If one looks at physical planning in Sweden today one can see that while talking about densification of existing development, reduced emissions and careful use of important land, urban sprawl is a fact with development of sheer residential districts in the urban edges and shopping malls in each and every municipality. As sustainable development is an essential goal for physical planning to strive towards, it is worth questioning if the direction of today?s planning will lead to the goal. A sustainable development can be seen as an obvious to goal aim at. In reality the aim means a hard and complex work.

The purpose of this study is to examine if digital public libraries are serendipitous environments. Serendipity in this instance is defined as finding something unexpected and valuable, while searching for something else.A survey was conducted at two Swedish digital public libraries, where the patrons were asked to fill in a questionnaire online. The questions were based on the work on serendipitous digital environments by Lori McCay-Peet, as well as considerations of human factors that could possibly influence serendipity.The result indicate that a majority of patrons experience serendipity at the digital library, although it?s still more common to do so at the physical library or on other web sites. The result also confirms the importance of taking human factors into account when studying serendipity.

There are several possibilities for those with an eating disorder, who wishes to get treatment and recover to get help and support. But for those who are not ready to recover, there are not any help to receive. Pro-ana is a youth culture where individuals who want to achieve the anorectic ideal help and support each other. The purpose of this study was to describe and analyse the content and the need for the Pro-ana community on Internet, among young people with eating disorders. More specifically the aim was to find out how young Swedish people uses the Pro-ana communities on Internet.

Deliberative democracy theory holds that democracy is about active partaking on formal and informal arenas in the public sphere where fairly equal citizens can obtain knowledge, discuss, evaluate and affect the political agenda before decisions are made.In line with the deliberative vision of online deliberation social media such as Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and Twingly offer such formal and informal arenas where people can obtain knowledge and interact with other people, and politicians.The Swedish EU-Presidency was the first EU-presidency to make use of social media and it was the first time the Swedish Government Offices used other social media than email and chat features.This thesis will examine the Swedish EU-Presidency?s ambitions of using social media as well as the actual use of social media on the Swedish EU-Presidency website in the light of deliberative democracy theory.The aim of this thesis is, through a case study, to analyze the Swedish EU-Presidency?s use of social media in the light of deliberative democracy theory..

The study´s purpose is to identify how their communication affects their brand. The study will be made trough the perspective image, the values and associations which the target audience have about the County Council. The study has two question formulations: Which parts in the County Council's communication affect their brand? How does the residents in Värmland's image about County Council's look like? The study is based in Balmers 6C's of Corporate Marketing. There´s also some organizational communication added  to the study.The two methods has been used in the study, qantitative survey's and qualitative interviews.

Studiens syfte är att skapa förståelse för kinesiska kvinnors förväntningar på ett globalt, västerländskt detaljhandelsföretag. Studien baseras på kvalitativa intervjuer med kinesiska kvinnor i Shanghai, Kina. Studien bygger på centrala begrepp inom forskningsområdena kundnöjdhet och förväntningar. Dessutom används teorier om konsumentbeteende generellt, såväl som teorier om kinesiskt konsumentbeteende och kinesiska kvinnors konsumentbeteende. Ett antal preliminära hypoteser utvecklas ur ovan beskrivna teoretiska perspektiv och används som studiens analysverktyg.

This Master Thesis treats the non monetarian aspect about the Internet Portal from a consumer and company perspective. The purpose of this thesis i st o give or create a picture and a tool, a model for how the Internetportal could be evaluated an valued. By creating a so called Dynamic Scorecard the authors of this Thesis have created a model throug which the purpose of this thesis is served. Through this model the authors have come to the conclusion that the Internet Portal can be evaluated through both economic, social, service and technical factors as well as through what relationship the companies or consumers value concerning the Internet provider. The product of conclusions of this Thesis is that there are three main factors upon wich the Internet Portal is valued.

The aim of this thesis was to investigate the possibility of integrating an item tracking systemwith a monitoring system currently under development at Fifth Generation Technologies (P) Ltd.A literature study of RFID technology and the networks ZigBee and MiWi was done. Based onthe literature study a concept for a distributed system was developed.The concept is to have several RFID readers placed in the area where tracking is to be performedand allow them to communicate with each other through wireless communication. The RFIDreaders shall be able to form zones and filter the data that is forwarded from the zones to theservers and thus perform some of the work that the server would normally have to do. Theconcept has been evaluated by prototype development and testing. The prototype uses an ultrahigh frequency RFID reader and a MiWi network.The test indicated some limitations with the selected technologies.

The power of news media to shape public opinion has been widely researched and acknowledged. In the globalized world of today, media representations of different ethnic groups therefore contribute to social segregation or desegregation. This thesis investigates how Spanish news media frame Spain?s most numerous minority of non-European ethnicity: the Moroccans. Using a quantitative content analysis, we have analysed about 200 news articles in the two most read Spanish online newspapers, El País and El Mundo, published during a two-year period, 2010-2012.

This thesis compares political participation by the public through the Swedish Parliamentary Ombudsman (PO) and the German Petitions Committee of the Bundestag (PC). Through studies of literature and statistics I examine how citizens can participate through the institutions, how frequently they do and the likelihood of sparking a debate while participating.Using media theories as well as theories of participatory and representative democracy I study how citizens can use these institutions for purposes of control and proposition.Both institutions deal with complaints but the PC also deals with propositions for legislation, making the institution more versatile. The PO deals with more cases than the PC and has more far-reaching competences and areas of inspection, although neither institution has binding decisions. Thus the direct advantage for citizens using the institutions is the chance of reaching out to media and the public through freedom of information laws and the German online petition forum.The PC to a larger extent fits the representative model while the PO in some respects is more a legal than a political institution, being managed by lawyers instead of MPs. Neither institution meets the ideals of participatory politics although the German official petition is closer to it..

Studier kring spel har under de senaste tio år fått stort genomslag i den akademiska världen. Datorspels påverkan på människans kognitiva förmågor har visat sig vara signifikant, även om övriga effekter av datorspel ännu diskuteras av forskare. Studier kring spel har gjorts, främst inom Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) genren, men även några First Person Shooter- spel (FPS) även om fokus då varit professionella spelare. Undersökningens fokus var att studera hur samarbete uppstår i spel då icke professionella datorspelare spelar spel, men även studera vilken roll samarbete har i publika spel. Olika datainsamlingsmetoder användes för att stärka eventuella resultat.

Title Communicating identity at every level - a study of how consumers perceive the brand identity in the new media landscape.Background The new media landscape has created new opportunities for companies to interact and communicate with the market. Even if this means increased opportunities for relationship-building between companies and consumers it also arise a risk in moving into a new stadium with no real strategy. It is therefore essential to communicate the brand as great as possible in every level of channel.Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether two companies (GANT & H&M) have succeeded in their stated brand identity through the various online platforms: website and facebook page.Method The study is a qualitative study consisting of four focus groups on students at Uppsala university at Ekonomikum.Results The results show that it is possible to convey the identity at every level and on different platforms on the closing of sufficient time and effort. H & M has integrated much of the material on the facebook pages section in a stylistic way which gathers more appreciation then GANT, which according to the informants did not seem to have spend much time at all. .

In Sweden according to the planning and building Act municipalities have planning monopoly. The question about shopping centres in the outskirts of cities is a regional issue, because they attract customers from a large area. Municipalities often find it hard to assert themselves against large commercial companies when it comes to their establishing new retail outlets on the outskirts of cities. Without a regional co-operation there is a risk that municipalities can be played up against one another, so that more and more companies are given permits without the municipalities having taken the strategic consideration necessary for a long term sustainable development. The focus in this work is on four municipalities in the Södertörn region (Södertälje, Botkyrka, Huddinge and Nynäshamn).

The aim of this study is to investigate where and why the fitness clubs, Sats and Friskis & Svettis in Stockholms county, choose to locate their facilities in certain places and which their primarily targetgroups are. Furthermore, the aim is to gain knowledge of people?s health status in areas where the facilities are located, in order to see if they are located where exercise is most needed. Interviews were conducted with members of the fitness clubs but also with non members, i.e. people who lived in areas with an absence of fitness facilities.

Concept description är en data mining-uppgift som strävar efter en begriplig beskrivning av koncept och klasser, inte exakta prediceringar. Syftet med studien är att visa hur prototypbaserad klustring kan skapa förståelse för en datamängds underliggande domän, enligt concept description. Experiment har utförts med data från pokerdomänen. Datamängden samlades in från ett low-limit, shorthanded bord, hos en av de stora Internetsiterna för online pokerspel. De två experimenten utfördes med samma datamängd, men där uppsättningen attribut skiljde sig åt.