Civil society is facing many challenges in modern society and there is a lot of debate about where it is heading - is volunteer work declining or just taking a new form Whichever hypothesis will prove correct in the future, organizations that are dependent on volunteers will need to adapt to the new circumstances. This study aims to examine what forces drive voluntary work at Rädda Barnen (Save the Children Sweden) and Hungerprojektet (The Hunger Project Sweden). Through interviews with employees and volunteers at the two organizations, this study finds that volunteers at Rädda Barnen are primarily driven by values and understanding, and that the volunteers at Hungerprojektet are primarily driven by career and to some extent by values, enhancement and social factors. Understanding these driving forces allow the organizations to adapt to the new circumstances by matching the volunteers interests with the organizations' needs..

In this study we examine five selected media organisations with different forms of productionplatforms that all appear in Stockholm's southern and western suburbs, which are part of themillion-construction project. Their stated ambition is to present an alternative image of thesuburbs than that found in mainstream media. They want to portray themselves instead ofconstantly being described by others.The purpose of the study is to gain a better understanding of the reason for the emergenceof these media, their visions according to the media producers themselves, and how theyrelate to mainstream media. The study is based on a theoretical framework that focuses ondiverse approaches of alternative media and the journalists' role in a democratic society.The wide data analysis from qualitative informant interviews, with small observations as acomplement, showed results indicating criticism against the misrepresentation of Stockholmsuburbs in mainstream media. Furthermore the results show that the overall dissatisfaction ofthis misrepresentation is one of the main reasons why the different media, which are bothrepresented by citizens and journalists, were founded.

The Swedish public library was founded in the years when the society in Sweden went from being a society of agriculture to industrialism. Modernism was sweeping over the country, everything was possible, which influenced the new society that was built. Now Sweden was going to be a true democracy with responsible and empathic citizens. One of the main tools in this process was to educate people, to get them to read and write and the public library fitted very well into these new ideas. It represented a place, free of charge, where everyone could go to take part of the knowledge and cultural learning that they needed in order to become the citizen that the society required.

AbstractAt the UN Conference on Environment and Development in 1992 the nations stated that traditional environmental policies were not sufficient to handle the multidimensional challenges posed by sustainable development. Governments needed to broaden their political decision making procedures in order to coordinate and integrate environmental, social and economic policies. Therefore a new tool was introduced in Agenda 21, National Strategies for Sustainable Development (NSDS). The aim of an NSDS would be to bring together actors from all parts of society to jointly reach a consensus on how to work towards the vision of a sustainable society. An NSDS would be seen as a strategic tool to help focus national policies for SD.

Introduction: As the media landscape has changed so has fierce competition in the market, giving an effect of stronger commercialization of the media. Societal problems in our society are caused by increased commercialization and market orientation. Media has gone from trusted social institutions to focus on their own economic interests, where owners are expected revenue. The content of the media is characterized more and more by entertainment, because it attracts a larger audience. On one side media is expected to contribute to democracy in society and on the other they are expected to contribute profits to their owners, which creates a conflict in today?s media society.

This bachelor essay studies families that have migrated from countries in Europe to Sweden,and their experiences of adapting to new conditions of the Swedish welfare state. Theirexperiences are studied firstly from an institutional point of view, which refers to the family?s experience of adapting family life to Swedish family social policy. Secondly it focuses how the families experience new norms and values connected to Swedish family social policy. The main aim is to seek what problems families migrating to Sweden might be confronted with when adapting to new conditions of the welfare state.

This essay is a study of how teachers in social studies relate to three central curriculum concepts; cultural diversity, swedish culture and common cultural heritage.Through unstructured interviews, I have taken part of two practicing school teachers interpretations and understandings of the concepts and their practical approach for teaching about identity. An area mentioned in the core content of the courses Social studies 1a1 and Social Studies 1b.The conclusion of my study is that teachers interpret the key concepts in a transparent manner. It is believed that the main task is to problematize the concepts rather than define them. In contrast to this, the practical teaching is largely based on normative values. An open discussion and a normative practice can be said to balance right on the border between the schools values ??and the demands of the curriculum on transposition of the current culture..

The purpose of this thesis is to clarify the concept of ?managing diversity? and to describe how it appears in the Swedish school, in the classroom as well as in the organisation. To support the study, interviews have been carried out with principals and teachers in three different Swedish schools.The thesis is divided into two sections; a literature study and an interview section where we describe the thoughts and knowledge of principals and teachers. From a diversity point of view, we discuss the relationship between documents, organisation and teaching.The study described in this thesis shows that managing diversity has not yet had its break-through in a Swedish school context. The official curriculum of the Swedish school system values diversity, although the directives are unclear as to how the managing of diversity is to be carried out in reality.

The public relations business has grown from almost nothing to a large international industry the last decades. Throughout the history the industry has struggled with a lot of critique and public relations has become a negative symbol for manipulation of information. Because of this negative view of the industry and the medial change taking place, the purpose of this study is to investigate how two different generations think about public relations. More accurate, the study will through a qualitative interview study explore how young people from a highschool in Luleå and elder people from Luleå township thinks about pubic relations, and most imortant why they have this particular view. By creating four focus groups, two with men and two with women, this also enables a comparative study between the gender. The focus groups were later analyzed and compared to two selected groups of theories on public relations, the theories were positive and critical theories compound in two categories.

The purpose of this essay is to study the two cases ?The hijacking of a bus in Årdal? & ?The double murder in Ljungsbro? from media ethics aspects.  The aim for this study is to clear up if the the Swedish newspapers have reported according to the mediaethic rules and to see if there is any differences between the newspapers reporting. The following theories has been used to reach the objective: the journalism task, news values, the liberty of press and speach, media ethical rules and discursive discrimination. The study has used a critical discourse method formed by Teun a. van Dijk to analyse the material, mainly through macro- and microstructures.

ABSTRACTToday's modern technological society is constantly evolving and house planning is one area that is constantly creating new technical solutions. By looking back at selected architectural eras during the 1900?s, the idea is to study and analyse three building structures in Gothenburg with a focus on quality and content in the urban space.In order to provide a background for the three selected areas, their history has been studied. The main question for the research is: how do different building structures affect the content and qualities in the urban space?The areas have been selected to represent three typical epochs in Swedish building history.

After the appointment of a new European Commission in 2004, ?communication? was made a top priority on the agenda. The Commission presented a new communication policy, which would establish a dialogue with the citizens, thereby bringing more democracy to the union and bridging the gap to the citizens. Three documents containing the policy were published, namely an internal action plan for the Commission, Plan D which establishes the framework for national debates and a whitepaper on EU communication policy. These documents were met by mistrust and criticism from many different actors such as journalists and experts.The aim of this master thesis is to examine this new communication policy from a deliberative democratic perspective.

This case study aims to find out whether the promotion of Swedish news through push technology, and the selection process behind it, obeys the traditional criteria of news values.A months-worth of push notifications, sent out by the mobile phone applications of newspapers Dagens Nyheter and Expressen, were analysed through the application of a number of taxonomies meant to determine their newsworthiness.These taxonomies were, however, based on 20th century media, and do not necessarily adapt well to analysis of digital news publication forms. The purpose of this study is therefore to find out which criteria are still relevant to the news selection behind a digitalformat such as push notifications; and which have become obsolete.The basis of this study is the criteria of news values originally designed by Galtung and Ruge in 1965 and revised by Harcup and O?Neill in 2001; as well as the model of assessing front page news proposed by Hvitfelt. The content analysis was conducted in a manner as similar to that of Harcup and O?Neill?s own study as possible, so as to constitute a re-revisal ?revamped for the digital age.Our results show that the criterion of ?frequency? ? that is the conformance between the time-span of an event and the publication frequency of a medium ? has acquired an ambiguous importance.

With background in the rapidly growing need to find solutions for sustainable energy production and the increasing interest for wind power, this report was written. With take-off point from the wind power plant Big Glenn, which has been built in the harbour of Gothenburg, a model of the adjacent power grid has been created in Simulink/SimPowerSystems. Parameters for the power grid and its components has been provided by Göteborg Energi Nät, that has also been the supplier of measurement data of produced power, the power need from loads in the vicinity, voltage levels, current values and also the variation of power factor at the wind power plant.The SimPowerSystems model has been used to perform simulations of power flow in the grid. These simulated values have then been compared to the measured values to verify the functionality of the model. Further, the model has been used to perform simulations of a grid fault, which causes a voltage drop.

In Sweden there are currently two separate guidelines you may use whenperforming calculations on frameworks, BKR and the Eurocodes. Although at theend of 2010 you are not allowed to use BKR any longer and only the Eurocodeswill be viable. The aim of this thesis is to explain how the Eurocodes and EKS work and alsohow they compare to the current guideline BKR. Similarities and differencesbetween these guidelines are also discussed so that the reader will get a betterunderstanding of how the Eurocodes are applied. The areas discussed are asfollows:Principles and adviceSafety ClassesSymbols and IndexesLifespanLoads and partial coefficientThe thesis also deals with the impact that this transition into a new guideline willhave on corporations, guideline costs, education and computer software. As anexample a rough estimate on what costs this transition will create on a companywith 20 employees is also included. Calculations have been performed in order to investigate how the design valuesdiffer between the two guidelines, the Eurocodes and BKR.