Purpose/Aim: The purpose of this essay is to see how the media, through the newspaper, "Vi föräldrar?, produces family and parental roles, and to investigate how the image changed over time.Material/Method: The material consists of a number of selected texts from the years 1968, 1988 and 2008. The method used is a discourse analysis based on the three level model by Norman Fairclough. The three levels are the text, the discourse practise and the sociocultural practise. In this study two of the levels, text and sociocultural practise, are used in analysing the texts.Main results: Family and parenting in the texts from 1968 can be linked to the structural functionalist theory in which the core family is central and women and men are assigned to specific roles.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to examine the profession of librarianship by studying tasks in Swedish public libraries. The method is a textual analysis of articles inspired by the critical discourse analysis of Norman Fairclough. The theory applied consists of the profession theory of Andrew Abbott and the gender theory of Yvonne Hirdman. The questions raised are: how do librarians speak about their tasks, which discourses can be constructed and how can profession theory and gender theory explain the result.

The aim of this master thesis is to examine how leadership in public libraries is constructed discursively in the Swedish library field of today. The empirical material reviewed is job postings and articles from three library related journals.The thesis seeks to identify what different leadership discourses can be found by looking at definitions, forms of address, present actors and themes emerging. It also aims to examine the contingent presence of late modern leadership theories in the order of discourse. The leadership theories primarily investigated are New Public Management (NPM) and value-based leadership.The theoretical starting point of the thesis is discourse theory, developed by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. In the analysis a model of four phases is used; in which central concepts of discourse theory help identify the discourses.

Abstract Youths and adolescents have for a long period of time, and at a high degree, beenabsent from the party political stage. The causes for this have been discussed inthis essay through a quantitative survey made in an upper secondary school class,consisting of some 19 subjects in the municipality of Kalmar. Tied together withrelevant literature and discourse on the subject, the essay has dealt with thepossible societal-, system- and individual barriers for political interest andinvolvement. Central questions for this essay has been for instance; age, gender,social background, geographical domicile, as well as the decline of ideology, theforms of current party politics, political interest, political engagement and soforth. The concluding remarks contain not only a mix of these barriers existing,not exclusively, for young and adolescents but different ground for them as well.On the one hand, there exist barriers which exclude youth from the conventionalpolitical life, but on the other, the more individualised youth of today, prefer to agreater extent not to participate under the conventional circumstances that partypolitics has to offer.

This thesis analyses how the European Unions institutions deal with the issue of illegal and harmful content on the Internet in key documents presented during the period 19961999. Particular attention is attached to content where the legal status is determined in relation to the user and to content that is legal, but characterized as harmful and entailing a need for special protective measures. The theoretical and methodological approach draws on discourse theory as formulated by Laclau and Mouffe. The thesis studies how the problem is represented in key documents from the European Commission, the Council of the European Union, the European Parliament, the Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions, with particular regard to the discourse on harmfulness, the child and Europe. The findings are that the overall discourse has shifted focus over time, from an emphasis on the protection of minors toward a more market-oriented discourse stressing the importance of protecting the competitiveness of the European economy.

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.

The aim of this thesis is to examine the fear of crime in old peoples lives. Notwithstanding that the age category is exposed to crime to a low degree, old people are experiencing a great fear of crime relative younger people. This is the paradox of fear, also recognized in gender studies. The question is how this paradox can be understood. To answer this, twelve elderly men and women have been interviewed and the reports about crime in the local newspaper, Norrköpings Tidningar, has been analyzed, through discourse analysis.The discursive construction of fear is here discussed in terms of discourses of a fearful society, and stereotypes of old age.

The purpose of this thesis is to expose the political myth in the West about the ageing population seen as a threat against the welfare society. To do so I have described what a political myth is, and showed how it is presented in the most influential newspapers and organisations in the West. I have also presented alternative perspectives to the dominating view on the ageing population and it's impacts on welfare. In this way I have tried to point out that the subject has a political dimension. In the thesis last section I compare the message presented in the newspapers and the organisations with the characteristics of a political myth.

Sweden has had laws protecting nature for about a hundred years. In this paper the views of nature and the values that serve as a rationale for protective measures are analyzed as results of a social process characterized by the dialectic relationship between institutions and discourse. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is used to study this relationship and the discursive practices used by institutions, which reproduce or reshape views of nature that define the relationship between society and nature. Institutional design contributes to shaping discourse in the field of nature protection, while being originally shaped by discourse. In Sweden, the national park is an institution that reproduces a view of nature as the wild and untamed opposite of society, and the natural reserves reproduce a view of nature as holder of a multi-faceted set of values intertwined with society.

Bachelor essay in political science by Marie Åberg, autumn 2011. ?Harm or benefit? A critical view of the theoretical grounds of the international development aid?. Supervisor: Professor Mats Lindberg. The first of the dual purpose of this essay is to present international aid policy ideas and the theoretical grounds of international development aid.

This study sets out to investigate how the roll of the teacher is constructed in the Swedish Teachers? Unions trade publication. Based on the theory of social constructionism we have used the method of critical discourse analysis to establish dominant trends and patterns in how the roll of teacher is constructed in editorials in Swedish Lärarnas Tidning. We have established that the conflict between a modernist school tradition and a postmodern society has resulted in a dominant, traditional teacher discourse which is being simultaneously challenged by both a market-orientated discourse and a professionalization discourse. Furthermore, we attempt to highlight how these ?ideal? constructions can create problems in terms of identity construction for teachers.

This essay focuses on the press coverage of the riots in Gothenburg 2001. The questions it aims to answer are, How is it that although the media was gender-neutral in its news reports, the lasting memory is one of rioting men, and why did the media simultaneously exaggerate and minimize the importance of the riots?The material consists of articles and photographs from Swedish mainstream newspapers. The method is text analysis, with a heavy influence of discourse theory. The conclusions are that since the hegemonic discourse on gender does not allow women to be active and violent, all bodies in the riot automatically become men, no matter how female they seem to be in other contexts.

In recent years there has been an upsurge in products and activities designed for infants, what is known as baby culture. The essay is a discourse analysis covering the part of baby culture which is concerned with infants and books. The essay studies texts from libraries and children?s bookclubs in order to understand what it is they communicate, to whom and the conceivable consequences of the communicated message. One of the main purposes of the study is to determine what view of infants as social and cultural beings it  is that arises from the texts.

The purpose of this essay has been to examine the public`s view of the Swedish eldercare during 2006. This study uses discourse analysis as a research method, the reference material has been articles from the newspaper Dagens Nyheter. The aim of the research has been to find central themes, conflicts and consensus in the discourse of eldercare. The analysis resulted in four main subjects which were based on four main questions; the questions of responsibility and execution, the question of contents, and the question of where the eldercare should take place. The analysis of conflicts and relations of consensus in the discourse of eldercare resulted in two different main views; the traditional and a more modern.

The aim of this study was to examine how the political party Sweden Democrats is represented in two Swedish newspapers. The study included a national newspaper and a local newspaper, Aftonbladet and Blekinge Läns Tidning. We studied 35 articles from both papers, from 2005 and from 2009. We analyzed the texts using the linguist Norman Faircloughs (1995) method for discourse analysis. Based on his theories, we created our own model to examine the texts. Our model primarily focused on representation. The study was conducted at a time when Sweden Democrats was given much support in opinion polls and knocked on the door to the Swedish Parliament. The study showed that Sweden Democrats in both newspapers, primarily by descriptions, the choice of interviewees, etc., often are represented as racists.