This thesis deals with visual communication in the form of photography. Explaining the theories of Roland Barthes and Vilém Flusser we point out the tight relationship of this medium with reality that obscures its constructive character. The witness role of photography seems to be essential in the context of journalism, where we are offered a story by the pictures that is however mistaken for reality itself. The thesis tries to present practices of media discourse that make us perceive an event as newsworthy. It draws on the theory of news values and the methods of social semiotic analysis and applies these to the winning photos of the contest Czech Press Photo (2006-2015). We highlight the semiotic resources used in the meaning-making process in relation to each picture. The results show that the preferred constructed news values are negativity, aesthetic appeal, proximity and personalisation and that the winning photographs mostly strengthen their semblance of being strictly informative.

Samtidens reklam har i takt med digitaliseringens utveckling nått ett maktskifte. En populär marknadsföringsstrategi i den nutida reklamen som växer explosionsartat och omsätter miljarder är att använda influencer marketing för att nå ut till sin målgrupp. Eftersom dessa influencers har sin arbetsplats på sociala medier, och att denna plattform nyttjas av så många är det vanligt att användarna, frivilligt eller ej, möts av reklam så väl ifrån sängen som på språng. Trots influencer markering och influencers stora genomslagskraft i företags marknadsföringsstrategi är dessa ämnen ett tämligen outforskat fält, varför denna undersökning ämnar fylla denna kunskapslucka genom att utforska influencerinlägg med hjälp av språkvetenskapliga metoder. De huvudsakliga teorierna som ligger till grund för analysen är den interpersonella metafunktionen i den systemisk funktionella grammatiken samt socialsemiotiken. I studien undersöks hur influencers skapar nära eller distanserade parasociala relationer och en identitet genom marknadsföringen samt hur detta stärker reklamen. Förhoppningen är därtill att kunna bidra med nya insikter och lärdomar i ett hittills relativt outforskat område.  I studiens resultat har framkommit att det finns en stor variation vad gäller vilken parasocial relation som upprättas i medieprofilernas inlägg, men slutsatsen bevittnar dock om att influencerinläggen som helhet tyder på en nära parasocial relation. Därtill är tolkningen att den parasociala relation och identitet som attribueras influencern skapar ett ideal som gynnar företagen och gör att följarna vill köpa samma produkter som deras idoliserade medieprofiler. Dock har användare på sociala medier lärt sig att känna igen samtidens reklam och vet därför att man kan bortse från reklamen, vilket gör att det trots det inte är självklart att marknadsföringen faktiskt främjar företagen.

Political advertising on television is a relatively “new” phenomenon in South African general election campaigns (circa 2008). The purpose of this study is to analyse and compare the three sampled 2009 and 2014 African National Congress (A.N.C.) political television advertisements, with a specific focus on the verbal, non-verbal and visual rhetoric in the communication of election campaign messages. To achieve this goal, the study reviewed literature in the subject of rhetoric and post-colonial perspectives in the areas of Afrocentrism and Eurocentrism, focusing specifically on the seminal work of the Afro-centrist, Molefi Asante, and the anti-Western-centric scholar, Samin Amin. The study uses social semiotics (as both a theoretical approach and a research methodological framework). As a theoretical approach, the social semiotic approach was conceptualised by Valentin Voloshinov (1973) and Michael Halliday (1978), and it argues for the creation of social meaning within a text and within a society. The study focuses on the former, the creation of meaning within a text, that is, the content of the three sampled political advertisements. As a research framework, the approach was adapted by Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen (1996). The study favours their social semiotic research method which provide the interpreter/researcher with dimensions, or “tools’, with which to explicate and deconstruct textual meanings. Thus, in this study, social semiotics as part of the broader field of discourse analysis, was used to deconstruct the latent and manifest ideologies of the non-verbal, verbal and visual rhetoric of two 2009 and one 2014 A.N.C. political television advertisements. Using this combined theoretical framework (rhetoric, social semiotics and Afrocentrism and Eurocentrism), and, research approach, it could be determined whether the verbal, non-verbal and visual rhetoric of these three A.N.C. political television commercials represents Afrocentric and/or Eurocentric post- colonial The main findings of the study show that both the visual and verbal rhetoric of the sampled A.N.C. political television commercials represents a combination of a varying ideological constructs, namely the “nationalist”; “socialist”; “liberal feminist”; and, “liberal capitalist ideologies” (cf. Haywood 1998; Thompson 2003). Furthermore, the findings of the study point out that the verbal, non-verbal and visual rhetoric of the selected A.N.C. political television commercials, are neither exclusively Afrocentric nor Eurocentric in nature. Both post-colonial perspectives are represented, in varying degrees, in the sampled A.N.C. commercials. The study makes a significant contribution to the political communication landscape in South Africa, in that, it is an exclusively qualitative content analysis, as opposed to previous, quantitative content-analysis studies (cf. Fourie 2008; Fourie & Froneman 2003; Fourie & Froneman 2001). It is also important to note that as far as can be determined, that this is the first study to use social semiotics, as either a theoretical framework or a research method. The key limitation of the study is that, it only focuses on three purposely sampled A.N.C. election campaign television advertisements, and does not include the political television advertisements of opposition political parties, such as the Democratic Alliance. / Communication Science / M.A. (Communication)

Syftet med studien är att undersöka och följa matematiklärares resonemang kring ämnesplanens förmågor, genom problematisering av nationella provuppgifter.   Matematikundervisningen både på grundskolan och gymnasiet har visat sig vara begränsad när det gäller målstyrning av undervisningen som bygger på medvetenhet och kunskap om förmågorna. En förutsättning för att undervisningen ska kunna vara målstyrd med avseende på förmågorna ser vi är lärares kunskap och medvetenhet om desamma. Avsikten med studien är därför att ur ett utvecklingsperspektiv hitta sätt att för lärare ge ämnesplanens förmågor innebörd. De nationella proven konkretiserar flera av förmågorna, och skulle därför kunna fungera som vägledare i lärares kompetensutveckling kring förmågornas innebörd.  Undersökningen baseras på två filmade fokusgruppsdiskussioner i vilka gymnasielärare i matematik deltar. Diskussionerna utgår från nationella provuppgifter i matematik, med stegvis introducering av skolverkets definitioner av förmågorna och senare också av skolverkets bedömning av desamma.  Studiens teoretiska ramverk utgörs av ett kollegialt lärandeperspektiv och ett multimodalt och socialsemiotiskt perspektiv, som också används i den kvalitativa videoanalysen.   Studien visar att lärarnas resonemang förändras under diskussionen utan Skolverkets definitioner, så till vida att en slags överenskommelse görs, av på vilket sätt förmågorna kan tolkas. Skolverkets definitioner visade sig ha marginell inverkan på resonemangets utveckling i riktning mot Skolverkets intentioner. Skolverkets bedömning tillsammans med definitionerna fungerade däremot som utmanare till lärarnas egen tolkning och skapade genom det ett ökat resonemang. Resonemanget visade dock inte på ökad kunskap och medvetenhet kring förmågornas innebörd, som är förenligt med Skolverkets intentioner. Med stöd av forskning kring kollegialt lärande, skulle ledning av expertis på området kunnat möjliggöra ett resonemang i riktning mot intentionerna. / The aim of this study is to investigate and to monitor teachers of mathematics when they reason on the abilities as expressed in the curriculum, through problematisation of Swedish national test questions.   Teaching mathematics in Sweden has shown itself to be limited when it comes to setting objectives when based on awareness and knowledge of the abilities. One condition for the teaching to be manageable is that the teachers are aware of the abilities. The intention of this study is to find a way for the teachers through a perspective of development, where the abilities are given meaning. The national tests define many of the abilities and therefore the tests could be a guide in the teachers’ development of the reasoning of the abilities.   The investigation is based on two videotaped focus discussions by high school teachers of mathematics. These discussions are based on national test questions, where the teachers are gradually introduced to the national educational agency’s (henceforth Skolverket) definitions of the abilities and assessments that are given by Skolverket. The theoretical framework of the study is based on collegial teaching perspective and a multimodal- and social semiotic perspective, which is also being used in the qualitative video analysis.   The study shows that the teachers’ reasoning changes during the discussions without Skolverket’s definitions, and the teachers reach a consensus on how the abilities should be interpreted. Skolverket’s definitions had only marginal effects on the teachers’ reasoning regarding the intentions of the abilities. However, the teachers’ interpretations were challenged by the assessments which resulted in an increase in the teachers’ reasoning and interpretations. But the outcome of the study has not given any convincing evidence that an actual increase in knowledge nor awareness of the abilities has occurred. According to research into collegial learning, experts in this field would have been able to support more developed reasoning in line with the intentions.

During the last decade, the Swedish Armed Forces have been struggling to achieve recruitment goals and to retain military personnel. To attract more people to join the agency, and to increase the knowledge about the agency’s role and function in society, the Swedish Armed Forces continuously run campaigns. Furthermore, the Swedish Armed Forces is a government agency with a mission that is determined by the Swedish government through government decisions. It can therefore be argued that it is important that the campaigns portray the agency’s mission in a correct and truthful way. The purpose of this study has been to investigate how the Swedish Armed Forces portray their mission in their campaign films, and to what extent it corresponds with the agency’s official mission. The research questions are thereby: (1) How is the mission of the Swedish Armed Forces portrayed in two campaign films from 2018 and 2020? (2) To what extent does the Swedish Armed Forces' communication about the agency's mission correspond with their official mission presented in the government decision? (3) Based on identified semiotic resources, and with a neo-institutional perspective on strategic communication, what type of communication has been allowed to take place in the Swedish Armed Forces' campaign films? To answer the research questions, a qualitative data analysis was conducted on a government decision constituting the overall direction of the Swedish Armed Forces, and a multimodal critical discourse analysis was conducted on two campaign films produced by the agency The results were compared, and analyzed through the lens of a neo-institutional perspective on strategic communication. In summary, it can be stated that the study finds that the Swedish Armed Forces, in the two campaign films, portray their mission in a way that greatly corresponds with their official mission as presented in the government decision.

Contemporary constantly expanding content of social media like Instagram brings the medium of photography to new contexts. Photography becomes an instrument of immediate communication and its historically defined functions are an object of change. The continuity of Instagram content creating, the personal perspective of its users, the constant presence of camera accompanying them are aspects analogous to the artwork of Nan Goldin. Goldin's photo essay ​The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (1986)​has a character of visual diary that captures the life of her community with almost obsessive continuity. It's also captured from deeply personal perspective depicting intimate moments and describing Goldin's personal relationships. Publishing of ​The Ballad​and formation of Instagram is divided by more than twenty-five years and both events and its meanings are profoundly different. This thesis nevertheless presumes that comparison of these, in many aspects alike phenomenons can help describe the change of the function of the media of photography, explore contemporary tendencies in photography aesthetics, the meaning of instagram's content to its users and provide general understanding of the role of shared photography in social and historical context. The methods of comparison are semiotic visual analysis,...

The thesis aims to describe how was the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement, which began in June 2019 in response to the proposed extradition law, perceived. In its theoretical part, the thesis will focus on a detailed description of the historical development of Hong Kong and the formation of an independent Hong Kong identity. Major events will be presented, from the times of colonial administration to the description of pro-democracy protests in 2019, which affected the current state of Hong Kong. Subsequently the theoretical framework of the processes of hegemony and visual representation will be introduced, which will be further presented in the context of Hong Kong. Last but not least, the topic of journalistic photography and its significance in the current journalistic field will be defined. The practical part of the thesis will offer an analysis of how the direct participants perceived the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, and whether their perceptions of events correspond not only with each other but also with the journalistic visual material that mapped four months of protests. A photo essay from the author's set of photographs was created to be also analysed in this work, part of which was subjected to a socio-semiotic analysis. Last but not least, there will be a comparison of results...

Sociala medier är en plattform som kantas av känslor. Samtidigt vänder sig människor dit under kriser för att dela känslor och prata med varandra. I kommentarsfältet på Gröna Lunds Instagraminlägg, där de kommunicerar efter Jetlineolyckan, 2023, händer detta. Genom en kvalitativ socialsemiotisk multimodal textanalys erbjuder fallstudien en tolkning, och bidrar till en förståelse för vilka meningsbärande element som konstruerar vilka känslor i kommentarsfältet. En teoretisk och hypotetisk diskussion förs om känslornas möjliga betydelse för organisationens legitimitet. Först och främst analyseras Gröna Lunds Instagraminlägg kvalitativt med en innehållsanalys för att belysa kontexten, och de kriskommunikationsstrategier som används. Fallstudien visar på att Gröna Lund kommunicerar under krisfasen, tar på sig hela ansvaret och latent kommunicerar känslor av skam och skuld. Med hjälp av kriskommunikationsstrategier erkänner och bekänner nöjesparken krisen, och kommunicerar därefter åtgärdande handlingar. Den vanligaste känslan som konstrueras i kommentarsfältet är känslan av ilska och sorg. Ilska tar sig i uttryck både mot Gröna Lund och mot andra Instagramanvändare. Skuld konstrueras latent i konstruktionen av ilska. Det finns även en liten mängd kommentarer som konstruerar känslan lycka. Känslan av ångest uttrycks framför allt i form av frågor och en stor ovisshet. Fallstudien visar att känslorna många gånger konstrueras av liknande lexikala val, och att olika emojis förstärker vissa konstruktioner. En mycket liten mängd emotikoner har påvisats. Den teoretiska och hypotetiska diskussionen visar att känslor som ilska, skuld och ångest potentiellt försämrar Gröna Lunds tre former av organisatorisk legitimitet. Kommentarer med känslor av lycka och hopp visar motsatsen. Ilska kan däremot både förbättra och försämra legitimiteten, beroende på vem ilskan riktas mot. Det samma gäller för legitimitetsstrategier. Känslor av lycka hopp kan ge en teoretisk fingervisning på att strategierna stärker legitimiteten. Slutligen är det av stor vikt för samhället såväl yrkeslivet att förstå hur känslor tar form, i framför allt i medier med öppna kommentarsfält, då dessa potentiellt påverkar organisationens legitimitet. / Social media is an emotional platform. At the same time, people turn to it during crises to share emotions and talk to each other. In the comments section of Gröna Lund's Instagram post, where they communicate after the Jetline accident in 2023, this happens. Through a qualitative social semiotic multimodal text analysis, the case study offers an interpretation and contributes to an understanding of which meaningful elements construct which emotions in the comment field. A theoretical and hypothetical discussion is conducted on the possible importance of emotions for organizational legitimacy. First of all, Gröna Lund's Instagram posts are analyzed qualitatively with a content analysis to highlight the context and the crisis communication strategies used. This case study shows that Gröna Lund communicates during the crisis phase, taking full responsibility and latently communicating feelings of shame and guilt. Using crisis communication strategies, the amusement park acknowledges and confesses the crisis, and then communicates remedial actions. The most common emotion constructed in the comment section is the emotion of anger and sadness. Anger is expressed both towards Gröna Lund and towards other Instagram users. Guilt is constructed latently in the construction of anger. There is also a small number of comments that construct the feeling of happiness. The feeling of anxiety is mainly expressed in the form of questions and great uncertainty. The case study shows that the emotions are often constructed by similar lexical choices, and that different emojis reinforce certain constructions. A very small number of emoticons have been detected. The theoretical and hypothetical discussion shows that emotions such as anger, guilt and anxiety potentially impair Green Lund's three forms of organizational legitimacy. Comments with feelings of happiness and hope show the opposite. Anger, on the other hand, can both enhance and detract from legitimacy, depending on who the anger is directed at. The same applies to legitimacy strategies. Feelings of happiness and hope can provide a theoretical indication that the strategies strengthen legitimacy. Finally, it is of great importance for society as well as the professional world to understand how emotions take shape, especially in media with open comment sections, as these potentially affect the legitimacy of the organization.

Den här studien undersöker hur webbplatsen kan användas i syfte att förmedla en varumärkesidentitet hos företag inom kultursektorn. Fotografiska, en privat konsthall för samtida fotokonst, belägen i Stockholm, publicerar på sin webbplats texter om varje utställning som konsthallen arrangerar. Undersökningen utgår från antagandet att såväl den omgivande kontexten som innehållet i texterna bidrar till att skapa en varumärkesidentitet. Genom en multimodal och narrativ diskursanalys av webbplatsen och utställningstexterna analyserar jag hur denna identitet realiseras i samspelet mellan semiotiska och narrativa resurser och vilken bild den förmedlar av Fotografiska till betraktaren. Resultatet visar, enligt min tolkning, att Fotografiska använder webbplatsen i identitetsskapande syfte genom porträtteringen av fotokonsten och dess centrala aktörer som bärare av ett antal socioestetiska kärnvärden; minimalism, intellektualitet, exklusivitet, tradition och kunnighet. / This study examines how websites can be used for corporate branding purposes of institutions in the cultural field. It is based on my analytical findings on the website of Fotografiska, a gallery for contemporary fine art photography in central Stockholm. The thesis is based on the claim that both the surrounding context and the content of the exhibition texts plays a crucial role in the creation of a corporate brand for art galleries. Therefore my intention here is to show how Fotografiska all together use semiotic and narrative resources on their website in order to brand themselves. Supported by the findings from my sociosemiotic discourse analysis I argue that the extensive portraying of fine art photography and its key figures, maintains a few artistic core values that are characteristic for the branding of Fotografiska. Those are minimalism, intellectuality, exclusiveness, tradition and expertise.