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.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how homosexuality and homosexual adoptions are manifested in children's comic "Bamse" and study the result in the light of a brief background about the western society and gay history. The study has a historical gender perspective and focus homosexuality primarily in modern times. Drawing on critical theory and Semiotic analysis, the study shows how ideas and ideology surrounding same-sex relations and parenting are negotiated in the ?Bamse? comic. 2010 was the year when the Bamse cartoon took a step into the gender debate and introduced two gay rabbits who adopted an infant.The study shows that despite the obvious intent to anchor homosexuality as normal and integrated in the society there are hidden ideologies that reveals homosexuality as abnormal and excluded.

A qualitative study of the Swedish Instagram account Kvinnohat´s framing of media criticism. The Instagram account Kvinnohat is an example when citizens with a feminist agenda participate in a public debate. With a critical point of view Kvinnohat approach society; which media is a part of. Social network with photo-sharing implement such as Instagram is a quite new type of social media. Instagram has quickly become a part of many peoples everyday life, especially among adolescents.

The purpose of this study is to investigate differences of how the Swedishemployees union ?Unionen? communicates with its members, on one hand thosewho are members of local union clubs and on the other non-club members. Thenumber of non-club members has increased due to labour market changes implyingthat workplaces have been fragmented and hence affect the possibility to form localunion clubs.The questions posed in the study are: How does Unionen communicate with itsmembers? How does the communication differ between club members and non-clubmembers? What are the preferences of Unionen´s members as far as communicationwith the central organization? What kind of information do the members seek andhow do they find it? What values does Unionen represent? Are there differencesbetween the messages that Unionen is sends out and how members and non-clubmembers, respectively, perceive them?A case study method has been used applying both quantitative and qualitativeanalyses. Quantitative methods have been used in illustrating the number ofdiscussion subjects at Unionen´s website, the members needs for receivingcommunication and channel usage while qualitative methodologies have been usedin interviews with Unionen´s members, club chairmen and union representatives aswell as Semiotic picture analyses and analyses based on methods of Uses andgratifications theory.One conclusion of the study is that two significant differences of communicationhave been found between members and non-club members.

Market capitalism sets the conditions for how the world is conceived, experienced and organized at various spatial scales (global to local). Currently, competitiveness, entrepreneurship and economic growth are key values that shape how the world is conceived, experienced and organized. Discourses of place marketing, place branding, and the construction of places as (economic) products, are part and parcel of the heightened commodification of space. Tourism has been a major factor in the commodification of place and space. More often than not, tourism has been seen as a possibility for peripheral places, in their struggle finding new ways towards development.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate, analyse and interpret the educational ideals of the ABF (Workers Educational Association) as they are understood by five members within ABF. The paper also examines how the educational ideals are represented in the national guidelines and statues of the ABF. The basic theoretical perspectives are intercultural theory and theories about Bildung and adult liberal education in a multi-cultural pedagogical environment presented by Bernt Gustavsson and Hans Lorentz respectively.The empirical study consists of five semi-structured interviews and a text study of the official documents of the ABF. The data is interpreted with hermeneutic and Semiotic tools. Organisational theory focusing on organizational culture has also contributed to the study.The result of the study, when analysed in accordance to the methods, shows mainly four things.

The aim of this study is to examine if library and archive will meet professionally in digitization projects. The study has been conducted as a discourse analysis in accordance with the methods of Norman Fairclough, professor of Linguistics at Lancaster University. The texts are seen as linguistic and Semiotic elements of social events that can be analyzed as parts of the social process ? discourse. The relationship between events and structures in society will be part of the social practice.The basic data derive from five public documents collected from Swedish government agencies.

The aim of the research project ?The menacing immigration and ideal Swedishness:A Semiotic analysis of the Sweden Democrats campaign films? was to highlight how ethnicities are portrayed in five different campaign films produced by the Swedish party the Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna). The applied theories are stereotypes, binary oppositions as well as the theory of whiteness and blackness. The method used to analyse the campaign films are Semiotics, and the tools denotation, connotation, anchoring, relay, metonymy and myths. The results show that a person?s skin colour is of minor importance.

 The theme of this essay arises from problematic pictures which travel journalism can bring about foreign countries, and in this specific case Mexico. These pictures can be problematic in the way that they can carry colonial elements and form colonial discourses. The main purpose of this study is therefore to investigate the Swedish travel magazines, Vagabond, RES and Allt om resor, and how they portray places and people in the written texts and photographs. This was done with a postcolonial and discourse theoretical framework, whereas empowerment of certain pictures can lead to formation of discourses, myths and stereotypes about places and people in Mexico. The method used to reveal different aspects of the travel reports was Semiotic analysis, Norman Fairclough?s critical discourse analysis and critical linguistics.

In the research field of the cultivation theory focus has shifted from TV in general to studying specific genres instead. It is proposed that there are similarities in otherwise different shows and that these shows give it´s voyeurs a solution to their problems.  The purpose however of this study is to investigate how the myth about the good life is posed in Tv3´s supply.  The theories used in this study are closely linked by their meaning. Narrative talks about the fact that texts, video in this case, contain stories. Ideology is the set of visions and beliefs one person has on the world and myth makes social, historic and cultural decided power orders in to facts.

The aim of this study is, from a norm-critical approach, to find, investigate and analyse human representation in the visual culture of one preschool in order to understand if the children enrolled are represented or not. The research questions are: In what ways is there imagery of human representations in images and materials designed for play? What skin-colors and origins are dominant in the data collected?We carried out a qualitative study in the form of visual ethnography. This method allowed us to use a combination of different data collection tools such as photography and ethnographic field notes to collect our data. The photographs we took of images and material used for play, was then analysed through Semiotic picture analysis.

The aim of this study is, from a norm-critical approach, to find, investigate and analyse human representation in the visual culture of one preschool in order to understand if the children enrolled are represented or not. The research questions are: In what ways is there imagery of human representations in images and materials designed for play? What skin-colors and origins are dominant in the data collected?We carried out a qualitative study in the form of visual ethnography. This method allowed us to use a combination of different data collection tools such as photography and ethnographic field notes to collect our data. The photographs we took of images and material used for play, was then analysed through Semiotic picture analysis.

The purpose of this study is to investigate and increase the understanding of how the two commercial companies IKEA and SAS and the two aid organizations/nonprofit organizations UNICEF and Save the Children use perceptions of Christmas to produce messages in their Christmas advertising/commercial film. The study also discusses if there may be communicative and pictorial similarities and differences in how these brands constructs messages in commercials, and why it may be that the brands choose to use these messages in commercials based on the recipient possible interpretations. The theories used in this study are promotional culture, framing theory, preferred meaning, Semiotics (denotation and connotation), myth and rhetoric (ethos, pathos and logos). The method used to answer the purpose and issues are the qualitative method that uses the theories Semiotic and rhetoric to analyze the material. The study's results derived from the qualitative content analyzes of the material (the brands IKEA, SAS, UNICEF and Save the Children Christmas advertising films) show that IKEA message might want to show that they want to help the customer and that they pay attention to the customer needs.

Title: A new battle, the same bottle: A case study of the visual communication of Absolut Vodka and how it?s positioned towards different market segments.Author: Anna von Friedrichs Grängsjö & Niklas SvanlindhTutor: Jessica GustafssonPurpose: To overview the visual communication of Absolut Vodka and how it?s positioned towards different market segments. Absolut Vodka is a brand that reaches a vast range of consumers through a single consistent marketing strategy. The hypothesis was that one can reach many different market segments with the marketing of a product by constantly keeping some components of the communication the same while constantly changing others. Key questions to be answered are: How do Absolut Vodka address their target audiences in their visual communication? Which market segments does the visual communication of Absolut Vodka seem to address?Method/Material: The research was conducted through a qualitative research study in which four Youtube videos by Absolut Vodka were analyzed.

The making of a cultural historical exhibition usually involves the collaboration of two categories of professionals: the curator, in charge of the exhibition content, and the designer. From these positions, representing content and form, the team is in charge of cooperating towards a shared goal ? the exhibition ? which is the spatial expression of ideas.This MA thesis is based on my work experience as a designer of cultural historical exhibitions. By means of situations where my perspective collided with that of the museum curators?, I examine our different concepts on a number of issues: the meaning of an exhibition; the process; and the perception of what our respective roles are.