The intention of this thesis is to examine "The Oprah Winfrey Show" and its position and functions in the public sphere. Particularly interesting aspects are like the linking of private and public issues, the show's potential as a forum for debate and dissemination of knowledge, and what types of criticism the show has been subjected to. The methods used dealt with the textual aspects of the show. Semiotic analysis and conversation analysis were applied to five episodes and a search of literature was made. The thesis rests on theories concerning television studies and talk shows, in addition to theories on modernity and identity.

On-call work has increased substantially in the past 20 years in Sweden, not least in the public sector and most notably in health and social care. This thesis argues that the increase has considerable influence on the prospects of on-call workers in the public services to act as guardians of democracy. Based on theories of Lennart Lundquist, the results of this study show that on-call workers suffers from inferior opportunities to act as democratic guardians in particularly two matters. First; they have fewer prospects than standard employees of professionalism due to lack of education and capacitation. Second; on-call workers have inferior opportunities to protest against wrongs, due to no real formalized possibilities to inform and due to transactional psychological contracts.

Over an extended period of time there have been plans to establish a shared facility in Lennheden to extract groundwater from the Badelunda esker to provide drinking water for the cities of Borlänge and Falun. The city of Falun is dissatisfied with the quality of its drinking water and the city of Borlänge is concerned about the risk of contamination of its existing groundwater supply at its current location. To provide a basis for a decision on this issue, the company Midvatten AB has been commissioned to perform hydrogeological investigations in the area of Lennheden.The purpose of this thesis is to design a functional groundwater model of the area between Lennheden, place of planned extraction, and Övre Tjärna, place of existing extraction, to get a better understanding of the groundwater situation in the area. A groundwater model enables simulations of different scenarios in risk assessment and contaminant transport. The aim of the thesis is that the model can be used as an aid in Midvatten?s investigations in Lennheden and that it also can be used in future projects in the area.The model has been made in Processing Modflow 5.3 and encompasses an area of 19,5 × 11 km along the Badelunda esker and the river Dalälven between Djurmo and Frostbrunnsdalen.

The public administration and its officials have a number of values which they have to relate to in their work. The values are a set of democratic and economic values.This study?s purpose is to examine how the officials at the National Insurance Office in Sweden give priority to these values. The study is performed by interviews with officials at two insurance offices.The study shows that the officials in a high degree value the democratic values legal security and public ethics. In turn they experience that productivity, which is an economic value, is being promoted in a high degree from the management.

Landstinget i Östergötland upphandlar sedan 2001 samtliga godstransporter från externa leverantörer. Detta examensarbete har som syfte att inför en kommande transportupphandling 2006 utreda behovet av godstransporter och hur kostnaderna för dessa transporter ska fördelas inom Landstinget i Östergötland. Målet var att förenkla existerande avtal och ta fram en lösning på hur förändringar av transportnätet ska kunna hanteras med minimal administrativ arbetsinsats. Lösningen skulle också innebära att landstingets kostnader kunde hållas låga.Studien har visat att det genom att standardisera transporttider går att förenkla transportavtalen avsevärt. Transportören erbjuds också större frihet att anpassa landstingets körningar till övriga uppdrag, vilket möjliggör lägre priser.

Ten years ago the public computers with Internet access were introduced in the public libraries. The purpose of the public computers was to give the possibility of searching information. Along with the Internet came also communication media like chat and e-mail. This type of communication was a new function for the libraries and the reactions among the librarians were mixed. It has been a source of big frustration and attempts to block it has not succeeded.

I detta examensarbete undersöks vad som lockar med bilen som vardagligt transportmedel hos invånare i Malmö. Som en del i detta, identifieras faktorer bakom valet av transportmedel. Malmöbors tankar kring sin egen miljöpåverkan samt vilka utmaningar vi står inför när det gäller att gå emot ett mindre bil-dominerat samhälle diskuteras. Metoden bestod i att genomföra samtalsintervjuer med sex personer som samtliga bor i Malmö och som har körkort och tillgång till bil. Resultaten tyder på att bilens attraktion består i de fördelar den tillhandahåller, såsom lastutrymme, sparad tid, frihetskänsla och oberoende.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to examine attitudes and standpoints amongst librarians at the Swedish public library towards literary awards and awarded literature. The questions posed in the study are: What attitudes are expressed amongst these librarians towards the Nobel Prize in literature, the August Prize and literary awards and awarded literature in general? What significance do the Nobel Prize in literature, the August Prize and other literary awards have concerning purchase and display at these public libraries? How is awarded literature perceived and how do they talk about it concerning quality and are questions of quality significant? Qualitative interviews with seven librarians at four different public libraries have been done. Theories regarding J?rgen Habermas the bourgeois public sphere and Pierre Bourdieu?s terms habitus, field and capital have been used as to explain the library as a public sphere.

This project practise methods used in the interaction design discipline to develop a concept related to the Swedish Guinness World Records Magazine. This project is a challenge to accommodate both the users? and client?s needs. We focus on interaction and the experience, which is acquired through the use itself, and how to connect it to a theme from a client. The aim of this project is to create a meeting place for children where they can interact with technology.

Title: By what strategies is the old media using the new media? A qualitative essay on TV: s use on social mediaNumber of pages: 54Authors: Marie Magnusson och Sabina KarlssonTutor:  Karin FastCourse: Media and Communication Studies CPeriod: Spring 2011University: Karlstad UniversityPurpose/Aim: Our purpose is to examine which strategies and why two TV-channels, SVT and TV4, are using social media. Our anticipated view is that SVT as a public service organization and TV4 as a commercial operator may have different motives with its use of social media.Material/Method: A qualitative method consisting of interviews by informants from SVT and TV4.Main results: Our result is that there isn?t any big difference between SVT and TV4 in the way they?re using social media. However, that SVT has to more specifically make sure no commercialism exists, while TV4 don?t have to think about it.Keywords: Social networking, convergence, commercialism, communication, Internet, public service, television..

The aim of this study is to describe and analyse the creation and the design of a new public library. In order to concretize this, the study sets out from two examples, the public libraries in Simrishamn and Landskrona. The material used to attain the purpose of the study consists partly of interviews, partly of literature on the subject. To be able to put these two libraries in their historical context, the essay also provides a short overview of the development of public library buildings in Sweden during the 20th century. Another aspect that is discussed is the actual procedure of planning a public library from scratch.

The aim of this Bachelor´s thesis is to describe the phenomenon ofmarketing. Four public libraries in the County of Kalmar have beenstudied in the aim to obtain information on their current marketingin the autumn of 2004, as well as their view of marketing and itssignification in connection to a vision that the Regional Library inKalmar has established. The vision is that the County of Kalmar isgoing to be the best Region of Libraries in Sweden in the year of2010. Target markets for the vision is the general public, studentsand entrepreneurs. The study has done a landing at an early stage ofthe vision, the starting point of which was in the year of 2001.

The aim of this Master's thesis is to analyze the relation between the discursive formation and the optical formation in the public library-apparatus. An ongoing individualization process in the library field and in society at large is used as a backdrop in the analysis. Discourse analysis is used as a method to explore the main Swedish library periodicals Biblioteksbladet, Bibliotek i Samhälle and DIK-forum. All issues from the years 1999 and 2009 have been used as material. The main analytical instruments applied in the analysis of this material are Michel Foucault's terms dispositive, apparatus and diagram.

As a company it is required to work with strategies to minimize costs such as packaging and logistic costs. The increased market of industrial produced wooden buildings results that the time and the cost which the packaging of prefabricated building elements consume, is experienced to be in greater need of development than before and demands a better solution. The aim with this dissertation was to discover how the development of the handling of the packaging can improve the packaging process. The goal was to present improvement proposals for a simplified and thereby a more efficient production in time and cost perspective.The packaging process which includes packaging, handling, storage and transport were studied. Interviews were made with participants from the market for manufacturers of wooden houses and a case study was made at the company A-hus.

The purpose of this master?s thesis is to investigate children?s access to specific children?s activities at Swedish public libraries 2005. The thesis is based on literature studies and qualitative interviews with children?s librarians, library directors and local politicians at two demographically different libraries in Gothenburg.The sub questions are: What measures exist to promote children?s access to public libraries and children?s activities when it comes to: law and other political statements: different efforts on the state level and different efforts on the municipal level in the direct activity with children at public libraries? What driving forces and needs justify activities for children at public libraries? How will the responsible persons judge that the efforts are sufficient? The result of the study shows that children?s access to library activity has increased in the last couple of years due to reorganization, economic savings with closing down of library affiliates and because libraries have given priority to other things, like IT and new media. Children?s librarians have got new assignments and less time for children?s activity.The conclusion of our investigation is that children?s librarians are ambitious in their work, but unfortunately don?t give children?s library activity adequate resources.