Purpose?This study has examined the information behaviour and perception of information in a group ofinformation users who have a critical approach to the media and the information supply. Some of them call themselvesor are being called conspiracy theorists. The purpose was to examine how their information behaviour is influenced by the belief that the information is biased or inaccurate and what the information behaviour looks like when the user searches for discrepancies rather than a response to a question.Method?The study is based on transcribed interviews and email responses to interview questions.

In 2002 George W. Bush held a speech where he classified six nations as being the main threats to American security, one of them being Syria, a state with a secular constitution, no resent offence towards the US, and with an improved diplomatic relationship to the US during the Clinton years.Being an ally to the Soviet Union during the Cold War Syria was forced to redefine its role in the region. Using neorealistc theory one part conlusion is the fact that the new Syrian leader, Bashar al-Hasad, in the early 21th century determined to set higher goals for the Syrian power ambition in the Middle East, threatened to destabilize the region and leave the US and its allies in a caotic situation.In the US, however, the new administration after 11/9 sharpened its tone towards states that did not cooperate in the new ?war on terrorism? or/and were likely to harbour terrorists. Syria was accused of doing both.

This paper aims to present a theoretical understanding of the emergence of extreme right- wing populist parties (ERP), and more specifically the electoral breakthrough of the ERP party, Sverigedemokraterna in the municipality of Karlskrona. By doing so the study is constructed as a theoretical framework, where the empirical material and the theoretical aspects are interwoven. This means that the theoretical framework also functions as an analytical part. The paper shows how Sverigedemokraterna could be understood as an ERP party, based on e.g its populist anti-establishment critique, and its critique towards the ?immigrant issue?.

This case study examines how a group of upper secondary school students in a multiethnical suburb of Stockholm reason about the theory of evolution. The theoretical background of the thesis is postcolonial and the questions raised were how spread the creationist thoughts are in the group; in what way the backgrounds of the students are relevant to their thoughts; how the students construct the notion of the theory of evolution; how they position themselves and others in relation to the discourse of the theory of evolution; if there are any differences between students at the collage program of natural science and the collage program of social science, and in that case, what differences; and who or what inspires the young in their thoughts about the theory of evolution. To answer these questions both a survey poll and interviews were used. The result of the case study showed that a majority of the students at the investigated school has creationist ideas and that the students profiled on social science have creationist ideas in a wider extent. Another result is that the religious background seems to be relevant to develop creationist thoughts, while the variables gender, home district and educational level did not differ the creationist group from the whole group.

In Peter Weiss debut Fra?n o? till o? (1947) the ?I? travels from island to island as a castaway. The island here can signify, or work as a synecdoche for exile and the feeling of isolation that exile often induces. But the movement from island to island also implies a restless state: Peter Weiss shifting from painting to writing to filmmaking and theatre, from German to Swedish and then back to German. The years during exile and the years that followed the exile until his breakthrough in Germany with Schatten des ko?rpers des Ku?tchens (1960), Abschied von den Eltern (1961) and Fluchtpunkt (1962), were the formative years of Peter Weiss authorship.

The aim with this study was to analyze and understand how begging is constructed as a social problem in Sweden between September of 2010 and the end of February in 2014 in debate articles in Dagens Nyheter. To do this I have chosen to use a social problems theory and critical discourse analysis to highlight some aspects in the process of defining the social problem. The study's main finding is that the construction of beggars and begging appears to be in a relatively extensive redefinition in the current situation. It is shown by, for example, a shift in focus in the discourse. For this reason, it is relevant for social work to examine how the construction progresses..

The aim of this study was to investigate how the position of the preschool teacher could come across in interviews with six teachers about their assignment to document and evaluate the preschool activity. The research done so far in this area shows that it can be a complex and difficult part of the preschool teachers work. A dilemma often described is how the teachers can be able to analyze and document the children´s learning with the aim to evaluate and develop the preschool activity without judging and mapping the children. A special focus of the study was to see how the methods and dsicourses described by the teachers possibly could affect the teachers´s position in the area of documentation and evaluation. To analyze the empirical data Ernesto Laclau (1935-2014) & Chantal Mouffe´s discourse theory was used, a prespective witch also figured to be the theoretical foundation of the master thesis.

The purpose of this study is to examine the medial depiction of Muslims in the case of Pastor Terry Jones' intention to burn the Quran. Our study is based on theoretical framework regarding an alleged clash of civilizations, how that leads to global conflicts and controls the world politics. It?s also based on the western way of characterize Muslims as violent, irrational human beings, and how mass media have a tendency to depict Muslims as ?the others?. The questions we aim to seek answers to are: How were Muslims portrayed in CNN's and Al-Jazeera's reporting regarding Terry Jones plan to burn the Quran? Which discourses exist about Muslims in each news channel and what are the main differences between them? The qualitative method used is a critical discourse analysis on empirical data consistently of twelve articles.

The purpose of this essay is to explore how social media affect the political orientation and commitment of youths. Three scientific questions highlight the purpose from different angles. The didactic perspective is discussed in the initial and closing discussion, and is analyzed in the corresponding chapter. Two methods are involved in the study; one survey and one interview with a focus group. The survey had a total of 98 respondents from four different classes, all in the first grade of upper secondary school.

Officially, the EU gender policy since 2000 has been guided by the strategy of Gender Mainstreaming. This strategy aims to promote gender equality and is informed by a feminist ontology which stipulates that women are structurally subordinated.In this essay, I examine whether the European Commission has adequately adhered to this gender policy in its free trade negotiations with the ACP (African, Caribbean, and Pacific) countries as part of the Cotonou Agreement. As a result of my text analysis of documents related to the negotiations, opinion pieces by interested actors and policy papers of the EU, I find that the Commission does not act in accordance to its stated gender policy.To explain this discrepancy between policy intent and actions, I employ postliberal feminist theory and Robert Putnam's Two-Level Game Theory Model. By analyzing statistics and published research, I explore how gender issues are being represented politically on a domestic and international level.My findings show that a key cause of this discrepancy lies in the low levels of female participation in the political institutions of the EU and ACP; a lack of participation that is especially pronounced in the area of international economics. In explaining the constraints on female participation and the prospects of full implementation of the EU's gender policy in the international political economy, I emphasize the role of culturally and historically gendered institutions..

The aim of this master´s thesis is to explore how Stockholms new library´s identity is constructed, and further to relate the case study to a general discussion of the identity of public libraries in Sweden. This is done through analysis of the visions and plans that the planned library is based on. We feel that it is a relevant study since questions concerning the public library's identity are for library and information science as well as the institution. Questions posed in the study are: How is the roles and identity of the planned library described in the texts that form the basis of the project? What characterises the relationship between the present and the planned library? What discourses concerning the public library's identity can we see in the material?The theoretical framework of the thesis is a discourse oriented analysis based on the critical discourse analysis of Norman Fairclough.

Analysmaterialet i denna uppsats består av en rad riksdagsdokument behandlandes den svenska riksdagens cannabisdiskurs. Detta analysmaterial som behandlas är under perioden 1990 till 2007. Vi har även studerat hur policydebatten har förts i ett historiskt perspektiv under perioden 1968 fram till mitten av 1990-talet.Frågor utifrån en Foucaultinspirerad diskursanalys behandlar en rad ämnen inom diskursen och vid närmare analys beskrivs den svenska riksdagsanalysen som synnerligen ensidig.Nyckelord: Foucault, cannabis, diskursanalys.

The purpose of this study is to present populism as a political phenomenon and to impose focus on the rightwing populist parties that are active in Scandinavia. This essay begins with a presentation of the three rightwing political parties in Scandinavia. The rightwing populist parties have successfully developed their rhetoric and effectively influenced the political establishment in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. The parties that the essay focuses on are theSwedish democrats (SD), the Norwegian Progress party (FRP) and the Danish People`s party (DF). These parties are interesting in the sense that they share many opinions and are active in comparable political atmospheres, but also that they use approximately the same rightwing populist rhetoric as a way of exerting leverage on political policy.The theoretical segment is constructed on a descriptive historical background of populisms three different phases.

This report describes a comparative study of the change in grading system in the year of 1995 and the coming year of 2012. The objective is to analyze and compare the political debate from two Swedish parties, the Social democrats and the Moderates, from a number of the parties political periodicals. Futher the objective is to show, from the periodicals debate, what approach to knowledge the parties are presenting. The theoretical base of this study is rooted in the political background of grading system and in literature defining different theories about knowledge and approach to knowledge. The investigation is qualitative and the main research method is text analysis.The conclusions is that the parties overall stood their ground and kept their opinions throughout the two debates and the change in grade systems.

Although Dan Andersson (1888-1920) is considered perhaps the most important of the early Swedish workingclassauthors, there has not been much research on his work. Through a perspective based on critical whitenessstudies, intersectionality and existential phenomenology, this thesis performs a close reading of Andersson?sKolarhistorier (1914) and Chi-mo-ka-ma (1920) in order to map the discursive formations of whiteness andblackness in the texts, as well as to expose how these formations interrelate with that of humanhood.Since an underprivileged situation of oppression and poverty is the point from which the fictional worldunfolds in both Kolarhistorier and Chi-mo-ka-ma, whiteness is not an existential style within close reach for thecharacters. In Kolarhistorier the charcoal-burners claim themselves as ?weary of whiteness? and accordingly thetext establishes what the thesis reads as a realm of blackness where the black, male body becomes a locus ofpleasure instead of despair.