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The purpose of this study is to examine Donald Trump's political communication regarding COVID-19 on Twitter during the time period 01-01-2020 to 30-09-2020. This study is motivated by the importance of analyzing Trump's power of definition regarding the situation surrounding the national crisis caused by COVID-19. The research questions include aspects of identifying frequent problem definitions, who is responsible for various crisis and whether Trump is motivating it, all provided through Trump’s tweets during the time period of the study.  The theoretical framework is constructed based on Entman (1993) as well as Matthes and Kohring (2008) to fulfill the purpose of the study and answer the research questions. The method is based on quantitative content analysis with qualitative elements. The method provided the ability to focus on the most frequent themes and topics. The analytical categories that have been used are: problem identification, problem definition, treatment recommendation, distribution of responsibility and whether it is motivated or not.  Findings of the most frequent societal crises were: Health crisis, Invisible Enemy-crisis and Information-crisis. Based on these three frames were identified: China is responsible for causing a Health crisis in the USA, China is responsible for causing the Invisible enemy-crisis in the USA and The spreading of disinformation by certain actors is harmful for the USA. With support of previous research of Donald Trump's political communication and usage of Twitter, this study highlights the importance of critically analyzing Trump, belonging to the political elite, how he uses his power to define COVID-19.

Uppsatsen är en retorisk studie av Ebba Buschs och Nyamko Sabunis kommunikation på Instagram ur ett identifikationsperspektiv. Studiens material är Instagraminlägg från partiledarnas Instagramprofiler och undersökningen studerar vilka tekniker de använder för att skapa igenkänning och social gemenskap. Något som är viktigt på sociala medier är personlig närvaro och att ge intryck av sin privatperson. Uppsatsen undersöker även hur Busch och Sabuni skildrar sin individuella person i inläggen.  Studien är en komparativ studie av de två svenska partiledarna och syftet med studien är att studera vilka retoriska tekniker som används för att skapa identifikation och gemenskap. Det är intressant att studera eftersom sociala medier används som en källa till social kontakt och igenkänning. Huvudteorin är Burkes identifikationsteori och studien utgår även ifrån teorier om politisk kommunikation.  Studien visar att intrycket av transparens är viktigt för att skildra sin privatperson och att det finns skillnader mellan Buschs och Sabunis inlägg. Busch flöde ger intryck av henne som privatperson, vilket är en viktig strategi när det gäller att skapa band med väljarna. Medan Sabunis flöde ger intryck av henne som partiledare och hennes vision inom politiken. Studien visar att partiledarna använder olika retoriska och kommunikativa strategier för att skapa gemenskap och igenkänning.

This essay aims to investigate how the leaders for the Swedish parliamentary parties appear on their official Instagram accounts. By conducting a discourse analysis, looking at both text, visual images, and the combination of the two in the Instagram posts, the intention is to analyse how gender is being performed through the rhetorical concept of persona.  The analysis show that all eight party leaders mainly enact political/professional personas. Sub-personas derived to this category are individual vs group member, active vs passive, and critic. The male party leaders exhibit the individual, active and critical personas to a greater extent than their female counterparts, and thereby performing gender in a stereotypically masculine way – reproducing the image of the stereotypical male politician. The analysis also finds that some party leaders, mainly female ones, use personal personas to a greater extent.  The conclusion is that all party leaders mainly use professional personas, profiling them as first and foremost politicians. But when looking at how the personas are carried out, the female party leaders can be seen using numerously more personas than the male ones, especially adding on personal personas. In addition to enacting the traditional female stereotype of having to handle both carrier and family, this may reward them with additional Instagram followers. But when the number of followers is put in relation to surveys of trust and opinion polls, the conclusion is that the party leaders exhibiting masculine coded personas are more prosperous in actual politics.

In recent years politicians have increasingly appeared in various types of entertainment media. For example, the President of the United States Joe Biden appeared on the talkshow The Late Late Show with James Corden. A notable example from 2022 is the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenkyy. He, who made his career as a comedian, became known as a political figure thanks to starring in the TV series Servant of the People. When he became president, the main focus from the Western media was that he was just that, a comedian. However, on February 24 2022, he was immortalized as the person who sat as president of Ukraine during the Russian invasion. The aim of this thesis is therefore to examine how the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, creates discourses in an entertainment interview during an ongoing war. The research questions for the essay are: (1) What discourses about the war in Ukraine does Zelenskyy raise verbally and non-verbally in My Next Guest with David Letterman and Volodymyr Zelenskyy? (2) How does Volodymyr Zelenskyy build authenticity and trust through the interview verbally and non-verbally? (3) What is the role of humor in communication about the war in Ukraine in the interview? The material analyzed in the thesis is the episode My next guest with David Letterman and Volodymyr Zelenskyy which is apart of David Letterman’s talkshow. Zelenskyy appeared in the thirty-minute interview in December of 2022 in Ukraine. The method used is multimodal discourse analysis and Fairclough's three-dimensional model. The results from the analysis present that the main discourse that Zelenskyj raises about the war is that Ukraine and Ukrainians are suffering and fighting to survive against Russia. With non-verbal communication, Zelenskyy succeeds in building trust and authenticity. As for humor, the analysis showed that it is important to use gallows humor to achieve resilience for the oppressed and that Zelenskyy can use satire to a certain extent in the interview. The main conclusion of the thesis is that Zelenskyy follows the conventions for a talkshow, however he differs from the classic talkshow format by speaking more about the Ukrainian people than himself.

Ämne: Valaffischer som en del av politisk kommunikation och teorin kring ideologins död. Syfte: Syftet är att fastslå graden av politisk ideologi och/eller överideologi som är närvarande i riksdagspartiernas valaffischer inför riksdagsvalet 2014. Teori: Utifrån semiotik och retorisk analysera valaffischer med teorin om ideologiernas död som utgångsperspektiv. Metod: Kvalitativ innehållsanalys med semiotisk utgångspunkt i text och bild av valaffischer. Resultat: Studien visar att politisk ideologi är närvarande i alla respektive åtta valaffischer, ändock i varierande grad. I många fall visar de verbala och visuella elementen på flera olika, ibland motsägelsefulla, ideologier även om en dominerande kan fastställas. Valaffischerna är till sin karaktär slagkraftiga och enbart tendenser av teorin om ideologins död har förekommit. Många ideologiska element platsar inte in i kriterierna för någon av de tre klassiska ideologierna, vilket möjligen kan innebära att nya ideologier uppstått med andra grundvärderingar och förslag till konkret handlande. Överlag går det att utröna politiska ideologier hos valaffischerna. I de flest fallen har ideologierna varit av traditionell karaktär, eller i en ny kombination av dem. Trots att överideologiska tendenser framkommit har dessa varit i mindre grad. / Subject: Election posters as part of political communication and the theory of the death of ideology. Purpose: The purpose is to determine the degree of political ideology and/or signs of the death of ideologies, which are to be found in the parliamentary parties’ election posters for the general elections in 2014. Theory: Based on the theory of the death of ideology, the election posters will be analyzed in a perspective rooted in semiotics and the rhetorical argumentations model. Method: Qualitative content analysis based in semiotic, analyzing the verbal and visual elements of election posters. Results: The study reveals that political ideology is present in all of the analyzed election posters, although to a varied degree. In many cases the verbal and visual elements in various, sometimes contradictory, ideologies although a dominant one can be determined. Election posters are by nature powerful and show only tendencies of the theory of the death of ideology. Many ideological elements do not match the criteria for any of the three classical ideologies. This could possibly mean that new ideologies have arisen with other values and proposals for concrete actions. Furthermore, the result in the analysis of the visual elements around and on the party leader can have different functions. They reinforce firstly the textual messages and secondly build support for it through visual features that signal safety and security.

This thesis examines how the president of the EU-Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, is using rhetorical figures in his annual State of The Union speech to describe certain situation and enhance their message. With a qualitative idea analysis together with a rhetorical analysis and Richard Vatz theory about the rhetorical situation, the study analyses four speeches made by Juncker at the European Parliament. The results show how Juncker describes certain situations to favour his own political agenda – a more united EU. The situations are often portrayed in a negative and pessimistic manner. To give these descriptions a better effect he uses a set of different rhetorical figures. The figures help in particular with repeating the importance of a specific message and to illustrate it and explain it better for the audience.

The aim of this study is to explore the correlation between contemporary political agenda and film themes, how and if the antagonists’ behavior is depicted in relation to whom the political opponent was at the time of the making of the film. The literature is concurrent: movies are used to spread norms and political messages. There are several examples; during the Cold War people and antagonist behavior could clearly be linked to the Soviet Union. During the Gulf War the antagonists was often depicted as Arabic terrorists, but after the war the villain character became unclear and was often represented by natural disasters, organized crime, corruption etc. Following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Arabic terrorists once again became the new antagonists. The film selection is made out of the five most profitable movies (adjusted for inflation) that take place in our world that was produced during the Cold War, and five films that fill the same criteria that was produced after the Cold War. My goal was to see if I could see a correlation between the political agenda at the time of the making of the movie, how the antagonists are portrayed and what political themes were addressed. Unexpectedly, I found no such correlation in my film selection. However, I could see similarities in certain genres, such as action, thrillers and adventure movies, that support the theories in the literature. / Jag studerar huruvida man kan dra en parallell mellan den rådande politiska agendan och filmens politiska teman samt hur skurkgestaltningen ter sig i relation till vem den politiska motståndaren var då filmen gjordes. Litteraturen är tydlig kring att film används för att sprida normer och politiska budskap. Det finns flera exempel kring hur man under kalla kriget främst hade Sovjet eller personer och beteenden som tydligt kunde kopplas till Sovjet som skurkar. Efter kalla kriget, i samband med Gulfkriget, blev det under en tid araber för att därefter vara en mer oklar skurkroll (ofta naturkatastrofer, organiserad brottslighet, korruption, etc.). Efter terrorangreppen mot USA den 11:e september 2001 fick man återigen en tydlig motståndare och den arabiske terroristen blev den nya antagonisten. I min studie utgår jag från de fem filmer som drog in mest pengar (justerat för inflation), som utspelar sig i vår värld och som kom under kalla kriget, samt de fem filmer inom samma kategorier som kom därefter. Detta för att se om jag kan se en tydlig parallell mellan den rådande politiska agendan och hur skurkarna gestaltas samt vilka politiska teman som tas upp. Oväntat nog finner jag att ingen sådan tydlig koppling finns i de exemplen. Jag finner liknande paralleller inom vissa genres, såsom actionfilm, thrillers och äventyrsfilm, men ingen direkt koppling till filmen generellt kan göras.

Syftet med följande undersökning var att analysera korrelationerna mellan valkampanjerna Britian Stronger In Europe och Vote Leave, Take Back Control i förhållande till retorikens tre element ethos (trovärdighet), logos (förnuft) och pathos (känslor). Utifrån en kvalitativ innehållsanalys har valkampanjernas dokument, rapporter, affischer, tal och videoklipp analyserats för att presentera korrelationerna faktorerna emellan. Undersökningen kommer fram till att valkampanjen Britian Stronger In Europe och dess kampanjmaterial gick att korrelera till samtliga retoriska element, medan Vote Leave-kampanjen enbart gick att korrelera till ethos- och pathos-elementen. Anledningen till detta berodde på att Vote Leave-kampanjen inte utgick från något tillförlitligt material för att styrka sitt ställningstagande i relation till Storbritanniens medlemskap i EU, vilket var ett krav för att uppfylla logos-elementets kännetecken. Detta till trots, lyckades Vote Leave-kampanjen gå segrande ur den brittiska folkomröstningen med 52 % av rösterna gentemot Stronger In-kampanjens 48 %.

The purpose of this essay is to analyze why the Sweden Democrats (SD) continued to grow in the 2018 election, while the Danish Peoples Party (DF) lost over half of their support in the election in 2019. By using a structured, focused comparative method, the essay analyses the similar political systems of Denmark and Sweden, focusing on the traditional established parties’ different strategies to gain back the voters lost to populists. The analysis concludes that the success of SD and failure of DF can be contributed to ineffective strategies by Sweden’s traditional parties and a more effective strategy in the Danish case. Sweden’s established parties used isolating strategies by demonizing SD and their voters as extremists, paving way for SD to use populist political communication. In the danish case, most established parties have legitimized DF by co-opting their stances on immigration. The blue block has cooperated with DF in the Danish government.  By anchoring the analysis in theories about favorable conditions for populism, the main conclusion is that SD, because of the established parties’ isolating strategies, have been able to use populist political communication to present themselves as a distinct political alternative which mobilizes voters. DF have not had this opportunity, due to the co-optation, cooperation and broad consensus on their main issues