The aim of this study is to investigate differences that exist in Estonia and Russia with regard to civil society, democracy and corruption and try to find out what can be possible causes to the vast differences in these two countries. Many political scientists claim that civil society plays a key role in democratic transitions. This paper takes its point of departure in 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed and Estonia and Russia became independent. Since then Estonia has had a flourishing economy which attract many foreign investments, with Sweden as the greatest investor. The country has also managed well to adjust quickly from totalitarianism to democracy.

This study analyzes how civil society contributes to the democratic development in a Nicaragua governed by the sandinist party FSLN. The empirical focus lays at the relationship between state and the civil society. By using a conceptual framework outlined by Caroline Boussard, the civil society is being analyzed as an actor with a democracy-building potential that is supported or constrained by a political context.The civil society is divided between traditional social movement and more newly borned NGOs. Social movements tend to approach the government comparatively to NGOs, which adopt a highly critical attitude. In contrast to NGOs, the traditional social movements are improving their democratic functions as a counterpart while NGOs confine its democratic potential to an agenda setter drawing attention to democratic deficits.

Today?s society has become more and more digitalized and we have access to more information than ever before. This has had a major impact on organizations and their work processes. For example have intranets become a common technical groupware to communicate and get relevant information from inside the organization. A common problem related to this is an over-reliance on the technology, where there's not taking into account that some informal and communicative means are difficult to occur through digital resources.The aim of this study is to examine the use of an intranet in a municipality, which consists of many different employees with various work situations.

The society of suburbs is frequently discussed in media, which often focus on the problems related to these areas. The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to examine how Swedish contemporary youth literature may contribute to create, strengthen and articulate social representations of the society of suburbs. The analysis is based upon six youth novels published during 2003 to 2007. The theoretical framework consists of two parts and is based on Anthony Giddens? theories about late modern society in which the youth novels in our study take place, and those living conditions that this society creates.

Our society has become a society of knowledge. The answer to the question of how to reduce unemployment has become more and more unified: education. In this case, higher education, meaning college and university. With this disposition in our society, how does it affect the students? How does this change of society and our universities affect the students of these institutions? In this study we have chosen to examine the choices of students in universities in several Swedish cities.

Today every organization is committed to some kind of environmental scanning in order to get necessary knowledge of the world around them. The acquisition, organization and storage of information in combination with a strategic use, is today an important factor for a successful organisation in any sector of our society.In this Master thesis I have studied how an organisation such as The Confederation of Swedish Enterprise (Svenskt Näringsliv) handles its information resources. I have also looked at the flow of information within the organization. The Confederation of Swedish Enterprise is Sweden?s largest business federation representing 50 member organizations and 55 000 member companies.

The main purpose of this master thesis is to investigate how six elderly individuals, 65-75 years old, use and perceive Internet in their everyday life. The focus in this study is to enlighten elderly people as Internet-users.In 2010 many elderly people are still digital excluded. In Europe and in Sweden efforts are made to educate citizens to use the Internet, and that benefits of the digital society should be available to all.This study is based on the following questions: what made the informants take an interest in the Internet in the first place? How and for what purpose do they use it? And how do the informants regard to their own Internet usage and its importance in society?We interviewed six people aged 65-75 years old, using semi-structured questions. The data was analyzed by using the theory developed by Hektor concerning Internet and information behaviour in everyday life.

This essay is an analysis of how Swedish sixth form students interpret ?a good society?,an expression which is part of the main content of Religion1, the mandatory course inreligious studies. It is based on a a survey asking 198 students to define and reflect onwhat a good society might look like. A hermeneutic method has been used to analysetheir answers in relation to regulations and research.The conclusion is that although most students show themselves able to reflect on whata good society might be, their ability to use ethical theory and concepts required by thecourse?s grading criteria is limited.

In today?s society the average person is flooded by information from everywhere. This is in particular the case when using the Internet; consider for a moment the fact that a decent search engine at this moment scans 8 058 million homepages. For a user that repeatedly comes back to the same site, the case is often that they know what they are looking for. The problem is to isolate the important information from all the other information embedding it.We would like to state that we have found one possible solution to this problem, where the user himself can define what information he is looking for at a specific server, then scan the server when visiting it with his browser.

This master thesis is a study of a new electronic library reference service-project called Speak instantly to a librarian and the purpose of the thesis is to investigate a new electronic reference service and how the librarians who work with it experience it. This should be seen from an informational society point of view. The study is conducted from two questions: - What needs do the libraries have and how do they argue for the project and the chat-reference service Speak instantly to a librarian? - How do the librarians experience the personal work situation in the new reference service, and its use of chat technology? Together with interviews of a selected group of librarians from the public libraries of Göteborg, Malmö, Nacka and Stockholm, this thesis includes aspects such as the theory of the informational society by Manuel Castells, as well as literary studies of the history of library reference, the development of electronic reference service and the virtual library, and the background and the beginning of the studied project Speak instantly to a librarian. The thesis also contains an overlook of other similar library projects in the United States of America.

This paper aims to broaden the discussion on how press freedom can be a powerful tool in the war on corruption. Previous studies have shown a significant relationship between more press freedom and less corruption, it also shows that the causal link runs from press freedom to corruption and not the other way around. There are quite a few studies on the impact of a free press on corruption and therefore there is a lot more to be published on this issue.This paper looks at press freedom as one of the most important parts of a democratic society and that it plays a vital role in reducing corruption as both an informant on key issues and also as a ?watchdog? on society. But press freedom cannot be seen as an ?easy fix? in a country or the international community's struggle to reduce corruption.

Since the down of archaeology much of the resurges has focused on graves andgrave materials. This essay is an attempt to interpret a grave material to the society of the living, to investigate what a megalithic grave material can tell us about the society that made them and the people that were buried in them. The study is focused upon two megalithic graves in Löderup; Ramshög and Carlshög. A study of the bone materiel, building construction and building material at Ramshög and Carlshög is done and then compared with different theories that are made of Ramshög and Carlshög and of other megalithic graves. By studying different theories of megalithic graves and comparing these with Ramshög and Carlshög I have tried to evaluate which ones that are relevant in this case.The megalithic graves primarily shows some kind of change, in society or in their way of looking at the dead or the life after this.

The aim of this essay is to examine the view on children with disability´s in the end of the 19 Th to the beginning of the 20 Th. We will examine the children that lived in Eugeniahememt but we will also examnie the view the society had on the children who lived on Egueniahemmet. In our essay there are four questions that we are going to answer.- Who took the initive to start Eugeniahemmet and how did it affect the activity?- Which view had the society on the children who lived on Eugeniahemmet?- How did the work with the children look like?- Which view had the staff, in Eugeniahemmet, on the children?The method that is being used in this essay is trying to analyses what the material tells us about the view on the children and how the work with the children lookt liked in Eugeniahemmet.The theory that we use is about Michel Focaults look on madness. Focault says that a person who is mad dosen?t have a connection between body and soul and that creates hallucinations witch leeds to madness.

AbstractInformation and information seeking have always been important parts of society. How behavioural patterns of information seeking manifest themselves are partly due to individual prerequisites and partly due to the practice where the seeking of information is conducted.The aim of this study is to investigate a group of newly examined physicians? experiences of information seeking behaviour in their educational practice and in their professional practice. The two practices are related to each other but still very different. This makes it interesting to study whether individuals? information seeking behaviour changes when they move from the educational practice to the professional.The theoretical framework for the current study is a socio-cultural one.

The purpose of the study was to learn how social structures can enable accessibility, by asking persons with visual impairment about their experiences of accessibility in the public environment in the city of Stockholm. Eleven adults with visual impairments, living in the city of Stockholm, were interviewed using two separate focus groups. The study was carried out with the objective to allow for the participants to be involved in the research process. The resulting data was analyzed on the basis of Nancy Fraser?s theory on social justice, focusing on the conceptions; needs, politicised needs, redistribution, recognition and misrecognition.