The aim with this master?s thesis is to examine the information practices and information literacies among social workers in the field of the social services and in the work with child welfare investigations. This is in this study related to their ambition to fulfill the requirements of an evidence-based practice. On a theoretical level, the study is based on three theories grounded in the idea of situated learning and of human activities based in a social context. These are the sociocultural theory, the theory of communities of practices and the theory of information practices.

In the following study I probe the social world of hard-rock music. By conducting interviews with four young male enthusiasts of this music I try to develop a general picture of this social world, as well as of the basic elements on which this particular subculture is constructed. The identity of a hard-rocker is based upon a number of factors beyond just a preference for that music. Throughout the interviews I encountered many implicit norms that one must followed in order to be able to see oneself as a true hard-rocker. I also found that from the respondents? perspective, the mainstream culture has, throughout the history of metal music, used various ways to counter the spreading of this genre.

The subject of this two year Master's thesis in Library and Information Science is the information practices of illiterate immigrants in everyday life. The purpose is to examine how immigrants seek, identify, understand and value information sources and information, and how the practices have changed with their arrival in Sweden. It furthermore focuses on the barriers that illiterate immigrants meet in accessing and understanding information. It moreover investigates the strategies they use to overcome them.For this purpose twelve qualitative research interviews were carried out, with illiterate immigrants as well as with service providers. The theoretical concepts of the essay is information practices, which means that the information process is within a context, and information poverty, that people in different context do not have adequate and equal access to information and information sources.Using McKenzie's model of information practices, the essay concludes that illiterate immigrants are active in their information process, especially when they interact with information.

In the history of scientific visualization techniques there is a lack of social science practices and methodologies. The advent of modern computer graphics brought the use of visualizations into a whole new era, but even though the tools by which such modern visualizations are created become easier to access and use, the lack of social science researchers harvesting the benefits of such tools still remain. This ease of use, increase in power and accessibility plus the ever growing need within the natural sciences to augment the human senses has further complicated the relationship between scientific methodologies, validity, reliability and the use of visualization techniques. This relationship must be explored, demystified and understood in order to fully grasp the impact of visualization practices when incorporated into any given scientific method. Within the social sciences there is one example of a tradition that has since its conception carried within it a graphical notion and a visualization practice.

From a time where employees often remained at one company until retirement, globalization and changed employment patterns have created a more mobile labor market in the last years. In an effort to expand the connection between organization and employee a rising interest in corporate alumni networks has emerged. Previous research has shown that conditions for such networks are formed through employees social identification, perceived organizational support and organizational citizenship and can be shaped by company's HR practices.This paper aims to examine two case companies' perceived benefits through alumni relations as well as their HR prac-tices, in order to increase understanding surrounding the relationship between the two areas. Further the study intends to draw conclusions about the role of corporate alumni networks in the creation of the received benefits.The study indicates that HR practices, through the creation of an organizational citizenship behavior, can influence the conditions for beneficial alumni relations. Results show that some expected benefits of alumni relations can be re-ceived through strong citizenship.

Fish-head pendants are one of the characteristic Gotlandic Late Iron Age artefacts. This object has been rather neglected and mainly considered as an insignificant embellishment, normally worn as a neck-collar and seen as an artefact include in the typical Gotlandic set of female jewellery.The fact that the fish-head pendant has a very long life span, which stretches from grave-finds in the Early Vendel Age to hoards in Viking Age as well as secondary usage as brooches in the Early Middle Ages, makes the artefact an excellent starting point for discussions on Social practices and change through material culture. It's shown in this study that, contrary to previous beliefs, the normal usages for fish-head pendants is as solitary pendants and not as neck-collars. Neck-collars is shown to have an intricate relation to inhumations for young individuals, whereas solitary pendants are found in cremation deposits for adult individuals, something that relates to a fixed social practice mainly in the period 700-900 AD and that develops from the cremation funeral practice. This particular social practice relates to aspects of attraction and protection and continues in to the 10th century outside of funeral structures, which is shown by the composition of hoard-finds from the 10th century, but is totally absent when the pendants is given a secondary usage as brooches in the end of the 11th and beginning of the 12th century.

"Syns du inte - finns du inte. SEO best-practices och utvärdering." handlar om sökmotoroptimering. Arbetet har som sitt mål att undersöka i fall det finns några rekommenderade best-practices för att lyckas med sökmotoroptimering. Arbetet tar också upp olika metoder för utvärdering av SEO-ansträngningar.Som webbutvecklare jobbar man med att ta fram webbsidor och vill att dessa ska bli hittade av målgruppen därför kändes det valda ämnet relevant och intressant.Resultatet innefattar en sammanställning av rekommendationer/best-practices från tre olika källor. En del rekommendationer har testats för att verifiera deras effektivitet samt för att undersöka i fall sökmotoroptimering är svår att tillämpa i praktiken.

This essay elucidates upper secondary students? literacy practices, (literacy events, literacy competencies and literacy culture) during a typical day, with focus on the daily literacy practices. A literacy ethnographic study conducted in the environment which participants naturally are, at home, at school and in leisure. The study is inspired of a project, Skriftbruk i arbetslivet, ´Literacy Practices in Working Life´, that conducted by Anna-Malin Karlsson, Per Ledin and Olle Josephson, in collaboration with Vetenskapsrådet ´Science Council´(2002-2004).The result of this study shows that students from professional preparing programs not use such literacy competencies that been tested in traditionally reading comprehension test, particularly much. However, do they read a lot during the literacy practices day by television, computer and mobile phone.

In this paper the authors examine three questions: 1) Is stealth marketing messages posing as status updates on Facebook a more effective way of advertising than traditional web banners? 2) What impact has learning about stealth marketing practices in social media on consumer attitude and post purchase behaviour? And finally 3) Will different generations respond differently to these questions?Our findings show that stealth marketing in social media is not more effective than traditional web banners. Furthermore, the result indicates that when consumers find out about stealth marketing practices it will have a negative impact on future purchase intensions and brand image. Most consumers will also have strong feelings of being deceived, which could instigate harmful post purchase behaviour such as negative word-of-mouth and possibly, based on some earlier cases, boycotts.The result of our research shows that the brand perceptions and future purchase intentions of Generation Y, persons between 18 and 30 years of age, are affected in a less negative way than the brand perceptions and future purchase intentions of older generations when finding out about stealth marketing practices in social media. However Generation Y:s reaction is still negative and they do consider traditional web banners to be more credible than status updates on Facebook.

In this two-years masters thesis the information practices of former interns are examined in relation to a possible lack of certain kinds of information in the prison environment. The essay is positioned in the research field of information practices which means its looking at all kinds of information, formal and informal. Since the essay is in the field of information practices it means the focus lies in how information is taught whithin contexts and groups. Information is not looked at solely as an individual process but is seen as a collective experience.The method of the essay is that of the qualitative research interview. Besides taking an interest in information practices i investigate whether access of information in prisons could be improved and whether the library organisations could be a part of those improvements.The result of my research shows that information in the prison coming from the correctional institution is not perceived as well functioning.

The purpose of the study is to explore how social workers work with youths that seek financial assistance and what importance gender plays in this process. The participants were six female social workers that work with financial assistance. They were interviewed and had to reflect over a case, where the client where either male or female. The results was analyzed and compared in relation to social constructive theory and gender theory. The study shows that social workers work in two parallel processes, when they decide about financial assistance and other help benefits, the formal and the intuitive.

It appears from today's debate about the quality of social work and addiction treatment that largely focuses on the impact of recent various interventions in the hope of being able to alter social work's role in society and also the organizational structure. The debate points to a part of the 1970s social welfare debate. Today's aspirations to establish an evidence-based practice can hardly be expected to solve the social services basic dilemmas is that it always have to do something, despite the many times you cannot get clear instructions on which funds should be used by law or science. Even if you follow the rules and practices based on scientific studies should the importance of various key initiatives to remedy deficiencies in social service work with addicts in large part depend on how, in these initiatives define the term "evidence-based practice" and what steps will be indicated for to develop practice. My starting point was to explore how evidence-based social work in connection with medication-assisted treatment for opiate addiction look, which evidence-based interventions Social Services currently uses in connection with medication-assisted treatment for opiate addiction, as well as how to work with it in the ordinary course of business. The study showed that social services have become better at using these methods in recent years and that today there are more tools available than before.

The aim of this thesis is to examine Social science teachers infor-mation seeking in their professional role.The focus in this study has been on what sources the teachers use for information seeking, examine and analyze their information practices and how they state their reasons for using different in-formation sources, and finally how these teachers experience con-ditions related to information seeking and how these conditions in-fluence their information seeking.This study is based on four semi structured qualitative interviews. The empirical material from the interviews has been compared to earlier relevant research and analyzed with a theoretical frame-work, which includes conceptions from a sociocultural perspec-tive, a matrix over different kinds of information sources devel-oped by Höglund och Persson and McKenzie?s model of infor-mation practices.The results of this study are:- These teachers use both formal and informal sources and external and internal sources. Digital sources are important and these have consequently been added to Höglund och Persson?s original matrix from 1985.- Information practices tend to overlap each other, for example ac-tive seeking (more specific and prepared information seeking) and active scanning (less specific), which are the two most common information practices among the teachers.

The aim of this study is to illuminate social worker?s perception of social class within the Swedish social service system. This study therefor examine if social class contributes to the production and reproduction of the client and what impact social class has on the interaction between client and social workers. The study was conducted with qualitative semi-structured interviews with social workers from three different departments of social service. The theoretical approach is Yeheskel Hasenfeld?s theory about moral practices in welfare organisations, Michael Lipsky and Roine Johansson?s theories about client construction and Pierre Bourdieu?s class theory.

The purpose of this study is to examine web-based recruitment to short term summer jobs at the SocialServices Department in Luleå municipality in Sweden. Recruitment goals, selection options on therecruitment homepage Offentliga Jobb and recruitment practices were analysed in order to reach a deeperunderstanding of the interactions between these three levels in the selection process. Pre-selection throughOffentliga Jobb was a special concern of the study. Different consciousness levels in the selection process areemphasised according to Anthony Giddens' structuration theory. Ten recruiters from different parts of thedepartment were interviewed.