AbstractPurpose/Aim: This essay deals with The Swedish Red Cross Society and their work concerning strategical information and communication about HIV and AIDS in the Swedish context. In a broader sense the relation between the global and the local will be investigated and a discussion about what it means to work in an organization operating on a global arena will be held.Material/Method: This essay is based on relevant theories about culture and health communication which I have studied, selected and put together, with purpose to analyse The Swedish Red Cross Society and their informational work with HIV and AIDS- prevention. Furthermore I have interviewed four of the organizations co- workers to collect data about their experiences in working in the Red Cross organization with this specific mission. Moreover I and my colleague Hillevi Good attended at seminars and lectures to observe activities held by the organization and to get inside information about what people working with HIV and AIDS are discussing and considering as critical issues. The study holds a qualitative approach focusing on understanding this typical case rather then generalizing facts in a larger sense.Main results: The Swedish National Society of The Red Cross has a difficult mission in their work to inform the public about HIV and AIDS, although it is the perfect organization when it comes to communication due to their well-known profile and a huge geographical spread.

The aim with this essay is to examine in which way self-realizing and solidarity can bereconciled in a multicultural society. The essay is a sociological literature study whichexamines the self- realizing process and puts it in a multicultural perspective.The issues areWhich role does self-realizing play for solidarity?How is solidarity created in a multicultural society?Can everyone be self-realized in a multicultural society?Conditions and problems for self-realizing processes are examined and are treated mainly onthe basis of Jeffrey C. Alexander and Axel Honneth theories. In the essay is established thatself-realizing and society-solidarity is mutually interdependent and that solidarity requires aform of shared value, but it doesn?t need to be based in the traditional values that commonhistory, ethnicity or culture.

The purpose of this Masters thesis is to examine the attitudes of deaf and hear-impaired people towards libraries, information, and culture. The issues are: What are the attitudes of the informants towards libraries and culture? What do reference group theory and the theory of information access-/avoidance implicate concerning the information behaviour of the informants? In-depth interviews with five deaf and hear-impaired university students have been carried out in this qualitative study. The world of deaf and hear-impaired people is presented as well as a survey of political guidelines to make, for example, libraries and theatres more available to disabled people. The research overview analyses scholarly studies on deaf and hear-impaired people.

The aim of this Masters thesis is, partly, to examine the information needs of lesbians: what discernable information needs they have, how they seek information and which information sources they use. The purpose is also to examine what part fiction plays regarding the information needs mentioned above and how fiction indexing could improve retrieval. The study is conducted through ten qualitative interviews with lesbians as well as through textual analysis. The theoretical framework includes queer theory and theory concerning information needs and uses. The results indicate that lesbians have evident information needs that mostly concern identity.

To be able to feel a sense of belonging, people need to have the possibility to take part of the information from the society. Hearing-impaired don?t have the same possibility as hearing people when they want to take part of the information, therefore they don?t get the same benefit. This contributes to a feeling of not belonging and a sense of limitation in different social occasions. Therefore the society needs to be accessible to everyone regardless disability.

Visitor Centers were first established at various national parks in North America. Most Visitor Centers were built in the ten-year period following 1952. The purpose of the Visitor Centers was to welcome visitors and enhance their experience of the national parks. Today there are Visitor Centers all around the world, connected to different places or attractions. Many of the Visitor Centers that exist today, especially those in the national parks in North America, were built during the Information society.

For centuries it was a crime to be without work or an income in Sweden. Those breaching this law were called vagrants and could be sentenced to forced labor. They stood outside of society in many ways as they were being criminalized. Society's view of them becomes clear by the laws enacted against vagrancy. The investigations that were made in creating the laws do not only say something about society's view of vagrancy, but something about the society itself.In Sweden we have a unique collection of investigations and referrals that are public records through Freedom of the Press.

The purpose of this master thesis is to find out if library activities in civil society may be seen as a complement to public activities. The incitement lies in a discussion in the research activities of social sciences and among politicians, where the opinion is that civil society may function as a complement to governmental policy. The NGO-library Föreningen Miljöbiblioteket i Lund and the municipality of Malmö stad where chosen as units for examination. The common feature of the two units is the global task introduced by the UN, to create a sustainable development. The material used is exclusively concerning domestic information activities.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to examine the information needs of gay, lesbian and bisexual adolescents? when they are coming out. I also examine what kind of information they seek and where they might find this information. The purpose is also to examine what role the public or school library plays. The study is conducted through qualitative interviews with gay, lesbian and bisexual adolescents?.

When Sweden acceded to the European Union in 1995 the term social economy was introduced to the Swedish context, gradually replacing the term civil society. This replacement can be seen as an indicator of a changing meaning of what the concept of civil society used to stand for.The aim of this essay is to study if it is possible to identify changing perceptions of the role of civil society for democracy in Sweden in government bills between 2002 and 2008, and, if so, what effect does this have on the delineation between the civil society and the government.An analytical model is proposed consisting of two dimensions which both capture the roles of civil society for democracy and the model examines how those roles relate to the government.The conclusion is that the government still sees the main function of civil society as a democratic school and a change agent for democracy. However, there is strong evidence to suggest that the civil society is increasingly regarded as more of a welfare producer than a fosterer of democracy..

This Masters thesis is analysing four Swedish novels written by first time authors published between 1993-2002. The purpose is to make the fictitious main characters illustrate what conditions and obstacles there can be for the individual of today to create a self-identity. Anthony Giddens ideas about the self in the late modern society are used as a theoretical framework. In the core of Giddens theory is the concept of reflexitivity which means that the self must be constructed in a continuous fashion because the overall conditions in society are subject to constant change. The questions posed in this study are dependable on Giddens in general and the concept of reflexivity in particular.

With the volume and availability of information increasing as fast as technological development in society a phenomenon called information overload has emerged. The purpose of our thesis was to investigate how university students experience this increase in volume and ease in access to information. In our study we concentrated our focus on the student?s use of electronic resources. So as not to prejudice our study group our questions focused on different aspects of searching for information.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the process of transferring information from science to "the field" of environmental protection in Sweden. I have studied four Swedish environmental organizations, Greenpeace Nordic, WWF Sweden, the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation and Friends of the Earth Sweden to see how they search/get information. I have also studied the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency and its role as sender of information, since it is the authority which is responsible for environmental information in Sweden. I have used information and communication theories as a help to analyse my results. While working on this paper I realized that my methods were not the best.

We are constantly being fed information. Everything and everyone we come into contact with may somehow make a new impression on us, whether we are aware of it or not. One of the ways that people in today?s society in Sweden are being given information is via different types of media, for example through commercials. Whether it?s a video clip or a still-frame picture, a commercial is an effective way for a company to reach out to potential customers.However, it is not only the messages or signals that may appear obvious that these companies send out when advertising with commercials.

Based on an analytical overview of post-Communist civil society development in Russia, the present thesis attempts a critical discussion of general civil society theory from the perspective of its relevance for the case study in question. The text consists of three closely interconnected, mutually reinforcing parts. In the first part, major issues of current civil society research are being thematically presented and discussed. The second part concerns itself with the case study as such. It is divided into two parts, one dealing with the relations between state and civil society in Russia, the other with civil society and the individual.