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.

Over the past few years the Åland islands have attracted growing internationalattention as an example of how to successfully secure the position of a minorityregion, and in the current situation the government of Åland has an intention toextend the efforts of spreading the example of Åland. The purpose of this essay isto shed light on the political discussion about the example of Åland, andinvestigate the underlying political reasons for emphasizing the example of Ålandinternationally. Through interviews with leading politicians on Åland I analyzeÅland as a norm entrepreneur. The research shows that besides altruism, selfinterestis a factor behind emphasizing the example of Åland. The essay showsthat the theory of norm entrepreneurship also can be applied on an autonomousarea, but instead of influencing international organizations themselves, theautonomous area use norm entrepreneurship as a tool for influencing domesticpolitics..

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.

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. .

AbstractThe aim off this study is to research social workers´ knowledge, use, risks and possibilities of social media in their work with clients. Because today the society is using social media networks in daily life and social media has become a tool in social work as well. How does social media and social work cooperate? And how does social media effect social workers? For example the website Facebook has grown huge and many people use it everyday. Where is the line between work and private life? To reach this knowledge in this study, qualitative interviews have been done with six social workers that work with children, youths and families.

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.

This essay studies the practice of both the political and the administrative leadership at the municipal level from the point of view of the politicians and the chief officers leadership role, and the relationship between politicians and administrators. I discuss and analyse how politicians and senior officials practice leadership, differences or similarities and if their practice of leadership raises any challenges in a democratic framework at the municipal level. I conducted interviews with the municipal political leader and the head of administration at the municipal level in Karlshamn and Sölvesborg. In the analysis I discuss communication as a leadership process which highlights ?enabling elements? and potentials of the leadership process.

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.

I have studied how network in a broad sense can affect decision-making. The primary purpose is to see if the political initiative somewhere disappears when it comes to understand the relations between power, actors and politics. The study discuss in a theoretical area that concerns the reliability in neoinstitutionalism to use as an analytical instrument. Some criticism is given to the theoretical standpoint in the sense that there is no power perspective included in the theory. I include a discussion about a concept of power, which I include to the theory.

The purpose of this thesis is to study how homosexuals and homosexuality were represented in the press during the trials against the Pentecostal pastor Åke Green, and to what kind of social representations and narratives these representations can be related.Using critical discourse analysis and theories about the differentiation between in- and outgroups I try to unveil implicit meanings and attitudes towards gay people mainly at the local text level. The material consists of articles in Ölandsbladet and Dagens Nyheter that were produced before, during and after the trials.The analysis suggests that homosexuals are construed as a deviant outgroup and that the majority, the ingroup, is presented as an essentially heterosexual, tolerant community. Homosexuality is wrong and heterosexuality is the right way of living. Homosexuals, in terms of group lobbyism, are construed as an enemy, a threat, against Western ideals such as family values and freedom of speech. They indirectly become a threat to Swedish democracy.

This is a study about the relation between the Swedish school and the political system of Sweden. I wanted to see if the relation had changed since the election of 2010 as it was in that election the Sweden Democrats got over five percent of the votes and took seat in the Swedish parliament. The thing that is unique about this election is that it was really the first time a right-wing party had been elected into the Swedish parliament. Many experts argue that this is the first xenophobic party that has been elected into the Swedish parliament. This led to a problem for schools and their principals and a difficult question to answer because xenophobia is contrary to the school?s core values and the school?s democratic mission.Should the school still be open for political parties? How do schools manage to distinguish between political information and political propaganda? If parties still are welcome into the schools, which parties should be allowed? The equality ombudsman has said in a report that the schools have to comply with the principle of objectivity, which stipulates that the public sector has to be unbiased.I have chosen to make use of a qualitative method because I think the study then gets a deeper understanding of the topic.