AbstractThis paper is a comparative study of the final reports of the Norwegian and Danish power studies performed in 2003. While the Danish study found that democracy is thriving, the conclusion of the Norwegian power study was that democracy is in a crisis. The purpose of this paper is to find explanations to why the studies in two Nordic countries arrived at such different results.Methodologically, the paper consists of an ideological text analysis and critical analyses of the discourse. In order to study how the results of the power studies can differ so considerably, the following aspects have been surveyed; 1) external contexts (government inquiries); 2) work process (the researchers? background, role and co-operation); 3) the problem areas and themes studied; and 4) power perspectives.

The purpose of our study was to examine how missing children are portrayed in media. We wanted to see if there are any recurring story patterns and characters in the texts. We also wanted to examine how the relationship between children and adults are framed and which comprehensive view of children is mediated in journalistic texts.Our questions were: how do Swedish newspapers write about missing children? Which narrative pattern are there in the texts? How are children and adults represented in the texts? What relationship between children and adults are made visible in the texts? What a comprehensive approach to children is constructed in the texts?For this study, we used the media discourse, theories of representation, stereotypes and characters. And theories of narrative, dramatic turns and opposites.We chose to make three case studies in which children suddenly disappeared, the case of Bobby Äikiä, the case of Engla Höglund and the case of Sebastian Hedman.

The starting point of this study is that the news media in general strongly influence which topics determine the public agenda by their choice of what is considered newsworthy. The study is based on articles from two major Swedish daily newspapers, Svenska Dagbladet and Dagens Nyheter. The aim of our thesis is to establish how the environmental public debate as portrayed in the newspaper corresponds to the environmental discussion within the scientific (subject matter expert) field, that is taught by the academic institutions, or if the two materially differ. The environmental communication discourse at the academic institutions advocates ?episodic? formation as the driving force behind transformation of attitudes and behavioral preconceptions. This episodic formation is aimed at incentivizing change by creating intimacy to the incident by linking cause and consequence to the individual citizen instead of to society as a whole.

Deliberative democracy theory has been prominent within political science research since the early 1990?s, often applied in studies on postnational democratic constellations, in particular the European Union. Of the main institutions of the union, the European Parliament stands out as somewhat understudied from this point of view, which is why the main aim of this thesis is to study the conditions for deliberative democracy in the European Parliament.From deliberative democratic theory four criteria have been selected to function as methodological framework in analysing the institutional structure and proceedings of the parliament. Each of the criteria is applied separately to the practice and function of the plenary sessions, the parliamentary committees and the political groups. The analysis shows that the conditions for deliberative democracy differ between the three fora, as do their respective roles in parliament, but all in all they supplement each other.

This is a critical discourse analysis of the conformation of the conflict in Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo, as constructed by Ekot, a news-show on Radio Sweden. The ambition of this bachelor thesis is to examine the production of a Congolese conflict for a Swedish audience and to find out how the construction differences with and without a reporter in the field. To obtain this purpose the narrative is studied as well as the use of voices that define the conflict. The construction of proximity between Swedish audience and the Congolese event and the meaning of sound to stabilize the formation of discourse within foreign news is examined as well. To conform and explain foreign news it must be put in relation to a starting point.

Education systems face a number of challenges regarding social justice, diversity, difference, and inclusion and membership for all students in the groups that schools create. This invokes questions of how well these challenges are met in curricula and teaching materials. Through discourse analysis of eight Swedish geographical textbooks, this essay aims to seek out the perspectives surrounding difference within the subject of geography. It concludes that the idea of fixed homogenous cultures as meaningfull in differentiating among people dominates throughout the latter half of the 20th century and during the last decade. In addition, it concludes that the discourse surrounding diversity in Swedish geographical teaching materials mainly has a binary liberal view of plurality focused around tolerance.

Purpose/Aim: The purpose of this essay is to examine the ways two Swedish tabloid newspapers portray and describe the non-Socialist parties during the Swedish election of 2006.Material/Method: We have been studying 388 articles about the non-Socialist parties, derived from the two largest tabloid newspapers in Sweden, Aftonbladet and Expressen, during the month before the election. The method for the study is quantitative content analysis.Main results: The main conclusions drawn from this study are that Aftonbladet had twice as much written material about the non-Socialist parties, despite the fact that the paper is traditionally Socialist, while Expressen had consistently larger headlines. Both tabloids function to a higher degree as political actors than arenas for politics. The results are in accordance with earlier research, which shows that the degree of attention the non-Socialist parties acquired as a whole in the 2006 election, is remarkable. More than half of the articles in both tabloids portrayed the non-Socialist parties as a single political actor.

Every year, approximately 17 500 drunk drivers are sued in Sweden. Of these, only 10 percent are women. The women are therefore considered a minority. In this study, I have taken interest in how the female drunk driver is constructed implemented by the probation service. By using critical discourse analysis I have found that the woman in these investigations is contributed the role of a deviant in two senses.

The debate about affirmative action for ethnic minorities in countries with another majority culture is growing bigger in many parts of the world. However, it is often the debate misses the aborigines within the countries? borders. The aim of this paper is to investigate the possible conflict in opinions for xenophobic political parties when managing an aborigine population. I will use a qualitative method to study the ethnic minority Sámi in Sweden, Norway and Finland, and afterwards xenophobic parties view on them.To reach a result will I present a scale over Xenophobia ? Cosmopolitanism, which is described as a political cleavage.

The thesis examines the crisis that the Swedish-flagged merchant marine underwent in the 1990s, that resulted in a narrow market for the Swedish-flagged fleet. In order to save the industry, the TAP- agreement was created, consisting of three parties, government- market and interest organizations.  Purpose in this thesis, is to exam how the TAP-agreement was carried out in relation to the parties, and how it correlates in relation to how the global political economy affected the Swedish maritime politics. Two questions are presented. Is the TAP agreement an expression of Swedish corporatism?  Which aspect of Global Political Economy is characteristic for the TAP agreement? A case study is preformed in three steps. The different parties of the TAP-agreement have been interviewed.  A comparative study of two Swedish crises has been performed, in order to establish the correlation between them, in regards to corporatism.  A survey, with the aim to pinpoint which aspect of Global Political Economy is characteristic of the TAP agreement. Findings in this thesis are that the TAP-agreement was designed through corporatism, and that the most important aspect of all, the Swedish flag was worth saving, for all parties. .

Our purpose is to analyse three different epistemological discourses that exist in the social practice, Library and Information Science LIS, using the strategy for interpretation from the mimesis model by Paul Ricoeur and the terms from the critical discourse analysis by Norman Fairclough. The aim is also to explore there different views of knowledge organisation. We review previous research involving epistemology, knowledge organisation and discourse analysis in LIS. These show that there are many different epistemological standpoints and that later research has shown a more critical and sceptical state of knowledge organisation than earlier traditional positivist ideals. Discourse analysis is described as an important theory and method in LIS.

AbstractAuthor: Josefin Gustavsson, Moa OsbäckTitle: School social workers view on young people using social media ? a study with a discourse theoretical approach [Skolkuratorers syn på ungas användande av sociala medier ? en studie med en diskursteoretisk ansats]Supervisor: Anders GiertzAssessor: Jan Petersson The aim of this study is to investigate school social workers view on young people using social media. With this study we are intended to understand how discourses affect the interventions of school social workers. This study has a qualitative approach and contains seven interviews with school social workers and one social worker who responded through a written response document. The interviews were semi-structured to enable spontaneous reflections and to catch the essence of the respondent?s language in the context as a school social worker.

Terrorism. A word that makes you think about different situations throughout the last decade that has passed. However, in this particular thesis the purpose is to examine both national and international terrorism from a Clausewitzian theory. The main point is to examine whether any of these types of terrorisms can fit in to this theory and as examples in this study are the terrorist organizations ETA and al-Qaida. The questions to be answered in this paper are if their aims can be explained as political and how far are they ready to go to have their way? Furthermore, the reason for this paper is to find an understanding for why the terrorist organizations act as they do.The result of this comparative study is that both terrorist organizations fit in to the theory because their goals can be seen as political and therefore can their aims justify their actions.

In this essay I examine how a municipal- and an independent upper secondary school compare to the ideal types the Company and the Political organization and how that affects the school practise as it?s described in policy documents. The conclusions are that the municipal school on a number of variables correlate to the ideal type the Political organization. At the same time the school reforms of the 1990s are considered as an intention to ?companylize? the municipal school and a number of tendencies how that have affected the municipal school are shown.

This study analyzes the political view of criminality and crime politics in three political parties in the Swedish parliament, Socialdemokraterna, Folkpartiet and Moderaterna. The study seeks to describe which kind of view these parties present on the criminality in our society. The material for this study is the ideologies that the parties descend from which are, socialism, liberalism and conservatism, the political programs of these three parties have also been studied as well as the parties proposals, political documents in the Swedish parliament. The current public debate shows that the crime politics is an attractive question and the parties may seem to have similar proposals on how to lower the criminality in our society. The theory that has been used to describe the results of the study is ?actors and structures? and the results are related to this theory as well as the theory has been used as an instrument to explain and sort the material and the results.The results of the study show that the parties are different in their views on criminality as a problem in our society.