Marketers of today are confronted by the fact that it is increasingly difficult to gain the customer's attention, as they first have to break through the ad clutter. In a landscape where the general attitude towards advertising is negative, one way to successfully deliver the message to the customer involves communicating through personal impact. By using stimuli containing identical information with different senders, this thesis seeks to quantitatively explore whether brands can make use of the personal networks of its employees, in their social media marketing strategy. The purpose of the study is to investigate if communication via the employees could enhance traditional communication effects, such as buying intention and electronic WOM intention. Furthermore, the study aims to examine which role the employee should hold when communicating on behalf of the brand, and if the communication effects vary with the degree of product involvement.

Previous research on Twitter use among nonprofit organizations has been centered on the US, thisessay Nonprofits on Twitter: a content analysis of Swedish nonprofits working for gender equalityseeks to expand that research to include nonprofit organizations operating in Sweden. By studying tenSwedish nonprofits all working to achieve gender equality this study can begin filling a gap in theexisting research. Focusing on both what kind of messages the organizations publish, and what kind ofmessages engage the organizations? followers. This is achieved by quantitative content analysis:categorizing messages into the categories Information, Community and Action, and measuring whichof these categories got the most shares, comments and likes.

The implementation of this research increases the awareness of the value for luxury fashion brands in utilizing social media as a communication channel to reach young consumers globally. It provides a general understanding of young consumers? perception of luxury fashion brands on social media in regards to geographic cultural background, attitude towards new luxury, and preferred way of contacts..

The purpose of this study is to discuss the use of social media by the Swedish Police for democratic purposes. The idea of citizen empowerment is closely related to the development of new communication technologies such as social media. Yet many studies indicate that governmental institutions rarely make use of the assumed potentials of social media.In this study, the democratic potential of social media is derived from Habermas normative concept of deliberative participation. Operational definitions emphasize discursive equality, interactive reciprocity and external impact. The analytical framework is combined with qualitative text analysis to highlight the conditions of interaction between representatives of the Police and citizens.In conclusion: the democratic potential of social media, from a Habermasian point of view, is to a significant extent neglected at the expense of its strategic advantages.

The purpose of this thesis was to study a selection of Swedish government agencies and their usage of new media to convey information. We thought that the relationship between government agencies and the media should be addressed. This because of the current transitional period between traditional and new media. We have studied five different Swedish government agencies; Swedish Armed Forces, Swedish Tax Agency, Swedish National Institute of Public Health, Trafikverket and Sida.We used a qualitive content analysis and analyzed their homepages on the basis of six different criteria. In addition to this we studied their presence on external social communities and how the government agencies comply with the requirements of their communicative efforts.The study shows that the government agencies? media usage varies.

This study investigates the use of the social network Facebook among 67 Swedish libraries; 27 academic libraries and 40 public libraries. Data is collected through an analysis of the libraries? Facebook pages and through an email survey. To analyze the data, a series of statistical analyses were performed.The results indicate that the public libraries more actively posted Facebook updates than the academic libraries and that the libraries that had a policy for use of Facebook/social media more actively posted updates than those libraries that did not have such policy. The libraries use Facebook mainly to post links and photos and to announce events, provide book recommendations, and to emphasize special occasions.

AbstractIT can facilitate communication among individuals and connect people across geographical distances. On the contrary, citizens of the society who do not use communication technologies to some extent might feel excluded from the information society. As elderly citizens are already in a vulnerable position for the digital divide, communication technology becomes an important tool for interacting with friends and family. The social situation of elderly, 60 years of age and older, is a topic of current interest since they are the fastest growing age group in the world today. Further, social interaction becomes more important among elderly since it has a positive effect on well- being.

Dagens teknik erbjuder en mängd olika sätt för människor att kommunicera och interagera med varandra. Denna uppsats är en studie i bilddelning på sociala medier med fokus på amatörfotografers användande av tekniken i syfte för att nå ut med sina fotografier. Huvudfokus lades på vad för strategier de använde sig av, men även på användarnas olika målsättningar. Med hjälp av tidigare forskningsarbeten och djupgående intervjuer har vi lyckats återkoppla den egna empirin med våra teoretiska utgångspunkter och dragit slutsatsen att användandet av sociala medier i syftet för att nå ut med sina bilder till andra människor varierar väldigt stort från person till person. Hur tekniken används för detta syfte är därmed unikt för den individuelle användaren, dock har vi lyckats identifiera vissa likheter i användandet av sociala medier i dessa syften. .

Facebook´s importance has grown significantly regarding crisis communication. A deficiency concerning what types of companies has been investigated earlier and how their crisis communication should be carried out on Facebook, has been identified. The aim of this study is to examine the crisis communication of a smaller company on Facebook and explore how this communication has been received by the company?s recipients. We apply an explorative approach on to a case study in order to answer the aim.

This essay, Pictures from a death-bed, expands on the pictorial genre called post mortem portraits, a field with long history in the western society. A post mortem portrait is an artwork where the artist paint or photograph the model after her or his dead. My survey delineates to treat two specific pictures, one from the seventeenth century and one from the twentieth century. Both of them are portraits of dead boys on their death-beds, but the first one is a painting and the other one is a photo. By this survey I wanted to find both similarities and differentials between the pictures; if they were made by the same reasons, if you could see anything different between the portraits by children and by the portraits of adults, and finally, if there were any cultural or religious connections between the pictures and their existents.

This paper intends to show how micro- and small businesses in the tourism and experience industry makes use of social media as a marketing tool. The study also shows the possibilities for businesses to market themselves to customers through social media. Small businesses usually don?t have the same conditions or the same marketing resources that larger companies have. For small businesses that lack marketing resources, social media is a great addition to marketing since the technology around social media is relatively simple.

The purpose of this study was to understand whether there is a difference in how the Swedish police work with Facebook in two municipalities with different criminal records. The methods used were qualitative interviews with the ones responsible for the Facebook-sites and quantitative content analysis of different Facebook-posts, both from members of the Facebook-site and from the police themselves.Among the theories used in this study were the ?four-step relations process? by Cutlip, Allen and Broom, theory around public relations and theory around the public sphere by Habermas.The results showed that there is a difference in how the police uses Facebook between the municipalities and one of the conclusions is that this is mainly because of the ways that the police choose to work with Facebook rather than the difference in criminal records. Another conclusion is that the police get positive feedback from the members on their Facebook-site, and that how much the police uses Facebook as a tool depends a lot on how much resources they have to spend since the ones writing on Facebook are policemen and policewomen, and that the police do not have someone who works with the Facebook-site as a primary task.Keywords: Facebook, police, social media, qualitative interviews, quantitative content analysis, authority, public relations..

Vår uppsats strävar efter att beskriva turisters motivations- och identitetskapande med hjälp av det sociala mediet Facebook. Facebook är idag det största sociala nätverket och unga vuxna är de mest frekventa användarna. Vi kommer således i vår uppsats gå in på en djupare diskussion om deras använde av Facebook vid resande med hjälp av information insamlad genom personliga intervjuer samt litteratur. De intervjuade bestod av svenska unga vuxna i åldrarna 18-25 år. Den specifika åldersgruppen valdes eftersom de tillhör den största användargruppen på Facebook.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka till vilken grad studenter som använder Facebook och som studerar vid Uppsala universitet uppfattar att vissa grupprocesser (kommunikation, samarbete och koordination) stöds av Facebook och hur det i sin tur påverkar gruppen och det arbete den utför. Undersökningen är baserad på en enkät som besvarats av studenter på Uppsala universitet som använder Facebook och kvantitativa data som samlades in har legat som grund för undersökningen. Resultatet av undersökningen är en utvärdering av hur de deltagande studenterna uppfattar att Facebook stödjer de olika grupprocesserna. Undersökningen visar att studenterna tycker att Facebook är ett bra hjälpmedel i grupparbeten och att kommunikationen stödjs till stor del. Men koordinationen och samarbetet stödjs inte till så stor del av Facebook, men studenterna uppfattar ändå det som ett bra hjälpmedel..

AbstractIT can facilitate communication among individuals and connect people across geographical distances. On the contrary, citizens of the society who do not use communication technologies to some extent might feel excluded from the information society. As elderly citizens are already in a vulnerable position for the digital divide, communication technology becomes an important tool for interacting with friends and family. The social situation of elderly, 60 years of age and older, is a topic of current interest since they are the fastest growing age group in the world today. Further, social interaction becomes more important among elderly since it has a positive effect on well- being.