During the 1990's high expectations were put on telemedicine technology in health care organizations, which can be seen as a reflexion of the society's interest in IT. The use of tele-medicine is expected to improve the quality and decrease costs of health care services. However, if these expectations are to be attained the visions have to be translated into fields of application in local settings where the technology would be used. This could be seen as an infusion process, which means that the technology would incrementally be used in a comprehensive and integrated manner. In this thesis, four Swedish telemedicine projects are analyzed. The approach used is that of Actor network theory (ANT), which has enabled the development of a theory of the infusion process, implementation of IT-projects, and parts of ANT, e.g. the model of the translation process and the notion of inscription. By using the concept of translation, it is possible to see the infusion process as a process where the generic features of the technology (transmitting sound and pictures in real time) are translated into concrete activities in local settings. These fields of application are realized by the mobilization of different task-based networks, where the roles of the actors are defined by the task to be solved. An iterated mobilization of the network implies further that the network will become stabilized, which is a central dimension in the process of infusion. Another way to understand the process of infusion is to describe it as cycles of implementation, where one cycle symbolizes the implementation of a field of application, which is a result of the translation of the generic features of the technology. The inscriptions in the studied technology allow a high degree of flexibility of use and flexibility of action. The flexibility means that fields of application ought to be developed in interaction between actors in local settings, and supporting programs of action are to be identified, or developed, in order to integrate technology use into daily routines. The considerable numbers of failed of IT-project implementations can be explained by the fact that a traditional planning perspective has been used on technologies, which allow a high degree of flexibility of use and flexibility of action. However, by categorizing inscriptions in technological artifacts, it becomes possible to predict what kinds of implementation strategies are appropriate for different kinds of technologies. By viewing the implementation of open networking technologies as a process of translation, the infusion process will be facilitated and a comprehensive and integrated use of technology will be enabled. / digitalisering@umu

This PhD thesis concerns language and racism. The aim is to explore how racism is reproduced in interaction in public debates on immigration, integration and refugee policy. From a constructivist pragmatic perspective, language is considered as a practice that composes and makes sense of our social world and all the phenomena and individuals that we perceive in it. Racist discourses discriminate against and privilege people by categorising them according to notions of cultural, ethnical, racial, religious and national differences. The thesis has two main themes: 1) the linguistic reproduction of, and response to, racist discrimination and privileging in interaction, and 2) the role of language in various public arenas, and the norms and conditions for participation in these arenas. The thesis comprises five studies. Study I examines racist discourses and conditions for participation in an online newspaper comments section. Study II examines how the phrase “politically correct” is used and negotiated in the same comments section, and how its usage leads to the reproduction and normalisation of racism. Another comments section is the focus of Study III, in which discriminating and privileging categorisations of Muslims, Islam, Swedes and Sweden are analysed. Study IV examines an anti-racist forum on the social networking site Instagram. In the study, the reproduction of norms of whiteness is analysed, as well as power relations that are evoked, sustained and transformed in interaction. Finally, Study V is an analysis of linguistic, visual and material reproductions of political positions and racist discourses in a debate among party leaders on Swedish television. The thesis demonstrates how normalisation of racism is accomplished in interaction, and how reproduction of hierarchically structured difference and bigoted stereotypes are performed, and challenged, through language. The medium, combined with the user’s speech acts, set up the norms and conditions for participation, and for the discursive processes that reproduce the relations and structures of power.

This dissertation investigates the processes and effects involved in the production of styles in contemporary Stockholm. Particular focus is given to materialization processes regarding gender and sexuality. It is an ethnographic study, organized around three different research methods: participant observation, semi-structured interviews and organic wardrobe studies, carried out during the duration of two years and mainly delimited to Stockholm, often focusing on but not limited to the queer-orientated downtown club scene. The study is centered on ten participants, but is also concerned with the events, situations and relations the participants become part of during this time. In this way, the analysis gives equal attention to the specificity of garments and the spaces and places of social interaction. Drawing on a combination of Judith Butler’s theory of performativity and Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory, it analyses how styles are produced and maintained through interactions. The concept of style operates as a tool of analysis, approaching the subject matter from three different perspectives: verbal communication and politics of naming, the wheres and whens of sartorial practices, and lastly bodily matters as a point of intersection, where styles are constituted as bodily materializations through gestures, movements and orientation in space. Furthermore, this thesis engages in an on-going discussion within fashion studies on how the articulation of matters regarding sexuality, gender and identity projects can be theorized through the concept of style. In this way, it also challenges and furthers the definition of this concept by proving its productive qualities through ethnographic fieldwork.

The aim of this study is to examine the transformation of war into play in the context of the hobby called wargaming. The main focus is around Military Simulations (Milsims) using so called airsoft guns, and the miniature game-rules called Force on Force. It also studies how participants create a common understanding of the plays content, and how conceptions of modern conflicts, soldiers and the traumatizing effects of war are perceived and mirrored in wargaming. The investigation is based on interviews with airsoft and figure gamers, as well as an analysis of rulebooks and observations of said wargames. The theoretical frame is Gregory Batesons play frames (as used by Lotten Gustafsson), discourse theory and Actor-Network-theory, showing the importance of human and material interactions – articulations - within the context of playing. This investigation also relies heavily on the conclusions regarding Wargaming made by P.A.G. Sabin. Using meta-communication and performance, participants create the play frame where their conceptions of modern warfare are played out. Physical objects are an important part of the play frame, affecting the performance of the participants. The study also shows how common prejudices, like the portrait of an irrational and bloodthirsty Muslim, prevail. Women are welcomed to join these male dominated games, but are strongly feminized, making it difficult to enter on even terms. The study concludes that the articulations used to transfer war into game reflect the participants apprehensions of gender, culture, anti-heroes and the military; even though wargamers themselves see their play as being relatively distanced from the ”real” worlds opinions and conceptions.

<p>Programmes and policies to support ecological sustainable development and the practice of implementation is a question of innovation rather than known and taken for granted procedure. This thesis argues a priori models concerning stability in the social sciences, and human geography especially, are less able to help us understand this practice and planning in such unstable situations. Problematic in common understandings of planning and policy implementation concerning sustainability are the dualisms between physical-social spaces and between rationality-contingency. The first dualism makes it hard to grasp the interaction between humans and nonhumans. The second dualism concerns the problem of how to capture change without resorting to reductionism and explanaining the evolving projects as either technically, economically, or culturally rational. </p><p>The scope of the thesis is to test resources from actor-network theory as a means of resolving these dualisms. The case is the Stockholm Local Investment Programme and the new district of Hammarby Sjöstad. The programme’s objective was to support the implemention of new technologies and systems, energy efficiency and reduced resource-use as well as eco-cycling measures. The case-study follows how the work with the programme unfolded and how administrators’ efforts to reach satisfactory results was approached. In doing this, the actors had to be far more creative than models of implementation and traditional technology diffusion seem to suggest. The recommendation is to take the instrumentalisation framing the plasticity of a project in planning seriously – as innovativeness is not a special but the general case. Hence, to broaden our tools and understanding of planning a human geography of planning projects is pertinent.</p>

Electronic Patient Records (EPRs) are becoming standard tools in healthcare, lauded for improving patient access and outcomes. However, the healthcare professionals who work with, around, and despite these technologies in their daily practices often regard EPRs as troublesome. In order to investigate how EPRs can prompt such opposing opinions, this project examines the EPR as a collection of communication genres set in complex contexts. In this project, I investigate an EPR as it was used on the Nephrology ward at a large, Canadian, urban, paediatric teaching hospital. In this setting, this study investigates EPR-use in relation to the following aspects of context: (a) the visual rhetoric of the EPR's user-interface design; (b) the varied social contexts in which the EPR was used, including a diversity of professional collaborators who had varying levels of professional experience; (c) the span of social actions involved in EPR use; and (d) the other genres used in coordination with the EPR. <br /><br /> This qualitative study was conducted in two simultaneous stages, over the course of 8 months. Stage one consisted of a visual rhetorical analysis of a set of genres (including the EPR) employed by participants during a specific work activity. Stage two involved an elaborated, qualitative case study consisting of non-participant observations and semi-structured interviews. Stage two used a constructivist grounded theory methodology. A combination of theoretical perspectives -- Visual Rhetoric, Rhetorical Genre Studies, Activity Theory, and Actor-Network Theory -- supported the analysis of study data. This research reveals that participants routinely transformed EPR-based information into paper documents when the EPR's visual designs did not support the professional goals and activities of the participants. <br /><br /> Results indicate that healthcare professionals work around EPR-based patient information when that genre's visual organization is incompatible with professional activities. This study suggests that visual rhetorical analysis, complemented with observation and interview data, can provide useful insights into a genre's social actions. This research also examines the effects of such EPR-to-paper genre transformations. Although at one level of analysis, the EPR-to-paper-genre transformation may be considered inefficient for participants and so should be automated, at another level of analysis, the same transformation activity can be seen as beneficially supporting the detailed reviewing of patient information by healthcare professionals. <br /><br /> To account for this function in the transformation dysfunction, my research suggests that many contextual factors need to be considered during data analysis in order to construct a sufficiently nuanced understanding of a genre's social actions. To accomplish such an analysis, I develop a five-step approach to data analysis called 'context mapping. ' Context mapping examines genres in relation to the varied social contexts in which they are used, the span of social actions in which they are involved, and a range of genres with which they are coordinated. To conduct this analysis, context mapping relies heavily on theories of "genre ecologies" (Spinuzzi, 2003a, 2003b; Spinuzzi, Hart-Davidson & Zachry, 2004; Spinuzzi & Zachry, 2000) and "Knotworking" (Engestrom, Engestrom & Vahaaho, 1999). Context mapping's first three steps compile study data into results that accommodate a wide range of contextual analysis considerations. These three steps involve the use of a composite scenario of observation data, genre ecologies and the description of a starting point for analysis. The final two steps of this approach analyse results using the theory of Knotworking and investigate some of the implications of the patterns of genre use on the ward. <br /><br /> Through context mapping analysis, this study demonstrates that EPR-based innovations created by a study participant could result in the generation of other improvisations, in a range of genres, by the original participant and/or by other collaborators. These genre modifications had ramifications across multiple social contexts and involved a wide range of genres and associated social actions. Context mapping analysis demonstrates how the effects of participant-made EPR-based variations can be considered as having both beneficial and detrimental effects in the research site depending on the social perspective adopted. Contributions from this work are directed towards the fields of Rhetorical Genre Studies, Activity Theory research, and Health Informatics research, as well as to the research site itself. This study demonstrates that context mapping can support text-in-context style research in complex settings as a means for evaluating the effects of genre uses.

Thèse numérisée par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

Esta tese aborda o fenômeno da complexidade da educação a distância e semipresencial segundo referenciais conceituais da modalidade, em diálogo com teorias sobre a comunicação digital, a epistemologia da complexidade, a teoria ator-rede e a cartografia das controvérsias. Investiga quem são os atores que constituem o agregado social educação a distância através do mapeamento de conflitos no fórum geral de discussão do primeiro curso semipresencial da USP, o curso de Licenciatura em Ciências, no período de novembro de 2010 a novembro de 2011. Na perspectiva deste trabalho, as controvérsias ocorreram devido à prevalência de uma visão humanocêntrica que deposita nos atores humanos a proeminência e a prevalência das ações, não reconhece que objetos, processos, encontros, entre outros actantes, são também mediadores e não simples intermediários ou atores coadjuvantes. A pesquisa procura demonstrar que a compreensão do que seja o social, conforme a Teoria Ator Rede, pode ajudar a explicar e a superar os entraves que a modalidade da educação a distância ainda enfrenta na sociedade brasileira. / This thesis approaches the phenomenon of complexity of distance and blended education according to conceptual references of the modality, in a dialogue with theories about digital communication, the epistemology of complexity, the actor-network theory, and the cartography of controversies. It investigates who are the actors that constitute the social aggregate of the distance education through mapping of the conflicts which arose in the general discussion forum of the first blended course taught at the University of São Paulo, Licentiate in Sciences, from November 2010 to November 2011. Under the perspective of this work, the controversies originated due to the prevalence of a view, which assigns to human actors the prominence and the prevalence of the actions and does not recognize that objects, processes, meetings, and encounters, among other, are also mediators and not just mere intermediary or supporting actors. This research intends to demonstrate that the understanding of what the social is, according to the actor-network theory, may help to explain and overcome the hindrance that the distance education modality still faces within Brazilian society.

‘Integration’ is often referred to in Swedish policy documents and analyzed by measures of effectivity and structural adjustment, assuming acculturation and essentialization of populations. This thesis explores how integration is practiced and defined within the context of professional adult education for newly arrived immigrants. The main case study focuses on Swedish for Professionals (SFX) and specifically, the Swedish for truck drivers (SFL) program as sites where the lifeworlds of teachers and students emerge as an actor-network of integrative forces. By relying on ethnographic methods including semi-structured interviews and participant observation the informants’ own narrative of entering society surfaces. Actor- network theory and community of practice theory lift the informants’ actions and accounts to assemble a community of integrators located within a network of integration. Tracing the voices, actions and interactions of the participants at SFX and SFL in particular, results in a contextual version of integration that relays their subjective experiences and explains the social and material processes involved in them ‘coming into society.’ The lived-in experiences of integration offered in this thesis both compares and contrasts to forms of integration offered in political and scholastic discussions.