The aim of this study was to examine former criminals? experiences of help and support of importance to leave a criminal life style. The study consists of six interviews with former criminals and earlier studies on the subject. These studies show that relapse in crime are most common among those who are socially excluded from society. They also show that important factors to end a life in criminality are for example a supportive social network.

Title: Constructing identity on Facebook.com ? A qualitative ethnographyNumber of pages: 40 (34)Author: Clara LindholmTutor: Amelie HössjerCourse: Media and communications studies CPeriod: HT (Autumn) 2009University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of InformationScience, Uppsala University.Purpose/Aim: The purpose is to study how the social community Facebook.com canbe used in order to construct identity. The study follows three Facebook users in anobservation where they are able to document their thoughts and reflections in anprivate media diary. This study investigates their use of the medium and focuses onthe functions with which they are able to alter their profiles. The result consists of acombination of these reflections, interviews and a selection of literature relevant tothe subject of new media, the use of social internet communities and social sciencetheories.

Purpose:mental illness and the effect it has on individuals social network and relationships, and vice versa.The purpose of this study is to shed light on the rarely mentioned subject of severe Method:analysis was performed on a total of 15 interviews, which consists of three individuals with severe mental illness. The focus of the study was the subjects? description of the social network, excluding clinicians and other professionals.This study is inspired and conducted in a Grounded Theory manner. A secondaryFindings:may it be with specific individuals or groups. They describe the importance of surrounding themselves with people who do not judge them and it is through them they get validated.Places have been emphasised as having special meaning for the social interaction and overall wellbeing for the subjects.There is active actions for social interactions/relationships taken by the subjects,Conclusion:their social network.

This study focuses on the social medium Facebook. Its intention is to examine the contents of the Facebook statuses the Swedish parliament parties chose to publish in the final two weeks before the parliamentary elections in 2010. The key concepts used in the analysis are interactivity and multimodality. Aspects to be explored are interactivity of their status updates and how the parties used various multimodal objects. A comparison of the parties' usage also follows.

The purpose of this thesis is to explore the co-creation process and how value is created based on a service orientation using a network perspective. The thesis is studied from a social-constructionist philosophy, using a qualitative approach of data collection and the theoretical framework includes network theories, theories of service-orientation and co-creation. We have conducted semi-structured interviews with a small firm and its network, which consists of a customer, a supplier and a partner. We found that Håkansson?s ARA framework combined with Ballantyne and Varey?s triangulation of value-creating activities help to acquire an understanding of the actors? bonds, the resources? ties and the activity links that exist in a network.

This essay aims to find out what impact social media have on the daily lives of Swedish people in regard to their usage and sociability. In order to find that out we have performed four group interviews with a total of 16 people from two different age categories that were later compared. To analyze the empirical data we?ve used the theories on the Network Societies by Jan Van Dijk as a help of understanding. The results show that social media have become an integrated part in the lives of our informants and that a consdierable amount of time is spent on them everyday. In the younger group Facebook was considered the most useful medium as it makes the planning of events easier and can be used as a way of keeping oneself updated on news as well as on the lives of others.

This essay addresses the subject social interaction in the social network named Facebook. The studied interaction took place between the Swedish clothing company H&M and the active visitors on the company page in the social network. The subject of social interaction in social media is an interesting field to study due to its vast range, the largely amount of people involved and it is of interest to see how the company and customers interact. The purpose of the essay was to study the interaction between the company and visitors. The statement of the problem is divided into four questions which is processing a deeper analysis of how the company page is used.

 The aim of this study was to examine how young people, who have been treated for their misuse and/or to learn to handle a parent's misuse, portrayed the network's implication in their wishes about improving their lives, to make new choices. The network included members of nuclear family, relatives, important persons at school/work and friends. The ?professional network? (therapists and social workers) also became a part in the young people's life during a period. The main issues of this study concerned differences in their experiences of the young persons´ network relationships in before, during and after completed treatment.

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.

An individual's social capital consists largely of the social networks that may consist offamily, friends and acquaintances. The social network is of great significance on olderpeople's physical and mental health. Aim: The overall purpose is to examine the knowledgeof social network and the health of the elderly. Method: Litterature review, using threedifferent databases, CINAHL, PubMed and Scoupus for searching of articles, with differentcombinations of keywords. Results: Different types of social networks have both positive andnegative effects on health.

This paper examines the interpersonal and intercorporate networks of interlocking boardmembers among Sweden's 50 largest publicly traded companies in 1985 and 2005. We find that both the interpersonal and intercorporate networks of 1985 are considerably more coherent and densely connected than those of 2005. The observed changes in social network structure are compared to changes in company ownership in Swedish publicly traded companies during the same period, and it is found that the observed changes in network density and cohesion can be related to a notable increase in the number of foreign board members. These results imply that the social organization of the Swedish system of corporate governance has changed notably during the period. Social network theory suggests that these changes can explain the greater demand for external regulation, decreased homogeneity of board members and increase in board member compensation observed under the period.

This thesis discusses various approaches that venture capitalists have when evaluating investment prospects. The thesis is a case study of the business angel network Firm Factory Network. The empirical material is based on an extensive interview with Firm Factory CEO Daniel Kaplan. Our conclusion is that Firm Factory Network uses both informal and formal methods when they evaluate interesting prospects..

The interest in companies that are based outside the cities has grown, and many of these companies have focused their activities around service. The countryside companies meet some difficulties in marketing and communication with other entrepreneurs. A network with service based companies in the countryside could help the individual companies to promote themselves and also give inspiration and new ideas to develop their business. The aim of this study is to investigate how a countryside network can be organized but also what conditions is needed to make the network function. The theory is based on a literature study of the three major topics "countryside", "networking" and "marketing".

Research about social support and social networks has mostly concerned the impact on a person?s wellbeing and health. However an aspect largely neglected is how social support within the social networks can affect the process of giving up a drug abuse. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of what role the social support within different relationships can have on the process of giving up drug abuse. Furthermore the aim is to examine how a self-help group can provide social support in the transitional period after leaving a drug abuse.

In recent years, the internet has exploded of images. Not at least in the popular photo-sharing network Instagram as one of the fastest growing social network for the moment. Millions of people around the world share pictures and expose themself for friends and family. We were therefore interested in which experiences and attitudes users have towards their identities in relation to their self-image and self-presentation on Instagram. Furthermore, whether they in general have a primary interest in using Instagram as a tool to experiment with images to present their identity on Instagram, in which way they approach their Instagram follower?s expectations on how they present themselves on Instagram and if they are aware of any strategies in their self-presentation on Instagram.The result of this study is the fact that our respondents thinks that they do not intend to have a primary interest in experimenting with images on Instagram to present their identitiy, it is rather something that comes naturally in how they present themselves on Instagram.