AbstractTitle: PR and Politics- the role of the PR consults in Swedish politics (PR och Politik ?PR konsulternas roll i svensk politik)Number of pages: 34Author: Andia GhafouriTutor: Peder Hård af SegerstadCourse: Media and Communication Studies CPeriod: HT 2006University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Information Science,Uppsala University.Purpose/Aim: To study the PR functions role in Swedish politics and what role it plays for the democracy.Material/Method: Interviews with PR peopleMain results: That the PR people have the right kind of network and the knowledge about how to influence political decisions and the public opinion. Their methods could be criticized from a democratic point of view since they are professionals and their ability to bring up issues in to the public agenda is stronger than ordinary peoples? ability, which could be discussed if it is fair in a democratic society, that people who get paid have more power to change than those who don?t.Keywords: Public Relations, Communication, Politics, Democracy, Information, Networks.

The aim of this one-year master thesis in archival science was to examine how municipalities take regulations concerning public records into account when they use Facebook. Another aim was to examine the involvement of archivists, registrars or similar staff in the management of the regulations. Since Swedish archival theory and practice has a close connection to the application of these regulations, such an examination was hopefully going to reveal tendencies of importance for archival science. The method used to collect information was a web questionnaire and the result was based on answers from 21 municipalities with an official Facebook page. The questionnaire showed that six of the municipalities regarded documents originating from their Facebook page as public records.

It might seem obvious that public opinions should be included in the planning process. However, it is not clear to what extent. Statutory forms of public participation attract little interest since many people feel that it is hard to make a difference. The purpose of this study was to engage those that normally do not get to speak their mind in the planning process. In this study, two methods for conducting ?on-street surveys? were investigated.

Information technology (IT) with its enormous capacity involves more and more in our daily activities and public sector is using IT to make their activities more efficient. The government goal with electronic government (e-government) among other things is increasing the availability and service to the public as well as improving the democratic process. Democracy can be strengthened by involving citizens in public decision making process but this goal has not been achieved yet and the development of e-government has mostly been focused on improving efficiency within administration and electronic services (e-services). Promoting the democratic process has been postponed in the development of e-government because of the lack of political commitment and decision. Digital divide is also preventing public sector to promote democracy with the support of IT.

Under efterkrigstiden har den regionala tillväxten i industriländerna undergått en explosionsartad utveckling. Samtidigt skedde en massiv utbyggnad och förbättring av infrastrukturen. Dessa båda områdes avancemang avslutades abrupt med den globala finanskrisen under 1970-talet. När konjunkturen vände tillbaka och tillväxten tog fart igen var det däremot inte med samma starka stäv som innan krisen. Denna tröga utveckling förbluffade makroekonomerna, som sökte med ljus och lyckta efter möjliga orsaker såsom energipriser, social reglering och regioners näringslivssammansättning.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to analyse how adult students in Swedish adult education seek information for school tasks. The focus is on how they use the public library and electronic information sources and their reflection on information and sources in this process. Also of interest in the study is the help they receive from staff in the public library and their teacher. Methods used in collecting and analysing data for this study were of qualitative nature.

The aim of this Bachelor?s thesis is to investigate the public librarian?s professional identity and its relation to the public library as an experience centre. The development of the library as an experience centre raises questions about how public librarians understand their professional identity, and about their motives for working with activities like workshops and qigong, activities that have no significant connection with the librarian?s traditional tasks. The data was collected via semi-structured interviews exploring the perspectives and points of view of four public librarians.

In a web environment the library and the librarian continue to function in their role as information provider even when the physical library is closed. Research question is to describe how and in what extent the public libraries websites are integrated in their daily activity and what the causes are for that. The empirical material consists of a survey of number of public libraries websites and qualitative interviews with responsible librarians. I have delimited the study by only investigating the websites of Gothenburg public libraries. In my survey of the websites I have studied four spheres; Services, Contact, Structure and General viewpoints.

Since 1928 the Swedish accounting and taxation has been closely linked by law which today as the European Union works with its harmonisation of the European accounting systems brings up difficulties. The Union strives to integrate the countries different ways of accounting in order to make it easier to use and understand foreign information. The Swedish connection between accounting and taxation means that a harmonisation would change the whole system as its known today. The purpose with this study is to examine what the link between the two means and how a decoupling would affect Swedish accounting and auditing. We also want to examine how the Swedish taxation office, who currently uses the accounting as a ground for taxation, could guarantee the quality of the declaration without a proper underpinning. The study shows that a decoupling could lead to an increase in quality on swedish accounting and that the administration would become more difficult to handle. The risk of dividend of untaxed profits is not seen as a problem in this context.

Our thesis is an analysis of four librarians view on LGBTQ and which implications these views have on the practical work with LGBTQ issues in the public library. The three ideal types we can identify are the excluding, the including, and the normcritical approach. We also want to know if the four librarians? standpoints can be connected to the above mentioned ideal types. We can see that the area where the implementations of the three ideal types are most visible is the way LGBTQ material is displayed in the library space.

The aim of the thesis is to highlight external factors to explain why the EMU was created. The external factor considered here is the monetary policy of the United States, which often conflicted with European interests. The statistical data in the thesis, as well as previous research, show that even though the EU economically in many ways had become an equal partner of the US during the second half of the 20th century, the union still faced US influence and dependence.The results of the thesis can be explained with neorealist theories on power measured as an actor's distribution of capabilities and balancing of power. An actor that is equipped with the world's leading currency is more independent from others. Other actors, on the other hand, become increasingly dependent on the major currency and the policy of its owner.

In this thesis I analyse and discuss what impact the 2003 U.S lead intervention in Iraq, had for the cooperation against global terrorism between the European Union and the United States. Six years have passed since the Bush administration decided to go on with the intervention, even though they did not have the necessary UN mandate. Due to unsuccessful argumentation in favour of the intervention by the Bush administration, the world got divided. George W. Bush reference to a ?war on terror?, which passed almost unnoticed by Americans, rang alarm bells in many European countries.

How do you build cities that are exciting and nice to live in? What factors in the physical environment is it that make you feel comfortable in some of the places in the city, but in other places not comfortable at all? Why do some cities have a rich public life in their public realm, while the public realm in other cities is abandoned and empty? How do you plan environments that support people?s physical and mental health? These are questions that I put to myself, and that people who are interested in or working with physical planning should ask themselves. That is why I have been studying an authority on the subject, the Danish Professor Jan Gehl, who has been researching and working with peoplefriendly public realms for 50 years. He is best known for his book Life between buildings that has been a text-book in the education of architects for more than 30 years, and to have initiated Copenhagens most famous pedestrian street, Strøget, to show his theory of how people will use the public realm, if it?s only got the right qualities.

In this thesis, the Swedish venture capital market and its profitability is analyzed. Venture capital is defined as capital that is invested in the early stages of a company's life cycle, in the two investment stages seed/start-up and expansion.A common view is that the profitability of Swedish venture capital has not been, is not and will probably not become high either. With this in mind, we try to answer to the following questions in this thesis:? What has the profitability of Swedish venture capital actually been historically?? Which reasons could be found in order to explain the historical returns for Swedish venture capital, and which factors has been identified in international comparative studies between venture capital markets?In order to answer these questions, data showing historical returns for the Swedish, European and American venture capital market has been gathered, an extensive literature study has been performed, and three interviews with participants from the Swedish venture capital market has been conducted.We conclude that the historical returns of Swedish venture capital is in line with the general view that they have been low. We also see a trend where Swedish venture capital funds that are not specialized in one investment stage generate lower returns than more specialized funds.

This is an essay about journalism and the ethical norms of journalism. Four famous cases have been analyzed; Watergate, News of the World, Joy Rahman and Bill Clinton. When analyzing we used the theories of Denis McQuail and the ethical guidelines of the Swedish Journalist Association. We have also used the ideas of utilitarianism to analyze the chosen cases.We aimed to analyze the roles of the journalists involved and found that the ethical norms are customizable to each and every case. In the Watergate-case the journalists act somewhat in contrast to the ethical guidelines but do so in order to favor the public, which makes it approvable.