This study examines key narratives that are being spread on three pro-Russian Telegram channels with a significant following. Additionally, we examine Telegram’s involvement in the spread of pro-Russian narratives as well as the intricacies of current Russian media landscape.

The aim of this study is to present readers with a comprehensive analysis of key narratives that dominate Telegram channels of three TV presenters that possess a significant level of influence in the Russian society and pose a threat to Europe’s stability through the use of tools used in information warfare.

Results of our analysis show that when it comes to content of the messages observed we can clearly see that the overall sentiment of observed narratives is negative and can be interpreted as hostile. Narratives portraying Russia’s offending army as liberators of the Ukrainian people and the defenders of Russian state from NATO are dominating Solovyov’s, Simonyan’s and Skabeeva’s Telegram channels. Additionally, person-centred narratives have been observed involving Volodymyr Zelenskyy, president of Ukraine and Joe Biden, president of the United States of America.

This research paper sets out to investigate the messaging present in a corpus of texts gathered from Acxiom’s, an American data-analysis and ‘Identity Solutions’-company, website. The paper applies a framework of Critical Discourse Analysis informed by Theo van Leeuwen’s theory of ‘legitimations’ and analyses the findings through the theoretical
framework of ‘Sociotechnical Imaginaries’. Greater emphasis is placed on the theoretical framework, in the hopes of allowing a greater insight into the ideological underpinnings of the corpus. The paper looks at five broad categories of inductively identified discourses in the texts; the neo-liberal market economy, privacy, identity structure, techno-utopianism, and the naming conventions/usage of biological terms carried out by Acxiom.
This is undertaken with the aim of answering the question: ‘What discourses are present in the texts, and to what extent do they extol the virtues of techno-utopianism?’ After the empirical analysis, the project will pivot to focus especially on the underlying techno-utopian elements and discursive positions which Acxiom assume in the texts. The analysis will be focusing on the techno-utopian elements, and Acxiom’s own conception of identity, as it exists both inside and outside of its system, to show how the texts analysed contain a great
starting point for attempting to trace an outline of the imaginary disseminated through
Acxiom’s system.
Additionally, through engaging in a legitimation-based critical discourse analysis, this study aims to examine the power structures implicit in the texts. It diagnoses how Acxiom constructs not only their own position, but also that of their clients, and the consumers which are categorised in said system. Through doing so, the project looks at the role of a dataanalysis company working largely unseen in today’s data-driven landscape of marketing
and communication in order to ensure that corporate communications remain targeted and relevant at the potential cost of reifying and maintain prior power relations in society.
Additionally, the project looks at the imaginary, the vision of a preferable future, constructed by Acxiom and critically analyses how it contains elements that misinterprets the role and function of ‘identity’ and reshapes it into an algorithmic abstraction, away from its roots in individuals’ ‘real’ lived lives. Through activating the idea of said ‘imaginary’ the project
shows how futures that are envisioned run the risk of being subsumed into the technology of those that control it.
Therefore, the project will through an empirical element, draw out the theoretical and ideological underpinnings of a major actor in the sphere of data-analysis and identity solutions.

Research in field negative campaigning has demonstrated an anglophone nature. Little is known about strategies of negativity beyond American and the Western European scope. Purpose of this paper is to investigate types of negative ads produced by political parties in post-Soviet, hybrid democracy and determine if well-established findings and theories of negativity can be used to explain dynamics of the negativity in multi-party political system, where political parties as a democratic institutions are weak, political culture is low and personalization of politics is highly demonstrated.
An extensive literature review is done to derive theories and finding from already existed academic knowledge in regard to phenomena of negative campaigning. This study touches upon different aspects of negative ads and examines the types of negative ads produced to attack the competitors durin parliamentary race. The impact of context characteristic, such as personalization and the extent to which negativity is targeted to downplay election completions to political leadership. A step further, diverse techniques to design audio-visual content to transmit negative messages is explored.
To reach the objective of the presented study, rarely used qualitative approach compared to the functionalist approach dominating the field of the negative political advertising is implemented. With the flexible nature of the Ethnographic Content Analysis and construction of unique guiding framework inspired by the M.I.T.S method for studying screen media it became possible to remain sensitive to the yet unexplored political and cultural context and at the same time ensure systematic analysis to account for the scientific credibility.
The results show that types of negative ads produced to attack competitors in hybrid democracy is fully in line with the strategies used in other countries. That is, incumbents attack less compared to parties in opposition with poor poll standings. Due to personalization of politics in the country under investigation, attacks instead of ideological stances target politicians and their characteristics; this tendency was detected in both types of negative ads, whether attacking policy or image of the opponent parties. Lastly, study found that negativity in attack ads is conveyed through different dimensions of the audio-visual content and negativity is embodied in the cues and symbols rooted in the historical and cultural knowledge of the nation.

Purpose: To add to the existing research on political communication on Instagram. It will do so by studying the phenomena in a Swedish context and by focusing on the personalization of politics. The aim is to explore how political personalization manifest in the management of Swedish party leaders’ Instagram accounts.
Theory: Personalization of politics is theorized as a process in which the focus of politics is changing from topics to people and from parties to politicians.
Method: Qualitative design by conducting semi-structured interviews with managers of party
leaders’ Instagram accounts.
Result: The results showed that personalization was an integral part of how Instagram was used. The two main dimensions of personalization, individualization and
privatization, proposed by Van Aelst, Sheafer and Stanyer, could be found in the respondents’ answers about how their respective party leader’s account was managed.
This establishes that the dimensions of personalization are present to a large degree. that the results point to Instagram not only being a personalized arena if one conceives of it as focusing on party leaders, but also from a privatization dimension of focusing on personal characteristics and the party leader’s personal life. The results suggest that personalization manifested itself in how the account was managed, how it was used to portray the party leader as an” ordinary” person, how politics was presented through the personal life of the party leader, and in how authenticity served as the foundation for successfully personalizing the party leader.

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 oninformation 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).