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During the second part of the 20th Century celebrities became more commonly used for commercial purposes as they could enhance purchase intentions, word-of-mouth- intentions and change attitudes towards brands and products. Over the last few years blogs and bloggers have become more and more used for product placing and the bloggers? power over consumers? behaviour has grown rapidly. The aim of this study is to compare a celebrity?s and a blogger?s impact on consumer behaviour and try to understand the underlying reasons why they do have such power over their audiences.

The aim of the thesis is to analyze the role of regional development planning concerning a regional perspective of green structure and to reflect on its future role. The target group of the study is foremost practitioners but also students of regional planning and development. Three questions are examined. 1) What view concerning green structure has the regional planning body of Stockholm County Council (RTK) communicated through the years? 2) Has this view contributed to generating a common understanding concerning green structure among the actors in the county? 3) Has this common understanding been referred to by actors in discussions concerning how this green structure should develop? The empirical material consists of documents from rtk, the County Administrative Board, the municipalities of the county, a network of ngo:s, as well as interviews with representatives from the above mentioned organizations.

A relatively new sector in the world is the one concerning social enterprises and their development. Social enterprises are enterprises that are working with social objectives, their goal is not to make as much money as possible. This essay is looking at the development in social enterprises in two countries; Great Britain and Sweden and how the employee numbers in the enterprises have changed over time. The result shows a large increase in the number of employees in the enterprises in Sweden, however the enterprises in Great Britain does show a declining number of employees. This essay also tries to examine whether a couple of external factors, taken from a series of already existing theories, are affecting the possibility of development in these enterprises.

The purpose of this study is to identify and make attitudes among social workers towards homosexual and bisexual people visible, examine how these attitudes relate to their actions in their professional role and how these attitudes and actions can be understood by theories of heteronormativity and power. The study is a cross-sectional quantitative survey in the form of a questionnaire completed by social workers. The result shows that there are two groups among the social workers. One larger group that reproduces a norm of acceptance toward homosexual and bisexual people and one smaller that reproduces a heterosexual norm. This reproduction of heteronormativity increases the risk for homosexual and bisexual people to be made invisible and treated more negatively in contact with social workers, which in turn can lead to worse health among the clients..

This essay is about the staff in integrated homes very complex profession and this is illustrated through twelve interviews in five integrated homes for disabled people. The profession changed when the institution closed and especially when the Law of Support and Service (LSS) was introduced in 1994.The purpose of this survey is to study how staff works with LSS intentions in integrated homes for disabled people and to increase the awareness about the structure of power and how this affects the daily life for those who live there.The main objective in this survey is to find out which the differences that lie between LSS intentions and the work that take place in integrated homes for disabled people. This survey tries to illustrate when and why these differences occur. This survey has a multidisciplinary perspective, where three models of disability and theories from Foucault, Sibley and Wendell have been included. The result shows that the staffs work is difficult, full of responsibility and has many facets.

A future expansion of wind power in the Nordic power system makes the balancing for the transmission system operator Svenska Kraftnät (SvK) more complicated. Up to the hour of delivery the balance responsible parties? (BRP) makes prognoses and plans, for consumption and production, to help maintain the balance in the electrical grid. How well this is accomplished is affected by the setup of the market design. Therefore SvK has proposed the following possible changes in market design: Increase the imbalance costsIntensify the regulation of imbalancesIncrease the temporal resolution on the different marketsPresent the prices for balancing power in real-timeModify the balancing market to simplify auction of consumption bidsA mapping over the BRPs? processes within planning and trading on the day-ahead, intra-day, and the balancing market has been performed in this thesis.

This thesis work is the last part of the Master of Science education inmechanical engineering at KTH, Stockholm.The aim of this project was the development of a Multi-zone modelfor NOxformation in Diesel engines. Because of the stringent emissionlegislations, great effort is made to decrease the fuel consumption and theharmful emissions of internal combustion engines. Computer simulationsplay a decisive role in this context because they substitute the expensiveand time-consuming laboratory tests.The model is based on a multi-zone approach and uses the wellknownExtended Zeldovich Mechanism which gives a relation to calculatethe NO formation rate using the concentration of different gas speciesinvolved in the process.All the most important phenomena involved in the Diesel combustionhave been modelled. A special attention is then paid to the equilibriumconcentration calculation; this is a significant part of the model whichstrongly influences the following steps.A Simulink model has also been developed. This second version isbased on the previous model and it is made especially to allow theconnection with other external softwares, GT-power in this case.

Research in the field of gaming and the gaming culture shows that the culture is characterized by sexism and hypermasculinity, however a majority of this research is conducted in an Anglo-Saxon context. Therefore the aim of this study was to elucidate the Swedish gaming discourse in relation to gender, gendered norms and stereotypes. We also sought to examine the relationship between the editorial content and the blog comments. The study was based on a critical discourse analysis with a gender perspective, applied to five Swedish gaming blogs. By implementing power theory and encoding/decoding theory, we have concluded that there is a discursive struggle, where one part of the gaming culture is characterized by male dominance, while the other part of the discourse is showing signs of resistance to this hypermasculinity.

The purpose was to examine how the pre-schools used the public libraries in two Swedishtowns. We also examined if and how the pre-schools and the public libraries were coopera­ting.Literature showed that it is possible to stimulate children's language development and this is a duty for pre-schools and public libraries. We sent an inquiry to all pre-schools divisions in both towns. We interviewed two librarians. Our results showed that the pre-schools did use the libraries to a great extent but they didn't cooperate with the libraries in the sense that they had elaborated agreements.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to examine how the introducing of municipal library plans has influenced some compulsory schools in Malmö. I wanted to know if the library plan is a possible way to improve the quality of the school library. Through qualitative interviews with four school librarians and four headmasters, I investigate their knowledge of the library plan and their opinion of the possibilities to realize the directions of the plan. The theoretical framework is based on a model of organizational culture by Bakka, Fivelsdal and Lindkvist.

The aim of this study has been to investigate Swedish youth?s conceptions about pornography and sexuality through a gender and power perspective. The questions of issue were the following: 1. Does youth reflect about gender and sexuality concerning pornography? a) Does any norms appear concerning consumption of pornography and sexuality?b) Is any kind of power structure related to gender recognized concerning pornography? c) Does youth think that pornography effects the conception of gender and sexuality? If so, how?2. Are there any differences between how girls and boys reflect about the questions of issue above?The used research method has been qualitative individual semi-structured interviews with eight students totally, four girls and four boys, all in the ages of 16-18. The study has a hermeneutical and abductive approach.The result shows that the respondents recognize both positive and negative influences from pornography.

International media groups and the freedom of speech are two issues that have been questioned during the last years when large media groups control a large amount of public-oriented information. The masters thesis at hand considers three debates that illuminate Bonniers and AB Mariebergs hereinafter referred to as the Bonnier Media Group positions on the media market. The objective of such a study is to establish in the face of the theory on hegemonia, for example from which factors the media actors deduce their argumentation when discussing the above-mentioned topic and the meaning of such a discussion in our time. The thesis also discusses whether freedom of speech and free opinion are affected by the increasing power of the Bonnier Media Group and if they, as a result, have diminished their own cultural and liberal assets, features that are firmly associated with the company. I conclude that various features have come to change the media market during the last years.

This project has revolved around finding better ways of overseeing vibrations of the gearbox at a wind power station. The gearbox has been a huge problem at the stations located at Gässlingen and the sooner the warning of an incoming breakdown is at hand the more money you can save from preparations. The work has been carried out together with Askalon AB in cooperation with consults from ÅF. Askalon is a company with a department focused on overseeing vibrations and it is in collaboration with that department the work has been carried out. During this work, new positions for the sensors and new methods of gathering and analyzing data have been worked out. This was then implemented at a wind power station to be tried out on site.

This is a thesis about the American empire. I also focus my work to see if this American empire is declining. The two main questions I ask and want to answer in this thesis are: is America an empire and is it in decline?I first conclude that America has been an empire ever since the end of the Second World War. The sheer military and economic power of the American empire matches and exceeds the ones before them.