Title: Under the surface - Fredrik Reinfeldt and Stefan Löfven in a comparative photo studyAuthors: Jon Demred, Fanny Wijk & Olivia WikströmLevel: Bachelor of JournalismLocation: University of GothenburgLanguage: SwedishNumber of pages: 39This thesis compares how Stefan Löfven was being portrayed in Swedish media the week after the generalelection 2014 with how Fredrik Reinfeldt was portrayed in the first week after 2006?s general election.There has been made a lot of research on how politicians are portrayed in the media, but most of theresearch focus on text portrayal. This thesis focus on something different, it compares how the two ?winners? were portrayed in news photos.A semiotic approach was used to analyse news images in the newspapers Aftonbladet, Expressen, SvenskaDagbladet and Dagens Nyheter. It was important to not only look at the pictures, but also the outer context, i.e the headlines, had to be analysed to come to any conclusions.Fredrik Reinfeldt was portrayed more positive and more as a winner than Stefan Löfven was.

Title: [Frontline bureaucrats discretion in the transition to Establishment Reform]This essay aims to study discretion among frontline bureaucrats as an important factor in the integration of immigrants. In contrast to other studies of discretion this essays has its focus on a new establishment reform that has been recently legislated. The theoretical frame is based on the concept of frontline bureaucracy developed by M. Lipsky (2010). In the analysis of the discretion in this specific area I have been inspired by I.

In the essay the author examines how pilgrimage can be used as a tool to radicalise democracy in a late modern society marked by neoliberalism. Applying a dialectic perspective on social movements the essay puts forward how the pilgrimage movement Pilgrim?s Walk for Future, administrated by Church of Sweden, is working in line with the historical pilgrimage theology - a modern critical ecclesiology- to mobilise political action to prevent climate change. The result of the study shows how PWFF meet the neoliberal hegemony with a mobilisation of alternative values beyond the order of capitalism, in line with Christian theology and tradition. The mobilisation is made possible by new forms of identifications with oneself and the social world that meet a modern power/knowledge- regime based on rational thought, and which questions norms and practises by paying attention to their negative effects on nature and on human life in general.

This study focuses on the politics around ecological sustainable development in Sweden today, with emphasis on urban development, building and living. The starting-point for this study is the environmental adapted city district of Stockholm, Hammarby Sjöstad. The primary focus of the study is to investigate what means of control the environmental investment in Hammarby Sjöstad is expressing, and to elucidate their ideological, political and social implications. The empirical material is primarily based up on the local Hammarby Sjöstad environmental program along with qualitative in-depth interviews with citizens of this district. The study is based on critical discourse analysis The result of this study is that the ecological investment in Hammarby Sjöstad partly constitutes a hidden exercise of power, taking shape as built-in physical measures in the dwellings and the neighbouring surroundings.

This thesis applies a discourse theoretical approach in order to examine in whatways and with what possible meanings the library at KVINFO participates in the overall gender discourse in society. This means that our reading takes place at a metatheoretical level, focussing on the library as a constructor of meaning in relation to society's gender discourse.Besides the actual reading, the thesis argues for the fruitfulness of using both a discourse theoretical and a feministic perspective in the field of Library and Information Science. By looking at libraries in general through a lens provided by these perspectives, libraries are staged as battlegrounds for competing discourses,that attempt to promote its particular knowledge claim on how reality should be perceived.The reading shows that it is possible to perceive the library at KVINFO as amaterial articulation that takes shape by and is part in a feministic counterdiscourse against the masculinistic hegemonic discourse, which throughout ?hisstory? has positioned women as ?the other?, and established men as the normative category in society, including the libraries. Through its practise KVINFO has contributed to a change in the collective identity ascribed to women.

Essay in political science, C-level by Mikael GranathAutumn semester 2012, Tutor: Freddy Kjellström- Ideological convergence in Swedish party politics?- An analysis of ideologies of the Swedish Social Democratic party and the Swedish Moderateparty and their healthcare and health service policies between the years of 2002 and 2010.The main purpose of this study is to examine the truthfulness in the common perception thatthe Swedish moderate party and the Swedish social democratic party are increasingly sharingthe same political views - particularly between the years of 2002 and 2010. The main researchquestion is:?Did the Swedish Moderate party and the Swedish Social Democratic partyideologically position themselves closer in the year of 2002 than they did in 2010within the health care policy area?The research design chosen for this study can be labelled as a comparative case study wherethe two political parties party programs and election manifestos that were current in the yearof 2002 and 2010 are studied. This is done to give a better view of ideological change.

In the rural districts of Sweden, especially in Skåne, the political party Sverigedemokraterna is gaining more and more territory. The aim of this thesis is to examine if the presence of Sverigedemokraterna has had an effect on the other political parties in Kävlinge and Svedala municipality, with focus on images and collective identity. The aim is also to examine what influence Sverigedemokraterna might have on the political agenda of the two municipalities. In order to be able to fulfil the purpose of the essay, we chose to combine three kinds of qualitative methods; interviews, observations and literature studies. We used theories about images and collective identity to examine in which way the municipal politicians tend to classify Sverigedemokraterna in terms of different images and if their presence has effected the other politicians in terms of forming a collective identity.

The increased popularity of e-books in the Swedish publiclibraries started a debate in newspapers and library journalsbecause of the increase in costs, which this popularity hadled to. The main subject of the debate was the businessmodel provided by the e-book vendor Elib, which accordingto some ruins the libraries financially. In this thesis, opinionarticles have been analyzed using a theoretical model ofcultural politics by the Danish Library and Informationscience researcher Dorthe Skot-Hansen. The results of thestudy showed that people from the library field, publishersand authors were the ones contributing to the debate. Theanalysis of the articles showed that the model of culturalpolitics which consists of four general motives: socialchange, education, economic growth and entertainment wasvisible in the articles.

This essay is based on seven lifestoryinterviews with people who are undergoing orhave undergone a long asylum process. Four women and three men have contributedwith their stories about their experiences of waiting for a determination of theirapplication for residence permit. The main aim of the essay is to give betterunderstanding of how to be a refugee and a long asylum process affects people's abilityto narrate and thus examine their opportunities to be active in the construction of theirown identity.The questions that are debated and discussed are:? What can it mean for an individual's identity to escape her country and for a longtime wait for decision of asylum?? What stories can be told?? What reality are highlighted as central in the stories?? How do they handle their situation and give meaning to their lives?The analysis is based on two main theoretical perspectives: narrative theory and identitytheory. The approach is that people create meaning of events through storytelling andthat they through this process of narrating construct (and reconstruct) their identities -the self image as one have and wants to present to others.In the analysis three different types of stories are distinguished, stories that arerepresented in the empirical material: the story that can not be told, the story that mustbe told and the story that are gladly told.

The purpose of this essay is to study causes for the lack of political trust in Europe and especially in Sweden. The essay starts with a presentation of two theories about the reasons for low political trust. Robert D. Putnam among others presents a theory that gives social capital an important role when viewing the low political trust. As Putnam sees it a person that participates in any kind of organization, political or not, develop trust for other human beings that in the long run affects political trust.

Previous research regarding the European debt crisis has mostly focused on the purely economic aspects of the crisis. However, there is a strong ?Protestant-Catholic? dimension in Europe, where historically Protestant countries are more prosperous than their Catholic and Orthodox counterparts. This has especially been a fact since early 2010, when several countries within the European Union had their credit ratings downgraded. Is this phenomenon merely a coincidence? Or could the roots of the recent troubles in Europe have a basis in historic religions? To tackle this question, Max Webers ?s 110 year old study The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism is brought back into light and used as a tool for analysis of the crisis.The results show that not only are Protestant countries in general more prosperous, but they also have lower corruption and their citizens have a higher level of trust towards the government.

The aim of this study was to examine how the Danish people and Denmark are represented in the daily Swedish press. We wanted to examine how the Danish people were represented, the characteristics given to the Danes and the differences we see between the different genres. We used theories about discourse, representation, stereotype and national community, too see what underlying messages was hidden in the texts. We analysed 30 texts from three Swedish daily newspapers: Sydsvenska Dagbladet Snällposten, Dagens Nyheter and Aftonbladet. The method we used was discourse analysis based on Faircloughs theories and methods.One of the most interesting results we found was that the Danish people often were represented as different kinds of stereotypes.

Protracted social conflicts, as those in Cyprus and Northern Ireland, are based on deep rooted perceptions of identity and definitions of "the other". According to the theory of discursive conflict transformation, war is primarily a social phenomenon, which is legitimated by a discourse of identity defined in terms of exclusionist boundaries and structural ideas of the social relations in society. In order to develop positive peace, the discourse of violence has to be challenged and the discursive structures that enable war have to transform into a counterdiscourse of inclusion and individuality. For the purpose of making a critical peace analysis, I have, with the assistance of established conflict theories, analysed the basic ideas behind the the Annan Plan and the Belfast Agreement and thus been able to interpret to what extent they may foster positive peace. I argue, that in order to provide basic needs on a group basis, power sharing arrangement, based on ethnicity or religion, exacerbates division rather than ameliorating it.

The essay?s main focus has been to investigate and analyze the political actions behind the 2015?s grade compromise; an agreement to introduce grades from the fourth year in primary school. Through a game-theory analysis, mainly based in Leif Lewin?s and Jörgen Herman's research on rationality in politics, this study examined the grade debate  during a fifteen year period. The primary task has thereby been to explain the grade compromise through game-theory.

AbstractEssay in political science, C-level, by Julia Leonsson, spring semester 2007Tutor: Susan MartonFreedom ? The political philosophy of our time?An analysis of the ideas of the international debate aboutChávez socialistic politicSince more than 2000 years there has been an ongoing discussion about whether state interference is a good thing or not. Most international organisations on the international political arena are today founded on neoliberal values, and it has developed in to the hegemonic ideology of the world. The socialistic politics of the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez is thereby a somewhat unusual strategy. The purpose of this essay is to examine to what extent the international debate about Chávez socialistic politic can be understood through a neoliberal perspective.