| 1. |
- Gustrén, Cia, 1979-
(författare)
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Negotiating school identities : a multimodal analysis of upper secondary school promotion on the web
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The research interests of this doctoral thesis are the mediated ways of presenting and promoting Swedish upper secondary schools on the web to attract students. The thesis studies the rationale of schools’ strategically designed attempts to reach out with their educational offers in a highly competitive school market. The aim is to study how the identities of upper secondary schools are constructed and how potential students are addressed to identify with schools as of year 2020- 2021. More specifically, the thesis is concerned with the multimodal character of school identities as situated in the interplay between different means of communication. The way visual components reinforce, complement, or contradict each other in the presentation of schools is focused. The relation between text and image is admittedly a field of research of its own. Other research interests are concerned with the way potential students are positioned along with a certain worldview as well as how they are supposed to recognize themselves in the description of four theoretical study programs.Moreover, I study the grips or gripping forces by which the audiovisual promotion of schools is designed to appeal to or encapsulate potential students on basis of a sense of purpose and belonging. The study material for the thesis is hence found in three categories of web-based information: 64 schools’ self-presentations online, program descriptions of four theoretically oriented study programs on the so-called “school webs” of the same schools and, finally, upper secondary schools’ YouTube-videos integrated in many cases on the websites. These empirical instances are studied to learn more about different school identities, the ideological significance of education as related to certain world views, and the way of addressing or gripping potential students in the promotion of schools.My method of inquiry is a combination of a logics approach with visual analysis to address the relation between different modalities. A set of discursive logics are integrated with a multimodal framework to emphasize multiple modes of communication and to make sense of the interplay between them. The multimodal analysis proceeds from the way discursive statements are situated in a field of tension. Because the descriptive means by which upper secondary schools are presented to potential students are based upon the self-interpretations of schools, they are well-suited for the study of the construction of school identities in the intersection between visual modalities of text, image, and video. It is important to point out that the thesis has no intention to analyze the meaning of images per se, but mainly the way they reinforce, add to, or contradict the textual or spoken messages found in the self-presentations on the web or in the audiovisual presentation of schools. Discursive statements are hence approached as mediated accounts. Form matters as much as content; the way messages are conveyed has a bearing on the perceived meaning of statements.This thesis is situated at the intersection between strategic communication, visual culture studies, multimodal analysis, and the critical study of education. A major finding is that a traditional identity of schools is largely appropriated for or turned into a means of competition. A competitive approach is also associated with that of caring and tradition as a way of gaining legitimacy. Tradition is not so much questioned from a market point of view as reaffirmed as necessary for schools to be recognized as such. Opposite demands are continuously negotiated and hence subject to the ideological logics of both/and, as it often appears as desirable to incorporate, embrace and balance different aspects instead of maintaining just one of them. This offers a more flexible approach to identity construction in allowing schools to incorporate opposite demands as though complementary aspects.As to the role of visual means of presentation, images form an integrated and central part of webpages as mediated presentations of schools. Because of the poignant or emotive implications of images in relation to text, they are often considered a powerful means of identification with the schools and their core values. A crucial aspect that emerges in the interplay between text, image, and video, is that of reciprocity. Schools and students are seen to be mutually dependent upon each other and so, in terms of a caring and compassionate attitude, look after each other’s interests. As the free choice educational system depends for its efficacy and perceived success on students making the “right” choice of education, ninth graders’ personal interests are what is supposed to guide their choice of school. Although admission also depends on previous school merits, it is understood as desirable for a sense of common purpose that the interests of students overlap with those of the schools. In sum, students are indeed expected not only to represent but to be the schools or incorporate all that which schools are claimed to be.
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| 2. |
- Baltz, André, 1986-
(författare)
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Dialog och digital kommunikation i svenska kommuner
- 2024
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis explores the work of Swedish municipalities in dialogue and digital communication. It examines digital communication and dialogue through field studies in Örnsköldsvik municipality from 2015 to 2019, and the presence of Swedish municipalities on Facebook from 2009 to 2017. During this period, digital communication and dialogue have been prominent on the agendas of municipalities both in Sweden and internationally. The development of social media, e-services, strategic communication, branding, and citizen dialogues are crucial for understanding the evolution of communication and democracy, both now and in the future. The overall aim of this thesis is to investigate how municipalities communicate with citizens, with a focus on digital media.The dissertation is grounded in the fields of participatory research, organizational research, strategic communication, and organizational communication. The material includes notes, reports, and documents from observations, policy documents, guidelines, interviews with officials and communicators, and Facebook posts from municipalities’ Facebook pages. The four case studies draw on new institutional theory, communication theory, and deliberative systems theory to varying degrees. These case studies are theoretically linked through a focus on institutions and how they shape and are shaped by understandings of communication and participation.The thesis captures ideas about communication and participation through eight perspectives, shedding light on what it means to be, work in, and represent a municipality today. Communicators play a central role in conveying meanings about communication by acting as internal consultants, trainers, and critical reviewers of the organization’s communication purposes. They also have a strategic role in formulating guidelines and standards for communication design. The thesis argues that both communication and participation must be understood through a broader media concept to grasp the complex interactions between the municipality and citizens. The municipality speaks, listens, and negotiates with citizens directly and indirectly in various ways, from user data and motion sensors to physical meetings. The thesis also shows that municipalities use communication to steer citizens in different directions, from how they should contact the municipality to how and where they can be involved in designing services and policies. Through large-scale digital text analysis, the phatic nature of communication also emerges. Municipalities seem to communicate to maintain, build, and establish social relationships with citizens on social media. This form of communication not only fulfills a social function but also alludes to local pride and community by highlighting landmarks and other local and “sacral” objects. The results also show that citizen participation from the municipality’s perspective is characterized by ideas about inclusion and strengthening the decision-making process. The more (and different) perspectives that can be considered, the better and more sustainable the decisions will be. However, the perspectives on participation are fraught with problems and challenges, as broad inclusion is time-consuming and makes it difficult to reach consensus.
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| 3. |
- Carlsson, Eric, 1972-
(författare)
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Medierad övervakning : En studie av övervakningens betydelser i svensk dagspress
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This doctoral thesis explores the use of surveillance images and discourses of surveillance in the Swedish press. Questions concerning surveillance appear frequently in the news today. The ongoing »War on Terror« has generated numerous news reports informing their audiences how surveillance technologies will protect society, prevent terrorist attacks, and ensure security. The purpose of the study is to examine representations of surveillance in Swedish newspapers, more specifically, how they use surveillance- and amateur images in their reporting. In order to carry this out, the thesis sets up two areas of concern: news on terrorism and news on police violence. The questions that produce the field of inquiry relate to how discourses of surveillance are articulated in text and image. They also concern construction of social identities related to reproduction of power relations, normality, and deviance. Research material used in this study consists of journalistic texts and visual images published in mainly four major Swedish newspapers; Aftonbladet, Expressen, Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet. A qualitative research strategy was undertaken inspired by discourse analysis. The analysis focuses on four major issues: representations of terrorists, intensified surveillance, victims, and representations of police violence. The analysis concentrates on surveillance images that were used by news media to visually represent the terrorists involved in the so called »London bombings« in 2005. The thesis also highlights how politicians and other experts become the predominant subjects who proclaim the need for a more modern, efficient, and enhanced surveillance technology. A further issue ofinterest concerns media representations of victims and especially how the construction of victims reproduces normality, and further, how victimisation is related to surveillance. The newspapers used amateur footage from ‘the bomb scene’ in ways that represent the victims, not as objects, but as active agents participating in an act of surveillance. How the public become represented as victims of the surveillance society is examined. Dystopic stories about negative aspects of surveillance including islamophobia and fear of intrusion of privacy emerge as major themes. Finally, the study seeks to connect surveillance to resistance. Different media events on police violence are discussed in the light of events that have been filmed by amateur video or surveillance cameras. Surveillance in a mediated context is a complex field with many different and contradicting meanings and connotations. However, it is clear that surveillance links up with security, resistance, power and control, intrusion of privacy, and above all, to the reproduction of social differences between Us and Them. The news media seems to promote a public discourse of fear, which may contribute to legitimisation of both present and future demands for intensified surveillance. Nonetheless, mediated surveillance may also help to resist and challenge power hierarchies in society and promote social change.
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| 4. |
- Eckeskog, Linn, 1984-
(författare)
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Kommunikation i förskolan : förskollärares och barnskötares kommunikation med föräldrar i ett digitaliserat medielandskap
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The overall aim of this doctoral thesis is to study communication work among personnel in Swedish pre-schools, with a particular focus on mediated communication with parents. The purpose is also to analyse what roles are given to the professionals in this communication, to identify what subject positions are constructed and to identify how boundaries are managed within the communication practices.The primary theoretical framework of the thesis is social constructivism and symbolic interactionism. The pre-school organisation and identities are regarded as in a perpetual state of becoming and changes in the media landscape are viewed as rearranging the preconditions for communication practices. Technical innovations are regarded as social products at both ends. Results build upon observations in five pre-schools, interviews with 32 pre-school employees and multimodal analysis of communication material directed to parents. Additional interviews and document studies were conducted in the form of a case study, in order to gain knowledge of the implementation of a digital learning platform.The study shows that the communication environments differ between pre-schools, e.g. concerning how and which mediums are used. Several obstacles to communication are identified, of which many (but not all) are related to the socioeconomic status of parents. Within the mediated communication, pre-school personnel to some extent position themselves as experts concerning practical and pedagogical questions, whilst parents are positioned as actors in need of guidance. A major function of mediated communication is assigning parents’ responsibilities in relation to the pre-school, along with norms regarding what constitutes the “good” (pre-school) parent. Boundary work in relation to parents is conducted using different modalities, used for hedging but also for establishing professional positions. Digitalisation appears as a negative force when introduced top-down, without regards to the needs, previous practices and preconditions within a particular pre- school; but as a positive force when initiated by the professionals themselves and when responding to particular needs within specific pre-schools. As expectations on digitalisation in pre-schools increase, questions of preconditions and communication skills grow in prominence.Although expectations on pre-school professionals’ communication skills are high, communication with parents is not sufficiently acknowledged as part of the actual work in pre-schools. A sign of (and reasons for) the under prioritisation of communication work is the uneven and arbitrary preconditions for communicating, in the forms of relevant education, time and technical equipment. The lack of resources can be connected to three issues: A working environment issue (discrepancy between expectations and preconditions), a democratic issue (communication being random rather than planned/ considered) and a professional issue (multimodal communication not reflecting the professional identity that informants strive towards).Communication with parents (and surrounding society) needs to be acknowledged as part of the work in pre-school, and the personnel need to be given the necessary skills and conditions for communication, in order to provide equality of ac- cess to the parents, but also to give personnel the possibilities of communicating about and reflecting the pre-school organisation as they know it.
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| 5. |
- Ekstrand, Eva, 1949-
(författare)
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Kaj Anderssons Morgonbris : kvinnopress, trettiotal och längtan efter fri tid
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In the 1930s the Swedish homes were modernized through a series of social reforms. As a result of this, time was expected to be released from the housewife’s daily domestic duties and the question was what to do with this time. In this dissertation the concept of time is used in the sense of free time as time for free thinking. The time issue during the thirties is an underlying question throughout the study. The magazine Morgonbris (1904-), a political campaign journal published by the social democratic women’s association (in Swedish: Socialdemokratiska kvinnoförbundet, SSKF) was the public arena for political issues of this kind.The aim of the study is to scrutinize the magazine, its shape (typography and layout) and content, the editors´ journalism as well as the relationship to the SSKF and the circle of readers during the decade, in order to describe the dramatic changes of this political and public arena with special focus on the editorship of Kaj Andersson (1931-1936).Methodologically this study draws on Hannah Arendt’s “storytelling” or “fragmented historiography”. Theoretically the concepts “public sphere” and “proletarian experiences” are adopted and Jürgen Habermas, Oscar Negt & Alexander Kluge as well as Pierre Bourdieu, are referred to. The gender perspectives of Joan F. Scott and Yvonne Hirdman are also adopted.Kaj Andersson’s ”active journalism” in Morgonbris exhibits two distinguishing characteristics during the thirties, it was clearly socialist and critical towards nazism and fascism and it was the most salient vehicle of modernity within the Swedish press at the time. She re-styled the magazine, gave it a new outfit and introduced a new kind of modern, photojournalism. The result was an economic upswing for the magazine. The heritage of Ellen Key´s aesthetics came forward in a consumer campaign, “The best of the industry to the needs of the homes” (Fabrikernas bästa till hemmens behov), which bears similarities to the “Better Homes of America” campaign, launched in the 1920s in the USA. The political path in both campaigns coincided partly with the agenda of Alva Myrdal. Also the “Housewife Holiday” campaign that Kaj Andersson initiated in Morgonbris was in line with the modernization of women’s life throughout the country. The exhausted housewives’ yearning for rest and temporary release from domestic duties was reflected in several articles, in which their grass-root initiatives were acknowledged as political action.Until Kaj Anderson left Morgonbris, after several schisms with the committee about her creative – her backbiters would say self-indulgent – style to run the editorial office, she balanced on the border between commercialism and socialism. Her background in the party press, the social democratic newspaper Social Demokraten, influenced her ideas, but her initiatives to turn to the fields of production and consumption also drove a wedge into the field of journalism, as an involuntary beginning to separate it from the field of politics.
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| 6. |
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| 7. |
- Enbom, Jesper, 1972-
(författare)
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Facket i det medialiserade samhället : En studie av LO:s och medlemsförbundens tillämpning av news management
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- According to most ways of measuring it the Swedish trade union movement is the strongest in the world. The Swedish Trade Union Confederation is the largest and most influential union confederation by far. Since the 1980s though, Sweden experienced a shift in the power relations between employers and unions in favour of the former. This has coincided with a growing importance for political communication, public relations and the mass media. This development has presented the Swedish trade union movement with a multitude of challenges. One of the major ones is how to influence the representations of trade unions and their viewpoints in the news media. The purpose of this study is to describe and try to explain how the Swedish Trade Union Confederation and its affiliated unions act to confront the “medialisation” of the public debate. A combination of research methods are used in this study in order to investigate both the historical development of trade union news management and the use of news management by trade union personnel in their everyday work. The study of how news management historically became a part in the overall union activity was performed through qualitative analysis of archive material. The study of the everyday uses of news management and the factors constraining this work builds upon interviews with the press officers of the TUC affiliated unions and the TUC itself. The study shows how both the historical development and the everyday use of news management by the Swedish trade union movement need to be understood in a context. This context contains political, economical, ideological and organisational structures that at the same time enables and constrains the adaption of news management. The study points towards five central paradoxes which faces the trade unions when they seek desired media attention and try to avoid unwanted publicity. The first paradox concerns how to fight hard in the interest of the members, while at the same time avoid being described as a sectional interest. The second paradox stems from the desire of the trade unions to be perceived as big and strong and how this might result in the labelling of them as ‘Goliath’ during a conflict. The next paradox concerns how trade unions want to show the importance of the work done by their members during a conflict and the way this might lead to media attention about how the strike affects ‘innocent bystanders’. The fourth paradoxes come from the wish of the trade unions to make their local representatives visible in mass media. This could result in unwanted publicity, due to the difference between blue-collar trade unionists and middleclass journalists. The fifth paradox stems from the importance of acting quickly to achieve wanted media attention and to avoid unwanted. The paradox is that it might be hard to be fast and at the same time have a thorough democratic process on a controversial issue.
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| 8. |
- Engström, Kerstin, 1959-
(författare)
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Genus & genrer : forskningsanknutna genusdiskurser i dagspress
- 2008
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- At the centre of this study lies the question of how research-related media texts contribute to the social construction of sex and gender conceptions when they use research, either as a main source, or to support or comment on specific issues and statements, from the political arena, for example. The principal aim of the study has been to analyze and problematize the ways in which different types of newspapers, genres and editorial sections reproduce, or contribute to change, in existing gender discourses.The material was collected from two Swedish newspapers during the year 2001: the national morning paper Dagens Nyheter (DN), and the national evening paper Aftonbladet.The theories of discourse, agenda-setting and -framing in this study are related to the questions: what kinds of knowledge on women and men, and biological, physiological, psychological, social and cultural perspectives on sex/gender are represented; how are they described; and how do content and form contribute to the (re)production of, or change in, gender discourses? The main analytical perspectives are those about gender discourse (re)production, genres as ideological forms, and the epistemologies of journalism.A combination of analytical strategies and methods was used: content and thematic analysis, and qualitative analysis of text and language with methodological tools from different traditions of discourse analysis.In my study, I can see an interplay between research traditions and genre conventions in the (re)production of gender discourses. Since the news sections repeatedly choose to publish research as empiric and in the form of results, and then within that, primarily findings from medicine and the social sciences, these areas are reproduced as important and relevant, and as producers of objective, true knowledge that can be presented as simple facts. Research-related texts in culture journalism, on the other hand, follow the tradition of primarily treating research within the humanities, and nowadays also gender and queer theoretical perspectives within different disciplines. Through the genre conventions of culture journalism, this research is reproduced as something that you can reflect upon, problematize, criticize, form an opinion of, and judge.The study also gives reason to argue that media logic and institutionalized genre conventions contribute to the reproduction of science and research as different worlds and cultures, in which the natural sciences and the humanities are found in different media spaces, and different forms of knowledge about sex/gender are given space on different conditions and in different forms.
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| 9. |
- Ferrada Stoehrel, Rodrigo, 1975-
(författare)
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The mediation of affect : security, fear and subversive hope in visual culture
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The overarching purpose of this study has been to problematise how visual practices and the mediation of affect is linked to the capacity to produce (new) perceptual realities, sensations and imaginaries, ultimately aiming to legitimate or counter-legitimate the hegemonic discourses and practices mobilised in the name of security. The first part of my thesis approaches this matter through an analysis of media cultures and discursive systems circulating within the court and the state military. Here, I discuss the impact of affect in the judicial-policial production of visible evidence (paper 1; published in the International Journal for the Semiotics of Law) and the state military (visual) narrative of threat (paper 2; published in MedieKultur: Journal of media and communication research). Additionally, as affect runs counter to hegemonic power relations as well as reinforces them, the second part of my thesis focuses on the way in which different resistance collectives cultivate affective dimensions through aesthetic practices in order to foster political attitudes that contest the established discourses of the (in)secure. Here, I examine the online activist group Anonymous’ visual political communication (paper 3; published in TripleC - Communication, Capitalism & Critique. Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society), and the Spanish movement Podemos’ visual and verbal discursive strategies (paper 4; forthcoming in Cultural Studies). In terms of theoretical and methodological approaches, I have my roots in, among others, Mouffe’s (2005) notion of conflict and (political) affect, Foucault’s (1980) concept of power/knowledge, and Thompson’s (1984; 1990) three-dimensional framework of ideology- analysis. In paper 1, my findings suggest that camera-produced images and technical and dramaturgical elements may have unintentional judicial consequences when they are read as evidence. I detail how this production of visible evidence can potentially stimulate and elicit emotional reaction, as well as discussing the degree to which pictorial crime evidence fails to be an instrumental and neutral representation of truth. In paper 2, my findings point in the direction where the military representation of the ‘Other as threat’ connects to aspects of economic globalisation and the (inter)national production of defence materiel. In article 3 (co-authored with Lindgren 2014) my findings suggest that citizen participation in public matters can be made engaging through the mobilisation of that which Anonymous calls ‘the lulz’; a tickling joy/pleasure (also, a sense of meaningfulness) of standing against power abuse through, for example, online direct action and culture jamming practices. Paper 4 explores the relationship between the affective and the visual using a broader security framework. Here, my findings indicate that Podemos’ discursive battle for social protection and economic security in a context of the crisis of political representation, is no longer framed through the traditional left-right conflict, but within the post- ideological (affective) articulation of ‘the new’ versus ‘the old’ and/or other discursive differences. I show how affect works as a potential for social change, by analysing the strategic production of a ‘We-Them’ discourse using Podemos’ take on social media and the media logic of mainstream television.
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| 10. |
- Högvall Nordin, Maria, 1962-
(författare)
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"Dom brukar jämföra det med en stridspilot" : föreställningar om arbetsmiljö och risker i skogsmaskinarbete: en studie i organisationskommunikation
- 2006
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The focus of this dissertation is on how communication regarding work environment and work related risks can be understood from an organizational communication perspective. Based on a case study of communication about work environment and work related risks in the Swedish forest industry, the present study discusses institutional influences on organizational sense making processes. A central question has been how to understand the organizational field as a cultural and communicative arena where concepts and ideas connected with issues in the field are communicated between different actors. The empirical data was gathered using different methods. A questionnaire aiming at screening media habits and information gathering strategies of forest machine contractors was used. Based on information from that screening, mass media content was analysed, such as daily newspapers, trade press and advertisements for forest machines. Also, interviews with actors in the field were analysed thematically with respect to how to unveil hidden key symbols and cultural valuations of forest machine work, the work environment and how to handle work related risks in forest work. The key symbols that were identified to organise conceptions about forest work and occupational risks connected with it contained information about different attitudes towards how to handle risks and other problems in the work environment. Two main types of conceptions were identified, technologically oriented conceptions and person oriented conceptions. The analysis revealed a fragmented picture of forest work. Yet, the picture was more or less common to the organizational field as a whole. Building on institutional theory and theories of sense making, the study results in a deeper understanding of sense making in relation to work environmental issues by applying an organizational dimension to risk communication in an organizational field.
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