A large part of the daily life today means being active online and to take part in the interactions that occur there. The accessibility which social media brings, means that you can reach and be reached in several ways and there are many different ways in which information can be disseminated. Social media supports the learning process. The aim of this study is to examine how upper secondary schools students' use of social media and how it can be used as a tool for informal learning. Our study is based on the socio-cultural perspective where interaction and social cohesion is a big part.

The problem with narcotics is one of Sweden?s biggest social problems. Statistics shows thatthe number of narcotic related deaths and the numbers of heavy drug users are increasing. Thepresent narcotic policy has been questioned due to this increase. As a social worker you meetdrug users on a daily basis.

This thesis examines the power of developing countries within the World Trade Organization (WTO). The research question is if there is a change in the power relations between developing countries and developed countries from the establishment of the WTO in 1995 and until mid 2006, and if so, why this change is taking place? The thesis has its theoretical starting-point within regime theory and views it from a critical theoretical perspective. A multidimensional why of dealing with the concept of power is being used to answer if there is a change in the power relations? The conclusion is that there is a small change in the power relations and that the developing countries are gaining more, but limited power.

My thesis is based on a qualitative study. The purpose of the study is to investigate whether the educationalist at an especially chosen school in Stockholm promotes the students multicultural background in the education or not.This is due to the fact that the Swedish school to a considerable degree reflects the multicultural Swedish society. The socio-cultural starting point is when people come together and meet. The language is the tool of the socio-culture and it is the dialogue, discussion and sympathetic understanding that makes people meet.The cultural concept is diffuse and very wide. Everyone has their own definition of it.

Taiwan's recent democratization seem to have rallied a wider support of the notion of a national identity amongst its citizens which in the year 2000 led to the election of the pro-independence party DPP and President Chen Shui-bian. Meanwhile, China insists on the "one country, two systems" formula, regarding Taiwan as merely a Chinese province, and continues to fight any Taiwanese initiative towards sovereignty. Through a narrative perspective, this essay analyzes the self-conscious national identity-building quest embarked upon by DPP and President Chen Shui-bian. The analysis consists of three parts. Firstly, a text-analysis of President Chen Shui-bian's speeches is conducted to examine in what way he enforces and legitimizes the identity-building-process through narratives.

The study's purpose was to get a picture of what a number of class teachers know about and their views on the concept of working memory and working memory training and whether this affects their working and teaching in the classroom. The study is based on qualitative interviews and classroom observations and the theoretical perspectives that the study is based on two: didactic perspective and the socio-cultural perspective. The results of my study show that the class teachers' views and use of the concept of working memory is limited, even if they unknowingly working on parts of it in their teaching. All classroom teachers in my study term difficulties that can arise for students as concentration difficulties, which according to previous research can count towards deficiencies in working memory. All of the respondents in this study believe that it is mostly special education teacher who trains working memory, and that they themselves do not have that knowledge. They also believe that the classroom environment is important for all learning. Common to all respondents consider that the topic is important and would like to have more knowledge of how they can help and support pupils with poor working memory. As a special education teacher and teacher you often meet students who have trouble concentrating, and because of this may be difficult to absorb knowledge as when reading.

AbstractThis thesis analyzes the Russian Foreign Policy Doctrine from a broad theoretical perspective, with the aim of describing and explaining the doctrine using a number of theoretical approaches. Russia's foreign policy has undergone substantial changes since Vladimir Putin became president in the year 2000, involving a radical shift in foreign policy objectives and thereby moving away from the more confrontational and distrusting policies which characterized the Boris Jeltsin regime. Putins doctrine, based on pragmatism and seeking partnership and collaboration with the West, can be described as a near revolutionary re-orientation of Russia's foreign policy guidelines, meaning a transformation of the country's self image which implies a rejection of great power status and a search for a new role in the international community.Our thesis has examined explanatory variables such as the domestic political situation in Russia, the contemporary international system and President Vladimir Putins system of beliefs in order to describe and explain the doctrine. Our results show that the doctrine is largely a product of Putins personality, values and beliefs, but also to a large extent a consequence of necessities, namely the poor Russian economy and the fact that the country no longer can withstand an all out conflict with the West involving an excessive arms race.Keywords: Vladimir Putin, pragmatism, realism, domestic politics, radical change..

In this thesis I will examine Willy Brandt's new Ostpolitik with the help of Robert Putnam's analytical framework of two-level games perspective and the theory of social constructivism. Firstly, I will briefly set out the development of Germany's history before it was divided into the Federal Republic of Germany and German Democratic Republic in 1949. After that I present West Germany's foreign policy from 1949 to 1969 in order to show how Willy Brandt continued and broke with different foreign policy doctrines. Finally, I want to illustrate his new Ostpolitik and the international and domestic factors, which contributed to its realisation. The main question of this essay is: How significant were the changes of the West German society for the realisation of the new Ostpolitik from 1969 to 1973? One of the most important findings in this essay is that on the one hand that many West Germans had accepted that their country was divided and on the other hand that many groups in the society such as the significant newspaper Die Zeit and intellectuals supported the new Ostpolitik.

The consociational democracy model in Macedonia, which came out from a warcrisis and a peace agreement from 2001, in addition, putting an end to the violent conflict, actually admits the division of the society along the ethnic lines. Paradoxically, there is an attempt to bridge the ethnic gap with this model. As a result, the consociational democracy model holds solutions that can be abused if somebody misuses its power and desires to disintegrate the country. The future development depends therefore on the moderate attitude of the citizens, and first and foremost, on the political elites and their commitment to the values of democracy and human rights instead of their nationalistic goals. Furthermore, thepresent democratic consolidation in Macedonia is established on the execution of the peace agreement and the improved effectiveness of the institutions.

The word crisis is often used in everyday language, but according to political theory it actually refers to a crisis situation within a country where national interests suddenly are at stake demanding that important and complex decisions must be made within certain time constraints. These decisions can in turn lead up to most fatal consequences. USA, being one of the world's superpowers is most certainly involved in crisis situations directly or indirectly, frequently or more seldom. Amounts of people get suddenly involved and even more people can be drawn in by the decisions that are made thereby. Research has shown that the character of a leader affects decision-making.

AbstractThe aim of this thesis is to investigate how the Swedish political parties have been discussing gender politics since 1970 to nowadays, in order to see which problems and solutions that have been suggested by the parties to increase the representation of women and the equality between the sexes. The theoretical framework is constructed by theories of women´s representation, gender politics and women?s interest.To describe how the discussions about gender politics have been between the different parties, the methodological foundation consists of an ideology critical textual analysis of the political programs from the Swedish parties.The analysis confirms that the discussions about gender politics and the political representation of women increase over time. The most important issue of equality is the lack of women´s rights and possibilities in the labor market as a consequence of women´s responsibility of home and childcare. The analysis also shows that parties which discuss women as a category and the underrepresentation of women also point out the importance to increase equality between men and women..

The object of this paper is concerned with the subject youth and politics. The aim of the paper is to study what influence our today modern societies has between two social landscapes, Greece and Sweden and try to give an explanation to why young peoples political engagement is different in the two countries. To fulfil my aim of this paper I have used a few questions, these questions will give me an insight in how young people look at politics, what their interests are and if they feel that they can and ought to act political. The theoretical starting points I?ve used I?ve chosen with reflection to look at the social landscape we live in and its changes over time.

This paper deals with a partly new development in the Swedish law system, somewhere in the boundary between political science and jurisprudence. A new instrument -artbrott- has successively become more popular among lawyers and politicians. The new instrument -here translated to classified crimes- signifies that the perpetrator is sentenced to prison even though the seriousness of the crime committed is not in itself serious enough for such a consequence. The reason for this policy stance is to create a prevention against crime of that specific character among the public. The use of this instrument has grown considerably both concerning types of crimes as well as in application.

This thesis purpose is to investigate the sociopolitical factors and causes that led to why KB chose not to use the criteria and guidelines for their digitization activities are described in DIGSAM. To do this I focused on three research questions;- What factors (internal / external) led to the decision not to use the criteria guidelines for digitization, which is described in the policy document DIGSAM and what arguments and opinions formed the basis for the decision.- What is the Library's digitization activities, the factors, criteria and guidelines governing activity in the current situation? - Will KB's choice not to use DIGSAM as a whole in their digitization activities affect national library's role as a beacon for the Swedish libraries digital work? In what way and why? In order to answer these questions I interviewed three of KB:s librarians who had extensive knowledge of digitization and DIGSAM. I chose to also use a pilotstudy that was conducted at KB in the of spring 2010. The idea was to use this material as a basis to build on.As a theoretical framework, I chose to use a socio-political theory of Ingrid Mason.

AbstractDue to the success of the Populist Party Sverigedemokraterna in the Swedish election of 2006, the daily paper Sydsvenska Dagbladet published a number of columns written by well-known academics, writers and debaters. Their aim was to address the question of why this happened in the election and what it is in the Swedish society today that brought forward these trends. The first and the last word was given to the writer Fredrik Ekelund, and therefore the debate was named Ekelunddebatten.The debaters are fighting to present their view of the world as the only option when categorizing different societal groups and appointing themselves as group representatives. My aim is to unravel these different conceptions of the world and to do this I use the Dicourse Analysis as a method. I discuss the results with Critical Discourse Theory as a theoretical base and also from the view of the current societal discourses: the working class discourse, the multicultural discourse and the discourse of political correctness.I mainly observe four different conceptions of the world with different posing of problems.