People are given better opportunities to participate in polity today. Democratic equality entails that all individuals are equal and therefore they should be included in the process of making the decisions. How can participation be defined and does it mean that having the possibility to participate means that people can influence the process of making the decisions in polity process?This paper focuses on participation and influence in polity and examine the relationship between having the possibility to participate and having the possibility to actually influence polity process on more local level. Therefore I have been examining the citizens? participation and influence in Helsingborg which is my case study.

The aim of this master thesis is to find out if young people and librarians think that reference groups can support public libraries to meet the needs of young people, and if the reference groups, which the librarians describe, differentiates from the young peoples requirements. I have made a qualitative study with a questionnaire to six librarians who have experience from reference groups and ten interviews with teenagers. The result showed that young people have many interests and needs which can be met from the library. The teenagers were positive to the library and many of them showed interest in having more influence on the library. Many would like to join a reference group, but on the condition that they would be offered real influence.

To which extent elderly people at nursing homes have an influence on their daily living is currently debated. Studies have shown that they have limited influence due to restricting routines associated with nursing homes. Therefore the aim of this study was to examine how elderly people experience the ability to influence their daily living at nursing homes and how limited influence is revealed in the daily care. Five elderly people, from four different nursing homes, underwent a structured interview. The outcome of the interviews was analyzed in relation to established theories related to geriatric care.

This Master?s thesis concerns the question why a public library establishes a special room for young people and how the young people can influence the activities. I have made interviews with two librarians and four teenagers from a reference group. I have also made an observation of the room. The most important theories are Pierre Bourdieu?stheory of symbolic capital and Mats Lieberg?s theory of free zones.

This bachelors thesis examines how av new musicfestival in Umea is communicated on thefestivals website and how the communication is beeing percepted by people who have boughttickets to the festival and people who have chosen not to. The material is based on qualitativeinterviews with theese people and a discourse analysis of the website. The methods beeingused in this thesis are discourse analysis and qualitative interviews. The interviews focuses ontwo groups, people who have bought tickets to the festival and the ones who has not. Theresults of the analysis shows that the website uxufestival.se communicates the vision of aunique festival who brings people together.

In the end of the last century the interest for youth politics increased in Sweden. The causes for the increased interest were the more obvious youth politics questions and problems, for example the increased youth unemployment. In 1998 the government wrote down national goals and instructions for the youth politic work in a government bill (1998/99:115). This government bill describes how the youth politic work should be carried at a local level in the municipality.The purpose with this study is to investigate young people, in Värnamo kommun, view of their own situation. The study´s focus lies om three main concept; democracy, justice and faith in the future.

In this thesis we have examined if some young people's identity is influenced by television programs. We chose to illustrate this from a gender perspective and have made use of social construction theory. We did group interviews with 13 youngsters, in three groups, to find out how much insight they had in what they watch, if they believe that they are affected and how they believe that gender roles in television programs often look. Our questions are: Does young people's identity take influence of the TV program? How? Creates a social construction of gender in the television programs that young people are watching? Is there awareness among young people on what they watch and how is this in this case out? Important to emphasize is that our results are not necessarily representative of youngsters in general when we only had the opportunity to interview a few.

The usage of internet is growing significantly every year in today?s society and whether you like or not, the internet has an influence in your life. It is therefore important to find out how people are affected by its use. We have through our study interviewed a number of people that uses internet on a day to day basis, who have agreed to live without internet access for a period of time. We started out by interviewing these people about their internet usage and what it means to them, then proceeded with their non-internet access period.

Our language bear traces of who we are and of the culture we live in. As human beings we create language in interaction with other people and with our society. Media and commercials are other factories that strongly influence our everyday life as well as our language. With this study we would like to illuminate how our surroundings influence our language. We focus on the language of young people and their use of symbols, phrases and expressions when they reflect on relations.

The purpose of this essay was to examine teenager's views on violence among young people.Our main questions were: What kind of views on violence among young people do teenager's have? What do teenager's think about what causes violence among young people? In what way does scientific knowledge confirm young people's views about what causes violence among young people?To answer these questions we designed a questionnaire which we distributed in three 8th grade classes. We also interviewed five teenagers about violence among young people, to get a deeper knowledge about their views.The results of this study show that the teenagers think that violence among young people has increased and that the violence mostly appears between different groups of young people. The teenagers also think violence among young people as a phenomena due to different kind of reasons..

This bachelors thesis examines how av new musicfestival in Umea is communicated on thefestivals website and how the communication is beeing percepted by people who have boughttickets to the festival and people who have chosen not to. The material is based on qualitativeinterviews with theese people and a discourse analysis of the website. The methods beeingused in this thesis are discourse analysis and qualitative interviews. The interviews focuses ontwo groups, people who have bought tickets to the festival and the ones who has not. Theresults of the analysis shows that the website uxufestival.se communicates the vision of aunique festival who brings people together.

AbstractTitle: Manipulation or relation ? the language as an instrument for influence (relation eller manipulation ? om språket som medel för påverkan)Number of pages: 42Author: Matilde JohanssonTutor: Peder Hård af SegerstadCourse: Media and Communication Studies CPeriod: Autumn term 2007University: Division of Media and communication, Department of information science, Uppsala universityPurpose/Aim: The aim of this essay is to gain a deeper understanding of how communication consultants work with communication. The purpose is to sort out whether or not the consultants have the same view in their strategic work with influence as they have when they build relations to customers. In the end the essay will answer if the perspective is the same between their strategic work, their relations and the research definition of how to obtain a genuine dialogue and a good relationship.Material/Method: This is a qualitative research. I have interviewed five communication consultants from three different corporations.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine how the elderly people experience the food on a sheltered accommodation. We will examine nutrition in the food and if the elderly people have an influence on food they gets everyday. The aim of this study was to examine older persons? everyday experiences of food within the context of homes for the elderly. More specifically, nutrition and the personal experiences of influence concerning choice of food were examined.

Online dating and ?People nearby applications? (PNA) has become more popular in today?s society. With PNA you can easily find people who are nearby you that you can socialize with and maybe even meet. In this paper we study the mobile application Badoo and explore how it is used for dating in clubs in Stockholm through observations that we participated in. We also had a group interview with five Badoo users about their usage of the application.

The purpose of this study was to examine the media?s portrayal of young people that gamble with money. Young in this study refers to people in the age 13 to 30. The following questions were examined: How does the press, in this case three newspapers, portray young people who gamble with money? What discourses in the selected newspapers, regarding young people who gamble with money, are the most prominent?The method used in this study was Faircloughs three dimensional model for critical discourse analysis which was used together with a social constructionist point of view.