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This thesis explores how online gaming has become a central tool for networked social movements to participate in consumer activism. I look at the case study of MapleStory: a Korean MMORPG game and their consumer activism efforts started by the players. Migrating from different social media channels to organize, coordinate and strategize ways to create change within their group, through using consumeractivism techniques such as boycotting, protesting and spreading information. I framed this group as an early example of a networked social movements and analyzed their usage of social groups to spread activism messages. Through the internet and new technologies members were able to find their own political voices and teach others how to protest for social change. I also concentrated on the social aspect of these communities and how they fostered social bonds through collective action and participation. I argue that online gaming has become a platform that enables consumers to protest against a company’smal practices by utilizing their positions as consumers of a product.

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This thesis discusses the ways of how physically handicapped fans of Game of Thrones, a television series, identify with characters like or dislike and answers the questions how physically handicapped fans choose who they favour and who they don't, how they identify with them and how is their interpretation linked to their own experience of being handicapped and how their social reality influences how they perceive the media reality. The research reveals orthodoxies of power of the dominating ideology of being fit, against which "the ill" and "powerless", define themselves, albeit subconsciously; it describes the difficulties, connected with their handicap, which they project into the series, behaviour strategies resulting from this phenomenon and how the world around interferes; and, last but not least, it confirms sociological premises of deepening empathy on the basis of different dimensions of one's own identities and experience. The qualitative research of audience is based on semi- structured interviews and deploys the interpretative approach, while the results are coded using the method of anchored theory. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

The subject of this dissertation is the introduction and reception of science fiction literature in Sweden 1950–1968. Apart from considerations on science fiction as a genre and market category, and a brief survey of science fiction published in Sweden before the year 1950, the dissertation scrutinizes the Swedish publishers’ attempts at introducing both domestic and translated science fiction, the reception of the genre in Swedish literary criticism, the magazines Häpna! (1954–1966) and Galaxy (1958–1960), and the foundation of a Swedish science fiction fan culture. Science fiction was established as a category on the Swedish book market in the early 1950s, with several attempts to launch single works or whole series of mainly translated fiction. Between 1952 and 1968, roughly 30 publishing firms published over 160 books marketed as science fiction, with an apex in the late 1950s. Few publishers were successful, however, and most of the series were discontinued within just a few years of their inception. Meanwhile, in Swedish literary criticism, science fiction was increasingly perceived as a deficient form of commercial entertainment. A few of the exceptions were Harry Martinson (1904–1978), with his space epic Aniara (1956), and the translated author Ray Bradbury (b. 1920), who came to be considered as surpassing the boundaries of the genre. With the magazine Häpna!, a Swedish science fiction fan culture was contrived, with fans forming clubs, arranging conventions, disseminating fanzines, and, eventually, starting their own publishing firms and magazines. In the Swedish literary system, science fiction became a semi-separate literary circuit of production, distribution and consumption, and, concurrently, a growing autonomous subfield of cultural production, with its own forms of specific symbolic capital, doxa, and instances of consecration.

A topic of this thesis addresses the media image of three football clubs as this was reflected in the Czech press within 2010/2011 season. The attention is paid to the press coverage of Sparta Praha, Manchester United and Dukla Praha. The specifics of their image are followed in three differently profiled Czech titles. Deník Sport represents the sport - focused newspaper, Mladá fronta Dnes stands for the most widely read Czech newspaper with a special regional sport section and Hospodářské noviny has been chosen because of their specifically economic profile where the sport section represents just a minor part of each issue. The term "media image" is linked to the signs of evaluation and expression of support for a particular team as it is mediated through the articles. This support is analysed through the structure of topics and through the use of subjective language. The aim is to point on how these teams were presented during the season and how their presence kept changing in the press within the time. The possible differences and overlapping are explained more into details. The term "media bias" is related to subjective reporting that stresses negativity or stardom on the contrary. The term is used to point out potential devotion from objective reporting. It is used to address possibly...