Libraries are often associated with positive values such as democracy and equal rights. The contents of the literature on offer should therefore be of great interest to the librarian, the supplier of said literature. The topic of this Master?s thesis is the popular literary genre known as chick lit. The purpose is to investigate the love theme in Swedish chick lit, and how it relates to Anthony Giddens? theory on love in late modernity.

The purpose of this essay is to explore how social media affect the political orientation and commitment of youths. Three scientific questions highlight the purpose from different angles. The didactic perspective is discussed in the initial and closing discussion, and is analyzed in the corresponding chapter. Two methods are involved in the study; one survey and one interview with a focus group. The survey had a total of 98 respondents from four different classes, all in the first grade of upper secondary school.

This essay studies the practice of both the political and the administrative leadership at the municipal level from the point of view of the politicians and the chief officers leadership role, and the relationship between politicians and administrators. I discuss and analyse how politicians and senior officials practice leadership, differences or similarities and if their practice of leadership raises any challenges in a democratic framework at the municipal level. I conducted interviews with the municipal political leader and the head of administration at the municipal level in Karlshamn and Sölvesborg. In the analysis I discuss communication as a leadership process which highlights ?enabling elements? and potentials of the leadership process.

In this study, we investigate various lighting applications in a virtual environment, where we compare between light based in naturalism (natural light) and pictorialism (artistic light). The purpose of this study is to gain further knowledge in lighting, which is increasingly important for game graphics. Theory are examined to gather information and recommendations on how to use various light settings that convey different emotions. We then use this information to illuminate the environment that we have built. The environment is presented in Unreal 4 for respondents who are allowed to move around freely in the environment.

This study analyzes how civil society contributes to the democratic development in a Nicaragua governed by the sandinist party FSLN. The empirical focus lays at the relationship between state and the civil society. By using a conceptual framework outlined by Caroline Boussard, the civil society is being analyzed as an actor with a democracy-building potential that is supported or constrained by a political context.The civil society is divided between traditional social movement and more newly borned NGOs. Social movements tend to approach the government comparatively to NGOs, which adopt a highly critical attitude. In contrast to NGOs, the traditional social movements are improving their democratic functions as a counterpart while NGOs confine its democratic potential to an agenda setter drawing attention to democratic deficits.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine if companies? incentive programs for employees is designed in such a way that it makes it possible for managers to reach their goals. Method: Qualitative with a semi standardised questionnaire Results: Our results is that the incentive programs for employees in their present form don?t give the companies a good possibility to effect the employees to perform towards the goals of the system. The performance measures in the incentive programs for employees is suitable in comparison with the goals of the program but the construction and the use of the systems doesn?t give a satisfied result in comprising with the goals.

The purpose of this essay is to examine how administrative officers at the Swedish social insurance agency experience and deal with the goal conflicts they may experience. Furthermore, the purpose is to gain a greater understanding on how they perceive their role in the implementation process, and their position as the link between the citizens and the state. Two potential conflicts are examined; between quantitative goals and performance measures and those more qualitative and hard to measure; between economic values such as cost efficiency and productivity and democratic values such as the rule of law. The other conflict examined is that between implementing and following the laws set forth, take into account the individual needs and interests of the citizen. The theoretical framework consists of Lundquist?s theory on public officers as the guardians of democracy, which means that they should not only implement laws and rules according to political intentions, but also make sure that the democratic values and principles are followed in the relationship between state and citizen.

In the essay the author examines how pilgrimage can be used as a tool to radicalise democracy in a late modern society marked by neoliberalism. Applying a dialectic perspective on social movements the essay puts forward how the pilgrimage movement Pilgrim?s Walk for Future, administrated by Church of Sweden, is working in line with the historical pilgrimage theology - a modern critical ecclesiology- to mobilise political action to prevent climate change. The result of the study shows how PWFF meet the neoliberal hegemony with a mobilisation of alternative values beyond the order of capitalism, in line with Christian theology and tradition. The mobilisation is made possible by new forms of identifications with oneself and the social world that meet a modern power/knowledge- regime based on rational thought, and which questions norms and practises by paying attention to their negative effects on nature and on human life in general.

Att penisen inte haft en betydande roll inom den socialpsykologiska forskningen rörande mäns identitetsskapande, samtidigt som manskroppen blivit en tydligare fokuspunkt i media och samhället de senaste åren, är utgångspunkten för denna studie. En studie som syftar till att se hur män konstruerar sin identitet utifrån sin kropp. I denna studie antogs ett diskursanalytiskt angreppssätt för att söka svar på hur män i åldern 20-30 år konstruerar sin identitet utifrån sin kropp med ett särskilt fokus på penisen och dess inverkan. Det utfördes åtta stycken semistrukturerade intervjuer, som transkriberades och kodades i programmet Nvivo. Utsagorna analyserades utifrån valda delar av olika diskursanalytiska angreppssätt och även Goffmans dramaturgiska perspektiv och hans teori om stigma, samt Butlers performativa idé om kön och Connells teori om hegemonisk maskulinitet.

This thesis aims at studying representatives from three groups in the Egyptian society with an ethnographic method and with regards to their experiences, reflections and stories of the Egyptian revolution. The material of the thesis is based on ethnographic fieldwork and on interviews.The purpose of the study is to explore different themes in the informants? stories related to society, freedom, social justice, human values, peace and civility. The purpose is also to examine the informants' stories with emphasis on various informal learning processes that occurred in the Egyptian social change.The study finds that according to the informants a society should be characterized, among other things, by human values, social justice, non-violence and peaceful methods and approaches. Various informal learning processes involving both individual citizens and active members of civil society and NGO groups were found to be practiced to be able to accomplish these changes in the Egyptian society to create a better future.The degrees of involvement of the various learning processes not only reflect differences between informants regarding the social and cultural background.

The purpose of this study is to describe and analyze homelessness in a medium-sized municipality from an organizational perspective. Some of the central questions in this study are: How is the cause of homelessness explained? How do different actors in the community address, prevent and combat homelessness? Who is responsible for the homelessness?This study is based on four semi-structured interviews with organizations that work with homelessness. The analysis is based on problem definition theory.The result of this study shows that homelessness is a problem in this medium-sized municipality even if it is not a big one and that it is often closely combined with substance abuse. The responsibility for the homeless is on the homeless themselves and the social service because that causes is, according to this study, individual based.  .

Through semi-structured interviews with 8 school photographers and 10 parents,this study attempted to clarify what photographers and parents of children(aged 1?5) in preschool think of photography business in the current situationprovides retouching children?s school photographs and what they considers tobe acceptable. The result shows that companies do not offer photo retouchingfrequent, but performs this service at the direct request of the customer. Themajority of parents agreed that dirt and food was accepted to be removed fromthe photograph, and that this does not affect the child's self image. The photographersbelieve that one should be very careful when it comes to children andretouching, and that the debate is important..

The aim of this thesis is to better understand branding work in government agencies. What can systematic branding work result in, in a government agency, besides a strong brand in itself? Can it contribute to the democratic mission that government agencies have?Based on background information on government agencies, their mission in terms of communication, their particular characteristics in relation to the private sector; brands and how they are developed; as well as theories in organizational communication, and research on the possibilities and risks of branding work in the public sector, a qualitative case study on the Swedish Patent and Registration Office (PRV) was carried out.The case study consists of a study of PRV?s brand platform, their website as well as an interview with the person responsible for developing the platform. The information gathered during the case study indicates that PRV?s brand work seems to have resulted in a number of positive outcomes.

Previous studies of stress and coping regarding urban bus drivers describe an unhealthy occupation in areas of psychological and physiological factors. In the present study a social constructionist approach was used to investigate Swedish urban bus drivers' constructs of stress and coping regarding passengers. Semi-structered interviews were performed with ten bus drivers, nine males and one female. The data was transcribed verbatim and analysed with the program QSR NUD*IST.Three main themes where found; passanger related context, coping strategies and promoting circumstances. The bus drivers' constructs describe passanger relations as part of a stressful work environment where successful coping is problematic..

The purpose of our essay is to describe and analyse the experience of adults growing up with alcohol abusing parents and how their adult lives have been affected by this. The essay consists of both theoretical and empirical studies and we have used a qualitative method. We used a semi structured interview where we interviewed eight persons. We used symbolic interaction to analyse the collected data. The result is to a large extent consistent with previous research.