The purpose of this study is to understand to what extent and how anti-immigration disinformation was utilised in Swedish online news media before the 2018 Swedish national elections. Disinformation is intentionally misleading or false information that benefits the creator and aims to influence how people think, feel and act regarding a certain issue. The analytical framework used in this study was based on theory and previous research. Disinformation can adopt different strategies: constructive, disruptive or distractive. Research also suggests that disinformation can be categorized into different types: fabrication, manipulation, misappropriation, propaganda, satire and parody. This study analyzed 123 articles from different online news media from ten days before the election up until election day. Using qualitative content analysis this study showed that 20 percent of the articles contained anti-immigration disinformation. All of those articles were found in far-right online news media where almost 50 percent of the published articles during the examined time period contained disinformation. All different types were found, but misappropriation, fabrication and propaganda were most common. About half of the articles containing disinformation used a constructive strategy and about one third used a disruptive strategy. A bit more than one third of the articles had a combination of two or more types and strategies. The results indicate that disinformation can indeed constitute a problem, especially for those who seek information on far-right platforms. This study unveils a polarized debate on immigration with a lion's share of the disinformation coming from far-right online news media, while the mainstream media only publish very few critical articles on immigration. As research shows that a negative framing of immigration can affect attitudes, and by extension voting behaviour, further research to examine the effects of anti-immigration disinformation on voter behaviour and election results is needed. Especially in light of a diminished trust in democratic institutions, a growing demand for populism and increasing support for anti-immigration parties.

In this dissertation, I investigate the role of oil resources and economic and political institutional quality on the economic performance of Iran. To this end, I examine four related themes. First and foremost, I provide a detailed picture of the economic structure of Iran and compare its performance with other oil and non-oil economies of the Middle East and the Middle Easterb region. As we get a clear picture of the relative economic position of Iran in the MENA region, I go further into macroeconomic analyses of oil wealth effects on the Iranian economy. The second theme investigated in this dissertation is the interaction of political power structure with oil rents and their effects on Iranian economic growth. This study is the first examination which takes into consideration political factionalism interaction with oil rents in the case of Iran. The results show that oil resources have a direct positive effect on economic growth in Iran. However, the interaction effect of factionalism (as a proxy for political asymmetry degree) with oil rents is negative and significant. The third theme which is examined in this study is illegal trade in Iran. This topic is also related to natural resource management in Iran. A large number of fuel products smuggled from Iran are due to heavy subsidies within the country. In this study, I measure the amount of illegal trade in Iran, identifying the major causes and indicators of smuggling. The average of illegal trade in Iran’s total trade is 13%. The value of annual illegal trade, on average, is within the range of $ 2.5 - 3 billion. The fourth topic which is examined in this dissertation is macroeconomic populism in Iran. The main source of financing populism spending in Iran is the oil revenues. Therefore, it is connected to the management of natural resources.

De radikala högerpopulistiska partierna Sverigedemokraterna och Dansk Folkeparti har båda etablerat sig i Sveriges respektive Danmarks partisystem. Då studier av populism och populistiska aktörer i relation till journalistik ur ett medievetenskapligt perspektiv är få, är denna studies syfte att studera och diskutera relationen mellan journalistik och radikala högerpopulistiska aktörer. Detta för att möjliggöra en diskussion kring vilken roll denna relation spelar för mediers journalistiska innehåll och framställning av politiska aktörer. Uppsatsens utgångspunkt tar sitt uttryck från tidigare forskning av radikala högerpopulistiska aktörer och deras framväxt tillsammans med teoretiska ansatser om mediers politiska rapportering. Genom en kvantitativ innehållsanalys av ledande svenska och danska dags- och kvällstidningar kommer slutsatser kring beroenderelationen mellan medier och radikala högerpopulistiska aktörer dras och problematiseras.

Questa tesi contribuisce alla letteratura di economia politica attraverso l’analisi degli effetti di una crisi economica sulla tipologia di governo. In particolare, ci si concentra su due tipologie di governo che possono essere viste come anomalie empiricamente correlate a fenomeni di crisi economica e finanziaria: il populismo e la tecnocrazia. Dopo una rassegna critica della letteratura esistente, si sviluppano due distinti modelli di teoria dei giochi. Il primo analizza il populismo nel contesto di una relazione principale-agente tra l’elettore e il politico. Concentrandosi su come la probabilità che si affermi un governo populista è influenzata dai parametri che catturano la situazione economica del Paese, si dimostra che, in un contesto di crisi economica, è più probabile che il governo attui provvedimenti populisti. Il secondo modello spiega la comparsa di un governo tecnocratico (e in parte anche la sua stabilità) in un sistema politico in cui gli agenti principali sono due partiti e, in alcuni casi, un gruppo di tecnocrati. Qui si prova che il governo tecnocratico ha più probabilità di emergere in un contesto di crisi economica, quando il parlamento è equamente diviso e quando la distanza ideologica tra i due partiti è sufficientemente grande. / This thesis contributes to the literature on theoretical political economy analyzing the effects of economic crisis on the types of government. In particular, we focus on two types of government that can be seen as anomalies empirically related with the emergence of financial and economic crisis: populism and technocracy. After a critical survey of the existing literature on those topics, we develop two different game-theoretical models. The first one studies populism in the context of a standard political-agency relationship between a voter and a politician. We see how the likelihood of the emergence of a populist government is affected by parameters representing the economic conditions of a country, and we find that, in a context of economic crisis, the government is more likely to make populist decisions. The second model explains the emergence of a technocratic government (and captures some issues related to its stability) in a post-election partisan politics setting where the main players are two parties and possibly a group of technocrats. We prove that the technocratic government is more likely to emerge in a context of economic crisis, when the parliament is evenly split and the ideological distance between the two parties is big enough.

Thesis (Ph. D. in Religion)--Vanderbilt University, May 2009. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1997. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 1459-1564). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1997. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 1459-1564). Also available on the Internet.

Submitted by Marcus Gebin (mgebin@hotmail.com) on 2014-06-10T21:19:29Z No. of bitstreams: 1 DissertacaoFinal-MarcusGebin - ABNT3.pdf: 836447 bytes, checksum: fbe146fb905e9050d807de8ea0f2097c (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Suzinei Teles Garcia Garcia (suzinei.garcia@fgv.br) on 2014-06-10T21:21:50Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 DissertacaoFinal-MarcusGebin - ABNT3.pdf: 836447 bytes, checksum: fbe146fb905e9050d807de8ea0f2097c (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T12:46:28Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 DissertacaoFinal-MarcusGebin - ABNT3.pdf: 836447 bytes, checksum: fbe146fb905e9050d807de8ea0f2097c (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-05-09 / In this research we tried to identify the Bills proposed in the Senate and the House of Representatives between 2002 and 2012 that showed corruption as a central theme; to determine the proportion of the criminal nature Bills among them; to understand, by analyzing the texts of the justifications that accompany them, what are the functions of the criminal measures. In addition, we seek to understand - always from the point of view of the legislator - what is corruption, who is the corruptor and what are the corruption causes and consequences. Finally, drawing on the concepts of "moral panic" and "penal populism", we suggested ways to identify and understand some of the variables that influence the legislative process and the responsiveness of the legislator to a diffuse demand for penalty. / Nessa pesquisa buscamos identificar os Projetos de Lei propostos no Senado Federal e na Câmara dos Deputados, entre os anos de 2002 e 2012, que apresentaram a corrupção como tema central; determinar a proporção das propostas de cunho penal no conjunto desses dos Projetos; compreender, por meio da análise dos textos das Justificativas que os acompanham, quais seriam as funções das medidas de natureza penal. Além disso, procuramos compreender as representações do legislador sobre o que seria corrupção, quem seria o corrupto e quais seriam suas causas e conseqüências. Por fim, nos valendo dos conceitos de 'pânico moral' e 'populismo penal', sugerimos formas de identificar e compreender algumas das variáveis que influenciam o processo legislativo e a responsividade do legislador à demanda por pena difusa no corpo social.

In this study, a qualitative rhetorical analysis is done on U.S. president Donald Trump’s crisis communication on Hurricane Maria, which was an Atlantic hurricane that struck areas such as Puerto Rico and Dominica in the autumn of 2017. Given that the former is an unincorporated territory of the U.S., the need for effective relief measures by the Trump administration became of particular importance there. However, in the media, the actual response by the administration was widely criticised as being slow and inefficient by actors like the relief group Oxfam and the humanitarian organisation Refugees International. Therefore, this study critically evaluates Trump’s crisis communication strategies on the hurricane to assess their success. The material consists of statements by Trump in both traditional and social media through official remarks and tweets, which are analysed through the crisis communication theories of image repair theory and situational crisis communication theory. In doing so, of interest is also to examine whether any differences can be seen in the strategies used by Trump in these two kinds of media channels. To address the hurricane, the findings showed that Trump mainly used the crisis communication strategies of corrective action, bolstering, defeasibility and attack accuser from image repair theory and compensation, reminder, ingratiation, excuse and attack the accuser from situational crisis communication theory. Moreover, no distinctive differences were found in which strategies Trump used in the respective channels, even if the attacks on Twitter were often more aggressive. While both positive and negative evaluations could be made of how Trump used these strategies overall, the main conclusion of the study is that his crisis communication was largely ineffective due to the strategies sometimes being contradictory and inconsistent.

No description available.