Double nailing of dissertations in Strategic Communication

Publicerad 15 maj 2020

On Friday May 15:th, two of our phd students, Hui Zhao and Rickard Andersson, nailed down their thesis’.

Nailing is a Swedish academic ritual in connection with the presentation of a doctoral dissertation. Three weeks before the dissertation, the thesis must be published, and from this date, the University must provide the thesis so that anybody who would like to read it in order to be able to make any questioning during the actual thesis.

As of the ongoing Covid19, the Department is following the Swedish physical distancing recommendations and the nailing was held as a Zoom meeting as well as sent Live through the Department’s Instagram account, #strategiccommunicationatlu. Unfortunately our Phd student Hui Zhao with her thesis titel; ”Politicizing crisis communication via social media: A contextual understanding of organizational crises in China”, could not be physically on site. Instead, one of her supervisors, Senior Lecturer Charlotte Simonsson, nailed down the thesis, but also held a short speech in connection to the thesis. Ms Zhao’s work aims to increase the knowledge about how societal contexts shape the social construction of crises in Chinese social media. Moreover, it advances the context-oriented tradition by scrutinizing the large-scale dynamics of societal contexts in crisis communication. To this date the thesis is a very accurate and interesting piece and can also easily be related to the current crisis of Covid19.

Mats Heide, Professor at the Department of Strategic Communication, and main supervisor started the nailing procedure of the second thesis with a short speech for Mr Rickard Andersson’s and his piece of work; “Strategic communication at the organizational frontline: Towards a better understanding of employees as communicators”. The thesis problematizes the understanding of employees as communicators by empirically investigating the employee communication role and communication responsibility. Through explicating the phenomenon, the knowledge contributes to challenge widespread idealistic thinking of employees’ communication role by improving and broadening our understanding of it, as well as its more problematic consequences. The thesis gives an in-depth knowledge to the real world of how we act as communicators in our everyday work life and how it affects the surroundings in the way we talk and act as employees’.

The dissertation for ”Politicizing crisis communication via social media: A contextual understanding of organizational crises in China”, takes place through Zoom on Tuesday June 9 at 13 o’clock.

The dissertation for “Strategic communication at the organizational frontline: Towards a better understanding of employees as communicators”, takes place at Campus Helsingborg – Lund University on Friday June 12 at 13 o´clock. It will be held as a Zoom meeting with people on site, max 50 people. Priority gives to relatives and staff needed.