Bakgrund: Varje dag gör människor val som har större eller mindre påverkan på framtiden. I takt med att hållbarhet påverkar en större del av vår vardag, kommer även beslut kring sparande bli mer påverkat av aspekter som hållbarhet och socialt ansvarstagande. Det är långt ifrån alla konsumenter som tenderar till att vara medvetna om hur stor påverkan deras fondval kan ha på bolagen som fonden investerar i och även hur stor påverkan det kan ha på vår hållbara framtid. Beslut rörande hållbara fonder påverkas inte bara av förväntad avkastning och hållbarhet utan även psykologiska faktorer. Hur informationen presenteras för fondspararen kommer därför påverka hur investeringen uppfattas och hur beslutet argumenteras för av investeraren. Det framgår att det finns ett informationsgap mellan fondbolagen och privatpersoner kring hur hållbara fonder kan påverka bolagen fonden investerar i. Lite kunskap finns även om hur privatpersoner resonerar kring hållbara fonder. Genom att undersöka privatpersoners beslutfattande kring hållbara fonder bidrar studien till en kunskapsspridning och kartläggning om hur beslut inom hållbara fonder fattas. Syfte: Studiens syfte är att kartlägga hur privatpersoner fattar beslut som leder till investeringar i hållbara fonder och vilka faktorer som kan påverka beslutsfattandeprocessen. Genomförande: Studien är tentativ och karaktäriseras av ett kvalitativt tillvägagångssätt. Empirin har samlats in genom ett bekvämlighetsurval med inslag av såväl målstyrt- och kvoturval. Sammanlagt har 72 privatpersoner intervjuats under en tidsperiod på tre veckor. Slutsats: Studien resulterar i att faktorerna referenspunkt, rationalitet, socialt dilemma samt framing påverkar beslutsfattandeprocessen vid val av hållbara fonder och vissa av dessa är påverkningsbara. Studiens författare har, genom empirin, även skapat olika investeringsprofiler beroende på hur privatpersoner fattar beslut inom hållbara fonder. Vidare har ett analysverktyg utvecklats för att tydliggöra när de ovan presenterade faktorerna påverkar beslutsfattandeprocessen. Analysverktyget kan användas av fondförvaltare som arbetar med hållbara fonder för att förstå vad som påverkar beslutsfattandeprocessen samt vad de kan göra för att påverka investerares beslut. / B Background: Every day, people make choices that have an impact on their future. As sustainability affects a greater part of our daily lives, savings decisions will also be more affected by sustainability and social responsibility. It tends to be far from all consumers who are aware of the impact of their funds on the companies the funds invests in and even less the impact it may have on our sustainable future. Sustainable investment decisions are affected not only by expected returns and sustainability but also psychological factors. Therefore, how the information is presented to the investor will affect how the investment is perceived and how the decision is being argued. It appears that there is an information gap between fund companies and individuals regarding how sustainable funds can affect sustainability and how individuals make sustainable investment decisions. By studying individuals’ decision-making in sustainable funds, the study contributes to the dissemination of knowledge and mapping of how sustainable investment decisions are carried out. Purpose: The purpose of the study is to describe how individuals make decisions that lead to sustainable fund investments and, which factors can affect the decision-making. Completion: The study is tentative and based on a qualitative approach. The empirical data has been collected through a convenience sample with elements of both target and quota sample. A total of 72 interviews with private individuals have been conducted during the time period of three weeks. Conclusion: The study conclusion is that reference points, rationality, social dilemma and framing affect the decision-making process when deciding about sustainable funds, some of which are influential. Through the empirical study, the authors have also created different investment profiles depending on how individuals make decisions in sustainable funds. Furthermore, an analysis tool has been developed to clarify when these factors presented above has an effect on the decision-making process. The analysis tool can be used by fund managers working with sustainable funds to understand what affects the decision-making process and what they can do to influence investors' decisions.

This research looks at how local television news framed the efforts in Iowa in 2010 and 2012 to unseat Iowa Supreme Court Justices whose 2009 ruling in the case Varnum v. Brien made Iowa the third state in the nation to legalize same-sex marriage. By looking at relevant news packages and interviewing journalists, news directors, and spokespersons, I traced the way the traditionally ignored judicial retention votes became a top political story, and how particular frames entered the news. I found that despite a well-meaning intention to cover the story in a professionally acceptable fashion, these same news values and reporting rituals blinded journalists to how their attempts to provide “balance” ultimately accomplished the opposite. Evidence studied here suggested that morality politics was the dominant frame throughout most of the coverage, with the civil rights aspects of the issue mostly relegated to the day after each election rather than in the weeks prior. Political science literature defines morality politics as a campaign strategy that relies upon arguments based on “morality,” “values,” or even “sin” to motivate supporters. In the Iowa case, this concept gets modified because while the conservative campaign engaged the logics of morality politics, they also felt the need to couch their campaign in issues like “judicial activism.” I conclude the ability to get news coverage of the anti-retention campaign and get this modified morality politics framing as dominant in that coverage reveals the exercise of political and social power in defense of the hegemonic heteronormative cultural matrix.

During the 2010’s a new situation emerged due to the influx of people using the Mediterranean Sea route. Around its peak in 2015, widespread media coverage constructed this crisis as ‘the refugee crisis’. Camps like Moria became the emblem of the refugee crisis, yet, more than half a decade later, the ‘crisis’ has yet to be resolved. And, amid a pandemic, a global crisis, not the least affecting refugees, yet another ‘crisis’ arose during the night of 8th/9th September 2020 when a series of fires almost completely destroyed refugee camp Moria, leaving more than 10.000 refugees ‘homeless’. It is in this unique context, at the intersection of ‘the refugee crisis’, ‘the corona crisis’ and ‘the fires in camp Moria’ that this exploratory study captures written news coverage from the four biggest Dutch newspapers, engaging with the refugee crisis in the first week after the fires (9-15 September 2020). It does so, with the aim of exploring the range of frames used to (re)construct the refugee crisis, thereby making certain meanings more likely to be conveyed than others.  Directed at an event focussed time frame within an understudied national context, this study zooms in on a moment of heightened media import to explore the (re)construction of frames as the situation unfolds. To this end, a qualitative inductive framing analysis, focussing on how the frames are reconstructed through framing and reasoning devices, has been conducted on a total of 60 articles.  Including both broadsheets and tabloids with diverse political backgrounds in the sample, significant differences between the coverage of the two tabloids and the two broadsheets were found. The former (tabloids, Telegraaf politically right oriented and AD politically neutral oriented) significantly distance the situation in Moria, the refugees and the refugee crisis as a whole, quite often even framing the refugees as a problem while rejecting humanitarian grounds. The latter (broadsheets, Volkskrant politically (centre) left oriented and NRC politically centre right oriented) were found to centralize humanisation and identification within a humanitarian frame, while problematizing, and assigning responsibility to political handling. Furthermore, the coverage of the tabloids is characterised by more superficial, descriptive accounts, using little framing devices, while the coverage of both broadsheets is saturated with framing devices to substantiate the humanitarian frame.             Finally, the study also found similarities on the level of incorrect labelling (the usage of migrants instead of, or as interchangeable with refugees) and ‘voicelesness’ (the rare opportunity for refugees to speak). The sample articles more often than not mix labels. Furthermore, the broadsheets give (multiple) refugees a voice in respectively 2 (Volkskrant) and 3 (NRC) articles. And in doing so, these articles actually centralize those accounts. Both tabloids on the other hand, only briefly quote an anonymous and un-contextualised refugee once. Although the broadsheets ‘do better’, still, overwhelmingly, refugees themselves do not play a role in their representation and framing.

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Forskare och teknologer talar om artificiell intelligens som en revolution lika omvälvande som industrialismen och investerare har skyhöga förväntningar. Detta medan det hos allmänheten finns både okunskap om och rädsla inför AI, även om AI redan i dag tillämpas inom områden som sjukvård och industri. Många tillämpningar innebär att människans livsmiljö behöver anpassas för att AI ska fungera. När ny teknologi växer fram saknar vi ofta uttryck att tala om den och AI är dessutom till stor del osynlig för blotta ögat. Allmänheten blir därför i stor utsträckning beroende av mediernas skildringar. Det ger medierna makt eftersom de får kontroll över de budskap som sprids om AI, vilket gör att de kan påverka våra tankar, känslor och handlingar. Syftet med studien har varit att utforska hur AI har konstruerats i medierna i en tid när varken AI eller diskurserna om AI har hittat sin slutgiltiga form, det vill säga låsts in. Vad säger vi egentligen om AI i form av diskurser, ramar och metaforer? Empirin består av 90 nyhetsartiklar om AI publicerade av TT Nyhetsbyrån från 1980-talet till mars 2020. TT Nyhetsbyrån har en unik plats som nyhetsförmedlare då de når ut till hela Sveriges befolkning och åtnjuter stort förtroende hos allmänheten. Studiens teoretiska ramverk består av tre teorier i samspel: diskursanalys, framingteori och metaforteori. Diskursanalys ser språket som en social handling, vilket innebär att diskurser om AI kan leda oss i en viss riktning. Framingteori studerar hur olika sätt att rama in ett ämne som AI styr hur vi uppfattar och tolkar det. Metaforer ses i studien som centrala tankestrukturer som påverkar hur vi uppfattar, känner och handlar kring AI. Metodval är kvalitativ analys utifrån den undersökningsmodell som konstruerades med det teoretiska ramverket som grund. Resultaten visar att inramningen av TT Nyhetsbyråns artiklar är övervägande positiv, där AI i majoriteten av artiklarna presenteras som ett verktyg med stora möjligheter, som bör utvecklas och tillämpas. Metaforer som förekommer tillskriver maskinen mänskliga egenskaper och motiv och framställer AI-tillämpningar som smarta, läskunniga, nyfikna med flera mänskliga förmågor. Det impliceras i flera artiklar att maskinen skulle ha ett intresse av att konkurrera med människan. En central slutsats är att det förekommer ett spänningsfält med två motsatta huvuddiskurser i empirin. Den ena beskriver AI som ett neutralt verktyg, den andra som en konkurrent till människan. Båda leder till bilden av AI som ett verktyg med stor potential. AI-intressenterna gynnas av spänningsfältet medan läsare missgynnas: de lämnas att själva dra slutsatser om AI:s egentliga fördelar och nackdelar. Andra slutsatser är att de metaforer som förekommer tillskriver AI mänskliga egenskaper och motiv, vilket skapar stora förväntningar. Metaforerna döljer att AI kan förekomma i andra former än som en människoliknande robot, former som inskränker människans livsutrymme. Inramningen har varierat något över tid och tecken finns på att diskurser har låsts in. I empirin finns en klar övervikt för vita män ur elitklassen, vilket gör att TT Nyhetsbyrån kan sägas reproducera existerande maktstrukturer. / According to scientists and technologists, Artificial Intelligence is as revolutionary as the Industrialisation, and investors have soaring expectations. At the same time there is ignorance and fear of AI among the public, even though AI is already being applied in areas such as healthcare and industry. Many applications mean that human life must be adapted to make AI work. As new technologies emerge, we often lack expressions to talk about them, and AI is also largely invisible to the naked eye. The public, therefore, is largely dependent on depictions in media. Newspapers and radio channels decide what messages are spread about AI, messages which influence our thoughts, feelings and actions. The aim of this study was to explore how AI has been constructed in the media at a time when neither AI nor the discourses of AI have found their final form. What do we really say about AI? This study investigates 90 news articles about AI published by TT Nyhetsbyrån from the 1980s to March 2020. TT Nyhetsbyrån has the ability to reach the entire population of Sweden and enjoy great public confidence. The study’s theoretical framework consists of three theories in interaction: discourse analysis, framing theory and metaphor theory. Discourse analysis sees language as a social act, which means that discourses about AI can influence our behaviour. Framing theory studies how different ways of framing a topic such as AI can determine how we perceive and interpret it. In this study, metaphors are defined as central thought structures that influence how we perceive, feel and act. A qualitative analysis was applied in the study, based on a model that was constructed using the theoretical framework. TT Nyhetsbyrån’s articles are found to be predominantly positive, where AI in the majority of articles is framed as a tool with great opportunities, that should be developed and applied. Metaphors ascribe human attributes and motives to the machine, such as smart, literate and curious. It is implied in several articles that the machine has an interest in competing with man. In TT Nyhetsbyrån’s articles two opposite main discourses are visible, creating a tension between the two. One describes AI as a neutral tool, the other as a competitor to humans. Both lead to the image of AI as a tool with great potential. AI stakeholders are favoured by this tension between discourses, while the public is disfavoured: the readers of TT Nyhetsbyrån’s articles are left to draw conclusions about the true advantages and disadvantages of AI. The metaphors in the articles attribute human traits and motives to AI, which creates high expectations. The metaphors hide that AI can exist in forms other than a human-like robot, forms that restrict human life. The framing has varied somewhat over time and there are signs that discourses have been locked in. Since a majority of the interviewees in the articles are white men of the elite class, TT Nyhetsbyrån can also be said to reproduce existing power structures.

This study explored how women involved in U.S. politics visually framed themselves on their Instagram pages. While recent research in political communications examined the use of Facebook and Twitter, few studies assessed Instagram's role in the game of politics. Guided by political and visual framing theories, a quantitative content analysis of Instagram posts (N = 1,947) from women involved in U.S. politics was conducted. This examination allowed for an exploration of how these public figures framed themselves on Instagram and the extent to which they shared personal content, despite their varied involvement in U.S. politics. Results showed that: both Democrat and Republican women shared political content more often than personal content; Instagram affords a visual-first emphasis for different political issues; and women most often framed themselves as the credible, ideal stateswoman, while still showcasing their personality. Implications for this study affirm Instagram as a legitimate political communications platform, despite its reputation as a food and travel haven.

The thesis deals with the issue of photographs taken during the Rwandan genocide in 1994. The ethnically motivated conflict, in which the Hutu majority tried to exterminate the Tutsi minority, claimed almost a million victims in a hundred days. The Rwandan genocide is notoriously associated with machetes and radio. Most of the victims were killed with primitive weapons, and the murders of neighbours and family members took place under the influence of a propaganda radio broadcast. The thesis describes how photojournalism in the 1990s reported on such a specific conflict as modern genocide. The thesis uses visual framing analysis, which is based on the theory of framing. After that it was possible to identify the recurring visual frames through which the Rwandan genocide is depicted in the images.

This thesis follows a qualitative research approach to explore the type of framing entrepreneurs of the funeral industry are using to present their idea. By creating a pilot case study, I have determined which types of framing specific entrepreneurs use to strategically resonate with customers. The framing variables have been explored through determining the strategic implementations across all representative samples. Those categories are frame creator; framing topics; framing models; and stimuli in framing. Data was collected by deeply analyzing websites and assigning cognitive or emotional values to categorical attributes of each, thereby making those attributes or categories into a frame. The data was then analyzed for trends in framing strategy amongst entrepreneurs. My research aims to provide insight on what aspect of their innovation they frame to influence customer towards having a favorable position.

The aim of this study is to investigate how moral issues surrounding one of the lengthiest environmental conflicts – the Canadian seal hunt controversy - were communicated by two Canadian mainstream newspapers: the national Globe and Mail, and the Newfoundland-based The Telegram in 2009, the year in which the European Union banned the import of all seal products on the basis of a moral standard relating to the welfare of animals. At a general level, the purpose of this work is to examine how the news media construe and convey environmental ethical positions when dealing with complicated environmental issues. To this end, this thesis draws from media framing theory to implement a qualitative linguistic analysis of the 99 news articles to analyze how seals and sealers – the two main subjects of moral worth in this controversy – were framed in the two newspapers. The analysis found that seals were predominantly framed in accordance with their perceived social and economic benefit, largely overlooking animal welfare considerations. Sealers, on the other hand, tended to be portrayed as people of moral rectitude and brave seafarers, with a concomitant onus placed on the cultural and economic importance of sealing for Northerners. The findings corroborate claims that our perceptions of animal species, especially those which are considered wildlife, and the type of our relationship with them vary in accordance with human utility. At the same time, these perceptions are influenced by the social and cultural aspects of humans' relationship with the environment that may trump considerations of animal welfare and compassion toward sentient animals. Seen in the perspective of environmental ethics debate, the seal hunt controversy reveals the current lack of consensus on determining the most sound ethical principle in order to ensure our treatment of the environment is morally consistent. As the seal hunt controversy is not a standalone phenomenon of the protest based in animal welfare considerations, this thesis can be of value for the future research of comparable environmental controversies. Reconciling antagonistic environmental ethics is important for environmental policy-making and management, in order to ensure a greater and more productive stakeholder participation in solving environmental issues more effectively, while at the same realizing our moral obligations towards the animal world and the rest of the nature.

Previous research on framing has proved its strong effects on the social perception and political preferences of individuals. Therefore, the aim of this research is to explore how Saudi women's issues have been framed in a sample of United States and Saudi newspapers. Saudi Vision 2030 is the post-oil plan for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia that was announced on April 25, 2016. The sample of this thesis was 300 news stories from eight newspapers. The U.S. newspapers were the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the Los Angeles Times. The Saudi newspapers were Al Riyadh, Okaz, Al Jazirah, and Al Watan. This thesis explores how these issues have been covered before and after Saudi Vision 2030 by answering five basic questions. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used to analyze the news stories. For the quantitative analysis, five pre-defined generic frames from Semetko and Valkenburg were adopted: conflict frame, human interest frame, morality frame, economic consequences frame, and responsibility frame. An inductive approach to find the new frames was used for the qualitative analysis. Moreover, this thesis looked at how U.S. and Saudi newspapers have visually framed Saudi women through an analysis of the types of images used in the news stories related to Saudi women's issues. The main finding suggests that within the used frames in the newspapers, the U.S. newspapers focused more on the human-interest frame, while the Saudi newspapers mostly used the economic frame. Furthermore, the types of issues covered are discussed.