The potential of information technology as a means to invigorate democratic practise is constantly under discussion. Regardless of the differing opinions as to the most suitable way to utilise IT, there are certain democratic core values that have to be considered. One of these is freedom of information, defined by us as the right of every citizen to seek, obtain and express information. The aim of this study is to explore whether the use of IT as a means to enhance democracy can strengthen the citizens right to freedom of information. As an instrument for analysis we use an article by Jan van Dijk, professor of communication science.

The definition of an expectation gap is, when the local municipal politician and the audited apprehensions and expectations gets apart about what auditors are going to work with and what they are going to accomplish.Svenska Kommunförbundet writes in their publication Fullmäktige och revisionen (2004) that the communication between the auditors and the audited is important so the final result becomes great. Apart from the communication, the recurring information about auditing is important to increase the knowledge and understanding. Are there expectations on what the auditors are going to review and discover among the audited, when there probably are expectations from the inhabitants on the auditing. This leads us to our purpose of our essay which is to investigate and describe if there exist an expectation gap between the auditors and the social welfare boards in the primary municipality. The method we used to collect our data was a guided telephone interview with 66 persons.

AbstractThis essay investigates what knowledge members of staff in day care centres for grown up people with disabilities have about Alternative and Augmentative Communication, AAC (in Swedish, Alterantiv och Kompletterande Kommunikation, AKK). Day care centres are working places for people with disabilities who do not have the possibility, caused of their disability, to work in ordinary works in the open market.To communicate with other people is a human right for all people even if you have a disability, even if you don?t have a spoken language or if you, because of your disability, have difficulties to understand a spoken language. When you don?t have a spoken language you need different ways to be able to communicate, make choices and take part in activities in the community.

 The aim of this two-years master?s thesis is to examine the role of the body and the importance of nonverbal communication in the library workplace and to explore the possibility of becoming more nonverbally skilled. For this purpose a course was developed and presented to nine librarians in a public library in the vicinity of Stockholm in February, 2011. Qualitative interviews with the librarians were conducted after the course.Important theories for this work were Annemaree Lloyd?s thoughts on corporeality, Erving Goffman?s dramaturgical sociology and John Dewey?s learning by doing.

The purpose of this study is to see how secondary schools in Skelleftea? County market themselves in order to attract students. How the schools portrait themselfs, what is in focus in the information material and how the schools communicate their message to the students who are about to choose schools are the questions asked. The study contains both municipal secondary schools and independent secondary schools. A text analysis has been implemented on texts from the schools websites and interviews were conducted with five respondents from the municipal secondary schools.

This surveys hypothesis is based on the notion that all citizens have the right to access information of the municipality they live in. The aim of the study is to examine how residents of Vilhelmina municipality take note of the current information, and also how they would proceed to access information in the future. In order to conceptualise the results these following theories were used: digital divide, digital immigrants, digital native, uses and gratification theory, social capital, communications strategies and two-way communication. The survey is conducted with four focus group interviews and one separate interview with a person working at the municipal office. The focus groups were divided into age categories in order to see the similarities and differences between the groups' media habits and preferences of future communications.

Current technology offers many possibilities for remotecommunication. Nevertheless, people with cognitive and communicativedisabilities have limited access to common communication technology like textmessaging via a mobile phone. This study is part of the project Text messagingwith picture symbols - a possibility for AAC users and people with cognitiveimpairments. Semi structured interviews were used to investigate three menand four women?s experiences of using Windows mobiles with adaptedfunctions for text messaging.

The purpose of the study is to examine the multilingual student?s use of IT in school.The study also highlights the teacher?s view of development and how they use IT in their own teaching.A qualitative approach study was conducted to acquire a deeper understanding of students' language learning by using IT. In the study, it was assumed socio-cultural perspective in which learning takes place through interaction with others.The result shows that multilingual students have difficulty understanding information available on the internet and they are either waiting to meet a teacher to get a clearer picture of what to do or doing tasks even though in some cases misunderstand the task. Language teachers also confirm student?s impression and at the same time express the concern that students are reading less.This study shows that there may be correlation between students' learning motivation and an understanding of instructions online.

Earlier research has shown the difficulty of defining insulting behaviour in the workplace. It has been noted that the individual and subjective definition is connected to the specific situation in which the potentially insulting incidence occurred. In this study we designed a quantitative questionnaire in order to hopefully elucidate the comprehension of insulting behaviour and furthermore enable a more in-depth investigation on how important the contextual meaning is. This study examined 140 (n=140) working adult?s attitudes towards insulting behaviour in the workplace and the importance of the contextual variables.

In this paper we examine how young women present themselves on their weblogs. The main purpose of this study is to get their own opinions and thoughts about their own blogging, to see if we can find norms for how they present themselves and how the presentation online matches themselves offline. We put this in relation to information technologies, social software and Computer mediated communication, CMC. It´s also in our interest to see how the phenomenon of blogs, its role and methods of communication have changed and developed in the last few years, and whether there are differences in the way people use it according to age. The major finding is that, unlike previous research, the women in our study tend to be themselves in their weblogs and they do not manipulate their identities.

Current technology offers many possibilities for remotecommunication. Nevertheless, people with cognitive and communicativedisabilities have limited access to common communication technology like textmessaging via a mobile phone. This study is part of the project Text messagingwith picture symbols - a possibility for AAC users and people with cognitiveimpairments. Semi structured interviews were used to investigate three menand four women?s experiences of using Windows mobiles with adaptedfunctions for text messaging.

This essay examines migration paths through Sweden. There has been a debate in August 2010 that Sweden is regarded as a backdoor for non European immigrants to come over Denmark. It has been discovered through Denmark?s statistics and is regarded as negative by the Danish government. Denmark and Sweden are two countries that are socio- , economically- and culturally similar, but went in two different directions, especially with immigration policy.

The main purpose of a logotype is to harmonize with a company?s business concept and culture. This study is based on the receiver?s attitudes about three different logotypes - Volvo, Telia and Mcdonald's. It informs the reader about the importance of a logotype as a mean of communication and if the perceptions of the logotype harmonize with the profile of the company.

 The purpose of this study is to investigate the attitude to and experience of information and communication technology (ICT) in teachers teaching and what motivates them. The study is qualitative and its research material is based on interviews. There are eight interviews and they where carried out at one school with a stated IT profile and at another school without a stated IT profile. The two schools are located in different municipalities, but both are secondary schools. The result shows that there are differences in attitude between the two schools. The school with a stated IT profile seems to have a more open mind of using ICT when teaching, but both schools sees the lack of availability as one of the main hindrance for using it. None of the participating teachers saw themselves as controlled to use ICT in their teaching.

AbstractTitle: Transparency within Public Relations ? A study about PR-companies understanding of opennessPages: 71Authors: Olof EhrsTutor: Virginia MeliánCourse: Media and Communication Studies, Bachelor Degree.Period: Autumn 2011.University: The Department of Journalism, Media and Communication, JMK,at Stockholm University.Background and aim: The PR-industry is continuing to grow in Sweden. The increase of working consultancies has made it more difficult to define what PR-activities really are in Sweden today. This exam reviews the presence and lack of transparency within the PR labour. The aim of the essay is to inspect the PR-companies relation to transparency and non-transparency.