Title: Digital christmas greetings - the viral communicators, public sphere and democracy(Digitala julhälsningar - de virala kommuniktörerna, offentligheten och demokratin)Number of pages: 41Author : Anna-Sara TorgnysdotterTutor: Ylva EkströmCourse : Media and Communication Studies DPeriod: Spring, semester 2010University: Devision of Media and Communications, Department of Information Science,Uppsala UniversityPurpose: The purpose of this study is to see if social media could be an arena for the usersto increase democracy and the public sphere. Studying the role and possibilitys of the individual.Is there a space for any one to act and debate?Method: A qualitative analysis based on interviews with ten users of social media - viralcommunicators. They were discussing public and private sphere, democracy, norms andbehavior in social media.Theoretical platform: The theoretical basis has its roots in sociology: Ervin Goffman´sidea on self-presentation and social interaction, Manuel Castels´ theories of the networksociety and Jürgen Habermas idea of the public spehere.Main result: The viral communicators are ambivalent in their use of socialmedia. They are users because they want to be but also because they feel forced to - professionalor private.

Arms trade is a multi-faced issue, it can increase the state's economic revenue; however also endanger the human security. The European Union's member state United Kingdom is one of the five largest arms traders in the world. The EU promotes human security in its work, especially in the union's development policies. These circumstances address the main question of the study: is there a contradiction between the UK's arms trade and the EU development policies. The objective of this study is to research the stately weapon use in three of the UK's trading partners, and how it could affect the EU development policies.

The transformation among armed forces in Europe is a consequence due to shifted security perspective and the growth of international security actors, such as NATO and the EU. Sweden has played an active role in EU to ensure its influence in forming the security policy for the organisation. Some studies mean it´s because of Sweden?s interest in strengthen EUs roll as a security actor they transformed their own armed forces to be able to take part in international operations. This transformation led to what can be called ?the Swedish defence dismantle? and some studies mean that it has led to the point where Sweden completely lacks the ability to defence themselves.The question is if the ambition to become an active member in these security organisations can explain all the decisions made throughout the Swedish defence-transformation, or if some decisions were made due to other factors?By studying the decision process leading up to the decision to locate the flight education to Malmen in Linköping this study seeks to answer why the decision was made.

This Master Thesis aims to study and discuss the occurence of three concepts in some influential cultural policy documents which includes the UNESCO public library manifesto, the Swedish libraries act, the Swedish cultural policy objectives, and a study from the mid nineties which deals with the cultural policy. The questions asked are: -Do the documents mention democracy? In what way? -Do the documents mention the public sphere? In what way? -Do the documents mention information? In what way? -How can we understand the content of the documents through relevant theories about democracy, the public sphere and information? Theories about the information society are used, as well as theories from Jürgen Habermas, Herbert Schiller and Robert Dahl. The way of method is document studies and abduktion, with influences from hermeneutic theory. The analysis deals with the documents through these concepts: democracy, the public sphere and information and puts forward the content, or lack of content, about democracy in the analysed material.

This study concerns unaccompanied refugee children and their experiences of living in Sweden and also their thoughts about identity and security. The aim of this study was to find a deeper understanding of these children?s situation. We formulated three research questions in order to obtain this deeper understanding:? What experiences do the informants have of living in Sweden?? What are the informants? views of their identity in their new life situation?? What is security to the informants?This is a qualitative study based on six semi-structured interviews with six youths whom have come to Sweden as unaccompanied refugee children.

ABSTRACTIntroduction: An increasing number of patients undergo surgery under local anesthesia and are thereforeawake during the procedure. Nursing care that is provided to these patients can differ from those thatreceive general anesthesia. Previous research has focused on patients? general experiences of being awakeintraoperative. But there is no research that focuses on patients perceptions of security.

This bachelor thesis examines the library as a public sphere in the notion of Jürgen Habermas? theory from 1962. The questions asked concerns how the public sphere is discussed in relation to Swedish public libraries today in our late modern society. The analyzed material consists of the Swedish Cultural Bill of 2009 and five qualitative interviews with librarians. The material is analyzed with two of the four social actions presented by the sociologist Maw Weber: value-rational and instrumental.

This paper deals with the development of scientific geography during Antiquity from its mythical background before the seventh century BC to Claudius Ptolemy during the second century AD. The main focus is on questions concerning the shape of the earth, its place in the universe, size and mapping of the earth. Already before 400 BC, the idea of the earth as a globe was firmly estabished. During classical time, Aristotle used empirical and rational arguments to prove that the earth was a sphere and that it was situated motionless in the center of the universe. In the third century BC, the first reasonably correct measurements of the circumference of the earth was carried out by Eratosthenes.

???Information Technology is an essential part of the society today, not least in large ???organisations dealing with sensitive information. An example of such an organisation is the Swedish Armed Forces which indeed is in the need of ways to ensure information security in their Information Technology systems. The means which is used is an authorisation and accreditation process.All Information Technology systems go through a life cycle which includes realisation, usage, development and liquidation. In the Swedish Armed Forces the lifecycle is an authorisation process.

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.

This essay aims to explore the development of the common foreign and security policy within the European Union as well as the recent addition of the post of High representative in the field of the common foreign and security policy. This essay will attempt to achieve this trough exploring the questions; how have the aim of the European foreign policy developed, how the forms of cooperation has within this field developed and finally what impact will the recent addition of a high representative for the common foreign and security have. My aim is to answer these questions with the help of neo-functionalism.The results that came out of this essay point to the direction that the neo- functionalist premise about spill over effects and the notion about increased supranational influence turn out to have some validity in them. The study has shown that during the time the cooperation within the field of foreign and security policy have developed it is possible to see that supranational institutions will gain influence when the scope of integration within a policy area widens and deepens..

The United Nations is an important organization when it comes to international peace and security. Recent events in international politics, however, have brought about a widespread concern about the abilities of the organization. Powerful states have shosen to act outside of the organization to achieve their goals. They have furthermore a disproportionate influence on the decision-making body, the Security Council.The aim of this essay is to examine wheather UN can function productively as keeper of the international peace and security in the political climate of today, and to find out to what extent the powerful states harm the organization. I use a theoretical article, concerning states relations to international organisations, to analyse the acts of powerful states in UN.

A student at the Technical University in Jönköping was given an assignment from Falköping municipality. The assignment was to evaluate their IT systems 'users' awareness of information security and even present suggestions for IT-Users to improve their information security within Falköping municipality.Falköping municipality consists today of seven administrations. The target groups for the study of the information security are a pilot group consisting of 30 IT Users and four different managers from various administrations within Falköping Municipality.The purpose of this work is mainly to indicate an understanding of the importance of the information security knowledge among IT Users in Falkopings municipality, mainly those who use their smartphones and tablets for work-related activities.This work aims to answer the following questions:? How wide is the awareness of information security among municipality's IT users?? How can information security improve among the municipality's IT users?Theories that work consists of are mainly what information security is, how it is handled and the threats and risks that may create problems for the municipality, basically when IT Users use their smart phones and tablets.The Work Implementation started with sending surveys to a pilot group of IT- system users and the student even interviewed four general managers working in Falköpings municipality. Both the questionnaires results and interviews results are presented in diagram and text.The result from both surveys and interviews was very positive and it shows that the municipality investigated IT-Users are very aware and have knowledge about information security, when they use their smart phones and tablets.

Facebook is today a phenomenon that has connected the whole world. With millions of users this has become an attractive place for soccer clubs to connect with their fans. But in what ways are they using Facebook as a tool to connect with their fans?This essay aims to answer the question if it?s a difference in the way English and Swedish teams communicate with their fans on Facebook. The study was conducted with the use of telephone- and mail interviews.

Today?s society is one where technological advances are made daily, which increases the need to stop and assess the risks against users? integrity when integrating new technology in contemporary systems all the greater. We have taken two technologies, Near Field Communication and Certified Wireless USB, whose envisioned area of use is to be integrated into mobile phones, and evaluated what security threats are revealed for the respective technologies. The threats against security have been identified through research of the standards and existing reports for each technology. Practical experiments have not been conducted on account of us not having access to any equipment to run such trials.