Executive summary
This study examines how young women experience social media usage today compared to five years ago, before the #metoo-movement, with increased focus on experience related to digital activism, solidarity and political engagement. Empirical data was collected through semi-structured interviews with eight women who were strategically chosen based on prior
knowledge regarding their social media usage, their prior knowledge of the
#metoo-movement and appropriate age for our purposes. All interviews were conducted in Gothenburg, except for one which was conducted remotely through video call.

The research questions were the following: How do young women experience their consumption, sharing and posting of content on social media? and Do they experience that their usage today differs from before #metoo, and if so, how? Responses from the interviewees were categorized into recurring themes which were then analyzed through and compared to theoretical framework and previous research related to the subject.

Our results show that the interviewed women experience their consumption, sharing and
posting of content on social media somewhat differently. However, all of the women
commonly found activist content as a major part of their consumption experience, and they all
acknowledge its uses in social media. Regarding content that is posted and shared from other
people, the women often reflect upon what is genuine and what is fake. They acknowledged
that many users tend to distribute many types of content solely to convey an idealistic public
image, referring to everyday content as well as activism. Regarding how the women
experience that they are affected by content, they found it hard to describe. However they all
reflect on the content that they consume in varying degrees of activity. The women found it
hard to differentiate between sharing and posting. A possible cause of this, we argue, is that
all women explained a need to be informed and ready to take a stand for the cause while
performing both activities, which through action relates them to each other. However, the
women explained that they found it more comfortable to share another user’s content, rather
than owning up to and sharing their opinions through posting their own content. This is
mainly because of the need to be informed around the content, and the risk of being
questioned or antagonized.

All women shared the opinion that the discourse on social media has changed compared to before #metoo. Some explained that the reception of content has generally become less forgiving, with a larger emphasis on the need to be informed before distributing content and a greater likelihood of opinions being confronted. The women also explained that they have
become more aware of the social rules of social media, and show deeper consideration before sharing or posting content in general. However, some women also expressed that they have become braver and allow themselves to post more personal content now than before. None of the women believed that the #metoo-movement is the sole reason for their contemporary social media user experience. However we suggest that the #metoo-movement could possibly have influenced how women relate to activism-related content in social media today, but we do not exclude the possibility of the contemporary user experience being a result of other
factors. We have only studied Swedish women in a Swedish context. A similar study, conducted in another country could have presented different results. From our findings, further research seeking actual correlations through larger test populations is needed to specify what aspects of #metoo that may have affected the contemporary social media experience.

Executive summary
TikTok is a social media platform centered around short user-produced video clips. It is one of the biggest social media platforms in the world with one billion active users, the majority of which are made up of young people. In Sweden most users are under the age of 24 and most of them are girls. The difference between TikTok and other social media like Instagram and Facebook is that the content is highly personalized based on algorithmic calculations. Previous interaction, such as liking, commenting, or sharing content, presents the user with what new research terms The Algorithmized Self, a reflection of one’s own identity through the algorithm (Bhandari & Bimo, 2022). Furthermore, the app is ripe with sexual content, where sex-ed, nudity, tips about sexual activity and dating are common. Previous research has shown that the media is an influential aspect of young people’s sexual socialization (Shafer m.fl, 2013). Media presents sexual scripts of favorable and unwanted behavior that the young person internalizes and uses in their everyday life, TikTok is no exception. Furthermore, previous research has shown that girls, when discussing their sexuality online, tend to focus
on how to please men (Grisso & Weiss, 2005). Women also tend to accept information about male sexuality more easily since they do not have that experience themselves (Ward & Rivadenyra, 1999).

Interviews were conducted with nine Swedish females in the ages between 16 and 23 performed in groups of two or separate. Through this we hoped to gain insight into young women’s experience of sexual content on TikTok and what it says about their sexual selfconcept. All interviews were conducted with two interviewers and were recorded and transcribed. Theories used in development and analysis of the study were Media Practice Model (Steele & Brown, 1995) and Sexual Self Concept (Hensel et al. 2010). The choice to
focus on only young women’s sexual self-concept is based on previous research that shows that women’s sexuality long has been a subject surrounded by taboo and controlled by other than the woman herself. Social media has also been found to act as a safe space for women to discuss and discover aspects of their sexuality that they cannot do in real life.

The results of this study show that the interviewees were exposed to several media scripts about how to behave, look and navigate to succeed in romantic relationships and sexual encounters. They were presented with both helpful and truthful as well as misleading information which they either accepted or rejected. The interviewees expressed a concern that this false sexual information could mislead young people without any previous sexual
experience. Previous research has shown that young people more easily accept sexual media messages about things they do not have personal experience of, which we also found signs of in this study. In addition to this, we discovered indications that sexual media messages on TikTok could both weaken and strengthen sexual esteem. Interviewees with strong sexual
esteem stated that they would question themselves in a sexual context when they were confronted with sexual media models or messages they could not identify with. On the other hand, sexual esteem seemed to increase by TikTok enabling normalization of their own sexual desires, act as inspiration and helped them discuss sex with friends and partners.

Our results align with previous research that TikTok’s algorithm reflects identity back to the user. Our findings indicate that the app’s “For You Page” might be used to confirm and reinforce young people’s already existing sexual self-concepts, whether they be positive or negative. This is of importance since research has shown a connection between sexual self concept and young people’s sexual health.

The purpose of this study is to examine how perfume advertising portrays men and women from a gender perspective. This qualitative study uses multimodal critical discourse analysis as a method and theory to analyze how the semiotic resources interact to create meaning. Furthermore, Eriksson and Machins (2019) analysis tools are used together with Goffman’s (1979) analysis tools to include gender. More specifically, this study examines how the male and female gender roles are represented in a commercial from Dior’s campaign ”DIOR HOMME”. Furthermore, it is studied whether the
commercial maintains or opposes the gender norms that exist for men and women based on Hirdman’s gender contract.

The questions were designed to achieve the purpose of the study. Question number one asked how the male and female gender roles are represented in the commercial to see how gender roles are portrayed in the interaction between text, speech and image. The second question asked in what ways the commercial maintains or opposes the gender norms that exist for men and women to see if it corresponds to Hirdman’s (1988) theory of the gender contract based on the discourses identified.

The results from the study show that Dior’s commercial represents the female and male gender role in a stereotypical way. The results from the analysis showed that the commercial contained underlying discourses that indicate a stereotypical portrayal of the woman as subordinate and passive and the man as confident, active and powerful. The study illustrates how this portrayal of men and women contributes to maintaining the gender norms that exist according to Hirdman’s gender contract. Through the use of multimodal critical discourse analysis and other theoretical frameworks, we have been able to identify a problem that otherwise risks being overlooked.

Executive summary
Social media is now part of our everyday life. Most people are either on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube etc – or all of them. These social platforms have developed over time and concepts such as influencers and influencer marketing have occurred. An influencer is a person who uses their profile on social media to reach out to a high amount of followers.
Followers of an influencer are mostly people who share their interests and values, and nonetheless people who find them inspirational. Companies have found that influencers are powerful people who can influence a large audience in an effective way, which they now use in their marketing strategies. In that way influencer marketing has occurred. Influencer
marketing is when companies pay influencers to market their product or services. Influencers post about the company and their products on their account and the advertisement reaches the influencers’ followers. Influencer marketing has lately turned into a controversial subject, and people tend to be critical about the fact that it leads to too much advertisement on social
media. Likewise people think that the high amount of advertisement has an effect on influencers’ followers and their view of the influencer.

Studies show that followers experience a certain bond with influencers, and that they value their relationship as a friend relationship. Therefore followers have trust for influencers, just as they have trust for friends. But would a real friend advertise products to their friends and get paid to do so? Is influencer marketing affecting followers’ trust for influencers? The main purpose of this thesis is to examine how followers’ trust for an influencer is expressed in the
comments on a sponsored post from influencers on Instagram. Therefore the main focus lies on the followers’ perspective. This is examined through a quantitative content analysis where eight different influencers and their sponsored posts with comments serve as a basis, resulting in 401 comments in total which are encoded through 17 different variables.

There are four core issues that the thesis is focusing on. The first issue seeks to examine what
attitudes that are expressed in the comments on a sponsored post from an influencer on
Instagram. Second issue seeks to examine what similarities and differences there are in the
comments depending on which influencers’ post is examined. The third issue seeks to
examine how often influencers and their followers interact in the comments. The fourth and
last issue seeks to develop an understanding of how trust is expressed in the comments on a
sponsored post from influencers on Instagram. All of these issues are answered with empirical
results that are analyzed through previous studies, trust as a concept, the two step flow of
communication and the theory (trans) parasocial interaction/relation.

The result shows that the majority of the comments are expressing a positive attitude, mostly for the influencer and the post in its entirety. Expressing a positive attitude can be equated with expressing trust, therefore the result also shows that the level of trust is high throughout the comments. This shows that even though influencer marketing tends to be a controversial
subject, as mentioned in the beginning, it does not reflect in the comments on a sponsored post. There is little interaction from influencers in the comments, this is regardless of influencer. Though interaction builds relationships which in turn builds trust it does not seem to have a great impact on followers’ trust for the influencer. This is because, as mentioned
earlier, the majority of comments are positive. This also means that there are few differences in the comments between all the influencers, because the majority of comments are positive and there are few that express criticism. Most of the comments are directed toward the influencer or toward the post in its entirety, and very little toward the products that are advertised or the company that is in sponsorship with the influencer. This means that it is not
possible to comment on influencer marketing’s effectiveness, though there seems to be very little criticism of influencers making sponsored posts. With that in mind sponsored posts from influencers on Instagram seems to have very little, nearly non-existent, effect on followers’ trust for influencers. Lastly, it’s important to keep in mind that this is a result based on eight
different sponsored posts with the same company brand, there might be other results if therewere other influencers and companies that were examined.

Executive summary
The morning of February the 24th 2022, the world woke up to the news that Russia had invaded its neighboring country Ukraine. After eight years of low-intensity fighting in the Crimean peninsula, Russia conducted a full-scale invasion. The world quickly responded with criticism, condemnation,
and harsh sanctions against Russia. In traditional media, the debate is conducted by politicians, experts and opinion leaders in more traditional ways. On internet forums, however, the topics and content seem more unconventional. On Reddit, memes about Ukrainian soldiers telling a Russian warship to f*** themselves quickly became popular, and previously unknown Ukrainian farmers became viralinternet sensations after seemingly stealing tanks from the invading army with their tractors.

This thesis is about internet memes concerning the war, and the immediate effects of the war, using quantitative thematic analysis and qualitative rhetoric analysis to determine which subjects are the most common to post memes about, and how these are presented. The combination of methods gives a perspective on which factors contribute to the popularity of a meme.

The selection is based on the most popular memes during the initial month of the war (the 24th of February 2022 to the 24th of march 2022). The material is sourced from the subreddit r/memes on the internet forum Reddit, with over 18 million members. Our findings suggest that the material consists of 25 different themes with memes that (1) ridicule the Russian economy, (2) ridicule Vladimir Putin, (3) celebrate Ukrainians, and (4) concern the world situation in general. Only one of the 127 memes included in the material portrays Russia positively. Using the theoretical framework of rhetorics, semiotics, intertextuality and incongruence – with a perspective on humor and traditional satire, we have found patterns in the material. Our findings suggest that memes that ridicule the Russian economy and Putin are personally targeted showing negative things about them to make a point,
whereas memes that celebrate Ukrainians put them in an opposite relationship to create a hero/villain relationship. Regarding the theme of the world situation in general, the content is generally not aimed at a specific person or object, or takes a political stance.

With this in mind we conclude that the rhetorical function of memes in a crisis is (a) an epideictic form of rhetoric expression, that binds together people who agree on a topic, and (b) a way to process stressful and negative emotions. This connects to the basic functions of traditional satire; to criticize
and entertain, and bring humorous perspectives to political topics. What the popular memes have in common is that they are largely based on intertextuality and incongruence and that the enthymeme is
the most common rhetorical trope.

Memes, which are complex multimodal texts, consist of several layers of meaning-making and can be understood on several levels. We suggest that the rhetorical power of a meme lies in the relationship between the producer and the consumer, and how they make sense together. The rhetorical power is amplified by the reader sharing cultural, political and historical knowledge with the producer; which determines how many layers of intertextuality the consumer can detect. These are factors that possibly
also determine the popularity of a meme. We further suggest that future research should focus on comparing how images portrayed in traditional media relates to images portrayed in memes, and qualitative interview studies to determine people’s attitude towards memes.

Executive summary
Commissioned by JMG, Gothenburg University, this study has taken on the significance and acceptance of advertising. In today’s society everything is based around the internet and social media platforms. Almost every person today uses social media, therefore it is no longer a question of whether companies should use social media platforms in their marketing
communication effort. The question is instead how companies should use them in the best way. In this study, we intended to investigate how marketers should use TikTok in marketing methods, such as influencer marketing.

The purpose of this study has been to investigate how expectations on TikTok can affect young
men and women’s view on influencer marketing on the social media platform. To succeed with
this the study was based on three questions: What are the expectations of TikTok, compared to other
media? What are the views on advertising, focusing on influencer marketing? Are the expectations of TikTok
related to the view of influencer marketing on the platform? Six qualitative interviews, with three men and
three women have been performed to answer these three questions. The respondents were all
eighteen, consume TikTok, study the same economic program at two different schools and the
gender knew each other. To analyse the studies result, theories as The Expectation Confirmation
Theory (ECT) and The Expectancy Value Theory (EVT) have been used – these are newer theories
within the Uses and Gratification framework. Through these theories we were able to determine
expectations for TikTok and analyse their role in relation to how respondents prefer influencer
marketing ads.

Why we chose to study this subject was because we saw that there were no previous studies done on expectation of TikTok in combination with the view of influencer marketing. In today’s society, there are fewer companies that do not conduct marketing campaigns that include popular users on platforms such as TikTok. However, companies can find TikTok difficult to navigate. As TikTok has grown rapidly in a short time, it contributes to companies feeling that they do not have enough information about the platform. It is thus considered relevant to add research to a relatively new medium that many consider themselves lacking knowledge about. It is also seen relevant to add research on influencer marketing, because it is a relatively new communication strategy, which today is seen as the most successful marketing method on the market.

In conclusion, the results showed that the main expectation the young men and women had on TikTok was to be entertained, through content with humour. When influencer marketing was entertaining, it was more appreciated by the respondents because of their existing expectation for entertainment on TikTok. Through this qualitative interview study, we have seen that the answer to the question of how companies should best use social media platforms as TikTok, is to include entertainment through influencer marketing at the platform. Mainly in the form of humour.
Humour was considered the best way, regardless of gender, to reach the target audience and satisfy their expectations of TikTok. Because, if a social media platform has a format where the user expects to be entertained, the female and male respondents thought the content on that platform should be in line with that, as they stated that their expectation of the platform was thus satisfied

Executive summary

Internal communication within public organizations is a vital part in making them function and to reach organizational strategic goals, however it is also somewhat forgotten. This is partly due to the glorification of external communication, but also beacuse external communication being easier to measure and its visibility outside of the organization.

Our aim was to explore how first line managers regard their communicative responsibilities and how they view the conditions they are working under to fulfill this responsibility. The questions we’ve aimed to answer are how first line managers’ knowledge and presumptions revolving internal communication and their communicative responsibility, how first line
managers work with internal communication in their operations and if the managers experience any need of support to be able to improve their internal communication.

We have conducted five semi-structured interviews with first line managers in Gothenburg elderly, health, and social care. The main results of the study were that the managers do have quite the understanding of the importance of internal communication although they sometimes struggled to put it into words. They struggled to achieve sensemaking communication in an organization that still clings on to a view of communication as a transfer
of information, especially higher up in the organizational hierarchy. Of course the managers did not provide uniform answers, we believe that factors such as age and years in managerial position affects their view of communication in general and internal communication in particular.

Our results can provide future researchers with a basic understanding of the challenges first line managers face in trying to achieve dialogue and sensemaking communication, and trying to turn the headwind they are sometimes working in into tailwind.

We propose researching how the CVC model might be used to expose the complexity of communication, and if that might contribute to a higher status in the technostructure. Another interesting field of research would be on how to design educations in communication for first line managers in the elderly care.

We can conclude that there is a long way to go until our studied organization truly becomes a communicative organization, but as more and more first line managers climb up in the organizational hierarchy this might change in a not too distant future.

Keywords: Internal communication, communicative organization, first line managers, elderly and social care.

Executive summary

Every day we are exposed to a large amount of advertisements. As social media has become an important part of many people’s lives, advertising on these platforms has also become important for advertisers and major sources of income for the companies behind the social media. The most
common type of ads on Facebook are native ads in the user feed and these ads are in most cases very similar to the posts that the user sees from friends and pages they follow.

In this study, we wanted to examine people’s awareness and attitude to native advertising on Facebook. We have in this study investigated the extent to which our respondents understand which posts that are advertising and which is organic content and whether they have a positive or negative attitude towards advertising on Facebook.

Previous research has shown that the attitude towards ads on Facebook is often ambivalent. This is especially true of the targeted ads that are perceived as positive but also created negative emotions that stem from feeling of surveillance. Ads that are perceived as intrusive and manipulative are the type of ads that are the most likely to arouse negative emotions.

When it comes to awareness of native ads on Facebook, previous research has shown that when
consumers do not perceive sponsored content as advertising, they receive the message as organic.
Consumers who discover and distinguish native ads have a more negative attitude towards the
advertiser. A number of parameters play a role in how consumers perceive native ads as
advertising, but perhaps the most important and clearest of these is the labeling.

As a theoretical framework, we have chosen to use the Persuassion Knowledge Model, which is used to examine awareness of and reaction to persuasion attempts. We also use Reactence theory and Gestalt laws.
Our results were in many cases in line with previous research and we could see that the attitude was often ambivalent. When it came to targeted advertising several respondents were positive about the fact that they were relevant but negative towards the data collection that makes targeted
advertising possible. None of our respondents had a particularly positive attitude towards ads on Facebook, but several saw them as a harmless advertising tool, which they had gotten used to and which has become a natural part of thier Facebook usage. Occasions when the advertisements
aroused negative feelings in respondents were, among other things, when they received advertisements for goods they had already bought, something we in this study link to Reactence Theory.

All respondents were aware of what the labeling of ads looks like on Facebook and thought they could comfortably identify ads from organic content. However, there was a difference in the number of ads respondents thought were in their feed and how many there actually were. This opens up a discussion about the respondents’ actual awareness and also the homogeneity of the feed.

Executive summary

Is it successful to force CSR-communication?
As the environmental crisis is becoming increasingly urgent, the world is taking precautions to prevent the crisis from escalating into a point of no return. One example of this is the directive 2014/95/EU, which was formulated to make companies provide high-quality environmental disclosures for stakeholders to rely on. Sweden implemented the directive in
2017, which constitutes the legal context of environmental disclosures which this study explores. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the quality of information in corporate sustainability disclosures has changed in connection with the introduction of the Swedish Environmental Reporting Act from 2017, in a comparison between the year 2014 and 2020. To analyze information quality in environmental disclosures, the theory of informativity was used. Informativity denotes a set of principles that evaluates the quality of information, these are scope, frequency, width and depth. These aspects establish the foundation onto which this study theoretically relies on. With respect to this theoretical framework, a quantitative content analysis consistent of 12 variables was used to determine the quality of information in corporate environmental disclosures. Thereafter a number of six
public Swedish companies were selected from the consumer staples sector. The study found that the scope of information relating to CSR had increased. The scope of information regarding environmental issues drastically increased, the scope of information regarding corruption and human rights also increased, whilst the scope of information regarding social sustainability drastically decreased. The width and depth of information also decreased from 2014 to 2020, whilst the frequency of information had increased. This means that environmental matters are given more space, and the entire field CSR-information is also given more space in 2020 in comparison to 2014. The quality of information did slightly increase from 2014 to 2020, but not significantly enough to conclude that the Environmental Reporting Act has had an effect. This study concludes that the Environmental Reporting Act
didn’t have a significant effect on the quality of information in corporate environmental disclosures.

Key words: Informativity, Quality of information, Sustainability Disclosure, Directive
2014/95/EU

Executive summary

CAN YOU GIVE US A SMILE?
The purpose of this study is to examine if the communication differs between journalists and femaleand male professional football players during live-interview situations. Since the 1900s sports
journalism has grown into what we today consider a main subject in modern journalism (Dahlén, 2008:71-72). Although research shows that women are less likely to be associated in sports news (Schmidt, 2017). Also, according to Dahlén (2008) sports journalism is constructed by a structure of norms, thus one of them is that the content is created to attract a male audience. This also leads to why men tend to have a bigger place in sports media. Futheron this also contributes to a vicious circle thus the interest of women’s sports fades out of existence. According to FIFA (2021) media play a big part
in the development of women’s football. Therefore, we also consider that the media is an important contributor to the work of equality, both within the sport but also in society. The subject of interpersonal communication and sports journalism is rather unstudied. There is a lot of research on the exposure of women and male athletes in media but there’s still a lack of studies analyzing the content itself. Therefore, we wanted to examine live-interviews, as it is a big part of sports journalism.

This study is based on five different core questions that’s considered to be answering our main purpose of this research. Firstly, we seek to know how often relatives and/or partners are mentioned in the interview per say. Previous research shows that men dominate as the main characters in sports journalism. When a woman is exposed through sports media it’s often in relation to another, mostly male, family member (Bryant, 2014; Schmidt, 2017). We therefore found this question relevant to our
study. Secondly, we wanted to know how often the journalist comments on the players visual appearances, as in looks and mood. Based on the previous research we can identify a pattern of female athletes being portrayed in a more sexistic way than male athletes (Weiller-Ables, Everbach &
Colombo-Dougovito, 2018). We also found it relevant to question how often visual appearances weren mentioned in relation to the game itself, since previous studies had proven that women according to the norm are expected to communicate in a more emotional way compared to men. We once stated the fact that women get less media exposure than men, therefore we also found it suited to examine the number of interviews per game for male- and female athletes. The fourth question known in this study
is whether the journalist is being more critical to the male- or female player. We based this question on Brown & Levinson’s politeness theory (referenced in Jensen, 2015:180) and Lakoff’s dominance approach (referenced in Norrby & Håkansson, 2015: 124-126), and further association to previous
sayings from Kristiansson, a Swedish commentator, that have great experience within the industry (Fotboll och Damsamhälle, 2015). Lastly, we questioned if the journalist had a different tonality interviewing a male- or female athlete. By this we meant to be interested in factors like infantilizing
and derogatory comments or the general feeling of the interview itself. For instance, mentioning the player’s gender. This question also involved our interest to recognize if “obvious questions” are being asked, such as asking a player if they’re happy after winning a game.

Our hypothesis was based on the previous research mentioned above, in addition to the politeness theory, muted group theory, genderlect styles and the dominance approach. To summarize, our hypothesis stated that we would be able to identify differences in how the male and female athletes were treated. We thought that signs of the women being asked more personal questions aimed at family would be present, that they would get asked/comments about their visual appearances more often. Our hypothesis also stated that the overall climate concerning the interviews with women would be more gentle and less critical, but that the women probably would get interrupted and apologizemore often than the men. Concerning the question about media exposure, our hypothesis said that we would likely see less interviews per game for the women compared to the men.

This study is a quantitative content analysis and the material used are broadcasts of international games played by the Swedish national teams. The analyzed units are live-interviews chosen from selected international games, with Swedish male- and female professional football players. The
interviews have been broadcasted on one or more of the following channels: SVT, TV4, C MORE, TV12, TV6 & Viaplay, between the years of 2016 and present time (April 2022).

The main results of this study showed less differences between the genders than we expected. We couldn’t really find any strong statistical evidence suggesting that the journalists treat the players differently based on their gender during the interviews. There are occasional examples which stand
out, but they just aren’t enough to be of any statistical significance in this quantitative analysis. Overall, the genders seemed to be treated fairly equal, except for when it came to how many times they were being asked obvious questions. Our results showed that the female players were asked obvious questions in 20 percent of their interviews, while male players were asked these questions in 8 percent of theirs.

Our study also offered a few suggestions for future research. These suggestions contained research focused towards how journalists discuss injuries with the players, more qualitative approaches concerning how specific words are used during the interview, whether the gender of the journalist/the company the journalist works for plays a role in how the player is treated, and finally we suggested future research to focus a bit more on the commentary and discussion between the “experts” in the studio, (which is commonly also broadcasted before/after the interviews). During our analysis we got to hear short clips from these discussions, and they seemed to have a bit of a different communicative climate compared to the interviews.