Scholarship on politics and popular culture is constantly evolving in the field of media and communications. Analyzing diverse types of mediated texts, especially the ones that are structured as narratives, such works aim to show how the cultural evolves from the political and vice versa. While storytelling in social media has attracted many scholars, it is mostly neglected from the perspective of politics and popular culture. The probable reason for this is that social media for long time have not introduced any new types of popular culture mediated texts, which would be impossible to imagine without the opportunities of Web 2.0. Through examining “1917. Free history” – a project dedicated to the anniversary of the Russian revolution – this study aims to fill the research gap and expand the scholarship on politics and popular culture to the storytelling in social media. It examines the theoretical paradigm of mediated historicity with the help of content analysis, and the concepts of narrative, myth and ideology with the help of narrative analysis. For the former, the results show how remediation in pursuit of immediacy, expressed in implicitly hiding the initial contexts of production of the texts, constructs the mediated historicity of the project. For the latter, the results show that the political narratives of “1917” are constructed as agoras holding different competing myths which make equipollent ideologies appear natural. These practices are mutually beneficial and their interconnections are understood by applying a theory of the Russian identity which corresponds to the notion of identity as a national mythscape. This work could have a potential impact on narrative and discourse methodologies for the popular culture mediated texts in social media. It could also contribute to the theoretical debates on mediated historicity and research on national identity, cosmopolitan identity and nationalism in social media.

The purpose of this study is to explain and analyse the body positivity movement in the social media platform Instagram, as well as its empowering effects on women active in this movement. The phenomenon based on visuality, body positivism, has more than three million pictures on Instagram, hashtagged under two popular hashtags examined in this thesis: #bodypositivity and #bodypositive. The goal of this movement is to show diversity in the portrayal of women, as well as to encourage acceptance of all body types, skin colours and body flaws - especially marginalised bodies that are often invisible in the current society. The research is conducted with methods of visual content analysis and interviews with women participating in the body positivity movement. This study is framed in feminism theory and this study includes theories of gender-norms, Western beauty standards, the male gaze and questions about identity and body image. The results of this study show that most of the people participating in the movement are white women and are pictured often in their underwear. In the pictures hashtagged with body positivity related hashtags, there are, however, not that many flaws visible - such as cellulite or stretch marks. Nevertheless, after interviewing the women active in this movement - active as picture publishers, conversation holders and as body positive Instagram-user followers - this movement is empowering to the women and helps develop a positive body image and better self-esteem. In addition, this phenomenon can change the narratives of the people with marginalised bodies and modify the image of how women are represented and portrayed in society.

Media is belittling millennials for the current overall decrease in civic engagement. They are criticized for their apparent lack of responsibility, political knowledge and reluctance to get involved in current affairs, and social media and the Internet have been regarded as contributing to this civic decline. Millennials choose more liquid forms of organizing, as they have uprooted from pre-established and stable collective identities. There is a change in generations and their activities, and millennials’ use of social media for both political and civic engagement is a growing research field now. Hence this thesis aims to determine how civic engagement has been redefined by new media and generational shifts. The Internet has been proven to entice citizens to thoroughly engage in politics, providing a framework for broad social participation, which is inherently democratic, becoming a potent tool for civic and political participation, a crucial motivation for the core constituency of movements. According to the theoretical and empirical material, with the emergence of new media, new concepts, such as online activism, have been materialized or old ones, such as simple protests, have simply shifted and adapted to current times. There is not a discontinuity but rather a redefinition of civic engagement. The findings of the current study are significant in this sense, as they support the theoretical concept of the reinvigoration of civic life through generational shifts and the rise of new media.

I denna kandidatuppsats undersöks vilken upplevd makt Sveriges riksdagspartiers pressekreterare har över den politik deras parti för samt i vilka dimensioner av deras arbete denna makt finns och fungerar. Detta är av intresse eftersom pressekreterare är politiska tjänstemän utan demokratiskt mandat att påverka politiken. Är det så att de genom sitt kommunikativa arbete påverkar politiska beslut kan de anses spela en stor roll i det politiska systemet. Studien tar avstamp från tidigare forskning som hävdar att politiska tjänstemän utgör en egen social kategori med homogena intressen och stort politiskt inflytande. Till hjälp i analysen återfinns här teorier kring maktbegreppet, politikens medialisering och samt problematiserande av pressekreterarrollen. Vissa teoretiker menar att pressekreterare inte kan anses ta hänsyn till folkviljan och att en högt uppsatt grupp specialiserade experter utgör ett hot mot demokratin. Med mediernas ökade inverkan på politiken påstås att behovet av en specialiserad pressekreterarkår ökar. För att undersöka detta har jag använt kvalitativa intervjuer med en pressekreterare ur samtliga åtta riksdagspartier. Detta har sedan analyserats tematiskt. Flertalet pressekreterare upplever en viss makt över utformningen av politiken, medan andra helt avvisar den bilden och kritiserar den av principiella skäl. Det som respondenterna är överens om är dock att de har stort inflytande över den mediekontakt och det påverkansarbete som ingår i deras arbetsuppgifter. Detta trots att medierna alltid har sista ordet och påverkar den politiska agendan. Pressekreterare menar att inflytande kommer med erfarenhet och förtroende inom partiet. Deras påverkan på politikutvecklingen sker främst via förslag och idéer som presenteras för andra högt uppsatta i partiet, både tjänstemän och förtroendevalda. Pressekreterare har dock en medvetenhet kring sin egen position och känner ett ansvar inför väljarna och inte endast lojalitet mot sin arbetsgivare. Så är pressekreterares medieexpertis ett demokratiskt problem? Det är mycket möjligt eftersom den bild kritikerna målar upp liknar det resultat som denna studie visar. Dock är det troligtvis inte ett så pass stort problem som det kritikerna menar. Pressekreterarens makt är dock speciell för vårt politiska system och ska inte helt förbises.

Syftet med denna uppsats att undersöka hur rikedom framställs och skiljer sig i reklamfilmerna “Jackpotsfesten - 124 miljoner” från spelbolaget LeoVegas och “Lotto - Färjan” från spelbolaget Svenska Spel. Utifrån teorier om semiotiska begrepp och Bourdieus teorier om kapital, smak, habitus och det sociala rummet analyseras framställandet av rikedom i två reklamfilmer från två olika spelbolag. Detta med hjälp av en semiotisk analysmetod, som är en kvalitativ innehållsanalytisk metod. Det utförs även ett kommutationstest där viktiga och betydande paradigm byts ut för att testa deras relevans i reklamernas bild av rikedom. Utifrån denna analys kan vi se hur LeoVegas spelreklam framställer rikedom genom att visa upp tecken i form av materiella ting som konnoterar lyx och exklusivitet och i sin tur ett högt ekonomiskt kapital. Vi kan även se hur tydliga tecken på ett högt kulturellt kapital, där den rena smaken ligger i fokus. Svenska Spel visar istället upp rikedom i form av en färja i en exklusiv miljö, samt genom lingvistiska tecken i form av ett berättande, vilket skapar en uppfattning om ett högt ekonomiskt kapital och inte genom lyxiga detaljer. Till skillnad från LeoVegas visar Svenska Spel upp en bild av den barbariska smaken och det kulturella kapitalet är något som endast hamnat i bakgrunden. Slutligen ser vi i denna reklamfilm tydliga tecken på en nyrikhet eller en parveny som inte syns i LeoVegas.

Twitter, a microblogging platform, has been increasingly used as a tool for political election campaigns. In an attempt to persuade people to vote for them, candidates and political parties worldwide have begun to incorporate Twitter in their campaigns to disseminate campaign information, promote themselves, and mobilize voters. In the 2016 U.S presidential election, Donald Trump had actively utilized Twitter to promote his campaign and convince voters to support him, which helped him earn a strong presence and huge popularity on Twitter. Eventually Trump even successfully got elected as the 45th US president. Although the rise of Twitter in political campaigns has been studied by researches from different disciplines, there have been very few studies focusing on Donald Trump or his communication performance on social media in the 2016 US presidential campaign. Besides, it is found that there is a lack of studying candidates’ social media use from the perspective of persuasive communication. In order to reveal how Donald Trump was making use of Twitter to influence audiences’ attitudes, this paper will present a content analysis of Donald Trump’s Twitter use from the perspective of persuasive communication. Specifically, the study will investigate the characteristics of messages demonstrated from Donald Trump’s tweets, and examine whether his messages placed an emphasis on certain aspects. The aim of this study is to offer insights into Donald Trump’s Twitter use, particularly about his persuasive communication on Twitter during the political election campaign.

This thesis explores how the aura of the artworks changes in the age of digital reproduction through the empirical experiments conducted in Uppsala Konstmuseum. By employing the definition of the aura given by Benjamin in The work of art in the age of the mechanical reproduction and The arcade project, this thesis conceptualizes the “aura” into eight dimensions and then operationalizes the eight dimensions in order to find whether audience’s evaluation of the artwork changes when they are given different stimulus in the control experiment. From the control experiment, the quantitative data will be obtained from a questionnaire and non-participant observation. The qualitative data will be obtained from the interviews. By also applying the simulacra theory of Baudrillard to the analysis part, this thesis finds that there exists a small difference in the perception of the aura between the people who see a digital copy and who see a real painting. The aura still has its power. However, such power is really weak, as many dimensions of the aura have been weakened by the digital simulacra. Through this study, I suggest the museums to take cautious steps to digitalize their artworks though there is no evidence that virtual museums can replace real museums.

The main focus of this thesis is the American election of 2016 and how it was reported in four Swedish newspapers; Svenska Dagbladet, Dagens Nyheter, Expressen and Aftonbladet. The theoretical approach is based on an analysis of news values, explaining what generally attracts the attention of media outlets, specifically newspapers. A quantitative content analysis shows that Donald Trump was by far the most reported presidential candidate in the leading Swedish newspapers. Hillary Clinton was more seldom reported about. All newspapers had strong strong arguments against Donald Trumps presidential candidature, but the support for Hillary Clinton was at the same time relatively weak.

Denna studie syftar till att söka inställningen till källkritik i dagens medielandskap hos ett antal intervjuade nyhetskonsumenter. I en värld med allt mer falska nyheter och större informationsmängd behöver vi se över hur vi ser på källkritik, vad det innebär att vara källkritisk och hos vem ansvaret för källkritiken ligger. För att söka dessa svar genomfördes en intervjustudie med semi-strukturerade intervjuer. Att källkritik är en komplex fråga framstod tydligt och den ökade mängden information gör den än mer komplex. Mängden information tillsammans med debatten om falska nyheter har bidragit till en ökad medvetenhet kring källkritik. Många intressanta frågor uppkommer som en följd av detta, bland annat hur en ska klara av att vara källkritisk.

360º videos have emerged as a technology that providesnew possibilities for filmmakers and users alike. Thisresearch study will look at 360º videos and the level ofspatial immersion that users can achieve while viewingthem in different contexts. A number of studies havelooked at immersion in virtual environment. However, thesame does not apply to 360º videos. The paper willintroduce related work in the areas of 360º as well asimmersion and spatial immersion in virtual realityenvironments in order to provide a background for theresearch question. The process of answering this researchquestion is conducted through showing test subjects fivedifferent videos in set in different locations andinterviewing them as well as asking them to take part in aquestionnaire. The study analyses the findings that emergefrom the interviews and questionnaire in relation to thespatial immersion dimensions that are presented in background literature. Among the study's findings is that the potential movements and actions that users feel theycan perform in the virtual environment is a significantfactor when it comes to achieving spatial immersion. Thestudy also concludes that movement is another factor thathelp users achieve spatial immersion.