In year 2000 the Swedish Public Service television started a new series of programmes named Mediemagasinet. The purpose was to expose the work of journalism through the eyes of a journalist. The programme showed different types of tasks and problems that have to do with journalistic reporting. The form of Mediemagasinet wasn?t anything new but the content was presented as the very first of its kind.

This study examines from a gender perspective how the gender distribution is viewed in the content of Göteborgs-Posten's sports pages and the short and long term effects of the the newspaper's gender equality plan that was introduced in 2005. It is a quantitative study for two sample periods, 2005 and 2009, that investigates how many articles in the newspaper which is about women's sports and male sports. Michel Foucault's theory of discourse is central to the study, his view of identity in society and how these are represented fit well on gender issues in sports journalism. The results show that women's sport is greatly subordinate to man's sport in terms of number of articles. The gender equality plan has not had any noticeable effects on Göteborgs-Posten's sports pages. This is due to a variety of factors ? economic aspects weigh heavily in this problem. .

What role should science play in democracy? Political scientists often assume that it is possible to demarcate between ?instrumental? and ?moral? knowledge, and argue that citizens and/or politicians should use their moral knowledge to agree upon political goals and then apply the instrumental knowledge of scientists to achieve them. This straightforward view is challenged by writers in science studies, who identify three major problems in the use of science in democracy: uncertainty, risk and hidden values. They suggest that these problems could be solved through citizen participation.In this essay I perform an analysis of the internal logic of their suggestion. Is it likely that citizen participation enhances the democratic decision making process so as to reduce the problems? The internal analysis shows that it is rational to advocate citizen participation by reasons of legitimacy.

This thesis examines the conditions for participation in the decision making process of a possible mine establishment in Storuman municipality in the north of Sweden. This is done through a case study where the main actors are the mining company Nickel Mountain AB, the municipality Storuman and the Sami village Vapsten. As a theoretical framework Cecilia Eriksson?s division of democratic theories is used as a starting point. Methods as described in deliberative democratic theory, such as discussion by effected community members, are seen as a method within the participatory democratic tradition, not a theory of its own.

Computational techniques have transformed the journalistic approach. Journalists now have the opportunity to integrate user-statistics from the news website with their work. Singer (2011) argues that journalists seem particularly afraid of items, which they perceive as trivial or otherwise unsavory, will prove popular - potentially creating management pressures to produce more of those stories. She describes this practice as ??traffic whoring??.

It seems like Swedish municipalities are dominated by beliefs that all citizen participation is good for the development of local democracy. A critic of this certainty is rising among Swedish scholars of political science. However, a critic with an ambition of such generalization is harsh. Different democratic projects contents different qualities and thereby diverse problems in the democratic process. If these democratic problems within the process can be recognized, a deeper understanding can be found and in the prolongation a strengthening of the democracy.This essay examines the democratic process of Lomma municipality's democratic project of citizen participation.

Within the journalistic profession lays a commonly accepted normative view stating that objectivity is an ideal to seek. The aim of this bachelor is to study Swedish sportswriters on local newspaper and their views of journalistic objectivity, and themselves in comparison to the traditional ideals. We want to study how local sportswriter work against their ideal and if factors like age and education affect their view of themselves and ther ideal.We have done eight semistructured deepinterviews that all build on theories and studies of the traditional ideal of journalists. The interviewed are all sportreporters, at four different newspapers. We have done active selection of participants based on age and education.

Political disenchantment and detachment is proven to be growing in well established democracies. This development brings along concerning behavior regarding general political participation. Fewer citizens participate in elections, parties are losing members, and the trust in politicians is steadily decreasing. IDEA (Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance) has been registering voter turnout worldwide for the last 60 years and their publications show a decline in voter participation since the 1980s.During the same period of time another development has caught attention, namely the fast progress of the medium Internet. The new generation of Internet functions is called Web 2.0 and allows users not only to create content, but also to interact with each other.This dissertation aims to explore the possibilities emerging when integrating Web 2.0 in political processes.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine and analyze how to improve the design of a Microsoft Surface SUR40 application. The application in focus was an interactive product browser developed by the company Spree, our external client. Spree is a multi-touch software provider, established in September 2010 and they expressed a need for suggestions for how to improve this application. Our work aimed at revealing how to make the application more suitable for several users and make it easier for them to interact simultaneously on the surface. From a qualitative standpoint we have examined how 17 users experienced the application.

With the Culture Survey 2009, the Cultural policy in Sweden has got a new direction. The new direction emphasises the importance of broadening the non-public funding for the cultural sector. The new direction opens up new phenomenon to establish themselves in Sweden. Crowdfunding is such a phenomenon. Crowdfunding is an online-method "by which the individual becomes financiers of projects and activities they have passion for" (Jakten pa? medborgarfinansiering, 11).

The Internet provides the common user with a variety of both traditional and non-traditional news sources, and a vast range of possibilities to contribute to the flow of information. By their participation in the production of information ordinary citizens can sometimes function as non-traditional news sources them selves and reach a potentially unlimited audience. The interactive nature of the Internet blurs the line between producers and consumers, and challenges traditional definitions of what counts as "news" as well as who qualifies as a "journalist". The main purpose of this thesis is to examine the potential consequences of this decentralization regarding the information behaviour of newspaper journalists and their perception of their professional role. The study consists of qualitative interviews with six journalists, employed by four of the leading Swedish newspapers, and a review of earlier research in the field.

The essay is an evaluative study of student democracy in the Swedish high school, its departure point being the 1994 national curriculum for the voluntary school forms (Lpf 94). We adopted an interview method, the survey units consisting in a number of high school teachers. The analysis has two principal theoretical departure points, involving democracy theory and implementation analysis, respectively. The former is utilized to help identifying what sort of democracy permeates the governing document and high school daily life, the latter to explain actual outcomes.The study concludes that the 94 curriculum is characterized by a strong democracy with emphasis on participatory democratic processes, whereas in practice there is a thin democracy in both classroom and formal student government contexts. Representative processes are given plenty of room although few attempts at participatory democratic components can be identified.A deeper analysis of the result reveals implementation problems traceable to elements of symbolism in the goals.

In this study we have investigated the news interview both from the perspective of the journalists and of the subjects of the interview.We have made interviews with 50 persons who participated as sources in the news and with 21 journalist who wrote the articles in the local newspapers Östran and Barometern in Kalmar, the 21 of November 2008.The journalists were asked to tell their story of how the articles where produced, how they prepared before the interviews, if they had an image of the articles in advance and if they were satisfied with the outcome of the article. The persons who had been interviewed were asked to tell us how they felt about the interviews, if they were satisfied with the outcome of the article, if they could consider being in the newspaper again and to give their opinion of local journalism.Most of the persons who had been quoted in the articles said that at least one or two things went wrong in the articles. Despite this they would not hesitate to be interviewed the newspaper again.Surprising for us was to see how often the journalists get ?served? with both the news and the subjects of the interview. It was for an example often that the Journalists visited press conferences and wrote articles from press releases.

This qualitative study is done with the purpose of creating understanding for the theoretical democratic content in educational materials for Civic Education courses 1a1 and 1b during GY-11, so teachers create an intentional approach when using educational materials in their democratic education. This was motivated as important considering the reduction in obligatory Civic Education for the vocational programs. The study was conducted using a hermeneutic qualitative reading method where the educational materials, more specifically two series with one book for each course, was read with purpose of creating understanding for the democratic content according to ideal democratic models: deliberative democracy, participatory democracy and electoral democracy. A text voice analysis was also conducted using Bakhtins theory of dialogic and monologue text that contributed to the general result concerning the democratic content. The results show that the electoral democracy ideal is dominant in all educational materials, there is hence no striking difference between the democratic content in 1a1 and 1b educational materials.

This paper examines the professional role of the music journalist and how it has been affected by the expansion of the Internet. The study aims to examine  the profession's outlook and how professional music journalists are working to reach the public with interesting information, despite the fact that the audience of today often can be first to deliver the news. Through qualitative research interviews with three current music journalists the professional role and its development is examined. Based on theories and previous research on journalism, how the media communicates and its importance to society, what it is to be a music journalist and the spread of digitization and the impact of file sharing the results are analyzed. The conclusions of the study are that it isn?t a profession that is disappearing but rather a profession that is working towards a new future.