The purpose of this study is to investigate and increase the understanding of how the two commercial companies IKEA and SAS and the two aid organizations/nonprofit organizations UNICEF and Save the Children use perceptions of Christmas to produce messages in their Christmas advertising/commercial film. The study also discusses if there may be communicative and pictorial similarities and differences in how these brands constructs messages in commercials, and why it may be that the brands choose to use these messages in commercials based on the recipient possible interpretations. The theories used in this study are promotional culture, framing theory, preferred meaning, semiotics (denotation and connotation), myth and rhetoric (ethos, pathos and logos). The method used to answer the purpose and issues are the qualitative method that uses the theories semiotic and rhetoric to analyze the material. The study's results derived from the qualitative content analyzes of the material (the brands IKEA, SAS, UNICEF and Save the Children Christmas advertising films) show that IKEA message might want to show that they want to help the customer and that they pay attention to the customer needs.

A constantly increasing number of magazines are using the Internet as a business channel. One of these is Allt om Mat (All about Food). Together with expressen.se, Allt om Mat developed a food website, alltommat.se, which was introduced at the beginning of 2008. In this essay we investigate how alltommat.se developed its service concept. Further, we look at how this development has influenced and been influenced by relations among the three actors and the users.

This is an essay about gated communities and their impact on society. The key questions of my essay are: why people choose to live in gated communities; how the city is impacted by gated communities and what the difference concerning the reasons and impact of gated communities in Florida and Sweden is, and what this difference might depend on. I am using postmodern urbanism as a starting point, and I look closer on Edward J. Soja?s theories about the postmodern metropolis.

The purpose of this essay has been to describe and compare the personal qualities that the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter (DN) tried to associate Barack Obama and John McCain with during the American presidential election campaign 2008. The main question to be answered is: What social and physical characters as well as what personal experiences, interest and resources did DN tried to emphasize regarding John McCain and Barack Obama during the American presidential election campaign 2008. The theoretical starting-point has been John B Thompson?s theory of the mediated publicity and John Corner´s theory of political persona and spheres of action. Various DN news texts, in all 38 articles, have been examined by content analysis from 25th of august to the 4th of November.

Karin Boyes Crisis (Kris) was published in 1934 as a contribution to the contemporary ideas of moral issues, challenging the dominating traditionalism within the literature critisism.With different kinds of stylistic procedures is Crises expressing a self which seeks to relieve itself from the repressing experience of Language. The text shows an attempt to create meaning beyond the conventional system of linguistic signs, beyond the tradition of literature.The focus in the essay is the self; the self is the basic structure and the theme of the text. Crisis shows it?s self-assuredness and points out a dialogue with the nietzschean philosophy. Nietzsche claims that the truth is a rhetorical creation, something which the language produces in the will of power.

This study examines regional integration in Africa with a focus on the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, COMESA. COMESA, with roots that go back to the beginning of the 1980?s, is one of the largest and most diverse areas for regional integration in Africa and has currently 19 member countries. The goal of the COMESA co-operation is to become a fully integrated area by the year 2025 that will merge into the African Union (AU). AU will then, in turn, create a fully integrated African continent in a not too far away future.

AbstractThe purpose of this study is to investigate how value creation influences consumers´ choice of market place. We have chosen to focus on how inner city centers can compete with external shopping malls by examining what values consumers find essential in shopping areas. The development within the retail market with more external malls outside cities has resulted in impoverished city centers; therefore, new strategies towards more attractive servicescapes in the inner city are crucial. The study is based on a qualitative approach due to deeper understanding and closeness to the subject, where Kalmar city is chosen as a case. We have completed a focus group study where respondents from each target group where represented.

The aim of this thesis is to study what impact the USA Patriot act has had on American libraries. The authors intent has been to see what changes have occurred in the librarians work-routines and to study their attitudes toward the Patriot act. The authors have also intended to find out what the consequences would be for the libraries. The findings are related to Swedish circumstances. The material used in this thesis consists of six interviews conducted at three libraries in the Bay Area in California.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how the research library of Linnæus University is used by students as a meeting place. Building upon Putnam's theory of bonding and bridging social capital and Audunson's conception of high and low intensive meeting places, it aims to explore the research library's potential for creating social capital and thus strengthening both learning and democracy in a university context. Borrowing part of the survey design from a study conducted as part of the Norwegian PLACE project, this study collects responses from 134 students as to their use of the library as a meeting place. The results show that the Linnæus University library is used for a variety of meetings of both high and low intensity, why it should provide a good setting for the creation of social capital. There seems to be a connection between how often one visits the library, as well as to which department one belongs, and how one uses the library as a meeting place.

In a historical view, house prices have developed at the same rate as inflation. In the end of the 20th century the prices on the housing market started to differ from the inflation rate, and today the deviation is strong and the real price increase has been very strong.The financial crisis in 2008, which was a result of a subprime mortgage crisis on the American real estate market, has made several agents on the housing market in Sweden question today?s prices. Robert Schiller, an American economist who predicted the mortgage crisis in 2008, claimed during the Nobel Prize ceremony 2013, that Sweden shows signs of a financial bubble ? "I think that people here in Sweden have an illusion that increasing prices is a lasting trend, but that is more suggestive of a bubble".

In 1929, the Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory was established in Chicago?the first of its kind in the United States. The purpose was to engage in practical use of scientific methods in the detection of crime. In 1930, the institute published its own periodical called The American Journal of Police Science. Applying the theory of boundary-work, this essay analyses how the novelty institute argued its legitimacy as a scientific establishment through the expansion of Police Science as a collective field of knowledge.

In nature settings people often experience positive emotions. Litterature and theories about the positive effect of nature on humans are largely based upon visual impressions and aesthetic preference. The purpose of the present study is to examine how visually impaired individuals that lack visual impressions experience nature. The background is about what it means to be visually impaired and what it is like to be visually impaired in a nature setting, followed by a presentation of the five human senses and about stimulation of senses in healing gardens. That is followed by theories about the health promoting effect of nature, about why nature and therapeutic gardens make people feel good. After that theories about experiences and relations with settings are presented.

?If we consume the product as a product, we consume its meaning through advertising? ? Jean BaudrillardSyftet med denna studie är att identifiera och analysera bakomliggande myter om lycka i kommersiella reklamfilmer, utifrån ett konstruktionistiskt perspektiv. Analysmodellen, som bygger på semiotik och neoformalism, genererade kunskap om de olika berättarstrukturerna kring lycka i de undersökta reklamfilmerna. Resultaten indikerade framförallt att berättarstrukturerna om lycka grundar sig i myter som är starkt kopplade till den kapitalistiska ideologin. Studien avser därmed att blottlägga och analysera myter om lycka i reklamfilmer ur ett kritiskt konstruktionistiskt perspektiv..

The purpose of this study is to investigate the educational opportunities that exist within hip hop music, i.e. to highlight the possible strengths and opportunities in informal learning. The aim was to answer the following questions:In what way do young people acquire knowledge through music?How can hip hop music affect language learning / vocabulary?How can hip hop motivate and support young people in school?The study was based on qualitative semi-structured interviews with six youths, three hip hop directors and a well-known researcher who has investigated that Hip Hop pedagogy.The results show that there are many benefits of learning that takes place in the context of hip hop music; from my informants? statements one can accordingly see the role of hip hop music plays in the absorption of knowledge. The conclusion is that hip hop music can lead to alternative learning about politics and society, as the music often deals with various social conditions and policy issues.

As social interactions migrate to the ubiquitous Internet we are facing a change in theway we relate to each other, which presents interesting new opportunities foranonymity to create identities. An aspect of this radically evolving technology thatexhibits strong possibilities for altering or producing identities is the rapidly growingonline game genre MMOG (Massive Multiplayer Online Game) which isentertainment that millions of people all over the globe engage in daily. Thisrelatively new platform for socialising has become of cultural and social significance,which is why it calls for examination and research. Thus, the main research questionsasked in this thesis are as following: How does players of MMOGs utilise the nighcomplete anonymity to present or modify their identities online? In which ways areMMOGs used as a platform for socialising and development of social groupdynamics? After observing a large group of players in a popular MMOG, as well asconducting several interviews with key identities within the group, I discovered three fundamental parts of identity creation, and created a model for use and applicationin different social situations and constellations..