The role of cultural policy within the general political planning of a community can vary both historically and regionally. The aim of this study has been to explore the cultural policy plans, during the 1990's, in the recently formed geographical region of "Västra Götaland". This is a qualitative study, carried out during 1999, and based upon structured interviews with five representatives of the cultural-policy sector in the "Västra Götaland" region. In order to identify connections and tendencies in a more general social context the aims of the five representatives regarding cultural policy have been explored from the perspective of three cultural policy paradigms, namely Dorte Skot-Hansen, Olav R. Spilling and Göran Nylöf.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine the view of literature within Swedish governmental cultural policy. The main issue is to discover changes in attitude towards democracy, literature and library by comparing the attitudes in the governmental policy documents from the 1970s with the governmental policy documents from the 1990s. The theoretical starting point is Danish cultural policy researcher Dorte Skot-Hansens theories of the development of cultural policy in the Nordic countries. My method of analysis is a textual one, analysis of ideas and ideology, focusing on the aspect of signification of a text. The study has an effort of analysing the governmental policy in terms of idea and ideology.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine the view of funding and sponsorship of culture within Swedish governmental cultural policy. The main issue is to discover changes in attitude towards funding and sponsorship of culture by comparing the discourse of cultural policy in the 1970s with the discourse of cultural policy in the 1990s. The theoretical and methological starting point is Ernesto Laclaus and Chantal Mouffes discourse theory. Another theoretical starting point is Danish cultural policy reasearcher Dorte Skot-Hansens theories of the development of cultural policy in the Nordic countries, and Norman Faircloughs, of critical discourse analysis, theory of the marketization of discourse. Four governmental cultural policy documents, two from the 1970s and two from the 1990s, are analysed through a model loosely based on Laclaus and Mouffes idea of nodalpoints and elements constituting a discourse.

The Internet offers an abundance of information. This information is easy to access in technical terms, however it is difficult to find. At present there is a wide variety of search services to choose from. This master's thesis is about selecting the appropriate search service for a certain question. Are different types of services suitable for different types of questions, and if so, which services for which questions?To answer this, I have undertaken one theoretical and one empirical study.

The recent development in society, such as the increased digitalisation, has brought new terms for both production and consumption within the cultural field. One of the main goals within Swedish Cultural Policies today is that everyone should have the same opportunities to practice and participate in cultural activities, with the right to develop their creative abilities. The cultural policies also contain the possibility to encourage spontaneous culture practice. The question is how to reach this goal.During the spring of 2012 I have been examining the term ?spontankultur? (spontaneous culture practice) as it appears in the discussion around participation in cultural activities and its connection to creativity.

The purpose of this master?s thesis is to examine how some university students, who are using the libraries extensively, use and experience the public and the university library and what they expect from the two different library types. I also compare their expectations with the different tasks and aims of the two library types. To answer this I have interviewed seven students at the department of history of literature at Göteborg University. I have also studied some literature and research related to this subject, for example user studies about students and libraries and the information behaviour of distance students.

What kind of self images characterise a football supporter? This question is the main focus of this thesis. Therefore, the thesis is trying to find distinguishing characteristic traits for football supporters. This work has been carried out through qualitative interviews with individuals who define themselves as football supporters. The interviews were mainly focused on two different types of supporters, official supporters and other supporters.

Cultural organizations set on capitalizing on artistic ideas are subject to an industry specific economic condition that requires a balance of art and commerce; two opposites reflecting credibility and non-credibility. Hence, commercialization of the cultural industries implies non-credibility in an industry insisting on symbolizing the opposite.This study aims to demonstrate how cultural industries can attract a wide audience, while maintaining credibility. This is done through the perspective of folksiness since its context indicates the existence of credible commercialism.The study demonstrate that credible commercialism is part of folksiness and is possible thanks to the folksiness context that 1) utilizes attributes that balance and disarm "negative attributes" creating an atmosphere of acceptance and 2) meets the consumer's need fulfilment of identity through individualism and belonging, and 3) contains attributes that increases loyalty..

The aim of this thesis is to examine how a context-specific form of abstracting of fiction film developed in relation to the cultural policy of Internationella biblioteket IB, theoretically can be motivated and practically shaped. The background of the cultural policy of IB is analysed and theoretical standpoints and problematic aspects regarding subject representation discussed. Theories which claim intersubjectivity as an ideal for subject representation and searches for objectivity in the process of subject analysis are criticised in light of the concept of interpretation as the only means to produce meaning and subjects in relation to fiction. Birger Hjørlands context-oriented theories of subject representation are used to theoretically motivate the context-specific form of abstracting. To suggest how a practical framework for abstracting can be created, film theoretical models of interpretation are examined in relation to the field of subject analysis and formal criteria of abstracting.

Can the lack of functional cross-cultural communication among individuals within an international organization be the reason for cultural clashes to occur, and lead to conflict between two cultures within the same organization?Our aim is to try to create a potential model of how cross-cultural problems can be studied, in order to contribute to the solution of the problem. And to examine whether the theories, which form the basis of our model can be applied in reality.The research have assumed from the hermeneutical approach for a holistic view of the problem area. The deductive approach has been used in order to distinguish whether the theories can be applied to reality, and qualitative research method for collecting data.The focus lies within cross-cultural communications, which defines the various cultural factors that can affect organizational culture. Hofstede dimensions and the social structure are mentioned and cultural factors as language and religion.

The purpose of this master?s thesis is to examine how some university students, who are using the libraries extensively, use and experience the public and the university library and what they expect from the two different library types. I also compare their expectations with the different tasks and aims of the two library types. To answer this I have interviewed seven students at the department of history of literature at Göteborg University. I have also studied some literature and research related to this subject, for example user studies about students and libraries and the information behaviour of distance students.

The intention with this essay has been to examine how the public instances working with cultural heritage in Sweden deals with the housing built under the period of the so called miljonprogrammet (?the million programme?) during 1965-75. The interest in the built environment from the 1960s and 70s has increased in the last ten years within the field of cultural heritage. The purpose with this study is to examine which cultural values that are assigned to the housing of the million programme. The purpose is also, as mentioned before, to study how the field of cultural heritage deals with this type of built environment.

The aim of this thesis is to develop two idealtypes of politics to help serve as instruments in understanding and analysing the view on politics held by top civil servants in the municipality of Lund Sweden. The two ideal types developed here are symbolic sense making politics and rational instrumental politics. These two ideal types were applied to material from a qualitative survey to help bring out clear results and to help with the interpretation of the material The results of the study showed that the two idealtypes could not help to clearly categorize the civil servants views on management by objectives. But while categorizing the top civil servants views the important features of policy documents the ideal types were helpful. By using the ideal types I came to the conclusion that the view on policy documents was mainly characterized by sense making politics.

The aim of the study is to research if the Sweden Democrats portray themselves in a way that can be described as populistic and xenophobic and also if this portrayal has changed over time.In order to do so, the terms of populism and xenophobia has been defined by research and put together into two separate ideal types. Through the eyes of the two ideal types and their traits, four of the party programs of the Sweden Democrats have been researched to look at how they express themselves in the programs and if it can be connected to some of the traits within the two ideal types.The conclusion is that some of the traits are to be found in the programs, and that this also varies over time. From showing signs of both populism and xenophobia, the populistic traits become less over time, while the xenophobic ones instead increases..

The purpose of this Masters thesis is to examine the performance of queries that are expanded by synonyms and hyponyms from Svenskt OrdNät, the Swedish version of the Princeton WordNet. Four different types of queries were constructed: a baseline query S1, the baseline query expanded with synonyms S2, the baseline query expanded with hyponyms S3 and finally the baseline query expanded with the synonyms and hyponyms used in S2 and S3. The terms for expansion were picked by hand. The queries were executed in the Query Performance Analyser QPA, a tool used in IR education and in experimental IR research for analysing and comparing the performance of individual queries. 20 topics from the test collection GP_HDINF were chosen for the experiment.