With the farming methods of the past century the agricultural landscape has changed. This has led to the fact that many habitats and species have been significantly reduced. Sweden is committed to the preservation of biodiversity through various conventions and laws. In the EU's Common Agricultural Policy there are currently agro-environmental schemes, which were created as an instrument for reducing the negative impacts of agriculture on nature and environment. Within this system any farmer who perform environmental measures are financially compensated for this.

Purpose: This thesis aims to study how students in upper secondary school evaluate sources in their everyday school work and how the role of the school library and librarian officiate in this context.Methodology: A web questionnaire was conducted and 155 students from different schools, with or without school library and school librarian, participated. We coded and aggregated the questionnaires according to the strategies that are used when evaluating sources, identified by Francke, Sundin and Limberg. Cognitive authority, a theory by Patrick Wilson, was also a part of our analysis. Conclusions: The study shows that students use different strategies, separately or combined, as a way to evaluate sources. The teacher is regarded as a cognitive authority and is the main influence concerning source evaluation. It also shows that the role of school libraries and school librarians, in this context, seem to be non-existent.

AbstractThe purpose of the present study was to clarify and describe what image men and women present and communicate in their profiles on an online dating site. Further has been investigated if traditional gender roles and stereotypes are as pronounced on this online platform or if it offers a space to go beyond traditional formations. The theoretical framework of this study consisted of a social psychological idea and understanding of identity as well as a gender theoretical perspective. The methodological points of departure were hermeneutic and the data consisted of ten male and ten female member profiles on match.com. The results of the study was divided into three themes, the emphasis on positive qualities, the attractive body and project manager to one?s own life.

The purpose was to investigate how conversationalinteraction is pragmatically affected in Huntington?s disease; whetherthis can be assessed by means of a questionnaire completed by a closepartner and how the close partners consider communicative ability haschanged since the onset of illness. Three dyads, consisting of a personwith Huntington?s disease and a conversational partner were involved.Conversations were analyzed with respect to the parameters in thequestionnaire and through Activity Based Communication Analysis.The results showed word finding difficulties, impaired turn taking,feedback and body language, repair, articulation and prosody.Agreement between communication analysis and the close partnerreport varied between 54-65 %. The close partners consideredcommunicative initiative, articulation, turn taking and sentenceintonation as much changed.

A growing need to strengthen ones position on the market, even as a city in competition with other cities, has resulted in an increasing number of municipalities developing brand platforms. When the city of Umeå developed their platform, they identified decision makers and investors as one of four important target groups.The aim of this study is to explore the portrayed image of the city of Umeå in two Swedish trade journals which addresses the specific target group decition makers and investors in both public and private sector. The aim is also to compare the image of Umeå in the two papers, to the ambition of the municipality, expressed in the brand platform.In order to make the observations as firmly established as possible, the method of the study is a combination of a quantitative content analysis and a qualitative text analysis. The study draws on the theories of Eli Avraham and Philip Kotler, concerning how to improve city images and how to market a specific city among others. The study shows that the city of Umeå in large extent is portrayed in accordance to the ambition which the municipality expressed in the brand platform.Umeå is displayed as an expanding city.

Social media on the Web has become more common over the last decade and in recent years it has grown immensely. The social media with the highest amount of members is Facebook, where not only private persons are found - companies started to establish their profiles on the network in 2006. However, little is known about how these companies succeed and reach their audience with information dissemination and interact with them. The aim of this study is to contribute with information to local companies on how they can manage to maintain their activity with different approaches and strategies. This study examines how three different local companies chooses to spread information and maintain relationships with their members on Facebook.

Syftet med studien är att få en djupare förståelse för hur användare av sociala medier förhåller sig till, och varför de väljer att följa företagssidor i sociala medier, vad de förväntar sig av dem samt hur de upplever företagens ständiga närvaro. Vi har undersökt detta utifrån en kvalitativ ansats och har använt fokusgrupper för att samla in studiens empiriska material. Fokusgruppsintervjuerna är semistrukturerade då detta anses vara lämpligt för att fånga in så mycket som möjligt av ämnet samtidigt som deltagarna får möjlighet att diskutera fritt. Det teoretiska ramverk som används i denna studie omfattar konsumentattityder, konsumentbeteende, skapande av image genom varumärken och word of mouth i sociala medier.Våra resultat visar att de största anledningarna till att deltagarna följer företag i sociala medier är för att få tillgång till information och inspiration samt ta del av underhållning. Majoriteten av deltagarna följer även företag för att få någonting tillbaka i form av tjänster, rabatter eller erbjudanden.

Syfte: Syftet är att studera diskrepanser mellan den av företaget förmedlade imagen och hur de anställda upplever arbetet inom organisationen i praktiken samt även hur de upplever själva förmedlingen. Metod: Med hjälp av individuella intervjuer har vi fastställt hur den av företaget förmedlade imagen upplevs av de anställda. Teorierna i studien har till avsikt att förklara dels image och hur image kan användas för att påverka anställda. Resultat: Diskrepanserna mellan individen och organisationen kan vara väldigt stora och många aspekter av individens identitet kan vara helt eller delvis segmenterade från organisationens identitet. Trots detta kan individen ha en positiv bild av företaget så länge det finns någon aspekt hos organisationens identitet som gör intrång på någon aspekt av individens identitet..

A growing need to strengthen ones position on the market, even as a city in competition with other cities, has resulted in an increasing number of municipalities developing brand platforms. When the city of Umeå developed their platform, they identified decision makers and investors as one of four important target groups.The aim of this study is to explore the portrayed image of the city of Umeå in two Swedish trade journals which addresses the specific target group decition makers and investors in both public and private sector. The aim is also to compare the image of Umeå in the two papers, to the ambition of the municipality, expressed in the brand platform.In order to make the observations as firmly established as possible, the method of the study is a combination of a quantitative content analysis and a qualitative text analysis. The study draws on the theories of Eli Avraham and Philip Kotler, concerning how to improve city images and how to market a specific city among others. The study shows that the city of Umeå in large extent is portrayed in accordance to the ambition which the municipality expressed in the brand platform.Umeå is displayed as an expanding city.

The post-modern western city is going through two central changes in the organization of paid labour. One is the switch from production of goods to production of services, and the other is the increasing rift between well-paid labour with permanent jobs, and temporarily employed workers with low wages. Both of these processes are rasified and gendered, and strike harder against women, young persons and people of emigrant background. The flexible capitalism creates an informalization of the economy, breaking with earlier regulations of the labour markets, in which workers also need to find informal strategies in their individual and collective struggles. In this paper, I search for these ?new? experiences of living and working in late capitalist society, by doing open interviews with three women of Latin-American origin, working without official permission (without documents) in the informal economy of Stockholm.

That we have a great need to be encouraged is coated in a variety of motivational theories. Despite our awareness of this need, studies show that Swedish employees feel a lack of encouragement in the workplace. The purpose of this report is to examine the factors that affect our ability to give others encouragement.Empirical data were collected through questionnaires from 91 people in the workplace. Correlation between the experience of giving and receiving encouragement, self-image, outlook on mankind and stress in the workplace are examined using a linear Multiple Regression Analysis. Correlation between the experience of giving and receiving encouragement is examined using Pearsons test of correlation.The results show that there is no significant correlation between the experience of giving and receiving encouragement, self-image, outlook on mankind and stress.

The aim of this thesis is to illustrate the principal problem of the study of national self-images and by questioning the congruent existence of one in the case of Sweden. Through the use of qualitative method and semi-structured interviews the ambition of the study is to compare and to understand the national self-images portrayed in a major Swedish town, Stockholm and to that of a smaller town on the countryside, Sjöbo. A social constructionist approach in co-operation with key temporal and spasial dimensions are used to penetrate the interviews at hand. The main conclusions drawn from this study highlights the difficulties in addressing the concept of a congruent national self-image. Several major discrepancies appear in the analysed material, mainly in the past and the external dimensions, both from a regional approach, but also very much within the local entities themselves..

Our consumption habits are today under development and alteration. The market for mobile commerce is increasing, as well as the use of social networks with mobile devices. This relatively new approach to online shopping requires that retailers adjust to new strategies related to trust issues. The purpose of this study is to examine how social networks affect the establishment of trust between retailers and customers in mobile commerce. We investigate what kind of strategies retailers apply in order for consumers to gain trust in the mobile environment.

Hedge funds? importance within the financial system has during the most recent years increased dramatically. These special funds are unique instruments that differ from traditional mutual funds in a variety of ways, however especially in how they expect returns. Due to the fact that hedge funds are able to hold short positions they possess the possibility to become market neutral investment vehicles.Because of this possibility to sustain positions neutral to market fluctuations, the concept of absolute returns became a unique selling point for hedge fund managers and promises of stable returns unchallenged by market conditions was assured. This research paper aims to examine the theory of absolute returns in hedge funds by examining hedge funds from the Nordic region during the last years of economic turmoil that has occurred by  analyzing the results from their strategies, partially by quantitative measurements as well as qualitative.  The results show that none of hedge fund strategies managed to deliver absolute returns over the chosen period..

The main purpose of this thesis has been to identify and discuss problems connected with the preservation of newspapers in Sweden. Another purpose was to see if the preservation of newspapers has been influenced by the fact that preservation studies in general concerns printed monographs and digital materials. This qualitative study is partly based upon interviews with four librarians experienced in working with newspapers and preservation. The thesis deals with cultural heritage in general and on a more specific level with newspapers where the following questions are dealt with: Why preserve? Who preserves? How to preserve? and What is preserved? Strategies used for preserving newspapers such as paper, microfilming and digitization are described as well as legal deposit, the Swedish microfilming programme and TIDEN, a digitization project of newspapers.