AbstractTitle: The GI- method ?bluff or the path to healthy life?Number of pages: 41Tutor: Lowe HedmanAuthor: Annika WestlundCourse: Media and Communication Studies CPeriod: Fall 2006University: Division of Media and Communications Studies CPurpose/Aim: The aim of this essay was to investigate how the site GI viktkoll describes glycemic index on their website. The intention was also to investigate how the media presented GI through articles and how they used doctors and dieticians to appear trustworthy. Another aim was to investigate what effect GI viktkoll could have on its readers.Method/Material: I have chosen a qualitative method where I did a discourse analysis of the articles which were presented on the GI viktkolls website during a period of three weeks. This was my main method in the essay.

This essay focuses on the implementation of the strategy gender mainstreaming in the European Union and the member states. It starts to identify problems connected to the implementation process and recognizes significant prerequisites for an efficient implementation of the strategy. The main problems and prerequisites are: political will, governance and structure and knowledge about gender equality. The empirical material consists of reports from the EU that touches upon gender mainstreaming and gender equality. The problems and prerequisites will be analysed in relation to the governance perspectives top-down and bottom-up and expert bureaucratic and participative democratic and gender and feminism.

This thesis is a discourse analysis of six rape trials, with the intention to analyze how the plaintiffs?? resistance is described. The overall aim is to investigate whether there are forms of resistance that the courts find more desirable and if there are any rules for how resistance should manifest itself. I will also investigate how the rape is itself described by the plaintiff and courts, respectively. I will analyze how this affects the understanding and attitude toward what has happened.

Slovenia and Latvia are two examples of countries which have gone through a successful democratic transition. They were both under authoritarian rule and command economy up until their declarations of independence in the early 90s. Today they have a functional market economy and political pluralism. I have examined transition theories highlighted by Jonas Linde and Joakim Ekman and from these theories sought the explanations to what lies behind the successful transitions of these two countries. The transition in Slovenia was affected by liberalization from within the ruling communist party which then controlled much of the transition process. A relatively large civil society and the fact that Slovenia was not involved in the Balkan War also contributed to the short process.

The current trend towards globalisation and democratisation has made the theories of politics in pluralistic societies, and how to make them work, of particular interest and concern. Lijphart's theory of consociational democracy is an important influence in this field. At the same time the importance of civil society in transition studies and democratisation processes has been reinforced over the last thirty years. However, the complex political situation that plural societies face, creates obstacles for a healthy civil society. This thesis is based on a case study of Lebanon, a country with deep ethnic divisions and a government that resembles a consociational democracy.

The purpose of this bachelor thesis was to illuminate and analyze the working conditions of visual artists in the Swedish region of Värmland. As a profession which is known to have many problems concerning income and the fact that most artist are unable to get by on their art sales alone it becomes interesting to look closer on cultural policy?s affecting the artists, where the problems lie and what possible help they can get.I have used previous research and different sources to map out the working conditions in Sweden and Värmland alike and also interviewed five different visual artists in Värmland to get a general view of the working conditions in the country as a whole and their perception of the situation and special circumstances in Värmland. I have also used discourse analysis to compare the source material with the answers of my respondents to see which discourses that exists, that have hegemony, and to see how this subject is talked about.The results of this study showed how political decisions may force artists to become self-employed entrepreneurs even though many artists do not self-identify as such or even have any interest in profitable gain. The study also shows among other things that most artists have another occupation on the side but that there are some aids to help the artists with income.

The purpose of this study is to highlight the existence ofpersonalization within Swedish political parties along withhow the parties work with this phenomena in order to achievemore voters.The method used is personal interviews with politiciansfrom four different government parties. As a complement, interviews with a political expert was also made. All parties use personalization in different ways as a strategy tocreate dialogues and relationships with both media and voters. We distinguished two sorts of personalization: individualization and privatization, and discovered that not all parties use both..

This study has the purpose to reveal whether gender stereotypes are manifested or challenged in the children comic Bamse - världens starkaste björn based on six different stories widespread over 40 years. The results will be studied in the light of the contemporary gender development in society and emanate from theories about power, discourse, representation, queer and gender. An eclectic analysis based on semiotics and critical discourse analysis will be the method to reveal the underlying gender perspective in Bamse. The conclusion of the study shows an ambiguous perspective in the comic where both men and women occasionally are represented in a manifested as well as a challenged stereotypical role. In some of the stories the gender is erased and all characters are represented based on their individual attributes instead, meanwhile in some stories men are represented as active heroes while women are portrayed as passive nurturer.

Den här studien är en kritisk diskursanalys av ämnet kroppslig hälsa i skriftlig media. Syftet med studien är att undersöka hur fenomenet kroppslig hälsa framställs i skriftlig media genom språket och dess användning. Analysmodellen vi använt oss av är formulerad av Norman Fairclough och det datamaterial vi använt oss av är av empirisk karaktär och insamlat från svensk skriven media i form av både rikstäckande press och lokalpress. I studien finns även ett avsnitt där vi presenterar tidigare forskning inom ämnet hälsa och diskursanalys. Forskningen presenteras genom fem teman: biopolitik, livsstil, individens ansvar, klass och könsskillnad utifrån ett hälsoperspektiv samt experthjälp.

The aim of this study is to find out how the tv-program I Zlatans fotspår (English: In Zlatan's footprints) broadcasted on Swedish public service television represent the participating young players and the Swedish football player Zlatan Ibrahimovi?. Our question formulation reads as follows:?        How is the participating youths being represented in the tv-program I Zlatans fotspår??        How is the football player Zlatan Ibrahimovi? being represented in the tv-program I Zlatans fotspår? Our thesis is qualitative and in order to find out how the participants are being represented we used a discourse analysis. We have focused on the theories discourse, identity, representation, stereotypes, discrimination and the perspective social constructionism.

The purpose of this study is to examine how immigrants are portrayed in the Swedish daily newspapers online reporting. The essay investigates in what context immigrants, as individuals, are made visible and how they and their origins are reproduced. The study focuses on the roles victim and aggressor, and is also investigating potential differences between morning and evening newspapers.Present theories are discursive discrimination, critical discourse analysis, cultural racism, stereotypes and structural discrimination. Adopted methods are qualitative and quantitative content analysis, based on the Global Media Monitoring Project-tool.The results show that immigrants are not individually stereotyped or depicted negatively, but that their immigrant origins often have a central part of the story, that they are mentioned mainly in connection with negative news and that negatively charged words occur frequently. .

By using contemorary work-theory this thesis aim to show how Yarden. En bera?ttelse, puts into play the circumstances of precarian work, circumstances that have gender political as well as identity political overtones. It tries to show how the idea of ?class-jouney? is used as a conciliatory element.

The municipality of Falkenberg is a result of a unification of several smaller municipalities in 1971, each one with a small library. This left Falkenberg with an unusual large amount of smaller branch libraries. The object of this thesis is to describe and try to understand the political conflicts that have erupted during the period 1971-1994. Through a case study containing press clippings from the local newspaper, different reports, political meeting protocols, a historical background of the library and a study of library specific norms and regulations I can create an image of the heated debate. The participants in this debate can be divided into politicians and civil servants and the conflict circles round the fact that from an economical perspective, there is not enough budget to keep all the small, local libraries.

The purpose of this study is that through a discourse theoretical perspective, analyze young girls 'statements about living with self-injuring by sexual behavior. The aim is to locate the discourses that surround them, visualize how discursive constructions affect these young girls' identity as victims and/or actors in relation to self-injury, the sexual violence and in meetings with the professionals within the health authorities. In addition discourse theory as an analyze method, the authors also use Nils Christie's (2001) theory of the ideal victim and Ingrid Landers (2003) theoretical perspectives on normative femininity. The authors of the study show a diversity of discourses that surround the young girls. All discourses contain normative actor- and victim?s positions that young girls constantly are obliged to relate to, which partially conflict with social constructions of the idea of victim and femininity.

This master?s thesis discusses the term physical theatre from a discourse point of view. It also focuses on aspects of power from a field theory perspective. The main theory used is Pierre Bourdieu?s field theory, and I try to apply this onto critical discourse analysis, mainly taken from Michel Foucault.