The blog has become a widely discussed subject, but while marketers do invest in blogs, there is little evidence on the how the blog works as a marketing tool. Therefore, we thought it would be interesting to create a greater understanding of the blog's potential communication effects. To demonstrate the potential of the blog in comparison with more traditional media, we decided to compare the communication effects achieved by a blog with those achieved by an online magazine. We pursued an experiment where we exposed an identical text about a brand to respondents in seven blogs and in seven online papers and measured the resulting communication effects in terms of attitudes and intentions towards the exposed brand. The quantitative study showed that the blog in some basic aspects works as a more traditional media; when the consumer forms positive attitudes toward a text in a blog, the attitude spills over to the attitude toward the brand, with higher buying and w-o-m intentions as a consequence.

In this degree project I have studied how an anti-discrimination bureau can adapttheir online information to the target group ? immigrants who only have modestunderstanding of the Swedish language. This group is often subject of discriminationmatters, and therefore it?s important that they can take part of the information.To find answers to my questions I have studied different relevant theories, performeda readability analysis on the online information and have had qualitativeinterviews with representatives from the target group. I have also tested my rewrittentexts on both representatives and other readers.The result from my studies has shown that it is words that are the most difficult inthe current online information, while length and structure of the sentences are alsoof importance when it comes to the readability.

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to study how well the online catalogue of The Music Library of Sweden works when ordinary users are searching for sheet music. The issues studied are: Why do the users fail to find the sheet music they are looking for? Do the users take advantage of the possibilities that the classification codes of the SAB system offer? If not, why?The source material of the study is 144 comments from a user questionnaire about the online catalogue and, in addition, the search log for one day (513 queries). The comments were sorted into seven groups depending on the type of information need, for example searches for certain instrumentation or genres and problems with spelling.

Internet har blivit na?stintill oumba?rligt i dagens va?rld. Fra?n online-spel till e-handel och fra?n kommunikationskanaler till ett informativt na?t, a?r Internet fo?rmodligen en av de mest framtra?ngande och vitt spridda uppfinningarna av va?r tid. Medan sa?kerheten kring anva?ndandet av Internet har diskuterats vilt sa? har anva?ndbarheten av Internet i olika omra?den inte utforskats till samma grad.

This paper examines the impact of conscious shelf management on online grocery stores. An S-O-R framework is used to unveil if some established shelf management techniques from physical stores are applicable in an online context. We also explain some of the cognitive processes customers experience as they get exposed to online buying situations. A main study with two data sources is conducted: one quantitative website experiment with 168 participants who got exposed to five different organisation patterns within five different categories; and one more qualitative eye tracking experiment with 20 participants. The results indicate that a disorganised product page evokes not only different scan paths and cognitive patterns but also generates higher sales.

Ensåsengruvan is a mine situated within Ljusdals municipality in central Sweden. Themine was in use from 1984 to 1991 and has since been undergoing a remediation program. Mine tailings from sulfide rich ore is a potential environmental hazard due to its tendency to cause acid waters and heavy metal leakage. Lake Ensjön is situated one kilometer from the mine area. Due to the hydrological conditions it was not expected to receive inflowing water from the mining area.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of consumer generated advertising as a marketing tool to encourage online word of mouth. Subsequently, the researchers aim to examine if there are certain design factors in consumer generated advertising that influence the effectiveness of consumer generated advertising in encouraging online word of mouth. The study conducts a multiple case study of several consumer generated advertising campaigns. It consists of in-depth studies of these cases in combination with quantitative analyses of the encouraged word of mouth. The different cases are examined on several design factors that could possible increase the volume of encouraged word of mouth..

Bachelor thesis in Interaction Design by Håkan Carlsson, spring term 2007, Malmö University, School of Arts & Communication. The climate for video sharing online is somewhere in the border of becoming a place for only the big companies to distribute material with general interest, or small communities with genre-specific interest to attract a larger audience. In this article I will look at the travelindustry to see what possibilities can be implemented into communities with interest in planning and travelling. I will argue that the importance of collaboration with different media can create a bigger picture so that more people can use and discover each other?s travel videos and experiences. I have also taken a closer look at social interaction at online communities such as MySpace and YouTube.

A new phenomenon on the Internet is the online audience response. Mentimeter is a web-based tool where you can create online polls. The users can then cast a vote and the result is shown in real time. We want to test the information visualization in Mentimeter and we base our hypothesis, that a better graph design is possible, on the work of Edward Tufte and Stephen Few. Edward Tufte is an emeritus at Yale University, where he held courses in statistical evidence and information design and has created theories about how visual information should be designed.

This study investigated how banner ads, depending on its quality and placement,can capture a user's attention while searching for editorial content in an online newspaper. Furthermore, the user's search strategy was also studied to see whether it varied depending on the placement of an ad. An experiment was conducted where 20 subjects searched for articles in a Swedish online newspaper while their eye ovement was recorded with a headmounted eye?tracker. In each search task the online newspaper contained either a low quality ad or a high quality ad.

TPB, The Swedish Library of Talking Books and Braille, has requested a study to investigate the organization and content of a possible future Swedish web portal for users with reading disabilities. The aim of this thesis is to conduct such a study, with an emphasis on knowledge organization. The main aspects studied are formal description, representation, search and retrieval, document retrieval, and additionally also aspects related to content. The following questions are answered in this thesis: - How are web portals, online databases and Internet libraries for users with reading disabilities constructed, from an organization of knowledge point of view? - How can these solutions for knowledge organization be incorporated into a possible Swedish web portal? - With regards to content, which additional aspects are present in the studied web portals, online databases and Internet libraries? The questions are addressed through a detailed study of ten web portals, online databases and Internet libraries from Nordic and Anglo-American parts of the world.

The purpose of this thesis is to increase the understanding about consumer buying behaviour when purchasing books online. In order to acquire data for the study we used a questionnaire that 75 students where asked to respond. The respondents were students at the University of Technology in Luleå. Our findings suggest that the following factors are the most commonly cited reasons for deciding to complete the purchase: trust, perceived risk, price, convenience, design of the website and experience. The following factors are the most commonly cited rea-sons for deciding not to complete the purchase: trust, perceived risk, price and the design of the website.

The aim of this study is to identify and analyze the discourse within a gothic online community and examine how they use significant symbols to create themselves as goths and being part of a community. In order to achive this aim, eleven different forum threads were examined to amalyze how the goths created their significant symbols within the online community and through interaction with each other. The results implies that the discourse within the community describes the goths as either true or false goths and that it is important to maintain this boundary.

Denna studies huvudsakliga syfte har varit att undersöka och kartlägga hur unga vuxna frånkristna minoritetsförsamlingar i Västerbotten och Norrbotten upplever religiösa kränkningarpå sociala medier. Som bakgrund till denna studie ligger forskning kring sociala medier ochinternets nya status, web 2.0. Metoden för studien har varit kvalitativa forskningsintervjuer,en enskild intervju och två fokusgruppsintervjuer. Till hjälp under intervjuerna har memesanvänds som material. Resultatet av intervjuerna har framställts med ett fenomenologisktteoriperspektiv och visar på att dessa unga kristna upplever religiösa kränkningar online, mensällan gör något åt det.

    The purpose of this essay is to examine trust, or lack of trust, in the social services. Previous research considering this topic is limited, which, in our point of view, implies the need of further studies. A quantative method was used, consisting of an online questionnaire containing statements about the social services. The statements were designed using a five level Likert-scale which required the respondent to rate their level of agreement. The questionnaire was published on five webcommunities directed to parents.