This study applies qualitative methodology to the study of sociopolitical development (SPD) among community and labor organizers of color. Participant data (open-ended applications) were obtained from a long-standing training institution, span 18 years (n=200), and equally represent Black, Latino/a, and Asian individuals. This study sought to reveal important dimensions of SPD and to identify contributing life experiences. Three SPD themes emerged: (1) social analysis, (2) commitment, and (3) empowerment. An organizer thus exhibits multidimensional insight into social injustice, commitment to taking action, and genuine belief in his/her individual and collective abilities. Four experiential domains contributed to participants’ SPD: (a) family, (b) social identity, (c) social injustice and (d) sociopolitical work. Each theme and domain is described in a multidimensional way. The relationships between life experiences and SPD themes are furthermore examined, and located within existing psychological research. Finally, implications of these findings for practitioners are discussed.

Consulting with the public on planning issues has become an endeavour formalized throughout Western democracies over the past half-century. However, there remains a dichotomy between the legislative minimums for this part of the planning process and the extraordinary efforts of some municipalities. Inefficiencies emerge as attempts are made by many municipalities to implement the contributions received, exposing the potentially different objectives held by each of the major consultation players. Academics suggest that the rationale for consultation appears to have advanced to the point where its value is beyond question, but that the means and frequency for its conduct are not. The literature on the subject is further split between that which focuses on the process of consultation and that which centres on its outcomes. Correspondingly, the fairness of consultation exercises can be viewed from the procedural and distributive points of view. To date, academic study in this field has largely been conducted along qualitative lines. Using a combination of questionnaires, interviews and a focus group to triangulate data received from the major players, an answer was sought to the hypothesis that consultation players possess distinct objectives for this planning exercise. The results indicated that planners and the public do subscribe to separate views for the purpose of consultation, which bias their paradigms of the other parties. Isolating other factors regarding each of these cohort groups further suggested that time, geography, and education often limit the participation of citizens, while planners feel constrained by time, apathy among participants, the political processes and certain fiscal realities. Therefore, changes to planning legislation are recommended that would indirectly reduce the burden for each of the major players by conducting anticipatory consultation. Such measures would reverse the onus of participating while requiring a lesser investment of staff and resources from municipalities. Future research would test the validity of this approach and engage political figures as the final cohort in the triangle of planning participation.

Abstract This thesis focuses on integrating multipurpose public displays with online social networking services. Modern public displays are capable of much more than the early digital billboards used for promoting brand awareness in urban areas. Currently, smaller, interactive displays are proliferating and starting to offer a variety of services for their users. A network of such displays is located in the northern City of Oulu, Finland, for example, where it is used by the general public. As such, it forms a realistic test bed for studying novel public display services in an authentic urban setting. This thesis examines how to leverage online social networking services in creating services for interactive public displays. A key difference to most related research is that the displays simultaneously offer multiple services to their users. The thesis first provides general purpose software components, which together allow creating services that take advantage of online social networking services. These include a distributed user interface framework, a login mechanism for displays that relies on the developed framework, and a social networking service API for public displays, relying on the login mechanism. Then, the thesis presents a number of prototype services that use the developed components. The services are discussed in the contexts of user generated content, public displays for enabling communication between users, and the role of smart phones in enabling these services. The key findings of this thesis illustrate how consuming and producing user generated content directly on public displays provide compelling use cases. Also, while leveraging online social networking services can be useful in supporting casual communication between users, the anonymity of public display users is likely to cause problems in official communications. Mobile phones are found as suitable for enabling the integration of social networking services and public displays by de-anonymizing the users. However, we are still far from a situation in which mobile phones are a natural part of the interface between humans and public displays, and more research and development towards this vision are needed. / Tiivistelmä Tämä väitöskirja keskittyy monikäyttöisten julkisten näyttöjen ja yhteisöpalvelujen yhdistämiseen. Uudenaikaiset julkiset näytöt kykenevät paljon muuhunkin kuin ensimmäiset suuret mainostaulut joilla mainostettiin suuria tavaramerkkejä. Pienemmät, interaktiiviset näytöt yleistyvät ja alkavat tarjoamaan uudenlaisia palveluita. Yksi verkko tällaisia näyttöjä sijaitsee Oulussa, Suomessa, missä se on yhteisön käytössä. Se muodostaa aidon ja totuudenmukaisen testialustan julkisten näyttöjen palveluille aidossa kaupunkiympäristössä. Tämä väitöskirja tutkii Internetin yhteisöpalveluiden käyttämistä interaktiivisten julkisten näyttöjen palveluiden luomisessa. Yksi työn tärkeimmistä eroista olemassaolevaan kirjallisuuten on se, että käytetyt näytöt tarjoavat yhtäaikaa useita palveluita. Väitöskirja esittelee ensin yleiskäyttöisiä ohjelmistokomponentteja, joiden avulla voidaan luoda näytöille palveluita, jotka käyttävät hyväkseen Internetin yhteisöpalveluita. Nämä ovat hajautettu käyttöliittymäratkaisu, sisäänkirjautumismekanismi, mikä rakentuu kehitetyn käyttöliittymäratkaisun varaan sekä yhteisöpalvelurajapinta, mikä taas rakentuu sisäänkirjautumismekanismin varaan. Seuraavaksi väitöskirja esittelee prototyyppipalveluita, mitkä rakentuvat mainittujen komponenttien varaan. Nämä palvelut analysoidaan eri viitekehyksissä: käyttäjien luoma sisältö, julkisten näyttöjen mahdollistama kommunikaatio eri käyttäjien välillä sekä älypuhelinten rooli näiden palveluiden luomisessa. Väitöskirjan löydökset havainnollistavat, kuinka käyttäjien luoma sisältö sekä sen tuottaminen suoraan julkisella näytöllä ovat mieleisiä käyttötapoja. Lisäksi, vaikka yhteisöpalvelujen hyödyntäminen julkisilla näytöillä voikin tukea arkipäiväistä kommunikaatiota käyttäjien välillä, käytön anonymiteetti voi kuitenkin aiheuttaa ongelmia virallisemmassa kommunikaatiossa. Matkapuhelimet todetaan sopiviksi yhteisöpalvelujen ja julkisten näyttöjen yhdistämisessä etenkin käyttäjien tunnistamistuen vuoksi. Olemme kuitenkin vielä kaukana tilanteesta, missä matkapuhelimet ovat osa luonnollista käyttöliittymää ihmisten ja julkisten näyttöjen välillä, ja lisää tutkimusta on tehtävä tämän vision suuntaan.

Magister Curationis / Domestic violence is a pervasive problem in South Africa. The School of Nursing at the University of Western Cape has responded to the challenge of training sensitive, knowledgeable and skilled health personnel by developing a Management of Gender- Based Violence Module. The purpose of this study is to describe the professional and personal development of nursing students who were placed at the Saartjie Baartman Centre for Abused Women and Children for the service-learning trial run of this Gender- Based Violence module in 2003. A qualitative, contextual, and descriptive design was therefore used to provide rich information from in-depth descriptions of students’ perceptions and experiences with regard to the service-learning module. Purposive, convenient sampling was used because the key informants, 27 female students involved in the trial run of the module, were selected to “illuminate" the research question. Content analysis was done and to ensure credibility, data triangulation was done using focus group, project reports and the students’ journals. Informed consent to use data from the previously mentioned sources was obtained from students. The overall findings indicate that the service-learning programme allowed students to achieve the goals defined by the community, services and the university. Students came to understand the supportive roles that health professionals can play and recognised that the development of the attributes of caring, advocacy and civic ngagement is essential to their professional development. Comments in their reflective journals revealed that students valued their service-learning experience, and believed that this experience would expand into future collaborative relationships within civil society. The recommendation is that further in depth research be conducted given the promise shown by this educational approach. / South Africa

In prior research focusing on teaching and learning science, a definitive trend toward a new approach for undergraduate non-major science courses has emerged. Instruction should be refocused from information-transfer to giving students experiences that allow them to explore and engage in their new knowledge and find ways to integrate it into their everyday lives. One technique is to focus class material on real issues of interest and relevance. Course development that allows for civic engagement and self discovery connects learning to the lives of students and their communities. This study used a quasi-experimental design to see if students who engaged in their learning had improved learning gains, increased motivation, and ability to relate it to their lives. The results showed that students were more motivated to connect the subject to their lives when they engaged through civic engagement projects. Techniques used in this research can be used in the future to develop science courses that focus on the needs of 21st century learners.

The expression “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” is a core summary of the established knowledge about social capital (Woolcock & Narayan, 2000, s.225).   Since social capital has been shown to provide benefits for both the individual and community, this study aims to examine how young people in Sweden relate to friendships and civic engagement. The study is carried out through quantitative analyses of a survey from 2014, that was published in the book "Unga och religion: Troende, ointresserade eller neutrala" (Klingenberg & Lövheim, 2019, s.203-213). Groups of young people are divided first based on how they describe their upbringing conditions from a social perspective, second based on the young people's approach to religion and religiosity. Furthermore, the study examines possible connections between the respondents’ social background, friendship, social commitment, and non-profit involvement. The theoretical concepts of social capital and religious capital will be described, and then used in order to shed light on the connections that are discovered. The aim of the study is to nuance the knowledge about young people's community involvement and the connections that can be defined with the help of the concepts of social capital and religious capital.   In the results of this study, social capital is revealed in the relationships between young people’s friendships and their descriptions of upbringing conditions from a social perspective. Religious capital is revealed in the relationships between personal approach to religion and non-profit work, as well as between religious commitment and non-profit work. At the same time, there were no statistical connections either between social capital and non-profit work, or between religious capital and developed friendships, which was unexpected based on previous research and is a possible subject for further studies.

This study analyzes the relationship between motivation for civic engagement, migration experience, and identity, in first generation migrants. It draws upon the idea that civic engagement is beneficial for democratic societies in general, and that it can also be a source of great support for migrants in the process of integration into a new environment. So far, very little attention has been paid to the civic engagement of migrants in the Czech Republic, especially from the point of view of migrants themselves. This qualitative study aims towards a better understanding of the connections between migration and civic engagement. Personal histories of civic engagement of active migrants are analyzed, with an emphasis placed on the roles migration experience and ethnic/national identity shifts play in the process of civic engagement.

The goal of the presented thesis is to understand how parliaments of children and youth influence past members 'civic engagement after they leave the parliament's structure. The topic is seen by the actors. The theoretical part is focused on the concept of civic engagement, especially on youth participation. The Czech legislative frame is also mentioned. The biographical design was chosen for the methodology of the research. As a method of data collecting I collected 10 deep interviews with formal members who took part in parliaments of children and youth in the same time. The research revealed that the participation in parliaments of children and youth influences not only the civic engagement of formal members but also choosing the branch of study, its own studying at university, gaining job and the life path in general. At the same time the study presents the fields of contribution of participation in the structure of parliaments of children and youth for formal members. These fields are important for various branches of life.

Russian-speaking immigrant`s community in the Czech Republic is quite extensive and quite closed. A large proportion of this group includes university students whose civic engagement is an excellent indicator for assessing the level of integration into Czech society. The aim of this thesis is to find out how the young Russian-speaking immigrants participate in civil society in Prague and what potential obstacles to participation they have already had or may have. In addition, the large role is played by personal background and motivation of migrants. The history of the Russian migration in Czechoslovakia, integration theory and the theory of civic engagement are included in theoretical background. Design of the thesis is a qualitative research.

This thesis focuses on communication of strategic planning of municipalities in the Czech Republic. Communication is viewed from the position of the authors of media messages. The author demonstrates firstly the importance of the level of information awareness as a prerequisite for citizens' participation in formulating public policies and places the issue of participation in the concept of governance. On the basis of media analysis the data from 1996 to 2014 and five main criteria, from which relies for further data interpretation in connection with the strategic plans of cities and municipalities, author identifies major trends in communicating the topic in the media. The main question for this thesis is: What is the experience with communication of strategic plans of municipalities and cities of the Czech Republic in the media? This question evokes another sub- questions, which in the context of media analysis will need to be answered. How are the strategic plans called in the media? How are they explained to the public? What other techniques of explanation of complex planning process can we engage? The author focuses on recent publications by the World Bank and shares experience with participation from around the World. These methods author presents to further research in the field of...