Playboy is a magazine that, for more than a half century, has been mostly known to the wider audience for its stylized pictures of naked women. What a lot of people do not know is that the magazine, with its editor in chief Hugh Hefner in the lead, has been frontrunners in human rights. Playboy has been fighting protecting the right of freedom of speech, fighting for equal rights for all people during the civil rights movement and supported the feminist movement by funding precedent cases on abortion rights. According to a series of text analyses by Beggan & Allison (2000, 2002b) Playboy?s editorial direction contradicted conventional definitions of masculinity. Also, the magazine portrayed its Playmates with complex identities that, in many cases, contained a number of traditionally masculine abilities.In this thesis we have done a critical discourse analysis of the Playboy interview and how the gender of its subject is portrayed by the magazine.

In this project we have used the theory of analytical mechanics to derive equations of motion for complex mechanical systems in order to study their behaviour over time. Even if the theory provides powerful tools to tackle tough problems which would be very hard to solve by methods of Newtonian mechanics, you are still relatively limited without running any computer simulations. One realises that in a faster rate it will be an incredibly difficult task to find an analytical solution when the degrees of freedom increases. Even if one would succeed to derive the equations, one still has to solve them to get the information of the systems behavior. Of experience one knows that the equations in general are nonlinear and hence must be integrated numericaly.

Z39.50 is a standard protocol designed to create an interface between diverse computer databases for diverse information needs. Since it has to be adjustable it is also complex and demands a certain degree of expertise when being set. However, the aim of this paper is not to make a theoretical description but to examine certain conditions in practice. From the perspective of Swedish research libraries two principal hypotheses are examined: 1) the implementation of a given technology (Z39.50) is primarily influenced by social circumstances, and 2) the way in which the technology is implemented will bias the results of information retrieval. For this examination we need a framework of theories concerning the relationship between technological development and society, organisational theories and database theories.

Information overload occurs when the amount of information exceeds the individual s capacity to efficiently process and use the information available. In this situation information instead of being an asset becomes a load. This interview study deals with college students experiences of information overload when working on their thesis. Focus lies on use of Internet based information resources. The main result was that the students experienced information overload in specific situations and steps of the process.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine how novices set about when they search for information. Marchionini's information-seeking model is the theoretical starting point, which is supplemented by theories of other specialists within the field, such as Chowdhury; Harter; Large, Tedd and Hartley. As method a questionnaire survey was used. The questionnaire was sent to 96 students at IHM Business School in Gothenburg and 57 questionnaires were returned. The results show among other things that the majority of the students used highly interactive search strategies, and they did not plan their search before they carried out the search.

The main purpose of this work was to examine the information behavior of nonfiction publishing Company editors. Three problem areas were presented and expressed in the following questions:- What is the information need of the editor in every day work?- Which sources of information do the editors use when they are looking for information and how do they make use of them?- Are there any factors that have an influence on the information behavior of the editors and in what way do the factors effect the information behavior of the editors in their everyday work? And finally, do the editors experience any factors as barriers to information behavior?Six editors, all with academical background, all employed in different publishing companies were interviewed. The result of this study have been analysed within a theoretical framework influenced by the work of Tom Wilson, Lars Höglund and Olle Persson and Block and Lagberg. The result shows that the editors had various regular needs of information in their every day work.

Information overload is by no means a new concept, but has come to prominence the last decade. A generally accepted definition of the phenomenon does not exist. The main question in this master thesis is how to define information overload in order to create a connotative concept for information science. This thesis reviews the nature and causes of information overload, and considers possible solutions, both individual and technical, and their relevance to the information professional. The review of the results shows that researchers seldom or never give a legible definition of what the concept information holds.

Customer information is to be seen as an essential part in service development. The company should be aware of how their customers experience their services. The company can get access to customer information through complaints from their customers. All information obtained from the customers is not possible to use when developing new and existing services. The information has to be analysed before it is possible to use it for service development.This paper describes if Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) uses their customers as a source of knowledge when developing new and existing services and in that case how.

Society today is characterized by the transforming effect IT has had, the majority of the activities we perform on a daily basis involves one way or another digital technology. One area which has not yet seen the positive effects of IT is education. Despite the progress of technology, the school education has barely changed since it first saw the light of day. Our goal with this study is to investigate the possibility of implementing Gamification elements in educational environments and examine whether it could increase our young students learning motivation. We believe that this kind of implementation will have a positive effect for these young people since they have been interacting with games since they were small and are familiar with the driving force of a reward system.With this study we want to examine the opportunities and challenges that Gamification implementation brings out in a learning environment and therefore encourage and motivate our young ones to study even harder..

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the process of transferring information from science to "the field" of environmental protection in Sweden. I have studied four Swedish environmental organizations, Greenpeace Nordic, WWF Sweden, the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation and Friends of the Earth Sweden to see how they search/get information. I have also studied the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency and its role as sender of information, since it is the authority which is responsible for environmental information in Sweden. I have used information and communication theories as a help to analyse my results. While working on this paper I realized that my methods were not the best.

This thesis examines information seeking and information needs at the Swedish Government Offices. The Government Offices comprise the Prime Ministers Office, the Government Ministries and the Office for Administrative Affairs. Approximately 4 500 members of staff are employed, of whom around 120 are political appointees. For this study, interviews have been conducted with 15 senior officials and political appointees at the Government Ministries and the Prime Ministers Office. The interviews have been supplemented with literature studies based on user studies research in library and information science.

The purpose of this essay is to analyze the EU discourse in the Swedish media. The questions that the analysis seeks to answer are; what image of EU is portrayed in the Swedish media? To which degree does the EU discourse fulfill media?s ?news values?? And what are the potential effects of the discourse on EU?s reputation? After several demarcations, I chose 8 articles form Sweden?s four largest newspapers to base the analysis on.    The theoretical and methodical structure behind this analysis is the theories and practices of Fairclough?s critical discourse analysis. Added to the theoretical structure are also theories about reputation and theories about news values. The method used in the analysis is a modified version of Fairclough?s three-dimensional model of critical discourse analysis.

This thesis is a discourse analysis analyzing public library librarians' talk on the subject of public library meeting places. Within the field of Library and Information Science the public libraries' functions as social meeting places have been scrutinized for more than a decade. Researchers in the Nordic countries in particular have looked at library users' use of the library space and have highlighted the sociologic dimensions of the public library and the meeting place functions. Few however have paid much attention to the library personnel's point of view. The discourse analysis perspective is about language use and how people construct the reality.

Abstract Background: More and more people receiving palliative care in the home, leading to increased responsibility for the next of kin. Being a caregiver and at the same time next of kin is a complex situation for everyone involved. Next of kin´s everyday life changes drastically when everything revolves around the one who is seriously ill.Aim: To describe next of kin´s experiences of being caregivers to a palliative sick person at home. Method: A literature review in which eleven qualitative scientific articles were analyzed and summarized. Results: The results revealed three themes; experience of support, experience of changes in life and experience of strategies.

This master thesis has been performed at the department of Machine Design at KTH, The Royal Institute of Technology. The thesis has been a part of a global development project in collaboration with Luleå University of Technology, Lund Faculty of Engineering and Stanford University. Corporate liaison and sponsor has been Immerse Global Inc. The project was also performed on sponsorship from the Product Innovation Engineering Program, PIEp. The thesis is a representation of some of the contributions made by the authors.The lack of clean drinking water is one of the key issues facing the world today.