Humor on the Websites of the Organizations participating in the HURMOS Project
Lamberg, Annika (2015)
2015
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Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-202401121317
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-202401121317
Tiivistelmä
This study focuses on examining the usage of humor on websites. The client organization is HURMOS project of Oulu University of Applied Sciences and University of Oulu. The project aims to advance the utilization of the strategic use of humor in Finnish companies by increasing the awareness and competence of humor usage. The objective of this thesis is to examine the quantity and the quality of humor on the websites of nine organizations taking part in the HURMOS project.
The work was divided into the theoretical background and the empirical part. In the theoretical background a consisted of a short summary on marketing communications and advertising. Furthermore the concept of humor and the theoretical background of it were introduced. The humor that was found on the web pages was analyzed using the discourse analysis as a method. Then the humor cases were categorized on the basis of the ways of constructing humor. In addition the context and the amount of humor was analyzed.
All websites do not contain humor, altogether there were nineteen humor cases in the material. Most commonly humor was found on the descriptions of the services or products. The means of the humor were versatile even in such a small sample: altogether there were eight different ways to produce humor. Incongruity and surprise, and word play were the most common ways of constructing humor on websites in this material. Humor was constructed fourteen times by linguistic means and it appeared ten times in descriptive way. Some interesting research questions arises for the future research, such as humor usage in other means of marketing communication or on the websites of organizations from the same field.
The work was divided into the theoretical background and the empirical part. In the theoretical background a consisted of a short summary on marketing communications and advertising. Furthermore the concept of humor and the theoretical background of it were introduced. The humor that was found on the web pages was analyzed using the discourse analysis as a method. Then the humor cases were categorized on the basis of the ways of constructing humor. In addition the context and the amount of humor was analyzed.
All websites do not contain humor, altogether there were nineteen humor cases in the material. Most commonly humor was found on the descriptions of the services or products. The means of the humor were versatile even in such a small sample: altogether there were eight different ways to produce humor. Incongruity and surprise, and word play were the most common ways of constructing humor on websites in this material. Humor was constructed fourteen times by linguistic means and it appeared ten times in descriptive way. Some interesting research questions arises for the future research, such as humor usage in other means of marketing communication or on the websites of organizations from the same field.