This research was inspired by two courageous Finnish women, journalist Jessikka Aro and PhD Saara Jantunen, who shined a light on Russian hostile behaviour on the Internet and started discussions about information operations nationally and
internationally all over the world. Due to personally becoming a target of aggressive
information campaigns, Jessikka Aro had to move abroad from her home as the Finnish Security and Intelligence Service suggested there is nothing to be done to counter the attacks or safeguard her from getting harassed online and ”offline”.
The following paper will take a closer look on Finland and its governmental work towards making the cyber domain securer and safeguarding Finnish society from the potential threat looming in the Internet and social media platforms. Information
operations in the cyber domain are gaining saliency in the national security conversations. The governments and other actors in the civil society are rushing to find policies which would mitigate the harm information operations are causing in elections, healthy public debates and widely in the democracy as we know it. Finland is known for its technologically savvy industries and the society is highly dependent on technological solutions in all aspects of the nation to work efficiently. The Finnish society, including the political leaders, are broadly integrated in social media and therefore potential subjects of information operations.
The thesis argues, that the obstructions in the cyber domain and information operations have caused security environment to expand from the traditional considerations of the securitisation of military and the state. Rather, the cyber security has expanded similarly like other global issues in multiple fronts: climate change, migration, polarisation and
trade. Cyber space offers a domain for the whole global world, where there are basically no boundaries, no governments, no norms of behaviour and in addition, no need for exposing users own identity. The case study of Finland will analyse six governmental texts from the Ministry of the Interior and Ministry for Foreign Affairs from the time period of 2012 and 2020. The years chosen are argued to reflect a change in the Finnish threat environment and policies which have potentially stemmed from the Crimean annexation in 2014. In 2014, Finland and other European countries saw how different hybrid tactics, including information operations, can lead to military conflict which still to this day in 2021, is present in Eastern Ukraine.
The thesis is exploratory in its nature, due to the lack of previous studies which explore the Finnish security environment and policies regarding information operations. The results are argued to reflect and predict a wider change in the international considerations of the threats in the cyber environment and a bigger wave of policies
which are meant to tackle and counter information operations globally. Finland has been considered as a front runner in technology as well as in cyber security matters, which indicates that Finland could be one of the countries driving the change and
demand more governing in the cyber environment. Finland poses an interesting case to study, since it might be one of the countries initiating broader scales of international norms in cyber space and policies for the future regarding cyber environment, ICT, artificial intelligence, data security and beyond.

While most of the world quickly came to terms with covering their noses and mouths in crowded places, people in Sweden have mostly gone without, riding buses and metros, shopping for groceries, and going to school maskless, with only a few rare souls have covered up (Novus, 2021). Officials from the Swedish Public Health Authority (PHA) have repeatedly argued that masks are not effective enough at limiting the spread of the virus to warrant mass use, insisting it is more important to respect social distancing and handwashing recommendations. The current field of sensemaking research related to crises has often left out that the fact that meaning-making is a process embedded in the context of individuals’ social lives (Sandberg & Tsoukas, 2015). Previous research on risk and crisis communication has shown that different social, political, cultural, and economic conditions have created different risk cultures in which expectations about the responsibilities of society and individuals vary when a crisis occurs (Corina et al., 2016).
By revisiting core assumptions related to Sensemaking and Risk Cultural perspectives, the purpose of this thesis was to analyse how people, depending on their ethnic background and citizenship, have made sense of facemasks amid the COVID-19 pandemic. In essence, this thesis addressed people’s collective experiences, expectations, and attitudes to the broader meanings of facemask wearing beyond (just) preventing the spread of infection. This present thesis applied a social constructionist interpretive approach and used qualitative semi-structured focus group interviews to collect empirical material. The respondents were recruited using convenience sampling and were categorized into three groups based on (a) being born in Sweden with Swedish-born parents, (b) being born in Sweden or abroad with foreign-born parents, and (c) being born abroad, residing in Sweden, and holding citizenship other than Swedish. In total, five semi-structured focus group interviews were conducted, involving altogether 29 respondents.
The main results of this present thesis found that personal practices of wearing (or not wearing) facemasks are influenced by (1) the initial responses of the respondents first noticing’s of facemasks in ”in the outside world,” (2) the extent to which the respondents relied on information on masks provided from public authorities, (3) meaning-making outcomes of public spaces, and on perceived notions of social responsibilities and, and peer pressure, and (4) different kinds of risk-cultural norm and values.
Based on the previous research on risk cultures and Corina et al.’s (2016) typology, the empirical material distinguished two risk cultural divisions among the respondents. The first risk culture found, which was especially prominent among the respondents with foreign backgrounds (b) and citizenship in other countries (c), was the state-oriented risk culture. The second risk culture, most prominent among respondents with Swedish background (a), was characterized as a convergence between state-oriented and individualistic risk cultures. The dividing line between the two risk cultures was, i.e., the state-oriented risk culture and the ”state-individualistic” risk culture, the cultural anticipations and responsibilities directed towards the Swedish authorities. More concretely, the state-oriented risk culture demanded that the state, by almost all means, should protect its citizens from hazardous situations and risks. However, it may involve certain limitations of individual freedoms and rights. On the other hand, the state-individualistic risk culture argued that the state is responsible for leading, mitigating crises, and providing survival capabilities but should simultaneously also maintain/guarantee certain individual rights and freedoms. These empirical findings raise questions on whether Sweden theoretically should remain classified as state-oriented risk culture, an issue which future research should address more deeply.

The rally effect arises at times of international crisis affecting the confidence of the prime minister. During the pandemic, the planet has faced a health crisis that each country has managed with different measures. This research aims to study the duration of the rally effect in the case of Spain, one of the most affected countries and with the worst management according to some organizations. In addition, the relationship between the measures that the Spanish government has taken to fight the coronavirus with the trust of the public in the president of the government will be studied. The results show the existence of the rally effect after the emergence of the pandemic, and a positive relationship of confidence in two of the three states of alarm announced by the government.

The thesis investigates to what extent corporations engage with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement on Twitter. The purpose is to facilitate a better understanding of corporate communication on social media in general, and around social movements in particular. This aim is approached through a textual analysis of 20 corporation’s communicative practices around the BLM movement on Twitter. In more detail, each corporate utterance is subjected to an operationalization of Kent and Taylor’s five components of engagement to investigate to what extent corporations engage with the BLM movement on Twitter. This method is supplemented by the normative theoretical framework of dialogue theory which accentuates a public-centered approach to corporate communication.
The investigation shows that corporations have primarily engaged with the BLM movement to an extent to which they demonstrate positive regard for the Black community’s input, experiences, and needs, and to an extent to which they communicate specific actions such as donations and policy change that benefit the Black community and the BLM movement. Corporations have generally neither engaged with the BLM movement to an extent to which they communicate whether they have engaged in an effort to understand the socio-cultural circumstances related to the BLM movement before communicating around it on Twitter, nor to an extent to which they demonstrate openness towards public feedback on ways to improve their conduct with regard to the Black community and the BLM movement.
The findings demonstrate that corporations increasingly disregard traditional norms such as control and persuasion within their communicative practices on social media. Instead, there are signs of a development towards communicative norms such as empathy, listening and mutuality. Hence, the thesis argues that corporations have not entirely adapted a public-centered approach to communication on social media, but that there are signs of a gradual development towards said direction.

Misinformation has always existed, though research suggests that their prevalence has increased in recent years in different forms (post-truth and alternative facts, for instance). Experts claim that it is now a global phenomenon regardless of their financial condition or advanced technology. Given this, it is no surprise that media and communication scholars have devoted increasing attention to investigating questions such as who the creators of misinformation are, how misinformation is disseminated, why misinformation is created and propagated, and which media platforms are used to disseminate misinformation. However, the recent research about misinformation is focused mainly on the Western perspectives. We know a little from underdeveloped countries’ context, especially where the freedom of expression is in poor condition, the state of democracy follows a backsliding trend. One such country is Bangladesh. Against this background, this study investigates patterns of misinformation in both social and mainstream media in the country. Previous studies have been reviewed to understand the theoretical perspectives on misinformation, and theories such as motivated partisan reasoning, human decision-making process, online echo chambers, and filter bubbles have been applied. The study has been conducted mainly a descriptive analysis based on the fact check reports done by BD FactCheck during 2020. The study also investigated how people interact with political and non-political issues such as health and medicare, law, crime, and education. The results suggest that the politicians, both mainstream and social media are the active actors in disseminating misinformation. Also, there is significant amount of misinformation related to political issues.

The use of new information- and communication technologies, and social media platforms in particular, has rapidly increased from 2010-2012, when social media ‘boomed’ in Sweden. Thereafter, these platforms have become integrated in all aspects of everyday life – in the social as well as the functional, e.g. communicating with friends or performing tasks at work. Yet, some people choose not to participate in the online community, for various reasons (political standpoints, life-style choices, et cetera). These are, in this thesis, referred to as ‘digital disconnecters’. Previous research on digital disconnection has mostly dealt with motivations to disconnect, or the consequences of disconnecting (e.g. health implications or social implications), but it is a rather small field as of today, and not much research has dealt with the discourse surrounding disconnection, in contrary to ‘constant connection’. The purpose of this thesis is to examine media representations of digital disconnection, as portrayed in Swedish legacy news media (Dagens Nyheter, Svenska Dagbladet, Aftonbladet and Expressen), and furthermore to describe how digital disconnection is ‘talked and written about’ in Sweden during 2010-2012, when social media boomed, and 2018-2020, when social media platforms – and Facebook in particular – have received a fair amount of criticism from experts and Silicon Valley ‘insiders’. The theories used to explain the results are ‘media representations’, ‘media discourse’ and ‘political consumerism’, and a critical discourse analysis has been undertaken to examine and describe the phenomenon. The study moreover showed that digital disconnection is mostly represented as healthy and authentic, while constant connection is represented as harmful (to relationships and one’s mental health) and addictive. Those who disconnect are framed as ‘enlightened’ and firm in their values, e.g. by boycotting Facebook for political reasons. However, no clear difference could be seen between the two time periods (2010-2012 and 2018-2020).

This study examines the Swedish Public Health Agency’s (PHA) crisis communication regarding the COVID-19 pandemic during the year of 2020. Departing from a synthesis of the frameworks of Image Repair Theory and Bureaucratic Reputation Theory, the PHA’s online press conferences are critically analyzed to map out how the PHA’s representatives react to reputational threats that occur alongside and in connection to its management of the crisis at hand. With reputational threats is meant allegations or incidents that risk shedding a negative light on the organization in question. The aim is to explore the applicability of said frameworks in a new empirical, crisis communicative context, but also to contribute to the understanding of what role reputational concerns play in public organizations’ crisis communication; an aspect that I argue has been overlooked in the crisis communication-literature. Departing from a definition of reputational threats as either criticism (where the PHA have been publicly questioned or criticized) or acts of reversal (where something seemingly changes in the PHA’s approach), five situations and six corresponding press conferences are selected for examination. A rhetorical analysis based on the logic of accusation (kategoria) and defense (apologia) finds several instances of what can be classified as verbal defense-strategies in the PHA’s crisis communication, but also interesting variations depending on what the threat is about or where it comes from. The PHA’s only constant reaction across press conferences is found to be initial silence: to wait until the issue at hand is brought up by someone else (in this case, a journalist participating at the press conference). The insights of this study pose challenges to current scholarly understandings of crisis communication within the public sector and showcase opportunities for future studies of the same.

Research in negative campaigning is growing throughout the years, however, the focus by researchers has been put into negativity’s effects. The present study seeks to address the research void detected in the negative campaigning’s drivers. Using data deriving from a world-wide scale based on more than 1000 experts’ evaluations on more than 300 candidates’ political campaigns, aims on providing answers regarding the reasons political actors go negative while campaigning. The analyses provided have examined how the personality of the candidates matters in the degree of negativity in their campaigns, how the media affect that degree, and which is the role of the dynamics taking place in a broader election context.
The definition of negative campaigning is a difficult task that the academia has been facing and there is an abundance of definitions being used among the literature. In overall, negative campaigning refers to any form of campaigning that attacks a political actor’s opponent, that arises fear, or cynical news. There are many factors affecting the decision of any candidate to go negative. The most prominent ones found in the relevant literature refer to strategic choices, the candidates themselves, or the dynamics being caused by the media.
The present study used data from the Negative Campaigning Comparative Expert Survey Dataset – NEGex which is directed by Alessandro Nai. It is the first large-scale comparative study providing systematic data on the use of negative campaigning on a world-wide scale. The cases included in the study refer to 157 candidates who competed in 64 elections from 56 different countries and have been evaluated by a total of 625 experts. The analysis consists of regression analyses aiming on the estimation of the effect of the candidates’ personality characteristics, the media and the general election context on the degree of negativity in their campaigns.
Results show that the candidates’ personality indeed matters in the degree of negativity that their campaigns have. Candidates holding socially preferable traits are less likely to employ a negative tone, unleash character attacks, or use fear appeals as a part of their campaign. On the other hand, when media is focusing on the sensational aspect of the news and pay attention to negativity, the degree of negativity in the candidates’ campaigns increases. In addition, more competitive elections are causing more negative campaigns. However, another finding of the present study is that the three components of negative campaigning (tone negativity, fear appeals, character attacks) have different predictors, and that

While the concepts of trust and performance often appear together in research,there seems to be little consensus on how they together relate to compliance.
The purpose of this study is to examine this relationship, how it changes over time, and to question the common idea of trust being one of the main predictors of compliance in crisis situations, suggesting that performance evaluations might play a bigger role than often thought. This study argues for the role of performance evaluations in determining compliance and aims to test this argument through quantitative longitudinal analysis.
An extensive literature review is conducted to conclude what is already known on the relationship between trust and compliance, trust and performance
evaluations, and performance evaluations and compliance. Three lines of previous research are recognised; performance evaluations as a type of trust, i.e., confidence, performance evaluations preceding trust through trustworthiness, and performance evaluations as an antecedent of reputation.
The mechanisms of trust and performance evaluations affecting compliance are discussed and two main frameworks are recognised; trust affecting performance evaluations, which then affect compliance, or performance evaluations affecting trust and thus affecting compliance. The different theories are discussed and compared. Hypotheses and a conceptual model are formed based on the previous literature.
Method: A three-wave panel data collected in Sweden during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 is used to conduct a statistical analysis on the relationship between the independent variables of trust in authorities and performance evaluations, and the dependent variable of compliance. Logistic regression model (n= 4,187) is constructed to analyse the change in variables during the course of the three panel waves. A measure of social distancing is used as the dependent compliance variable, and the relationship is controlled with general trust, sex, age, and education level.

This study examines the news coverage in two different online media outlets, the New York Times and Fox News, in their reporting on two different vaccines, the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) and the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine (MMR). It uncovers media frames in the respective outlets in order to evaluate if political divides in attitudes
towards the respective vaccines can be attributed to the media portrayals in these outlets. Using framing theory and qualitative content analysis to uncover media frames, it explores the circumstances in which a left-leaning contra a right-leaning audience is invited to understand the issue of HPV- and MMR vaccination. The study exposes the complexity of the vaccine debate in media discourse. Further, it demonstrates that media discourse is generally dependent on political actors instilling an issue with political meaning for it to be framed in terms of conflicting interests. Findings show that the media discourse on HPV vaccine is no longer politically charged or controversially framed. The framing of the MMR vaccine involves some partisan endorsements and it framed as an issue of competing
values and interest. However, the framing is not deemed politically charged beyond the partisan endorsements in the debate on mandatory vaccination.