I have studied how human networks can affect decision-making and different constellations. The primary purpose is to clarify the possibility to affect the decision to move the infrastructure investments from Region Skåne to Region Västra Götaland. The study starts at the EU-level and continues to the Government and on to the region. Region Skåne is studied especially since it was from there the infrastructure investments were moved.The conclusion is that there is no specific representation in the government that represents regional topics, in spite of the fact that almost 30% of the members of the Parliament come from these regions. There is no discussion between the members that could be considered a networking-activity beneficial for the regions.

Foreign aid is a very debated and controversial topic. The most recent studies have focused more on GDP growth and foreign aid correlation, however not much of the debate has focused on what kind of foreign aid should be given. The most common foreign aid is budget support, often a bilateral funds transfer between two countries. This kind of foreign aid can be both conditional and unconditional from the donors? perspective.

The purpose of the study is, through literature and interview studies, to analyze and draw attention to critical mindedness regarding news features in a multilateral way. In the interview 16 participants got to see three SVT news features with lack of criticism. Great importance was given to the spontaneous reasoning of the participant. The study is explorative and has given a number of hypotheses and ideas for further research concerning the subject. Among other things the study shows that previous beliefs affect the critical mindedness of the individual, that individuals have the ability to think critically if reminded and that the trust of the source and medium affects the critical mindedness of the individual..

Edward Said's book Orientalism (1978) is the most important reference point in the post-colonial theory and describes how the West is dominant over the Orient. There is a clear distinction between "us" and "the other" and the purpose of this study is that, from a postcolonial perspective, focusing on Said's theoretical concepts "the other" and "discourse", examining how two foreign-born people with ethnic backgrounds living in the same place, are looking at themselves, at other foreign-born and native Swedes. My questions to answer this are; ?what are the concepts of "the other" and "discourse" and is it possible to use these concepts to examine how foreign-born people are looking at themselves, at other foreign-born and native Swedes in a specific location??, ?who is "the other" in a place where there are almost as many native Swedes as foreign-born??, and ?how do these two foreign-born people with ethnic backgrounds perceive Norrliden as a place and what effect has that place had on their identity?? I have used a post-colonial philosophical ground and a qualitative approach, focusing on two different interviews with two men, living in Norrliden. In Norrliden almost 50% of the inhabitants are foreign-born were both of the interview-persons are feeling safe and secure.

In this study we have investigated the news interview both from the perspective of the journalists and of the subjects of the interview.We have made interviews with 50 persons who participated as sources in the news and with 21 journalist who wrote the articles in the local newspapers Östran and Barometern in Kalmar, the 21 of November 2008.The journalists were asked to tell their story of how the articles where produced, how they prepared before the interviews, if they had an image of the articles in advance and if they were satisfied with the outcome of the article. The persons who had been interviewed were asked to tell us how they felt about the interviews, if they were satisfied with the outcome of the article, if they could consider being in the newspaper again and to give their opinion of local journalism.Most of the persons who had been quoted in the articles said that at least one or two things went wrong in the articles. Despite this they would not hesitate to be interviewed the newspaper again.Surprising for us was to see how often the journalists get ?served? with both the news and the subjects of the interview. It was for an example often that the Journalists visited press conferences and wrote articles from press releases.

In recent decades, public relations and news management have become increasingly important in organizations? communication efforts. This thesis aims to show how the Kalmar municipality works with this type of strategic communication to build the Kalmar brand and how their communication efforts can be improved. The thesis is mainly based on theories concerning Public relations and News Management but also the medias impact on forming opinion. An important issue throughout the thesis is that all theories must be related to the fact that the study concerns an organization in the public sector and the obligations that comes with that fact.

The purpose of this essay is to investigate how large Swedish corporations within the same industry protect themselves against foreign exchange risks and to determine if there is a general practice for how the protection is done. What is the responsibility structure at these corporations regarding the handling of exposure to foreign exchange?.

The aim of this thesis is to examine expressions of power and racism in news reporting about the district of Rinkeby, Sweden, in two major Swedish newspapers. News articles are examined using Norman Fairclough?s three-dimensional model for critical discourse analysis. The discourse theory has also been complemented with theories of media in relation to power, ideology and racism. The study has shown that news reporting about Rinkeby largely focused on stereotypical subjects such as violence, social problems and crime.

A fauna passage is a way for animals to cross roads separated from the traffic. In Sweden, there are an unknown number of passages with different functions and appearances. These passages would, with the question ?Which fauna passages can be found in Sweden, and how well do they work?? as a base, be compiled in a comparable way. This would be done with a number of questions asked to the different regions of Vägverket.

The aim of this paper is to examine how young men of foreign background are pictured in the realistic adolescence novels of 2009. In my process of work I have used a classical schedule for literature analysis from which I have worked out a few questions to use on my texts. The questions are related to the main characters and some of the most important minor characters ? all are young men with foreign background ? and focuses on aspects of for example where they live, who their friends are and what they think about and dream of.To put these pictures into a wider perspective I compare my results with the well known stereotype picturing of men with foreign background in media. I then discuss how or if this affects the young men?s picture of themselves and the majority society?s picture of them.

In this study we have investigated how local journalists in Kalmar think when they choose their sources to interview. We have also studied several factors that can affect their choices of sources.We have interviewed eight news journalists from the two largest local news papers Barometern and Östran in Kalmar.The journalists were asked about the sources they often use as interview objects. They were supposed to tell about how they think when choosing sources and define which sources they commonly use. There are different factors that can affect the choices and we have narrowed them down to ethics, source critics, credibility, stress, hard production conditions, public and their own interest and if they consider themselves to be individualistic or controlled by the news desks. Furthermore the journalists were asked to characterize what changes they would make when choosing sources in a perfect world.All of the journalists had not reflected prominently on the subject of sources before our research.

European cities of today are under the challenge to find ways to stay competitive and flourish in a rapidly changing world, where the old patterns of centrality and periphery not necessarily holds true. New and improved communication networks, a changed political geography in Europe, and the globalisation of not only the financial and industrial markets but also to a certain extent the globalisation of people, have all led to great challenges for cities and regions.In a changed spatial reality the classic monocentric models are challenged by newer models of urbanisation. The polycentric urban region is one such model which has been used to describe urban regions like the Randstad in the Netherlands and the Rhein-Ruhr region in Germany. Regions which lack the single dominant central city of the monocentric models of old, and instead shows a high degree of more equal-sized and sometimes more specialised cities in regional cooperation. The polycentric urban region is in that aspect a possible model for how other urbanised regions in Europe may act to be able to position themselves as attractive urban regions and regional hubs in the European urban network.Polycentric urban regions are not a universal solution, though.

The aim with this study is to investigate how Swedish public service local radio uses information subsides in the form of press releases. In terms of which entrants gain entrance to the news feed, in which forms and in which subjects. Also we wanted to study how the journalist uses the content in the press releases. To do this we cooperated with the public service radio channel Sveriges radio P4 Kalmar. For 28 days, four weeks, we collected all incoming press releases to the newsroom of P4 Kalmar.

AbstractTitle: The ?Investigator? and the ?Updater? ? new patterns of news use among young adults.Number of pages: 48Author: Anna StrinnholmTutor: Amelie HössjerCourse: Media and Communications, D- levelPeriod: Fall of 2005University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Information Science, Uppsala UniversityPurpose/Aim: The aim of this essay is to provide an description of how daily newspaper, TV, radio and the Internet are used by young adults in order to contribute to Lennar Weibulls model ?a typology of the Swedish mediasystem from an audience perspectiv?.Method/Material: The method of gathering of empirical material has been conducted by interviewing eight people of how they use daily newspapers, TV, radio and The internet to inform themselves of the daily news. The empirical material has then been analysed by applying a two step method, of first making a summary of the interviews and secondly making a comparison with a model of Lennart Weibull ?a typology of the Swedish mediasystem from an audience perspectiv? .Main results:Two different types of ideal media users can be drawn from the empirical research, the ?Investigator? and the ?Updater?. The updater search for news to stay updated and relies on the Internet as main source of information.

Title: Multi channel publishing: a qualitative study on how Norrköpings Tidningen publishes news in multiple channelsAuthor: Roland AlbinssonThesis supervisor: Per-Anders ForstorpBackground: In this day and age, the media is omnipresent and a part of our daily life. The phenomenon of media convergence can be traced back to the birth of the internet, and today all of the major newspapers have a website of their own. As a result of multichannel publishing, consumers have a wide range of tv channels to choose from, but there is still uncertainty as to whether more channels automatically equates to more and better news. There is no doubt about the fact that multi channel publishing is a necessary survival skill for media conglomerates today, but effects such as news recycling and the concentration of ownership are in conflict with the consumers? availability demands.Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to, by means of a case study, describe how NT?s multi channel publishing is an expression of media convergence, as well as to study how the news are affected by multi channel publishing.Research procedure: This study is based on three different research methods, observations, text analyses and qualitative interviews.