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.

The purpose of our master thesis was to investigate how a multicultural society is reflected in childrens books picture books, books for children and young people, published in 2002. We found this issue interesting since children of today experience a change in society, where people of many ethnicities, cultures and religions live together to a greater extent than before. Since children in their everyday life are exposed to these different cultures, we think they also should be exposed to them in the books they read. In order to enhance an understanding of why such books are important to children, especially immigrant children, we have in our thesis included a passage with childrens linguistic development, identification and stereotypes. Other passages concern libraries and their roles in a multicultural society.

The three post-communist states - Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine ? have gone different ways in terms of freedom and democracy since the breakdown of the Soviet Union 1991. During these years, the state and the civil society have been fundamental actors in the struggle against, and even for, authoritarianism.A strong state with great capacity in Belarus has undermined the chances for the civil society to fulfil its task as a watchdog of the state and link between the citizens and the government.Failed authoritarianism in Moldova has led to a situation where both the state and the civil society are weak. The major problem is lack of organization and cohesion; both the state and the civil society have often been divided by ethnical differences and are therefore not strong enough to promote democracy.In Ukraine, the dominance of a strong state ended in 2004 when the Orange Revolution took place, sometimes called a ?peak of democracy? where popular mobilization and protests succeeded in it's opposition against the state.

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 current trend towards globalisation and democratisation has made the theories of politics in pluralistic societies, and how to make them work, of particular interest and concern. Lijphart's theory of consociational democracy is an important influence in this field. At the same time the importance of civil society in transition studies and democratisation processes has been reinforced over the last thirty years. However, the complex political situation that plural societies face, creates obstacles for a healthy civil society. This thesis is based on a case study of Lebanon, a country with deep ethnic divisions and a government that resembles a consociational democracy.

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.

Abstract Essay in political science, C-level, by Patrik Larsson, autumn semester 2007.Tutor: Susan Marton The battle over the agenda-Can media be regarded as an individual political actor? The purpose of this essay is to study to what extent media can be regarded to function as an individual political actor. In other words, do the media have more power over the political agenda than the politicians and do the media influence how the politicians make their decisions. This research is a case study and to be able to complete the intention of this study I have used Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaws theory, the agenda-setting theory. From this theory I have used four aspects to analyse my material which has consisted of editorials from a Swedish newspaper, interpellations and debates that belong to the interpellations. The aspect I have worked with are, how the problem is defined, who is responsible for the problem, what values and which solutions are expressed.  I have used a qualitative text analysis as my methodological approach which means that the results of my study are my interpretation of the material. My conclusions are that the media in this case shouldn?t be regarded as an individual political actor because there is no tendency that shows that the media has influenced the government in their decisions concerning the real-estate tax.

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..

Our language bear traces of who we are and of the culture we live in. As human beings we create language in interaction with other people and with our society. Media and commercials are other factories that strongly influence our everyday life as well as our language. With this study we would like to illuminate how our surroundings influence our language. We focus on the language of young people and their use of symbols, phrases and expressions when they reflect on relations.

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. .

Our digital society encompasses nowadays different channels, which includes social media where many users consider it as a platform where they can fetch news or exchange news and information. This leads to a large spread of news exchange in a very fast speed, which involves the global users within social media to be a part of this social interaction. This study is focused on how Twitter affects the usage of the user?s news consumption. By reaching out to our specific target audience, which includes Twitter users in Sweden, we made a web based survey with a content of relevant questions.

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 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.

The world today is not an equal place. We see children starve, people being discriminated and women?s rights being neglected. The media coverage of women?s sports is no exception.