The HPV vaccine represents an important step in the primary prevention of cervical cancer, yet uptake rates for the vaccine remain below what is needed to establish "herd immunity" from the virus. While many studies have examined both psychosocial and communication factors affecting HPV vaccination decisions, this study adopts a unique approach to understand the communication environment within which this health decision happens, such as the many and sometimes conflicting messages about vaccine efficacy and safety guiding young women's decisions. Using the message convergence framework, this project identifies how further study of converging and diverging messages in the communication environment in which young women make their vaccination decision can extend research in considering optimal communication strategies to enhance demand for HPV vaccination. In Study 1, 39 unvaccinated women participated in qualitative interviews and were asked questions in order to understand the important elements of the HPV vaccination communication environment that affected their decision (i.e., common sources and content of messages, how they discussed these messages "interacting" and influencing their decision). Study 2 builds on the findings of Study 1 by employing an experimental design to test different message convergence conditions on women's intent to vaccinate (e.g., what happens when a doctor and a family member give conflicting information and recommendations about HPV vaccination?). Three hundred and nine unvaccinated women were randomly assigned to one of nine experimental message conditions and then assessed on behavioral intentions. Support was found for the message convergence framework. This project represents the first formal testing of the message convergence framework and the first time it has been used in the health context. The findings from these studies are discussed in terms of the implications for future cervical cancer research and prevention campaigns, as well as the utility of the message convergence framework for other health communication research topics in which researchers are seeking to better understand and consider the communication environment when designing health behavior interventions.

While past research has revealed diverse forms of relationships between consumers and brands similar to those of interpersonal relationships, this research focuses on the perspective of the brand role in its relationship with consumer in an advertising context. Therefore, the present research examines the interactive effect of brand role (partner vs. servant) and regulatory focus message (promotion vs. prevention) on advertising effectiveness. The results show that interaction between brand role and regulatory focus message significantly influences advertising persuasiveness and consumers' attitudes toward the advertisement, but not consumer's advertising believability, attitudes toward the brand and purchase intention. To be specific, individuals are more persuaded and show more positive attitudes toward advertising when a partner brand is advertised with a promotion-focused message. In contrast, when a servant brand is advertised with a prevention-focused message, individuals are more persuaded and show more positive attitudes toward advertising. / text

<p>ABSTRACT</p><p>Title: How do you get the students to listen? – A study of Academic Works communication towards students (Hur får du en student att lyssna? – En studie av Academic Works kommunikation mot studenter)</p><p>Number of pages: 38 (41 including enclosures)</p><p>Author: Fredrik Hansson</p><p>Tutor: Peder Hård af Segerstad</p><p>Course: Media and Communication studies C</p><p>Period: Autumn 2007</p><p>University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Information Science, Uppsala University.</p><p>Aim: The purpose of this paper is to study the strategies involved in the communication process between an organisation and its target audience. The study also aims to examine the company Academic Work and its communication efforts towards the targeted audience students.</p><p>Method/Material: In order to examine the aim above, interviews were made with two persons involved in the communication of Academic Work. In addition to the interviews, a questionnaire was carried out at campus Ekonomikum, Uppsala University.</p><p>Main results: The main result can be summarized as:</p><p>· Academic Works communications have a lot of resemblance with the papers presented theory.</p><p>· Events and direct meetings is the communication effort by Academic Work that has the biggest impact on student’s awareness and knowledge of the company.</p><p>· A large majority of the students at campus Ekonomikum at Uppsala University are interested in working part-time and are aware of Academic Work. Despite this, only a few percents of the students participating in the questionnaire are working or have ever worked for Academic Work.</p><p>Keywords: Communication, students, Academic Work, target audience, strategies, message, media channel.</p>

<p>Abstract</p><p>As online social network services are becoming one of the dominant media channels the importance of disseminating messages through them is of high importance for governments, organizations, companies etc. The online social network services are several and changes rapidly as they grow and evolve. Being networks, the services give the user the tools to send, as well as receive text and information. This proposes us with yet another obstacle in communication via online social network services since sender and receiver merges together.</p><p>Online social network services and the Blogosphere, which essentially also is a network, exist in the context of Web 2.0. The crucial feature of Web 2.0 is to a large degree the harnessing of collective intelligence i.e. the collection of individual knowledge and information. Many of the tools and sites within Web 2.0 are therefore of a network structure, hence further stressing the importance to communicate via networks in general.</p><p>Network Analysis is the discipline through which we can see and understand the larger patterns of networks. In this thesis I have looked into three key concepts of Network Analysis; Weak Links, Growth and Preferential Attachment. I have found that we can use the knowledge of Network Analysis to disseminate messages via online social network services since it provides us with the raw structures of how networks tend to grow, and how messages tend to disseminate.</p><p>Title: Web 2.0 and Network Society – PR and Communication: The Challenge of Online Social Networks</p><p>Number of pages: 34</p><p>Author: Max Tandefelt</p><p>Tutor: Else Nygren</p><p>Course: Media and Communication Studies C</p><p>Period: HT 07</p><p>University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Information Science, Uppsala University.</p><p>Purpose/Aim: Facilitate message dissemination through online social network services, as they are becoming one of the dominant media channels</p><p>Material/Method: Network Analysis</p><p>Main results: I have presented crucial concepts of Network Analysis that can be used for message dissemination via online social network services</p><p>Keywords: Online Social Network Services, Network Analysis, Web 2.0, Message Dissemination</p>

We study a message passing network where nodes keep a numeric attitude toward a subject. Messages are created by a message factory and each is sent to a random seed-node, which then gets eventually propagated in the network. Each message has some information about the subject, which is interpreted by the receiving node based on its features. Hence, the same message could be interpreted quite differently by two different nodes. Once a message is interpreted, the attitude of the node toward the subject is updated. In this setting, the thesis is that an external agent can influence (in a desired way) the average attitude of the network, by sending the messages to specific nodes (rather than sending them randomly) based on the message content. We call this agent a leader which its goal is to minimize (maximize) the average attitude of the network, and its actions are choosing one of the seed-nodes for a given message. The leader does not have any information about the nodes in advance, instead, it eventually learns the interests of the seed-nodes through sending messages and receiving the feedback of the network. We formulate this as a contextual bandit problem and study the effectiveness of a leader in different network configurations. Moreover, we study the case that there are two adversarial leaders, and present different policies and evaluate their effectiveness. Finally, we study the leader's performance when there are dynamic changes in the nodes features and network's topology.

The general purpose this study has been to determine the perception of MBA students on quality lecturing. Business schools are concerned about how learners evaluate the lecturing experiences in order to monitor the quality of the lecturing. Student evaluations are assumed to mirror relative stable views which hold implications for how tertiary institutions act upon and reward the educational practices of lecturers. It is evident from prior research that broad reaching claims concerning student satisfaction cover large alternatives in terms of a construct being evaluated. Links between what is measured, and how this information should be utilised, are not always well-defined. Previous studies suggest that student satisfaction and perception is a multifaceted concept consisting of several complex dimensions. The true muscle of lecturing is crucial leadership ability. It is not just a lecture or a presentation. Lecturing is a set of skills. It is not just about a gift. It is a set of practices that should be rehearsed, mastered and delivered. A lecturer will certainly not deliver a faultless lecture, but might bring an influential and current lecture. The skill set of lecturing is both a skill and a discipline. A lecturer should learn and practices the discipline; then the skill will be conquered. Everyone can be a powerful and skillful presenter, but it will take time, rehearsal and vigor to overcome mediocrity. The management of business schools should comprehend the importance of quality lecturing. Without emphasis on lecturing, the perceived quality of a business school could be misconceived by students. Quality lecturing should always be a focus point and the emphasis on improved effectiveness by management. / MBA, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

In this thesis, the concept of mobile messaging awareness has been investigated by designing and implementing a framework which is able to annotate the short text messages with context ontology for semantic reasoning inference and classification purposes. The annotated metadata of text message keywords are identified and annotated with concepts, entities and knowledge that drawn from ontology without the need of learning process and the proposed framework supports semantic reasoning based messages awareness for categorization purposes. The first stage of the research is developing the framework of facilitating mobile communication with short text annotated messages (SAMS), which facilitates annotating short text message with part of speech tags augmented with an internal and external metadata. In the SAMS framework the annotation process is carried out automatically at the time of composing a message. The obtained metadata is collected from the device’s file system and the message header information which is then accumulated with the message’s tagged keywords to form an XML file, simultaneously. The significance of annotation process is to assist the proposed framework during the search and retrieval processes to identify the tagged keywords and The Semantic Web Technologies are utilised to improve the reasoning mechanism. Later, the proposed framework is further improved “Contextual Ontology based Short Text Messages reasoning (SOIM)”. SOIM further enhances the search capabilities of SAMS by adopting short text message annotation and semantic reasoning capabilities with domain ontology as Domain ontology is modeled into set of ontological knowledge modules that capture features of contextual entities and features of particular event or situation. Fundamentally, the framework SOIM relies on the hierarchical semantic distance to compute an approximated match degree of new set of relevant keywords to their corresponding abstract class in the domain ontology. Adopting contextual ontology leverages the framework performance to enhance the text comprehension and message categorization. Fuzzy Sets and Rough Sets theory have been integrated with SOIM to improve the inference capabilities and system efficiency. Since SOIM is based on the degree of similarity to choose the matched pattern to the message, the issue of choosing the best-retrieved pattern has arisen during the stage of decision-making. Fuzzy reasoning classifier based rules that adopt the Fuzzy Set theory for decision making have been applied on top of SOIM framework in order to increase the accuracy of the classification process with clearer decision. The issue of uncertainty in the system has been addressed by utilising the Rough Sets theory, in which the irrelevant and indecisive properties which affect the framework efficiency negatively have been ignored during the matching process.

Titel: Hur engageras medarbetare i ledningens vision? En studie inom intern kommunikation.  Nyckelord: Internal communication, hierarchical communication, corporate communication, organizational communication, sensemaking, employee engagement, message distortion  Syfte: Skapa ökad förståelse för hur en ledning, via sin interna kommunikation, kan öka medarbetarnas engagemang.  Metod: Studien har utförts med en kvalitativ ansats där data samlats in via intervjuer med tretton respondenter fördelade på ledningsgrupp, enhetschefer, gruppchefer och medarbetare.  Bidrag: Genom praktisk tillämpning av en teoretisk modell (Welch &amp; Jackson 2007) har en visions väg genom en organisation granskats. Aktiviteter har identifierats vilka kan förklara graden av engagemang samt hur väl visionen förankrats på medarbearnivå.  Originalitet: Intervjuerna är utförda på samtliga nivåer i en hierarkisk organisation. Studien täcker således mer än en nivås perspektiv på den interna kommunikationen. / Title: How do employees become engaged in the top management ́s vision? A study within internal communication.  Key words: Internal communication, hierarchical communication, corporate communication, organizational communication, sensemaking, employee engagement, message distortion  Purpose: To increase the understanding of how a management, through the use of internal communication, can increase the employees’ engagement.  Method: The study has been conducted with a qualitative approach. Data has been assembled through 13 interviews with top management, unit managers, group managers, and employees.  Contributions: By practical application of a theoretical model (Welch &amp; Jackson 2007), a vision's path through an organization has been reviewed. Activities have been identified that can explain the level of engagement and how well the vision has anchored on employee level.  Originality: The interviews have been conducted on all levels of a hierarchical organization. Therefore, the study covers more than one group’s perspective on the internal communication.

Children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) per DSM-5 criteria are characteristically limited in their ability to interact socially due to conversational speech delays. Typically, children with ASD experience a more constrained number of appropriate initiations and responses in conversations with peers. Previous research has shown the benefits of using scripted language to increase verbalizations in these children. However, limited research has been conducted on the use of technology to increase social interactions between children with ASD. This study will be based on hypotheses and results from the dissertation, “Teaching Conversational Speech to Children with Autism Using a Text Message Intervention” by Denise Grosberg. Grosberg evaluated the performance of a text message intervention (TMI) procedure using scripted language to teach conversational speech with typically developing peers. The present study used a multiple baseline design across dyads to again assess the efficacy of a text message intervention between dyads of children with ASD, including younger and lower-functioning participants. Results demonstrated an increase in appropriate conversational speech through the TMI and an increase in unscripted language following the intervention. Seven of the participants generalized the behavior across peers and settings as well as after a two-week follow-up period. Data are discussed in terms of the percentage of appropriate phrases used, as a function of appropriate phrases, inappropriate phrases, and the number of times a participant did not respond.

Recently, sexting has gained popularity in both popular press and academic publications. Despite the prevalence of this communicative behavior, there is limited research that focuses on a theoretical explanation as well as how it can potentially enhance relationships. The purpose of this dissertation was threefold: to utilize the multiple goals theoretical perspective to examine sender goals when sexting, to assess if multiple goals within sexting was associated with relational behaviors and outcomes, and to develop a reliable and valid scale for sexting goals. A two-phase study was implemented. In phase 1, participants provided actual sexting messages they had recently sent to another person, and also provided their goal when they sent that particular message. Participants also answered scales related to relationship, communication, and sexual satisfaction, affectionate communication, and relational maintenance behaviors. Analytic coding was utilized for the open-ended responses regarding message content and goals, and the researcher also used the responses to develop participant- and theoretically-driven scales. Nine themes were identified for the type of goal participants had when sending sext messages. For phase 2, the proposed scale for the multiple goals of sexting was added to the preexisting survey. The researcher coded 204 sexting messages provided by participants as instrumental, relational, or identity goals and conducted multiple regressions to assess how the type of goal influenced each of the five relational outcomes. Multiple regressions revealed no significant associations among multiple goals and outcomes. Finally, exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis was used to assess the proposed scale for the multiple goals of sexting. The EFA revealed a four-factor solution and the CFA demonstrated factorial validity for the scale. Post hoc analysis revealed significant associations for the goals from the scale and the relational outcomes. The results of this dissertation demonstrate that multiple goals are utilized in the context of sexting, and that specific goals are important for relational outcomes.