The number of blogs, from weblogs, are increasing every day. Blogs are also becoming more visible in the public debate as well as the awareness of their existance is rising among politicians and citizens. The aim of this thesis is to answer the question what democratic potential blogs can have. This question will be answered by initially studying the research that exists today about weblogs and democracy. The second part of the analysis consists of a selection of texts from weblogs that touches this subject.

BACKGROUND: Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is a slow progressive disease affecting the family caregivers by limiting their lifestyle. Subsequently the situation can be experienced as stressful for both the afflicted and the relatives. To easier understand the needs of the caregivers of family members suffering from COPD have, it is important to get an insight into their experience of every-day life, so that medical staff can help, support and promote their health according to their needs. AIM: To illustrate caregivers? experiences of living with a family member suffering from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease.

The purpose of this essay was to describe and analyse the tension/conflict between external demands and actual conditions, as experienced (and told in interviews) by employees at two social insurance offices in Scania, concerning their roles in the process of working life rehabilitation. The theoretical starting point is the theory of street-level bureaucrats, as defined by Lipsky. The comprehension among the employees were that working life rehabilitation services are approved less today compared to a few years ago. The discretion, i.e. the position to choose among competing alternatives; about what to do, how to do it etc., characteristic of street-level bureaucrats, according to the employees is less prominent, as the routines of handling cases and decision making are regulated.

The aim of this study was to describe how persons with Whiplash associated disorder experience how the pain affects them in their daily life. The design of the study was descriptive with qualitative, individual interviews, questionnaire with background facts of the examination group, and diary notes from persons with pain of WAD. Method for selection was convenience. Through contact with the association of whiplash group in a county in middle of Sweden, the majority of the examination group for the study was found. Five persons where given information about the study, one of them choose not to take part of the study, and one of the persons did not complete the study.

An Interoperable Fare Management system for public transport has been a struggle for the actors in industry of public transport. A lot of effort has been put into creating a smart card solution that enables the travellers to use the same card for paying and holding the ticket regardless geographical position in Sweden. That project has failed, mostly due to a lack of taking non-technical actors and aspects into consideration during the project process. This thesis highlights the major actors and their responsibilities. The ARKTRANS framework is used as analytical tool to identify different roles. Throughout the thesis a sociotechnical perspective is used. The developed method in this thesis is suitable for mapping of actors and responsibilities in a network surrounding a complex technical system.

The main objective of this thesis is to examine the situation concerning information technology, computers and information resources for university students at a selection of universities, and their libraries, in Sweden. Another objective is to compare this situation to what is stated in policy documents on the subject, and if the size of the university matters regarding resources. The thesis starts with a discussion of several authors, Frank Webster, Paul F. Burton and Lars Qvortrup among others, and their views on the information society. These range from whether we are living in it, are in a transition period or are still in the Industrial Society.

There are problems with poor quality, poor scheduling and poor working climate in the Swedish construction industry. Many parts have been involved, trying to solve the problem.This spring a new planning and building-law becomes final. In this law, the requirements set on the controls are greater. Hopefully this will lead to fewer construction errors. The requirements set on the working environment have also increased, forcing consultants and contractors to focus on safe workplaces.For each project requiring a building permit, an inspection plan has to been drawn.

The goal of this study is to examine how the market reacts when information about the exchange of a CEO becomes public. It also examines factors such as gender and whether the departure was voluntary or not, discerning if the market behaves differently concerning any of these aspects.To achieve this, the study was performed using an event study. The selection consisted of 48 companies on the Stockholm Stock Exchange, who had during the years 2005 to 2008 underwent a change in leading management. These units were submitted to hypothesis tests, to determine if an abnormal return was attained during the event window. The tests were performed on the units as a whole, and divided up after gender and whether the departure was voluntary or not.The results of the study show no statistically significant abnormal return caused by the announcement of a CEO exchange.

Abstract: The purpose with this study was to explore different peoples preconceived opinions of three psychiatric diagnoses; Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD), schizophrenia and Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). These designations are accompanied by a definite social stigma, which could have profound effects on a person diagnosed with either disorder. These designations carry the risk of excluding and labelling individuals and could provoke a feeling of abnormality and potentially segregate them from the Community. This study is a qualitative study of six individuals, (sample size equals six). The rationale behind the selection was to get a broad representation of different individuals? opinions.

The current debate regarding organizational strategies for sustainabledevelopment is influenced by the theory of global governance. Decentralizedstructures of the global society are taken to use in the realization of a sustainabledevelopment. New roles of transnational networks and partnerships raisesquestions of the ability of global governance to co-ordinate and implement longtermsolutions without assistance from centralized and hierarchic structures basedon government. The aim for this thesis is to illustrate the current conditions forwell-functioning networks of sustainable development and examine therelationship between global governance and government. Issues of participation,decision making and compliance are examined by a case study of the Marrakechprocess, a global process to support the implementation of sustainableconsumption and production.

Nötcenter Viken is a Swedish nucleus herd for dairy cattle. The goal for the farm is to select suitable mothers for the next top generation of bulls. Today the selection for udder health is based on a pedigree index and phenotype data. The pedigree index is based on the cow?s father and grandfathers breeding values.

This research paper is a thesaurus construction for the interdisciplinary subject of landscape planning. The personnel doing the indexing of documents at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences had earlier expressed a need for such a work within the fields of Landscape Architecture and Landscape Engineering. However our objective was not to create a complete thesaurus, but instead a basic construction which the personnel at the Agricultural University could expand upon. The actual construction is based upon ISO 2788-1986, Documentation Ð Guidelines for the establishment and development of monolingual thesauri, and Aitchison, Gilchrist and BawdenÕs Thesaurus Construction (1997). The line of enquiry taken has dealt with the problems relating to the collection, selection and control of indexing terms.

This report studies how the divergence between men and women is manifested in the physical space and how the representation of room recreates this divergence. Spaces are coded and women have traditionally been associated with private space and men with public space, leading to that the home is encoded as female space and public squares as male space. Thereby women lack a natural place in public space. The National Board of Housing, Building and Planning (Boverket) wants to change this situation by enforcing safety-creating measures based on gender equality theories.I have studied what potential risks the project initiated by Boverket as well as discuss the potential problems with representation. Can representation be used without freezing the space? I also search for methods for working with a gender perspective without reproducing gender stereotypes and roles and avoiding encoding the private as female and public as male? Also I use a public seminar with urban planners, artists and architects to retrieve how we work with these issues today.I conclude that city planning needs to incorporate new strategies of thought that does not divide space, e.g.

The aim of this master?s thesis is to obtain greater understanding of how children relate to the film medium and their experiences. This is obtained by listening to the children and observing their verbal and nonverbal communication in two focus group interviews. Children?s access to and selection of film are due to adult?s restrictions.

This bachelor thesis explores how librarians are portrayed in fiction literature. The aim is to see how the librarian and their work tasks are described. Our material consists of 12 fiction novels from the years 2000 to 2012 (with an exception of a book from 1998). We have used discourse analysis in order to examine the picture of the librarian.We have used three major questions: How is the librarian portrayed in our selected fiction literature from year 2000 until today (the beginning of 2013)? How are the librarians profession portrayed in our selected fiction literature? Does our selection of the fiction literature give a positive or negative image of the librarianand how can that affect the view of the profession?Our analysis resulted in the discourses the librarian and literature and the librarian and the library.