The blog has become a widely discussed subject, but while marketers do invest in blogs, there is little evidence on the how the blog works as a marketing tool. Therefore, we thought it would be interesting to create a greater understanding of the blog's potential communication effects. To demonstrate the potential of the blog in comparison with more traditional media, we decided to compare the communication effects achieved by a blog with those achieved by an online magazine. We pursued an experiment where we exposed an identical text about a brand to respondents in seven blogs and in seven online papers and measured the resulting communication effects in terms of attitudes and intentions towards the exposed brand. The quantitative study showed that the blog in some basic aspects works as a more traditional media; when the consumer forms positive attitudes toward a text in a blog, the attitude spills over to the attitude toward the brand, with higher buying and w-o-m intentions as a consequence.

This is a study based on discourse theory in purpose to examine the border-politics ofthe EU. Since the EU step by step has developed into an area of free movement on capital, people and services, the external frontiers have been given prioritiy on the political scene. Development in recent years have put questions of foreign- and security politics on a supranational level, meaning that the EU-member states in a wider range now cooperate in these political areas.To handle the increasing ammount of (illegal) migration to the EU an independet agency, Frontex,was established 2005 in favour of coordinating the Member States in issues regarding bordersecurity. The focal point of this study is to critically examine the identity of Frontex by using Becks theory of risk combined with the theory of governmentality. By doing so I seek to highlight the relation between Frontex and the EU and also that of Frontex mission in relation to illegal immigration.

The purpous of this master?s thesis is to explore how the swedish public library evolved between 1890-1911, before the state implemented the library reform in 1912. The material used to cunduct the study concists mainly of texts published during the time frame of the thesis in the form of books, booklets and articles from Folkbiblioteksbladet, a journal dedicated to the subject of the swedish public library.Drawing upon Habermas theory of the structural transformation of the public sphere and Bourdieus theories about taste as social distinction and symbolic capital, the thesis seeks to show how the public participated in the evolvement of the public library and which aspects of society that contributed to the public library?s establishment as an institution. The findings are also discussed in relation to previous research of the history of the Swedish public library.

In many of the world's countries, there is a national organization responsible for marketingthat country as a tourist destination. Through their offices, these organizations work towardsthe creation of effective strategies and a deeper understanding of local markets. Usingqualitative methods such as interviews, observations, and thematic analysis, we managed toinvestigate how the Czech and the German national tourist offices operate, and whatstrategies they are implementing to increase the volume of tourism. The study focused on theanalysis and comparison of the organizations' goals and communication channels.The results show that the investigated tourist boards operate in a similar manner with smalldifferences concerning choice of strategies and communication channels. These discrepanciescan be partly explained by differences in the organization's ownership forms and theconsequences that follow that fact.

This final thesis consists of an investigation of how suitable it is to vertically integrate forest in Swedish forest companies. Different strategies to obtain raw materials have been evaluated and the advantages and disadvantages have been weighted against each other. The investigations contain a number of interviews with represents from companies with different strategies and persons that in different ways have faced the question of issue. An account study of SCA´s forest ownership has also been performed. The benefits for a forest company to vertical integrate forest consist mainly of safety in delivery, control over the supply chain and company image.

The environment that surrounds us affects us all. Research has shown that we feel physically and emotionally best in natural environments with greenery or water elements. Urban environments are likely to be more stressing then natural environments. How we experience specific elements, as water, of an environment is not as much investigated. There is a need of further knowledge for us to fully understand the interplay between our senses and the environment. Human beings have always been depending on water and the search for it has characterized our deeds and doings through out evolution.

With examples from a single classroom situation, several educational moments show what goes on between the teacher and the student. The teacher?s responsibility in the learning process is, with a gesture frozen in the air of the moment, to lead and follow the student in her tentative efforts at seeking knowledge. Initially, it is an attempt to shed light upon the "not yet seen" with a certainty that the student herself possesses the capacity and the aptitude to reach greater insight and clarity in her understanding. The Validation/Feil Method presented in this instructional situation illustrates how best to communicate with elderly people suffering from Alzheimer?s dementia.

Today, we see tendencies of politicians being more active in social media using selfies. According to previous research using selfies is associated with being self-centered and narcissistic. It is not known though what implications the behavior will have for a selfie-using politician in terms of chances of being elected. This study aims to contribute to the research on political communication and social media behavior. More specifically the study intends to investigate whether there is a difference between voters' views if a politician uses selfies or not, and whether there is a difference by gender.

Huvudsyftet med denna studie är att kartlägga vilka faktorer som påverkar i gymnasievalet. Frågeställningar som belyses är vilka faktorer som påverkar eleverna och vilka personer som är betydelsefulla. I studien diskuteras också skillnader mellan olika grupper som exempelvis kön. Metoden som valdes var enkätundersökning med elever i årskurs 9 som stod inför sitt gymnasieval. Resultatet visar att intresse och att programmet ska förbereda för högre studier är de faktorer som påverkar mest.

The response to many on-going or emerging conflicts since the beginning of the 21st century has been different forms of multinational complex peace operations. Civil-military relations are a commonly studied field that traditionally has its focus on nations. This study intends, in the context of organisations, to test the correlation between a civil-military approach and outcome in complex peace operations. A hypothesis has been deduced from researcher Robert Egnell?s theory on complex peace operations, that states that: UN peace operations with an integrated civil-military approach are more successful in achieving their goals than peace operations with a divided approach.

Different forms of organization in the field of social work, creates different conditions of the individual social workers occupation. This affects not only the people who carry out this work, but also the clients who come in contact with social services.   This survey was based on six interviews executed during spring in the year 2010. The respondents were social workers within economic aid and their nearest executive manager at two municipalities in Kalmar County. The overall aim for this survey was to examine how these social workers were influenced by various ways to organize the municipal work activity. This through following questions:How was respective social service in the municipalities organized?How were the social worker effected in their daily work by the organization?Where there any specific up- or downsides in the way that economic aid was organized in the aspect of the social workers daily work?  The result of this survey was synonymous with a lot of the previously executed research in the area in the sense that the larger municipalities were more specialized in its organization than the smaller.

Companies within the e-commerce industry currently try to overcome the disadvantages of not being able to provide a physical inspection of products, and this is especially an issue for the apparel industry. One way of trying to overcome this issue is by presenting apparel with a short video of a model wearing the garment. The aim in this thesis is to investigate how these video presentations affect consumers' emotions, cognitions and intentions. Since previous studies have found that different shopping scenarios can moderate the effect of stimuli in the atmosphere on the consumers' emotions, we also aim to see if a video presentation, depending on the shopping scenario, could have a negative impact on site visitors. Moreover this thesis investigates the moderating effects of involvement on consumers' cognitions.

Denna uppsats visar vilken påverkan infrastrukturprojekt vars mål är regionförstoring har på olika aspekter så som befolkningsmängd, utbildningsnivå, pendling samt inkomstfördelning. Detta genom studerande teorier som Human Capital Theory, Central Place Theory med flera. Men också genom genomförda intervjuer och insamlad statistik. Uppsatsen består av två huvudfrågeställningar, dels vad syftet är med Ostlänken och vad detta bygge kan innebära för Norrköping utifrån faktorer som befolkningsmängd, pendling, utbildningsnivå samt inkomstfördelning? Men också om det blev större inkomstskillnader i Strängnäs efter bygget av Svealandsbanan? Resultaten visar att större infrastrukturprojekt har en påverkan på vissa aspekter, speciellt utbildningsnivån, pendlingen samt inkomstfördelningen.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how structural changes are depicted as well as formally brought about in the documents of rule and regulation of Uppsala University and Uppsala University Library the years 1999?2013. Beside the documents of rule and regulation, also documents that is commenting on (or in other ways relates to) these are investigated. The study is based both in organizational theory and modern rhetorical theory. The results show that the University to a certain extent gained an increased possibility to micromanage the library?s working routines during the time span covered and the study traces the consequences this had on the library organization and reactions it evoked among the leaders and representatives of the library staffThis raised a debate between representatives from the University library and its mother organization, the University, regarding at which level in the whole organization decisions regarding the library?s forms of funding and everyday praxis.

An efficient market implies that the use of fundamental analysis should not result in excess return, and that any return exceeding the market average can be explained by compensation for risk, accord-ing to The Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM). The focus of this study is to test whether the suc-cessful investment strategy developed by Piotroski (2000) generates excess return on American data, after risk adjustment by using Fama & French?s (1993) 3-factor and Carhart?s (1997) 4-factor CAPM. Initially we form stock portfolios based on companies characterized by high book-to-market values, additionally, we divide them into different performance classes by ranking them with Piotroski?s (2000) measure of financial performance, F_SCORE.