This thesis aims to explore the video game medium in depth, to relate it to the stories foundon Internet communities about users’ gameplay experiences during burdensome moments inlife. To achieve that, the phenomena is explored through the lenses of Uses & Gratificationstheory by means of a netnography on the ‘/Persona 5’ official subReddit; interpreting, codingand analyzing all narratives that fit the criteria with the help of a proposed ‘USE’ system. Themodel is in charge of classifying the information into explicit displays of ‘Dissatisfaction’,‘Motivation’, ‘Immersion’ and ‘Emersion’. The resulting codification enabled the creation ofeight different types of reports among a sample of one-hundred threads, all in correlation withthe varied aspects of the game that act as categories. The data derived from the conclusions ofthis study shows that players are not motivated to use the video game for any other purposesthan mere entertainment. Yet, the immersive potential of the virtual world addressed theirdissatisfactions and made them emerge back to reality with, mostly, not-sought gratifications. Still, not all players were able to control their video game uses to regulate their emotions,further implying the importance to continue researching cases of media immersion toestablish guidelines of ethical design and appropriate production and consumption practices. 

As museums face conflicting demands on maintaining and caringfor their collections, opening for visitor engagement, and beingmore inclusive in their practice, new approaches are needed tomuseum work. This article introduces a democratic and inclusiveapproach focusing on the relational properties of the artefact–the Method of the Thing (Tigenes Metode). We use interviewswith different museum professionals in Sweden. The methodallows knowledge to emerge from the convergence of differentactors within and outside the museum who negotiate theirexpertise, (professional) roles and technical infrastructure of themuseum by foregrounding the object rather than the curators’story. We use the encoding/decoding model to discuss thestrengths and weaknesses of the method where centring theobject allows for a process of democratisation and polyvocality totake shape, thus allowing divergent narratives to emerge.

Due to the pandemic, along with the growth of current technology, working remotely is becoming more feasible. As a result digital nomadism has become a viable alternative as a career. The emerging literature on digital nomadism focuses mainly on lifestyle descriptions, with less attention given to potentially understand digital nomads and their needs (Wang et al. 2018). In this research the author will apply uses and gratification theory to describe the gratifications that motivates digital nomads and their means of communication combined with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to determine if the needs of digital nomads have changed during the course of the pandemic. The aim of this thesis is to provide terminological and philosophical insights on the idea of digital nomads and their future.  

Since the start of the pandemic the discussions whether remote work is the future has been fluctuating to say the least. Big companies have introduced a “work from anywhere” model meaning that their employees will have the possibility to choose if they want to be remote after the pandemic (CNBC, 2021). Prior to this, digital nomads were already fully remote. This could be the ideal time and subject to study to gain further understanding if the digital nomad phenomenon has changed. Moreover, if there has been an increase or decrease in interest regarding a remote future while aiming to understand the future remote workforce.

Witnessing the speed of growth and reach in demand for service design (SD) confronts us to ask what neoliberal forces are behind this acceleration? Can services, systems and structures really improve at this velocity; what are we eroding and ignoring in turn? Pausing to ask about the direction and effect of change is critical to recognising SD’s implication in the status quo. This paper calls for a reflexive methodology of noticing precedents that are quotidian and dystopian to show how dominant logics of SD commodify social practices of relating and organizing. By slowing down to attend, listen and reflect, our approaches reveal existing rituals, values, nuances and commitments that teach us what an apolitical SD fails to see. Rather than adding aspirational methods, this paper calls for greater attention to the political in SD practice, sharing paths of resistance and reorientation toward ethical, transformative, self-determined service design work and learning. 

After the eruption of the demonstrations along the Syrian cities, in March 2011, the Syrian regime responded with hostile acts against the civilians, therefore, waves of IDPs and refugees occurred for millions of Syrians causing one of the largest catastrophes in the modern era, as a result, the international community specifically the EU and USA intervened to address the needs of those IDPs and refugees. 

The thesis aimed at analyzing the Western development interventions in NW of Syria, the interventions were initiated through their development agencies and INGOs and were implemented by local stakeholders. 

This thesis explored several impacts of this intervention between 2011 till present, it focused on analyzing from a decolonial approach how the intervention contributed to ngoizing the Syrian Revolution on the basis of community demand driven approach using a historical discourse analysis and interview as methodologies, accordingly, several qualitative interviews were conducted in Gaziantep with thirteen leaders of the revolution and CSOs. 

Finally, this thesis reached to conclusions: the Syrians need financial then political and legal support, additionally, it reached to three different dimensions of Ngoisation: A helping strategy that aims at empowering the locals. Wrong implementation of the Donors’ policies, and a hidden agenda of the soft colonial changing tools. 

Digitization is an important part of today's society. Sweden aims to be a leader in exploiting the opportunities of digitalisation. The school system constitutes an important role for successful digitalisation work and therefore the government has designed a nationalized digitalisation strategy for the school system. In recent years, digital learning platforms have been implemented in pre-schools and primary schools, where it is intended that these will support teachers' administrative work. However, what is considered business support may differ for management and teachers. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether digital learning platforms in the school system are interpreted as a means of control from management that teachers need to adapt to or as a helping tool that is adapted to teachers.

This study applies a participatory design approach including the design, development, implementation, and evaluation of a participative website in media literacy for Iranian teachers. In the design cycle, we utilized collaboration with Iranian teachers formulating basic inceptive design in three workshops identifying needs and requirements in media literacy. The development process was through paper-based prototyping of design components of the website by participants embodying particular design guidelines and ideated design concepts for the website. In the implementation step, the website was launched based on guidelines and prototypes taken from participants in the workshops. The website was evaluated by teachers based on four factors including being educational, facilitating networking, being engaging, and user-friendly. The result of this research informs researchers about the benefit of a participatory design approach to design a platform in media literacy for teachers. We argue that the process of applying participatory design and the design components prototyped by teachers for designing a website in media literacy can be a guide for researchers and all other agents who are active in media literacy education.

In recent years, travel vlogging has gained more popularity. Women, men and even families have chosen to live as adventurers to explore the world. This study examines how travel vloggers represent their identities in their films. The research materials consist of two selected films by two famous travel vloggers, namely Eva zu Beck and Louis Cole. The study uses semiotic analysis to examine the material from mainly a psychoanalytic perspective, additionally incorporating cultural and narrative perspectives. The results show that risk, challenge and novelty are three main elements in identity construction and representation in travel vlogs. These elements are utilized to focus on the vloggers’ inner journeys and the challenges they face rather than their outer journeys and destinations they visit. The analysis results also indicate that the represented image of the vloggers is idealized and created with the intention to make a specific impression on the followers.

The study intends to analyze how the film Caramel breaks stereotypes through the five main characters and how director Nadine Labaki uses media activism to change the image of Arab women in film. This has been carried out through a qualitative semiotic analysis where the concepts of denotation and connotation have been applied as a method. My theoretical framework has been made up of the concepts of representation, codes, symbols, stereotypes, Feminist film theory and media activism. Five selected characters have been analyzed based on their representation in the film. The result of the study shows that Caramel has broken some stereotypes of Arab women in the film and that Nadine Labaki used feminism and activism to change the representation of Arab women in film.

Internet of Things (IoT) environments encompass different types of devices and objects that offer a wide range of services. The dynamicity and uncertainty of those environments, including the mobility of users and devices, make it hard to foresee at design time available devices, objects, and services. For the users to benefit from such environments, they should be proposed services that are relevant to the specific context and can be provided by available things. Moreover, environments should be configured automatically based on users' preferences. To address these challenges, we propose an approach that leverages Artificial Intelligence techniques to recognize users' activities and provides relevant services to support users to perform their activities. Moreover, our approach learns users' preferences and configures their environments accordingly by dynamically forming, enacting, and adapting goal-driven IoT systems. In this paper, we present a conceptual model, a multi-tier architecture, and processes of our approach. Moreover, we report about how we validated the feasibility and evaluated the scalability of the approach through a prototype that we developed and used.

Engineering Internet of Things (IoT) systems is a challenging task partly due to the dynamicity and uncertainty of the environment including the involvement of the human in the loop. Users should be able to achieve their goals seamlessly in different environments, and IoT systems should be able to cope with dynamic changes. Several approaches have been proposed to enable the automated formation, enactment, and self-adaptation of goal-driven IoT systems. However, they do not address deployment issues. In this paper, we propose a goal-driven approach for deploying self-adaptive IoT systems in the Edge-Cloud continuum. Our approach supports the systems to cope with the dynamicity and uncertainty of the environment including changes in their deployment topologies, i.e., the deployment nodes and their interconnections. We describe the architecture and processes of the approach and the simulations that we conducted to validate its feasibility. The results of the simulations show that the approach scales well when generating and adapting the deployment topologies of goal-driven IoT systems in smart homes and smart buildings.

Internet of Things (IoT) systems are complex and multifaceted, and the design of their architectures needs to consider many aspects at a time. Design decisions concern, for instance, the modeling of software components and their interconnections, as well as where to deploy the components within the available hardware infrastructure in the Edge-Cloud continuum. A relevant and challenging task, in this context, is to identify optimal deployment models due to all the different aspects involved, such as extra-functional requirements of the system, heterogeneity of the hardware resources concerning their processing and storage capabilities, and constraints like legal issues and operational cost limits. To gain insights about the deployment decisions concerning IoT systems in practice, and the factors that influence those decisions, we report about an industrial survey we conducted with 66 IoT architects from 18 countries across the world. Each participant filled in a questionnaire that comprises 15 questions. By analyzing the collected data, we have two main findings: (i) architects rely on the Cloud more than the Edge for deploying the software components of IoT systems, in the majority of the IoT application domains; and (ii) the main factors driving deployment decisions are four: reliability, performance, security, and cost.

The Internet of Things (IoT) has enabled physical objects and devices, often referred to as things, to connect and communicate. This has opened up for the development of novel types of services that improve the quality of our daily lives. The dynamicity and uncertainty of IoT environments, including the mobility of users and devices, make it hard to foresee at design time available things and services. Further, users should be able to achieve their goals seamlessly in arbitrary environments. To address these challenges, we exploit Artificial Intelligence (AI) to engineer smart IoT systems that can achieve user goals and cope with the dynamicity and uncertainty of their environments. More specifically, the main contribution of this paper is an approach that leverages the notion of Belief-Desire-Intention agents and Machine Learning (ML) techniques to realize Emergent Configurations (ECs) in the IoT. An EC is an IoT system composed of a dynamic set of things that connect and cooperate temporarily to achieve a user goal. The approach enables the distributed formation, enactment, adaptation of ECs, and conflict resolution among them. We present a conceptual model of the entities of the approach, its underlying processes, and the guidelines for using it. Moreover, we report about the simulations conducted to validate the feasibility of the approach and evaluate its scalability. View Full-Text

The Internet of Things (IoT) is revolutionizing our environments with novel types of services and applications by exploiting the large number of diverse connected things. One of the main challenges in the IoT is to engineer systems to support human users to achieve their goals in dynamic and uncertain environments. For instance, the mobility of both users and devices makes it infeasible to always foresee the available things in the users’ current environments. Moreover, users’ activities and/or goals might change suddenly. To support users in such environments, we developed an initial approach that exploits the notion of Emergent Configurations (ECs) and mixed initiative techniques to engineer self-configuring IoT systems. An EC is a goal-driven IoT system composed of a dynamic set of temporarily connecting and cooperating things. ECs are more flexible and usable than IoT systems whose constituents and interfaces are fully specified at design time

As the digitalization constantly grows, opportunities have emerged for companies to market themselves. One marketing strategy that has become a big part of many companies' strategies is influencer marketing. The strategy has shown very effective results, but it remains to be investigated whether the effectiveness is affected in connection with mass media scandals.

This study has examined the effectiveness of influencer marketing on NA-KD's Instagram in connection with mass media scandal. This through a digital data collection that examined users' interactions in the form of likes. A survey that examined users' attitudes towards NA-KD and its choice of influencers.

The results made it clear that users are divided on how the scandals have affected the image of NA-KD and the influencers. The digital data collection for scandal 1 resulted in a reduced average value of likes for the category influencer and an increased average value for the category product placement. For scandal 2, the average value of likes for the two post categories increased. Despite the increase in likes for the category product placement, the category influencer has continued to have the most likes.

The results from the survey indicate that users have lost confidence and gained a worse perception of both NA-KD and the influencers. In order for the respondents to regain confidence in NA-KD, they demand a clear action plan and public apology for each scandal. The authors of the study believe that the survey indicates that the respondents would like to see that the influencers actively distanced themselves from NA-KD in connection with the scandal.

The Arabic cultural scene in Sweden is characterized by its richness and diversity, encompassing various forms of cultural expressions such as books, artistic events, films, and online platforms. These productions reflect a synthesis of values derived from both the host society and the longstanding Arabic cultural heritage. However, despite the abundance of cultural content, there exists a significant knowledge gap concerning their creation and development, necessitating further investigation. To gain a comprehensive understanding of this landscape, it is crucial to explore the social networks of Arabic-speaking writers. This entails examining the nature of their production, their geographical distribution, literary genres, and the dynamics of their interactions within postmigration contexts. The main objective of this research is to explore the efficacy of Arabic-speaking social networks in facilitating the movement of writing and creativity within the postmigration context in Sweden. The theoretical frameworks of Postmigration and Social Networks are applied to inform the research design, which incorporates a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods including surveys and semi-structured interviews. The findings reveal the capacity of Arabic-speaking writers to establish extensive networks that transcend both their countries of origin and the host country. These networks encompass various domains such as geographic connections, publishing networks, and professional associations. Furthermore, the professionalization of the Swedish language has created opportunities for writers to forge new networks within Swedish society. This study serves as a foundation for future research endeavors that seek to delve deeper into the Arabic-speaking cultural productions. Moreover, it contributes to the broader discourse on postmigration research that explores the intersections of art, literature, and cultural expressions.

On May 26th, 2020, the world was shocked after learning that George Floyd had died at the hands of the police while being wrongfully arrested. Protests took place worldwide, demanding justice for Floyd as well as the end of the systematic racism present institutionally in police forces. In Europe, people started raising their voices, denouncing that this phenomenon was no stranger to the Old Continent. Indeed, the last few years have witnessed the media coverage of multiple cases of police violence based on ethnic grounds. The media play a key role as the source of information for the population, they decide what is going to be on the headline, catching people’s eye. France has especially attracted attention with its racial profiling practices that go against the 2001 European Code of Police Ethics acting as recommended guidelines for the Member States. Therefore, this study aims to analyse media discourses depicting three specific cases of police violence: the Adama Traoré Case, the Theo Luhaka Case, and the Michel Zecler Case. Following the model of Norman Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis, the point of this thesis is to find whether the power relations regulating the world can be identified within these discourses. By analysing the articles and finding similarities in how they portray the events then an idea of the institutional and societal power relations in France.

COVID-19 hit the world causing global health, social and political problems. Exceptional misinformation about the pandemic has been circulating through social media and contributed to the public panic and confusion about how to deal with the crisis. In addition to fake news and rumors, conspiracy theories are among the most common type of COVID-19 infodemic.Given the prevalence of misinformation in the context of COVID-19 and the harmful effects of conspiracy theories on the people’s behavior, the purpose of this study is to investigate the following question: “How is the discourse about COVID-19 conspiracy theories, as presented through popular videos in the Arabic social media, structured to negotiate identities, and construct ideologies?The study applied the Van Dijk CDA framework to analyze the text, context, and worldviews. Empirically, it is based on a sample of the 13 popular conspiracy videos that circulated through Arabic social media.At the textual level, the analyzed conspiracy videos constructed conspiracy theories by narrating major themes:1) depopulation of the world to reach the target of the golden billion; 2) dismantling the existing economic system and establishing a new one; 3) genetically modifying the COVID-19 virus in the lab.Conspiracy theory videos presented five forms of conspirators to support the conspiracy structure: abstract conspirators (secret cult, elite); individual and family conspirators (Gates, Trump, Rockefeller, Rothschild, Tedros); organizational conspirators (WHO); corporation conspirators (Pfizer, BioNTech, and Moderna); and state conspirators (USA, UK, China).The conspiracy videos used several semantic and discursive practices including access, setting, lexical style, metaphor, rhetorical, and denial. Ant-Semitism, anti-western and Ismailism ideologies reflected in the videos, affected the world views and promoted the conspiracy narratives.The study suggests that the existing ComDEv strategies have to be revised and equipped with a thorough analysis of the conspiracy theories taking into consideration the proliferation of conspiracies in the post-truth era and its association with fake news and alternative facts

The aim of this study is to examine and to describe how student teachers engaged in courses in web-based learning environments over a period of 40 weeks develop a collective competence to collaborate. The collective competence of collaboration is defined as the level of learning ability a group of students express when using dialogues as a tool for their own and other’s learning in a web-based learning environment. The students’ contributions to the course assignments, the group responses and the collaborative discussions and dialogues were analysed and interpreted based on Bakhtin’s and Rommetveit’s theories on dialogic interactions and meaning potentials. The results describe three different levels at which students use dialogues as a tool for learning when they collaborate within the group.

Kommunikation i sociala nätverk runt barn och ungdomar med stora kommunikationssvårigheter Lotta Anderson Bakgrund Kommunikation och språk utvecklas mellan människor i samspel och en fungerande kommunikation är grundläggande för annan utveckling. Detta till trots är det många kommunikativa möten i vardagen som av olika skäl inte vidareutvecklas i positiv riktning. I den närmaste omgivningen, dvs. familj, släkt och vänner, förskola, skola och kamrater, skapas utvecklingsmöjligheter genom att personerna kommunicerar och berikar varandra på olika sätt. För att barn och ungdomar med stora kommunikationssvårigheter ska kunna utveckla sin kommunikation och sitt språk krävs kunskap och kompetens hos personer i det sociala nätverket (Blackstone & Hunt, 2002; Anderson, 2002). Projektets relevans och målgrupp Projektet består av två delar; där den första omfattar en enkätundersökning medan den andra inriktas på kommunikationsutveckling hos åtta familjer och deras sociala nätverk. Projektet förväntas belysa processen i det gemensamma lärandet då betydelsefulla närpersoner som finns omkring barn/unga med stora kommunikationssvårigheter samtalar kring bl a funktionshinder, kommunikation, delaktighet, faktorer som underlättar eller hindrar, lärandemiljöer, samtalspartnerns roll och kompetens (Light & Binger, 1998; WHO, 2004). Målgruppen är barn och ungdomar med stora kommunikationssvårigheter i åldern 5-25 år. Stora kommunikationssvårigheter innebär att kommunicera med någon form av symboler, men dessa räcker inte till för att göra sig förstådd eller att förstå i vardagen. Syfte Projektets första del syftar till att kartlägga och analysera föräldrars och yrkesverksammas uppfattningar Frågeställningarna handlar om kommunikation och dess tillämpning, samtalspartnerns roll, samverkansformer och kompetens samt vilka uttalade behov av stöd som finns och hur dessa kan tillgodoses. Den andra delen av projektet handlar om familjens sociala nätverk, dvs. i detta fall bestämmer familjen vilka som ska ingå i nätverket runt barnet/ungdomen. Åtta sociala nätverk är aktuella. Arbetet i dessa kommer att pågå i 1½ år och inriktas på att under handledning/utbildning som inkluderar videobaserad vägledningsinsats över tid, reflektion och dokumentation i syfte att utveckla förmågan som kommunikationspartner i relation till barnet/ungdomen. Metod För att få frågorna besvarade i projektets första del har postenkäter skickats till föräldrar och yrkesverksamma inom förskola/skola, habilitering, daglig verksamhet och fritidsverksamhet. Kartläggningen genomfördes nationellt. Resultat del ett Om barn och ungdomar. Alla de aktuella åldrarna finns representerade, men med en övervikt för åldrarna 8-14. Pojkarna är fler än flickorna. Kommunikationssätten är varierande och oftast kombinerade i form av tecken, bild och kroppsspråk men också i huvudsak teckenspråk eller tal. En dryg tredjedel av barn/ungdomar har någon form av kommunikationshjälpmedel, oftast till följd av motoriska svårigheter snarare än andra funktionsnedsättningar. Flertalet 2 barn/ungdomar har någon form av diagnos som grund till olika svårigheter, 19 olika diagnoser, som enda eller i flera kombinationer, förekommer. Flertalet har också habiliteringskontakt som bedöms som mer eller mindre tillfredsställande av föräldrarna. Nästan 2/3 av barnen/ungdomarna har en plan med mål som handlar om kommunikation/språk . Men det finns också små barn som inte har någon individuell plan, vilket kan betraktas som märkligt. De mål som beskrivs är ibland så generella att det kan ifrågasättas hur de kan genomföras och utvärderas och man träffas mestadels på de yrkesverksammas villkor. Om det finns en plan, oavsett vad den kallas, beror det i mindre utsträckning på hörselproblem (signifikant skillnad) än andra svårigheter (motorik, koncentration, syn)! Barn och ungdomar kommunicerar bäst i strukturerade situationer och mest i situationer som är motiverade, lustfyllda, har ett barn/ungdomsfokus och tillsammans med en partner som är engagerad, har fantasi, inger förtroende, är stresstålig eller m.a.o. är en kommunikativ "naturbegåvning" eller medvetet kunnig. För att ställa frågor, berätta, protestera, "hålla igång" ett samtal måste barn/ungdomar veta hur de ska gå till väga, vilket inte alltid är fallet. De strategier som används och hur framgångsrika de blir är ofta kopplade till barn och ungas personlighet, språklig- och kommunikativ utvecklingsnivå men också till omgivningens kompetens och form av respons. Föräldrar menar också att deras barn har mycket mer att uttrycka än de har uttrycksformer för. Om föräldrarnas uppfattningar: Mestadels är det mammorna som svarat på frågorna. Flertalet familjer är med i någon intresseförening, företrädesvis FUB, men också DHB. Ofta är de med i flera olika föreningar med koppling till någon av barnets funktionsnedsättningar och synpunkterna varierar från mycket stöd och gemenskap med föräldrar liknande situationer och olika utbud till inget stöd alls med avseende på kommunikation. Den som svarar på frågorna menar sig förstå barnet i något större utsträckning än övriga familjen. Kommunikationen försvåras med avståndet, dvs. släkt, vänner, grannar, kamrater förstår i mindre utsträckning. Än mer tydligt blir detta när man inte har någon gemensam referens, dvs. när budskapet är mer eller mindre okänt för kommunikationspartnern. Men föräldrar förlitar sig mer på andra vuxnas kompetens än jämnåriga runt barnet. Föräldrar menar att de i mycket liten utsträckning erbjudits att pröva alternativa kommunikationsutbud. Om de yrkesverksammas uppfattningar: De yrkesverksamma arbetar mestadels som lärare och specialpedagoger inom olika skolformer och logopeder inom habilitering. De anser, precis som föräldrar, att de förstår sina elever eller de barn/ungdomar som de arbetar med i större utsträckning än vad andra uppfattas göra. Men inte helt oväntat lika övertygade för egen del som föräldrar är. De yrkesverksamma (i skolan) menar å ena sidan att barn/ungdomar kan ses som "ensamma öar", som nästan aldrig kommunicerar med varandra. De menar också att det behövs vuxenstöd för att de ska "komma igång" med sin kommunikation. Men å andra sidan menar de att de skapar tillfällen så att kamrater kan samspela med varandra och att de vet vad som motiverar till kommunikation och samspel. De anser att det kan vara svårt att anpassa sig till barn/ungas tempo och intresse oftast till följd av att eleverna i grupperna har så varierande förutsättningar och behov. De största problemen med att arbeta med barn/unga med stora kommunikationssvårigheter är, menar de, att fånga alla i omgivningen - det finns en tröghet i systemet, den kommunikativa kompetensen, attityderna och förhållningssätt hos andra inom verksamheten skulle kunna vara mycket bättre. Det finns också kommunikationstillfällen som leder till missförstånd eller som 3 lämnas oförstådda och detta leder till stor frustration samtidigt som de menar att de i hög grad behärskar det kommunikationssätt som eleven använder. Likheter och skillnader: En del svar tyder på att föräldrar och yrkesverksamma har uppfattningar "om den andre" som inte sammanfaller när man tittar på varje grupp för sig. Uppfattningar som skulle kunna vara underlag för gemensamma diskussioner och leda till större tillfredsställelse. De yrkesverksamma menar att föräldrar har inflytande över insatser och utformning av planer. Föräldrar å sin sida anser att information om hjälp för att kunna kommunicera med sitt barn eller att få gehör för sina synpunkter inte varit tillräckliga. Således en fråga om delaktighet och att ge och få inflytande över företeelser som berör. De yrkesverksamma kan skriva såhär: "När man gör planer så krävs det att föräldrar vet vad de vill och vad barnet behöver", eller "det finns föräldrar som har svårt att acceptera sitt barns behov av teckenspråk", men också att "föräldrarna är stommen runt barnet - personal står för det pedagogiska kunnandet". Dessa uttalanden handlar om att inta olika roller men också att lägga över "bördan" på någon annan. De yrkesverksamma anser att elevernas behov mestadels tillgodoses. Föräldrarna (40 %) menar att de kommunikationsinsatser som erbjudits barnet och familjen inte varit meningsfulla. Detta formulerar de som att: "alla kring barnet kan tecken och kan avläsa", "logopeden tror oss inte när vi berättar", "skolan famlar mycket", "många tips men inget genomförande" men också "det vi fått har varit bra men för lite". Uttalandena handlar om kompetens, ansvar och trovärdighet. De yrkesverksamma anser att deras egna och föräldrarnas uppfattningar om barnets kommunikationsbehov stämmer överens och föräldrarna menar samtidigt att de ges möjlighet att diskutera barnets kommunikation med dem som regelbundet arbetar med barnet. Både föräldrar och yrkesverksamma har uppmanats att beskriva egna behov av insatser och stöd och kompetensutveckling och hur detta skulle kunna utformas. Vad gäller de yrkesverksamma så finns det ett önskemål som överskuggar allt annat - utbildning om och i tecken som alternativ och kompletterande kommunikation och teckenspråk. Föräldrarnas önskemål är mer mångfacetterade, ligger på olika nivåer, och riktar blicken mot organisation, struktur och innehåll. De kan sammanfattas med följande ord: regelbundenhet, samverkan, förståelse, empati, likvärdighet, kunskap, lust och glädje. Reflektioner: Resultatet ger en mängd intressant information, men där fortfarande mycket återstår att bearbeta. Men så här långt kan några punkter lyftas fram. • Den vanligaste kommunikationspartnern till barn/ungdomar, oavsett deras ålder, är en vuxen. Vad får det för konsekvenser när vi vet att samspel och kommunikation med jämnåriga också är centralt för utvecklingen. • Barn/ungdomar kommunicerar som mest när upplevelsen är gemensam och väcker intresse och utmaning. • Både de yrkesverksamma och föräldrarna har föreställningar om "den andre". • Samverkan sker med och mellan många parter och där hänsyn måste tas till delaktighet, inflytande, begriplighet, meningsfullhet och ansvar. 4 • Alla uttalar ett stort behov av kunskap och kompetens om kommunikation och samspel. • Varje familjs behov är unika och måste tillgodoses genom ömsesidighet och respekt. Projektet finansieras av Allmänna arvsfonden, Sunnerdahls handikappfond och Tysta skolan. Nyckelord: kommunikation, kommunikationssvårigheter, samtalspartner, sociala nätverk Referenser Anderson, L. (2002). Interpersonell kommunikation: En studie av elever med hörselnedsättning i särskolan. Malmö: Lärarhögskolan. Blackstone, S. & Hunt-Berg, M. (2003). Social Networks: Augmentative Communicators and their Communication Partners, http://www.augcominc.com/socialnetworks.html Light, J. & Binger, C. (1998). Building Communicative Competence with Individuals Who Use Augmentative and Alternative Communication. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co. WHO (2004). Klassifikation av funktionstillstånd, funktionshinder och hälsa, ICF-CY. Stockholm: Socialstyrelsen.

The study assesses the influence certain individual factors have on reseller employees online purchasing behavior, after various UI alterations were implemented on a leading tech manufacturer’s web application.

A total of 207 reseller employees, from 46 different countries, participated in an 8 week long within-subjects designed A/B test. By examining four different individual factors (age, gender, education/income and culture) and the participants usage analytics data, it was possible draw some pertinent conclusions as to how resellers are affected by UI alterations.

The results confirm what have been largely theoretical ideas of linkages between reseller employees individual factors and online purchasing behavior. Correlations on gender and culture exist, and these can be explained and supported by the quantitative data collected.

Denna studie undersöker problemområdet sexualiseringen av kvinnokroppen på sociala medier, eftersom det är en stor källa till visuella intryck idag. Syftet är att undersöka hur influencers, mer specifikt Fanny Lyckman och Amanda Ekström representerar kvinnokroppen i sociala medier utifrån ett postfeministiskt perspektiv, och där frågeställning lyder: Hur representerar Lyckman och Ekström kvinnokroppen i sina sociala medier utifrån ett postfeministiskt perspektiv i relation till sexualiseringen av kulturen? Studien genomförs med en kvalitativ semiotisk visuell analys där materialet undersöks enskilt samt kompareras. Teorin som appliceras är bland annat postfeminism, representation och gaze-teori. Resultatet av undersökningen visar att Lyckman objektifierar och sexualiserar sin kropp vilket skapar en tydlig koppling till mjukpornografin, och att den manliga blicken används. Ekströms bilder är också avklädda, men det finns ingen tydlig koppling till pornografins bildspråk, här är modellerna i stället subjekt och bilderna utgår inte från en manlig blick, snarare en icke-blick. Både Lyckman och Ekström representerar kvinnokroppen medvetet med en underton av empowerment, samtidigt som det finns kopplingar till hur kvinnokroppen stereotypiskt representerats genom historien och sexuella anspelningar, framför allt i Lyckmans material vilket skapar en dubbelhet i resultatet.

The aim of this study is to explore how one citizen journalist, Joakim Lamotte, reflects on codes of journalistic standards and ethics. Lamotte is a Swedish citizen journalist who publishes texts reporting on events in society on his Facebook-page. From the Facebook-page, five texts have been sampled for analysis in this study. This is done through using Norman Fairclough's critical discourse analysis as a methodology. The analysis is supported by Erving Goffman's theory of self presentation and Rom Harré and Luk van Langenhove's positioning theory as theorethical frameworks, to explore Lamotte's self presentation and how he is positioning in his role as a citizen journalist.

Some of the main results of the study are that Lamotte uses the term independent journalist in the self presentation of his role, but at times includes himself in the group of the public (his audience). Throughout the samples he positions himself against professional journalists and mainstream media, as a way to reinforce his position as an independent journalist. While doing so, he criticises their choices and justifies his own choices relating to codes of journalistic standards and ethics. The study is an example of one citizen journalist with a large audience, in a Swedish context, reflects on codes of journalistic standards and ethics.

The aim of this study is to explore how three Swedish media outlets adhere to mass media logic and social media logic in articles on their websites and the corresponding Facebook posts on their Facebook pages. The media outlets are SVT (Sveriges Television), Dagens Nyheter and Expressen. They represent a public service broadcaster, a daily newspaper and a tabloid in a Swedish context. The samples of the study consists of the headlines and leads of the articles and the text in the corresponding Facebook posts. The articles and the corresponding Facebook posts cover the news event of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on the 24th of February 2022. The samples are analysed with the method of critical discourse analysis and the theoretical frameworks of mass media logic and social media logic.

The main findings of this study are that the samples adhered to the mass media logic elements of coverage of events, staging experts and media personalities; and the social media logic elements relating to connectivity. The further implications of this study may be that media as an institution is impacted by social media platforms, such as Facebook, and that news distributed on Facebook is adapted to the platform. The findings of this study are an example of how media outlets in Sweden adhere to mass media logic and social media logic, when covering a news event in articles on their websites which they share on their Facebook pages.

In this essay, 10 front pages of the newspapers Dagens Nyheter and Aftonbladet are analysed with the aim of examining how and with what visual expression the terrorist attack on Drottninggatan 2017 was visualised. The results of a semiotic analysis of the newspapers Dagens Nyheter and Aftonbladet's front page visualisation of the terrorist attack on Drottninggatan 2017 show that the journalists who reported used arguments that alluding to readers' feelings. Large images that like to evoke emotions marked the front pages the day after the terrorist attack. The images themselves contained visual elements that showed that they related to a rhetorical strategy when reporting. Previous studies have mainly focused on how the news media has framed the incident, with the help of the semiotic analysis, a deeper meaning and understanding can be reached for how and in what way the news media visualised the terrorist attack.

The article shows norms are constructed, and how power relies in the norm, i.e. in the normal. It also illustrates how race/ethnicity is constructed, and how whiteness is constructed as part of the national construction in Denmark. It gives examples of how 'ordinary' situations and relations, that might appear neutral, play a role in the current discrimination.

In our time, it is not the product itself which carries value, but rather the brand name that comes with it. Brands – protected by copyrights laws – represent financial and emotional value. People wanting to create social change therefore need to look beyond the product and focus on the brand instead. In order to change, go for the brand.

Syftet med utredningen är att skapa förutsättningar för att bättre kunna möta forskningens behov och bidra till att effektivisera forskarnas arbete genom stöd till informationsförsörjning och IT. Den organisationsövergripande dialogen, kartläggningen, de förslag och pilotprojekt som arbetats med inom utredningen, och som föreligger här är tänkt att kunna fungera som såväl beslutsunderlag som idébank till BITs framtida service för högskolans forskare.

The thesis purpose is to gather recommendations to adapt participatory design to elderly users, through the involvement of an association of elderly museum volunteers. The outcome is the result of a participatory process that included forms, interviews, cultural probes, and workshops where the volunteers and designer collaborated tightly to explore volunteers’ needs and find solutions to address them. This process led to the design of a platform that empowers volunteers' work and recognizes its value. The platform includes sections managed by the volunteers to archive information about the museum pieces, share organized activities, and receive feedback from visitors to improve their work.

This article examines video activism in a context where ubiquitous camera technologies and online video sharing platforms are radically changing the media landscape in which demonstrations and political activism operates. The author discusses a number of YouTube videos documenting and narrating the recurring, anti-capitalist demonstrations in Europe in the past decade. With the death of Ian Tomlinson in London during the 2009 G20 protests as an empirical starting point, the author raises questions of how video documentation of this event links up with previous protest events by juxtaposing representations of ‘the moment of death’ (Zelizer, 2004, 2010) of protesters in the past. This article suggests that these videos work as (1) an archive of action and activist memory, (2) a site of commemoration in a online shrine for grieving, and (3) a space to provide and negotiate visual evidence of police violence and state repression. The author offers a re-articulation of the longstanding debate on visual evidence, action, and testimony in video activism. The results are suggestive of how vernacular commemorative genres of mourning and paying tribute to victims of police violence are fused with the online practices of bearing witness and producing visual evidence in new creative modes of using video for change.

This paper is based on a case study of the media narratives of the neo-Nazi organisation the Nordic Resistance Movement(NRM) which situates this particular actor within the broader landscape of violent extremism in Sweden today.[i] The empirical data consists of a strategic sample of the organisation’s online content (including web-TV, feature articles, and podcasts) all produced by and for members of the NRM and all presented as ‘culture’ and categorised under labels such as ’entertainment’, ‘pleasure’, ‘humour’ and ‘satire’[ii]. Drawing on a qualitative content analysis informed by the conceptual horizon of narrative inquiry, the paper examines various cultural expressions of neo-Nazi ideology in the organisation’s extensive repertoire of online media. Theoretically, it turns to the work of Miller-Idriss (2018) and Teitelbaum (2018) to bring centre stage the role of popular culture and entertainment in the construction of a meaningful narrative of community and belonging built around neo-Nazism in Sweden today. The paper demonstrates how the organisation with their efforts to boost the culture and entertainment-end of their media repertoire seek to add to the ordinariness and normalcy of neo-Nazi discourse and the banalisation and defusing of its underlying ideologies. Further, the analysis of the convergence between different genres, styles and content into new borderline discourses illustrate how contemporary extreme right movements are complicating the traditional binaries with which scholars have operated such as fascist versus liberal, totalitarian versus democratic and mainstream versus extremist.

This article is based on a case study of the online media practices of the militant neo-Nazi organization the Nordic Resistance Movement, currently the biggest and most active extreme-right actor in Scandinavia. I trace a recent turn to humor, irony, and ambiguity in their online communication and the increasing adaptation of stylistic strategies and visual aesthetics of the Alt-Right inspired by online communities such as 4chan, 8chan, Reddit, and Imgur. Drawing on a visual content analysis of memes (N = 634) created and circulated by the organization, the analysis explores the place of humor, irony, and ambiguity across these cultural expressions of neo-Nazism and how ideas, symbols, and layers of meaning travel back and forth between neo-Nazi and Alt-right groups within Sweden today. 

This article situates contemporary forms of video activism in online environments within a historical trajectory of radical film recruited for Left thinking and action. Focusing on the remix ethos and aesthetics of political mash-up videos, the article suggests how revisiting the analogue precursors of digital video may help contextualise and understand new forms of video activism, and politically committed media practices more generally. In the first part of the analysis, I engage with some of the principal conceptual themes and aesthetics that shape the various hybrid genres of the kind of visual activism we see emerging in YouTube and similar video platforms today. For these purposes, I propose atypology for understanding the motley array of video documentary and documentation available online as a hybrid and diverse range of media forms for political investigation and portrayal. The second part of the analysis demonstrates how such mash-up practices play out on three distinct levels when digital videos are put in circulation online. First, political mash-up is understood as a set of material practices in which online content is mixed and repurposed, second, in terms of a convergence between different styles, genres and modes of address, and finally, the concept of mash-up opens up for an understanding of the blurring of boundaries between different political actors and motives in online media environments.

This paper is based on a case study of the online media practices of the neo-Nazi organisation, the Nordic Resistance Movement, conducted in the context of an ongoing project on contemporary forms of violent extremism in Sweden. Focusing on the activities of female “online influencers”, the paper explores the contradictory discourses around the role of women as “race warriors” and “Nordic wives” as this is articulated both by the women in the organisation themselves and in the online universe of the organisation more generally. On the one hand, women’s positions are determined and heavily policed by men in an organisation that openly propagates women’s subordination to men and their natural and biological role in the realm of homemaking. On the other, the discourses produced by these women are saturated by ideas of female empowerment, sisterhood, emancipation and the importance of women in the reproduction of the white race. The content analysis of online propaganda produced by female activists about the role of women positions these contradictory pulls of “White femininity” inherent to the white supremacist movements at the current political juncture in which the extreme right is growing and actively looking to recruit women as part of a broader strategy to “mainstream” in Sweden and mobilise internationally.

The article argues that contemporary protest movements are facing a convergence of what has traditionally been coined as mainstream and alternative media. Traditionally, the broad term ‘alternative media’ has been employed to embrace a wide range of oppositional media channels that can be considered to carry on the tradition of the early radical and party press: micro-media operating at the grassroots level, discontinuous, non-professional, persecuted or illegal. Today, heavily commercialised media and online communities such as Facebook, YouTube and MySpace constitute a common part of the repertoire of communication channels for activists engaged in alterative politics and protest movements. Are these new media channels a necessary means in order to reach beyond the circles ofthe likeminded? Or, do the use of these media point towards a mainstreamingprocess of political cultures of resistance to the establishment, eroding their very raison d’être? Combining a theoretical discussion of the inherent paradoxes in the celebration of new media technology as a source of democratisation and empowerment of civic cultures with an empirical focus aimed at exploring the changing repertoire of communicative tools used by social movement actors, this paper analyses two cases of online media practices in contemporary Scandinavian protest movements: 1) A series of civil disobedience actions and mobilisations of mass demonstrations before and after the eviction and destruction of the Youth House (Ungdomshuset) in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2007-2008; 2) The populardemonstrations in connection with the European Social Forum in Malmö, Swedenin September 2008.

The purpose of this report is to provide a comprehensive overview of existing knowledge on contemporary extremist narratives circulating online in three countries across Europe; Austria, Bulgaria and Sweden. To achieve this, the report draws on a review of an extensive body of previous research and secondary data sources, pursuing two primary objectives: firstly, it maps what kind of extremist narratives are on offer across Europe today, and second, it identifies where across the digital mainstream, these are currently in circulation.

Upon reviewing the available evidence, two key topics emerge as central to the proliferation of extremist narratives in Europe. First, extremist narratives continue to predominantly emerge around anti-migration ideas and sentiments. Contemporary anti-immigration narratives echo familiar themes and long-standing ideas that European societies are collapsing under the weight of enforced multiculturalism and/or that European/white populations are being replaced by immigrant communities and in particular Muslim “invaders”.  Such anti-immigration narratives, which continue to take on new forms and tap into shifting conspiratorial beliefs and falsehoods, circulate openly today and in mainstream media.

Second, the Covid19 pandemic gave rise to a host of anti-establishment narratives some of which veered towards illiberal and anti-democratic ideas and behaviours. These narratives peddled widely circulated conspiracy theories suggesting that a malevolent global elite exploited or orchestrated the pandemic to dismantle European societies, infringe upon civil liberties and harm populations through the vaccination programs.  Anti-establishment narratives sparked during the pandemic continue to circulate and take on new forms in online spaces today.

Beyond the key topics outlined by OppAttune - vaccination, migration, silent narratives and protectionism - this report provides evidence that climate change and gender are emerging as key topics around which new extremist narratives and conspiracy theories tend to gravitate in Europe today.

In its efforts to identify the key online spaces in which extremist narratives occur, the report finds that these move across a wide range of online spaces ranging from well-known global social media platforms to more fringe and country-specific sites operating at the margins of the digital mainstream. These range from alternative news sites, websites and blogs to fringe video sharing platforms such as Rumble, BitChute, Odysee; the online messaging services Telegram, Discord and Viber; discussion forums like Reddit and mainstream social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram. Some of the online platforms identified are specific to the national contexts. In the Swedish landscape of online media discussion forums Flashback Forum and Familjeliv along with SwebbTube emerge as prominent conduits for extremist narratives and divisive discourse. Specific to the context of Bulgaria are Spodeli, Kaldata, Dir and BG-Mamma, all of which are online forums affording anonymous and relatively unmoderated discussions.

In addition, focusing on the transnational and multi-language forum Reddit, the report provides preliminary analytical insights into the dynamics of online discussions on migration among ordinary citizens in the three countries. These empirical insights suggest that extremist narratives proliferate across the three subreddits and provide ample evidence of the increasing penetration of exclusionary and stigmatising discourse into the digital mainstream. 

This paper traces the recent turn to humour, irony and ambiguity embodied in the adaptation of memes into the repertoire of online propaganda of the militant neo-Nazi group the Nordic Resistance Movement; in a process, we dub the ‘memefication’ of white supremacism. Drawing on a combination of quantitative visual content analysis (VCA) and in-depth visual analysis focused on iconography and symbolism, we explore all memes (N = 634) created and circulated by the group around the 2018 general elections in the country. The analysis proceeds in two steps: First, we present the results of the VCA in which we identified five thematic categories of memes crafting white supremacy, xenophobia, homophobia, misogyny and anti-Semitic ideas onto esoteric and popular culture iconography then to map these across a matrix of content and form. We then proceed to the analysis of the cluster of memes coded as violent to explore the iconography and symbolism used to promote violence and death threats and render them banal. We draw on a range of recent scholarship on the entanglement of memes in the rise of the far- right and engage critical perspectives on the necropower of fascism to explore the interplay between ambiguous, playful and jokey imagery on the one hand and the murder fantasies and serious threat of white supremacist violence at the heart of neo- Nazi ideology, on the other.

This comparative case study of the Freedom Movement in Sweden and the Freedom Convoy in Canada provides insights into the processes of transnationalization involved in the (re)production of far-right narratives around the COVID-19 pandemic. Focusing on the online media of these protest movements we explore the extent to which the political and cultural context shaped far-right meta narratives and more universal concerns around the pandemic. The study finds significant similarities in how protest narratives in the two countries were constructed and appropriated to intersect with far-right extremism and anti-establishment ideas but also that these narratives were repurposed to make sense in two national contexts characterized by stark differences in the level of restrictions imposed and curtailment of civic rights. Unpacking the local/global intricacies of these narratives helps us understand the ubiquity of contemporary anti-government and anti-establishment discourse propelled by the far-right but also its malleability and flexibility in terms of how it is made to fit different political contexts and scenarios across liberal democracies.