VILNIUS TECH Library invites you to follow the published new dissertations. The dissertation „Ephemeral content as an instrument to convey identitary values in masstige fashion brands’ communication“ prepared at VILNIUS TECH by Sigita Kamašauskė. The dissertation was prepared in 2021–2025. Scientific consultant – Assoc. Prof. Dr Živilė Sederevičiūtė-Pačiauskienė.
The dissertation was defended at the public meeting of the Dissertation Defence Council of Communication and Information in the Aula Doctoralis Meeting Hall of Vilnius Gediminas Technical University at 1 p.m. on 17 December 2025.
The dissertation examines the communication of global masstige fashion brands on the Instagram social media platform and analyses how ephemeral content – Stories – communicates identitary values. The research part of the dissertation is based on the Grounded Theory strategy. The created framework extends Hall’s Encoding/Decoding Model and Katz et al.’s Uses and Gratifications Theory, and explains how a user’s position is created and how the audience interprets a message to create new meaning. The dissertation examines the relevant and growing masstige fashion brand sector and its positioning on social networks. The dissertation research reveals that consumers are active creators of meaning, seeking authentic and original content in ephemeral brand communication. The dissertation contributes to the fragmentary but much-needed academic research in the field. The dissertation consists of an introduction, three chapters, general conclusions, a list of used literature, a list of the author’s publications on the dissertation topic, a summary in Lithuanian, and one appendix. The Introduction discusses the research problem and its relevance, describes the research object, formulates the goal and objectives, describes the research methodology, and discusses the scientific novelty of the work and the practical significance of its results. At the end of the introduction, the author presents conference reports on the dissertation’s topic and structure. The First Chapter is devoted to a literature review. It introduces key concepts of the study and the relevant research in the area. It provides a theoretical overview of brand associations and presents the theoretical research problem. The Second Chapter examines the ephemeral communication of global mass prestige fashion brands on Instagram and how users decode specific visual messages. The Third Chapter proposes a conceptual model for message decoding in masstige fashion brand communication. Three articles have been published on the dissertation topic: one in a peer-reviewed scientific journal with a citation index in the Web of Science database, one in a refereed publication in the Scopus database with a citation index, and one having both indexes. Seven presentations on the dissertation topic were made at conferences in Lithuania and abroad, and the research results were presented at a seminar organised by Vytautas Magnus University.
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