The advent and massification of the ICTs and the widespread use of internet have transformed the way in which traditional media such as ratio and television communicate with the audience, not only because of the technological shift itself, but because of the convergence culture undergoing as a result of the new relationships taking place online. Particularly, we wonder how the news’ organizations based in traditional media are adapting to these changes. Our assumption is that, although the news’ organizations have understood and are currently using the online technologies to present their information in varied ways with the intention to reach a broader audience and to generate higher levels of engagement, still much needs to be analyzed on how the contents are handled through each particular online platform. Along this study, we propose to introduce the rationale of Nation Branding from a Cultural/Critical perspective as a tool to analyze how transnational news organizations present their contents, since, even when their purpose might not be to carry out directly a Nation Branding strategy, they might be falling into the use of certain features of the Nation Branding logics. In order to perform this analysis, we explore, from a reductionist approach, the ways in which the English section of Radio Sweden International (a branch of Sveriges Radio, the public radio service in Sweden) has developed its online strategy, trying to identify: 1) whether Radio Sweden International is appropriating the logics of Nation Branding in the way they present their information; 2) if the online strategy of Radio Sweden International is oriented (either directly or indirectly) to build and/or enhance the “Brand Sweden”; and 3) the ways in which Radio Sweden International uses each specific digital platform in its online strategy. We collected 1893 elements across the Twitter account (760), the news’ website (620), the podcasts (422), and the Facebook page (91) of Radio Sweden International, which were submitted to the classifications of the Nation Branding model known as “Anholt’s hexagon”. What we found was that, although 70.4% of the elements do fit within Anholt’s hexagon, 29.6% of the elements did not fit, these last elements corresponding to Domestic News and Self-Promotion of the organization, reason why a new classification of these elements was due, giving as a result 9 new categories of information different from Anholt’s model. As a result of our empirical study, we concluded that there are indeed similarities between the way in which Radio Sweden International presents its information, and the form in which the Cultural/Critical developing perspective of Nation Branding proposes how the nation communicates within the convergent, global and networked society. Although Radio Sweden International does not have the direct task of promoting the image of Sweden outside the country, the ways in which this organization presents its information and uses the different online platforms can be related to the way in which Nation Branding intends to construct the image of the country both, inside and outside Sweden.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-225270 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Tinoco López, César Adair |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Medier och kommunikation |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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