Cecilia Cassinger

My research interests lie primarily in the field of marketing and brand communication. I am particularly interested in participatory communication processes, involving different actors, and negotiations of the meanings of crises, organisations, brands, etc. Another related research interest concern the transformative potential of the mundane (non-strategic!) practices in everyday life, and the conflicts that may arise when lived experiences and meanings are appropriated and valued in economic terms.

I currently work on, what can be described as, three separate, though related, research projects. The overriding objective of the projects is to improve our understanding of the conditions and practices of participatory communication processes on digital platforms and in the promotion of places. Each project is described in more detail, below.

1) Place branding. The first project includes several studies on the branding of cities, regions, and nations in collaboration with different colleagues. The studies deal with place branding as an instance of strategic communication and examines place branding strategies by means of cultural and practice based approaches. The research is predominately conducted in cities and sub-regions located in the Oresund region in southern Sweden.

2) Digitalisation and visualisation of guide services in a sharing economy. The second project examines the process of developing a digital services platform within adventure tourism and how experiences and offers are visualised. Digital and visual communication is central to the rapidly growing sharing economy, which is built on peer-to-peer exchange on predominately digital platforms. The project contributes with new knowledge on digitalisation and visualisation in the tourism industry. This type of knowledge can increase the understanding of how visualisation on digital platforms can prepare, mediate and deepen visitors’ experiences. In addition, it provides insight into the implications of such digital platforms for existing business models. The project is funded by BFUF and carried out in collaboration with Mia Larson at the Department of Service Management, Lund University.

3) Smartphone photography, reputation, and crisis. The third project examines the role of smartphone photographic practice in reputation management and crisis communication. The results of this study will help us to understand how the ubiquity of images in social media platforms impact the reputation of the organisation and how such images can be effectively responded to in times of crisis. The project is partly funded by the Crafoord foundation and is carried out in collaboration with Åsa Thelander at the Department of Strategic Communication, Lund University.