Virtual Communities is an increasingly common phenomenon on the Internet. Most of the Virtual Communities are operated and maintained on a non-profit basis with a direction towards entertainment. However, as more state administrated and commercial services become web-based, we believe that the number of Virtual Communities with a community-based or commercial direction will increase in a near future. In this thesis, we describe our participation in, and studies of, a number of Virtual Communities with focus on the IRC-channel ?3dfxsweden?.

AbstractAim: The aim of this essay has been to study how the Swedish church has created the image of their religious activity through media. This has been by studying the three commercial campaigns launched by the Swedish church during the years 2000, 2001 and 2003. Questions asked are: How has the Swedish church chosen to profile it self? Which discourses can be recognized in the campaigns? Which messages has been communicated through the campaigns? How has these discourses created the image of the Swedish church?Method: The methodological framework is critical discourse analysis inspired by Norman Faircloughs? three-dimensional model. Thirteen images all part of the campaigns are analysed using a semiotic method.

For better understanding of how users interact with the video on demand service Netflix a study was conducted in 10 Swedish households. This study is based on the well-established heuristic evaluation method of Jacob Nielsen, which we modified slightly by letting the users to act as ?evaluation experts? and informing them about the heuristic rules of thumb during the evaluation process. The purpose of this study was to identify usability problems when people interact with Netflix? interface.

Since a few years back television has been on a verge of an enormous digital change. Web-TV is now growing at an incredible rate and is said to completely change the way we consume TV. The purpose of this essay is to determine and gain an understanding of how representatives of the broadcast industry looks at the phenomenon of web-TV and especially the different kinds of online video services and how they believe this will affect the television. Methods used are qualitative interviews which we compared with previous studies on the subject and acknowledged communication theories. The respondents were people with good insight and understanding of the media and TV industry.

This c-level essay examines how deaf and hearing impaired individuals use smartphones to live and communicate in a ?hearing world?. The main target is to find some understanding of the struggles of this population and smartphones have made it easier to adapt to the hearing worlds? demands with the applications that follow. To acquire the information for this essay, representatives from both the deaf and hearing impaired communities were interviewed.

We have in this study preformed a quantitative examination on how hooligans use film and new technologies to spread private videos on the Internet. With today´s technologies it is very easy for hooligans to publish their videos. In this study, we have choosen to do a questionnaire poll based on seven questions about what people think of hooliganviolence on online video sharing sites. We have also conducted an online interview with a former swedish hooligan. The people who participated in our study are all anonymous, and therefore we have no age or gender included in our study.

In today's fast-paced, intense and complex media environment, it is hard for non-profit charity organizations to reach out and get their messages heard.In this study we examine whether the theories of advertising signaling also applies for charities. Past studies of the signaling theories indicates that higher perceived advertising expense leads to more positive effects on purchase behavior and brand perceptions. However, we believe that this does not apply for a charity organization. We argue that since charitable organizations have a fundamentally different mission than commercial companies, they will need different ways to signal quality and credibility, and therefore the common signal-theories will not hold for these organizations.To test our hypotheses, we conducted two surveys where the respondents saw one of five versions of the same ad for a well-known Swedish charity organization, or one of two ads for a commercial corporation. The ads had been manipulated to simulate different levels of perceived cost.Our results shows that perceived ad cost only affects attitude towards the ad if a charity was the sender, whereas perceived ad cost affects intentions, attitudes and credibility if a commercial corporation was the sender.

This essay describes a single case self-study of a music composer in order to track the compositional process in real time. In the study the subject and the researcher are the same person. The study builds on previous empirical studies that have used methodological approaches such as analysis of computer-based digital data collection, verbal protocol and video observations. It deals with issues of the compositional process related to for example time consumption, number of artistic decisions, the different roles and skills of a music composer, and methods of research in the musical composition process. During three shifts the researcher worked as a music composer dealing with the issue of converting an audio sketch of a composition into a representative finished audio product.

Forskning och nya innovationer inom området medieteknik skapar nya möjligheter inom den svenska sjukvården. I denna rapport undersöks fem telemedicinska scenarier från Karolinska Universitetssjukhuset i Stockholm och tre systemkoncept från forskningsgruppen Mediating Presence. Systemkoncepten är: Hydra, Det Medierade Ritbordet och Video Orchestration. Syftet är att utforska potentialen hos dessa systemkoncept i de undersökta sjukvårdsscenarierna. Genom litteraturstudier, intervjuer och observationer har information samlats om scenarier och systemkoncept. Med detta som grund har ett framework tagits fram för att utvärdera vilken potential dessa tre systemkoncept har i de undersökta sjukvårdsscenarierna.

Each year, Heterobasidion spp. is a major cause of economic losses to forestry in the northernhemisphere, including Sweden. New results indicate that pre?commercial thinnings could be at riskfor Heterobasidion spp. infections.

The purpose of this essay is to study the role of web radio in Sweden. To fulfill the purpose we have done a case study of two Swedish radio stations: Sveriges Radio AB, which is a public service station, and a commercial station called Mix Megapol. By interviewing two persons from each station and analyzing the contents of their web sites, we have tried to see how the relationship between radio, Internet and web radio looks like. Thus, our method is qualitative. We have come to many conclusion of which some are: The new medium web radio borrows qualities from the traditional radio.

Successful forest regeneration is a prerequisite for sustainable forest management. Therefore, it is important to prevent browsing damage on the commercially important tree species Scots pine. In this study I have tested a new alternative way to increase the available amount of forage and increase the use of these resources by especially moose. The method is based on a slash treatment at harvest, where the accessibility of slash as forage is increased during final felling or commercial thinning by gathering the slash and putting the Scots pine slash on top of the slash piles. This study has compared the availability of forage, the amount of browsed biomass and the number of fecal pellet groups between conventional and slash treated stands after final felling and commercial thinning in southern Sweden.

We would like to learn more about how the restrictive policy against incentive programmes affects the board’s of Swedish state owned commercial firms ability to govern management in an efficient way. We also want to find out if there are different consequences in reference to this that are not directly linked to corporate governance issues. Our empiric observations have been made in order to profoundly explore the subject and examine it through the eyes of professional individuals, all expressing different views and standpoints. We conclude that the most efficient structure is when an active board is complemented by a well structured and individualised incentive programme. However, this thesis conclude that this structure is not possible given the current guidelines and policies employed by the state, which in turn might lead to sub optimizations in the governing..

Jag följde under ett par månader ett antal elever och studenter i ett projekt som pågick under hösten 2007. Utifrån en diskussion om dokumentation och maktutövning som bygger på en Foucaultsk förståelse av makt- och diskursbegreppen tog jag fram en modell för pedagogisk dokumentation med video där dokumentationens form och innehåll bestämdes av den som blev dokumenterad: två av tio elever och två av fyra studenter fick i uppgift att spela in en minut videofilm om dagen som dokumentation av ett veckolångt projekt. Dessa filmer, samt observationer av arbetet under projektveckan, ligger till grund för en utvärdering av metoden, samt en analys av vilka maktstrategier som använts av aktörerna inom den diskurs projektet utgör. Metoden visade sig svår att förankra hos deltagarna och ansatsen att låta dem styra över materialet blev svårare att förverkliga än jag föreställt mig. För en bredare uppslutning i den avslutande gruppdiskussionen hade jag i efterhand velat engagera fler än fyra av deltagarna i dokumenterandet. I analysen av hur makt utövades mellan grupper i projektet fann jag att studenterna ofta använde vad som kan kallas för ett problemformuleringsprivilegium för att styra arbetet, och att de vid behov legitimerade det genom att låna in argument från utanpåliggande diskurser, främst från skolans värld. Eleverna, som saknade problemformuleringsprivilegiet, svarade med att göra motstånd genom bland annat arbetsvägran..

In this paper, we examine the attitudes of 16- to 19-year olds towards stealth viral marketing in the form of videos posted on websites such as Youtube. Apart from their general attitudes towards the phenomenon, we were also concerned with their views on the ethics involved in this marketing method and how this affects their view on the companies behind the advertising. To accomplish this, we administered a survey to a sample chosen by convenience. Using the Persuasion Knowledge Model and prior research on the subject, we then analyzed the gathered data and reached the conclusion that the respondents in our sample were mainly positive towards stealth viral marketing in this particular form, that they generally did not consider it unethical and that even though most considered the companies to be responsible for such videos, teenagers were not likely to take negative actions against them if they found out that a video that they had seen was in fact a stealth viral video..