Groups that are often referred to as being dismissed in society in general is by some aspects also considered being so in political arenas. A recent compilation of existing research over structurally based objections of gaining power and positions within Swedish parliamentary politics highlight a lack of research considering whether sexual orientation could be such a discriminatory basis. Using a queer theoretical approach, and drawing on concepts such as heteronormativity and homophobia, the principal aim of this essay is to illuminate aspects of local parliamentary political areas where discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation become relevant. In order to do so six in-depth interviews with homosexual politicians have been conducted. Finding a queer potential in certain ideological parliamentary political environments that enable homosexual politicians to be open about their sexual orientation, it still relies upon the individual to be confident enough not to interpret the political context as homophobic and heteronormative..

This master thesis was written in the purpose to study how the location and access to computers in the physical realm of the public library reflects the undergoing changes in the public libraries role in Swedish society. This study is done in a form of a case study of three small public libraries. All of them were in the process of transforming both their physical and virtual space. The thesis focuses on where in the library the computers are placed and how their location interacts with the libraries main tasks. It also focuses on the analysis of the relationship between these two elements and how that relationship reflects the alteration of the public libraries place in society.

The objective of this study was to investigate differences in the portrayal of Western European citizens and non Western European citizens in Hergé?s graphic novels about the young journalist Tintin. We wanted to see if the globalization during the mid 1900?s had an effect on Hergé?s way of portraying the world. We started off by selecting nine novels from three different periods of time, though we read all of the novels in The Adventures of Tintin.

The aim of this thesis is to study how Denmark and the Danish people has been represented in the Swedish press and which images of them that appears. For this purpose I make use of discourse analysis and discourse theory. By analysing three cases were the debate about the Danish migration policy has been scrutinized in Swedish newspapers I seek to discover different ways of looking at the world. The study concentrates on the descriptions made by journalists and others who contribute to the debate in the media. The results show an image of the Danes as a people reluctant to foreigners and restrictive in their politics.

Den svenska veteranutredningen lyfter upp mediabilden från Sveriges deltagande i internationella insatser som ett problem. Syftet med uppsatsen är att kartlägga skillnaderna i rapporteringen av händelserna under Operation Artemis i Kongo 2003 utifrån Försvarsmakten och de fyra största dagstidningarna (Aftonbladet, Dagens Nyheter, Expressen och Svenska Dagbladet) samt att undersöka om rapporteringen skiljer sig beroende av om det är en morgontidning eller kvällstidning. Analysen har gjorts utifrån ett narrativt perspektiv och tidningarna har analyserats utifrån kategorierna dagstidningsekonomi, sensationsjournalistik, objektivitet, vinkling och förenkling. Uppsatsen visar på att det finns skillnader i hur både Försvarsmakten och dagstidningarna rapporterade från Operation Artemis. Uppsatsen visar också på att rapporteringen skiljer sig om det är en morgontidning eller kvällstidning som skriver artikeln.

In this study we have investigated how local journalists in Kalmar think when they choose their sources to interview. We have also studied several factors that can affect their choices of sources.We have interviewed eight news journalists from the two largest local news papers Barometern and Östran in Kalmar.The journalists were asked about the sources they often use as interview objects. They were supposed to tell about how they think when choosing sources and define which sources they commonly use. There are different factors that can affect the choices and we have narrowed them down to ethics, source critics, credibility, stress, hard production conditions, public and their own interest and if they consider themselves to be individualistic or controlled by the news desks. Furthermore the journalists were asked to characterize what changes they would make when choosing sources in a perfect world.All of the journalists had not reflected prominently on the subject of sources before our research.

The purpose of this essay is to examine and compare the news covering of Swedens three biggest cities (the metropolitan areas) and their surrounding areas with the covering of the rest of the country (the provincial areas) in two daily national newspapers, Aftonbladet and Dagens Nyheter. The aim has been to answer the following questions:- What amount of the news coverage in Aftonbladet and Dagens Nyheter concern the metropolitan areas compared to the provincial areas, and how do these two newspapers differ in the news covering of these areas?- Is there a difference in the news articles size and content, depending on weather they concern the metropolitan or the provincial areas?- How has the balance between news concerning metropolitan and provincial areas changed over the recent 20 years?The theories used in this study are News values, the media commercialization and Popular Journalism, and The Agenda Setting Theory. The method that has been used is a Quantitative Content Analysis.Despite the essays hypothesis, that the news coverage in the two newspapers would be dominated by material from the metropolitan areas, the result showed that a majority of the examined articles concern the provincial areas. It also showed that Aftonbladet has a bigger percentage of provincial news than Dagens Nyheter.

This report is a case study of ?citizen forums? in the municipality of Uppsala. These forums are arranged to make people participate more in local politics. The aim of this study is to find out if the opinions and the wishes coming from the citizens are later involved in the planning process etc made by the authorities. The aim is also to explain why or why not the opinions from the citizens are of any importance.My empirical data come from interviews that I have made with seven different respondents, both politicians and civil servants.

How stakeholders can influence EU in global environmental politics and what consequences and risks this brings are heavily debated. Some scholars argue that civil society are being disenfranchised from the global political arena while others seem to find them having influence in areas where they normally shouldn´t have any influence. In this this paper I will compare the Europan Union policy on GMOs with the process in producing the Water Framework Directive using an analytical framework to study the level of stakeholder influence. Following the framework I will use two types of data namely NGO participation and Goal attainment. The data once summarized will be analyzed by using the methods of process-tracing and counterfactual analysis.My conclusions regarding both cases are that stakeholders, most notably, were able to influence policymaking in EU by using the internal revisions and by networking in smaller partnerships.

The purpose of this essay is to examine and compare the news covering of Swedens three biggest cities (the metropolitan areas) and their surrounding areas with the covering of the rest of the country (the provincial areas) in two daily national newspapers, Aftonbladet and Dagens Nyheter. The aim has been to answer the following questions:- What amount of the news coverage in Aftonbladet and Dagens Nyheter concern the metropolitan areas compared to the provincial areas, and how do these two newspapers differ in the news covering of these areas?- Is there a difference in the news articles size and content, depending on weather they concern the metropolitan or the provincial areas?- How has the balance between news concerning metropolitan and provincial areas changed over the recent 20 years?The theories used in this study are News values, the media commercialization and Popular Journalism, and The Agenda Setting Theory. The method that has been used is a Quantitative Content Analysis.Despite the essays hypothesis, that the news coverage in the two newspapers would be dominated by material from the metropolitan areas, the result showed that a majority of the examined articles concern the provincial areas. It also showed that Aftonbladet has a bigger percentage of provincial news than Dagens Nyheter.

This thesis studies how the Swedish government articulates social exclusion within the spring budget of 2007. Through a discourse theoretical approach, inspired by Ernest Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, the empirical findings are reconstructed through the nodal point of labour and two chains of equivalence, based upon the duality between employment and unemployment. By viewing social exclusion as a phenomenon concerning discourse, identity and politics, this duality forms the basis of a deconstructive and hegemonic analysis.I argue that the term social exclusion is a powerful and flexible political concept in that it obscures ideological assumptions and objectives as well as draws attention away from alternative social concepts. Throughout the thesis social exclusion is stressed as a social category constituting the relation between individual and society. Hence I argue that it is of vital importance that the values underlying its usage are made explicit and that social exclusion as a floating signifier is made an object of academic analysis..

Syftet med undersökningen är att analysera varifrån nyheterna har sitt ursprung och hur återanvändandet av nyheter ser ut i fyra av de största riksmedierna under en arbetsvecka.De fyra medier som ingår i undersökningen är Svenska Dagbladet, Dagens Nyheter, Sveriges Televisions Rapport och Sveriges Radios Ekot. I undersökningen ingår 356 analysenheter och det är en kvantitativ undersökning. För att förstå och analysera resultatet har teorierna gatekeeping, mediernas kommersialisering och nyhetsvärdering använts.Undersökningens resultat visade bland annat att 27 procent av analysenheterna består av köpt eller kopierat material från nyhetsbyråer eller material som är omskrivet från andra medier. Undersökningen visar också att det är stora skillnader mellan olika medietyper. Den största andelen material från nyhetsbyråer kom från tidningarna Dagens Nyheter och Svenska Dagbladet (såväl procentuellt som i absoluta tal).

   Officially, Sweden has a very low level of corruption and in 2008 topped Transparency International?s list in terms of the perception of a lack of corruption. However, on closer examination it would appear that the Swedish public sector is not as clean as the Transparency International list suggests. What appears to be relatively common and quite widely accepted in Sweden, especially in local government, are conflict of interest situations in which public officials use their position to obtain advantages for themselves, their friends and their colleagues, in particular with respect to public procurement. According to the Swedish constitution, the public administration shall be governed by the principles on legality and objectivity. Grave violations of these principles are deemed illegal and contrary to the penal code provisions relating to bribery, public misconduct and breach of confidentiality.

Who runs the development? A comparative study of the construction of residential buildings in Nacka and Södertälje.The aim of this study is to identify actors involved in the initiation and implementation of residential house construction in two Swedish municipalities. This means who is taking initiative for new residential buildings, who affects the planning process, who finances these new buildings and who builds them. By exploring empiric material from the municipalities of Nacka and Södertälje, the above questions will be answered and by referring to pluralism, growth machine theory and regime theory a link to general theories of political science is made. The results found show that the analysed municipalities have quite different possibilities for acting and that these backgrounds are also important for which actors will take initiative for new residential buildings and which actors will be allowed to state their opinion during the planning process.

Through the collection and analysis of negotiations surrounding the gay magazine Destroyer, the intention of this paper is to identify norms of sexuality within a contemporary sex-radical discourse. These negotiations are collected from interviews with individuals whom, at the time of the inter-view, consider themselves or their politics sex-radical. In order to allow for a more general under-standing of the context in which these negotiations have come about, material about Swedish law is also included in this text, together with the interview material, and serves as a base for analysis through the application of Gayle Rubin?s theory on the hierarchical value system of sexuality.Following, are the main themes throughout the paper: The meaning of the context; Sexualized children; The possibility to (not) participate: differences of power; The decision whether or not to sell the publication and The position of the pedophile and crossgenerational love/sexuality within the LGBTQ community.Key words: sex radicalism, pornography, boy-love, kiddy porn, pedophilia, Destroyer, Gayle Rubin..