Abstract?Political participation by the citizen?- Citizen proposals in Karlstad municipalityEssay in Political Science, C-levelAuthor: Tobias GustafssonTutor: Michele MichelettiIn Sweden the political parties are losing more and more of their members. That in combination with a tendency that the participation in the elections is getting lower is a problem for the representative and parliamentary political system in Sweden.In order to strengthen the democracy in Sweden and to make the gap between the citizens and the elected smaller there has been some democracy-projects. The purpose of these democracy-projects is to make the political participation by the citizens, between the elections, higher. One of them is ?citizen proposals to the municipality?.The purpose of this essay is to examine this democracy-project in order to see what influences it might have on the local democracy.

Abstract?Political participation by the citizen?- Citizen proposals in Karlstad municipalityEssay in Political Science, C-levelAuthor: Tobias GustafssonTutor: Michele MichelettiIn Sweden the political parties are losing more and more of their members. That in combination with a tendency that the participation in the elections is getting lower is a problem for the representative and parliamentary political system in Sweden.In order to strengthen the democracy in Sweden and to make the gap between the citizens and the elected smaller there has been some democracy-projects. The purpose of these democracy-projects is to make the political participation by the citizens, between the elections, higher. One of them is ?citizen proposals to the municipality?.The purpose of this essay is to examine this democracy-project in order to see what influences it might have on the local democracy.

The association between social parameters (i.e. socio-economy and level of education) and voting behaviour has been reviewed and analysed based on data from municipal council elections in Stockholm and Gothenburg in 2002. Some social scientists argue that the class voting is in decline and that new social cleavages have emerged. However, by using regression analysis techniques, this study implies a strong dependence of voting behaviour on social parameters, such as socio-economic status (SES) and level of education. Socio-economy appears to be a dominant predictor in the analysis.

I detta examensprojekt står de allmänna valen till riksdag, landstingoch kommun i centrum, och problematiken med detminskade intresset för dessa.I syfte att öka kännedom och engagemang om valet hos förstagånsväljarna,som är den grupp med lägst valdeltagande i senareval, har målet varit att färdigställa två informativa och underhållandefilmsekvenser.Längderna på filmerna har begränsats till en minut respektivetio?femton sekunder, då det tänkta forumet för filmerna ärtiden som finns mellan programblocken i TV, vanligtvis fylld medreklam eller trailers.Efterforskningar om valet och berörda myndigheters roll ochpolicy, samt analys av formgivning relaterad till, eller liknande mittprojekt har lagt en grund för konceptframtagandet.Den praktiska fasen har bestått av arbete med manus, storyboard,animatic, animation, testvisning, ljudinspelning, och efterproduktion,och resulterat i två filmsekvenser..

This thesis is using the theory of participatory democracy to show how one can work to increase the participation in the society, between elections as well as during elections. For a couple of years now many traditional democratic countries have been struggling with low voting rates. Hence this, I find it interesting to study what has been done to cope with this problem. The government in Sweden had a project working on how to make more people involved in the democratic process, especially people that to a lesser extent participate in this process. In this thesis two projects will be studied, Möllevångsgruppen and Unga väljer Miljö i Malmö.

The concept of the work-first principle (arbetslinjen) might be considered old, but still serves as the main principle as well as an instrument in the Swedish labour market and social policy today. The original idea was that work and willingness to work was to be rewarded, especially due to a common opposition against the passive receipt of grants. The general definition of work, today, is that it is something desirable that should be achieved and that unemployed primarily will be offered training or work rather than grants and subsidies. When the Moderate party re-launched themselves as Sweden's "workers' party of today", in the beginning of the 2000's, the concept was brought back into the spotlight. In the elections of 2006 and 2010, the labour market was widely debated and become a controversial issue, with the concept of the work-first principle playing a major role.The purpose of this thesis is to analyse and problematize how the concept was presented and explained in the nationwide newspapers Aftonbladet and Svenska Dagbladet during the 2010 elections, this in order to increase the understanding of the concept?s contemporary definition and policy implications.

Title: Under the surface - Fredrik Reinfeldt and Stefan Löfven in a comparative photo studyAuthors: Jon Demred, Fanny Wijk & Olivia WikströmLevel: Bachelor of JournalismLocation: University of GothenburgLanguage: SwedishNumber of pages: 39This thesis compares how Stefan Löfven was being portrayed in Swedish media the week after the generalelection 2014 with how Fredrik Reinfeldt was portrayed in the first week after 2006?s general election.There has been made a lot of research on how politicians are portrayed in the media, but most of theresearch focus on text portrayal. This thesis focus on something different, it compares how the two ?winners? were portrayed in news photos.A semiotic approach was used to analyse news images in the newspapers Aftonbladet, Expressen, SvenskaDagbladet and Dagens Nyheter. It was important to not only look at the pictures, but also the outer context, i.e the headlines, had to be analysed to come to any conclusions.Fredrik Reinfeldt was portrayed more positive and more as a winner than Stefan Löfven was.

Title: Det bortglömda valet? ? En kvantitativ undersökning av mediernas bevakning kring Europaparlamentsvalet 2009Authors: Elin Kullander and Sara LundinSubject: The media coverage of the election of the European parliament 2009Term: Spring 2014Supervisor: Mats Ekström, JMG, Gothenburg UniversityPages/words: 44/11 065Purpose: The purpose has been to investigate how great the media coverage was on the European parliament elections in 2009 and then compare the result to previous elections. The discussion is based on media?s role as a multiplier in a democracy.Method: We have used a quantitative method and studied the media coverage in four Swedish newspapers 23 days before the Swedish election on 7th of June 2009.Results: We have come to the conclusion that media is in fact meeting its democratic role as a multiplier, in any case as long as we only take in conclusion the amount of articles that has been published. We have seen that the media coverage for the first time has increased both in number of articles and in how big the articles were.

AbstractA general store is a grocery store that is located in the countryside. In today's modern society, it is difficult for general stores to compete with the supermarkets and discounters in terms of price and supply. The purpose of this thesis is to create an understanding of both the rural merchants and its customers? perspective on a well-­?functioning general store. We have conducted a case study of three general stores where we interviewed the merchants about how they do to please their customers? needs and identify key elements of a well-­?functioning general store.

2014 is a special year in Sweden: for the first time elections to the European parliament and the national elections coincides, creating a"Super election year". This year has also seen the rebirth of an old way of campaigning: door-to-door canvassing. For the first time in 50 years the two biggest political parties, the Social Democrats and the Moderate Party, have decided to create a campaign based on personal meetings with the voters in their own home. To investigate this old-new way of campaigning, this study presents an overview of the history of door-to-door canvassing in Sweden and the research in political marketing associated with the phenomena. Based on that, a new model is constructed to help analyze and map the Swedish canvassing-campaigns.

AbstractTitle: The Junilistan in the elections of the European Parliament in 2004 A media drama in three actsNumber of pages: 42Author: Kristiina RuutiTutor: Amelie HössjerCourse: Media and Communication Studies CUniversity: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Information Science, Uppsala UniversityDate of submission: 2007-01-13, autumn term of 2006Purpose/Aim:The purpose of the essay is to examine the media coverage of the Swedish Junilistan in the elections of the European Parliament in Sweden 2004. My hypothesis is that the media coverage of the political party Junilistan was a media drama with elements of classical dramaturge.Material/Method:Qualitative content analyses of four Swedish newspapers from a narratological perspective.Main results:The media coverage of the political party Junilistan was a media drama with elements of classical dramaturge. The coverage became a drama with three acts. Diverse actors with different projects could be identified from the articles.Keywords:Narrative, election journalism, classic drama, mediadrama, actant, European parliament.

During a political election the public?s interest in politics and political journalism increases significantly. During the American presidential election in 2012 a big amount of articles on that topic were published in two of Sweden?s largest newspaper, Svenska Dagbladet and Aftonbladet. Political journalism tends to frame politics as sports, game and scandals rather than focusing on the political issues.

The aim of this study is to get a better understanding of the Iranian regime. My theory is that the Iranian regime is a semi-dictatorship, based on the soul fact that semi-competetive elections take place. The main question this thesis tries to answer is what characterizes the political construction of the Iranian regime and by what means does it implement its political goals. In trying to answer this question the case of Iran is applied to four specific typologies being, semi-dictatorship, military rule, single party rule and personal rule. The aim has not been to categorically analyze if the Iranian regime matches one typology or the other perfectly, as this is seldom the case when it comes to typologies.After analysis of the four typologies, the conclusion is that the Iranian regime utilizes semi-competitive elections to give a guise of democracy, as is in line with a semi-dictatorship.

The purpose of this thesis is to study the level of democracy within the European Union (EU). To do so the following issues were examined: How the EU works and the efforts it has made to improve levels of democracy; and the degree to which the EU fulfils the criteria set by Robert Dahl in his theory of polyarchy.The study is based on a qualitative text analysis. The focus of the analysis is documents released by the EU that can be connected to democracy, and human and fundamental rights. The theory of polyarchy proposed by Robert Dahl and Joseph Schumpeter?s theory of democracy are the principal theories applied.

This study is about youths, democracy and school. It seeks to describe and problemize the school's role in the democratic society. Firstly, using Social Representations Theory, 44 upper secondary shool pupils? representations, or conceptions, of democracy are described and discussed. These representations are then analyzed in relation to the school's role in the democratic society, as it is described by different researchers.The results show that many of the youths have a rather simplistic and abstract view of democracy, describing it only in terms of general principles and the main features of the representative democracy, such as voting in national elections.