This paper explores the visual content of the Russian Embassy in London in connection to the Skripal poisoning in Salisbury, UK on March 4, 2018. Considering the Skripal poisoning as a significant event in the relationship between the UK and Russia, that Russian disinformation increases substantially surrounding events perceived as key to security, and that the Russian Embassy in London is increasingly coming under investigation for controversial content, the aim of this paper is to deconstruct the tweets made by the Russian Embassy in London using the Skripal poisoning as a case study. This paper also situates this event within the broader context of Russian strategic narratives and disinformation. Tweets made by the Russian Embassy in London were collected between March 4th and Sept. 28th , 2018 and categorized visually into representations of actors, events, and message. Bleiker's (2015) visual content analysis framework was used, specifically through compositional, semiotic and discursive analyses. Through this deconstruction of visual conflict framing, it is hoped that a better understanding of the building blocks of Russian state disinformation can be ascertained within the UK domestic media environment.

Machine-driven analysis of visual data is the hard core of intelligent surveillance systems. Its main goal is to recognize di erent objects in the video sequence and their behaviour. Such operation is very challenging due to the dynamic nature of the scene and the lack of semantic-comprehension for visual data in machines. The general ow of the recognition process starts with the object extraction task. For so long, this task has been performed using image segmentation. However, recent years have seen the emergence of another contender, image matting. As a well-known process, matting has a very rich literature, most of which is designated to interactive approaches for applications like movie editing. Thus, it was conventionally not considered for visual data analysis operations. Following the new shift toward matting as a means to object extraction, two methods have stood out for their foreground-extraction accuracy and, more importantly, their automation potential. These methods are Closed-Form Matting (CFM) and Spectral Matting (SM). They pose the matting process as either a constrained optimization problem or a segmentation-like component selection process. This di erence of formulation stems from an interesting di erence of perspective on the matting process, opening the door for more automation possibilities. Consequently, both of these methods have been the subject of some automation attempts that produced some intriguing results. For their importance and potential, this thesis will provide detailed discussion and analysis on two of the most successful techniques proposed to automate the CFM and SM methods. In the beginning, focus will be on introducing the theoretical grounds of both matting methods as well as the automatic techniques. Then, it will be shifted toward a full analysis and assessment of the performance and implementation of these automation attempts. To conclude the thesis, a brief discussion on possible improvements will be presented, within which a hybrid technique is proposed to combine the best features of the reviewed two techniques. / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc)

För att ge insikt hur design för ett nytt rockalbum ska ske och ge information kring vad som bör finnas med på ett nytt omslag har denna studie utförts. Studien framförde information om att albumsgrafik var relevant. Först sades det att en nedåtgående trend gick att anta, eftersom den digitala musikbranschen tog över från den fysiska. Men det visade sig därefter vara precis lika stor försäljning på de fysiska albumen som de digitala. För att besvara målen i studien utfördes en visuell innehållsanalys och informationssökning på internet. Studiens syfte var att visuellt granska rockalbum från tre olika ursprungsländer, som var Sverige, Storbritannien och USA. Genom analysen kategoriserades designelement, teman och framtogs landstypiska albumomslag. Studien berörde även vem som styr designen av ett omslag samt ifall det kunde ses någon tongivande designer bland de album som ingick i analysen. I slutsatsen framgick det att Storbritannien och USA hade mycket lika grafiskt manér och att omslag från Sverige såg annorlunda ut. Det framgick även att banden styr utseendet på omslaget mer än designern, och från analysen framgick inte någon tongivande designer. / This study is supposed to shed light on the design process behind album covers in the genre rock and give information about what should be displayed on them. Herein it is presented information about how the graphics on a record cover was relevant and didn’t follow the otherwise assumed declining trend. To be able to answer the goals set for the study, a visual content analysis was done and complementary information was gathered via searches on the internet. The aim with the study was to visually analyze cover art in the genre rock from three different countries of origin, these were Sweden, Great Britain and USA. Via the visual content analysis, categories and themes were structured. There were also created three different album covers, one for each country of origin that were based on the information of what should typically exist on the cover. Herein it is shown that designs from Great Britain and USA are much alike, whereas Sweden has a different style. In the study there was presented who decides the design of a new album and also concludes that from the albums in this content analysis there cannot be proven any designer who sets the generic tone for others.

Böcker är, trots ett generellt minskat intresse, fortfarande en viktig del av vårtkulturella samhälle. Att böckers utseende anpassas efter sin målgrupp är ingetovanligt men frågan är om även könet på författaren spelar in gällandeutformningen av omslaget.Syftet med studien var därför att genom en visuell innehållsanalys av böckerspocketomslag kartlägga de skillnader som återfinns på manliga respektivekvinnliga författares omslag.Denna undersökning har baserats på en visuell innehållsanalys där 200pocketomslag analyserades, 100 från svenska författare och 100 från engelskaförfattare. Dessa var därefter jämlikt fördelade mellan könen. I analysenreflekteras det över pocketböckernas motiv, dominerande färg, typsnittsfamiljersamt typsnittsfärger.Resultatet från undersökningen tyder på att kvinnliga författare har ettfemininare utseende på sina böcker överlag, och att svenska kvinnligaförfattares omslag uppvisade flest tecken på en femininare utformning. Det gårdock inte att utesluta att böckernas genre kan ha ett inflytande gällandeböckernas utformning, då det var svårt att precisera genren på många böckeröverlag. / Books are, despite a decline in interest, still an important part of our culturalsociety. It is not unusual for a book’s cover to adapt to its target audience butthe question stands whether the gender of the author functions as a part of thedesign equation as well.The purpose of this study was to through a visual analysis of paperback bookcovers map out differences found between male and female writers’ bookcovers.This study is based on a visual content analysis were 200 paperback coverswere analysed, 100 from Swedish authors and 100 from English authors. Thesewere then evenly divided between the genders. The analysis reflects over themotifs on the covers as well as the dominant colour, font families and fontcolours.The results from the analysis indicate that female authors generally got a morefeminine appearance on their covers, and that covers by Swedish female authorsshowed most signs of a feminine design. Alas, it is impossible to rule out genreas an important influence regarding the books’ cover design. However, as it washard to pinpoint the genre of many of the books analysed it was difficult tomake a distinct connection between genres and books’ cover design.

Syftet med vår rapport är att undersöka huruvida humor förekommer i kosmetikareklamfilm på YouTube. Om humor nyttjas vill vi undersöka vilken humortyp som används. Vi vill också undersöka vilken berättarteknik som nyttjas samt vilken typ av reklambudskap som används. Vidare avser vi utreda huruvida humor är uppskattad i reklamfilm för kosmetika utifrån konsumentens perspektiv i Sverige. För att kunna undersöka detta används en visuell innehållsanalys till hjälp för att se hur kosmetikareklamfilmerna är uppbyggda. För att få en bild över hur konsumenten uppfattar kosmetikareklamfilm skapas en enkätundersökning. Där efterfrågas respondenternas allmänna uppfattning kring humor i kosmetikareklam samt deras åsikter om reklamfilmer som visas i enkäten. Undersökningen visar att humor inte används i någon större utsträckning i de kosmetikareklamfilmer som studeras. De flesta reklamfilmerna använder samma reklambudskap och berättarteknik. I de enstaka fall som humor förekom används endast tre humortyper av de sju som finns med i studien. Respondenterna uppskattar reklamfilmer med humorinslag då dessa upplevs mer positiva och personliga. / The purpose of our thesis is to investigate whether humor appears in cosmetic commercials on YouTube. If humor is implemented we would want to analyse which humor type it is. We also want to investigate which storytelling technique is used and what type of advertising message is applied. Furthermore, we intend to investigate whether humor is appropriate in commercials for cosmetics from the consumer's perspective in Sweden. In order to investigate this, a visual content analysis is used to help us see how the cosmetic commercials are constructed. A survey is created to get a picture of how the consumer perceives cosmetic commercials. The respondents are asked about their opinion on general perception about humor in cosmetics advertising and their opinion on commercials that are shown in the survey. The study shows that humor is not used to any great extent in the cosmetic commercials that are studied. Most of the commercials use the same advertising message and storytelling technique. In the few cases where humor occurres, only three types of humor are used of the seven included in the study. The respondents appreciate commercials with humor as they are seen more positive and personal.

Under det senaste årtiondet har djurrättsintresset i världen ökat markant. Samtidigt blir marknadsföring mer och mer viktigt i en allt mer digitaliserad värld, så hur marknadsför sig egentligen en djurrättsorganisation?  Syftet med föreliggande studie är att se hur en djurrättskampanj skulle kunna se ut generellt, genom att göra en visuell innehållsanalys på 20 utvalda reklamkampanjer för djurrättsorganisationer. För var reklamkampanj analyserades sex stycken reklamenheter. Resultatet presenterades sedan i form av tabeller och diagram, men även genom en egenskapad generisk reklamkampanj.   För att validera att den egenskapade reklamkampanjen uppfattas som generell användes en fokusgrupp där de olika enheternas generalitet diskuterades. Utefter detta justerades utformningen av bildspråket.  Undersökningen visade att det finns en del olikheter mellan olika djurrättsorganisationers reklamkampanjer, men även gemensamma nämnare kunde hittas. / During the last decade the interests in animal rights have increased significant. Meanwhile advertising becomes more and more important in a digitized world, so how do animal right organizations advertise themselves?  The purpose of this study is to look further into how a general animal rights campaign could be modeled, by implementing a visual content analysis on 20 selected advertising campaigns of animal right organizations. For each advertising campaign were six different advertising units analyzed. The result was later presented in table and diagram form, but also through a self-made generic advertising campaign.   To validate that the self-made advertising campaign is perceived as a generic one, we used focus groups where the generality of the different units was discussed. Out of this the modelling of the imagery was adjusted.  The study showed that there are some differences between the different animal right organization campaigns, but it also showed that common denominators can be found.

Dans cette thèse, nous traitons de la compréhension de contenus visuels, qu’il s’agisse d’images, de vidéos ou encore de contenus 3D. On entend par compréhension la capacité à inférer des informations sémantiques sur le contenu visuel. L’objectif de ce travail est d’étudier des méthodes combinant deux approches : 1) l’analyse automatique des contenus et 2) l’analyse des interactions liées à l’utilisation de ces contenus (analyse des usages, en plus bref). Dans un premier temps, nous étudions l’état de l’art issu des communautés de la vision par ordinateur et du multimédia. Il y a 20 ans, l’approche dominante visait une compréhension complètement automatique des images. Cette approche laisse aujourd’hui plus de place à différentes formes d’interventions humaines. Ces dernières peuvent se traduire par la constitution d’une base d’apprentissage annotée, par la résolution interactive de problèmes (par exemple de détection ou de segmentation) ou encore par la collecte d’informations implicites issues des usages du contenu. Il existe des liens riches et complexes entre supervision humaine d’algorithmes automatiques et adaptation des contributions humaines via la mise en œuvre d’algorithmes automatiques. Ces liens sont à l’origine de questions de recherche modernes : comment motiver des intervenants humains ? Comment concevoir des scénarii interactifs pour lesquels les interactions contribuent à comprendre le contenu manipulé ? Comment vérifier la qualité des traces collectées ? Comment agréger les données d’usage ? Comment fusionner les données d’usage avec celles, plus classiques, issues d’une analyse automatique ? Notre revue de la littérature aborde ces questions et permet de positionner les contributions de cette thèse. Celles-ci s’articulent en deux grandes parties. La première partie de nos travaux revisite la détection de régions importantes ou saillantes au travers de retours implicites d’utilisateurs qui visualisent ou acquièrent des con- tenus visuels. En 2D d’abord, plusieurs interfaces de vidéos interactives (en particulier la vidéo zoomable) sont conçues pour coordonner des analyses basées sur le contenu avec celles basées sur l’usage. On généralise ces résultats en 3D avec l’introduction d’un nouveau détecteur de régions saillantes déduit de la capture simultanée de vidéos de la même performance artistique publique (spectacles de danse, de chant etc.) par de nombreux utilisateurs. La seconde contribution de notre travail vise une compréhension sémantique d’images fixes. Nous exploitons les données récoltées à travers un jeu, Ask’nSeek, que nous avons créé. Les interactions élémentaires (comme les clics) et les données textuelles saisies par les joueurs sont, comme précédemment, rapprochées d’analyses automatiques des images. Nous montrons en particulier l’intérêt d’interactions révélatrices des relations spatiales entre différents objets détectables dans une même scène. Après la détection des objets d’intérêt dans une scène, nous abordons aussi le problème, plus ambitieux, de la segmentation. / This thesis focuses on the problem of understanding visual contents, which can be images, videos or 3D contents. Understanding means that we aim at inferring semantic information about the visual content. The goal of our work is to study methods that combine two types of approaches: 1) automatic content analysis and 2) an analysis of how humans interact with the content (in other words, usage analysis). We start by reviewing the state of the art from both Computer Vision and Multimedia communities. Twenty years ago, the main approach was aiming at a fully automatic understanding of images. This approach today gives way to different forms of human intervention, whether it is through the constitution of annotated datasets, or by solving problems interactively (e.g. detection or segmentation), or by the implicit collection of information gathered from content usages. These different types of human intervention are at the heart of modern research questions: how to motivate human contributors? How to design interactive scenarii that will generate interactions that contribute to content understanding? How to check or ensure the quality of human contributions? How to aggregate human contributions? How to fuse inputs obtained from usage analysis with traditional outputs from content analysis? Our literature review addresses these questions and allows us to position the contributions of this thesis. In our first set of contributions we revisit the detection of important (or salient) regions through implicit feedback from users that either consume or produce visual contents. In 2D, we develop several interfaces of interactive video (e.g. zoomable video) in order to coordinate content analysis and usage analysis. We also generalize these results to 3D by introducing a new detector of salient regions that builds upon simultaneous video recordings of the same public artistic performance (dance show, chant, etc.) by multiple users. The second contribution of our work aims at a semantic understanding of fixed images. With this goal in mind, we use data gathered through a game, Ask’nSeek, that we created. Elementary interactions (such as clicks) together with textual input data from players are, as before, mixed with automatic analysis of images. In particular, we show the usefulness of interactions that help revealing spatial relations between different objects in a scene. After studying the problem of detecting objects on a scene, we also adress the more ambitious problem of segmentation.

Syftet med denna studie var att genom en visuell innehållsanalys undersöka hur kokböcker normalt såg ut för varje genus. Resultatet skulle sedan jämföras för att hitta skillnader och likheter mellan manliga och kvinnliga omslag för att sätta ett genusperspektiv på utformningen, samt undersöka om designen berodde på författarens eller målgruppens kön. Den visuella innehållsanalysen utfördes på sammanlagt 84 svenska kokböcker där hälften var skrivna av kvinnor och hälften av män. Analysen visade att kvinnor hade ett mer feminint utseende på sin omslagsdesign, men att även männens omslag var mer feminina än maskulina. Detta resultat berodde både på målgruppens och författarens kön. Omslagen var i övrigt lika varandra i utformning och i modellens posering då kokböckers egentliga målgrupp ska vara alla matintresserade och inte ett bestämt kön. / The purpose of the present study was to through a visual content analysis examine how cookbooks usually are designed for each gender. The result would then be compared to identify similarities and differences between the male and female covers to bring a gender perspective on the design, and examine whether the design was due to the author or the audiences sex. The visual content analysis was preformed on a total of 84 Swedish cookbooks, half of which were written by women and half by men. The analysis showed that the women had more of a feminine cover design, but also that men’s cover design had a more feminine look than masculine. This result was both based on the audiences and the authors sex. The covers were generally equal to each other in how they were designed and how the model was posing, since the market segment is supposed to be everyone with a food interest and not based on gender.

In this comparative study, the design elements and visual merchandising approaches employed in window displays by high-end and fast-fashion retailers are investigated. The study utilizes a visual content analysis method with standardized evaluation criteria to analyze the window displays of six high-end and six fast-fashion stores located in Paris. By adopting an analytical framework adapted mainly from Morgan (2015) and Diamond and Diamond (2007), the research aims to uncover shared patterns and distinguishing factors in the approaches of these two sectors. The findings reveal clear differences in purpose, layout, visual weight, focal points, color schemes, and prop usage between highend and fast-fashion retailers. These insights offer valuable practical implications for enhancing the visual appeal of window displays in the highly competitive retail landscape

(in English): In this thesis I present the Zapatista movement and its media strategy. Further I describe its visual communication by means of a case study. After evaluating the significance of media strategies of the zapatista movement, I will prove that Zapatistas' media communication played a crucial role in the transformation of Mexican society in the late 90s and directly influenced the process of transition to democracy in Mexico. In the introduction I will explain how news photographs can be a source of exploration of the Zapatistas and I will introduce the basic hypotheses of my research. In the historical part of my introduction I will put the movement in the context with the political, social and historical development of Mexico and the state of Chiapas, where the uprising broke out in 1994 and I will explain the causes of the rebellion and introduce its goals. Before I describe the aspects of Zapatistas' communication, I will focus on the Mexican media environment so that I can link it with the media outlets of the Zapatista movement. I will describe in general terms media strategies and myths created by the movement. In the case study I will examine photographs of EZLN published in the magazine Proceso in the years 1994 and 2001, I will compare the Zapatistas' visual communication with...