Purpose/Aim: In the information and communication technology society (ICT) we live in today it is easy to feel that we are constantly expected to be available. The daily contact with the Internet and the use of cell phones has changed our way to communicate. With this in mind in combination with the increased stress among young adults my aim is to investigate how young adults, aged 23-26 years, experience to be constantly connected and available through the Internet and the cell phone. What are their opinions, attitudes and feelings about what this entails in their lives?Material/Method: The essay is based on four focus group interviews with sixteen students from Uppsala University aged 23-26, two groups consisting of women and two groups consisting of men.

This paper is based on observations made in the classroom, interviews and studies ofliterature.The observations that I made during my practical training period made me believethat pupils with writing and reading problems succeeded more often with the methodsof teaching used in media education than with more traditional teaching methods.Through this study I hope to specify and define the factors that were the reasons for this. In doing so I wanted to show that you could adapt the teaching methods to reach more pupils with different kinds of learning styles.I have come to the conclusion that the following factors made the pupils with writing and reading problems succeed more often in subjects related to media education:Variety, time spent, the pupils? interests and the equipment used..

AbstractThis examination project studies two groups of students, who are in the last year of the mandatory school attendance in Sweden (15 years old and in school year nine), their views and thoughts about the Swedish school. The purpose of this study is to examine how the students in the study thinks about the role that the Swedish school have, and should have in the society, and how, and if the fostering mission that the Swedish school have, has any implication on the student?s opinions. I have also studied if the student?s trusts the Swedish school.I have made my study on interviews with two groups of students, one with four boys and one with four girls.

This study intends to discuss what might motivate Swedish upper secondary students to read literature in English. The study was performed through interviews with both teachers and students, as well as questionnaire studies with both students and teachers. The students give different interpretations of what the definition of motivation is, ranging from definitions of extrinsic motivation to signs of their definitions leaning toward intrinsic motivation. The conclusion is that although the English language itself is not a barrier for students? reading motivation, the majority of them are not motivated to read.

The aim of this study was to compare the Query-by-Humming systems Midomi, Musicline and Tunebot regarding their retrieval effectiveness. The aim was to see if there were differences between the systems but also between the user groups common users, musicians and singers. Query-by-Humming system means that the user sings a tune that the system then use to find the right melody.To compare the systems and their users, queries where collected from the different user groups and replayed for the systems. Mean Reciprocal Rank and Friedman test was used to do the comparison.The results showed that the system did not achieve equivalent and that there were no difference between the user groups. The Mean Reciprocal Rank showed that the systems had very different retrieval effectiveness, where Midomi was the system with best result and Musicline with the lowest result..

The aim of my ?two years master thesis? was to examine school administrators perceptions about important information literacy skills that the students should be able to control, perceptions about what role the teachers and the librarians have in teaching students information literacy and perceptions about the collaboration between these groups. My questions have been: Have the school administrators reflected upon the conception of information literacy? What conceptions do school administrators have about important information literacy skills that the students should be able to control? What role do they consider the teachers and the librarians to have in making all students information literate? How do they consider the collaboration between the teachers and the librarians work? What role do they consider themselves to have on a management level to make all students? information literate? I used a phenomenographical method and carried out six qualitative interviews with school administrators from five senior high schools in the municipality of Gävle. Both public schools and independent schools were included in the study. Most of the school administrators considered information literacy to be the same as criticism of sources, which they also considered as one of the most important information literacy skills.

The aim of this paper is in part to distinguish the ideas raised in the Swedish political debate on the new discrimination law in relation to protection of groups. Is protection by law against discrimination needed for the individual or the group? If it is needed for members of groups, are these groups viewed on as static or variable. Are there any conflicts present between group interests? We link these ideas to three different theoretical perspectives: multiculturalism, feminism and intersectionality and further examine the differences and contradictions between the perspectives represented by members of parliament.

AbstractTitel: Self-presentation at online dating ? through a gender perspective and an age perspective.Number of pages: 44Author: Karin WestlundTutor: Amelie HössjerCourse: Media and Communication Studies CPeriod: Autumn term 2009-12-21University: Division of Media and Communications, Informatics and Media, Uppsala UniversityPurpose/Aim: The aim of this essay is to examine the phenomenon Internet dating through a gender perspective and to some extent through an age perspective. What do the members? presentations look like? Do men and women select different ways to present themselves, and how does it look between the different age groups?Material/Method: Qualitative method with 42 presentation texts, half men, and half women in three different age groups collected from a Swedish dating site.Main results: The study shows that men and women choose to highlight their good points at self presentation in the student forum. The differences between the various age groups proved not to be significantly large.

Abstract- Stress, conformity, groups and self-worth in high-school girlsThe aim of this questionnaire-survey was to investigate the experience of stress and symptomsof stress in high-school girls, and to examine if the experienced symptoms of stress could bepredicted by groups, self-worth and conformity. Another purpose of this study was to describethe girls own thoughts concerning these factors. 80 girls between the ages of 15-18 yearsanswered the questionnaire. The results showed that stress could be predicted by theexperience of conformity, but not by the experience of belonging to a group and self-worth.The most common symptoms of stress were tiredness, problems to concentrate and headache.The girls reported that they thought that girls of their own age were ?slutty and cocky?, andthey thought that it was important to look good, but at the same time many girls were happyabout themselves and they had realised that they had to live with who they are.Keywords: high-scool girls, stress, groups, self-worth, conformity.

The basis for this study is the question of what happens at the point of impact between receiver and message in the case of a social marketing campaign on Facebook promoting sustainable travel. Hence the aim of this study is to analyse the reception of the social marketing campaign Fairadise in a sample of 19 individuals. The design of the study is therefore reception analysis with the help of four focus groups and thematic analysis to later identify patterns and themes in the gathered material. The theoretical approaches were collected from the field of media and communication and focused on public communication campaigns, public understanding of public communication campaigns as well as decoding of messages. The questions posed were; how is the Facebook campaign Fairadise received by the focus group participants? How do the participants read (decode) the campaign; dominant, negotiated or oppositional? And what assessments do the participants have regarding the visual versus textual information in the campaign? Previous research has shown that visual and emotional attributes are of great importance when it comes to interpreting messages about sustainable tourism and that rational information attributes are of less importance. The findings in this study agree with this previous research except when it comes to rational information.

Chronic illness is associated with conditions that may result in psychological ill-health in the adolescence. Consequently there is a need for development of preventive psychosocial support interventions for this target group. The objective was to develop, implement, and evaluate the effect of supportive intervention group program for teenagers suffering from chronic illness - aiming at increasing quality of life and supporting mental and physical health. Method: Six different intervention groups were conducted between 2007 and 2011, age 13?17.

The purpose of this essay is to examine if there is any difference in the style of conversation between a municipal politician and a politician in parliament? In order to answer this question I have created two sub-questions that are more precise. The first question is: Are the municipal politicians more open to cooperate with politicians from other parties than the politicians from parliament? And the second question is: Is the rhetoric between the politicians in parliament different than the rhetoric between the municipal politicians?My study is a comparative case study with two different groups of politicians. With the help of a survey I have tried to examine if there are differences in the use of language in the daily work for the politicians.

In this study the book talk is examined as a communicative act with a purpose to convince according to an under-lying intention to promote reading. I follow the book talk?s way from an idea of the book talker (and the library) to the reception of the audience, with the aim to understand how to talk about books in an engaging manner. More specifically, the rhetorical situation and the purpose of a book talk, the performance and the means to arouse and retain interest in the book talk as a speech and in the books themselves are examined and the impact of the book talk on the audience.The empirical material consists of observations of two different book talks (both directed to children) and interviews with the two different book talking librarians and a few of the children from the audiences to both book talks. The theoretical framework consists of rhetorical theories from both antique and modern times and I perform a rhetorical analysis of both book talks.

This essay analyses the act of reading August Strindberg?s novel En dåres försvarstal (A Madman?s defence). It reveals the writer?s motif and purpose with the text and it shows how a certain interpretation of the text is crucial for the writer?s intentions to become reality. But it also shows how this interpretation is threaten by several, both intertextual and extratextual, thematically and structural, factors.

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.