This study has examined how young people who are in their final year of upper secondary school experience and perceive the Swedish Armed Force's advertisements by finding what the Swedish Armed Forces has chosen to represent in the two selected commercials that the study examines. Using the theory of representation along with denotation and connotation in a detailed image analysis of images taken from the respective commercials, representations have been extracted. These representations that have been found from the image analysis includes; tradition, defense, “action and the soldier” as well as “camaraderie and fellowship”. In order to get answers on how the high school students experience and perceive the representations, a focusgroup has been carried out where the students have been given different basic questions according to each theme to discuss afterwards. The theory of encoding and decoding has been used to analyze the results that have occurred based on what the high school students have answered to the various questions. The theory has been used to understand how the Armed Forces has encoded their representations and how high school students decode them if they assume a negotiating position, an opposition or if they agree with the various representations that the Armed Forces may have represented in the commercials. The results have shown that high school students mostly have a negotiating position. They can understand what is represented, however, it is mixed in what position they take. The theme of tradition, however, they could only see in relation to the graduation. Opinions and how they perceive the representation are different depending on the person, but in general it has been similar to each other. What happened and was mentioned relatively often was a form of fear for life. That is, they can risk their lives in the Armed Forces, which led to an oppositional position in certain representations. In general, high school students appreciated the Armed Forces more after seeing the commercials. High school students take a some what advantageous position around the community and educational opportunities.

The aim of the research project “The menacing immigration and ideal Swedishness: A semiotic analysis of the Sweden Democrats campaign films” was to highlight how ethnicities are portrayed in five different campaign films produced by the Swedish party the Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna). The applied theories are stereotypes, binary oppositions as well as the theory of whiteness and blackness. The method used to analyse the campaign films are semiotics, and the tools denotation, connotation, anchoring, relay, metonymy and myths.   The results show that a person’s skin colour is of minor importance. What does matter, is if you are Swedish or not and how Swedish you are. All of the campaign films concern questions about “Swedishness” and immigration. When immigration and non-Swedes are in focus, the films present a dark theme with a sinister undertone. In contrast, when the issue of Swedishness is presented the films portray harmonious and idyllic images of Sweden. Sweden, Swedes and Swedishness is habitually portrayed as being the ideal, the desirable, and the good. It is the norm for being socially acceptable. Immigration, immigrants and non-Swedes on the other hand are consistently portrayed in a negative light. These extraneous groups of people are labelled as the others; they are the bad, and are portrayed as a threat that we Swedes have to defend ourselves against. A third, but less prominent theme that could be deduced from the films is that the Sweden Democrats are portrayed as martyrs. By presenting themselves as being misunderstood and as being the voice of the people, it can be interpreted that they attempt to detract the stamp they acquired as a racist party.   Although the Sweden Democrats seem to have refined the ways in which they express their opinions of Swedishness and immigration, it’s still a significant part of the message in their commercials. They glorify Swedes and reproduce coarse stereotypes of non-Swedes. With the portrayal and contrasting comparison there is an inherent consequence that immigrants are to be seen as less worthy, and that the Swedes in turn are indirectly attributed to a higher value and as such, being Swedish is set as the norm.