Freedom of speech has been a well discussed subject. Great philosophers and theoretics like Plato, Voltaire, Locke and Mill have again and again showed the importance of freedom of speech. Since the world have become bystanders to a series of events that can only classify as crimes aganst freedom of speech, it has become more important to study the phenomenon and analyse it. By finding cases where the freedom of speech has been compromised and analyse them in frames of three different theories, the argument of truth, the argument of democracy and the argument of tolerance, this paper makes the boundaries of freedom of speech a little clearer, and also makes a discussion about how reasonable the boundaries are possible. Everything according to the three theories.

?Liberal Democracy? is a common term in political theory, and it is used as if it had a commonly accepted referent, with both normative and descriptive content. This is certainly the case in democratic theory, where it on the one hand seems to refer to a normative democratic model; on the other hand it is used descriptively, to refer to real-life democracies. The deliberative democratic sub-field is not an exception; on the contrary, the term is frequently used albeit rarely defined; yet the concept it refers to is supposedly developed enough to allow detailed propositions about its citizens?s political behaviour.This essay is an attempt to analyze how Liberal Democracy is used by three deliberative democrats (Jürgen Habermas, John Dryzek and Stephen Elstub), in order to understand the democratic model (or models), whether normative or descriptive, they refer to.

Today there is a large consensus about the importance of Swedish schools providingconditions enabling students to develop the ability to manage and learn through information technologies (IT). The goal of this study was to describe and examine how national education goals for the use of IT transformed into municipal IT-strategies for the school. A content analysis was conducted of thirty-eight municipal IT-strategies collected from Swedish municipal websites on the Internet. The content in the municipal IT-strategies was compared with the content in both the Swedish education act and the national curriculum. The results showed that the content in the Swedish education act and the national curriculum in fact was translated into municipal IT strategies, but that the range of strategies concerning technology, pedagogy and content in relation to IT was broad.

The potential of information technology as a means to invigorate democratic practise is constantly under discussion. Regardless of the differing opinions as to the most suitable way to utilise IT, there are certain democratic core values that have to be considered. One of these is freedom of information, defined by us as the right of every citizen to seek, obtain and express information. The aim of this study is to explore whether the use of IT as a means to enhance democracy can strengthen the citizens right to freedom of information. As an instrument for analysis we use an article by Jan van Dijk, professor of communication science.

The purpose of this study is to illustrate how some teachers in multicultural school environments reflecton and experience the educational work with national tests in the third grade for students who do not have Swedish as their native language. The research questions I have chosen to work with are:How do teachers experience working with national tests in groups of students where there are children with Swedish as a second language?How do the teachers reflect on the students linguistic preconditions relating to the national tests in these groups of students?What strategies in their teaching on national tests do the teachers use when it comes to students with Swedish as a second language?In this study I have chosen to use a qualitative interview method. Since the purpose of the study is to understand how teachers reflect on students with Swedish as a second language the obvious choice was to interview teachers who work in a multicultural school. In my thesis I have chosen to use sociocultural theory, Cummins four quadrant model and context for theoretical approach.

Young people?s political influence has been surveyed, studied and discussed several times in Sweden during the last decade. There is a fear among the politicians that the young people are not interested in politics, especially not in party politics. On the other hand there is, among the youngsters a feeling of invisibility, not being seen or heard or for that sake respected. There are a lot of formal possibilities for young people?s political influence, but there are not as many real possibilities or situations to actually practice these possibilities.

The number of blogs, from weblogs, are increasing every day. Blogs are also becoming more visible in the public debate as well as the awareness of their existance is rising among politicians and citizens. The aim of this thesis is to answer the question what democratic potential blogs can have. This question will be answered by initially studying the research that exists today about weblogs and democracy. The second part of the analysis consists of a selection of texts from weblogs that touches this subject.

ABSTRACTCitizendialogue in the District of RasboA Case Study in the Municipality of UppsalaAuthor: Camilla ÖstlundSupervisor: Stig MontinThe essay is written inside the scope of Örebro Universitys evaluation of the new organisation in the municipality of Uppsala.The purpose of this essay is to study the citizendialogue in the district of Rasbo. This will be done partly by an examination of how the participants themselvesperceive citizendialogue. Their descriptions are put in relation to deliberative democracy and its critics amongst other. Partly by study how those involved have choosen to put it into practice. The opponents of the reorganization chose to start a non-profit association, Rasbo in co-operation, to carry on local mobilization and it will be compared with other similar groups.

Total amount of words: 15 269.In this essay, the purpose is to examine the personalization of Swedish national coaches during international championships in the Swedish tabloids. Research shows that a leader nowadays is representative for her organization. Therefore it could be assumed that the way the national coach is portrayed can have some kind of effect on the public opinion about the team as a unit and their sport federation in total. This essay is a quantitative study of the sport tabloids Sportbladet och SPORT-Expressen during three international championships: Euro 2012 in football, WC 2013 in ice hockey and Euro 2014 in handball. We have studied the coverage of the national coaches Erik Hamrén, Pär Mårts and Ola Lindgren/Staffan Olsson in contrast to the coverage of their teams in total.The main results are that the national coaches are mentioned in every second article that is written about the national teams during the championships. They are mainly portrayed in a neutral way, even though the coverage of them is affected by the results in the matches.

Title: School in Change : Good Grades = Good Democrat? Level: Final assignment for Bachelor Degree in Political Science Author: Marcos Castro Allende Supervisor: Per Strömblad Date: 2013 ? May Aim: The background to this study is a book published by Staffan. I Lindberg & Richard Svensson where they presented a hypothesis that the decline in trusting democracy within Swedish youth is a result of the deregulation of the education in Sweden. The aim of this study is to test this hypothesis and see if the declinne in democracy can be seen already before graduating from elementary school. Method: The method used in this study consist of a survey distributed to students at two elementary schools that differentiates in question of grades and social status. By comparing and analyzing the results of this survey with the claims of the hypothesis, former studies and Lipsets theory of the working-class authoritarism a conclusion is made of the hypothesis credibility. Result & Conclusions: The results showed that there may be a a difference trusting democracy between students with higher grades and those with lower grades.

The purpose of this qualitative study is to investigate how some teachers make use of the results of the national tests in mathematics to plan their teaching. The questions are how they plan their teaching in mathematics and if they use the results of the national tests to compare with their own teaching.   Five teachers in mathematics has been interviewed. I have used unstructured interviews with open-ended questions, and I have been able to ask follow-up questions based on their answers. The analysis of the survey is made from a systems theory approach.  The result of the survey shows that teachers make use of student performance to look at their own teaching of the current group of students. However, there is not enough time to rehearse and repair the deficiencies discovered in the national tests, which for some is perceived as a stress factor.

The aim of this thesis is to explore the institutional design of Participatory Budgeting (PB) in Sweden and how the design may contribute to realize central democratic goods. The study records the different PB experiences in Sweden and focuses on one particular case, which is the only case that successfully qualifies as a genuine PB-process according to international standards and definitions. To examine this, the following questions are asked: which municipalities in Sweden have implemented Participatory Budgeting? How can the institutional design of Participatory Budgeting be described and to what extent does it enable the realization of central democratic goods? To what extent does the institutional design enable the realization of the democratic goods inclusion, popular control, considered judgment and transparency? To what extent does the institutional design enable the realization of the institutional goods of efficiency and transferability?The study is based on an institutional theory of democracy. The method used is a mixed method ideal type analysis that combines document analysis, surveys and interviews.

The purpose of this study is to analyse the discourse on political exclusion in the official report Demokratiutredningen. It has been my ambition to relate the analysis of the report to a critical academic discourse on political exclusion and thereby make visible hidden norms and structures which functions to exclude certain individuals and groups from political participation.My paper point out that the report establishes a strong link between democracy and participation and that it, therefore, makes a strong case for a process of democratic inclusion. Though, in my study I suggest that that there is an unawareness of the importance of norms, hegemonic conceptions and structures and that inclusion, therefore, is unlikely to take place. Furthermore, I criticize the focus on deliberative democracy in the report. With insights offered by Mouffe in her argumentation on the necessity to acknowledge the dimension of antagonism present in all societies I underline that the focus on this democratic model is problematic.My conclusion is that the analysis presented in the report is insufficient if we want to create a democratic system characterized by equality..

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the schools? pupils have the capacity to understand societal change through social consciousness. In order to investigate that a theory has been developed specifying what social consciousness means and how it is used. The theory has been used as a tool in an ideology critical analysis of the steering documents on which the schools? work is based.

The aim ofthis study was to examine how economic growth affects the level of democracy inauthoritarian states. Some of these states have experienced high economicgrowth. However, one can discuss how it affects the country?s democratization-process.For that reason this study was needed to contribute to a clarification of howeconomic growth can affect authoritarian rule and democratization. This wasdone through an examination of the development in China.