This thesis discuss the matter of non-profit-making associations as a self regulatory technique out of a theoretical concept of power. The object for the study is the non-profit-making association Ditt Nya Hageby, which work in the neigborhood of Hageby, a suburb to Norrköping. In the study the association is placed in a contemporary postmodern social context and analyzed through semi- structured qualitative interviews, accordingly to hermeneutical method, with five active members of the association as informants. The association consists of members who lives in the neighborhood. Together with a hired organizer they realizes their own ideas in to projects which unquestionably improves the social and physical enviroment in Hageby. The author of this thesis, however argues their activities also can be looked at in a normative way concerning social order in a non-compelling sence. Thus the author means that the association, in this particular sense, could be understood theoretically by implying Michel Foucaults govermentality concept. In order to reach the final conclusion the informants experience concerning sense of community and identity in relation to Ditt Nya Hageby is analyzed. Further theoretical framework is provided by Ferdinand Tönnies concepts of gemeinschaft/gesellschaft and Jürgen Habermas civil publicity. The paper also accounts for what the authorbelieves to be the ideological/methodological basis for Ditt Nya Hageby’s activities by presenting and discussing the"from the inside out"-perspective which is recomended by John P. Kretzman&John.L McKnight regarding the reconstruction, in a wider sense, of exposed neigborhoods.

Students who obtain college degrees have a higher earning potential and greater likelihood of employment. Although researchers have found that student enrollment and performance in online college courses has increased, attrition has also risen at a higher rate than in face-to-face courses. The problem of declining persistence in online courses at a rural community college in the Southeastern United States was addressed in this study. The community of inquiry framework was used in this qualitative case study to explore perceptions of 10 experienced online learners. The research questions were focused on students' perceptions of the roles of connectedness and student engagement as well as the techniques and strategies used to maintain connectedness. Data were collected through semistructured online audio interviews that were recorded, transcribed, open coded, and analyzed thematically. Findings indicated that students perceived the presence of engaging materials, elevated instructor presence, established social presence, and confirmed learning as promoters of cognitive presence and students' online course persistence. The resulting project consisted of a hybrid workshop series designed to enhance instructors' pedagogical practices to promote engagement and persistence in online courses. The workshop evaluation provided both formative and summative feedback from the workshop participants. The project contributes to social change through the ability of educators and program developers of online courses to garner new knowledge, as well as contributions to the continued viability of the focus institution and long-term economic stability for students.

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The predominant theorists of community in American sociology define community as either geographically confined local solidarities or as networks or relatively close primary ties. These definitions fail to recognize the realities of modern life, let alone life in the context of a global economy. Community according to the earliest community sociologists was a way of organizing society wherein all the social interactions necessary to the reproduction of daily life were embedded in moral relationships, which were historically primary ties located within local solidary communities. With modernity, most of these social interactions have been removed from those moral relationships, and now occur on in a global marketplace where individuals feel no moral responsibility for the consequences of their actions. In such a context, today's predominant theories are no longer viable. In order for community sociology to remain relevant, we need an approach to community which reincorporates all of interactions necessary to daily life and that recognizes the social costs of modernity. The three articles in this dissertation together offer critiques of today's predominant theoretical approaches—the Community Saved and Community Liberated arguments, as Barry Wellman has named them—and provide an alternative that is suited to social life embedded in a global marketplace. The alternative is based on an honest reading of the so-called Community Lost argument—honest in that it is not biased by the straw men built up by the Community Saved and Community Liberated proponents—and extends that argument to include the work of several late-modern theorists (particularly, Zygmunt Bauman and Ulrich Beck). This revived version of the Community Lost argument allows us to address directly all the social interactions necessary to community and to understand the relevance of local solidarities and networks of primary ties as centers of moral proximity.

Over the past decade, many studies have provided some understanding on what influences association members‟ decision to attend a meeting; however, more systematic and theoretical research is necessary. The decision making process of attendees is a complicated human behavior practice. The major contribution of this study is adopting the sense of community (SOC) model from psychology to gain a better understanding of the attendee behavior. By doing so, this study will add a theoretical foundation to the existing research in the meeting industry. Also, this study will contribute to the SOC research in psychology by applying the concept to a different setting. This study investigates whether annual conferences build a SOC among association members. First, the SOC of association members at the conference will be analyzed. Second, the influence of SOC on members‟ satisfaction with the conference will be studied. Lastly, the direct and indirect relationship between SOC and future intentions (i.e., return to next meeting, membership renewal, and membership recommendation) will be examined. Data was collected through an intercept survey approach at three annual conferences of national/international associations. The questionnaire consisted of four sections: sense of community, satisfaction with the conference, future intentions, and member profile. Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to test the factor structure and structural equation modeling was used to examine the relationships, and Spearman‟s rank order correlation was used to see the strength of the relationship between respondent characteristics and sense of community. The results showed that sense of community was a strong predictor of future iv intentions. Implications, limitations, and suggestions for future research are discussed in the final chapter.

Gamification is a widely explored topic in various contexts. In particular, gamification is used in the form of likes and reactions on various social media. However, it was identified that this reward system in the form of likes led to addictive behavior. On the other side, it was not determined that gamification is significantly explored in the context of the sense of friendliness in online communities. Therefore, this thesis investigates other ways of using gamification to enhance the sense of community and engagement in online communities. This study was conducted with the social media startup COSE. The main goal of the startup is to build inclusive space with attention to users’ time and mental health. Therefore, it’s especially important to investigate not addictive ways of using gamification. The thesis consisted of three parts: primary research, prototyping, and evaluation research. Primary research was conducted in the form of a workshop with a focus group. Qualitative workshop data was analyzed with thematic analysis and an impact/effort matrix. In this thesis, five gamification elements were developed: a COSE interests map to connect users based on their interests, a badge system for rewarding and identifying users, a profile page with elements of gamification, a wizard to reduce anxiety associated with active participation (e.g. publishing content), and a community voting system to give users the ability to influence the community. The evaluation of prototypes was conducted in the form of a controlled withing subject experiment with semi-structured interviews. Finally, it was determined that the COSE interests map, profile page and voting system affected the sense of community. The profile page brought users closer together by reducing anonymity on the platform. Badges, especially secret badges, positively influenced participants’ motivation to explore the platform. Wizard, on the contrary, had no effect on reducing users’ anxiety but it successfully created a friendly environment on the platform. In general, this thesis expanded the traditional quantitative gamification in online communities by proposing qualitative solutions for enhancing the sense of support and friendliness in online communities. / Gamification är ett välutforskat ämne som används inom olika sammanhang, särskilt i form av gilla-markeringar och reaktioner på olika sociala medieplattformar. Det har dock observerats att denna belöningssystematik med gilla-markeringar kan leda till beroendeframkallande beteenden. Samtidigt har det inte i hög utsträckning studerats hur gamification kan användas för att främja en känsla av vänskap och gemenskap inom online-samhällen. Denna uppsats kommer att undersöka alternativa sätt att använda gamification för att stärka gemenskapskänslan och engagemanget i online-samhällen. Studien genomfördes i samarbete med det sociala medieföretaget COSE, vilket har som huvudmål att skapa en inkluderande plats med fokus på användarnas tid och psykiska hälsa. I samband med detta är det särskilt viktigt att undersöka icke beroendeframkallande användningar av gamification. Uppsatsen omfattar tre delar: primärforskning, prototypframtagning och utvärdering av resultatet. Primärforskningen genomfördes i form av en workshop med en fokusgrupp. Den kvalitativa workshopdatan analyserades med hjälp av tematisk analys och en påverkan/insats matris. Därefter utvecklades fem olika gamification-element: en COSE-intressekarta för att koppla samman användare baserat på deras intressen, ett märkessystem för att belöna och identifiera användare, en profil-sida med inslag av gamification, en så kallad wizard för att minska ångest i samband med aktivt deltagande (t.ex. publicering av innehåll) samt ett röstsättningssystem som ger användarna möjlighet att påverka gemenskapen. Utvärderingen av prototyperna genomfördes i form av en kontrollerad experimentdesign med semi-strukturerade intervjuer. Slutsatsen är att COSE-intressekartan, profil-sidan och röstsättningssystemet påverkade gemenskapskänslan. Profil-sidan bidrog till att närma användarna genom att minska anonymiteten på plattformen. Märken, särskilt hemliga märken, hade en positiv inverkan på deltagarnas motivation att utforska plattformen. Wizarden hade dock ingen effekt på att minska användarnas ångest, men skapade en vänlig miljö på plattformen. Sammanfattningsvis bidrar uppsatsen till det traditionella kvantitativa förståelsen av gamification i online-samhällen genom att föreslå kvalitativa lösningar för att förbättra känslan av stöd och vänskaplighet i dessa samhällen.

This thesis explores agency in urban refugee spaces and the factors and skills seen to facilitate refugee journeys towards self-reliance in protracted situations. An ethnographic case study was carried out in Kampala, Uganda, where observations and conversations were held with refugee leaders, business owners, and with practitioners at refugee-led organizations. The reasoning is based on Hannah Arendt's notion on what it means to have agency and on wider connections to agency in relation to spaces, storytelling, resilience, and a sense of community. Hermeneutics was applied to the planning and execution of the research, while a narrative approach was adopted to exhibit the findings. The stories presented lay a foundation for proposing a new agency-led approach of how to critically reflect and rethink refugee support in ways that are cost-effective, ethical, and durable over time. This proposed agency-led approach was made by learning from the field and comprises four parts: (i) organizational resilience; (ii) meaningful ownership; (iii) meaningful representation; and (iv) meaningful participation. The new approach is presented to practitioners, potential donors, and those interested in learning how, but also why, we must rethink refugees as actors.

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