The purpose with this work is to describe the language that is built around the chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) in Sweden. Our questions are: What does the professional field look like; who writes, about what and for which kind of readers? How do they describe the expressions and the upcoming of CFS? For which reasons can CFS be considered as a medical diagnosis/illness? How can CFS be understood from a social perspective? Our theoretical starting point is a social constructive theory and also Karin Johannisson's theory about medicalization and Foucault?s theory about power. We have from a literature-exposition of Swedish articles from 1989 to 2006, done a social constructive discourse analysis with help from Laclau & Mouffe's discourse theory, and Fairclough's model of social practices. In our textual analysis we found three dominating discourses: A medical discourse, a social/cultural discourse and a general/popular discourse.

Some researchers claim that we are witnessing the advancement of becoming a network society, and in spite of the different problems associated with the network form of organization, many cities still choose to engage in different types of networks. On account of that the aim of the study is to examine which expectations Swedish member cities of the network Eurotowns might have, and if their actions in the initial period of engagement in Eurotowns mainly could be explained by ?Logic of Consequentiality? or ?Logic of Appropriateness?.A qualitative research method was used and a major part of the empirical material consists of the information given by the interviewees.Regarding the expectations Swedish member cities have on Eurotowns, the result showed that five main areas could be identified mutual resource exchange, activities, breadth, security and meeting place. The results also showed that the actions of Swedish member cities may vary between ?Logic of Consequentiality?, ?Logic of Appropriateness? or a combination of the both logics.Furthermore the study also provides empirical evidence supporting the previously theoretical criticism expressed regarding the central assumption that the strategic actions of an actor can be regarded as a direct consequence of the mutual resource dependency..

The purpose of this thesis is to study how today?s consumer society can be understood from ananalysis of the phenomenon Every Day Carry (EDC). The aim is thus to problematize the daily useof the artifacts that surrounds us and investigate how these can be understood as networks of humanand non-human actors, aswell as identity- and meaning-making practices in today?s consumersociety.The theoretical and methodical framework is built upon an eclectic variety of consumptiontheories,Michel Callon?s, John Law?s and Bruno Latour?s work on Actor-Network-Theory,Discourse analysis inspired by Michel Foucault, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe and anethnographic methodology specifically adapted for online research. The empirical material consistsof photographs and commentaries from two EDC blogs aswell as commentaries regarding EDCfrom a commentary field on Youtube.com.

This thesis explore women?s needs when reentering society after having served a sentence at the female prison Färingsö, outside Stockholm and whether those needs are being met in the reentry strategies that are being provided. Parallel to this the thesis also examines if there, based on nonconformity and gender theories, is a socially constructed representation of women maintained in the rehabilitation work.The method of this thesis applied semi-structured interviews and used snowball sampling to expand the network of informants to obtain the data necessary. Totally five interviews were carried out. Previous research has shown that women in prison have much more complex problems than men and that there is a need for reentry strategies that take gender in account.The results showed that in terms of being able to reenter back in society, women needed help to structure a previously chaotic life.

Purpose: The aim of this thesis has been to study and obtain greater understanding of the consequences of active social media use. Specifically, in terms of social identity, social life and the sense of belonging. Secondly, the thesis studies the consequences of disconnecting and for a limited amount of time opt out of the social media context.Method/material:  The study is based on an explorative, cultural ethnographically-inspired method, in which four respondents were studied: two men and two women, all frequent users of social media. This was done in three steps: initial interviews, followed by social media diaries and finally a focus group. By allowing these methods to complement each other, the goal was to create an overall picture of the importance of social media in their everyday lives.The study's focus lies on the week in which the respondents kept social media diaries.

The purpose of this bachelor thesis is to examine the views of the elderly and the caregivers that appear in brochures for the elderly and the discourses that can be found within. The data that the study is based on was collected and analysed using content analysis and Faircloughs (1992) critical discourse analysis. The theoretical frameworks that have been used are social constructionism, critical discourse analysis, assortment and protest, and New Public Management. The results showed two images of older people (I) the elderly as active and autonomous and (II) the elderly as passive and in need of help. The results also showed two pictures of the caregiver (III) the caregiver and NPM, and (IV), the non-profit care provider as a complement.

This study investigates the use of the social network Facebook among 67 Swedish libraries; 27 academic libraries and 40 public libraries. Data is collected through an analysis of the libraries? Facebook pages and through an email survey. To analyze the data, a series of statistical analyses were performed.The results indicate that the public libraries more actively posted Facebook updates than the academic libraries and that the libraries that had a policy for use of Facebook/social media more actively posted updates than those libraries that did not have such policy. The libraries use Facebook mainly to post links and photos and to announce events, provide book recommendations, and to emphasize special occasions.

Mental illness in school ? A counselors perspective - The purpose of the study is to examine school counselors work with students (13- 15 years of age) who are struggling with mental illness. Focus on mental illness is discussed in a school context. From the school counselors perspective questions like, what kind of working methods are they using and, how they collaborate are examined. The research design is based on a qualitative approach, with ten Semistructured interviews with ten different informants who work as a counsellor at 10 different schools around Skåne.

Unemployment and long term unemployment is a reality for a large number of people in Sweden. This may be the result of structural changes in the labor market, but involves a wide range of issues. Along with other actors, the social services are obliged to support the long term unemployed to find a job. The aim of this study was to describe and analyze the work done by social workers towards the long term unemployed, 25-49 years old, in two municipalities. We performed altogether six qualitative interviews.

The aim of this qualitative deep interview study was to gain deeper understanding of single immigrant mothers´life situation. Grounded Theory was the method of analysis. Repeated interviews with five immigrant women from different parts of the world showed that women were in need of wider and deeper social networks in order to reconstruct their identities. Social support and social networks benefit, not only reconstruction of identity, but also personal well-being. Yet it is difficult for them to create social networks in the new country, because of single motherhood.

The aim with this study has been to examine and to analyze the discourse of Rosengård in Swedish media. With the concept of discourse is meant here specific ways to speak about and to understand the world, or a part of it. In order to reach increased understanding regarding media presentations and constructions of Rosengård, I have done a study about how Rosengård has been presented in the Swedish daily and evening press during the violent acts that took place in Rosengård in the spring and summer of 2008, when youths regarding to media put cars and containers on fire, and also threw stones at fire engines and other emergency service vehicles when these had to turn out to put out the fires. The collected data, containing newspaper articles, has been analyzed on the basis of the critical discourse analysis, CDA, which is a mould of a textanalytical method. This study applies a social constructivist perspective.

Concern about personal privacy continues to grow among online users along with the fact that new technologies help online companies to share user's private information. Still the usage of online entities such as social networks and e-commerce sites continue to increase. This raises the question of why online users act in such a contradictory and irrational way.Our study examines what impact one recently developed application called social login, which is provided by several social networks and used by millions of online companies, has on consumer's evaluation of online brands when they are primed for various types of information concerning privacy issues. Our assumptions are built up on the theory of cognitive, dissonance and suggest that there will be no differences in evaluation of the brands due to the human need to rationalize their existing behavior and attitudes when they receive new or contradicting information. The potential effects are measured by a manipulation presented in a survey distributed in an online environment to a sample of users (n=,154).

The aim of this study was to understand the contact between foster homes and social workers, by doing a comparison of the social workers and the foster homes experiences of the cooperation that is between them. We started from three main questions to get an answer to our aim, how the foster homes and the social workers experience the organization of the foster care in the Social Service as an impact of the cooperation, what does the foster homes and the social workers experience as a important fact of a successful placement and finally, how does the foster homes and the social workers experience the supporting and controlling contact that is between them. To get our results we based our study on interviews whit four foster homes and whit four social workers. The analysis was based on one theoretical perspective, Skaus (2007) analytical approach for power and help. As a conclusion we have found out, that the organization of the Social Service has significance for the contact between social workers and foster homes.

Often, the green is handled as an opposite to the built, but if it could be seen as a part of the built and the society, the planning will be easier to handle. The thesis work wants to create a method that treats villages in an analytic way in a context; with green, blur, grey and all the other colors that together are the completeness.This master's thesis is made to be used as foundation in detail plannng in the municipality of Örkelljunga. Target audience is on one hand those who work with planning and green matters in Örkelljunga municipality, but also other planners who work with landscape.Literature in the field of green city planning has been studied and 30 methods for analysis have been valued. The method for analysis that has been used in this work is a merging of ten different methods and has included literature studies, sketches, interviews and work on spot. The ten methods are consciously chosen to together make one comprehensive and true image of the village, as far as it is possible.

The aim of this master?s thesis is to explore concert institutions? informative texts prior to upcoming concerts ? texts in promotional materials and descriptive texts in programme papers. The thesis is carried out from a critical discourse analytical perspective. The discourse analysis is focusing on finding the texts? messages and it asks the question: To whom are these texts addressed? Theoretical support is mainly taken from Foucault?s theory about the relation between power and knowledge.