The purpose of this study is to examine which factors played an important role in the food price crisis of 2007-2008. Theories used are Microeconomic theory, explaining changes in supply and demand, and Macroeconomic theory, explaining the impact of changes in exchange rate on prices. A theory regarding speculation is also used to explain the impact of speculative activities effects on price. The method used is multiple regression analysis in order to determine the effects which ethanol production, oil price and dollar exchange rate had on the surge in the price of corn, rice and wheat.The data used is in monthly observations during the period 2005-2008. However, other factors are taken into consideration during the study, such as production quantity, stock size, economic growth, speculative activity and population growth.

According to earlier studies, men dominates the sports pages in Swedish newspapers. The gender balance is far from equal and the purpose of this thesis is therefore to look into how Swedish local and regional newspapers covered gender in their sports pages during the year of 2013. The study also examines the news values of men?s and women?s sports, whether there are any differences compared to previous studies and whether there are any differences across the country. The study uses a quantitative content analysis and the result is based on editorial material from six randomly selected newspapers in 18 randomly selected days.

The aim of this study was to create a greater understanding of apostates, by analyzing narratives of five ex-members regarding their exit from Jehovah?s Witnesses. I conducted interviews to gather descriptions from specific individuals in relation to their experiences, mainly focusing on the role of an ex-member of a specific group. The informants in the study were 38-73 years old, three women and two men. The empirical data I collected was later coded through qualitative content analysis, where central topics and themes formed the basis for the analysis of the results.

On the 15th of May 2011 the former leader of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was accused of sexually assaulting a maid in a hotel room in New York. Strauss-Kahn was cleared of all charges on the 23rd of August 2011 since it could not be proven that he had forced the maid to have sexual relations with him.The purpose of this study is to examine how the case was framed in two Swedish newspapers, Svenska Dagbladet and Aftonbladet. Svenska Dagbladet is a broadsheet newspaper and Aftonbladet is a tabloid newspaper. The purpose of this study is also to find differences and similarities in the framing of the case in broadsheet newspapers and tabloid newspapers.The study is primarily based on two different theories; the framing theory and the tabloidization theory. The method used is critical discourse analysis based on van Dijks theories and methods.

The purpose of this research is to study the new curriculum in the topic of modern languages in the upper secondary school, and compare the curriculum from year 2011 with the one from year 2000 and thus try to find differences in the content and wordng. The research also aims to investigate teachers' interpretations and understanding of the new curriculum. The study is divided into two sub?studies and those are based on the two methods of text analysis and interview. Text analysis of policy documents is made parallell with some aspects found in the background materials of the upper secondaryschool reform, which can be summarized as precision and globalization.

On the 12:th of April 2011, the Swedish tabloid magazine Expressen publishes a story, claiming that Ola Lindholm, presenter of critically acclaimed TV-show ?Wild Kids? has been suspected and apprehended on cocaine allegations. The serious allegation called for Ola Lindholm to defend himself against the allegations. His only public response was a blog-post where he claimed his innocence, albeit with some reservations.  The purpose of this paper is to analyze Lindholm?s rhetorical defense.

This study is about how videogamecompanies and Swedish newspapers represent masculinity and femininity in the covers of the games Assassins Creed 3, Grand Theft Auto 5, Bayonetta and Tomb Raider along with the reviews being done in conjunction with the game. The reviews has been published in the following newspapers: Aftonbladet, Svenska Dagbladet, Expressen and Göteborgsposten. The image that is formed in our society about how a man and a woman should be and behave will be the basics of this study. The covers of the games often represent what the game itself is about and what it contains and the reviews also conveys what the consumer who buys the game gets. The video game industry has grown in recent years to become one of the largest entertainmentindustries, but despite this, there has not been many studies on how this media represents masculinity and femininity.

In recent years, the Internet has exploded with different kinds of social media, where a significant function is to share your life in text and images. This changes how we form our identity, our religious identity included. The aim of this paper was to study how Instagram forms a space for the creation and development of religious and spiritual beliefs. For this purpose, Instagram updates from five women with yoga oriented Instagram accounts have been analyzed in relation to two theories: Paul Heelas? och Linda Woodhead?s theory of a spiritual revolution and Heidi Campbell?s theory of networked religion.The aim of the study was to explore how these women presented themselves in their Instagram flow and what part religion and spirituality had in their presentations.

This thesis will explore how the medium of film is treated in the recently published Swedish textbooks and how these textbooks take into account the four different aspects of Cineliteracy.Cineliteracy is a theory which advocates the necessity of students' increased cinematic knowledge by presenting the four skill areas that should be included when it comes to teaching film in school. The theory implies students´ analytical skills, contextual knowledge and knowledge of the film canon as well as the development of students' skills to produce films. Cineliteracy theory finds support both within Swedish National Agency for Education and in recent Swedish research.This study includes investigation of eight new textbooks, adapted to the criteria for the new Swedish curriculum 2011. The analysis will be limited to textbooks for the course Swedish 1, since it is mandatory regardless of the orientation of the student?s education..

The war between Georgia and Russia awakened the world pretty brutally when a small country like Georgia tried to restore order in South Ossetia. The war between the two countries took place over five days in August 2008. This paper discusses the Russian operational art and its development after the war. The starting point is to test the traditional and classic Russian theory of operational art. The aim is to describe and discuss the Russian operational experience and any developments and trends in the Russian Federation's armed forces. The purpose of describing the theory behind the operational art is to create an independent analysis model. The essay?s analysis is based entirely from qualitative research with the collection of qualitative data in the form of texts and documents with a holistic perspective. Initially, the theory chapter is created from an inductive approach to identify, define and describe the operational concept and principles, creating a theoretical model of explanation. The developed analytical model is based on the Russian theory of operational art and takes off from a deductive approach to the collected empirical data. The results of the performed analysis results are interpreted and the product of this presented in the operational conclusions. Russia had a strategic ability to win the war by means of strategic resources related to tempo, simplicity and shock effect on the Georgian troops. Russia carries out a variety of reforms and the outcome of the war demonstrates the importance of Russia having a strategic capacity to make use of one in the type of conflict that Georgia represents. This success shows that the strategic capabilities are initially a success factor, while the deficiencies in the operational and tactical levels cannot be accepted in the long run, but must be developed.

The aim of this thesis is to study how Denmark and the Danish people has been represented in the Swedish press and which images of them that appears. For this purpose I make use of discourse analysis and discourse theory. By analysing three cases were the debate about the Danish migration policy has been scrutinized in Swedish newspapers I seek to discover different ways of looking at the world. The study concentrates on the descriptions made by journalists and others who contribute to the debate in the media. The results show an image of the Danes as a people reluctant to foreigners and restrictive in their politics.

The purpose of this master thesis is to examine some pre-school teacher's and parent's perceptions about communication within the pre-school context and how this can be described in terms of conceptual dichotomy.The empirical investigation consists of a qualitative study, where data have been collected by interviewing two focus groups and one single parent.The main theoretical tools which the study uses as its premiss is Derridas' theory of hospitality and Habermas' theory of deliberative dialogues. The study also considers the conception of the intermediate domain as an arena for communication between parents and pre-school teachers, and further more the conception of stereotyping in social and cultural contexts.In order to explore these processes I have used the qualitative method of interpretation; Hermeneutic, also with a narrative approach to the analysis.The results and the analysis of the data show that the interviewed parent and pre-school teachers have a poor sense of knowing how much influence to give to each other. The parents were not satisfied with the level of open communication and how the pre-school teachers share information of the activities..

The title Urban furniture for young people reveals that this paper handles two central phenomenon in landscape architecture; the form and content of the urban spaces, respectively the users and their need for an appropriate outdoor environment in the city. In this paper youth is referred to as 15-18 year olds and the paper is based on theories of their physical use of the city?s outdoor environment. Urban furniture refers to equipment and components in the public room which becomes furniture when people takes them in to claim and gives them a meaning and a function that is useful for the moment. The starting point is that the users, in this case youths, defi nes urban furniture as something signifi cantly more than traditional park furniture, bicycle racks and waste baskets. This paper aims to investigate how the city?s furniture can be developed to meet the youths need to see each other, move and make their marks in the public room. The theories about how youths uses the city are presented in the Theory chapter.

The demands on the adult literacy-rate are very high in Sweden. People with reading and writing difficulties may find it hard to fit into the community and to succeed in school. To accommodate the needs of students with learning disabilities, Swedish schools provide easy-to-understand materials. The purpose of my thesis is to examine how easy-to-read textbooks for high school students are different from regular textbooks. The study was carried out using a content analysis and I examined the books according to criteria specified by the Swedish author Torbjörn Lundgren.

This master thesis concerns whether Swedish non-financial listed firms act in accordance with the optimal capital structure theory and/or pecking order theory. The examined period is 1998-2004 and we discover that Swedish companies neither follow optimal capital structure theory nor pecking order theory. From our results we conclude that there exists no single point of the capital structure which is optimal. Rather it seems as if the optimal point lies in-between an interval from 0 to the industry average, where firms tend to be indifferent to their debt-ratios. Our results show that Swedish companies prefer internal financing followed by equity and as last choice debt issuance..