In 2022 Spain recorded its highest suicide rates in history. Spanish politicians acknowledge the need for solutions but fail to agree on adequate ones that could help decrease the current upward trend in suicides. The study aims to analyse practical argumentations advanced by politicians during the 2022 Parliamentary debate where the issue of suicide was addressed, to explore the place suicide has in the decision-making process, to investigate the reasons for and against concrete ways of acting regarding the issue, and to understand how these arguments align with current political ideologies. This will deepen the understanding of the political response to the suicide crisis. To achieve this aim, the research applies Isabela and Norman Fairclough’s Political Discourse Analysis framework. The findings show that suicide is not addressed as the public health crisis it constitutes, and it is overshadowed by political power dynamics where regional nationalistic ideologies play a big role.

The development of early Mormon religion is best viewed in the context of multiple discourses, each of which contained various competing symbols. These discourses shaped the mind and world-view of early Latter-day Saints and determined in part their behavior. Prophetic symbols existed simultaneously with other, more American symbols; and while neither discourse excluded the other, a prophetic discourse gradually came to dominate. At the same time, however, the American discourse in Mormon religion remained intact and continued to influence the behavior and actions of early Mormons.

Denna studie undersöker en föreslagen pedagogisk metod, interaktionslärande, med fokus på elevens livsvärld genom en undersökt reell situation baserad på erfarenhet, materialitet och ömsesidighet i olika former. Metodiken appliceras och reflekteras kring i en fortsättningskurs i samhällskunskap på ett svenskt gymnasium, bland annat genom en praktiskt genomförd övning med påföljande intervjuer. Studien använder sig dessutom av en teoretisk metodik där aktionsforskning eller aktionslärande appliceras som metod tillsammans med så kallat kommunikativt handlande och förhållande till systemteori och så kallat lömska problem. Studien utvärderas genom reflektion i förhållande till kontexten utifrån samtal med de medverkande, för att sätta studiens pedagogiska metod i relation till en samtida pedagogisk debatt och därigenom förhålla sig till tankar inom denna, och överväganden också för en övergripande samtida pedagogik. / In this thesis an approach to pedagogy is proposed, Interaction Learning, with an ambition to bring a subject matter closer to the pupils’ life world by focusing on individual experience, materiality and mutuality in different forms. It is further examined through a study in an applied context in an advanced Social Science course in an upper secondary Swedish Gymnasium through an exercise followed by interviews. The study itself uses a theoretical framework based on an action research approach, using reflective experience and communicative action as well as Systems theory thinking that draws on theories on what could be approached as Wicked Problems. The applied practice is further evaluated and reflected on to set the methodological thinking in reference to a current and ongoing Pedagogical debate in Sweden. To evaluate the approach’s possible use and to reflect also on pedagogy on a broader scale for a contemporary current society.

In Germany, the Last Generation emerged as a new climate activist group at the end of 2021. The group is considered rather controversial due to their contested protest actions of for instance vandalizing artwork. This study examines the influence of their controversial protest actions on the online climate debate on Twitter, compared to actions of Fridays for Future Germany, which enjoy a less contested reputation. The three chosen activities per group were analyzed with the help of a case study approach using content and sentiment analysis. The analysis was then conducted based on the three following concepts: deliberation, on the one side, which fosters constructive debates, as well as communitarianism and liberal individualism, on the other side, which can foster polarization. The analysis revealed that polarization dominated the online climate debate generated by the posts of the two groups. As such, hostile attitudes, condescending language, as well as monologic statements fostered communitarianism and liberal individualism within the comment sections of the Twitter posts. Yet, also deliberation was visible, but to the greatest extend within the comment section of a non-controversial activity of Fridays for Future Germany. This, among others, led to the conclusion that the protest actions of activist groups do have an influence on the climate debate. As such, the controversial activities of both groups influenced the climate debate in so far as the debate shifted from the climate debate to the activity itself by for instance focusing on child protection instead of climate change/protection. This was supported by the use of negative sentiments expressed explicitly towards the action of the group(s).

La langue française ne possède que deux genres: le masculin et le féminin. Grammaticalement, le genre masculin l’emporte sur le féminin, par exemple en accordantles adjectifs en genre et en nombre. L’écriture inclusive vise à neutraliser la langue pour la rendre non discriminante envers les femmes mais aussi envers les personnes non binaires. Le langage inclusif suscite des débats importants en France depuis la formation d’une commission de terminologie en 1984, chargée de la féminisation des noms de métiers et de titres. En 2017, le premier manuel scolaire rédigé en écriture inclusive est publié enflammant cette question rendue publique. Par cette étude, nous avons l’intention de comprendre dans quelle mesure le débat dans la presse sur l’écriture inclusive est construit sur les mêmes arguments que ceux développés par les chercheurs dans ce domaine. Dans cette optique, nous avons créé et étudié un corpus basé sur six articles scientifiques traitant de l’écriture inclusive, ainsi qu’un corpus d’étude composé de vingt-et-un articles de presse datant de 2017 à 2022. Nous avons ensuite analysé, catégorisé et comparé les arguments favorables et défavorables concernant l’écriture inclusive développés dans le corpus de presse avec ceux avancés dans les articles scientifiques. Nos données montrent que quasiment les mêmes sujets autour du langage inclusif sont traités par les journalistes de presse et par les chercheurs. Cependant, les angles d’approche diffèrent naturellement : les scientifiques creusent plus en profondeur le sujet afin d’étayer leurs arguments tandis que l’objectif des journalistes reste d’expliquer et de commenter une question d’actualité. Finalement, nous avons pu constater qu’il existe bien une symétrie entre les arguments avancés par les chercheurs et ceux présentés dans les articles de presse même si les perspectives sont relativement éloignées. / The French language has only two genders: the masculine and the feminine. Grammatically  speaking, the masculine gender prevails over the feminine gender, for example in the agreement of adjectives in gender and in number. Inclusive writing aims to neutralize the language as to make it non-discriminating towards women and, to a certain extent, towards non-binary people. The debate over the gender-neutralized language has been going on in France since the establishment of a terminology commission in 1984, in charge of the feminization of job names and titles. In 2017 the first textbook using inclusive writing was published, stirring up a hot public debate. Our intention with this study is to understand to what extent the debate in the press about inclusive writing is based on the same arguments as the ones developed by researchers in this field. To this end, we created and studied a reference-based corpus including six scientific articles dealing with inclusive language as well as a study corpus composed of twenty-one newspaper articles from 2017 to 2022. We then analysed, categorised, and compared the for and against inclusive writing developed in the press corpus with those put forward in the scientific articles. Our data show that practically the same topics around inclusive writing are discussed by press journalists and by researchers. However, the approaches are naturally different as the researchers go deeper into the subjects in order to support their arguments, whereas the purpose of the journalists is to explain and comment on current issues. Finally, we could see that there is a symmetry between the arguments put forward by the researchers and those presented in the newspaper articles even though their perspectives are relatively distant from one another.

Teil 1 dieser Dissertationsschrift fasst die Person-Situation Debatte zusammen und definiert stabile Persönlichkeitsmerkmale (Traits) sowie deren temporäre Expressionen (States). Zentrales Element der sogenannten Person-Situation Debatte war unter anderem das Konsistenzproblem, welches in der ersten empirischen Studie weiter beleuchtet wurde. Hierzu unterschieden wir Person- und Situation-Effekte auf Verhalten. Um diese Effekte zu differenzieren schlugen wir die Konzepte simple Konsistenz und residuale Konsistenz vor und zeigten, wie Verhalten in funktional äquivalenten Situationen auch nach Kontrolle des Einflusses von Persönlichkeit konsistent ist. Teil 2 befasst sich dann mit der Definition und Erfassung von Situationen, da diese zentral sind um Konsistenz im Verhalten zu untersuchen. Im Rahmen von zwei Buchkapiteln beschrieben wir die bisherige Entwicklung der Situationsforschung und zeigten Herausforderungen auf, welche während der Entwicklung von Situationsmaßen zu meistern sind. Anschließend stellten wir sowohl eine neue Taxonomie zur Beschreibung von Situationen vor, die Situation Five, als auch ein Messinstrument zur Erfassung von Situationswahrnehmung vor. Teil 3 adressiert die Validierung bestehender Situationsmaße und im Besonderen die mögliche Überschneidung von Situationswahrnehmung und Affekt. In zwei Studien wurde untersucht, ob beide Phänomene überlappen und dennoch jeweils Verhalten vorhersagen können. Hierbei konnten wir zeigen, dass dies nicht nur der Fall ist, sondern dass spezifische Verbindungen zwischen Verhalten und Situationswahrnehmung erst nach Berücksichtigung von Affekt sichtbar waren. Teil 4 diskutiert die Implikationen der vorliegenden Arbeit und zeigt auf, wie insbesondere die Überlappung von Affekt und Situationswahrnehmung durch Einschätzungs-Theorien der Emotionsforschung erklärt werden können. Teil 5 schlussendlich gibt einen Ausblick auf zukünftige Forschung und zeigt die Bedeutung der vorliegen Arbeit auf. / Part 1 of the current work briefly reviews the person-situation debate and addresses the definition of personality traits and states. Central to the person situation debate was the definition of consistency. In the first empirical study presented here, we examined consistency in more detail. We introduced the concepts of simple and residual consistency, and showed how functionally equivalent situations may influence behavior, even after controlling for effects of personality. Part 2 is concerned with the definition and measurement of situations. In two book chapters, we reviewed the past development of situation research and specific challenges that can be faced during the construction of measures for situation dimensions. We then present a new taxonomy for the description of situations, the Situation Five, as well as a measurement tool to assess situation perception, a person’s interpretation and perception of situations. Part 3 addresses the validation of existing situation measures and, more specifically, the potential overlap of affect and situation perception. I the first empirical study, we examined this overlap, which turned out to be substantial. In the second study, we investigated if this overlap threatened the validity of situation measures: Would measures of situation perception predict behavior in daily life after controlling for affect? As it turned out, they did – and more importantly, controlling for affect unveiled specific, logically coherent links between situation perception and behavior. Part 4 then discusses implications of the current work. A special focus is placed on explaining why affect and situation perception were correlated and yet contributed uniquely to the explanation of variance in behavior. To summarize, appraisal theories of emotion may serve well as a general framework for understanding the processes involved in situation perception. Part 5 then briefly discusses implications of the current work for future research.

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The field of artificial intelligence (AI) has grown rapidly in recent years and its applications are becoming more widespread in various fields, including politics. In particular, presidential debates have become a crucial aspect of election campaigns and it is important to analyze the information exchanged in these debates in an objective way to let voters choose without being influenced by biased data. The objective of this project was to create an automatic analysis tool for presidential debates using AI. The main challenge of the final system was to determine the speaking time of each candidate and to analyze what each candidate said, to detect the topics discussed and to calculate the time spent on each topic. This thesis focus mainly on the speaker detection part of this system. In addition, the high overlap rate in the debates, where candidates cut each other off, posed a significant challenge for speaker diarization, which aims to determine who speaks when. This problem was considered appropriate for a Master’s thesis project, as it involves a combination of advanced techniques in AI and speech processing, making it an important and difficult task. The application to political debates and the accompanying overlapping pathways makes this task both challenging and innovative. There are several ways to solve the problem of speaker detection. We have implemented classical approaches that involve segmentation techniques, speaker representation using embeddings such as i-vectors or x-vectors, and clustering. Yet, due to speech overlaps, the End-to-end solution was implemented using pyannote-audio (an open-source toolkit written in Python for speaker diarization) and the diarization error rate was significantly reduced after refining the model using our own labeled data. The results of this project showed that it was possible to create an automated presidential debate analysis tool using AI. Specifically, this thesis has established a state of the art of speaker detection taking into account the particularities of the politics such as the high speaker overlap rate. / AI-området (artificiell intelligens) har vuxit snabbt de senaste åren och dess tillämpningar blir alltmer utbredda inom olika områden, inklusive politik. Särskilt presidentdebatter har blivit en viktig aspekt av valkampanjerna och det är viktigt att analysera den information som utbyts i dessa debatter på ett objektivt sätt så att väljarna kan välja utan att påverkas av partiska uppgifter. Målet med detta projekt var att skapa ett automatiskt analysverktyg för presidentdebatter med hjälp av AI. Den största utmaningen för det slutliga systemet var att bestämma taltid för varje kandidat och att analysera vad varje kandidat sa, att upptäcka diskuterade ämnen och att beräkna den tid som spenderades på varje ämne. Denna avhandling fokuserar huvudsakligen på detektering av talare i detta system. Dessutom innebar den höga överlappningsgraden i debatterna, där kandidaterna avbröt varandra, en stor utmaning för talardarization, som syftar till att fastställa vem som talar när. Detta problem ansågs lämpligt för ett examensarbete, eftersom det omfattar en kombination av avancerade tekniker inom AI och talbehandling, vilket gör det till en viktig och svår uppgift. Tillämpningen på politiska debatter och den åtföljande överlappande vägar gör denna uppgift både utmanande och innovativ. Det finns flera sätt att lösa problemet med att upptäcka talare. Vi har genomfört klassiska metoder som innefattar segmentering tekniker, representation av talare med hjälp av inbäddningar som i-vektorer eller x-vektorer och klustering. På grund av talöverlappningar implementerades dock Endto-end-lösningen med pyannote-audio (en verktygslåda med öppen källkod skriven i Python för diarisering av talare) och diariseringsfelprocenten reducerades avsevärt efter att modellen förfinats med hjälp av våra egna märkta data. Resultaten av detta projekt visade att det var möjligt att skapa ett automatiserat verktyg för analys av presidentdebatten med hjälp av AI. Specifikt har denna avhandling etablerat en state of the art av talardetektion med hänsyn till politikens särdrag såsom den höga överlappningsfrekvensen av talare.

I denna uppsats undersöks hur konkurrerande föreställningar om relationen mellan individ, kollektiv och stat framställs inom debatten om vaccinpass för tillträde till offentliga ytor. Mer specifikt syftar denna undersökning till att beskriva samt kartlägga den svenska opinionsjournalistiska debatten om vaccinpass utifrån vilka liberala och kommunitära idéer som kan utrönas, med hjälp av två frågeställningar: (1) Hur förhåller sig de huvudsakliga argumenten i den svenska opinionsjournalistiska vaccinpassdebatten till liberala respektive kommunitära idéer? och (2) Vilka likheter och skillnader kan utrönas mellan argumentationen som förs till förmån för vaccinpass och argumentationen som förs mot vaccinpass? 47 opinionsjournalistiska artiklar, publicerade mellan den 20 augusti och 30 november 2021, analyserades utifrån en beskrivande idéanalys med ett teoretiskt ramverk bestående av ideologierna liberalism och kommunitarism. Resultaten visar att en majoritet av argumenten som anförs i debatten kommer närmare en liberal förståelse av relationen mellan individ, kollektiv och stat. Motståndet präglas uteslutande av liberala idéer som att staten bör vara neutral och behandla medborgarna lika, samt att staten inte är i stånd att intervenera i individens fri- och rättigheter för att främja kollektiva målsättningar. Försvaret är å andra sidan splittrat mellan liberala idéer – som skadeprincipen och att staten bör undvika frihetsinskränkningar – och kommunitära idéer, som att staten bör använda sin tvångsmakt för att premiera vissa livsval framför andra och främja ett “gemensamma bästa”. I den utsträckning som både argumentationen för och emot vaccinpass grundar sig i liberala idéer bestod skiljelinjerna istället i vems perspektiv som beaktas, synen på åtgärdens implikationer och vilken del av ideologin som framhölls.

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