<p><strong>Title: </strong>I saw it on Facebook – Youth presentation of self on Facebook</p><p><strong>Authors: </strong>Nicole Dreher & Anders Skoglund</p><p><strong>Presented: </strong>01.06.2010</p><p><strong>Purpose: </strong>The purpose of this thesis was to examine how the, in the study, participating youths make their presentation of self on their Facebook profiles.</p><p><strong>Methodology: </strong>The method used in the thesis was a social semiotic analysis focusing on the social semiotic concepts: <em>semiotic resource</em>, <em>semiotic potential</em>, <em>affordance</em>, <em>denotation </em>and <em>connotation</em>. A social semiotic analysis of composition was also used with the purpose to gain a deeper knowledge of the social semiotic affordances of Facebook’s composition.</p><p><strong>Theoretical perspectives: </strong>The theoretical base of this thesis consists mainly of Erving Goffman’s theory on presentation of self in everyday life as well as relevant theories to youth culture in sociology and identity in social psychology.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>The results show that the youth’s presentations of selves mostly takes place in their profile picture, status updates, groups, fan pages and through their communication with other users on their wall. The borders between front and back stage on Facebook entirely depends on the norms that the reader expects the profile owner to uphold. The most frequent reason for impression management among the participating youths seemed to be to uphold a façade on front stage, i.e. Facebook, amongst their friends. Most of the participants’ use of Facebook confirms theories from previous research on the Internet generation – that they use it to communicate, network and to express opinions. The results also showed that the profile owner, through their status updates, can revise and reform their presentation of self at any time.</p> / <p>Denna uppsats undersöker hur de deltagande ungdomarna gör självpresentationer på sina Facebook- profiler. Detta kommer att undersökas genom en socialsemiotisk metod med fokus på begreppen semiotisk potential, affordance, konnotation, denotation. Det teoretiska ramverk som ligger till grund för uppsatsen är Goffmans dramaturgiska perspektiv som liknar livet vid en teater. Alla sociala interaktioner sker på en scen och individen har olika roller beroende på kontexten. Varje framträdande har, likt teatern, en bakre och främre region, där den främre är den roll du har vid uppträdandet och den bakre är den privata regionen. Goffmans perspektiv tar även upp intrycksstyrning vilket används för att styra det som släpps ut på scenen, den främre regionen. Det teoretiska ramverket innehåller även socialpsykologins identitetsbegrepp samt ett avsnitt om ungdomar, deras kultur och hur de förhåller sig till Internet. Uppsatsen undersöker även, med en socialsemiotiskmetod hur scenen Facebook är komponerat för att se vilka möjligheter av självpresentation det finns.</p><p>Scenen Facebook är komponerat med tre olika spalter, där den mittersta är störst och har den primära funktionen. Den västra spalten innehåller profilbilden med kompletterande information, i syfte att påvisa vem profilägaren är. Mittenspalten har två olika innehåll, den ena är informationssidan som återger biografiska uppgifter om profilägaren samt vilka grupper och pages denne tillhör. Den andra är wall:en, Facebooks centrala del, här kartläggs de aktiviteter profilägaren gör, till exempel: skriva på någons wall, kommentera på bilder, lägga upp egna bilder eller bli taggad i bilder.</p><p>Det undersökningen kom fram till var självpresentationen sker främst genom grupper och pages, statusuppdateringar, profilbild och kommunikation på wall:en samt att den varierar beroende på aktivitet. Vid hög aktivitet är det klarare vad som är menat att publicera och vad som regleras med intryckskontroll. Vid låg aktivitet var det ett problem att se vad som var intrycksstyrning och vad som var ett slentrianmässigt användande av Facebook. Det kom även fram att den profilbild som visas ofta är representativ utifrån materialet. Den som hade en humoristisk profilbild hade även en profil med ett humoristiskt tema. Humor var även det mest genomgående temat bland profilerna och ofta med subkultur kopplat till detta.</p>

<p>In this thesis I'm trying to examine the meaning potential of visual elements and layout in a Swedish newspaper front page and the same newspaper's website's start page, drawing on theories about multimodality and social semiotics developed mainly by Theo van Leeuwen and Gunther Kress. The study is focusing on Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet and the website aftonbladet.se and compares these three different days. In this thesis I also try to examine what the newspaper communicate about its identity through the different visual components. My conclusion is that visual elements and layout have a great importance regarding what a newspaper communicate about how the news articles should be read, but what can be said about a company's identity mostly depend on the genre the newspaper belongs to and how well the reader knows that particular genre.</p>

In this thesis I'm trying to examine the meaning potential of visual elements and layout in a Swedish newspaper front page and the same newspaper's website's start page, drawing on theories about multimodality and social semiotics developed mainly by Theo van Leeuwen and Gunther Kress. The study is focusing on Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet and the website aftonbladet.se and compares these three different days. In this thesis I also try to examine what the newspaper communicate about its identity through the different visual components. My conclusion is that visual elements and layout have a great importance regarding what a newspaper communicate about how the news articles should be read, but what can be said about a company's identity mostly depend on the genre the newspaper belongs to and how well the reader knows that particular genre.

The aim of this thesis is to shed light on the handbook as a multimodal resource from a reader perspective, with the material consisting of 32 Swedish handbooks on gardening from 1643 to 2005. The study draws theoretically on social semiotics and multimodal discourse analysis, as well as dialogism. There is an emphasis on the addressivity of the text, which is taken as a starting point for tracing signs of the intended text use in the design of the texts. The analysis is meaning-based, with the focus placed on functional features in the design of the texts. The first part of the study considers the reading goals afforded by the thematizations conveyed in titles, headings and text type patterns. The core function of these texts turns out to be action orientation, although the more recent books often include sections oriented towards other goals, like shaping individual aesthetic taste. The second part illustrates how the multimodal cohesive patterns in the books afford non-linear reading paths and make the texts searchable, which is enhanced by the presence of devices such as indices and tables of contents. Concentrating on six of the books, the third part of the study maps out the role of the reader that is naturalized by the design of the text, drawing on appraisal theory, and shows the strong, authoritative role taken by the authorial voice. The evaluative patterns naturalize a fact-seeking reading. However, the most recent book, from 1996, emphasizes emotions to a greater extent, naturalizing a parallel reading that invokes sensory experience. The conclusion drawn is that the core characteristics of the handbooks are action orientation, searchability and factuality. As different parallel functions in recent books are discerned, a tendency towards diversity and multifunctionality is described. The range of semiotic resources has also expanded, it is noted, and there is growing support for the view of a tendency towards the visualisation of written texts.

This thesis focuses on how different semiotic resources, such as spoken and written texts, artefacts and activities interact with classroom design and classroom communication in three school subjects in Swedish secondary school: Home and Consumer Studies, Biology and Chemistry. The research process has been concerned with the affordances that are created through different semiotic resources in classroom design and in classroom communication in the three school subjects, focusing on academic language and student participation. The study used an ethnographic approach, employing multiple methods for material production and analysis. Video and audio recordings formed the foundation for analysis. Material production also includes field notes, photographs and interviews with teachers and students. The research draws on sociocultural theory using a three-legged theoretical framework based in sociocultural theory. Basil Bernstein’s sociological theories were used as an overarching theory for understanding the results. The sociosemiotic theories of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and Social Semiotic Multimodality were adopted for analyzing classroom design and classroom communication. This study shows that classroom design and classroom communication are tied together. Classroom design presents affordances for a subject’s ideational and interpersonal meaning. These affordances are reproduced in classroom communication. In classrooms with subject-focused design, classroom communication is school-focused. Learning is segmented without connection between school subjects or other contexts. In one classroom, designed to create relevance for both school and everyday knowledge, communication is both school-focused and also creates relevance for students’ use of the contents in other contexts. Learning in this classroom is cumulative and students’ participation and meaning-making is integrated in teaching and design. This study also shows how different semiotic resources influence teacher’s and students’ linguistic choices. Vertical discourse, i.e. abstract and distant academic language, is realised in written texts such as text books and whiteboard texts. Few other artefacts introduce and encourage participants’ vertical discourse. Teacher and student communication realises mainly horizontal discourse, i.e. context embedded everyday language. Classroom communication provides few opportunities for students to appropriate academic language through semantic waves, as academic language is only unpacked into everyday language and not repacked into academic language.

No description available.

I denna studie som utgår från Huizingas begrepp ”den magiska cirkeln” undersöksapplikationen Tilt Brush för VR headsetet HTC Vive med avseende på dess bild ochljud samt hur detta tolkas och används under interaktionen med applikationens verktyg.Begreppet utgår ifrån att användaren kan låta sig uppslukas i ett spel så längeförväntningarna enligt spelets regler inte störs. Genom en fallstudie har applikationenstuderats med metoder som autoetnografi och multimodal analys utifrånsocialsemiotiska begrepp, samt öppna intervjuer med inslag av ”think-aloud”. Deliknande iakttagelser som framkommit med hjälp av olika metoder får anses styrkastudiens resultat. Resultaten i studien pekar på att det för interaktionens del är viktigt attvissa aspekter av ljudet, som har med positionering eller fysikens lagar att göra,stämmer överens med våra erfarenheter från verkligheten och att detta i sin tur stämmeröverens med det visuellt representerade. För bildens och ljudens meningserbjudanden iövrigt är användaren beredd att gå med på vilka oerhörda illusioner som helst så längebild och ljud kommuniceras i överensstämmelse och på ett trovärdigt sätt som lever upptill användarens förväntningar inom den magiska cirkeln, platsen för själva spelet.Förväntningarna behöver då inte ha med verkligheten att göra. Vad som uppfattas somhög modalitet styrs av vilken genre användaren förväntar sig att möta. Detta i sin turrelateras till användarens tidigare erfarenheter och sociala och kulturella bakgrund.

Magazine covers are multimodal texts designed to draw the attention of potential readers. Health and fitness magazines, in particular, make up a large portion of the publishing industry, and previous research has pointed to their influence on readers’ perceptions of health and fitness. In order to interpret the multimodality of magazine covers, a different approach other than the purely linguistic one needs to be employed. Following the theoretical frameworks of Systemic Functional Linguistics and Social Semiotics, this study set out to investigate the verbal and visual construction of health on eight covers of Men’s Health and Women’s Health. The findings indicate that there are significant differences in how health is constructed on the men’s and women’s edition of the magazines. These differences mainly concern the way in which health is achieved, and the relationship between the viewers and the magazine. This not only indicates that different strategies were used to attract viewers, but also reveals something about the relationship the viewer is supposed to have with their bodies as well as their perceptions of health.

Language can be seen as a bridge between the way we think and our actions. From a social semiotic, language becomes a resource with which collective knowledge can be distributed. The way we talk about an artefact is a reflection of our conceptual understanding thereof. Often, we use conceptual metaphors to communicate abstract concepts in abstract reasoning domains such as computer science. Conceptual metaphors are formed in relation to primary metaphors and are grounded in sensorimotor experience. Primary metaphors can be used to analyse how we embody our conceptual understanding of specific concepts. The aims of this study are threefold: Firstly, to explore how conceptual metaphors are used by students and teachers while engaging in conversations about computer programming; secondly, to analyse the emergent conceptual metaphors to identify how teachers and students understand abstract aspects about computer programming and thirdly, to identify the sensorimotor experiences that contribute to shaping the conceptual metaphors used by the students and the teachers. Two teachers and three students from two different upper-secondary schools engaged in informal conversations regarding aspects of computer programming. The conversations were audiorecorded, and excerpts were transcribed verbatim and translated into English. The excerpts were analysed by adopting a methodological framework based on Grady’s theory of primary metaphor. Results suggest that teachers and students have a multi-faceted conceptual understanding of computer science that involves concepts such as spatial relations, similarities between objects and computer code. Other emergent aspects concerned interpersonal relationships, in relation to customer service and social skills. The findings imply that expanding the number of available conceptual metaphors could lead to a more diverse set of didactic tools in computer science education, thus increasing overall conceptual understanding. / Vårt språk kan ses som en brygga mellan det sätt vi tänker och det sätt vi agerar. Ur ett socialsemiotiskt perspektiv blir språket ett verktyg med vilket kollektiv kunskap kan distribueras. Detta gör det rimligt att säga att det sätt varpå vi talar en spegling av vår möjlighet att förstå. Vi använder ofta konceptuella metaforer för att kommunicera abstrakta koncept som exempelvis datavetenskap. Konceptuella metaforer formas i relation till primärmetaforer, grundade i sensomotoriska erfarenheter. Primärmetaforer kan användas för att analysera hur vi kroppsligt befäster och förstår specifika koncept. Syftet med denna studie är att: i, undersöka hur konceptuella metaforer används av lärare och elever vid samtal rörande programmering, ii, använda de uppkomna konceptuella metaforerna för att identifiera lärares och elevers förståelse för abstrakta aspekter av programmering och iii, identifiera de sensomotoriska upplevelser som formar de konceptuella metaforer lärarna och eleverna använder sig av. Informella samtal kring olika aspekter av programmering genomfördes med två lärare och tre elever vid två svenska gymnasieskolor. Samtalen spelades in, varefter kortare utdrag transkriberades och översattes till engelska. Utdragen har analyserats med en metod baserad på Gradys teori om primärmetaforer. Studiens resultat visar att lärare och elever har en mångfacetterad förståelse för programmering. Deras konceptuella förståelse baseras på bland annat rumsliga relationer mellan olika objekt, skillnader och olika objekt samt relationen till kod. Andra identifierade aspekter berör interpersonella förhållanden, kundservice och social kompetens. Resultaten indikerar att en vidgad uppsättning didaktiska verktyg inom programmeringsundervisning skulle kunna öka antalet tillgängliga konceptuella metaforer relaterade till programmering och således öka den generella konceptuella förståelsen för programmering.

This thesis widens the application of intersectionality into the study of visual media. This study examines representational patterns on GQ magazine covers issued in the US with specific regards to gender-race-sexuality intersections. Also, this study seeks to grasp what meaning is conveyed via those representational patterns in conjunction with the visual and linguistic modes, and what social effect it imparts. The study employs a mixed-method approach combining the quantitative content analysis with the social semiotics, and the inter-categorical methodological approach to intersectionality. The findings show that GQ magazine employs the same representational patterns acknowledged in culture and the magazines’ market. Those patterns manifest in the sexual objectification of women, racial exclusion, and emphasis on white heterosexual maleness. Additionally, the intersectional analysis revealed that women of colour and sexual minorities are in the least favourable position regarding representational patterns on GQ magazine.