Drawing from the theoretical foundations of the ?critical theory? of the Frankfurt School and the media ethnographic ?cultural studies? approach of the british Birmingham School, this study attempts to sketch out a media theoretical overview of the contemporary state of media culture. Using the term Convergence culture as the foundation, this study offers a theoretical background to the two contemporary streams that are the significant and distinct tendencies of Convergence culture: intermedial convergence, its contemporary state and historical tendencies that can be traced back using the past media theoretical approach of the Frankfurt School, and cultural convergence, its contemporary state and historical tendencies, which lineage in a media theoretical context can be traced back to the british ethographic ?cultural studies? field. Using contemporary drama serials to identify and pinpoint these two stream, this study shows how intermedial convergence expresses itself today through media conglomeration in terms of branding, product placement and marketing as the result of the ?completed? convergence between screen culture and popular music as the current defining state of commodity culture.

Purpose/Aim: The aim is to study the critics own views upon their profession and upon the development of criticism, and to thereafter set this in relation to contemporary theory and debates.Material/Method: A qualitative study pursued through personal interviews. The results are categorized and split into different themes.Main Results: Through media convergence and a changed media culture the conditions for criticism have also been altered. But in spite of various negative prophecies, these changes cause no serious threat to criticism. New forums and new forms of criticism actually increase the importance of the traditional ditto as the authoritative voice that holds the field together. Still, there are questions and fears about a future seemingly less and less predictable.

AbstractTitle: Interactivity and participation - a qualitative study about the making of machinima withWorld of Warcraft (Interaktivitet och och deltagande ? en kvalitativ studie kring skapandet avmachinima med World of Warcraft)Number of pages: 68 total, 50 without appendixAuthor: Peter BrandbergTutor: Else NygrenPeriod: Autumn 2006Course: Media and Communication Studies CUniversity: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Information Science, Uppsala UniversityPurpose/Aim: The aim of this study is to take a closer look at the phenomenon machinima by analysing a number of specific movies from the site worldcraftmovies.com. This analyse is focusing on how the content of these movies relate to the wider game culture of the MMORPG World of Warcraft, what specific elements in the movies is referring to and if there is differences or similarities between different genres (or categories).Material/Method: The method used in analysing the movies is a combined method inspired by hermeneutic, semiotics and discourse analysis.Main results: Instead of answers this study raises many questions about the diverse content of the movies. A general division can be seen between movies focusing on the games rules and movies that are trying to present a fictive world. But the study also shows how there are many movies moving between these two points.

The media society of today is changing. Because of a media convergence, traditional media distributers like television, radio and newspapers have to rethink their place and their purpose in the world. This paper brings a new angle to this area of research, conveying how creativity, workflow and media convergence is related to each other. A deeper understanding of these relationships gives us a clue about how media convergence can change the practice of TV- production. In this paper, a case study at Go?kväll in SVT is presented.

In 1993 the internal market within the European Union was formed and ensured free movement of goods, services, capital and people. This led to the removal of trade barriers between members of the European Union. When opening up for competition, price differences between countries decreased and more jobs were created. A single currency was introduced by eleven countries in 1999 with the goal of reducing transaction costs, eliminating exchange rate risk and to further simplify trade. In 2001 Greece joined the collaboration and introduced the euro.

The aim of this study was to investigate in what way content marketing can be understood through podcasts as an alternative marketing tool. The material which the study was based on is Ölpodden, a podcast initiated by Carlsberg Sweden. The study intended to shed light on the interdiscursivity that emerges when brands are communicated through podcasts. Another aim was to understand how relationships and identities are constructed through the podcast by examining its intended audience. In order to achieve this a critical discourse analysis was used as both underlining theory and comprehensive method.

In this thesis, the introduction of smoke-free restaurants and bars in several EU Member States in a policy convergence perspective is studied. The thesis sets out to explain whether policy convergence has occurred and the possible explanations connected with it. It is stated that 15 out of 25 EU Member States had introduced or decided to introduce smoke-free restaurants and bars up to April, 2006. Out of all the countries in the world, 35, including the EU Member States, had introduced or decided to introduce smoke-free restaurants and bars. The result is analysed by using policy convergence theory and by putting the case in a global environment where tobacco control has become an ever more central theme for public health policy.The EU Member States are different in several ways considered to be important factors for policy convergence, such as cultural, institutional and socio-economic similarities, and the conclusion is made that EU membership has been a most crucial factor for the rapidity of the policy diffusion.

In 1993 the internal market within the European Union was formed and ensured free movement of goods, services, capital and people. This led to the removal of trade barriers between members of the European Union. When opening up for competition, price differences between countries decreased and more jobs were created. A single currency was introduced by eleven countries in 1999 with the goal of reducing transaction costs, eliminating exchange rate risk and to further simplify trade. In 2001 Greece joined the collaboration and introduced the euro.

In 1993 the internal market within the European Union was formed and ensured free movement of goods, services, capital and people. This led to the removal of trade barriers between members of the European Union. When opening up for competition, price differences between countries decreased and more jobs were created. A single currency was introduced by eleven countries in 1999 with the goal of reducing transaction costs, eliminating exchange rate risk and to further simplify trade. In 2001 Greece joined the collaboration and introduced the euro.

Conclusions: A myriad of interpretations are possible when studying and discussing a particular organizational culture. As culture can not be removed from its context, we illuminate the effects that the internationalization process has with regards to unifying the organizational culture in our particular setting studied. Maintaining however, that a reflexive look at this culture shows no single interpretation as being sufficient, we try to expose its richness and ambiguities through a three perspective approach..

In the light of the problems the media industry are struggling with, local news reporting is only one of the challenges the news organizations are facing. When local editors is being moved to the cities the tie with the local community is being severed.The aim of this study has been to analyze how the inhabitants of Vilhelmina municipality talks about their experiences of local journalism. With methodological inspiration from the Critical discourse analysis (CDA) this study examined the discourses of local journalism, social media, journalism's role and municipal policy. The theorectical framework consisted theories of media and democracy, Convergence culture and discourse theory.The survey was conducted with four focus groups interviews. The focus groups were divided in different cathegories based on the participants experiences, ages and employment.

This thesis aims to develop a theory in the under researched field of international comparative cultural policy studies. lt does so by combining theories from the fields of political scienceand cultural studies, researching how and to what extent the concepts of culture of different states have an impact on the way cultural policies are constructed.The thesis uses this theoretical development in order to research a specific problem, namely the perceived possibility that Swedish and German cultural structures are slowly converging. Two recent official policy documents from each country are the objects of study. Through comparative idea analysis and with Michiel S. D Vries theories on decentralization, the thesis explains the convergence between the countries by differing cultural views between them.

Internet and Convergence culture has changed the terms of the media landscape. When old media converge and new ones take form, questions about how these should be classified arise, which is accompanied by new challenges in terms of ethics and regulations. One of these newfound mediums is podcasting; an expanding auditive pull-medium available through streaming or downloading on the Internet.This study, which was conducted as a quantitative content analysis, examines the use of sponsorship in four of the most popular Swedish podcasts. This was done as an attempt to understand how producers of a new and unregulated medium choose to go about presenting their sponsor, without having any ethical guidelines to follow. Traditional media is already regulated and have ethical guidelines, that for example regulate how to address a sponsor, but in the new and expanding world of podcasting there are no ethical rules and guidelines.Our study shows that the placements of the sponsorship messages tend to vary and that there is very little consensus regarding how these podcasts choose to present their sponsor.

The aim of this study was to investigate how selected municipalities? use social media, with a focus on how they are working to increase the dialogue between municipalities? and residents. To answer the purpose of the study three questions has been formulated: how do the communicators use social media in their daily work? What opportunities and challenges are the municipalities? experiencing with Facebook? How do they work with Facebook to increase dialogue with citizens?The theories that has been used in this study is Cutlip?s and Grunig?s public relations theories, Shannon and weavers communication model, Cutlip?s and Heath?s theory of issue management and Jenkins theory of Convergence culture. The method that has been used in this study is qualitative semi-structured interviews and the analysis is done with a thematic text analysis.

The discussion about high culture and popular culture in our society has been going on for decades. In few places is it as loud as within culture journalism and the critics? society, where the question of what is good taste and what is dumb entertainment constantly gets brought to the surface. Film is a particularly vulnerable area, since it is such a universally appealing and rather young medium. In America and England several studies have been performed of the reviewing society and reveiwers? use of high and low art-discourse in their writing.