What attribute affects salience on a political agenda? How come some reforms are implemented while others are not? These are essential and central questions for our society. Our society, our democracy and our everyday life are dependent of these factors; communication is the condition. In the 2011 budget from the Swedish conservative government, the question of lowering the VAT on restaurant- and catering services was the single most debated reform. This was occasioned from 2009 when the European Union allowed, for the first time since Swedish entry in 2005, a lower VAT on restaurant services.

The purpose with this essay was to examine how the European Union is working totransfer norms to states they signed an agreement with and provide support for inframe of the Barcelona process and the Tacis programme. The theory which weused was Ian Manners (PhD in Political Science) theory of "the EU as a uniquenormative power". The aim was to examine whether the EU - which Manners mean- has had a normative power to influence states to change. We used a qualitativeapproach through the use of a multiple case study and qualitative text and contentanalysis. The States which formed the basis of our study were within the BarcelonaProcess; Morocco and Tunisia as well as Azerbaijan and Armenia funded by theTacis programme.

Authors: Martin Mederyd Hårdh, Frida Nygren, Daniel PaulssonTitle: Under Extreme PressureLevel: Bachelor of JournalismLocation: University of GothenburgLanguage: SwedishMethod: Quantitative content analysisPages: 38Politically motivated extremism is a common topic in the Swedish public debate ? and hence in Swedish media. The purpose of our study is to get an idea of how the media relates to the extremist groupings. On a traditional political scale, ranging from left to right, our study focuses on the Swedish extremists who figure on the outskirts of this scale; The ones who denounce the current system and opt for violence to change it.Violence is often an instrument used to get extreme political ideals in the public eye, and is seen as a threat to the Swedish democracy and the public in general. Both sides argue that the Swedish press is tendentious and treat the various extremist groups differently, airing their distrust for the media as a propaganda tool for these groups to establish themselves in the public debate.Our study consists of a quantitative content analysis where we study articles published in print by seven major Swedish newspapers.

This thesis is about the effect of political efficacy on societal participation among youths aged 15 to 29. It takes a starting point in the gloomy view of the decline of political participation among citizens in the western world, especially pointing out youths as a threat to democracy. This is a broad subject to take on so my aim becomes a bit more specific. The aim of the thesis is therefore to investigate if belief in ones own capacity and in the responsiveness of the political system affects the actual participation among youths in Europe, independent of a set of alternative predictors. Moreover the thesis is divided into two sub-investigations, one qualitative and one quantitative.

Det här är en uppsats som behandlar demokratisynen hos deltagare vid European Social Forum 2008 i Malmö. Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka om det finns samband mellan erfarenheter av politiska handlingar, identifiering med den globala rättviserörelsen och synen på hur demokratiska beslut i allmänhet bör fattas. Individer inom den globala rättviserörelsen kan ses som handlande subjekt inom utvecklingen av demokratiska system, då rörelsen formulerar en kritik mot globalisering och odemokratiska beslutsformer och strävar efter att möjliggöra en annan form av globalisering och en annan form av demokrati. Teoretiskt tar undersökningen avstamp i tre idealtypiska demokratiformer: deltagardemokrati, deliberativ demokrati och representativ demokrati, som har tre skilda utgångspunkter när det gäller former för beslutsprocesser. Även politiskt handlande går att skilja åt teoretiskt, i form av kollektivt och individuellt politiskt handlande.

The purpose with this essay was to examine how the European Union is working totransfer norms to states they signed an agreement with and provide support for inframe of the Barcelona process and the Tacis programme. The theory which weused was Ian Manners (PhD in Political Science) theory of "the EU as a uniquenormative power". The aim was to examine whether the EU - which Manners mean- has had a normative power to influence states to change. We used a qualitativeapproach through the use of a multiple case study and qualitative text and contentanalysis. The States which formed the basis of our study were within the BarcelonaProcess; Morocco and Tunisia as well as Azerbaijan and Armenia funded by theTacis programme.

AbstractTitle: The war in Afghanistan ? a necessary evil? (Kriget i Afghanistan ? ett nödvändigt ont? En kritisk diskursanalys av New York Times ställningstagande till och framing av kriget i Afghanistan)Number of pages: 41 (41 including enclosures)Authors: Jenny Häggmark, Madeleine JanssonTutor: Christian ChristensenCourse: Media and Communication Studies CPeriod: Fall term 2011University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Information Science, Uppsala UniversityPurpose/aim: Our main goal with this paper is to examine and describe how The New York Times have framed the war in Afghanistan in their editorials, and how their position on the war is reflected in the editorials. We are also interested in finding out if their position on the war has changed during the ten years of war. Are the New York Times editorials characterized by peace or war journalism?Material/Method: To fulfill our aim with this paper we are going to use a qualitative method of content analyzes, the critical discourse analysis, when we analyze the editorials selected.

The aim of this thesis is to examine how the identity of the public librarianwith regard to reading is manifested in the library field. The approaches thatare taken to reading and readers are examined as well as the consequencesdifferent approaches might have. The empirical material is based on 93articles published in Swedish library journals. The theoretical andmethodological starting point is discourse analysis. The application ofdiscourse analysis according to Michel Foucault?s hypotheses reveals threediscursive formations regarding the professional identity of public librarianswithin the framework of reading promotion: The public librarian asguarantor of democracy is related to the public library's original mission offostering, cultivating and educating citizens.

Min essä har utgått ifrån händelser i mitt yrkesverksamma liv som jag inte tycker mig ha reflekterat klart över. Syftet med essän har varit att synliggöra vilka konsekvenser pedagogers förhållningssätt och syn på barn samt deras föräldrar har för barnens vistelse på förskolan. Syftet har även varit att belysa barns rätt till delaktighet i ? och inflytande över - sin vardag på förskolan eftersom jag anser att dessa frågor inverkar på varandra och har betydelse för hur deras lek och lärande ser ut. Frågeställningarna är hur barns medbestämmande ser ut vad gäller leken på förskolan, på vilket sätt barns delaktighet syns i förskolan, på vilket sätt pedagogerna skapar möjlighet för barnens inflytande samt hur förskolan arbetar med demokratibegreppet.

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.

The aim of this Master's thesis is to study the public library identity from a brand perspective, how the public library brand identitity is communicated through blogs and what is communicated in them.The authors analyse the public library identity through selected concepts and a model within Aaker´s and Kapferer´s branding theories. These theories have been applied on literature and blogs as a method. The authors have examined literature about the public library identity in different works within Library and Information Science and political documents that applied to public libraries. An empirical study has been carried out on blogs published by public libraries in Sweden.The result of this study has lead to the identification of different core and extended identities for the public library brand. The core identities have been identified as democracy, adult education (the swedish word ?folkbildning? has no correct translation in english, adult education is the recommended related term) and lifelong learning.

Uppsatsens övergripande syfte är att granska kommunernas roll och självstyrelse i en föränderlig samhällsorganisation. Ansvarskommitténs reformförslag till ny samhällsorganisa-tion granskas genom att undersöka tidigare kommunindelningsreformer som genomförts i Sverige. Detta för att förstå de demokratiska effekterna av dessa förändringar.Resultat av den forskning som uppsatsen redovisar visar att reformerna har påverkat den kommunala demokratin, främst genom att antalet förtroendevalda har minskat samtidigt som antalet kommunala tjänstemän ökat. Avståndet mellan valda och väljare har växt. De svenska partierna har problem i hanteringen av den demokratiska processen och förank-ringen på den kommunala såväl som på den nationella nivån.Uppsatsens metod är en kvalitativ textanalys.

The purpose of this paper is to carry out a domain analysis of Section for Maps and Pictures at Uppsala University?s Library and investigate its business, collection and knowledge organization. Birger Hjørland?s socio-epistemological domain analytic paradigm is applied. As methods, Hjørland suggests eleven approaches, and from them he emphasizes especially the importance of the historical and epistemological approaches.In this paper three questions are analysed.

År 2003 utnämnde UNESCO årtiondet 2005-2014 till decenniet för utbildning i hållbar utveckling och även andra internationella och nationella beslut togs för att föra in utbildning för hållbar utveckling (Education for Sustainable Development) i skolans alla ämnen. ESD syftar till att eleven ska utveckla sin förmåga att kritiskt granska olika såväl ekologiska, sociala och ekonomiska perspektiv samt kunna ta ställning till dessa genom ett aktivt deltagande i olika demokratiska processer för att stödja hållbar utveckling. Forskning på området har dock visat att integreringen i skolans alla ämnen inte har fungerat på det sätt det har varit avsett. Denna uppsats syftar till att ta reda på om ESD förekommer inom engelskaundervisningen på gymnasienivå (inom Skaraborgs län). Den försöker också att identifiera vilka hinder och möjligheter det kan finnas för att arbeta med ESD i engelska A/B.

Although Social Democratic Memoirs comprise an extensive material, these texts have not attracted any systematic analysis as a distinct and yet varied form of textual genre. The focus in this MA-paper is the Swedish Social Democratic Memoir as a rhetoric genre. The main primary material is memoirs of the pioneer August Palm (1849?1922), the father of the nation Tage Erlander (1901?1985) and the political leader Göran Persson (1949?), published 1905, 1972?82 and 2007, respectively.The general aim is to find out what is the driving power of the memoirs and, more specifically, to shed light on the images of the party history and the history of the welfare state. The method is a comparative analysis of these texts.