This thesis concerns the use of observations of gravitational waves as tools for astronomy and fundamental physics. Gravitational waves are small ripples in spacetime produced by rapidly accelerating masses; their existence has been predicted for almost 100 years, but the first direct evidence of their existence came only very recently with the announcement in February 2016 of the detection by the LIGO and VIRGO collaborations. Part I of this thesis presents an introduction to gravitational wave astronomy, including a detailed discussion of a wide range of gravitational wave sources, their signal morphologies, and the experimental detectors used to observe them. Part II of this thesis concerns a particular data analysis problem which often arises when trying to infer the source properties from a gravitational wave observation. The use of an inaccurate signal model can cause significant systematic errors in the inferred source parameters. The work in this section concerns a proposed technique, called the Gaussian process marginalised likelihood, for overcoming this problem. Part III of this thesis concerns the possibility of testing if the gravitational field around an astrophysical black hole conforms to the predictions of general relativity and the cosmic censorship hypothesis. It is expected that the gravitational field should be well described by the famous Kerr solution. Two approaches for testing this hypothesis are considered; one using X-ray observations and one using gravitational waves. The results from these two approaches are compared and contrasted. Finally, the conclusions and a discussion of future prospects are presented in part IV of this thesis.

The Internet is one of the phenomenons of our time. As of speed and reach it surpasses all media on the world and unlike every other medium it actively engages all people to the process of creating the news. Basic attributes of the Internet make it a power standing above states -- it crosses national borders and doesn't have any direct owner -- and at the same time these attributes make it a power that is practically almost unregulatable. The Internet is regulated on a national level, but there are attempts to pay attention to it on the international level as well. The UN, Human Rights Council especially, examines the issue of the access to the Internet as a human right. This thesis examnies the effort of international community to formulate right to Internet as a human right. The right to Internet can be observed in two ways -- as a right to the content of the Internet and as a right to the technology of the Internet. This thesis observes both these dimensions and examines the international community's stance to their incorporation in the catalogue of human rights.

Made available in DSpace on 2017-06-01T18:24:47Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 alba_valeria_silva_moraes.pdf: 1809892 bytes, checksum: 336ed354f917cefcd9b8bb7ba203ca34 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-03-06 / The protest songs become a fruitful field for the study of discourse analysis. This paper presents our analysis of these songs produced during the Brazilian military regime. Joining the French Discourse Analysis (DA) of Michel Pecheux (1938 - 1983) developed in Brazil by Eni Orlandi and followers , this study sought to investigate the metaphorical effect on these protest songs the unsaid that is present in the silence and is expressed through the metaphors used by Chico Buarque. This study aims at investigating the poetic-political discourse of resistance or protest in songs produced during the Brazilian military regime, regarding this silencing in songs by Chico Buarque in the years 1964 to 1974. We hypothesized that the songs produced during the period of repression, especially by Chico Buarque, are historical documents which indicated a discourse of contestation and mobilization. Three songs selected for analysis comprised Chico Buarque in the period from 1964 to 1974, taking into account the conditions of production, based on analytical Discourse Analysis of French line. During the course of analyses, research and discursive constitution of clippings were important to delimit our field. Here we analyze the effects of possible meanings present in songs by Buarque, exploring the resistance to the military regime addressed by the composer in his compositions. By the use of DA, we noted that the speaker wants to say something but is prevented from doing so due to censorship, ie, silence working as resistance against censorship, it is a constant throughout the analysis. A priori, our considerations are brought for discussion of issues and intertwined from the metaphorical effect through discursive formations that mobilize new meanings and subject discourse that reflects the composer s silence site (censorship). Our notes will focus on the discursive properties of political discourse analyzed in the historical period, and how it worked, identifying the effects of meaning which show such discourse. / As canções de protesto tornam-se um campo fecundo para os estudos da Análise do discurso. O presente trabalho apresenta nossas análises sobre estas canções produzidas durante o regime militar brasileiro. Filiando-nos à Análise do Discurso de Linha Francesa de Michel Pêcheux (1938 1983) e desenvolvida no Brasil por Eni Orlandi e seguidores, buscamos nesse trabalho investigar o efeito metafórico presente nas canções de protesto, o não-dito que está presente no silêncio e que se expressa através das metáforas utilizadas por Chico Buarque. Este trabalho tem como objetivo principal investigar o discurso político-poético das canções de protesto ou resistência produzidas durante o Regime Militar Brasileiro, no que se referem aos silenciamentos presentes nas canções de Chico Buarque nos anos de 1964 a 1974. Formulamos a hipótese que a canções produzidas durante o período de repressão, principalmente as de Chico Buarque, são documentos históricos que manifestaram um discurso de contestação e de mobilização. Selecionamos três canções para análise composta por Chico Buarque no período de 1964 a 1974, levando em consideração as condições de produção, tendo como base analítica a Análise do Discurso de linha francesa. Durante o percurso de análise, a pesquisa e constituição de recortes discursivos foram importantes para delimitar nosso campo de atuação. Analisaremos aqui os efeitos de sentidos possíveis presentes na canção buarqueana, explorando a resistência ao regime militar abordada pelo compositor em suas composições. Por meio da AD observamos que o locutor quer dizer, mas fica impedido de fazê-lo em função da censura, ou seja, o silêncio funcionando como resistência contra a censura, isto sendo uma constante em toda a análise. Nossas considerações partem a priori de questões trazidas para debate e entrelaçadas a partir do efeito metafórico através das formações discursivas que mobilizam novos sentidos e o discurso do sujeito compositor que evidencia o silêncio local (censura). Nossos apontamentos irão privilegiar as propriedades discursivas do discurso político analisado no período histórico e, como funcionava, identificando os efeitos de sentido que colocam em evidência tal discurso.

The aim of this master thesis is to examine how Swedish public libraries approaches purchasing potentially controversial and anti-democratic books. According to the The Swedish Library Act, libraries should work towards the development of the democratic society and act for the benefit of free speech. If that is the case, how do libraries approach non-democratic works, for example works that speculate in racism or even genocide? This have been a widely discussed topic in media the last couple of years, fuelled by two decisions by the Swedish Parliamentary Ombudsman (Justitieombudsmannen) that ruled that two public libraries acted wrongly in their decisions to deny purchase of a couple of controversial books that had been requested to be purchased by patrons. This study is based on five qualitative interviews of managers representing five different Swedish public libraries, supplemented by a review of the libraries steering documents. To summarize this study finds that there has been a shift over the last couple of years how public libraries approach potentially controversial books. In the past, it was more common for libraries to not carry any books considered anti-democratic or xenophobic. However, today it is very common for libraries to add these kinds of books to their collection. The only aspect a library can deny a purchase on is the “quality” of the work, not the values or opinions expressed in it. Because of the lack of a national definition of what exactly “quality” entails some libraries have worked out their own definition that they use when making decisions regarding media purchases. The representatives didn’t think that a national definition was needed and that and under the current configuration the libraries have more manoeuvrability and can apply their professional competence to a higher degree.

During the beginning of the cinema media era around the turn of 20th century, a debate prevailed in Sweden about the film’s harmful and negative moral impact on children and young people. This study aims to investigate the debaters’ knowledge claims regarding a preview of a publicly shown film and if it is related to their morality. The following questions were asked: 1. What knowledge claims are made in connection with the need for prior control over the film that is shown in public? 2. What is presented as the basis for the legitimacy of these knowledge claims? 3. How do these knowledge claims change during its path to legal text? 4. What was the relationship between the presented knowledge claims and a moral perception prevailing among the debaters? A debate paper, a parliamentary motion from 1909 and the public inquiry before the decision to create the Swedish Agency of Movie Censors were analysed with argumentation analysis and thematic analysis with a perspective of history of knowledge. This study points at various aspects such as medical, psychological, social structure and moral arguments, which were put forward as arguments for a regulation of the new film medium. The knowledge claims were justified by professional expertise, general knowledge, experiences from other countries and the debaters’ prior knowledge of the subject. A strong fear of ruining a good existing moral conception that exists in the growing generation emerges. The analysis describes a change in knowledge claims: the moral arguments diminish along the way towards the legal text. Furthermore, the study points at the necessity for continued research to increase the understanding of how legitimacy of knowledge is created by an influential group and then passed on.

Dans la France du XVIe siècle, la justice traque l’hérésie chez les auteurs et les imprimeurs attirés par la Réforme : on connaît les poursuites à répétition contre Clément Marot et l’exécution d’Étienne Dolet sur le bûcher en 1546. Mais cette politique répressive ne se limite pas à ces condamnations tristement célèbres, ni aux seuls sujets touchant la foi. Plusieurs autres poètes, connus et méconnus, sont mis en cause pour leurs compositions religieuses, mais aussi satiriques, voire, dans quelques cas isolés, obscènes. Les contentieux portant sur la propriété littéraire mettent également aux prises les différents acteurs de la fabrication du livre. Il s’agit alors de comprendre comment de telles contraintes judiciaires ont pu déterminer l’écriture de la poésie à la Renaissance. Il faut d’abord reconstituer les opérations de censure des textes poétiques, depuis le repérage du texte suspect jusqu’à l’interrogatoire du poète, en passant par l’octroi de l’autorisation d’imprimer ou l’enquête sur les vers satiriques placardés aux carrefours de la ville. On prend ainsi la mesure du régime de contrôle auquel les poètes font face en tentant de défendre leur liberté d’écrire – droit à la satire, droit de chanter leur foi, liberté de jouer avec les codes de la poésie érotique. Aussi l’idée de liberté d’expression ne leur est-elle pas si étrangère qu’on pourrait le croire, car ils peuvent donner un sens politique à la notion de « licence », qui, d’ordinaire, justifie les excentricités du langage poétique. Grâce à l’écriture, les poètes essaient de faire avancer leurs procès et se réapproprient leur expérience de la justice : ces usages spécifiques font de la poésie judiciaire l’équivalent d’un genre à la fois en prise avec le réel et ouvert aux échappées irréelles de la réécriture des événements. / In XVIth century France the legal system hunts down heresy among the writers and printers attracted by the Reformation. Some well-known examples are the repetitive legal actions against Clément Marot and the execution of Étienne Dolet, burned at the stake in 1546. But this repressive policy was not limited to only these sadly famous cases, nor to matters of religious faith. Many other poets, famous and unknown, are put on trial because of their religious, satirical, and, in a pair of isolated cases, even obscene writings. Moreover the various actors implicated in the making of the book confront each other in some cases concerning literary ownership. This study aims to understand how such legal constraints influenced the writing of poetry in the Renaissance. The first steps are to reconstruct the process in which poetic texts were censored, from the identification of the suspicious text to the interrogation of the poet, including the licensing of the book and the investigation of satirical verses posted at town intersections. This is the system of control which poets stand up against, attempting to defend their freedom of speech, –the right to write satire and to sing their religious beliefs, the freedom to play with the codes of erotic poetry. In fact, the idea of freedom of speech is not so foreign to them as we could think, as they give political meaning to the notion of « license », which ordinarily justifies the excentricities of poetic language. Through their writing, poets try to advance their cause and to reappropriate their experience of the law : these specific goals make legal poetry a genre of its own, both in dealing with the reality and in recreating the events in an unrealistic manner.

The aim of this essay is to examine the censorship that the social media platform Instagram exerts over pictures of female nudes, and whether the body type of the women depicted is a factor in how the censorship is carried through. This is executed by making a comparative picture analysis of eight nude photos published on Instagram, four of which are allowed on the platform and four which are not, and have therefore been deleted. The bodies are analysed, and aspects of how they are depicted which are related to the Instagram Community Guidelines, and furthermore if the body depicted conforms to the norms of our contemporary beauty standards and “the Male Gaze”, are reviewed. This fundamental part of the study isbased on the formal analysis and the methods of semiotics. Furthermore, the history of the nude in art, the body norms and ideals of our contemporary society, the Instagram Community rules and Guidelines and the artists are presented briefly. The discussion which has been carried through is based on the analysis and thesis of how female nudes of the Western art cannon have been received, judged, divided into categories and censored to answer the central inquires of the essay. In conclusion, this essay finds how pictures of nude women on Instagram are received, judged, and censored differently depending on whether they fit into the norms of beauty and conform to the male gaze. Hence, the rules of Instagram are found to have been followed through with double standard and bias.

The purpose of this essay is to describe and examine the different versions of the 1982 movie Blade Runner. How these versions vary in question of narrative, theme, tone and message is a focal point of this essay. Of special interest is how these relate to our reality regarding political or philosphical views. The conclusion of this study is that the same core ideas and messages remain throughout the different versions of Blade Runner. However, the ways in which these ideas are presented vary, as does the tone of certain scenes. Through some censoring and editing, some themes are affected and are not as easily identified in all versions of the film. Some of these relate to symbolism through symbolic violence and how humans affect their environment. Other central themes relate to discrimination towards minorities and existential themes and questions. In conclusion: Blade Runner is a complex and topical movie which shifts in tone and theme depending on which version you view.

(in English): This thesis deals with a version of Boris Pasternak's novel Doctor Zhivago, translated into Czech by Jan Zábrana and Jiří Kovtun. The aims of the thesis are: (1) to follow the journey of the original exile edition from Italy to communist Czechoslovakia, (2) to clarify how both translators contributed to the poetry part of the novel, (3) to outline Zábrana's translation method a comparison of chosen typewritten versions of the translation from various phases of its creation. The primary source of material for all the individual objectives is Zábrana's inheritance, which answers the question why Jiří Kovtun's name does not appear in the first Czech edition of Doctor Zhivago (1990), although he is listed along with Zábrana as the translator of the poetry part in the remaining three editions (2003, 2005, 2011). The original material from the inheritance as well as Marie Zábranová's testimony emphasize the sequence of events that influenced the creation of Zábrana's translation. The final analysis compares chosen typewritten versions of the novel's eighth chapter with the first Czech edition and describes how Zábrana worked. The thesis aims to be beneficial for the Czech history of translation and contribute to the current knowledge about the translation method of Jan Zábrana. Keywords Jan...

Instagram, as one of today’s largest social media platforms, plays a significant part in the maintaining and reproducing of existing stereotypes and role expectations for women. The purpose of the thesis is to study how Instagram interprets violations against its guidelines, and whether decisions to remove certain pictures from the platform are in line with terms of use, or part of human subjectivity. The noticeable pattern among the removed pictures is that they are often norm-breaking. The thesis discusses communication within Instagram to reveal how and why some pictures are removed while others are not, which limits women’s possibilities to express themselves in non-conventional settings. The study applies semiotics to analyse 12 pictures that were banned from the platform without directly violating its guidelines. Role theory and norms are used to supplement semiotics and shed light on the underlying societal structures of female disadvantage. Two major conclusions are presented: 1) Instagram has unclearly communicated its guidelines to women’s disadvantage, and 2) Instagram has therefore been subjective in the decisions to have the pictures removed from the platform, also to women’s disadvantage. Further, the discussion focuses on how Instagram handles issues related to (1) female sexuality, (2) women stereotyping, and (3) female self-representation.