In this thesis I set out to study how the reading of fictional literature is viewed, legitimatized and operationalized in two educational domains: the recently revised steering documents that all Swedish teachers must relate to, as well as a selection of teaching materials designed for education in the Swedish language for upper secondary school. The teaching material I have studied has been recently updated in order to correspond with the new steering documents. I relate my analysis to previous research about the use of fiction in education, and I also combine my analysis of the two educational domains to see whether the underlying intentions of the steering documents have influenced the revision of the teaching material. The outcome indicates that the steering documents? previous focus on culture has diminished although a certain insecurity as to how to use the concept and deal with the issue of whose culture should be taught can be identified.

A picture says more than thousand words - an analysis of GQ Magazine´s cover images and ninth grade student´s views of them is an essay in media and communication studies covering 15 hp. This essay examines how men and women are depicted on the cover of GQ Magazine and how ninth grade students perceive these images. Our research questions are: How is gender presented in cover images? How do the students interpret these images? What possible differencies or similarities are there? Our theoretical framework is based on gender theory. Methods used are a survey conducted at Tegs Central school and a semiotic analysis of the cover images.

This survey's main purpose is to highlight how the two Swedish newspapers Aftonbladet and Dagens Nyheter writes and describes four different school shootings. We wanted to find out if there is a general pattern of how school shootings are reported by the media. Two of the shootings occured in USA, Columbine and Virginia Tech, and two in Finland, Kauhajoki and Jokela. The analysis aims at three areas: the whole event, the perpetrator and the victim. We have used a qualitative content analysis with a semiotic model to examine the articles in the survey. The theories in the study is based upon views on social constructionism, media logic, stereotypization, representation, morale panic/media panic and media events.

In this thesis I set out to study how the reading of fictional literature is viewed, legitimatized and operationalized in two educational domains: the recently revised steering documents that all Swedish teachers must relate to, as well as a selection of teaching materials designed for education in the Swedish language for upper secondary school. The teaching material I have studied has been recently updated in order to correspond with the new steering documents. I relate my analysis to previous research about the use of fiction in education, and I also combine my analysis of the two educational domains to see whether the underlying intentions of the steering documents have influenced the revision of the teaching material. The outcome indicates that the steering documents? previous focus on culture has diminished although a certain insecurity as to how to use the concept and deal with the issue of whose culture should be taught can be identified.

The Arctic region appears as a pristine remote environment, yet there is increasing evidence that it is greatly impacted by pollution such as lead (Pb) and mercury (Hg). In this environment deposition of Hg has increased threefold since the last industrial revolution. In this study five cryosolic soil profiles within non-sorted circles (NSC) in the Abisko region, northwest of Sweden, has been analyzed to improve our understanding regarding how pollutants are distributed within such type of soil. The soil samples have been analyzed with the use of X-ray fluorescence analysis (XRF), for the measurements of the total concentrations of e.g. lead (Pb) and zirconium (Zr).

Ephemerality is one of the most essential characteristics of fashion, since fashion by definition is existing in the present, in the fleeing moment. Also, fashion is closely related to art and there is currently no clear theoretical distinction made regarding the boundary between these two domains. In this essay I have explored the concept of transiency and the relationship between fashion and art in relation to fashion in general and to the collection Haute Papier, made by the fashion designer Bea Szenfeld, in specific. The Haute Papier collection is constructed almost entirely out of simple white paper sheets and of this reason it can be regarded as ephemeral. The material also positions the garments in a void between fashion and art, simultaneously existing in both domains and in none of them.

The purpose of this master's thesis is to examine how the public library communicates with young users through the library web sites. Four Swedish public library web pages for children are analysed. In the analysis the web pages are treated as a combination of semiotic resources that, communicating as a whole, hold a meaning potential. In order to identify the underlying meaning of the whole I have applied the tools of Kress' & van Leeuwen's visual social semiotics to the chosen web pages.The information value, the framing and the salience of each composition is examined and analysed, as is the size of frame, the perspective and the vertical angle of a selection of images from each web page. The results of the semiotic analysis are then discussed and related to Jochumsen et al:s four space-model and the notion of ?child perspective? and ?empowerment?.The results show that the child perspective is strongest on the web pages that represent the performative space as dominating and that empowerment is mainly represented as ?doing?, ?participating? and the ?free choice?.

Pictures are often used when marketing a tourist destination. Photographs of a place, a destination, are used to convince customers and stimulate daydreaming in order to turn a potential customer into a real customer. For some people the photographic representations of a place is the only one they experience. With this in mind, it is reasonable to question how representations of places and geographical imaginations are being (re)produced when marketing a destination by using photographs. This paper aims to study how representations of place and people are used when marketing a tourist destination via travel commercial.

Men?s magazines is a form of media that has been present and popular among men for decades and even centuries. In the beginning of 1990 the popularity for men?s magazines boosted as the new ideal man was presented. The new lad represented a new masculinity that was more honest about its ideals and point of views.

Posters had their breakthrough in 1830-1840?s all thanks to the lithographic printing technique. The poster was used as an advertising tool.In this essay, we have looked at which semiotic and rhetorical elements that are found in today?s Swedish movie posters. What kind of image and text elements does the poster use and with what function? With what and how do they persuade the audience that the movies are interesting and worth seeing?We have taken the most popular Swedish movies between 2001 and 2010, one for each year, going by the statistic found at the website of the Swedish Film Institute.

The escalating usage of pyrethroids has resulted in an increased awareness about resistance towards pyrethroids in insects. Pyrethroids inhibit voltage-sensitive sodium channels (VSSC) in nerve cell membranes and are composed of synthetic molecules based on pyrethrins present in pyrethrum extracts from Chrysanthemum species. VSSC are transmembrane proteins that are important for electric signalling over the membrane in insects. Mutations in the gene encoding the sodium channel have proved to be a common reason for resistance against pyrethroids. Pyrethroid resistance among pollen beetles is spread all over Sweden and also abroad and is increasing.

The purpose of this thesis was to examine the relationship between feelings and visualizations of climate change. A case study was done on visualizations of climate change from a web page concerning climate change published by the Swedish newspaper Expressen and from the American photographer Gary Braasch?s web page ?World view of global warming?. The thesis is based on the article ?Emotional anchoring and objectification in the media reporting on climate change? by Birgitta Höijer.

This paper addresses the question about what role typography plays in the interpretation of a text. From three different handbooks in typography arguments are gathered and categorized in to three categories: roman types, san serif and others. Interviews with people from the graphic design area are also a part of the paper and are accounted for in the discussion part of the paper. Areas of theory are a broad hermeneutic view based on Hans-Georg Gadamers thoughts, which have sub categories such as: Michel Foucault?s theory about discourses, John Swales genre theory and Anders Björkvall?s thoughts on typography and multi-modal texts.

Introduction: More and more children and young people get the diagnosis celiac disease established. Celiac is a life-long disease, which means that the child during the rest of its life has to be on a strictly gluten-free diet. There are few studies so far, which have examined how children having a life-long disease with food treatment and increasing prevalence really experience their health related quality of life (HRQoL).Purpose: The purpose of the study was to examine how children (8 ? 18 years old) suffering from celiac valued their HRQoL and to illustrate as well whether the age of the child and its extent of disease when it was taken ill affected the child?s evaluation of HRQoL later in life. The purpose was also to compare whether the children?s parents valued the HRQoL of their children to the same extent as the children did.Method: 160 children, 54 boys and 102 girls were included in the study.

In recent years there has been an upsurge in products and activities designed for infants, what is known as baby culture. The essay is a discourse analysis covering the part of baby culture which is concerned with infants and books. The essay studies texts from libraries and children?s bookclubs in order to understand what it is they communicate, to whom and the conceivable consequences of the communicated message. One of the main purposes of the study is to determine what view of infants as social and cultural beings it  is that arises from the texts.