Regionalization has become a catchphrase in European countries during the last twenty years with the establishment of the European Union. An ideational development has occurred during time towards emphasing more politicially powerful regions with the idea of new regionalism. Sweden represents a deviant case study, where regions historically have been politically weak and where Sweden has been characterized as a strong unitary state. The aim of this paper is to analyze the political debate in the Swedish parliament concerning the implementation of a stronger regional level (storregioner) during 2007-2010 and to determine if the debate can be characterized as a case of depoliticalization. The theory of depoliticalization have been introduced by Richard Katz and Peter Mair to explain why political parties through external pressure from europeanisation and globalization tend to become more consensual with similar political agendas, leading to a diminished the lef-right scale.

This is an investigation of a mobile prefabrication factory´s competitiveness and profitability which also will result in a suggestion for a design of the factory. The mobile prefabrication factory is an idea of a new concept for production which is meant to be used in the manufacture of slab. The main intention with this concept is that by using a fast established prefabrication factory to produce elements near the construction site, thus avoiding transport from the factory to the building site. This means not only an environmental and economic gain, but also that you can avoid risking damage the elements which often occur during transportation. The contractor is owner of the mobile prefabrication factory and can thus avoid long waiting times and cyclicality.

Regionalization has become a catchphrase in European countries during the last twenty years with the establishment of the European Union. An ideational development has occurred during time towards emphasing more politicially powerful regions with the idea of new regionalism. Sweden represents a deviant case study, where regions historically have been politically weak and where Sweden has been characterized as a strong unitary state. The aim of this paper is to analyze the political debate in the Swedish parliament concerning the implementation of a stronger regional level (storregioner) during 2007-2010 and to determine if the debate can be characterized as a case of depoliticalization. The theory of depoliticalization have been introduced by Richard Katz and Peter Mair to explain why political parties through external pressure from europeanisation and globalization tend to become more consensual with similar political agendas, leading to a diminished the lef-right scale.

This study aims to investigate how and why teachers use social media to reach their students, and how they handle different levels of computer literacy among students.The purpose of this study is to investigate the experience of teachers using social media in their teaching. I have done interviews with two teachers, who use social media in different ways. One of the teachers makes her students publish their work on the Internet on wiki-spaces, and the other one use Facebook for discussions and teamwork. This report uses the pedagogy theories laid forth by Vygotskij as a vantage point to analyze the answers from the teachers. I have also looked at some of the published student texts on the Internet.This study concludes there are students who don?t have access to computers and Internet at home.

This paper, called Pupils' practice of source criticism on the Internet, is investigating pupils? use of source criticism. The main research question was: how much knowledge pupils from an upper secondary class have about the use of source criticism, regarding examining data from the Internet intended for assignments. Furthermore, developing a suitable method to investigate this was included. The main research question led to further sub questions that aimed to answer to what extent pupils consider source critique criteria as sender, aim, up-to-dateness, credibility and dependence.The study has been conducted by using mixed methods, both qualitative and quantitative methods.

The main purpose with this MA thesis is to examine how visually impaired, disabled and people with dyslexia define service quality at the public library of Linköping. The method that has been used is focus group interviews. A focus group consists of four to eight people who are joined together, without knowing each other before, to discuss a certain subject. The aim is to get a wide spread of answers. A secondary purpose is to examine how this method works.

Drawing on theories of ethnic representations in mainstream news media and racial discrimination (van Dijk 2000, Hultén 2006, Husband & Downing 2005, Wodak 2011), and using methods of critical discourse analysis (mainly van Dijk 1993, 1991, Fairclough 1995) this bachelor thesis aims to investigate the inter-textual and inter-discursive relationship between selected editorial and opinion pieces written by three mainstream right wing ?symbolic elites? and the xenophobic blog ?Avpixlat?. The three selected symbolic elites are: Per Gudmundsson, editorial writer at the second largest Swedish newspaper SvD, Andreas Johansson Heinö, academic with a P.H.D. in political science, specialized on issues of integration and ethnic relations, and Paulina Neuding, editorial writer at SvD and editor in chief for right-wing oriented magazine Neo. All three are actively taking part in the mediated discussion of ethnic relations in Sweden from a liberal-conservative perspective.

Etablerade företag har framgångsrikt utökat sin verksamhet med webbutiker. Postorderföretagen har i allt högre grad gått över till att sälja över Internet och företag med specialiserat utbud säljer nu globalt. Denna typ av Internethandel utförs främst på stationära datorer, men försök har även börjat dyka upp på exempelvis mobiltelefoner och små handdatorer. Det mobila Internet har den unika fördelen att det är möjligt att handla var användaren än befinner sig. Forskare menar att denna mobila handel kommer gå om e-handeln på Internet, där skillnaden ligger i att fler kommer handla på små skärmar och mindre på stora skärmar.

Med utgångspunkt i att e-handel ökat markant de senaste åren samt i att lyxvarumärken har speciella egenskaper som komplicerar handel över Internet, är syftet med vår studie att studera hur lyxvarumärkena hanterar Internet som distributionskanal. Undersökningen grundar sig på en fallstudie av 12 lyxvarumärkens hemsidor samt på en personlig intervju. Den teoretiska referensramen innehåller teorier kring begreppet lyx samt lyxvarumärket och dess speciella egenskaper. Vidare återges teorier om lyxkonsumenten samt köpupplevelsens roll vid lyxkonsumtion. Slutligen presenterar vi lyxens demokratisering samt teorier kring Internet och e-handel.

With this research we aimed to seek how youth workers express their experience of counselling on the internet compared to traditional counselling face to face with a theoretical ground in semiotics and symbolic interactionism. Our questions were 1) How do youth workers describe their experiences from anonymous, faceless online counselling? 2) How do youth workers experience the differences between online counselling and the traditional face-to-face counselling? 3) Which possibilities and difficulties do they see in online communication with adolescents? We used semi-structed interviews with seven youth workers. Six of those are active in non-profit organisations, and one in social services. The results from our interviews showed that the interviewees saw that misunderstandings were more frequent on the internet, but that online counselling with adolescents still was easier than in the face-to-face meetings.

The aim of this master thesis is to investigate how the OPACs Online Public Access Catalogue used by public libraries have adapted the features and possibilities offered by online catalogues, for the purpose of searching for fiction. This is done by comparing five OPACs to Amazon.com, an online bookstore. The questions investigated are: Have the OPACs developed from the principles of the card catalogue and adapted to the features and possibilities offered by online catalogues, when searching for fiction? Can the library catalogue provide the same features as Amazon.com, when searching for fiction? How do the OPACs use the resources that online catalogues provide when searching for fiction, compared with Amazon.com? The thesis is based on two qualitative studies. The first study presents five OPACs from different library systems and examines which features they have in common with Amazon.com.

In a time of economic turmoil and financial crisis profitability matters rise higher and higher on company agendas. Many companies are pressured to find profitability to avoid layoffs or even bankruptcy. Profitability essentially depends on the margin on the product or service sold and the costs associated with selling these products or services and hence these areas are of vital importance if companies are to improve profitability. Previous research has focused, for the most part, on product profitability while customer profitability has received less attention. This study is based on a case study of a Swedish publishing house and aims to investigate how the company?s Cost-to-Serve varies between its distribution channels.

The phenomena of cyber bullying is relatively new, but it is now more prevalent than ever as children today have access to the internet on a daily basis, in school as well as at home. Although cyber bullying is an increasing problem in today?s society, there seem to be few guidelines for teachers to follow when using the internet with their students in school. The purpose of this study is to investigate who, according to six teachers, has the responsibilities revolving cyber bullying ? teachers or parents.

During the fall of 2007 Uppsala University gave the course ?Projekt DV?. As a result of this class a publishing tool for real-time media came to be ShiShi TV. The purpose of this application was to introduce a new way to reach out to people. This was done with a video player on the Internet and a second one placed in a regular mobile phone.

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to examine how The Trilogy of Pippi Longstocking, written by the author Astrid Lindgren, has been received by the critics in the Swedish daily press. A second aim is to examine how the critics could be of importance for the consecration of Pippi as a literary character. The study is mainly based on reviews from the daily press with nationwide coverage. The theoretical framework consists of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu?s theories of the literary field, and the method of the reviews is a qualitative text analysis.