The Swedish Public Relation industry has gone through a rapid growth in the recent decade. A peculiar, although perhaps not unexpected, development is that former politicians and politically employed individuals to a larger extent have been the subject of recruitment effort from the industry. Simultaneously there has been a public debate concerning the influence on Public Relations and Lobbying over the political agenda. The purpose of this thesis is to widen and deepen the discussion concerning Public Relations consultants. It centers on the individual consultants and takes their competence as the point of departure.

The Swedish right-wing party the Sweden Democrats gathered much attention during the Swedish general election of 2010. The party?s immigration policy clashed with other major Swedish parties perceptions and the Sweden Democrats got major coverage in Swedish media even before the election had taken place. Despite controvercies surrounding the party, they eventually succeeded in getting into the parliament.This study explores how the coverage of the Sweden Democrats in five large Swedish newspapers has changed between 2009 and 2013. This was done by studying two periods, each period taking place a year before the next general election.

Media has the power to influences society. Some call them the third power of a state. Through amongst others, the agenda setting theory and the framing theory, this report seeks to understand how media describes the swine influenza and how it uses its power to influence people to vaccinate. As this report will show, there is no doubt that media has had an impact on the Swedish population of which 60 per cent followed through with the vaccination. Media used an information discourse and attempted to present its articles in an impartial manner and used governmental authorities and experts to support its arguments.

? Does Karlstad municipality have adequate institutional conditions to make the best use ofthe citizens? proposals??The purpose with the thesis is to investigate if citizens? proposals lead to a broader politicalinfluence. To answer that, I have done a case study about how Karlstad municipal administers citizens? proposals. The research assignment is: Does Karlstad municipal have adequate institutional conditions to make the best use of the citizens? proposals? The perspective is a democracy perspective and the theory is institutional theory and policy process theory.A selection of citizens? proposals that have arrived to Karlstad municipal between 2008 and 2010 have been studied in detail to analyze how the proposals have been administered and if it matters how the proposals are phrased.

This discursive policy study has its starting point in the criticism of the Swedish gender-equality policy is depoliticised. The purpose of this study is to investigate how the Swedish gender-equality policy was problematised and designed during the 2000s. The purpose of this paper is also to investigate whether the Swedish gender-equality policy can be defined as a depoliticised policy or not. The research questions of this study are: What´s the problem of gender-equality represented to be in the specifics policies and what effects are produced of this representation? Can gender policy, as it is designed in the various policy documents, be understood as a depoliticised policy, in the sense that sex is not articulated on the basis of a conflict dimension?To find the answer of theese questions I use the method ?Whats´s the problem represented to be", which is an inductive approach where the researcher sets selected questions to its material.

Political disenchantment and detachment is proven to be growing in well established democracies. This development brings along concerning behavior regarding general political participation. Fewer citizens participate in elections, parties are losing members, and the trust in politicians is steadily decreasing. IDEA (Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance) has been registering voter turnout worldwide for the last 60 years and their publications show a decline in voter participation since the 1980s.During the same period of time another development has caught attention, namely the fast progress of the medium Internet. The new generation of Internet functions is called Web 2.0 and allows users not only to create content, but also to interact with each other.This dissertation aims to explore the possibilities emerging when integrating Web 2.0 in political processes.

Internet access has been a part of the range in public libraries for approximately a decade. The Swedish municipals, in charge of the public libraries, and the libraries themselves, have a great deal of saying in how they should be run, what to offer the public, how many hours they have to stay open etcetera. The Library law is very vague on many things, including public Internet access. Even though Sweden is ranked as first runner up worldwide when it comes to Internet penetration among the population (Internet World Stats 2007), approximately twenty percent in the 16-74 age group does not have Internet access at home, at work or at school (SCB 2006a). In this master thesis we try to determine, through personal interviews, how six of those in charge feel about Internet at their libraries, all located in medium-sized municipals (20 000 ? 40 000 inhabitants), why they have chosen the rules and regulations they have and their thoughts about what they consider to be the most important assignment of public libraries.

AbstractThe political parties in Sweden are losing members. This is seen as a problem because the political parties are the base and the recruiting ground for members to decision-making bodies. Social movements are seen as a place where people with a modest background could express their opinions and also learn the political process. These movements have also lost members during the last decades and this could seriously affect the representation of lower social groups among the decision-makers. This essay emanates from Robert D.

This essay is about power, democracy, solidarity and equality in preschool. I examine three different situations to determine if I could have acted more sensibly in my interactions with the children. I portray: a ?children?s choice meeting? where children select an activity, a so-called emotional gathering and a dialogue at the lunch table about a popular movie that we plan to watch together afterwards. The purpose of this essay is to examine which norms and values form the basis of my actions, and if so, how these lead me to use my power to shape the children.I have chosen to use hermeneutic and norm-critical perspectives where I investigate and examine my norms and values and how I react and act, both consciously and unconsciously.

The media industry, and especially the news, in Sweden is living in a dark world that seems to get even darker by the minute. According to Nordicom (2013) the number of readers in the ages 15-24 has dropped by 24 percentage points between 2007 and 2012. This is a big problem for the news industry, but also for democracy that require citizens that are well-read and know what is going on in society. Enda and Mitchel (2013) found that 65% of people in the USA have stopped reading a certain news source since it no longer fits their needs. Maybe with a better understanding for young adults needs this trend can change.This qualitative study was conducted using interviews with eight respondents to find out why young adults who study at a university consume news.

A Road project?s frame is built up of a decision- and consultation process, where the results of the preparatory studies are being discussed. The aim with a consultation process is that all theopinions and knowledge from the operators' will be taken into count in the basis of information, that is needed in order to the different involved operators' to take a decision.The aim of the essay was to investigate how the decision- and consultation process for a road project, the E4 section between Uppsala Läby, turned out. The aim is also to bring up how theprocess could have been done more correctly. The study was carried out through a qualitative method with an analysis of materials from the National Road Administration's archives, the associated Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and through interviews of the different operators.My theoretical basis has been a Stakeholder Analysis and its principles, and theory about different executions of social planning.The result showed that the decision- and consultation process has been bursting in democracy and consideration taking of the different operators' opinions, has been poor from the developer?s, in this case the National Road Administration's, side.

Ho?sten 2011 fa?lldes den flera hundra a?r gamla skyddsva?rdesklassade ek, kallad TV-eken, som stod pa? Oxenstiernsgatan pa? O?stermalm i Stockholm. I samband med fa?llningsbeslutet ? ett pa? papperet tekniskt beslut om att fa?lla ett risktra?d, men som av protesterande ma?nniskor tolkades som ett helt annat beslut ? uppstod en konflikt mellan ansvariga beslutsfattare och personer som ville bevara eken. Syftet med denna studie a?r att fo?rsta? vilka ha?ndelser och processer som ledde fram till den konflikt som uppstod i samband med beslutet om fa?llningen av TV-eken.

Following essay discusses the possibilities of using a gender perspective when studying local governance within a Swedish context. Governance is an international concept used to describe a more lose, informal and network based way of doing politics The main purpose for conducting this essay is that traditional theoretical frameworks used in the study of local politics are not enough to fully conceptualize the complexity of our changing political environment.After a broad summing up of what had been done in the recent decades within Swedish political science on the topic of local politics and gender I came to the conclusion that so far nothing had been written on governance. The next step was therefore to conduct a pilot study to cover the subject matter of governance and gender. The study was based upon interviews with five female politicians in Malmoe city.Results showed that governance, in terms of informal networks did exist, and had influence over the local politics. Some of the networks were male dominated.

The aim of this study is to investigate into the use of discussions in the classroom to help the pupils develop a deeper understanding of mathematical concepts and operations. The empirical data contain interviews with two teachers and observations from their lessons. The purpose of the interviews was to find out what importance the teachers ascribed to the ability of their pupils to talk about mathematics, and how they organised their classes to encourage mathematical discussions. With the observations, I was able to see the interaction in the classroom and hear discussions between the teacher and the pupils, as well as between the pupils themselves.The interviewed teachers proved to share my own belief in the results of researchers like Malmer (1999) and Löwing (2006) about the importance of verbal discussion, argumentation and reflection during mathematics classes. But convictions derived from the research of others are one thing, the practical application of the wisdom in the classroom another.

The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood has since the start of the Syrian uprising in March 2011 moved from a low-key position in exile to become one of the main actors in the political opposition. There appears to be a consensus among researchers today on the democratic commitment of the Syrian Brotherhood. However, ambiguity remains regarding its commitment towards gender equality, women?s rights and participation. This essay focuses on the gender discourse of the Syrian Brotherhood?s leadership, according to its policy-documents, from 2004 ? 2013.