Social media, with its immense and continuous flow of information, has in recent years growntremendously in terms of users and content. This increase has led companies and organizations keen to be seen within these channels of communication, but do they always have a clear idea of how andwhy, and are they aware of the risks that are associated with it? Current research on social media is somewhat divided in two. The debate concerns, among other things, what value the information on social media has, and whether the media is really a good communication channel or not. This raises several questions, for example can a company really afford to remain outside of social media with allthe information it generates? This research aims at answering these questions in order to further understand how organizations discuss social media presence and strategies.

Media has a big impact on our lives and is one of the main channels for people to recieve information. When recieved, the messages creates a meaning for the people that read, hear or see them. In other words, media could be seen as a source for people on how to perceive the world and it gives a certain picture of what is ?normal?. We chose to do this study to get a deeper knowledge of how men and women are being portrayed in a Swedish lifestyle magazine and what messagest that sends out to the readers.In this study we have examined how men and women are being portrayed in the Swedish magazine Café, both in photographs and in text.

Genom att studera relationen mellan upplevt psykologiskt arbetsklimat och anställdas användande av sociala media i arbetet söktes stöd för studiens huvudsyfte: om anställda använder sig av sociala media i arbetet om arbetsklimatet inte upplevs som positivt, samt om sociala media används, hur anställda då uppfattar sociala media som hjälp och stöd i arbetet. Genom en webbaserad enkät samlades data in från deltagarna (N = 27), vilka härrörde från tre IT-avdelningar i en kommunal organisation i Mellansverige. Analyser av ackumulerad data skedde till övervägande del genom Spearmans korrelationstest och Mann-Whitney U-test. Resultatet indikerade stöd för två av studiens tre hypoteser vad gäller samband mellan upplevelse av psykologiskt arbetsklimat och användande av sociala media, samt skillnader mellan anställdas upplevelse av relationer till kollegor offline och användande av sociala media. Däremot hittades inga signifikanta skillnader för hur anställda, beroende på hur de ser på kunskap, tar stöd från relationer online och offline..

AbstractTitle: Communications through Social media ? new challenges for organizations Kommunikation i sociala medier ? nya utmaningar för organisationerAuthor: Jenny Lilius Location: University of Kalmar Language: Swedish Number of pages: 46 (62 including appendix) Level: BA Thesis in media and Communications StudiesAim: The main purpose of this thesis was to explore what kind of challenges organizations face when communicating through social media. Because social media is a new phenomenon the thesis also examined how organizations active in Sweden today looks upon, defines, monitoring what is said about them and uses social media today.Method: The thesis was based upon the qualitative gathering of empirical facts. Through deep interviews with five organizations and literature studies the author was able to gather the results.Theories The analysis is primarily based upon theories about organizational communications such as PR, Rogers?s diffusions of innovations and the marketing mix.

AbstractTITLE Birdflu in the press ? a critical discourse analysis on the tabloidnewspaper ExpressenAUTHOR Per VågebrantSUPERVISOR Malin SveningssonPURPOSE The purpose of this essay is to find out how the Swedish tabloid newspaper Expressen writes about the birdflu H5N1. To be more precise the purpose is to find out how the discourse is constructed. The Birdflu or H5N1 witch is its real name is something that could affect us all, yet very few people know a lot about it. To achieve this purpose I constructed one primary research question:o How has Expressen, in the public media discourse, treated the phenomena we know as the birdflu?This primary research question holds three more specified research questions:o What does Expressens discourse about the birdflu look like?o What actors are participating in the articles?o Why does the discourse look like this?THEORY The theory chapter of the essay contains four different parts.

ABSTRACTElin Johansson, Hanna Johansson, Camilla Nilsson Say something interesting! A qualitative study of marketing communication on Facebook                               Pages: 36With the emergence of social media, new ways has been created for companies to reach out to its audience. From being dependent on journalists to provide information, companies today have the ability to self-publish information in the open media channels. The use of social media should not replace traditional marketing communication though, but works best as a complement. It is a new environment that requires the company to adapt its working methods. Although the work is different, it is important that companies see social media as part of the overall marketing communication and not as a separate project. The purpose of this paper is to study recipient?s experience of company?s communications in social media. We have chosen to relate this to the instructions on methods of marketing communication and social media marketing as found in literature on the subject. This is to examine whether firms achieve the desired effect of the methods that are considered most appropriate. Does the message reach out? The focus of this study is marketing communication in the social media Facebook. The study consists of qualitative interviews to illuminate the recipients' views and experiences, as well as a literature study from the theoretical perspective of the sender of marketing communication in social media. The results showed that business as well as audience must interact in a functional relationship in social media. Companies should be more like the customer they are trying to reach. If companies choose to expose themselves in social media, time must be given to this, which is what the audience expects. Key words: Marketing communication, social media, social media marketing, Facebook, recipients, sender.

Title: By what strategies is the old media using the new media? A qualitative essay on TV: s use on social mediaNumber of pages: 54Authors: Marie Magnusson och Sabina KarlssonTutor:  Karin FastCourse: Media and Communication Studies CPeriod: Spring 2011University: Karlstad UniversityPurpose/Aim: Our purpose is to examine which strategies and why two TV-channels, SVT and TV4, are using social media. Our anticipated view is that SVT as a public service organization and TV4 as a commercial operator may have different motives with its use of social media.Material/Method: A qualitative method consisting of interviews by informants from SVT and TV4.Main results: Our result is that there isn?t any big difference between SVT and TV4 in the way they?re using social media. However, that SVT has to more specifically make sure no commercialism exists, while TV4 don?t have to think about it.Keywords: Social networking, convergence, commercialism, communication, Internet, public service, television..

Aim With this study we want to highlight and analyze the media spin of the PR campaign Miss Skinny by clarifying; a diffusion pattern which covers posts published by bloggers and journalists; a framing pattern from the first audited post to the last; how journalists are influenced by user generated content, and what consequences this may have for the news coverage.Method We have conducted a studied of news posts and blog posts about the Swedish PR campaign Miss Skinny through content analysis, diffusion analysis and mapped direct links between blog posts and news posts.Main result We found that a surprisingly large amount of news postings contained direct links to previous blog posts and that the former media serial no longer can be applied on today's modern media where journalists and other players come together on the converged media arena. .

This essay deals with children?s and adolescents? use of interactive media as a tool for doing relations with each other. The purpose is to increase the understanding of the impact interactive media has on pupils? relations and identity development both in school and on their spare time. The school system?s mission is not only to teach formal knowledge and facts but also to train children?s social skills and abilities.

Purpose: The purpose of this essay is to describe the social media usage of five European official national tourism organizations (NTO). The essay proceeds to discuss and evaluate the findings, whilst reflecting on the advantages of social media usage from the point of view of an official national tourism organization.Method: The authors used three different methods of research: one structured observation to study the national tourism organizations? everyday work in social media, one field stimulation to study if and how different NTO respond if a prospective visitor makes them a direct question via social media and finally an email interview to gain insight into NTO?s underlying strategies and policies about social media usage.Theoretical framework: The theories that have been used in this paper include the Uses and gratifications model, theories of one-way and multi-way communication, theories of social media and relationship marketing.Conclusion: By making use of social media the company releases some of its control to the customers as the latter can express their opinions freely in this type of media. One of the advantages of social media is that the platform favors dialogue and feedback. Social media can be used for traditional one-way communication, but works best as a supplement to the regular marketing activities, allowing the activities on social media platforms to focus on branding and building long-term customer relationships.

Social media has made it possible to have a conversation in real time through audio, images and text, with anyone worldwide. The easy availability of social media has created a new society. Companies and organizations have the opportunity to interact with their audiences and their target in a way not previously possible. Welcome to the Web 2.0 world!Social media is a collective name for the communication channels that allow users to communicate directly with each other in real time through text, image or sound. Examples of social media are blogs, SMS, Skype, Facebook, Flickr, Youtube, Linkedin and Myspace.The purpose of this essay is to explore social media's role and opportunities in terms of being able to influence companies and organizations marketing communication. We have used a qualitative approach and our thesis is based on a qualitative text analysis study where we have analyzed 13 articles (the articles are from scholarly journals, magazines and trade/professional) from 2007 to 2009.

Aim: The aim of this study is to understand why people have changed their preferred community over time. What are the main factors when changing to a new one?Method/material: The method has consisted of personal interviews with six different people in the ages between 20-22 and of different gender. The main material that has been used in this essay is the theory of Uses and Gratifications as explained by Denis McQuail, the theory of Convergence culture by Henry Jenkins and the theory about Communites of Practice by Etienne Wenger.Main results: This study shows a heavy affection that the use of communities often centers round the people around the community, rather than the functions that the communities themselves provides. Having people that you know on the community you choose is a vital part for people or at least having the support of other people and changing to another community at the same time.

This study explores how online television works and how it is integrated with social media such as Facebook, Twitter and blogs. Through three qualitative interviews with representants from different fields of work regarding online television, we have concluded how online television is being used in Sweden today and concludes with examples of what the future of online television could look like. Representatives from the following companies have been interviewed: SBS Media Group Sweden, Strix Television and Mediamätning i Skandinavien. The use of social media for marketing of online television is a fact for the companies in this study. However, the result of the study shows that theres room for development in the integration between online television and social media.

Genom att studera relationen mellan upplevt psykologiskt arbetsklimat och anställdas användande av sociala media i arbetet söktes stöd för studiens huvudsyfte: om anställda använder sig av sociala media i arbetet om arbetsklimatet inte upplevs som positivt, samt om sociala media används, hur anställda då uppfattar sociala media som hjälp och stöd i arbetet. Genom en webbaserad enkät samlades data in från deltagarna (N = 27), vilka härrörde från tre IT-avdelningar i en kommunal organisation i Mellansverige. Analyser av ackumulerad data skedde till övervägande del genom Spearmans korrelationstest och Mann-Whitney U-test. Resultatet indikerade stöd för två av studiens tre hypoteser vad gäller samband mellan upplevelse av psykologiskt arbetsklimat och användande av sociala media, samt skillnader mellan anställdas upplevelse av relationer till kollegor offline och användande av sociala media. Däremot hittades inga signifikanta skillnader för hur anställda, beroende på hur de ser på kunskap, tar stöd från relationer online och offline..

The purpose of this bachelor thesis is to examine how public libraries use socialmedia for marketing purposes, and what librarians think about this. My focus of this thesislies on what librarians think about marketing of libraries through social media and if theythink that marketing through social media can create a better relationship between the libraryand its users. The questions I wanted to answer were:? Libraries using social media, for what purpose do they use them? ? Do the libraries choose to use social media to market their organization? Why? ? What attitudes exist among librarians about marketing through social media?The theoretical framework for this thesis is Evert Gummessons model off Relationshipmarketing and the process of Internet marketing, which both are based on relationalperspective. The methodology used for this study was structured interviews.