In 2011 the Swedish translation of Jonathan Franzen's novel Freedom was published in Sweden. The novel tells the story of a middle class family, their relatives and friends, set within a context of political events. As well as in the US, the novel was soon praised by Swedish critics as a generation novel, that illustrates "the way we live now". Around that time a debate about family ideals rose in Sweden. The debate pointed towards discourses about family norms, related to motherhood and divorce. Because of the reception of Freedom as depicting a 'typical' family in contemporary culture, Freedom is used as material in this thesis, to study the construction of family ideals. In this study the family ideal is defined as white, middle class and heterosexual, and an intersectional approach as well as Critical Discourse Analysis is used. The aim of this thesis is to study the family ideal as it is reproduced in Freedom, and compare the results to Social Sciences of Gender, Class and Critical Whiteness Studies. The thesis also studies both the American and the Swedish reception of Freedom, in relation to its content. The study found that a traditional family ideal is constructed, through different discourses. The study also found that subject positions in different social categories are constructed in opposition to each other according to gender, class and whiteness norms. 

I denna C-uppsats har vi undersökt hur ideella arrangemang av svenska festivaler går till. Vi har valt ut Hultsfredsfestivalen i Hultsfredskommun och Skogsröjet i Finspångskommun för att kunna analysera debatten kring festivaler i det lokala och nationella medianätverken samt även hur samarbetet mellan kommun och festival har utvecklats. Vi utgick från teorier av Andy Bennett där han diskuterar vikten av festivaler kopplat till ungdomskultur och att en festival är så mycket mer än bara en plats att lyssna på musik, som även stöttades upp av andra teorier av bland annat Kirstie Jamieson. Vi genomförde en analys och jämförde de teorier vi utgick ifrån med den historiska utvecklingen av festivalerna, för att sedan kunna se vad festivalerna har bidragit till i respektive ort som de äger rum på. En fråga som vi har utgått ifrån är om festivaler har utvecklats till den grad att de idag kan ses som kulturarv. Materialet i uppsatsen är till stor del intervjubaserad där vi har intervjuat Stefan Arvidsson festivalgeneral på Skogsröjet, Mårten Hafström kulturutvecklingschef för Finspångskommun och Thorbjörn Svan journalist och informationsstrateg på utvecklingskontoret inom Hultsfredskommun. När intervjuerna var klara jämfördes resultatet från intervjuerna med de tidningsartiklar som funnits kring respektive festival. Resultatet blev att en festival har en väldigt stor betydelse för de två kommunerna som Skogsröjet och Hultsfredsfestivalen ägt rum på. Samarbetet mellan bägge dessa festivaler och kommunerna har inte varit optimalt men försök har genomförts att stärka samarbetet. Slutsatsen är att ett samarbete mellan kommunen och en festival kan vara avgörande för en festivals existens. Festivaler bidrar till så mycket mer än bara musik, det ger bland annat en ort möjligheten att visa upp sig och bidrar till näringslivet. I Hultsfredsfestivalens fall så kom majoriteten av kommunens stöd under slutskedet av festivalens existens då de insåg hur pass betydelsefull festivalen var för dem. Idag hyllas festivalen i Hultsfred och man försöker bevara upplevelsen av festivalen. I Skogsröjets fall så återstår arbete att genomföra för att stärka samarbetet till kommunen, men ett intresse finns att göra mer än att bara vara ett ekonomiskt stöd. Vår förhoppning är med denna uppsats att belysa hur pass viktigt samarbetet är mellan kommun och festival. Ett bra samarbete kan vara avgörande i en festivals existens, men även media kan ha en betydande roll då de bidrar med berättelser kring festivaler i medieformer.

Between 1977 and 2011 the Swedish organization Samdok presented a nationwide programme for contemporary museum collecting, including an increasingly flexible intellectual and methodological framework. This article considers Samdok, its evolving programmes and self-presentations. It suggests that Samdok.s selfimage was one of inclusive progressiveness, social engagement and equality. It also suggests that they display four major rhetorical shifts: from an economic rationale to a social and cultural approach; from studies of a welfare state based´on industrial production to fieldwork concerning the adaptation to a postindustrial economy; from modern to post-modern epistemologies; and finally from engineering collecting to networking collecting, connecting contemporary collecting in Sweden to a transnational professional community. It is suggested that the case of Samdok casts light on the ways in which museums negotiate managerial issues, professional values and needs for inspiration and friendship.

In this chapter, we use the competing narratives and performances of four guided walks as the basis for a discussion of heritage in the intersection of gender, sexuality and class in the urban landscape of Norrköping, Sweden. Three of the walks focus on the life of straight, white, working-class women, while one offers a lesbian narrative thus disrupting the other walks. All the walks dealt with are part of recent projects to render female experiences visible so as to connect to current agendas and include them in the heritage for the future. They also testify to the difficulties of incorporating social complexity and intersectionality in heritage productions such as city walks.

Intersections and gaps in linked, shared and networked heritage One of the key questions archives, libraries and museums face today is how to deal with blurring boundaries between different institutions as well as between institutions and people’s everyday life as digital environments have become increasingly important for how people, material culture and heritage practices links. This project studies current intersections and gaps between heritage authorities and political cultural identity work among people in place-based communities as well as among those who are united by disability, sexuality and gender expression, ethnicity or religion.

Todaymuseums strive to include LHBTQI perspectives in exhibitions and audiencedevelopment, as well as in the collections. This articleis an attempt to explore three cases of archiving LHBTQI memories andexperiences. We use a broad definition of “archiving” to also include digitalcollections, exhibitions and social media so as to investigate differentapproaches. The first case we approach is the website Unstraight Museum wherewe bring to the surface the ways in which its digital collection creates acollective memory, makes LHBTQI experiences visible and queer the officialheritage. Our second case is the Museum of World Culture’s exhibition Playground. Here we bring the attentionto the ways in which curatorial themes such as love and family invite straightpeople to identify with unstraight experiences. Our last case is activists’ blogs at the webplatform Tumblr, which we here view as an archive, waiting to be explored bycultural historians. For now it is temporary and ephemeral, in two respects. Firstly,the flowsare constantly updated and thereby changing. Secondly, there is no guaranteethat posts and accounts will be saved for the future.

Boken Mörkrets Geografi utgår från en serie performativa verk av Anna Berglind vilka rör sig i spänningsfältet mellan ljus och mörker - plats, minne och glömska. Det rika bildmaterialet från glömda platser; ett gathörn, ett tunnelsystem under jord eller ett övergivet och förfallet mentalsjukhus skapar tillsammans med texterna ett prisma av reflektioner kring konst, konceptualisering och lärandeprocesser. Reflektioner kring hur man genom performativitet och social interaktion kan öppna upp för nya publika möten utanför de traditionella konstarenorna. 

Är Norrköping Sveriges nya Hollywood? Ja, åtminstone finns det definitivt en början till ett kreativt kluster kring film, och förutsättningarna finns också för att det ska växa sig ännu starkare. Ett kluster är ett antal företag inom samma fält som befinner sig inom samma geografiska område och samarbetar med varandra för allas vinst. När det handlar om företagande inom konst och kultur kallas det för kreativa kluster. I ett kluster blir företagen inte bara varandras konkurrenter, utan tvärtom drar alla fördel av de samarbeten och den specialisering som utvecklas. Vi har gjort en studie av Norrköping som hem för ett kreativt kluster kring film och jämfört med Linköping. Detta för att se vilka möjligheter och förutsättningar städerna har till att bilda kreativa kluster. Vi belyser också hur ett kreativt kluster uppstår och utvecklas genom att studera produktionsbolag samt nyckelpersoner inom filmbranschen. Vårt huvudfokus i denna studie är att undersöka vad samarbeten inom filmbranschen har för positiva och negativa effekter utifrån en klusterteori. Utöver det utgår vi från frågeställningarna Hur påverkar platsen möjligheterna till samarbeten? Hur påverkar utbildning möjligheterna inom filmbranschen? Vilka komponenter krävs för att ett kreativt kluster ska uppstå och utvecklas? samt Vilka av dessa komponenter finns i Linköping respektive Norrköping? Vi lyfter även filmbranschens utveckling, vilka resurser som finns tillgängliga för filmskapare i respektive stad, men också etableringsfasen och bakgrunden för olika produktionsbolag i regionen. Studien har utförts genom fyra kvalitativa intervjuer med två produktionsbolag, Fishy Minds och FilmVision samt två nyckelpersoner inom filmbranschen i respektive stad, Johan Karlsson (Chef för Cnema och Film i Öst, Norrköping) och Ann-Sofie Löw (Kultursekreterare, Linköping). Utöver det har vi även utfört en enkätundersökning med elva produktionsbolag i Östergötland. Det vi har kommit fram till är att det i Norrköping finns en början till ett kreativt kluster, och att förutsättningarna finns för att det ska frodas. Det börjar nu satsas på film i Linköping mer än vad som tidigare gjorts, men staden ligger långt efter Norrköping och vi ser i dagsläget ingen tendens till ett kreativt filmkluster.

Visuality is a concept that crosses boundaries of practice and meaning, making it an ideal subject for interdisciplinary research. In this article, we discuss visuality using a fragment from a video meeting of television producers at Swedish Televisions group for programming in Swedish Sign Language. This example argues for the importance of recognizing the diversity of analytical and practice-derived visualities and their effect on the ways in which we interpret cultures. These different visualities have consequences for the methods and means with which we present scholarly research. The role of methods, methodology, and analysis of visual practices in an organizational and bilingual setting are key. We explore the challenges of incorporating deaf visualities, hearing visualities, and different paradigms of interdisciplinary research as necessary when visibility, invisibility, and their materialities are of concern. We conclude that in certain contexts, breaking with disciplinary traditions makes visible that which is otherwise invisible.

This article presents the initial findings of research into how YouTube culture can become an arena for young YouTube videographers to remodel mainstream, sub-cultural, and media content (YouTube clips, music, film content, and viral memes). We juxtapose analyses from both media and child studies to look at the ways in which preferred images and notions of the “good” and idyllic childhood are re-edited into a possible critique of the prescribed Swedish childhood. Also, we look at ways in which these media-literate actors use YouTube to display their skills in both media editing and social media “savvy.” We discuss how “lay” professional competence in digital culture can be inherent in a friction between popular (children’s) culture and social media production, where simultaneous prowess in both is important for how a mediatised social and cultural critique can emerge.

We are constantly being fed information. Everything and everyone we come into contact with may somehow make a new impression on us, whether we are aware of it or not. One of the ways that people in today’s society in Sweden are being given information is via different types of media, for example through commercials. Whether it’s a video clip or a still-frame picture, a commercial is an effective way for a company to reach out to potential customers.

However, it is not only the messages or signals that may appear obvious that these companies send out when advertising with commercials. When taking a closer look at a commercial, it becomes clear that these pictures or video clips may make more impressions than it may first appear. Commercials mirror the society that we are living in, yet at the same time they send out signals about what the society could be like. Creating expectations, longing and ideals; commercials have a larger impact on their public than it may first seem.

In this essay we have chosen to focus on two Swedish brands: the grocery store Ica and the clothing brand Hennes & Mautriz (H&M). Focusing on three different time periods – the 1990’s, 2000’s and 2010’s – we have studied the development of these two companies commercials and analyzed what possible messages these commercials send out. Our main focus has been to study these brands from a gender critical perspective and analyzing how men and women are portrayed, comparing differences and similarities. 

In this thesis the argument of a new visual language as a narrative device will be discussed and looked at, by analyzing four different TV-series in the science-fiction genre: Terra Nova 2011, Defiance 2013-, Doctor Who 1963 – 1989 and Doctor Who 2005-. It will be possible to see the use of digital visual effects as a narrator in the image. To do this one main question has been asked and to be able to answer that question a framework model has been created, consisting of seven different questions: How are DVFx used as a visual language in the TV-series? What key elements drive the TV-series forward? What influence did DVFx have on the TV-series? How is DVFx used in the series as a narrator? What does DVFx represent in the image? Could the series have been created without DVFx? Techno-enhancement, visual language or hybrid?

Denna kandidatuppsats behandlar samtalet mellan en programledare i radio och personer som ringer in till programmet via telefon, så kallade inringare. Interaktionen undersöks med fokus på programledarens omständigheter och ämnar reda ut vilka förväntningar som finns på denna roll, vilka strategier de använder under samtalen och slutligen även hur det kommunikativa formatet ser ut i samtalen.

I studien jämförs samtal från de två radioprogrammen ”Ring P1” och ”Karlavagnen” med hjälp av metoden samtalsanalys. Den teoretiska grunden är förankrad i teorier om inramning, makt och samtalsstrukturer.

Studiens resultat tyder på att programledare använder sig av olika strategier från program till program, men att somliga gemensamma nämnare finns. Exempelvis frågor används flitigt i båda program som studerats, men ämnar ofta uppnå skilda saker så som att förtydliga ett argument eller lyfta en personlig upplevelse/känsla. Ännu ett resultat på forskningen är att programstruktur har en stor inverkan inte enbart på samtalslängd och ton, utan även exempelvis på det djup som nås i ämnet. Ur ett forskningsperspektiv nås även argument för att den tidigare teoribildningen varit för snäv gällande kategoriseringen av inringningsradio, och att en tredje typ vilken både är strukturerad och vardaglig går att återfinna.

Filmbranschen är på många sätt en mansdominerad bransch. Hade könsfördelningen inte varit så sned är det rimligt att anta att filmutbudet hade haft en större mångfald. Detta gäller förstås även för andra kategorier som klass, etnicitet och sexualitet. Syftet med denna uppsats är att ta reda på hur kvinnor med ledande kreativa eller administrativa positioner i filmbranschen har tagit sig dit de är idag, och vad de har upplevt på vägen dit. Vi har valt att applicera ett feministiskt perspektiv på vår studie, kompletterat med teorier om intersektionalitet. Vår frågeställning lyder:

1) Är det möjligt att utläsa vilka faktorer som verkar ha spelat in i hur deras yrkesliv har utvecklat sig (bakgrund, utbildning, familj etc.)?

2) Vilken betydelse ger de kön (att vara kvinna) i deras bransch, och hur har denna förståelse skapats?

3) Vad ger kvinnornas berättelser för bild av möjligheterna till ett mer jämställt arbetsliv inom film?

This case study is an exploration of different understandings of the evaluation process in a publicly funded performing arts project. With a hermeneutics entrance and abductive approach different meanings of evaluation is studied within the system that enabled the project Nationalismens Apostlar at the Swedish National Theatre 2014. The analysis is based on interviews and text material. The theoretical starting point is interdisciplinary with emphasis on Evaluation Methodology, Cultural Politics and Arts Management. The main argument presented in the thesis is that a peforming arts project as Nationalismens Apostlar must be understood as a result of different actors in an organisational context. The communication between these different actors is subsequently vital to define the meaning and value of the final artwork.  

Domestic use of hot water has been identified as an urgent energy issue to address. In this paper, results from focus group interviews, with both residents and staff members, are presented. Results show that hot tap water use is differently shaped depending on whether you are a resident or a staff member. One thing in common was that in the focus groups it was difficult to separate hot tap water use from water use in general. Hot tap water use was not distinguished from use of cold tap water. To explore the issue further, the research on hot water was taken to residents’ homes and through more in-depth qualitative methods by an artist a formation process was started. Residents started to share more detailed stories about how they lived their everyday life in kitchens and bathrooms. These stories contain childhood memories and how past experience has shaped their water use and consequently their energy use patterns. The formation of this topic continued and in the artist’s interpretation of the data, three different artefacts became important: the sink, tub and toilet. These artefacts were placed in a river in the centre of a city as part of an audio walk with voices from the residents talking about their use of water. The exhibition was available during summer 2016 and the audio walk with the voices are planned to be reused and part of an exhibition in 2017.

What would happen if we could create societies with an abundance of goods and services created by cutting-edge technology, making manual wage labour unnecessary – what has been labelled societies with a post-scarcity economy. What are the pros and cons of such a future? Several science fiction novels and films have discussed these questions in recent decades, and have examined them in the socio-political, cultural, economic, scientific and environmental contexts of globalization, migration, nationalism, automation, robotization, the development of nanotechnology, genetic engineering, artificial intelligence and global warming. In the first section of this article, I introduce methodological approaches and theoretical perspectives connected to Critical Future Studies and science fiction as anticipatory knowledge. In the second and third section, I introduce the question of the value of work by discussing some examples from speculative fiction. In section four to seven, I analyze the Thousand Culture tetralogy (1992–2006), written by science fiction author John Barnes. The Thousand Cultures tetralogy is set in the 29th century, in a post-scarcity world. It highlights the question of work and leisure, and the values of each, and discusses these through the various societies depicted in the novels. What are the possible risks with societies where work is voluntary?

Artikeln ingår i antologi som handlar om:

Uppfinningsrikedom och entreprenörsanda beskrivs ofta som svenska paradgrenar. Innovatörerna har blivit nationsbärare och symboler för varumärket Sverige i en samling idéer med djupa historiska rötter. Media, politik och industri har bidragit till att etablera tankegångarna som odiskutabla sanningar.

I Svensk snillrikhet? belyser forskare från olika discipliner hur personer som Gustaf Dahlén och Alfred Nobel, eller företag som Volvo, framställs i stereotypa framgångsberättelser som skapat föreställningar om svensk fallenhet för teknik. Författarna blottlägger en vurm för det manliga geniet och en bergfast tro på tekniska framsteg. Den kombinationen har bidragit till en förenklad bild av nationen Sverige - dess modernisering, invånare och framtid. En bild som lever och ständigt reproduceras.

Författarna sätter in aktörerna i idéhistoriska, politiska och ekonomiska sammanhang och visar hur idéerna använts i politiska syften. Snillet, innovatören och entreprenören blir förebilder i debatter om allt från skolfostran av barn och lanseringar av akademiska initiativ till satsningar på teknikdrivna företag.

The article discusses how issues raised by globalisation are represented in John Barnes’s novels A Million Open Doors (1992) and Earth Made of Glass (1998). I will argue that science fiction can work as a model for a futural public sphere, bridging the gap between the humanities and natural science, and enabling a broader public discourse about the societal impacts of science and technology.

Through the novels’ protagonists, Barnes discusses matters of authenticity and identity politics triggered by the globalisation discourse of the 1990s – issues that have again been brought to the fore in the political sphere. By setting the stories in our galaxy in the 29th century, Barnes is debating, challenging, and contesting dystopian as well as utopian conceptions of globalisation in our time. Barnes’s novels highlight the implications of nationalist ideologies, identity politics, and notions of authenticity.

But Barnes also shows how utopian thinking on a borderless global world and idyllic visions of a post-national society (expressed in some of the more utopian streams of globalization literature) are undermined by identity politics. In this sense, Barnes’s novels are opening up a terrain for debating these issues, forming a basis for a futural public sphere

In this reflection, the author examines Tenfjord and Oxaal’s popular Norwegian children’s novel Jens krysser himmelrommet (Jens Crosses Space), published in 1954, as an exceptional case among typical juvenile novels of the time, in that it portrayed in moral terms both the practice of science and the attitudes and attributes of scientists. He argues that in the early (and politically charged) days of the space race, this novel was unusual in offering young readers moral and intellectual models that aimed to encourage them to move beyond a simplistic enjoyment of science fiction for children to the rigors of mature scientific exploration.

Underhållning är den kanske mest betydelsefulla kulturkategorin i vår samtida västerländska kultur. Ändå har den fortfarande svårt att tas på allvar. Men om vi inte förstår vad det innebär att ha roligt förstår vi inte heller den värld vi lever i.

Inledning i antologi som handlar:

Uppfinningsrikedom och entreprenörsanda beskrivs ofta som svenska paradgrenar. Innovatörerna har blivit nationsbärare och symboler för varumärket Sverige i en samling idéer med djupa historiska rötter. Media, politik och industri har bidragit till att etablera tankegångarna som odiskutabla sanningar.

I Svensk snillrikhet? belyser forskare från olika discipliner hur personer som Gustaf Dahlén och Alfred Nobel, eller företag som Volvo, framställs i stereotypa framgångsberättelser som skapat föreställningar om svensk fallenhet för teknik. Författarna blottlägger en vurm för det manliga geniet och en bergfast tro på tekniska framsteg. Den kombinationen har bidragit till en förenklad bild av nationen Sverige - dess modernisering, invånare och framtid. En bild som lever och ständigt reproduceras.

Författarna sätter in aktörerna i idéhistoriska, politiska och ekonomiska sammanhang och visar hur idéerna använts i politiska syften. Snillet, innovatören och entreprenören blir förebilder i debatter om allt från skolfostran av barn och lanseringar av akademiska initiativ till satsningar på teknikdrivna företag.

Uppfinningsrikedom och entreprenörsanda beskrivs ofta som svenska paradgrenar. Innovatörerna har blivit nationsbärare och symboler för varumärket Sverige i en samling idéer med djupa historiska rötter. Media, politik och industri har bidragit till att etablera tankegångarna som odiskutabla sanningar.

I Svensk snillrikhet? belyser forskare från olika discipliner hur personer som Gustaf Dahlén och Alfred Nobel, eller företag som Volvo, framställs i stereotypa framgångsberättelser som skapat föreställningar om svensk fallenhet för teknik. Författarna blottlägger en vurm för det manliga geniet och en bergfast tro på tekniska framsteg. Den kombinationen har bidragit till en förenklad bild av nationen Sverige - dess modernisering, invånare och framtid. En bild som lever och ständigt reproduceras.

Författarna sätter in aktörerna i idéhistoriska, politiska och ekonomiska sammanhang och visar hur idéerna använts i politiska syften. Snillet, innovatören och entreprenören blir förebilder i debatter om allt från skolfostran av barn och lanseringar av akademiska initiativ till satsningar på teknikdrivna företag.

This paper introduces the interdisciplinary field of Critical Future Studies (CFS).

CFS investigates the scope and constraints within public culture for imagining and

debating different potential futures. It interrogates imagined futures founded – often

surreptitiously – upon values and assumptions from the past and present, as

well as those representing a departure from current social trajectories. CFS draws

on perspectives from various disciplines including sociology, political studies,

intellectual history, cultural history, media and cultural studies, utopian studies,

science and technology studies, and philosophy. CFS also engages with discourses

and ideas from the natural sciences (including popular science), computing and

economics. And, given our concern with public culture, CFS aims to contribute

constructively to vigorous and imaginative public debate about the future – a futural

public sphere – and to challenge a prevalent contemporary cynicism about our

capacity to imagine alternative futures while trapped in a parlous present. To that

extent, we propose CFS as a programme of engaged and open-ended social critique,

not as a solely academic endeavour. Our paper begins by describing the relationship

between CFS and mainstream Future Studies. Subsequently, we discuss

the contemporary context for Critical Future Studies. Here we make the case that

CFS is a timely and even urgent project at our current historical juncture, arguing

also for the significance of both utopian and dystopian imaginings. We then go on

to discuss methodologies within CFS scholarship. Finally, we conclude by reflecting

on the values underpinning CFS. Overall, this paper not only describes CFS

as a field of research but also serves as an invitation to cultural scholars to consider

how their own work might intersect with and contribute to CFS.

Introduction theme issue Culture Unbound

There is no doubt that the Newar culture of the Kathmandu Valley has attracted a lot of scholarly attention. The presentation of Newar culture in focus here, however, is very different from the scholarly literature. It is made for Newars by Newars; it is in the form of a song with a video, not a scholarly text; and it is a presentation for children, not for learned readers. The song is called Kaulā Kachalā. Within its small format, this song video plays up a very rich picture of Newar civilization and is positioned in and illuminates important problem areas and debates such as ethnic politics and cultural heritage, and cultural vulnerability and sustainability. 

This is a qualitative study about the city of Norrköpings culture producing scene and it’s participants. We focus on their establishment and the strategies and power structures in the field, but also on the dynamics of competition and collaboration. The study is based on eight semi-structured interviews with selected cultural producers and administrators in Norrköping, and the analysis is inspired by Pierre Bourdieus theory and notions of cultural fields and capital theories. In the conclusion we can see that the city is perceived as having a positive attitude towards culture and that it is a good place for participants to operate. They are also having an optimistic view of the growth of cultural production because they believe in collaboration instead of a competition. We live in a networking society were the participants thinks that networking is the key to success. But there are also a problematic for operating in the field today because of a dilemma of how the resource should be distributed and how they are used.

In this study, we examine how marketing actors using programmatic advertising manages consumer integrity. The context of our study is the possibilities current technology entails relative to the fact that people today live in a surveillance culture. Programmatic has emerged through the possibilities of technology to increase efficiency through personalized advertising by collecting customer data. This raises the question, how do actors collecting consumer data and using programmatic advertising manage not to lose the trust of the consumer in a society where we, in various ways, are under constant surveillance?

Our study is based on material collected through qualitative interviews with actors relevant to our subject who in various ways come in contact with programmatic advertising in their work. 

We could conclude that it is important to programmatic actors to manage the integrity issue correctly and to be transparent with their consumers, but that they do have interests which often overshadows the issue to varying degrees. We also noted that personal integrity is a complex concept which makes the issue difficult for actors to discuss and deal with in a palpable manner. The study identified the opinion of all actors that there is plenty of room to discuss the issue in to a greater extent than what is being done today.

This essay explores how comments on travel videos on YouTube are designed and what they refer to in relation to the videos. In the essay, I delve into a number of research areas, ranging from basic tendencies which explain the need of travel to more specific fields like comments on YouTube. In order to find out how the comments are designed and what they refer to in relation to the travel videos, in other words what the viewers’ comments are actually about, I conduct a discursive network analysis. The results of the analysis are in turn presented through figures of my own design. All the comments could through my method be divided into ten more or less distinct categorical blocks, which together form the discursive model of conversation in the comment section of travel videos on YouTube.If producers are aware of how a discourse finds expression and can distinguish elements of distraction from elements of opportunities, it is possible for them to extract relevant information from the comment section on YouTube which they can use to their advantage when developing their productions.

The idea for this study was evoked from a number of observations that we did in relation to our personal interest for feminism and gender studies. We have noticed tendecies of identity politics in feminist web­based discussion forums, which have led to intermutual conflicts within the feminist movement. Discussions of great importance between the members of these discussion forums, have oftentimes ended up being matters of interpretative prerogative, and to whom it belongs, as well as questions about who holds authority to claim which opinion, and why one holds authority to claim any opinion at all. We read this phenomenon as a matter of power configuration ­ for even within these formed groups of people that are oppressed in the western majority culture, relations including roles with oppressing positions as well as roles with oppressed positions emerge.

In this study we have chosen to focus on a certain type of identities that are frequently stressed when conflicts emerge in these web­based forums, namley transgender identities. The purpose of this paper is to bring forward the narratives of people with transgender identities, about their experienced possibilites to word in feminist web­based discussion forums, as well as analyze the discourses of power that figures in these forums. The material for this study was collected through qualitative interviews, which were made with four different respondents. All of which having experience of being transgender and members of different feminist web­based forums. The analysis in turn consists of essential recitals by the respondents, which are resolved from a discourse theoretical perspective. According to discourse theory, power configurations between people are made from a variation of factors that determine the directions of power, and are constantly reformed from one moment to another. From the recitals of our respondents we understand that there are several power discourses prevailing concurrently in the feminist web­based discussion forums, and that there is no binary and consistent divergence between the oppressing position and the oppressed position. A person whose identity validates its power in one discussion, can be totally powerless because of its identity in another. 

During the year of 2021 the city of Gothenburg turns 400 years and it attracts many contractors to finish then in honor of the anniversary, not at least to be expected is 30,000 new homes. The question is where the citizens come into the planning procedure. 

This bachelor’s thesis aim is to explore what the planning process looks like during construction and what the structural possibilities are for public dialog. The thesis goes through the different parts of the planning procedure, from concept to groundbreaking, and who that might be a part of this process. When it comes to public dialog the focus is on principals and policies, but also goes through what the needs are for education and current resources around working with dialog. 

Based on Jürgen Habermas theory on the Public sphere literary materials are examined, mostly from municipal sources, including City of Gothenburg, National Board of Housing and the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions. Complementing this are three interviews, these with focus on public dialog, cooperation between various competencies and conduct of the working process.

This study is a semiotic analysis of the representation of immigrants in five of the biggest printed Swedish newspapers pictures. The pictures are analysed from the theoretical perspective of social constructivism and representation. Ten pictures are semiotically analysed from these theoretical perspectives to find out how immigrants are represented in the Swedish newspapers. The study concludes that the representation of immigrants in Swedish newspapers pictures is generally negative and that reports on immigrants almost always have a negative tone or undertone.

Football has during the last decades gone through some major changes. The beautiful game has both been globalised and commercialised. As a consequence, the number of supporters that aren’t locally tied to a certain football club, so called ”long-distance supporters”, has increased. At SvenskaFans.com, Sweden’s largest sporting community, many of Sweden’s long-distance supporters of the Italian outfit AS Roma get together in the forum part of the community and discuss everything there is to discuss about the club.  

Through observations, and using Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical approach for human interaction and Sarah Thornton’s theories about subcultural capital as analytical tools, the subject of status amongst the supporters is examined. The analysis is used as a case for a broader and general understanding of subcultures and status.

This study investigates journalistic constructions regarding the antiracism demonstration in Kärrtorp in 2013. How do the newspapers Dagens Nyheter and Aftonbladet construct the racist, antiracist and immigrant during and after the demonstration? Through the use of Critical Discourse Analysis, Media Theory, Nationalism Theory and Whiteness Theory this study examines how these groups (racist, antiracist, immigrant) are constructed to be excluded as part of the “others” as well as included as part of “us” in addition to who actually expresses opinions about these groups in the articles.       In the construction of the Kärrtorp demonstration a threat was presented (in form of Nazi organizations) that threatened the contemporary Swedish democracy and the solution offered here was to stand up for anti-racism and integration in the demonstration. The journalistic technique of coding and decoding is what occurs in many instances when comparing the perpetrator and their cause to history. The small minority, perpetrator and racist is within the articles constructed as men belonging to organized racist networks that do not believe that all human beings are equal and is constructed as one of the country of Sweden’s major problems that needs to be fixed. What has been argued then is that instead of only constructing and discussing racist propaganda and the extremes within the news it would more important to evaluate institutionalized routines and pattern behaviors within the Swedish society.       Noticeable in the study is also the journalists’ attempt to resent, reject and disapprove Racism, Nazism and violence on all levels and how they in general construct articles with antiracists as spokespersons. Moreover, immigration is mentioned in very few instances in the construction and usually through the racist or Nazi negative perspective with which the journalist does not agree.

Syftet med min uppsats är att analysera dels vad som lyfts fram av Söderköpings kommun som kulturarv i småstaden Söderköping, dels hur Söderköpings kommun förhåller sig till kulturarvet. Ett ytterligare syfte är att analysera Söderköpings aktuella kulturarvsprogram för perioden 2014-2016 samt göra intervjuer med betydelsefulla personer som arbetar inom området.

”Istället för att enbart blicka framåt kanske vi bör titta i backspegeln för att hämta inspiration och kunskap.” (Thomas Blom turismens historia & utveckling.) Hur ska vi förmedla dåtidens historia idag? Utifrån globaliseringens samhälle är det idag svårare att definiera vad begreppet kulturarv betyder samt att finna känslor som tillhörighet, identitet och hemkänsla. Kulturarvet är den centrala delen som skapar relation mellan platsen, den lokala identiteten och mellan samtidens människor.

Kulturarvet kan idag ses som en resurs och produkt som samhället kan använda i näringsverksamhet. Det är kulturarvet som genererar kunskap om vår dåtid för att förstå vår samtid och som sedan kan förankras och bevaras inför framtiden. Medeltidsstaden Söderköping var en gång i tiden en central mötesplats genom in- och utrikeshandel. Idag är medeltidsstaden en idyll bestående av unika kulturarv samt historia som Söderköping satsar på genom exempelvis gestaltningar i stadsmiljön. Söderköpings kulturarv och historia finns under dina fötter, var du än sätter dina fotsteg när du besöker staden. 

The aim of this study is to illustrate and analyze the future visions of museums and what the future visitor of museums will be. This will be done through a discourse analysis supplemented with interviews with persons involved in the museum field. The questions at issue are how the future of museums is discussed, expressed, and described in the future visions of the for this study chosen museum actors. Furthermore this study will look into what role the visitor of museums is going to take in the future of museums. It will also study how museums should conduct themselves to the visitor of future museums. And finally, what do future museums seek to achieve in the future?

Museums of today are reaching out towards their visitors and hence the museums have gone from being storage for cultural heritage to become active learning environments for the people. Museums seek to achieve a sustainable future in the social-, environmental-, and economical area. Diversity should also be developed within the activities of the museums, both when it comes to qualifications and to work for development in society as a whole. Knowledge of the Swedish society and its history are likely to play a great role in the future of museums seeing that museums can be looked upon as an institution of knowledge. In this respect the cooperation with universities and colleges are of great importance since it gives an increased credibility for the visitor both when it comes to knowledge and research, as well as democracy and diversity.

In this time of change lies also the change in the role of the visitor. The future visitor of museums will no longer play the passive part of the listener and recipient of information. The future visitor will play a more active role in the process and product of the museums. This change is in part a result of the digital technology that today is a great part of people’s lives. Museums develop the individual visitor’s motivation and involvement in the community as a bridge between the past, the present and a future. 

Medborgarnas intresse för att utöva samhälleligt inflytande genom traditionella organisationsformer och institutioner, såsom politiska partier, samråd och ideella föreningar har på ett par decennier minskat kraftigt. Istället tar sig engagemanget nya uttryck. Internetteknologin och sociala medier har här framhållits som en allt viktigare arena för dagens politiska aktivitet där nätverkskulturen anses ha skapat nya förutsättningar för att organisera sig, samarbeta och påverka. Som ett resultat av detta har sociala medier i allt större utsträckning kommit att ses som en möjlighet att vitalisera den representativa demokratin och förverkliga det deliberativa demokratiidealet. Inte minst på lokal nivå där sociala medier fått ett stort genomslag och idag används av så gott som samtliga svenska kommuner.

Denna undersökning strävar efter att utifrån ett kritiskt perspektiv beskriva och analysera förhållandet mellan kommuner och dess medborgare på sociala medier i fem östgötska kommuner. För att uppfylla detta syfte har kvalitativa och semistrukturerade intervjuer med sex östgötska kommuntjänstemän genomförts.

Resultatet visar att sociala medier är en möjlighet för kommunerna att exponera positiva exempel på sin egen driftighet. Genom ett icke fackmannamässigt språkbruk hoppas respondenterna omförhandla bilden utav kommunen som en stel och byråkratisk organisation.

Till problemen och utmaningarna med sociala medier hör motstånd och skepsis inom delar utav den egna organisationen. Ökad arbetsbelastning, brist på resurser och rädsla för extrema åsiktsyttringar och kritik är viktiga argument. Då kommunerna ser ett behov av att kontrollera och styra flödet av information begränsas utrymmet för dynamisk kommunikation. Dock framhålls medborgardialog som ett viktigt syfte med närvaron på de digitala plattformarna. I realiteten utmynnar kommunikationen i medborgarnas möjlighet att lämna synpunkter och klagomål på kommunens verksamhet.

This master thesis contextualise, and discuss the contemporary art as a catalyst for change, and raises social issues through art production in the urban district Nima. Perspectives of "community", and "community of practice" affiliates with examples of placed based art, mainly mural paintings performed in the urban landscape of the community, in the stigmatised community Nima, an area in Ghana’s capital Accra.

The study has identified an artistic climate that is emerging from within the community, where artists have created a system for various forms of arts education. The artistic climate is a process of social practice, and this study further discuss the interaction of people in the process of art production, which provides both local, and global perspectives of art. Issues of representation, especially who is in the position to represent others, and how others are in fact represented are discussed and analysed as well as the terminology of “African art”.

På Nationaldagen år 1992 utnämndes steelpan till Trinidad och Tobagos nationalinstrument. Världens yngsta akustiska instrument har på några få decennier gjort en klassresa. Syftet med denna uppsats är att utifrån de gällande teorierna om subkultur analysera steelbandkulturens ursprung och dess utveckling från en gräsrotskultur till en representant för en hel nation. Vilka faktorer bidrog till subkulturens uppkomst? Hur var det möjligt för steelbandkulturen att inta en så framträdande position i ett multikulturellt samhälle där den europeiska kulturen värdesattes högst av alla? Och vad händer med en subkultur som blir accepterad av resten av samhället?

Studien "Guiderna och kulturarvssektorn" analyserar (1) hur guider visar kulturhistoriska miljöer, (2) vad guider talar om när de visar kulturhistoriska miljöer, och (3) hur guider är organiserade. Studien baseras på observationer av guidade visningar i ett stort antal kulturhistoriska miljöer, intervjuer med guider, samt analys av guideföreningars arkivhandlingar. Teoretiskt används begreppen plats, rum, berättelse, identitet och professionalisering.

Viktiga resultat: Guider visar kulturmiljöer med hjälp av en specifik guidekompetens. Formmässigt präglas guidade visningar av guidens personliga uttryck, av relativt stor variation i framställningen med inslag av humor, anekdoter, berättelser och korta informationstäta partier, av dialogiska inslag och av en (potentiell) förhandling om guidens auktoritet. Innehållsligt utmärks guidegenren av att innehållet förankras på platsen där guide och besökare rör sig. Innehållet är mer skiftande än i många andra genrer. Här samsas akademisk, saklig kunskap med mer underhållande inslag. Många guider i Sverige har sedan 1980-talet varit organiserade i guideföreningar och med den nationella paraplyorganisationen SveGuide. Guideorganisationerna har arbetat för en professionalisering av guidegruppen och har varit inflytelserika i sitt arbete för längre guideutbildningar. Ambitionen att få erkännande som en specialiserad yrkesgrupp har varit svårare och det är först 2016 som man nått fram till en nationell auktorisation av guider. Det stora flertalet guider har guideverksamheten som en bisyssla vilket bidrar till att förklara guidernas ganska svaga ställning.