The purpose of this study was to examine how modern information and communication technology influence collective action within the framework of social movements. By studying the protests in the Arab World 2011, and focusing on the social movements in Suleimanya in northern Iraq, by observation taken on place, the essay discusses that collective action is closely related to the use of technology, for example cell phones and Internet.Result shows that modern communication technology has enabled immeasurable access andconnection between individuals throughout the world, which seems to be different from previouscollective action. The new communication channels in the form of social media, has been used for the dissemination of information and news, documentation, organization and membership recruitment in the social movements in the Arab World and Suleimanya. The new social movements have the tendency to be decentralized and flattened organized, they are now self-organizing and that they only do a whole as global patterns, as evidenced by the social movements in the Arab World andSuleimanya..

The purpose of this study was to examine how modern information and communication technology influence collective action within the framework of social movements. By studying the protests in the Arab World 2011, and focusing on the social movements in Suleimanya in northern Iraq, by observation taken on place, the essay discusses that collective action is closely related to the use of technology, for example cell phones and Internet.Result shows that modern communication technology has enabled immeasurable access andconnection between individuals throughout the world, which seems to be different from previouscollective action. The new communication channels in the form of social media, has been used for the dissemination of information and news, documentation, organization and membership recruitment in the social movements in the Arab World and Suleimanya. The new social movements have the tendency to be decentralized and flattened organized, they are now self-organizing and that they only do a whole as global patterns, as evidenced by the social movements in the Arab World andSuleimanya..

Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka två samtida svenska filmfestivaler, Göteborg International Film Festival och Malmö Arab Film Festival, utifrån två teoretiska perspektiv på filmfestivalen med den mer övergripande målsättningen att bidra till ett spirande och stadigt växande forskningsfält kring filmfestivalen i den nationella kontexten. De aktuella festivalerna inringar i förhållandevis god mån den svenska filmfestivalflorans allsidighet; en omfångsrik historisk publik festival respektive en smalare tematisk nykomling.                      De teoretiska perspektiven innefattar festivalen betraktad som en del av ett internationellt nätverk utifrån Thomas Elsaessers och Marijke de Valcks definition, samt som en kulturell yttring av föreställda gemenskaper. Med utgångspunkt i dessa teoretiska positioner kommer festivalerna granskas med fokus på dess uppkomst, visioner och agenda, filmprogram, publik, ekonomisk beskaffenhet och liknande kontextualiserade förhållanden.                      För Göteborg International Film Festival utgör spridningen av filmkultur, de huvudsakliga fundamenten i dess målsättningar och agenda, i synnerhet med fokus på nordisk film, medan tematiken, den Arabiska kulturen, utgör det bärande för Malmö Arab Film Festival. Göteborg International Film Festival uppvisar i samstämmighet med de nätverksteoretiska perspektiven på festivalen en mångfacetterad beskaffenhet av filmceremoni, marknadsplats, internationell plattform och tävlingsmästerskap, i kontrast till Malmö Arab Film Festival där festivalens textur är mer komplex än föreliggande bestämningar. Båda festivalerna har uppstått i den post-industriella staden och dess återskapande som centrum för kreativitet, kultur och kunskap.                      Malmö Arab Film Festival adresserar en uppenbar Arabisk (föreställd) gemenskap i sitt tematiska fokus.

We have produced a process mapping and from there developed a document management plan for the research service at the Labour Movement Archives and Library (Arab) in Stockholm, Sweden. The project was conducted during five weeks in the spring of 2011 at Arab and the resulting classification structure and document plan has been formulated and presented to the staff at a seminar. We found that the institution in some cases were suffering from an inadequate documentation in a number of the identified processes, and also in their records management and archiving. In this additional memorandum follows an analyzing discussion of activity-based document- and archive management, e-archives and process mapping. We have accordingly tried to standardize the process of research services and contribute to a more adequate document management within the institution.

Denna uppsats behandlar ämnesområdet islam och demokrati. Studien är kvantitativ och innehåller 154 länder. För att närmare analysera dessa har vi använt oss av en multipel regressionsanalys .Resultatet av denna analys är att vi inte med säkerhet kan bevisa att muslimsk kultur förklarar de muslimska ländernas demokratiska tillkortakommanden. Däremot har variablerna Arabisk kultur, råvaruberoende, militärutgifter samt ekonomisk utveckling visat sig vara statistiskt signifikanta för demokrati.Utifrån detta har vi velat spåra de kausala mekanismerna i förhållandet mellan demokrati och Arabisk kultur ytterligare, och funnit att framförallt militärutgifter och det civila samhället är tänkbara mellanliggande variabler. Dessa är specifikt Arabiska kausala mekanismer som inte gör sig gällande för den muslimska kulturen.

In the late 1900s the Islamic feminist movement arose in a time of an Islamic renaissance in the Arab world. Even though it started as an Arabic movement it quickly spread to the international arena and became global. Today there are Islamic feminists all over the globe and this study is a discourse analysis with a focus on the Islamic feminist movement of today. The aim of the study is to investigate what the members of the movement have in common and on what viewpoints their opinions differ. The material used for the study is Internet blogs written by Islamic feminists and the timeframe of the blog posts stretches from the start of the Arab Spring until today.

In this study we examine four Swedish newspapers? visual coverage of the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings in 2010 and 2011 ? commonly known as the ?Arab Spring Revolution?, the ?Jasmine revolution? and in Sweden also the ?Women?s revolution? ? focusing on three main perspectives: news values and framing, postcolonialism, and gender.By means of a comprehensive content analysis and an in-depth semiotic analysis, the purpose of this study is to investigate how Swedish written media frames the revolution and its initiators and partakers through news photographs, headlines, lead paragraphs and photograph bylines, and to determine whether or not it reproduces earlier trends of media coverage and framing of non-Westerners and non-Western societies.The purpose of the extensive content analysis is to attain data for empirical research of the visual portrayal of the uprisings? first twelve weeks in Sweden?s four largest newspapers Dagens Nyheter, Svenska Dagbladet, Aftonbladet and Expressen. The analysis reveals that episodic framing is regularly used in all four newspapers, and that media demonizes Tunisians and Egyptians by constructing them as a brutal, uncivilized and threatening group which almost exclusively consists of men, and whose members are neither quoted nor named. It also shows that women are symbolically annihilated by media and that the very few women who do occur are gender stereotyped in accordance with established media conventions and postcolonial tradition, with the interesting exception of women being quoted to a larger extent than men. The analysis furthermore confirms the low occurrence of female journalists in Swedish foreign reporting, as well as demonstrates that the gender of the journalists does not influence what types of stories are written or how they are framed.The variable frequencies obtained from the content analysis provide indicators which are subsequently explored in the semiotic analysis of four news photographs.

Jordan is a developing country and there are ten Palestine refugee camps throughout Jordansince the Arab-Israel conflict in 1948 and the Arab-Israel war in 1967. The camps are run byUnited Nation Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)which is the main provider of health care in the camp. Today, the fourth generation ofrefugees lives in the camps which are extremely overpopulated. The social and economicconditions in the camps are poor. The nurses' workload in the Health care centre in the campis getting harder and UNRWA's resources are getting strained due to funding shortfalls.

I den här studien analyseras olika faktorers påverkan på utvecklingen av islamistiskt våld under 70-, 80- och 90-talet i Egypten. Syftet är således att skapa större förståelse kring varför den egyptiska staten fick möta detta ökade militanta motstånd. Undersökningen består av en kombinerad kvalitativ och kvantitativ analys av vetenskapliga undersökningar, rapporter och annan akademisk litteratur. Resultatet visar att den Arab-israeliska konflikten har haft stor betydelse för det islamistiska missnöjet, samt att repression och ett auktoritärt styre möjligen bidrar till våldsamma politiska metoder..

AbstractTurkey has emerged as a major actor in the Middle East over the last decade, since the ruling party AKP came to power in 2002. Turkey is now playing a mediation role in regional conflicts and has been speaking out loudly on sensitive issues such as the Iranian nuclear program and the Palestinian- Israeli conflict. Furthermore, Turkey has established close ties with the Arab world which has suffered the relationship with its long-time ally Israel. This new presence in Middle East has been criticized by Turkey's allies in west. Critics argue that the country is about to abandon its former western relationship and strengthen their ties with the Arab world instead.This thesis has two main purposes.

This thesis is an analysis of articles published in the Palestinian newspaper al-Quds concerning the escalated conflicts within the Fatah movement during the summer in 2004.The study is done on the basis of the assumption that The Palestinian Authority (PA) expects the domestic media institutions to support the official objectives and, in this case most important, the national unity. My investigation reveals that the articles are indeed highly adjusted and purposed to unify and to hinder further growing instability, both in the politicalsphere and in the streets. The message urging for unification under the PA is constantly, directly and indirectly, repeated throughout the articles by the choice of themes and references as well as by the choice of individuals and organisations delivering statements..

Aim: The aim of this study is to analyse the possible motives behind the actions of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council in relation to the conflict in Syria. The background of this aim is the Arab Spring and the protests and violence that have followed the uprising. While, in Libya, the UN Security Council adopted resolutions that allowed sanctions against the Libyan government, no such resolutions have been adopted yet in Syria.Theory: The principal theory of the analysis is Stephen D. Krasner´s theory on sovereignty.Method: I have researched various resolutions and statements done in the Security Council, together with official statements from the actors, through Hadenius´ motive analysis methodology and Gilje & Grimen and Ödmans theories on hermeneutics.Conclusion: The conclusion of the analysis is that there, in the case of Syria and Libya, are two different parties in the Security Council. One that stands for sovereignty and one that stands for intervention.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att med hjälp av diskursanalys granska hur makt, motstånd och identiteter skildras i de seriösa serieböckerna Persepolis av Marjane Satrapi, An Arab in America av Toufic El Rassi samt Maus av Art Spiegelman, som alla på ett eller annat sätt handlar om migration. Jag använder teorier som Michel Foucault och Chandra Talpade Mohanty har lagt fram och också litteratur om diskursanalys. Syftet är även att studera synen på serier som berättandeform. Jag diskuterar målgrupper för serieberättelser och huruvida serier håller på att ta sig in i "finkulturen". Där använder jag bland annat Ernesto Laclau och Chantal Mouffes teorier om diskursers kamp med varandra om makt och hegemoni.

Turkey has often been described as a cultural and geographical bridge between West and East. When the Islamic AKP came to power in Turkey 2002 many critics feared that the country was going to abandon its former Western allies and strengthen their relations with the Arab world instead. The criticism was intensified when the AKP increased Turkey?s bilateral relations with the Middle East and moved closer to former foe?s like Iran and Syria, at the same time as their long-time friendship with Israel experienced serious crisis. The aim and purpose of this thesis is to describe and explain the change in AKP?s foreign policy towards Israel.The research method is a combination of a qualitative text analysis of Turkey?s speeches in the UN General debate and Jakob Gustavsson?s model for explaining foreign policy change.The results show that the Turkish-Israeli relations have deteriorated after the Israeli attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in 2010, particularly regarding diplomatic relations and military agreements.

Research about what differences and similarities exists between UNHCR and UNRWA in the opinion of a refugee?This examination focuses on a study between The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and THE United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). Both organizations are UN-related and are in charge of refugees, however they differ by the fact the UNHCR controls all of the world?s refugees with the exception of the Palestinian refugees, for which UNRWA. The aim of this work will be to examine the definition of refugees as well as their entitlements and in what way they differ depending on which organization they belong to.As theory I have, among others, used Rainer Bauböck?s book ? Transnational Citizenship?.