The purpose of this case study is to investigate how and why social media can be used as a tool for internal communications. Research has been made on how employees interpret and use the external communication at an Instagram account. The study is conducted as a qualitative in-depth case study and is based on three semi-structured focus group interviews with employees at Skaraborgs regiment; a semi-structured interview with the communications manager; and access to a number of documents from the regiment. In total, 12 employees participated in the interviews. The study has been conducted remotely with video interviews. The results of the interviews have been analyzed through the theoretical lens of auto communication which illustrates how external information can be converted into internal information. The information at @Skaraborgsregemente is interpreted by employees and converted into internal information that they use in their workday. The study proposes that the auto-communication model be supplemented with external influences, which makes the model more sensitive to external communication. This may affect the sender's message and also the receiver's interpretation when the model is applied in the Web 2.0 environment. Treem and Leonardi's (2013) theory of Affordances focus on social media as a contributer to the internal communications processes. With the support of the Affordances theory the study shows that the regiment by stimulating news flow, facilitating sharing of information and knowledge and contributing to an overall perspective the Instagram account contributes to the internal communications processes at the regiment. The study reports that employees use @Skaraborgsregemente in ten different ways: recruitment, education, news flow, recognition, personal knowledge, cross-border geographical, overall perspective, regiment spirit, uniform rules and safety issues.

In times of the pandemic, Facebook has become a virtual space that through e.g.“coronavirus support groups” (Harris, 2020), partially substitutes social interactions and allows its users to better cope with the isolation and social distancing. A public Facebook group “Lappis” established in 2006 is a space facilitating communication for the local community of the biggest student housing in Stockholm “Stora Lappkärrsberget”. Since the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020, Covid-related postings started to emerge in the group’s forum. The study examines Covid-related content in order to define the function of the group through describing the forms of communication around the pandemic, i.e. the themes, the scope and the ways the content is conveyed. In doing so, the model combining the uses and gratifications theory and the theory of affordances is applied, allowing to investigate the motivations and interactivity of the members through Facebook group affordances. In order to encompass the puzzle from multiple angles, an adaptive approach of mixed methods is used by combining: qualitative content analysis and survey. Key finding of the research is that the Covid-related content is a minor part of the content shared in the group, yet that it provokes extensive discussions among the members with both “aggressive” and “unaggressive” responses. Furthermore, it is argued that the group has potential to be a coronavirus support group (Harris, 2020) and a substitute for interpersonal communication (Papacharissi & Mendelson, 2011). Finally, the study identifies possibilities for future research in the further examination of local Facebook groups in the context of pandemic, in order to map the possible changes in Facebook affordances that would lead to higher reliability of those groups as spaces for sharing Covid-related content.

Motivational interviewing is a widely used psychosocial intervention, both in general and more specifically in Swedish social services. It was developed within the substance abuse field and has later been adapted to many other fields, for example domestic violence. Up to this point there has been some research about MI in this context, but there is a lack of knowledge about how social workers working with domestic violence use and perceive the method in their practical work. This qualitative interview study explores seven Swedish social workers’ perception of this within the theory of affordances. The results have been thematically analyzed and shows that MI is viewed as a flexible, versatile and useful method within domestic violence. The results also show three themes which are called The learning process of MI as an affordance in itself, MI as a useful method in the work with domestic violence and MI applied partially in relation to contextual circumstances. The results further implicate more extensive future studies with a quantitative approach.