The main theme of this essay was; How does Instagram affect their users when it comes to everyday retouching and today’s ideal of beauty, and are there any differences between age and gender? To answer this question, the everyday retouching of the Instagram users selfies (self-portrait) was investigated and charted, to see how it affecting today’s ideal of beauty.   We used a quantitative method and conducted an empirical study that was rooted in the Encoding/Decoding-model of Stuart Hall, Gidden’s theory of structuration, Cooley’s ”looking-glass self”, Lippman’s triangle, together with previous research and a web survey that was targeted to a random selection of Instagram users. The study contained a total of 194 self-recruiting respondents. We deemed it necessary to conduct this study, as it addressed an important topic that might be linked to the current fixation on appearance and today's ideal of beauty.   The results showed that Instagram has a particular impact on its users when it comes to everyday retouching. The majority of respondents used Instagram’s built-in tools for their editing/retouching process. Our results also showed that half of the women edited/retouched their selfies. About half of the men who responded to the web survey edited/retouched their selfies. The clearest result of the study was that younger individuals had a tendency to edit/retouch their selfies more frequently. / Temat för uppsatsen var; Hur påverkar Instagram sina användare när det gäller vardagsretuschering och dagens skönhetsideal, samt finns det några skillnader mellan ålder och kön? Syftet var att undersöka och kartlägga Instagram användarnas vardagsretuschering och hur det påverkar dagens skönhetsideal, med fokus på användarnas selfies.   Vi använde oss av en kvantitativ metod och utförde en empirisk studie som utgick från Encoding/Decoding- modellen av Stuart Hall, Giddens strukturering teori, Cooleys ”spegeljaget”, Lippmans triangel, tillsammans med tidigare forskning och en webbenkätundersökning som riktade sig till ett slumpmässigt urval av Instagrams användare. Studien hade sammanlagt 194 självrekryterande respondenter. Vi tyckte att det var viktigt att genomföra denna studie, då den innehöll ett relevant ämne som möjligtvis kan ha koppling till rådande utseendefixering och dagens skönhetsideal.   Undersökningens resultat visade att Instagram har en viss påverkan på sina användare när det gäller vardagsretuschering. En majoritet av respondenterna använde Instagrams inbyggda verktyg i sin redigerings/retuscherings process. Vårt resultat visade även att hälften av kvinnorna redigerade/retuscherade sina selfies. Av de män som svarade redigerade/retuscherade cirka hälften sina selfies. Det tydligaste resultatet av studien var att de yngre har en tendens att redigera/retuschera sina selfies oftare.

<p>Texten jämför det analoga- och digitalafotografiet. Disskutioner kring arbetssättet, uttrycket i fotografiet, uppfattningen av det, de olika tekniska asspekterna och känslan i fotografiet är områden som berörs i texten. Även kamerans och fotografiets historia i allmänhet tas upp.</p>

Abstract: During the past decade, media researchers have intensified the study of media scandals and the role of journalism as an institution that holds social actors responsible for malfeasance and wrongdoings. On a micro level of analysis, the main attention has beendirected towards the journalistic interview and its use to promote the impression of guilt and journalistic neutrality. However, such studies have not been able to address the editing dimension of TV journalism that transforms conversation to another type of communicativepractice – that of communication through TV-flows composed of speech sequences, pictures,and sounds. This doctoral thesis develops a theoretical framework for analysis of the functions of editing inthe process of guilt attribution by journalistic TV-flows – e.g. investigative TV reporting. The purpose is also to contribute to an understanding of the relationship between the communicative competences of viewers and the contextualization of speech acts through the composition of TV-flows. The developed perspective consists of three parts: 1) A division of viewers’ reception of TV-flows in two types of interpersonal relations (to a speaker and to the composer) that involves six levels of cognitive activities. This division is based on the Habermasian notion of communicative rationality; 2) An intent-model, that lists communicative intentions expressed by the composer when speech sequences are merged and pictures are inserted; 3) A guilt-model, that encompasses guilt as a mental structure of ontologically separated elements (e.g. deed,intention, norm) and the associative relations that the viewer uses to create a meaningful whole– a fabula of guilt. The conveyed analysis of three cases of investigative reporting illustrates how the developed framework can be applied in the study of guilt attribution. The analyses also describe several compositional strategies by which the viewer is encouraged to make certain meaning, evaluate, and judge. The strategies concern the following areas: promotion of certain understanding of speech, promotion of certain evaluation of the validity claims, and promotion of certain understanding of the speaker’s intentions. Also strategies of positioning of the reporter in constructed discourses, that enhance the impression of her performances and argumentation, are explored. Furthermore, the composer’s strategies for masking intentions to interfere with the speech acts, by increasing intent ambiguity, are described. The guilt-model is used to understand the workings of the TV-flow on an overreaching level of meaning (the fabula level). Here, the analysis explains the interplay between portrayed intentions and acts, and the different ways in which condemning norms can be activated and highlighted. Furthermore, the model explores the possible employment of categorization in theprocess of guilt attribution (e.g. when properties of an individual are transferred to a group). In sum, this thesis contributes to a new way of understanding the reception of current affairs programs and TV journalism, as relation building between composer and viewer, by means of contextualization of speech acts.