This study investigate how the players' virtual community citizenship behavior were influence by online social identity and impression management of online game discussion forum. A questionnaire was designed for the online survey that resulted in a total of 692 valid responses. The results suggested that the player were more spontaneous involved in organizational citizenship behavior when they had higher identity on discussion forum. The player had more positive action in organizational citizenship behavior when they had higher attention on self impression management. This research is different from those past gaming community researches focus on the user's addiction and motivation, and give suggestions for future research.

Self-advocates and professionals in the field agree on the critical importance of providing self-advocacy and leadership training to youth with disabilities. Youth Leadership Forum (YLF) programs have been developed and implemented nationwide to provide a training venue for youth with disabilities to gain self-advocacy and leadership skills. The problem is the lack of empirical evidence validating the effectiveness of self-advocacy training provided through the YLF training format. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of the Texas Statewide Youth Leadership Forum (TXYLF) summer training event on the self-advocacy abilities of high school students with disabilities, and to examine the interaction effect of disability type and gender on the improvement of self-advocacy abilities. To accomplish this purpose, a Non-Equivalent Groups Design (NEGD) was selected and used. The target population for this study was high school youth with disabilities in the state of Texas. The final sample included 68 youth. The TXYLF Pre/Post Questionnaire was the instrument used to measure the participants? self-advocacy abilities. The pretest was administered the week prior to the training event. The posttest was administered to the treatment group immediately following the training event and to the control group in the two weeks following the training event. Descriptive and inferential analyses were conducted to answer the primary and the exploratory questions. The inferential analyses included an ANCOVA and two factorial ANOVAS. Results indicated that the training had a positive effect on the selfadvocacy abilities of the participants. The results of the ANOVAs indicated (a) type of disability did not interact with treatment to affect the self-advocacy abilities of these participants, and (b) gender did not interact with treatment to affect the self-advocacy abilities of these participants. A descriptive and inferential post hoc examination of the treatment group data yielded an interaction by treatment effect for disability type indicating the treatment was more effective for participants with Developmental Disabilities. Future research studies should focus on replication of the current study results and examination of the long term effects of the self-advocacy training for youth with disabilities. In designing these studies, group designs should be considered and used.

U.S. led Western Democracies have imposed comprehensive sanctions on the PRC government by ceasing high-level exchanges politically and canceling bilateral cooperative agreements economically in response to the PRC¡¦s 1989 crackdown on Tiananmen Square demonstrators. At that time, former paramount leader Deng Xiaoping brought up a ¡§24 character¡¨ strategy for China¡¦s foreign and security policy: ¡§observe calmly; secure our position; cope with affairs calmly; hide our capacities and bide our time; be good at maintaining a low profile; and never claim leadership.¡¨ PRC did not gradually disengage from the U.S. led isolation until the U.S. government resumed high-level exchanges in 1993. The end of the Cold War meant that China was the major beneficiary of greatly reduced superpower penetration, and this strengthened the interregional dynamics of the Northeast and Southeast Asia. After PRC disengaged from diplomatic isolation made by U.S. - led Western Democracies and began to have the power to influence regional security affairs, a China-centered East Asian regional security complex was born. From lack of confidence in constructing in East Asian regional security complex in the mid 1990s, China became active and could rule the RSC after late 1990s. The goal of PRC¡¦s security strategy is to form an anti-U.S.-led East Asia military alliance to protect its national security interest. In the existing regional security complexes, the framework of ASEAN Regional Forum was separated into ¡§ASEAN-China Strategic Partnership¡¨ and ¡§non ASEAN-China Strategic Partnership¡¨ camps in 2003. China established the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in 2001 and allowed one of the axis of evil states- Iran to participate in the Organization in 2005. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization will develop into an anti-U.S.-led military alliance under China¡¦s manipulation. In 2003, the U.S. government urged China to play a responsible stakeholder role in the Six-Party Talks instead of being a draft- making secretary. The PRC¡¦s participation in constructing East Asia regional security complexes is analogous to a state that clothed neo-realism but harangued regional security interdependence. On the one hand it reprehends the U.S. East Asia military alliance as an out-of-date cold war thinking. On the other hand, PRC¡¦s military expenditure from 1996 to 2006 shows an annual growth of more than 10 percent. The mutual security in East Asian regional security complexes are still being constructed. China participates in The Six-Party Talks and ASEAN Regional Forum while sometimes it will depend on particular circumstances to make certain contributions, but rules the Shanghai Cooperation Organization with its full strength to keep it operate as China¡¦s political will. The aim of this thesis is to examine the changing characteristics of the regional security complexes in East Asia. The thesis focuses on the foreign policies and strategies of PRC¡¦s participation in those security complexes from mid 1990s. Finally, this thesis will to explore what will impact on the East Asian regional security complex when China participates in and try to construct it, and who will construct whom.

<p>The aim of our study has been to see how DIK-forum represents the occupational groups that are represented in the frames of the trade journal. We have, to find out the phenomenon, done a content analysis by looking into 18 numbers of DIK-forum from year 2006 and 2007. The 18 strategically chosen journals was enough to give us a statistic result that we later on could generalize over those two years of DIK-forum. Totally there were 818 articles, news items and vacant advertisements that made the central point of this study. By these materials have we studied the representation of the occupational groups to find out if there were any over- and/or under represented groups, and also if the publications of the material were directed to the students or to the occupational groups in these trade journals.</p><p>In our study the results shows that the trade journal DIK-forum does not represent all the occupational groups at the same level. There are two occupational groups that are over represented in DIK-forum, librarians and the professions of museum, while four occupational groups have an under representation. These under represented groups are handicraft, professions within tourism, language translators and editors. The occupational groups that have an even level of material amount are building antiquarian, culture intermediary, media and communication professions and archivist.</p><p>The result show’s that there is an obvious difference regarding the representation in DIK-forum’s material (articles and news items). While 93,2 percent of the material in DIK-forum was directed to the occupational groups only 6,8 percent of it was directed to the students.</p>

Online public fora based on social media facilitate social interaction and synchronous online discussion. Social-media-based public fora resemble real-life political talks, and induce a larger number of and a wider variety of participants than blogs or Usenet newsgroups. By investigating two online groups centered on political discussions on Twitter, this study explores how information and influence flow, how diverse the actual discourse is, and to what extent the online groups communicate with the government. Using network analysis and content analysis/co-word analysis, this study has the findings as follows: In terms of the structural qualities, online public fora are relatively inclusive, but are centralized on a few participants and do not have a statistically significant indication of being equitable in discussion. The two-step flow of communication operates along with the presence of opinion leaders who turn out to be influentials but not content creators. Interestingly, the flow of influence is likely to be less centralized than the flow of information, which implies the importance of the reliability of a given message rather than that of the author. In terms of the actual discourse, participants turn to like-minded fellow citizens’ remarks. Discourses are more emotional than cognitive and exhibits more anger than anxiety. Influential discourses are those with negative emotion more so than with positive emotion and those that are cognitive rather than emotional. Among cognitive components, assertive and strong discourses have greater social influence than analytical discourses. In terms of the interaction with the e-government outlet, the distance between public authorities and private citizens is continuously present despite the decline of temporal and physical distance via the Internet. Based on the results, this study suggests a reconsideration of the Habermasian public sphere in online public fora. It contributes to the literature by empirically confirming the presence of the two-step flow of communication in online public fora and testing the difference between the flow of information and the flow of influence. In addition, it broadens the realm of research on political communication by exploring not only sources/ideological perspectives but also emotional/cognitive aspects in discussions. Methodologically, structure/context, multi-level, and quantitative/qualitative analyses allow this study to have a comprehensive account of online public fora. Practically, this study proposes to improve the interactivity with citizens as the next stage of e-government development. / text

Bakgrunden till denna studie grundar sig i den statliga myndigheten Forum för levande historia och dess kampanj Brott mot mänskligheten under kommunistiska regimer. Syftet har varit att ta reda på hur det utbildningsmaterial som tagits fram förhåller sig till de styrdokument som styr den svenska historieundervisningen i grundskolan och gymnasieskolan samt några utvalda läromedel i historia. Även den politiska debatt som föranlett det mediala intresset för projektet har implementerats och behandlats i undersökningen. Arbetets teoretiska del grundar sig på olika typer av historiebruk och har applicerats på den empiriska delen där materialet har analyserats. Undersökningen visar att det material som Forum för levande historia har tagit fram kan kritiseras för att vara onyanserat men att det också tillför en annan dimension av de behandlade områdena. / The background to this thesis is the Public authority ‘Forum för levande historia’ and their campaign “Violation of human rights in Communist states”. The purpose was to investigate how the educational material distributed stand in relation to the nation curricula and education acts that are directing the history teaching in the compulsory- and the upper secondary school in Sweden, together with selected textbooks in history. The political debate that has created the media’s interest for the project has been implemented and reviewed in the study. The theoretical part has its basis in different types of historiography and has been applied on the empirical study where the material has been analysed. The study shows that the material supplied by ‘Forum för levande historia’ on one hand can be criticized as biased, at the same time it is bringing a new dimension to the studied areas.

Le Forum économique de Verdun est une concertation intersectorielle menée par une coalition d'acteurs locaux à Verdun. Il a été créé pour revitaliser le territoire de Verdun touché par les conséquences de la désindustrialisation de Montréal et par la crise économique des années 1980. C'est une étude de cas qui s'inscrit dans le cadre d'un projet de recherche plus vaste intitulé « Économie sociale et inclusion socioterritoriale », qui, sous la direction de Juan-Luis Klein, vise à étudier les effets structurants des initiatives locales de développement qui se sont appuyées sur les ressources de l'économie sociale à Montréal pour revitaliser ou reconvertir des territoires fragiles ou fragilisés suite aux conséquences de la crise des années 1980. L'analyse des effets structurants dans notre étude de cas s'est penchée sur un facteur important dans la réussite de ce type d'initiatives, à savoir le leadership (Klein et Champagne, 2011). Notre hypothèse de départ postule que plus la coalition qui soutient un leadership est large, plus celui-ci est capable de mettre en place une gouvernance plurielle et inclusive et plus le milieu devient créatif et réussit à contrer les tendances à l'appauvrissement de la collectivité. Or, nous montrerons que le leadership du FEV à Verdun, soutenu par l'élite locale traditionnelle, a opté pour une démarche de concertation institutionnelle pour mener la revitalisation du territoire. Tout en s'appuyant sur les ressources de l'économie sociale et montrant une grande capacité de mobilisation de ressources diverses et diversifiées, le FEV est demeuré incapable d'intégrer les acteurs du milieu communautaire comme partenaires de ladite concertation et n'a pu, de ce fait, mettre en place une gouvernance plurielle et inclusive. La démarche adoptée a privilégié l'observation participante et s'est basée sur la documentation et des entrevues semi-dirigées avec divers acteurs. L'analyse du cas du FEV a porté sur l'examen des différents aspects qui rentrent dans la légitimation et l'institutionnalisation du leadership pour expliquer les raisons qui ont limité la construction d'un leadership partagé. ______________________________________________________________________________ MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : Initiative locale, leadership, développement local, économie sociale, gouvernance locale, coalition, Verdun, Montréal.

The aim of this thesis is to evaluate how stakeholder participation should be implemented to improve societal acceptance for mega projects. Thereby societal acceptance is seen as a major contributor to project success in this context and involving society in decision-making and two-way dialogue is recognized as the most  effective to achieve this. Based on this research area, a theoretical framework was proposed for the mega project context including prerequisite, process and outcome criteria for stakeholder participation. In this sense, a critical realist ontology stance was assumed to develop the knowledge base and the research was carried out with a qualitative, deductive approach. The case of the coal-power plant “Datteln 4” project and its stakeholder participation forum were used as a unit of analysis for evaluating the proposed framework. From the case, data was collected from interviews with participants as well as forum documents and then analyzed using the template analysis. Based on this evidence, the proposed theoretical framework was adapted to a new case-based framework. The research had three objectives at the outset which were fulfilled in the discussion of the data findings. For the first of these, it was shown that the general link of stakeholder participation and societal acceptance is applicable to the mega project context. A second major finding was that the theoretical framework proposed in literature is relevant, however only to a certain extent. Contextual challenges pertaining to mega projects such as the nature of conflict, long duration and stakeholder positions, however, require more attention to these criteria. Lastly, the necessary further developments for the new case-based framework were discussed including that for mega projects underlying issues of transparency, expectations, power and atmosphere must constantly be considered in stakeholder participation. In conclusion, a stakeholder participation framework is presented that matches the context of mega projects and their need for societal acceptance. Therefore this thesis developed the theoretical knowledge on this underexplored area of project management, and for practitioners it offers criteria to consider during stakeholder participation in mega projects.

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Bakgrund: Nästan hälften av alla personer med kroniska ryggsmärtor anser att de inte får en tillräckligt god smärtlindring. Kronisk ryggsmärta definieras som smärta i ryggen vilken varar längre än den förväntade tiden för smärta efter operation eller som förekommer i mer än sex månader. Vanliga behandlingsmetoder för kroniska ryggsmärtor är smärtlindrande läkemedel, värme och/eller kylterapi och massage. I tidigare studier har personer med kroniska ryggsmärtor upplevt att de ses som gnälliga och missförstådda i mötet med vården där de har haft svårt att tala om alternativa smärtlindringsmetoder. Syfte: Att beskriva personers erfarenheter av att använda cannabis som smärtlindring vid kronisk ryggsmärta. Metod: Kvalitativ innehållsanalys av inlägg i diskussionsforum på internet. Resultat: Analysen resulterade i fyra kategorier: Smärtlindring med subkategorin Sidoeffekter/Bieffekter, Jämförelse med andra läkemedel, Sociala aspekter och Vårdmötet. Slutsats: Personer med kroniska ryggsmärtor är en notoriskt svårbehandlad patientgrupp. Cannabis har i denna studie visat sig ge god smärtlindring för vissa personer och vidare även lindrat illamående och sömnsvårigheter. Klinisk betydelse: Denna studie avser att öka kunskapen om personer med kroniska ryggsmärtor och deras erfarenheter av cannabis som smärtlindrande läkemedel. Förhoppningsvis leder resultatet till att förståelsen från sjuksköterskor ökar gentemot dessa personer och deras lidande och på så sätt förbättrar omvårdnaden i vårdmötet. / Background: Almost half of all people with chronic backpain argues that they receive insufficient pain relief. Chronic backpain is defined as pain that persists longer than expected after surgery or pain that remains after six months. Common treatments for chronic backpains are painkillers, massage, heat and/or cold therapy. People with chronic backpain feel they are winy and misunderstood in health care encounters and have problems talking about alternative ways of pain relief. Purpose: To describe peoples experiences of cannabis use for chronic backpains. Method: Qualitative content analysis of posts in discussion forums on internet. Results: Four categories emerged from analyzing the data: Pain relief with the subcategory side effects, comparison with other drugs, social aspects and health care encounters. Conclusion: People with chronic backpain is a notorious difficult patient group to treat. Cannabis has in this study shown to give some people sufficient pain relief and even helped with nausea and sleep problems. Clinical importance: This study aims at increasing knowledge about people with chronic backpain and their experiences of cannabis use as a pain killer. Hopefully the results of this study leads to increasing nurses’ understanding towards this group of people and their suffering, doing this will increase caring in healthcare encounters.