Purpose/Aim: This study is an analysis of the view on masculinity, male sexuality and creation of identity with the television series Queer as folk as a base. The analysis is partly based on a semiotic analysis of the representation of masculinity and male sexuality from an episode of the chosen television series Queer as folk, and partly based on a thematic analysis of focus group discussions with young men with different sexualities.Material/Method: This study is based on focus group interviews and a semiotic and thematic analysis. The focus groups consisted of three men in three different groups and were chosen on the criteria of gender and sexuality. All groups were presented with an episode of the television series Queer as folk to see how they perceived masculinity and male sexuality. Their discussions were analyzed with a thematic analysis and the television series Queer as folk with a semiotic analysis.Main results: The three analyzed characters in Queer as folk showed different representations of masculinity and male sexuality.

AbstractTime after time the world is struck by humanitarian catastrophes, whether it is through a war or a natural disaster. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to have a functional and effective aid, as it is a matter of life and death. Thereby the actions of the humanitarian aid organizations are interesting. The investigation treats the three specific organizations Star of Hope, Sida and the Red Cross movement and the process from decision to action in times of war. The organizations are different from one another in many areas.

This study examines the possibilities of interpreting the moral values and ethics presented in the current curriculums in a way that makes them inclusive and constructive. The study also reveals how the liberal democratic ideal, presented in the curriculums as a hyper-ideology, is not at all easy to define or live up to in the pluralistic school of today.By close-reading and criticizing the curriculum for the Swedish senior high school (Gy11)and by looking at it from two different points of views, as rules or norms and as a process, Ishow how the curriculum can be interpreted as a basis or starting point for a communicationabout values. I also discuss wether the aim of this communication should be consensus or anongoing process..

This project aims to obtain a deeper understanding of what it is like to be young today, and of how young people experience their lives. Identifying and uncovering the process of meaning constitution concerning young people's thoughts and feelings within each subjective individual, and their visions about the future as well as how they experience relations to other people in their surrounding, was achieved with a phenomenological approach. The participants were asked to write a self-report in answer to a carefully formulated question.The received reports were analysed according to the method of Meaning Constitution Analysis and Sphinx Lexica. The result showed that young people's lives are both complex and unique. They rather write about friends than family and write less about the future than we first assumed.

The purpose of this master's thesis is to examine children's communication and interaction during story time at the public library. The aim is also to examine how to develop the story time ? in terms of participation and equality ? at a specific library.Action research was used as a research strategy and participant observation, log, tutoring and interviews as methods to collect data. Since action research is done on the basis of practice, a significant collaboration with the librarian and the participant children is taking place within this study.Research from the fields of Library and Information Science, Education and Childhood Sociology form the interdisciplinary research area to which this study links. The theoretical framework consists of theory and concepts from the Socio-cultural Perspective, Poststrucuralist Feminism and Childhood Sociology.

Lean Production is used by many manufacturing companies. Companies in process industries do not use Lean Production to the same extent today. This is part of the report's issue to explore how Lean Production can be applied to a company in the process industries.The investigated company is a processing company that manufactures various types of foil. The company wishes to streamline its production and has therefore asked the authors to examine if Lean Production can offer the company improvements in their production. Lean Production value stream mapping tool has been selected to identify and analyze the current state of two of its products in production.

The purpose of this study was to examine how the social services are applying the sections of the law concerning custody transfer within foster care. More specifically the aim was to find out what circumstances are underlying the social services decision to go through with a custody transfer within the foster care, and to find out which difficulties and possibilities the law offers when it comes to this process. The study was based on interviews with six respondents, within the social services, who have great experiences working with these issues. The study concluded that there are several factors which affects the decision whether to implement at custody transfer or not, and some of these are the child?s attachment, the child?s fundamental needs and consent from the involving parties in the case.

This report is a risk- and vulnerability analysis of how the commercial ship and its goods can be a threat to the environement and to human health in case of a discharge. It present the most common dangerous goods that are transported with ship through Kattegat in the Baltic Sea..

This study concerns how Muslims are portrayed in a choice of twelve news articles from Swedish dailies and tabloid newspapers on the aftermath of the film Innocence of Muslims published on YouTube. All articles are distributed in the newspapers Aftonbladet, Expressen, Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet in the period of September 11th, 2012 until September 30th, 2012.For this study, a qualitative text analysis has been embraced and focus has been on van Dijk?s Critical discourse analysis to the texts, with additional features from semiotics applied on the images.The theories consist of Critical discourse analysis, hegemony, ideology and power, postcolonialism and stereotyping.In the qualitative content analysis, concrete examples from the articles are retrieved and commented. These have been divided into various themes, which are trends that the authors have been able to distinguish in the analysis.The result shows that Muslims in the analyzed newspapers are portrayed as the others, unimportant and extremely religious, in a negative manner rather than a positive. Moreover the press has tendencies to generalize Muslims as a group.

Syftet med denna studie var att utifrån ett socialkonstruktionistiskt perspektiv och ett Foucault-inspirerat diskursanalytiskt ramverk visa på några av de sätt att tala om och förstå den bildterapeutiska processen som finns tillgängliga för och används av bildterapeuter. Syftet var även att beskriva hur dessa sätt att tala kan påverka bildterapeuter i det bildterapeutiska arbete de bedriver. Datainsamlingen genomfördes med semistrukturerade intervjuer med bildterapeuter. I resultatet lyftes tre distinkta sätt att tala om processen fram, som gav den tre olika innebörder. Dessa tre diskursiva konstruktioner framställde den bildterapeutiska processen som en blottläggande process, som en experimenterande process och som en reflekterande process.

The HBTQ-society is not a homogeneous group; it contains a range of different sub-groups. QX is Sweden?s biggest magazine aimed at members of the HBTQ-society. The purpose of this study is to analyze if the magazine is more directed towards gay men or women ? both by examining how many men versus women appear in QX, but also by looking at the different ways in which the articles are more relevant to either men or women, such as by tone, language or choice of subjects.In this study, we have analyzed twelve issues of QX, from January 2012 to December 2012, in order to get the most current results as possible.

The economic development and industrialization that has taken place in many parts of the world during the past century has brought about a huge increase in economic welfare. During this process, it has repeatedly been debated whether the gains from economic development are shared by everyone or just a few. In the field of economics, vast research has been conducted on this particular subject ever since the 1950?s. The most famous contribution might be said to be Simon Kuznets article, Growth and Income Inequality from 1955 and the ?inverted U?-hypothesis that was formulated on the basis of that article.

This thesis has been made in cooperation with Forsheda Stålverktyg AB which develops and manufactures injection moulds and diecasting tools. The main concern has been their Trading-system which provides them with considerable amount of quality lost function.Focus has to however be put on the analysis of the Trading-system due to the fact that this has previously meant various quality issues for the company.This thesis treats quality assurance of the Trading-system, identification of the problems in the process and improvements of these problems.Quality assurance is carried out when a company detects that their quality based costs become too high. Quality based cost are? the costs that would disappear if a company's products and its different operational processes were absolute? (Sörqvist, 2001 p.30, free translation from Swedish). High quality based costs often result in increased quality problems, which can lead to substantial economic loss for the company.This work has resulted in a thorough review of the Trading-system whereupon problems have been identified.

An increasing number of chemicals are being transported by ships along the Swedish coastline. Many of these chemicals may pose a threat to the environment. Accidents and spills are luckily rare, but nonetheless it is important to be prepared for a possible chemical spill. The Swedish Coast Guard is responsible for responding to chemical spills at sea, and has both equipment and trained personnel for the purpose. In order to prepare for a possible accident one also needs to know what is currently being transported at sea.

Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to examine how students who also serve as writers of bachelor theses mainly utilizing the discourse analysis methodology comprehend the method of discourse analysis, and in what way the students bestow it in their research.Methodology and Material: This is a case study of the theses, which are also the text material, as it can be used examining numerous cases. Another beneficial factor is the relationship to the theoretical framework. One does not need to divorce the two institutions; instead they cooperate with each other.Results: A thoroughgoing apprehension of the Discourse Analysis is it being strongly attached to semiotics and how texts can be analyzed by the method in question to reveal institutions in our society alongside with mapping out the agency of words. In other words, language and soceiety mirror each other in a way or another...Key words: Discourse Analysis, thesis, Foucault, Fairclough, Laclau & Mouffe, language, reality, readings.