Executive summary

In today’s society, we see advertisement everywhere. Personal-targeted advertising has also grown larger because of the information-gathering of users’ personal data, in order to design advertising that will suit the individuals interests. Ahead of the upcoming election this autumn, political advertising has made rapid progress. Politicians want to reach out to their
young voters on Instagram and therefore, are buying advertising space there. However, there is not much research about what people actually think of political advertising, which leads up to the purpose of this study.

The younger generation grew up with social media and a lot of advertising. Earlier studies show that this younger generation also finds this “new” technology positive and find personalized advertising more appealing than the regular type of advertising. The purpose of the study was to investigate how female first-time voters experience the political advertising
that is seen on Instagram. It was also essential to get an insight into their awareness of how their personal data is processed and used. Are they aware that the advertising that they see is targeted directly at them? And how do they feel about politics and advertising being combined together on a platform you spend a lot of time on?

The main purpose can then be broken down into three questions: what do users think about the targeted advertising on social media? What do users think about politically oriented advertising on Instagram? How do users view integrity in relation to targeted political advertising? To find out, five people were interviewed with questions that were designed based on the theoretical framework.

The results of the study show that targeted advertising is received positively among the interviewers, as they receive advertising that is in line with the individual’s own interests. What is considered uninteresting, they just scroll past. Even if the people do not reflect much on information-gathering, there is a feeling of being constantly monitored. The interest in politics is low, while the will to become more educated about it is strong

Executive summary

The purpose of this study is to examine how young people experience the marketing and brand of VELO, a tobacco-free snus company based in Sweden. This from an ethical perspective, but also how it correlates to their use of the plattform Instagram, VELO’s primary marketing platform, and the use of influencers to promote the white portions. In 2021, the sales of tobacco free nicotine portions increased 88%. Since the launch of nicotine pouches, the general use of nicotine has increased, not at least among young girls. For years, there has been research done on other addictive substances, such as tobacco products. Since the white portions have increased in
popularity in a short time, the research on white portions is limited. The primary focus of this study is therefore to examine how young consumers experience the marketing around VELO.

In order to do this, we have applied a qualitative method, conducting nine semi-structured
interviews with young adults aged 16-25. During the interviews, the respondents were asked
about their use of white portions, VELO as a company and the marketing of the white portions.
This led to discussions regarding the ethical perspective of influencers promoting addictive
substances. The respondents were also shown images taken from VELO’s Instagram and from
some of the influencers promoting the products on their Instagram page.

The results show that what is happening on Instagram affects the respondents’ attitudes towards snus. If an influencer promotes something as cool, it is common for others to develop the same attitudes. The fact that they also testify that they sometimes consume the products that influencers suggest supports that result. This means that what happens on Instagram in some way has a connection to the respondents’ attitudes. In addition, we found that the psychological needs met by using snus and using Instagram are similar, needs such as satisfaction, group affiliation, satiety dependence, time travel and more.

Most people considered that the wide range of flavors is unproblematic on a personal level and considered it positive to an extent, as they have more choices. On the other hand, it was considered more harmful on a societal level as there will be a lower threshold for young people to start using snus. Regarding the ethical aspect, there were differences in the opinions on whether VELO markets itself in an inappropriate way. The majority agreed that the marketing takes place towards an inappropriate target group. It became a question of definition where the respondents had different boundaries and opinions.

Executive summary

During the last decade, social media has become an increasingly important part of our everyday lives, as has the advertising that we are fed daily on various platforms and social networks. The advertising on Instagram has almost become as much a part of our daily feed as our friends’ updates, and it seems to be even more and more. Has it become too much, has the
real purpose of using Instagram been replaced by a feed filled with advertising rather than a platform for social interaction?

The purpose of this study is to investigate the perceptions of advertising on Instagram, the target group for the study is women born in the 1960s. We found a lot of studies about advertising, but very few that focus on an older generation.

To achieve the purpose of the study we have worked with three main questions, (1) what motivates the interviewees to use Instagram? (2) What attitudes do the interviewees have towards personalized advertising on Instagram? And (3) what significance does the credibility of advertising have on the purchase intention? The theoretical framework of this study
consists of Uses and Gratifications, The dynamic motivation activation model, The attitude model, and Electronic word-of-mouth. As well as previous study about advertising, attitudes about personalized advertising and purchase intention. To answer our questions we have conducted semi-structured interviews with 8 women born in the 1960’s.

Our results show that it is possible to identify several motives for women born in the 1960’s Instagram use. The most prominent motive was social interaction, both with friends and family. Followed by being part of a community and killing time. Secondly, the attitudes towards advertising on Instagram turned out to be appreciated, at least when the advertising is
one’s own choice. The general attitudes towards advertising were relatively negative at first, but when the advertising was directed and thus tailored to its interests, it was perceived as more positive. Lastly, our study revealed two groups with different opinions. One half found famous people and influencers advertising trustworthy and the other half had a negative
attitude. The results also indicate that the ones who follow famous people or influencers have consumed Instagram to a greater extent. In summary, it can be stated that there is a certain ambivalence about the perceptions of advertising on Instagram, it is perceived as both disturbing and at the same time appreciated. When there is too much advertising, and it interferes with the individual’s use of Instagram, it evokes negative emotions. At the same
time, the results of the study show that personalized advertising is perceived as something positive when it corresponds to the individual’s interests. Regardless of perceptions of advertising and that there is sometimes a tendency for too much advertising in users’ feeds,users still choose to continue using Instagram and see their time on Instagram as valuable.

Executive summary

The purpose of this thesis is to study and analyze how adolescents and young adults experience advertising on YouTube. We have through qualitative interviews studied our respondents’ self-experienced attitudes towards video-ads and influencer marketing, and how this may affect their YouTube consumption and/or their propensity to buy the advertised
products or services.

YouTube was founded in 2005 and started as a relatively small media platform for consumers to share videos on their own channels for others to view, but rapidly grew to the Google owned YouTube we know today. Today it is one of the biggest social media platforms with around 2.2 billion users as of the year 2021 (Statista, 2021). Nowadays social media celebrities and opinion leaders known as “influencers”, also known as “YouTubers”, rule the
platform with millions of people consuming their content. The Swedish YouTuber Pewdiepie has as of now (May 2022) over 111 million followers. Huge amounts of followers often equals huge amounts of views on their content, which attracts companies for them to advertise their products and services on. This results in a large amount of advertisements for
the consumer. The consumer therefore has to pay with their time on watching advertisements to be able to consume the actual video they want to see.

We focused our study on the group, seen in past research, that consumes YouTube the most. People ranging from 15 to 27 years old; adolescents and young adults. We wanted to study our respondents’ attitudes and reflections about advertisements on YouTube. This led us to choosing a qualitative interview-method for this study. The results, with a broader discussion
in the thesis, showed how all of our seven respondents reflected negatively on YouTube advertising, but they appreciated influencer marketing more than the traditional video-ads.

We bounced the results of theories and previous studies to help us analyze our results. The theories varied from common communication-studies theories, for instance: encoding and decoding, the two-step hypothesis and the third person effect, but also less common like Rappaport’s theory about the ways companies advertise to create a relationship between brand and consumer. Previous studies used in this thesis have examined advertising, the internet, and the effect on children, adolescents and young adults. The theories and past studies match partially or entirely with our results.

Further, we discussed the possible flaws and imperfections with what we could have done
differently, and what result we would get from another method. We also discuss what parts of
the results that surprised us, and what did not. To exemplify:
● an occuring advertising fatigue
● the respondents did not identify influencer marketing as a form of marketing at first
thought
● an existing feeling of relationship between some respondents and the influencer.

Executive summary

We live in a society that is embossed by social media. It has gone from being a platform where you share photos and updates with your closest friends, to becoming a platform that influencers make a financial living on. Today it is almost impossible not to be exposed to advertisements on social media, whether it is ads or influencer marketing. Today’s children and adolescents have never lived in a world without Smartphones, apps and likes and
therefore know nothing else.

The purpose of this essay is to investigate 13 to 16-year-olds’ attitudes towards advertising on social media. We have two questions that intend to answer the purpose of this essay. The first
question addresses what the respondents think advertising is on social media. The second question addresses which advertising generates the different attitudes in Ducoffe´s theoretical framework, Model of Attitude, according to the respondents. To analyze the respondents’ answers we applied the Model of Attitude, which has the intent to explain attitudes towards advertising on the Internet. The model also has the intent to show how different types of advertising create different types of values for the user that could result in different types of attitudes later on. To answer our thesis, we have applied a qualitative method to gain a deeper
understanding of adolescents’ attitudes towards advertising on social media. This is carried out with semi-structured interviews.

Based on the results from question one, it can be seen that the respondents consider both influencer marketing and paid ads to be advertising, which indicates an awareness of what advertising is. The majority of respondents were more positive about tips than advertising. The respondents tend to assimilate advertising that is characterized by parasocial relationships the most, which may be because it is perceived as a tip from a friend rather than advertising per se. You can also see that the respondents have a good understanding of how influencer marketing works and have a positive attitude towards it, if it is done in an honest way and with a genuine approach. However, few respondents knew about targeted advertising. When we informed them about what it meant, several respondents were positive about a social media page tailor-made towards them. A few on the other hand found it unpleasant, but in the end most still preferred an individualized page.

Based on the results from our second issue, it can be seen that the respondents’ answers about annoying, entertaining, and credible advertising correspond to the definition outlined in the Model of Attitude. However, Ducoffe’s description of information did not agree with the respondents’ perceptions. He believes that informative advertising is something positive, but the respondent’s answers indicated that it would rather be negative as they did not have the interest nor the will to read too much information.

To conclude this, we can see that the respondents generally have a positive attitude towards advertising on social media.

Syfte: Syftet med undersökningen är att undersöka på vilka sätt personifiering visar sig i utvalda inlägg på Instagram från de tre stycken svenska partiledare med flest antal följare på Instagram.

Teori: Personifiering (professionell, privat, emotionell)

Metod: Multimodal analys, kvalitativ textanalys, semiotisk analys

Material: Inlägg tagna från Instagram av Ebba Busch (@buschebba), Ulf Kristersson
(@kristerssonulf) och Jimmie Åkesson (akesson.jimmie).

Resultat: Resultatet av undersökningen visar att de analyserade politikerna i samtliga inlägg
uppvisar någon av de tre former av personifiering som varit till grund för operationaliseringen
men i varierande grad och sätt. Studien visade att till exempel professionell själv-personifiering användes för att kommunicera partiets budskap med partiledaren i fokus, att emotionell själv-personifiering användes för att vinna sympatier och att privat själv-personifiering användes för att skildra sin privata sfär för följarna.

Syfte: Syftet med studien är att undersöka hur herr fotbolls-VM i Qatar 2022 framställs i Dagens Nyheter och Göteborgs-Posten.

Teori: Gestaltningsteori (framing)

Metod: Kvantitativ innehållsanalys

Material: 253 artiklar i Dagens Nyheter och Göteborgs-Posten mellan 1 augusti 2018 och 30 november 2021

Resultat: Resultatet i studien visar på att rapporteringen innehåller sportsliga prestationer,
korruption och mänskliga rättigheter. Framträdande aktörer är fotbollsspelare, SvFF och svenska herrlandslaget i fotboll. Den vanligaste förekommande värderingen var balanserad/neutral. Episodisk gestaltning förekommer mer än tematisk gestaltning. Sett till övriga gestaltningsramar förekommer gestaltning utifrån mänskligt intresse samt ansvarsgestaltning mest. Samband mellan innehåll och aktörer har kunnat göras i relation till värdering och gestaltning.

Syfte: Syftet med arbetet är att undersöka hur influencer-yrket påverkar influencers och deras
familjers vardagsliv. Det finns inte mycket forskning kring detta, vilket gör att denna studie
kommer fokusera på tidigare forskningsgap inom ämnet. Forskningsfrågor: Fråga 1: Vilka krav ställer företagen på influencers i förhållande till influencers vardag? Fråga 2: Hur påverkas influencers vardag av företagens krav? Fråga 3: Vad kan förbättras i samarbetet mellan influencers och företag?

Teori: Tematisering av influencer marketing och influencer-yrket med centrala begrepp samt
tematisk analys.

Metod: Kvalitativ halvstrukturerad temaintervju, tematisk analys av materialet.

Material: Intervjuer med 5 influencers samt en respondent från byrån Nine Agency.

Resultat: Resultatet visar att vardagen på ett eller annat sätt alltid kommer påverkas av influencer-yrket men att man kan underlätta denna påverkan genom att visa upp en äkta bild av vardagen samt att företag ger friare tyglar vid samarbeten. Resultatet visar även att företag som är mer insatta i influencer marketing tenderar att ställa mer rimliga krav och för att kraven ska förbättras kräver det att företag blir mer insatta i influencer marketing samt att den personliga kontakten mellan företag och influencers förbättras. Slutligen visar resultatet att företag behöver förbättra sin approach vid första kontakten med influencern. De behöver
utöver detta förbättra den personliga kontakten, ge bättre återkoppling samt bli bättre på att betala influencern.

Aim: To investigate how the Swedish media contributes to France’s country image as a
cooperation partner for Sweden and how this might have changed during the progress of Brexit.

Theory: Framing theory

Method: Quantitative content analysis

Material: 437 articles sampled from Dagens Nyheter, Svenska Dagbladet, Aftonbladet, and Expressen

Result: The image of France as a cooperation partner demonstrated an increase in positive frames and decrease in negative frames in the portrayal of the Franco-Swedish relationship during the progress of Brexit. It demonstrated an increase of positive
frames in the representation of France as a political cooperation partner, whilst the
negative framing contained an increase during the progress of Brexit. The framing of France as an economic cooperation partner decreased over the progress of Brexit. The general framing of France contained an increase in positive frames and decrease in negative frames.