The 2008 U.S. Presidential Elections were in many ways special, where the USA got its first president of Afro-American origin, Barack Obama. The elections will also be historical since the great use of social medias - as the community Facebook, the video sharing site YouTube and web based diaries, blogs - broke through during the campaigns. This study's purpose was to examine how a few members of the Swedish parliament described the result of the Presidential Elections in their blogs. The main question - how the election results were described in the blogs - was divided into three themes, created on the basis of the blog's content.

A B S T R A C TTitle: Democracy- Choice of the people or the voice of media? (Demokrati- Folkets styre eller Mediernas Makt?)Number of pages: 36Author: Carolina VallinTutor: Else NygrenCourse: Media and Communication Studies CPeriod: Autumn term 2006University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Information Science, Uppsala UniversityPurpose/Aim: The purpose with this essay is to discuss which influence media has on the democracy.Material/Method: Qualitative explorative research method is used to see how much space the newspaper Dagens Nyheter gave to the parties represented in the parliament, and compare the results with the numbers the parties received in the general election 2006.Main results: This research showed similar results in the survey made of DN and the numbers the parties received in the general election 2006. Media can?t decide how people should vote in a election, but they can influence what citizens think and talk about by having the power to choose which information that shows on the agenda.Key Words: Dagens Nyheter, Agenda setting, Media, Power and Democracy..

This study reflects on the swedish model and the models future. The swedish modelmeans that legisilation acts with the collective agreements . The wage issue is notregulated by law instead it is managed by the social partners in the form of collectiveagreements. In 2008, a report was presented by the Commission on a joint regulation ofthe minimum wage for all EU countries. The issue has become increasinglycontroversial and was especially disccused for the election of candidates to theEuropean Parlament last spring.

This essay examines the indirect effects of the local strength of the Swedish Democrats on refugee acceptance in the Swedish municipalities. With statistical methods this essay has aimed to investigate if such effects exist and by using statistical data from three periods of time - 2002, 2006 and 2010 ? the investigation has been able to measure effects over time. Based on former research and reasonable expectations the hypothesis for the essay claims that the Swedish Democrats has got an indirect effect upon the refugee acceptance. With the statistical analyses made, the essay is able to conclude that the strength of the Swedish Democrats in municipality elections as well as the change of this strength between the elections does have a negative effect upon refugee acceptance in the Swedish municipalities.

?The new labour party? A study of the labor-market policy ideas of the Moderata samlingspartiet and their ideological change?Thesis in Political Science (C-level) at Karlstad University byJenny Ljung, Fall 2006Tutor: Susan MartonThe labour-market policy of the Swedish Moderaterna may have undergone changes in the liberal ideology. During the election the year 1991 Moderaterna focused upon questions that concerned the economic growth and the free market. In the election at year 2006 Moderaterna appointed themselves as ?the new labour party? and were called social liberals by several critiques.

My ambition with his exam is to study how young girls are being depicted in swedish novels of 2010. I have analyzed how the identity and the search for identity are produced in these books. To be able to make my analysis of these books I have used Maria Nikolajeva?s book Barnbokens byggklossar. From wich I have worked out a few questions that I have used my analysis in the portrayal of these girls.

The Swedish election year of 2010 has just begun and the political actors are mobilizing their communication efforts to win the votes of the public. The political campaigns of 2010 have the potential to be the first where a new channel for political communication has the potential to make a difference ? the social media. This paper aims to describe in what ways a Member of Parliament, Nina Larsson (FP), together with the PR-agency Hello Clarice are using social media to conduct political campaigning on the web. It also aims to study if the professional consultants of Hello Clarice have any influence over Nina Larsson?s political communication.The theoretical framework which is the base for this study are theories of an extended public sphere in the age of mediation.

This thesis discusses the 2007 elections in Kenya, and its aftermath. The aim is to examine whether or not ethnicity played a major role in the outbreak of violence that followed the referendum. As well as different theories and discussions on ethnicity, I will also try to explain the course of events by using theories of increased civil violence during a democratic transition, and the fact that weak political institutions can cause violence. My conclusion is that ethnicity has played a part in the violence, but is too simple to blame the events following the election on just that. A number of different factors all contributed to the outbreak, but all to a different extent.

This thesis aims at studying the development of the party cohesion in the Swedish national parliament, riksdagen, after the introduction of preference voting in the election of 1998. The party cohesion has been measured during parliamentary sessions before and after the reform. The result of the cohesion during each of the sessions has then been compared towards each other. The cohesion was measured between the members of parliament viewed as a whole, and within the party groups during the different sessions. The research method being used has been a quantified statistical voting analysis, making the comparisons of party cohesion during the different parliamentary sessions as easy as possible.

A qualitative document analysis is used to answer the aim of this thesis that is to find out if the relation between the European Union and Belarus has changed from confrontational to reparational in between the two parliamentary elections that was held in the country in the years of 2004 and 2008. The study focuses on debates from the European parliament in association to the elections in Belarus to see if the rhetoric used in the debates have changed. It is found that the rhetoric used in the European parliament after the 2004 election in Belarus are extremely confrontational and the members of the debate expresses their thoughts of Belarus in a rather harsh way. It has also been found that the rhetoric used in the European parliament after the 2008 election in Belarus are more diplomatic and have the tendencies of a warmer relation to Belarus although there are still some confrontational views among the members..

In 2010 the Church of Sweden initiated a project to elaborate a new handbook for church services and church documents. This handbook draft was ready to be tested in 2012. The first Sunday of Advent 2012 the church launched an extensive trial for the draft for the new handbook; this handbook draft will now be tested in a selected variety of Swedish parishes until Judgment Sunday 2013. Upon which the Church of Sweden will evaluate and respond to the comments and reactions from the Swedish congregations in terms of the handbooks proposal. My main goal with this paper is that I?m hoping to be able to examine where the need for a new handbook for church services originates.

This thesis will explore how swedish Talang 2010 used their strategic communication in Kalmar and Stockholm and how the effect of this work was shown in the two cities. With a focus on how the sender was working with the external communication in the two cities, the heart of the research was studying Talang 2010?s communication strategy in these two contexts. The research was made with surveys during two audition days in Kalmar and two days in Stockholm. The competitors, the audience and the general public were answering different surveys but with the same base to study the effect.

Metaphors and their use as a rethorical vehicle are examined. Two texts, one in Chinese and one in Swedish, are compared and analyzed to determine the extent to which the associations they create successfully capture the author's intent. Seecondarily, a shift from the assumptions that rhetorical analyses often assume (read: antiquity and Aristotles) to a more abstract internal human platform is suggested. Neurological and cognitive research is cited in support of this shift.The essay examines the question: How can metaphoric contribute to conveying the communicator's intention? By comparing metaphorics used by an historical Chinese rhetor with those used by a contemporary Swedish rhetor.

The purpose of this thesis was to gain an understanding of how Swedish political parties gain knowledge of their voters. The assumptions taken in the thesis were that political parties are using same methods as businesses do to find interesting segments. To attain insight into the purpose of the thesis, two research questions were formulated: how are Swedish political parties obtaining insights in who their potential voters are? With the second question, an attempt is made to answer how the very same parties are using their knowledge about their voter segments. To find answers to those questions, personal interviews were performed with seven political parties.

For the last ten years Internet has become more popular and is now used by most Swedes every day.  Internet has made it possible for many people to access a great deal of information about news all day long. Internet has also made it possible for people to create their own news and comment on happenings as they are taking place. One way to do this is to start your own blog, which is a kind of diary where you can publish your own thoughts about politics and news.In Sweden the media is often referred to as the third governmental power since the media is examining the government and people in power positions and bringing the people as consumers of news closer to the government. There is a theory called agenda setting that says that the media is an actor that shapes the political issues discussed by the people and politicians.In this essay I have used the agenda setting theory and linked it together with the Medias references to blogs in their news. This I have done to see if the media might be influenced by blogs.