| 1. |
- O’Hagan, Lauren Alex, 1991-, et al.
(författare)
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Blurring the Boundaries Between Medicine and Food : The Canny Marketing of Läkerol in Early Twentieth-Century Sweden
- 2024
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Ingår i: Social history of medicine. - : Oxford University Press. - 0951-631X .- 1477-4666.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper explores the early marketing practices (1910–1940) of the Swedish cough drop brand Läkerol, demonstrating how it capitalised on the ‘spaces of confusion’ posed by the product’s liminality between food and medicine to create a slick marketing campaign inspired by the tried-and-tested formulas of the food industry. Advertisements used a range of strategies, such as expert and role model testimonials, humorous and serious newsjacking and the introduction of a friend-physician brand mascot to extend Läkerol from a cold remedy to an everyday product necessary for fun and excitement. By telling consumers not just about its benefits, but also connoting that it was part of a contemporary way of living, Läkerol was able to incorporate itself into a daily consumerist lifestyle, growing into a trendy and popular brand consumed daily by Swedes as part of a ritualised practice.
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| 2. |
- Vikström, Axel, 1991-
(författare)
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The Mediated Representation of the Super-Rich : Secrecy, Wealth Taxation and the Tensions of Neoliberal Capitalism
- 2024
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis examines how the wealthiest apex of the capitalist class, a segment commonly referred to as ‘the super-rich’, is represented in Swedish legacy newspapers. As decades of neoliberal reforms have paved the way for increasing wealth concentration at the very top, the super-rich has emerged as both a material and discursive phenomenon. The news media provides an influential site for studying meaning-making around the super-rich in the context of the underlying tensions of the neoliberal capitalist social order. Combining Nancy Fraser’s theory of normative contradictions with a critical political economy approach to the media, this thesis explores mediated representations of the super-rich as sites of ideological struggle between ideals of market justice and social justice. The thesis conducts an in-depth Critical Discourse Analysis to uncover what discourses Swedish newspapers – both in contemporary and historical settings – draw upon when representing the super-rich. The thesis consists of three case studies, each zooming in on different dimensions of the super-rich. The findings suggest that, while the feature reporting on the super-rich is no twithout its ambivalences, the critique is largely limited to questioning the morality of individual billionaires or business models, not billionaire wealth in itself. The thesis also shows how the secrecy surrounding the super-rich, hailed as a key part of the reproduction of economic inequality, can be mobilized by the tabloid media to intensify the ‘wealth porn’ genre rather than questioning inequalities per se. It also argues that the longterm coverage of the Swedish wealth tax in the liberal/conservative press between 1969 and 2007 delegitimated the tax as an immoral and irrational anomaly in a globalized world, paving the way for the social acceptance of large individual fortunes. As such, the thesis provides a comprehensive account of how the news media operates to incorporate the super-rich into the justice narratives of neoliberal capitalism, thus serving to mitigate the tensions of the social order.
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| 3. |
- Eriksson, Göran, 1964-, et al.
(författare)
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How cosmetic apps fragmentise and metricise the female face : A multimodalcritical discourse analysis
- 2023
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Ingår i: Discourse & Communication. - : Sage Publications. - 1750-4813 .- 1750-4821. ; 17:3, s. 278-297
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In the present time, we see a rapid development of so-called cosmetic apps promoted by prominent cosmetic companies. Although there is an emerging market for male consumers, these apps are marketed as technological innovations designed to analyse, rate and evaluate mainly women’s facial appearances through the submission of a selfie. Based on the results generated from the selfie, personalised solutions are offered in the form of recommended products to supposedly help women improve their appearances. Drawing on a critical feminist approach and using multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA), the aim of this article is to study how these evaluations are semiotically reproduced and presented to the users. The paper examines in detail how apps convey the evaluation process and transform a selfie into measures, presented through diagrams and charts, that is, how the female face is fragmented and metricised. Coming with affordances of being systematic, exact and scientific, these infographics assign the facial evaluations with meaning. A key argument is that these cosmetic apps are changing the way women are implied to consider and control their (facial) appearance. Following neoliberal notions, the apps put strong pressure on women to take the responsibility to engage in intensive forms of aesthetic labour and to consume the ‘right’ products to appear as the best versions of themselves.
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| 4. |
- Kenalemang-Palm, Lame M., 1991-, et al.
(författare)
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The scientifization of “green” anti-ageing cosmetics in online marketing : a multimodal critical discourse analysis
- 2023
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Ingår i: Social Semiotics. - : Routledge. - 1035-0330 .- 1470-1219. ; 33:5, s. 1026-1045
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper examines the marketing of trending green cosmetic products containing natural ingredients and coming with claims to keep skin health-enhancing and age-defying benefits. This is fostered by the growing importance of successful ageing and the neoliberal self-care agenda. Adopting the notion of "integrated design" from Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA), this paper looks at the communicative affordances of the web and how marketers of "green" cosmetics connect these to science. The analysis shows that the integrated design of the webpages allows cosmetic companies to connote science while glossing over significant details, leaving causalities, classifications, and processes unspecified. This marketing frames fighting the "look" of ageing as a moral and ethical consumption choice. Such choices relate to self-care regimes of a "successful" neoliberal citizenship.
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| 5. |
- Andersson, Helen, 1968-, et al.
(författare)
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The masculinization of domestic cooking : a historical study of Swedish cookbooks for men
- 2022
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Ingår i: Norma. - : Taylor & Francis. - 1890-2138 .- 1890-2146. ; 17:4, s. 252-269
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This study analyzes how men's domestic cooking is represented and masculinized in cookbooks, written by men for men and published in 1975, 1992, and 2010, respectively. Departing from the concept of domestic masculinities, it uses the methods of Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis. It asks: what kind of values and ideas connected to men, food, and the home are realized in texts and images? And how are these legitimized and naturalized? As the study's context is Sweden, a country known for its pursuit of gender equality, the study focuses on how men's domestic cooking has been represented in cookbooks published roughly 20 years apart. The analysis shows that, while the first two books are characterized by a 'real man' discourse and working-class masculinity, the 2010 book represents a masculinity in line with a 'new man image' closely linked to consumption and materiality. However, structurally, there are few differences. Values associated with traditional middle-class masculinities, traditional gender norms, and gendered division of domestic labor are reproduced. Men's cooking is recontextualized as a playful leisure activity. In all three books, cooking becomes another way for a man to appear successful - both in relation to other men and women, and in socioeconomic terms.
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| 6. |
- Chen, Ariel, 1987-, et al.
(författare)
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Connoting a neoliberal and entrepreneurial discourse of science through infographics and integrated design : the case of ‘functional’ healthy drinks
- 2022
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Ingår i: Critical Discourse Studies. - : Routledge. - 1740-5904 .- 1740-5912. ; 19:3, s. 290-308
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Riding on the rising concern of public health and the growing neoliberal self-care agenda, the food market has witnessed a surge in ‘healthy’ food despite the criticism of this food does not help consumers eat more healthily. A growing interest in CriticalDiscourse Studies (CDS) is how food marketers colonise not only the food discourse but also the broader ideas and values such as health, politics, and environment. Contributing to this growing body of research, we look at one of the fastest-growing food trends, ‘functional drinks’, which claim to target physiological and psychological processes in the body, so that consumers can manage their health and performance. Company websites rely on forms of infographics to communicate how the products work. Adopting the notion of ‘integrated design’ from multimodal CDS, we show how these infographics, drawing on their affordancesare particularly useful in symbolising classifications and causalities which could not be accounted for in running texts. The paper argues that this is a way health and science converge with a neoliberal discourse of self-management and enterprise culture. Given the increased use of forms of integrated design incommunication, more critical discursive work is needed in this area.
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| 7. |
- Eriksson, Göran, 1964-
(författare)
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Promoting extreme fitness regimes through the communicative affordances of reality makeover television : a multimodal critical discourse analysis
- 2022
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Ingår i: Critical Studies in Media Communication. - : Routledge. - 1529-5036 .- 1479-5809. ; 39:5, s. 408-426
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Taking off from the theory of social semiotics and using the methods of multimodal critical discourse analysis, this paper demonstrates how the communicative affordances of a Swedish reality makeover show, The Great Health Journey, are used to promote discourses normalizing extreme fitness ideals. It is a show that reduces health to body fitness and supports a particular health consciousness gaining prominence today, an ideology here depicted as fitnessism. Progressing the ideas put forward by Crawford (1980, Healthism and the medicalization of everyday life. International Journal of Health Services, 10(3), 365-388; Crawford, 2006. Health as a meaningful social practice. Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine, 10(4), 401-420) with the notion of healthism, fitnessism accentuates the careful submission to strict fitness-related regimes as crucial for a healthy lifestyle. It turns the very fit body into a sign of good morals, indicating the values of self-discipline, self-control, and willpower, personal characteristics seen as crucial in the neoliberal era. But the healthiness of this fitness ideal can be questioned. Rather than serving the interest of public health, fitnessism seems to mainly encourage "aesthetic labour" (Elias et al., 2017. Aesthetic labour: Rethinking beauty politics in neoliberalism. Palgrave Macmillan) and support commercial interests to exploit body dissatisfaction.
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| 8. |
- Heuman, Anna, 1990-
(författare)
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Negotiating standard language ideology : Metalinguistic discussions in mundane, online interaction
- 2022
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis investigates how ordinary language users enact language policy and thus negotiate (standard) language ideology in mundane, online interaction. The language policy work is found in metalinguistic discussions on various social media. The discussions have been triggered by deviations from standard written language, mostly on the level of orthography. The discussions mainly target different aspects of standard language ideology. The three studies included in this compilation thesis identify discursive strategies and reveal the contradictory ideologies underpinning the discussions.The discussions are analysed with an interactional and procedural focus, highlighting the unfolding negotiations of standard language ideology. The results show that standard language ideology is prevailing which, in turn, enables certain realisations. When drawing on standard norms, the participants can use strategies that do not include explicit arguments. However, the discussions also include contradictions and strategies that challenge traditional standard beliefs. These results illustrate the mundane, vivid metalinguistic negotiations in which standard language ideology is primarily enforced, but also challenged.The results illuminate how standardisation is not a mythical and imperceptible process, but one of constant and visible iteration, also in very mundane situations. Furthermore, the pervasiveness of standard language ideology could make it harder for those who deviate from it to be listened to or even to participate at all. In this way, everyday metalinguistic discussions are one among many language policy activities that can enforce loyalty to the standard variety and its position as unmarked.
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| 9. |
- Kenalemang-Palm, Lame Maatla, 1991-
(författare)
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Recontextualising ageing as a choice : A critical approach to representations of successful ageing
- 2022
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis examines the intersection between representations of ageing femininities, empowerment, and oppression in marketing and advertising practices, within the context of successful ageing. In the current era of population ageing, debates on gender and ageing are becoming more pronounced. Due to population ageing, there is a visible increase in representations of (successful) ageing in the media. As a result, we are experiencing an expansion in the “grey market” of anti-ageing products and services, e.g., cosmetics, mainly aimed at wealthy older women who constitute an important market segment for such. Given that the media helps form people’s ideas about ageing, there is a need to critically examine this growing market and how older women are represented and/or addressed in it. Such representations are crucial for understanding contemporary feminist discussions on the contestation between women’s empowerment and oppression. To provide a deeper understanding of this phenomenon, I use an intersectional feminist perspective combined with the methodology of Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA). This perspective highlights and deconstructs the complex ways in which power and ideology work to maintain and reinforce existing intersectional structural inequalities based on age, gender, class, and race that marginalise women. This thesis consists of three empirical studies. The findings suggest a shift from the postfeminist gaze towards a neoliberal self-objectifying gaze that closely operates alongside discourses of successful ageing. This self-objectifying gaze encourages women to actively work on and transform the ageing self through intensifying self-surveillance, self-scrutiny, and self-improvement practices. These self-transformation practices are presented as the free choices of empowered, entrepreneurial, and responsibilised subjects. Nonetheless, such choices confine women to never-ending forms of self-governance that promote the internalisation of patriarchal and capitalist ideal standards of beauty, thus reinscribing privilege and oppression.
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| 10. |
- Liu, Chenxiao, et al.
(författare)
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Potentiating Vγ9Vδ2 T cell proliferation and assessing their cytotoxicity towards adherent cancer cells at the single cell level
- 2022
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Ingår i: Biology Open. - : The Company of Biologists. - 2046-6390. ; 11:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Vγ9Vδ2 T cells is the dominant γδ T cell subset in human blood. They are cytotoxic and activated by phosphoantigens whose concentrations are increased in cancer cells, making the cancer cells targets for Vγ9Vδ2 T cell immunotherapy. For successful immunotherapy, it is important both to characterise Vγ9Vδ2 T cell proliferation and optimise the assessment of their cytotoxic potential, which is the aim of this study. We found that supplementation with freshly thawed human serum potentiated Vγ9Vδ2 T cell proliferation from peripheral mononuclear cells (PBMCs) stimulated with (E)-4-Hydroxy-3-methyl-but-2-enyl diphosphate (HMBPP) and consistently enabled Vγ9Vδ2 T cell proliferation from cryopreserved PBMCs. In cryopreserved PBMCs the proliferation was higher than in freshly prepared PBMCs. In a panel of short-chain prenyl alcohols, monophosphates and diphosphates, most diphosphates and also dimethylallylmonophosphate stimulated Vγ9Vδ2 T cell proliferation.We developed a method where the cytotoxicity of Vγ9Vδ2 T cells towards adherent cells is assessed at the single cell level using flow cytometry, which gives more clear-cut results than the traditional bulk release assays. Moreover, we found that HMBPP enhances the Vγ9Vδ2 T cell cytotoxicity towards colon cancer cells. In summary, we have developed an easily interpretable method to assess the cytotoxicity of Vγ9Vδ2 T cells towards adherent cells, found that Vγ9Vδ2 T cell proliferation can be potentiated by media-supplementation and how misclassification of non-responders may be avoided. Our findings will be useful in the further development of Vγ9Vδ2 T cell immunotherapy. © 2022. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd.
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