Sammanfattning Syftet med det här examensarbetet är att undersöka hur högstadieelever uppfattar teknikämnets användbarhet. Utgångspunkten är vad Skolinspektionen (2014) påpekade i sin granskning av ämnet teknik när det gäller att erbjuda teknikundervisning som grundskoleelever upplever som relevant. Fokusområden har varit elevernas syn på teknikämnets relevans för deras vardagsliv. Metoden för studien är en kvalitativ undersökning som bygger på semistrukturerade intervjuer med totalt åtta elever, varav 4 elever från årskurs 8 och 4 elever från årskurs 9. De här eleverna kommer från två skolor som ligger i en förort i Göteborg. Mina teoretiska utgångspunkter är vissa relevanta forskningsstudier och även två lärandeteorier; det sociokulturella perspektivet och pragmatismen. Resultatet från studien visar en variation i en liten skala mellan flickors och pojkars värdering av teknikämnets användbarhet. Undersökningen visar att alla intervjuade elever vill se samband mellan teknikundervisning i skolan och livet utanför. Med andra ord kan man säga att det är meningsfullt för eleverna att förstå i vilket sammanhang teknikuppgiften kan vara aktuell och fruktbar i relation till människa och samhälle. / Abstract The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how secondary pupils perceive the usefulness of the subject technology. The starting point is what the School inspection (2014) has pointed out in its review of the subject technology when it comes to offering technology teaching, which secondary school pupils perceive as relevant. The focus area has been the students´ view on the relevance of  subject technology för their everyday lives. The method of this study is a qualitative study based on semi-structured interviews with eight pupils, 4 pupils from class 8 and 4 pupils from class 9. Those pupils are from two suburban schools which are located in Gothenburg, Sweden. My theoretical points have been some relevant research and also two learning theories; the socio-cultural perspective and pragmatism. The results of the study show a variation in a small scale between girls´ and boys´ appreciation of the usefulness of technology. The survey shows that all the interviewed pupils want to see the connection between technology education in school and life outside. In other words, one can say that it is significant for the pupils to understand the context in which a technology task may be relevant and productive in relation to humans and society.

Miljöproblem kan ses som ett växande problem. Studien visar hur stor kunskapen är hos gemene man angående särskilda miljöproblem och dess risker. I denna studie tas problemet upp angående miljö- och hälsofarliga metaller som ansamlas i slammet hos svenska reningsverk. Metallerna kan ge allvarliga hälsoeffekter på människan och förekommer i en rad kända vardagliga produkter. Studien grundar sig i en enkätstudie med 200 deltagande respondenter och syftet är att mäta deras kunskapsläge. Respondenterna är indelade i en yngre och en äldre åldersgrupp. Skillnader och likheter har analyserats mellan de yngre och de äldre. Studien tar upp miljö- och hälsokonsekvenser för respektive metall samt dess förekomst i olika varor och produkter. Det allmänna kunskapsläget om miljöproblem och dess risker tas upp, samt om metaller kan renas i svenska reningsverk eller inte. En annan del av studien behandlar gemene mans tillförlitlighet till olika aktörer som har förmågan att sprida information om miljöproblem och dess risker. Respondenterna får även svara på vilka vägar av informationsspridning de själva föredrar.Enkätundersökningen är indelad i en kvantitativ och en kvalitativ del. Den kvantitativa delen har kommit fram till att den äldre åldersgruppen visar sig ha högre kunskapsnivå än den yngre åldersgruppen vad gäller de fyra olika metallerna rent allmänt. De har även större kunskap vad gäller metallernas hälsoeffekter och förekomst i varor och produkter. Den yngre åldersgruppen har dock bättre kunskap om miljöproblem och dess risker i allmänhet samt om metaller kan renas i reningsverk eller inte. I den kvalitativa delen undersöker vilka spridningsmetoder respondenterna föredrar samt vilka aktörer de känner störst tillförlitlighet till. Respondenterna föredrar att kunskap bör förmedlas genom bland annat skolväsendet och media. Tillförlitliga aktörer anses inom informationsspridning vara myndigheter, forskare och organisationer. / Environmental problems can be seen as a growing problem. The studie will show how big the knowledge of ordinary people in specific environmental problems and risks are. In this study the issues concerning environmental and health hazardous metals that accumulate in the sludge at the Swedish treatment plants are analysed. The metals may have serious health effects on humans and appear in a series known everyday products. The study is based on a survey with 200 participating respondents and the purpose is to measure their knowledge. The respondents are divided into a younger and an older age group. Similarities and differences have been analysed between the younger and the older ones. The study addresses the environmental and health impacts of each metal, and its incidence in different goods and products. The general state of knowledge about the environmental problems and risks will be addressed, as well as if metals can be purified in Swedish sewage or not. Another part of the study deals with the common man's reliability to the different actors who have the ability to disseminate information about environmental problems and risks. The respondents have also answer what routes of dissemination of information they prefer.The survey is divided into a quantitative and a qualitative part. The quantitative part has come to the conclusion that the older age group have a higher level of knowledge than the younger age group in terms of the four metals in general. They also have greater knowledge regarding the metals health effects and occurrence of goods and products. The younger age group has a better understanding of environmental problems and risks in general and about if metals can be purified in wastewater treatment or not. In the qualitative part the study examines the methods of dissemination respondents prefer and which actor they feel the greatest reliability to. Respondents prefer that knowledge should be conveyed by including the school system and the media. Reliable traders considered in the dissemination of information to be authorities, researchers and organizations.

本研究關注「手機使用」與「青少女日常生活脈絡」交互作用之下，編織出的文化意義，企圖理解手機這項媒體科技，如何嵌入青少女受制的文化結構裡，甚至成為無形的武器，被青少女挪用來與成人所建立的結構抗衡。 本研究首先探索青少女在日常生活中使用、挪用、與棄用手機的方式，並收集青少女手機內外的各種文本，進一步探究這些實踐與文本背後的動機與對青少女的意義，以找尋青少女在成人制定的結構中所處的位置。再以Lefebvre與de Certeau的日常生活理論，探討青少女藉由手機使用，展現出的能動性與抵抗結構的意涵。 本研究採質化研究取向，使用深度訪談法，並現場記錄蒐集青少女手機實踐的相關實物文本，最後輔以受訪者的一週手機使用日誌，將此三類資料交互分析論證。 研究發現，手機一方面型塑青少女日常生活在結構中循環的秩序與過程，另一方面卻也成為青少女與結構相抗衡、擾動秩序的資源。青少女藉由手機的集體使用，在分享與認同中形成與結構抗衡的基礎，並發展出在限制中游擊的戰術。此外，青少女也經由手機的使用，自行定義生命中的重要事件與場景，突破預先被結構設定的意義，讓詮釋、定義生活的權力，下放至青少女手中。 / Based on the theories about “everyday life” suggested by Lefebvre and de Certeau, this study aims at explicating how teenage girls appropriate mobile phones to overcome the limitations in their everyday lives. Rather than disrupting the norms, teenage girls establish the full-time intimate community with their peer group by mobile practice to form a concealed, local “tactic” to undermine the adult-controlled structures that govern their lives. For teenage girls, the characteristics of mobile phones and mobile communication are not inherent in the device, but are determined by social and cultural context and power relations in everyday life.

Déclenchée par une expérience personnelle – la recherche d’une « robe d’architecte » –, la présente étude gravite autour de l’architecture en Roumanie et se concentre sur le style de vie de ses professionnels. Si les modalités de distinction qui opèrent dans ce champ – encadrées par la théorie de Pierre Bourdieu – sont initialement apparues comme pistes à explorer, ce sont les écrits de Siegfried Kracauer qui m’ont permis de traiter le sujet de façon satisfaisante. En traçant les contours de l’image d’architecte qui, sur son chemin vers une meilleure vie, s’abandonne au souci de s’élever socialement, j’ai découvert avec étonnement les architectes réservés de T. – la ville moyenne de Transylvanie qui a constitué le terrain de mon enquête. Ce qui s’est présenté au début de ma démarche comme obstacle est devenu, au fil de l’analyse, son aspect le plus fécond : dans les hésitations des architectes de T. (les ellipses et rectifications de leur discours), j’ai pu discerner plus de traits de leur réalité quotidienne que je l’avais d’abord anticipé. Grâce aux leçons de Siegfried Kracauer – son œil attentif, son intérêt pour les détails, ses capacités d’étonnement tout comme sa sensibilité aux idéologies et grandes directions de la société et son ouverture aux matériaux offerts à la sociologie – et à son style d’écriture, j’ai pu déceler des indices qui m’ont permis de plonger dans la réalité des architectes de T., une réalité mêlée d’une gloire rêvée et d’incertitudes vécues. C’est cette exploration minutieuse du quotidien et du discours des architectes de T, mis en balance avec leur représentation dans des œuvres littéraires et cinématographiques, qui se reflète dans le présent mémoire et le structure. / Triggered by a personal experience – the search for an “architect’s dress” – the present study revolves around architecture in Romania and focuses on the lifestyle of its professionals. If the modes of distinction operating in this field – formulated in Pierre Bourdieu’s theory – initially appeared as a path to be explored, it is the writings of Siegfried Kracauer that allowed me to capture the subject more aptly. By drawing the contours of the image of an architect who, on his way to a better life, abandons himself to the thirst to raise socially, I discovered the reserved architects of T. – the average-sized city of Transylvania, which was at the heart of my investigation. What emerged at the beginning of the process as an obstacle, soon became its most fruitful aspect: in the architects’ hesitations (the gaps and rectifications in their discourse), I could discern more aspects of their daily reality that I had initially anticipated. Thanks to Siegfried Kracauer’s lessons – his keen eye, his interest in details, his capacities of astonishment as well as his sensitivity to the ideologies and major directions of society and his openness to the various materials offered to sociology – as well as his style of writing, I was able to detect clues, which allowed me to plunge into the reality of architects in T., a reality combining dreams of glory and experienced uncertainties. It is this meticulous exploration of the everyday life and discourse of architects in T, weighed against their representation in literary and cinematographic works, which is reflected in the present memoire and lends it its structure.

Die Prozesse der stetigen, interaktiven und lokalen Herstellung der Alltagswirklichkeit zu untersuchen, ist das Anliegen der Ethnomethodologie, die dem interpretativen Paradigma der Soziologie zugerechnet wird. Ihre leitende Frage lautet: Welcher Praktiken bedienen sich Gesellschaftsmitglieder, um die geordnete Struktur ihrer Alltagswelt interaktiv hervorzubringen? Geschlecht wird entsprechend als ein interaktiv hergestelltes Merkmal sozialer Ordnung begriffen.

This dissertation is a collection of five essays examining different aspects of consumer and firm behavior in dynamic markets. The first essay combines clickstreams of users at a major news website with Facebook activity data, to study if social networks complement or compete for online browsing time. This is the first empirical study to show that Facebook activity increases time spent on news sites. Online news consumption is a shared experience, as the activity of social network friends strongly influences the behavior of other network members. We also find that visitors’ own browsing patterns are important predictors of online content consumption. The second essay examines consumer attitudes to risk and uncertainty vis-a-vis their purchase and search decisions for air tickets online. Using a two-stage model of purchase incidence and carrier choice, we find that browsing experience, search costs and product characteristics are important predictors of purchase incidence. Implications for website managers are also discussed. The third essay provides insights on the impact of customer heterogeneity and preference stochasticity on behavior based price discrimination. While customer heterogeneity intensifies competition, resulting in greater price discrimination, preference stochasticity reduces the incidence of price discrimination. Overall, the effect of preference stochasticity is more salient. The fourth essay presents models of strategic interaction to analyze the impact of dominance and concentration on pricing strategies. We show that lack of market dominance is a sufficient condition for discounts to existing customers. We further test our predictions via an experiment with pricing professionals. The behavior of professionals confirms that price discrimination increases with market dominance and concentration; however, lack of dominance is not a sufficient condition for loyalty discounts. We contend that increasing competition is a more effective means of improving consumer welfare compared to regulating dominant firms. The fifth essay considers the role of identity and customer type recognition in influencing pricing behavior in dynamic markets with symmetric and asymmetric players. When customer identity is detectable firms charge higher prices to repeat customers while new customers are offered lower prices. However, pricing behavior changes when information on customer type is available and this behavior varies with market structure. Age, education and experience of managers are also found to significantly influence pricing behavior.

The question of how the Internet affects existing geo-cultural or geo-linguistic communities in relation to nation-states has continued to receive attention among academics and policymakers alike. Language-based technologies and services that aggregate, index, and distribute materials online may reshape pre-existing boundaries of the relationship between users and content, for instance with different language versions of user-generated encyclopaedias or different local versions of search engines. By comparing two major Chinese online encyclopaedias, Baidu Baike and Chinese Wikipedia, this thesis investigates whether the Internet overcomes, shifts, or reinforces boundaries among Chinese language users. The Chinese language provides an excellent case for examining the boundary question. While the Internet can potentially connect the largest number of native speakers around the world, the majority (i.e. those from mainland China) face an Internet censorship and filtering regime that may limit this very potential. Modern Chinese history has also complicated the cultural-political boundaries among the regions of mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. This thesis compares the conditions and outcomes of their respective editorial processes, content features, and users’ reception. Multiple findings emerge from a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, including content analysis, webometrics, and search engine result visibility tests. These methods show that boundaries are drawn in the process of creating, linking, and searching content on the Chinese Internet. Their geolinguistic extent differs, a phenomenon that reflects the cultural-political division between mainland China and the rest of Chinese-speaking world. Both the findings and methods of the thesis have important implications for research and policy for understanding the globalizing regionalization and nationalization effects of the Internet.

The prevailing discourse of “resistance vs. acceptance” in IT implementation research mostly personalizes the issue as “users” versus IT implementers (e.g., managers, CIOs, CMIOs, etc.). This kind of discourse has created an IT-implementer-centric attitude among IS scholars and practitioners. The IT-implementer-centric attitude, while embraces “acceptance” as a desirable reaction almost unconditionally, frequently holds for minimizing or more conservatively suppressing “resistance” to IT implementation. In other words, the mainstream IT implementation research, almost completely, treats “users” as passive recipients whose choices, as they face pre-developed/pre-designed/pre-rolled-out technology being implemented, can only be defined on a spectrum from “acceptance” to “resistance.” The current research study, however, offers an alternative perspective that views the “resistance vs. acceptance” duality “from the other side,” i.e., from the perspective of the supposed “resistors” or “acceptors” themselves. Through a review of the literature, this study first identifies major drawbacks of the extant theories and models of IT implementation research. Next, drawing on an interpretive paradigm of research (more specifically, phenomenological sociology), this study investigates a real world case of healthcare IT implementation. The results of the aforementioned literature review and case investigation subsequently form the basis for the study’s proposed theoretical account, which provides an unprecedented understanding and explanation of how actors representing different stakeholder groups, among which people who are routinely called “users” are but one group, experience IT implementation as they live their everyday lives. The proposed theoretical account is lastly used as a guide for crafting both practical and research prescriptions with respect to managing IT-involved change occasions.

Internet évolue avec la société et les nouvelles technologies, mais ses usages restent centrés sur le principe communicationnel de partager ses idées, ses histoires avec d’autres personnes. Comprendre les modes de communication des internautes offre des défis de taille aux chercheurs. Malgré une riche littérature sur les usages d’Internet, peu d’études se sont penchées sur l’analyse en profondeur des habitudes des internautes ordinaires. Cette thèse a pour objet d’étude le partage de contenus en ligne, car il s’agit d’une pratique permettant de réfléchir sur le rapport des usagers à la technologie. En m’inspirant des travaux d’Henri Lefebvre et de Michel de Certeau, je mobilise le concept de la vie quotidienne, concept qui met en lumière les processus à travers laquelle les gens font sens de leur vie. Afin de mieux saisir le quotidien, lequel est mobile, fluide et multiple, des métaphores spatiales tirées d’études des sciences, technologies et société (STS) seront mobilisées. Les concepts d’espace fluide et de feu sont idéaux pour étudier les pratiques de partage de vidéo que l’on peut qualifier de mutables et adaptables. Dans cette thèse, l’accent est mis sur les expériences subjectives des internautes ; ainsi, j’ai adopté une méthodologie qualitative pour recueillir les témoignages d’une dizaine de participants décrivant longuement leurs pratiques. En effet, j’ai rencontré chaque personne à plusieurs reprises et nous avons discuté d’exemples spécifiques. À travers les thèmes récurrents qui ont émergé des verbatims, et dans la tradition de la théorisation ancrée, la première partie de l’analyse fournit une riche description du quotidien des participants. J’explore en particulier la façon dont les internautes adaptent leur partage sur leurs expériences des sites de réseaux sociaux, comment la vidéo est utilisée dans le maintien de leurs relations sociales, et comment le partage des vidéos complémente leurs conversations. Sachant que les pratiques en ligne et hors ligne se fondent l’une dans l’autre, la deuxième partie de l’analyse articule la complexité de la vie quotidienne et la fluidité des pratiques de partage à l’aide du concept de l’objet fluide pour traiter des aspects complexes, dynamiques et souples des pratiques des internautes ordinaires. Cette recherche qualitative fournit un portrait de l’expérience humaine qui est autant détaillé que possible. Elle permet de souligner que c’est dans une variété contextes non remarquables – car faisant partie intégrante de la vie quotidienne – que les Internautes naviguent et que les activités humaines sont sans cesse construites et transformées, ouvrant des possibilités vers de nouvelles façons de faire et de penser. La thèse poursuit un dialogue interdisciplinaire entre la communication (les Internet Studies notamment) et les études des sciences, technologies et société (STS), tout en apportant de nombreuses données empiriques sur les pratiques des internautes « ordinaires ». De plus, la thèse offre des métaphores capables d’ouvrir de nouvelles perspectives pour l’analyse des usages du Web social. Elle apporte également une contribution originale en intégrant des approches théoriques des pratiques quotidiennes avec la théorisation ancrée. Tant les fondements conceptuels et des approches méthodologiques développées ici seront des exemples très utiles pour d’autres chercheurs intéressés à poursuivre la compréhension des pratiques quotidiennes impliquant l’Internet, surtout quand ces derniers impliquent le visuel, l’émotif et le relationnel. / The Internet evolves continually with society and the development of new technologies, but its uses remain centered on the communicative principle of connecting with others and sharing ideas, stories and information. Understanding the communication modes of the Internet offers a sizable challenge to researchers. Despite a rich literature on Internet usages, few studies offer in-depth analysis of the habits of ordinary users. This study specifically addresses the question of online content sharing, as a practice that enables reflection on users' relationships with technologies. Drawing inspiration from the work of Henri Lefebvre and Michel de Certeau, this dissertation mobilizes the notion of daily life (the quotidien), a concept that highlights the processes through which people make sense of their lives. In order to best apprehend daily experience that is mobile, fluid and multiple, I draw on spatial metaphors from science and technology studies. With their sensitivity to both social and material characteristics, fluid object and fire space concepts are well-suited for studying video-sharing practices that are highly mutable and adaptable. Since I emphasize subjective experiences, the research design involved a qualitative methodology. I met with ten participants three times each. During these meetings, they described their video sharing practices and told stories around using and sharing videos. Building on recurrent themes that emerge from transcriptions of various conversations, in the tradition of grounded theory, the first part of the analysis provides a rich description of everyday life and video sharing. In particular, I discuss how people regulate their sharing behavior on social networking sites, how they use video to maintaining their social relationships and how sharing videos complements their conversations. The second part of the analysis focuses on the complexity of everyday life, and draws attention to how one context flows almost imperceptibly into another, and how online and offline worlds intersect. Fluidity offers a metaphor to support the complex, dynamic and flexible aspects of ordinary users’ video sharing practices in a continually changing space. This qualitative approach produces a picture of the human experience that is rich and detailed, and allows us to highlight the different contexts in which the participants navigate their daily lives. It is in these often unremarkable contexts that human activities are constantly constructed and transformed, creating opportunities for new ways of doing and thinking. The dissertation engages in an interdisciplinary dialogue between communication (particularly Internet Studies) and science and technology studies (STS) in order to offer new perspectives for the analysis of uses of the social Web. It also makes an original contribution by integrating theoretical approaches to daily practices with grounded theory. The conceptual foundations and methodological approach developed here provide a useful guide for other researchers interested in pursuing the understanding of everyday practices involving the Internet, especially when these involve visual, emotional and relational elements.

The diploma thesis outlines the history of the small district town in the second half of the 19th century from a political (government, local government, modernization), economical (transport, especially railways, industrial development) and cultural (socials, social activities, theatre, festivities) point of view. Attention is paid to social, national and religious problems and education. Included are also some portraits of the most prominent personalities of the town. Special Attention is paid to Austro-Prussian war (conflict between Austria and Prussia) in 1866 and on the impact of this exceptional event on people and life in the town. The work is based on archival materials stored in State district archive in Mladá Boleslav and Mnichovo Hradiště Municipal museum, local chronicles, handwritten memories of the local citizens and contemporary regoinal newspapers were taken into account as well as historical works of a synthetic character.