occupational identities according to local feeling rules. Based on analysis of in-depth group and individual interviews with parliamentarians, and focusing on the passage of the Civil Union Bill as an exemplar of parliamentarians’ emotion work, three interpretative repertoires were identified in their accounts of emotion in the workplace. These repertoires, The Game, The Performance and The Crusade are work-place specific meaning-making resources whose flexible deployment enabled parliamentarians to assert claims of occupational identity and vocational authenticity. These repertoires show the emotional labour involved in parliamentarians’ negotiation of shared meanings around ‘entering’ the occupational role and asserting the authenticity of their new identities. In particular, The Crusade repertoire makes available the subject position of the Knight, the subject position important for accomplishment of being a passionately rational worker. In this thesis, I introduce two new concepts for emotional labour in complex workplaces where that labour has both exchange and use value; emotional convocation and personified emotion. Together these concepts allow for a more thorough theorisation of emotion work than do existing concepts of emotional labour. Although developed in relation to the work of parliamentarians, personified emotion and emotional convocation have utility for understanding other contemporary experiences of work where emotion management within a complex emotional culture is fundamental to both occupational identity and the accomplishment of vocational authenticity.

<p>This paper is concerned with the newly reformed national English test for Chinese college students, called the College English Test (CET) Band 4 (or Level 4). By comparing the test before and after it was reformed, there will be a close examination with regard to the aspects of test reliability, construct validity, authenticity, interactiveness, impact and practicality. With an extra focus on how vocabulary and grammar are tested, the paper aims to investigate the extent to which the new system is considered useful and how effective it is in testing vocabulary and grammar.</p>

<p>This paper deals with an object donated by a group of members of the public to the Royal Armoury in Stockholm, Sweden. The donators claimed to own a horse bit that had been used by King Gustav II Adolf's mount in the battle of Lützen, where the King was killed. The bit was a gift to the donators' ancestor, the farmer and politician Petter Jönsson, from the King of Sweden, Oscar I, in the 1850's. In this paper, the donated bit is examined and found unlikely to be the bit used at Lützen. The examination also revealed that the bit now worn by the horse in its display is a prop, included in the group of objects in the 19^th century, and that the original bit probably was lost in a fire in 1648. The examination also raises questions on why this bit was considered a valuable gift, what consequences the gift transaction of the bit had for giver and reviever. It ends with a discussion about the donated bit and the bit in the display, and their roles at the museum in the future.</p>

Le but de cette recherché doctorale est d'établir la liaison entre deux phénomènes de mobilité parallèles qui peuvent faire changer une société de manière dramatique. On trouve dans le Maramures deux couloirs de mobilités fort liés entre eux: l’arrivée de personnes vers la région, qui consiste surtout en tourisme rural, et le départ des personnes originaires de la région vers l’étranger, qui est représenté par la migration de travail. Le tourisme rural est encastré dans un contexte social, politique et historique particulier. La spécificité supposée de la région est celle d’une authenticité bien préservée, avec un fort usage du discours concernant l’Etat national. Le Maramures est considéré comme une des régions “authentiques”, “archaïques” et “traditionnelles” qui attirent une certaine catégorie de visiteurs, comme c’est souvent le cas du tourisme rural. L’évolution du phénomène touristique est le résultat des intersections complexes des divers acteurs, les migrants jouant un rôle important. Une grande partie des remises de fonds provenant des migrants est investie dans le tourisme rural, d’une manière directe ou indirecte. De plus, ceux-ci fonctionnent comme des médiateurs culturels pour les activités touristiques. La participation à une pratique, tel le tourisme rural ou la migration, facilite souvent l’accès à l’autre, générant ainsi des tensions et clivages sociaux. La croissance continue du tourisme et de la migration est en même temps cause et effet d’une interdépendance entre les modèles culturels et économiques de l’Est et de l’Ouest. / The goal of this PhD research is to show the connection between two parallel mobility phenomena that have the potential to dramatically change a local society. There are two strongly linked “mobility corridors” in Maramures. Incoming mobility, i.e. the arrival of foreigners, largely involves tourists, whilst outgoing mobility consists mostly of labour migration. Rural tourism is embedded in a particular social, political and historical context. The alleged specificity of this area is a well-preserved authenticity, with a strong background of national discourse. Maramures is seen as an “authentic”, “archaic” or “traditional” area, so it attracts a particular category of visitor, as is often the case in rural tourism. The evolution of this tourism phenomenon is the result of the complex intersection of different actors’ interests, and migrants play a major role. A large part of the labour migrants’ remittances is invested in rural tourism, directly or indirectly. Moreover, these migrants function as cultural brokers for tourism-related activities. Participation in either rural tourism or migration often facilitates access to the other. However, it also creates tensions and social gaps. The steady growth of tourism and migration is both cause and effect of an interdependence between the cultural and economic models of Eastern and Western societies.

This dissertation examines three of Carmen Martín Gaite’s later novels, identifying existential issues that are presented through the narrative. It aims to unravel issues pertaining to personal identity, freedom, communication and ethical stances in a postmodern context. The thesis is divided into three studies, one for each novel examined. The corpus of novels includes Nubosidad variable (1992), La reina de las nieves (1994) and Lo raro es vivir (1996). The Introduction and the General Conclusions cover all three studies. The first examines the epistolary nature of Nubosidad variable, presenting the subjective and dialogical aspects of the texts in question. The protagonists’ quest for true identity, concealed beneath acquired social roles, elicits a search for authenticity. The second study analyses the intertextual character of La reina de las nieves, identifying the existential issues that are imbedded in the intertexts and the narrative. The third study looks into the importance of communication in a self-exploratory process in which death and life-giving issues are discussed. Identity is understood as a combination of ipse, selfhood, and idem, sameness and narrative identity as a narrative formation of discourse in which human experience is articulated and subject to change over time (Ricoeur). Freedom, responsibility, authenticity and subjectivity are viewed in light of theoretical considerations offered, inter alia, by Sartre and Kierkegaard. The study concludes that the main idea of these novels is that the act of writing gives purpose or meaning to life. Although death is ever-present, emphasis is placed on life challenges and the subject’s existential sense of direction. As regards ethical inclinations in the novels, there is an appraisal of the effort to acquire self-knowledge and self-fulfilment, assuming personal responsibility for choices made in life.