In the new media society, social media has become an important part of many organizations' daily lives. Organizations, whether public or private, must be where their audience is and many times, these can be found on social media channels like Facebook. Leading researchers in the fields of crisis communication and relationship management believe that social media is a great tool for managing relationships between an organization and its' public, whether it's before, during or after a crisis.The purpose of this study is to examine how the Karlstad municipality use Facebook to manage civic relations before, during and after a crisis. The municipality's approach will be compared to the citizens' experiences of the municipality's communication in different stages of a crisis.The theoretical framework used in this essay is the research on crisis communication and relationship management. How these two frameworks can be integrated with social media like Facebook, is an important part of understanding how the Karlstad municipality make use of Facebook to manage civic relations and communicate before, during and after a crisis.The empirical study consists of a qualitative interview, two qualitative content analysis and an online survey.

Diskussionsforumet Flashback Forum har med sin slogan ?Yttrandefrihet på riktigt!? etablerat sig som det forum på Internet där kontroversiella åsikter och provocerande material får fritt spelrum. Detta gör forumet till en tacksam forskningskontext när det gäller föreställningar om något så allmängiltigt som välfärdsverksamhet. Studiens syfte är att synliggöra de föreställningar om socialtjänsten och socialarbetare som finns på Flashback Forum, bilda en diskurs av dessa och sedan jämföra diskursen med andra diskurser kring samma fenomen. Flashback Forumdiskursen genomsyras av fyra teman; Misstro mot socialtjänsten och socialarbetare, Socialtjänsten och socialarbetares verksamhet, Socialtjänsten, socialarbetare och kön samt Tilltro till socialtjänsten och socialarbetare.

Partly as a reaction to a perceived crisis in contemporary democracy, the nineties witnessed an upsurge in different forms of citizens? fora, dedicated to the promotion of increased participation by the citizen in the political process. Youth councils are a special point in case as they entail the general characteristics of a deliberative forum, with an emphasis on political learning. This study aims to undertake an evaluation of a regional youth council in the region of Skåne in the south of Sweden. Through qualitative analysis, the study aims to portray the origin, purposes and consequences of such a forum.

AbstractTitel: När rykten blir nyheter ? Lokalpressen och Flashback ForumFörfattare: Anna Jernberg, Annica HallquistHandledare: Anna Edin Uppsatsen behandlar relationen mellan Flashback Forum och Gävles lokaltidningar Gefle Dagblad och Arbetarbladet. Om hur nära de jobbar varandra, medborgarjournalisternas betydelse, vem som sätter agendan och hur tidningarna jobbar med de etiska spelreglerna. I viss mån även ryktesspridning.Syftet med uppsatsen var att studera om och i så fall hur medborgarjournalistiken bidrar till morgondagens nyheter via Flashback Forum.De metoder vi har använt oss av för att nå vår slutats är komparativ metod och semistrukturerade intervjuer. Den komparativa analysen för att se i hur många fall lokalpressen använder sig av Flashback och hur våra informanter i intervjuer säger sig arbeta med detta forum.Materialet kommer från intervjuer med journalister, Arbetarbladet (AB) och Gefle Dagblads (GD) nätupplagor samt tråden på Flashback Forum Mord på kvinna, Gävle 20/9-14 som handlar om mordet på Stora Esplanadgatan.

The aim and research questions of this study are concerned about how, and what kind of, problems and subjects that citizens raise during verbal interaction with politicians and officials in the field of participatory democracy. The theoretical framework of the study dominates by theories with a positive approach towards participatory democracy, but there is also a broader discussion on the phenomenon?s strengths and weaknesses.The case in focus of the study is a specific phenomenon of participatory democracy created by the municipality of Växjö. The empirical material that is analysed is consisted of written text based on the verbal interaction from these meetings between citizens and politicians/officials.The outcome of the study shows that most of the verbal interaction was held between citizens and politicians/officials in a vertical direction and that a major part of the responsibility concerning the raised subjects is estimated to be in the hands of the latter part. In the light of under what circumstances the meetings are practised, the democratic and collective minded performance of the citizens is argued to be in good condition, despite the dominating vertical interaction and estimation of trust..

The representative democracy has become weakened during the last decades. At the same time the United Nations declared at the Rio de Janeiro meeting in 1992 that environmental problems can best be solved by involvement of all concerned citizens in decision-making. The main purpose of this study has been to examine if citizens panels is a possible way to involve citizens in environmental decision-making and what the outcomes can be. Furthermore the study has investigated what the participation has contributed to environmental politics and how representative the results have been. This has been carried out by investigating the Piteåpanel in the municipality of Piteå by conducting interviews.The result of the study shows that the involvement of the citizens in the decision-making influenced the environmental politics of the municipality.

Bakgrunden till denna studie grundar sig i den statliga myndigheten Forum för levande historia och dess kampanj Brott mot mänskligheten under kommunistiska regimer. Syftet har varit att ta reda på hur det utbildningsmaterial som tagits fram förhåller sig till de styrdokument som styr den svenska historieundervisningen i grundskolan och gymnasieskolan samt några utvalda läromedel i historia. Även den politiska debatt som föranlett det mediala intresset för projektet har implementerats och behandlats i undersökningen. Arbetets teoretiska del grundar sig på olika typer av historiebruk och har applicerats på den empiriska delen där materialet har analyserats. Undersökningen visar att det material som Forum för levande historia har tagit fram kan kritiseras för att vara onyanserat men att det också tillför en annan dimension av de behandlade områdena..

The European Union is seen as democratic, and one of the criteria for a democratic decision process is that it must be fully transparent for the citizens. That is the only way for them to make their own decisions about political issues, and it is only possible as long as the citizens have access to relevant and reliable information. However, this is not always the case within the European Union, since it is often difficult to get a hold of different documents of the institutions, and since the civil servants to a great extent are forbidden to give away any information..

The main purpose of this study is to investigate to what extent municipalities in Sweden use democratic innovations to include citizens in the decision making process. Along there are three research questions:? What different forms of democracy innovations are Swedish municipalities applying in order to increase the civic participation between elections and what forms are dominant?? What potential influence in decision-making are citizens getting through these democratic innovations based on the results?? Based on the results ? in what ways is the democracy innovations used in municipalities challenging representative democracy? The method used to fulfill the purpose and answer the research questions is a web survey including 287 of 290 (in total) municipal websites. The theoretic framework includes a model which is called ?Smith?s ladder of participation? and is influenced by the research of Graham Smith and Sherry Arnstein.

Modern democracies rest on a foundation of values essential to their prosperity. Two of those values are freedom of speech and political equality. To many, these values appear to coexist effortlessly. However, what this thesis aims to expose are some of the problems that quickly arise when attempts to interpret the values fail.The thesis investigates a specific US Supreme Court ruling called Citizens United. The ruling enabled corporations and unions to use their own treasuries for unlimited independent political expenditures.

AbstractTitel: När rykten blir nyheter ? Lokalpressen och Flashback ForumFörfattare: Anna Jernberg, Annica HallquistHandledare: Anna Edin Uppsatsen behandlar relationen mellan Flashback Forum och Gävles lokaltidningar Gefle Dagblad och Arbetarbladet. Om hur nära de jobbar varandra, medborgarjournalisternas betydelse, vem som sätter agendan och hur tidningarna jobbar med de etiska spelreglerna. I viss mån även ryktesspridning.Syftet med uppsatsen var att studera om och i så fall hur medborgarjournalistiken bidrar till morgondagens nyheter via Flashback Forum.De metoder vi har använt oss av för att nå vår slutats är komparativ metod och semistrukturerade intervjuer. Den komparativa analysen för att se i hur många fall lokalpressen använder sig av Flashback och hur våra informanter i intervjuer säger sig arbeta med detta forum.Materialet kommer från intervjuer med journalister, Arbetarbladet (AB) och Gefle Dagblads (GD) nätupplagor samt tråden på Flashback Forum Mord på kvinna, Gävle 20/9-14 som handlar om mordet på Stora Esplanadgatan.

The European Union is struggling to maintain democracy and tries to increase the participation among the citizens in Europe. The European Citizens? Initiative, ECI, is a platform established by the European Commission to allow citizens to propose new legislation. ?Water and sanitation are a human right! Water is a public good, not a commodity!? is the first ECI that has met the requirements.

This Master´s thesis examines the conceptual ideas of science fiction and science fiction fandom produced in the Swedish fanzine Science Fiction Forum (1960-) between the years 1960 and 1980. Science Fiction Forum was and still is a fanzine published by Skandinavisk Förening för Science Fiction (Scandinavian Science Fiction Club). Both the club and the fanzine are a part of the phenomenon called fandom.A fandom is a collective of people called fans who form a community by sharing a special interest in a special object. The fanzine is one of the many material products produced by fans within a certain fandom. Science Fiction Forum and Skandinavisk Förening för Science Fiction were founded in 1959 and are a part of swedish science fiction fandom, where the object of fandom is literary science fiction..The primary focus of this thesis is the meta discussion on science fiction and science fiction fandom in Science Fiction Forum.

Internet is used today as a traditional medium for information exchange and social interaction. One of these is virtual meeting places where people meet and exchange information, socialize and exchange knowledge with each other. The group has chosen to examine the factors affecting the use of web forums, one of the virtual meeting places that exist on the Internet today. And look at how people use the web forum today in the current situation and how to design a web forum.A survey was conducted to find out how people look at web forums today, 80 people participated, and they got to talk about what they think about different web forums regarding how and why the use these them. Guidelines on how a web forum should be designed were also developed.

Syftet med den här studien är att undersöka diskurser kring våldtäkt och hur kvinnor framställs utifrån kön och sexualitet på internetforumet Flashback forum. Studiens frågeställningar är: Hur diskuteras det om våldtäkt på Flashback forum? Hur framställs kvinnor utifrån genus och sexualitet i diskussioner kring våldtäkt på Flashback forum?För att besvara studiens två frågeställningar insamlas textmaterial från Flashback forum. Studien är kvalitativ och (kritisk) diskursanalys används som metod. Materialet analyseras med hjälp av feministiska teorier med fokus på genus och sexualitet.Studiens resultat visar att diskursen som finns på Flashback forum många gånger skuldbelägger våldtäktsoffret.