Thesis (M.A.)--Ohio State University, 2008. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 83-90).

The aim of this study is to go into depth and analyze the concept of criminality (kriminalitet)and how it is constituted in Swedish parliamentary debates. During the election campaigns leading up to the 2022 election, a big part of the campaigns dealt with the growing criminality, which shows an increased interest in the issue. In April 2022, the "Easter riots"(påskkravallerna) took place, where a number of people for example threw stones at the police and other emergency vehicles personell. The study aims to investigate what the use ofthe term criminal in the parliamentary debates studied means, and what attributes are put to the term, based on statements made from politicians from three political parties in Sweden -Socialdemokraterna, Sverigedemokraterna and Moderaterna. Furthermore, the study aims to investigate whether the discourse in the parliamentary debates has undergone any changeafter the Easter riots, and if so, what type of change has taken place. The study also aims to find out whether a securitization of criminality has taken place. The first main contribution of this study is that discourses around the term mean that a large part of crime is due to immigration and segregation. The result shows no major change in the discourse after the Easter riots. The second main contribution of this study is that criminality has not become a security issue, but a speech act has been initiated by Sverigedemokraterna and Moderaterna

The present study explores how representations of an underclass in Sweden is being constructed and negotiated by a diversity of so-called spokesmen of an existing underclass in Sweden within the Swedish hiphop genre. In their song lyrics, they state to speak up for an underclass in Sweden. They are, a strategically selected Swedish hiphop collective, Kartellen, whose song lyrics constitutes the study’s empirical material. Through a qualitative approach, inspired by the discourse theorists Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe the analysis critically investigates and elucidates how the representation is being carried out and through their use of language. The empirical material has firstly been deconstructed and after that, analyzed within a discourse theoretical framework, consisting of postmarxist and poststructuralist influences. More specifically it aims to focus on statements regarding and constructing the prior group and representation of an underclass by exposing how it has been articulated and further represented. The study shows that there is a tendency to describe an underclass based on a leftist discourse consisting of a series of political manifestations. There are in addition, competing articulations concerning terms of alienation and nation present in the song lyrics. Moreover, descriptions of an underclass as a homogeneous group are given from their exclusive position of the social community, which neglects differentiations. This creates an ambiguous representation, reflecting on the arbitrariness of the use of language and therefore, exposes the risk of the representations’ fictive nature.

Title: How masculine is Donald Trump? – A comparative discourse analysis of how Donald Trumps masculinities are portrayed on The New York Times, The Guardian & Aftonbladets webpages The aim of this essay is to compare how Donald Trumps masculinities are portrayed in the news reporting by The New York Times, The Guardian and Aftonbladets webpages. The time period of the study capture Donald Trump before he was elected as president, after the election and then as the position as incumbent president to grasp one more dimension of his masculine identity throw different time periods and capture his subject position in the news reporting. The method that is used to examine this issue is Laclau and Mouffes discourse theory that work as a combination of discourse analysis as a method of analyzing the news text and locate different discourses. As well as in combination with theories about masculinities and previous studies about former presidents, macho culture and hegemonic masculinities. The result show Donald Trump with different masculine identities through both time and media channel. Donald Trump has first been seen as a masculine joke, a stunt like one of the Jackass-gang would pull in the TV-series. A man that is not afraid to take the challenge and run for president even if the odds are well against him, he represent a masculine crisis. Later on he take the form of a business man that hopefully will ”not” run USA like his worldwide affairs, fast and unpredictable. The latest chapter portray Donald Trump as a fearless president that do whatever he want in policy making and the media is afraid of what will happen to the world order. From a former identity of a ”business rockstar” that does what he wants with females and worldwide affairs to become one of the most fearsome manly leader of the western civilication. Alongside with the theory of masculinities Donald Trump try to defend the hegemonic masculinity of politics and business leders by playing on a possible ”mancard” like Ronald Reagan back in the 80 ́s, by reaching out to the industry workers that mostly are men and defending there chances of labour – when the society evolved form industrial to a more service economic society with women competing alongside men about workplace. The slogan ”America First” would rather be ”Masculinity First”, ”Make America Masculine Again” would be the text on the caps

Lärare, pedagoger, författare, forskare och myndigheter – i stort sett alla som har en yrkesmässig koppling till fritidshem – har olika tankar, idéer och tal om som formar och omformar diskurser gällande fritidshemmets didaktik. Fritidshemmet har numera ett skolnära uppdrag och ska komplettera skolan. Fritidshemmets pedagogiska verksamhet är dock något annat än skolans vilket även motiverar behovet av denna studie. En pedagogisk verksamhet som bidrar till att stimulera elevers lärande och utveckling av förmågor genom att ha fokus på deras intressen, behov, nyfikenhet och erfarenhet. Fritidshemmets unika verksamhet kan möjliggöra en större självständighet i såväl val av innehåll samt med andra medel och metoder än skolans generellt mer inrutade verksamhet. Syftet med studien är att ur ett diskursteoretiskt perspektiv undersöka hur diskursen gällande didaktik i fritidshem framställs i tolv lärosätens självvärderingar och Universitetskanslersämbetets tolv yttrande vid bedömning av kvaliteten på grundlärarutbildningar med inriktning mot arbete i fritidshem. Utifrån ett diskursteoretiskt perspektiv och en diskursanalytisk ansats studeras de diskursiva bilder som de olika institutionerna och myndigheten tilldelar begreppet didaktik i relation till undervisning i fritidshemmet och studenters blivande yrkesroll.Resultatet visar att det finns hegemoniska intentioner som riktas mot att förtydliga såväl didaktiken som den ämnesspecifika didaktiken i relation till fritidshemmets pedagogik. Examensmålet som uttalar att studenter specifikt ska visa förmåga att tillämpa sådan didaktik och ämnesdidaktik inklusive metodik som krävs för undervisning och lärande inom det fritidspedagogiska området och inom det eller de ämnen som utbildningen avser och för yrkesutövningen i övrigt blir en hegemonisk ekvivalenskedja i sig själv. Resultatet visar att begreppet didaktik beskrivs ur flera olika aspekter men vad som är fritidshemmets didaktik eller ämnesdidaktik redogörs inte mer än i ett fåtal antagonistiska exempel. Utifrån de analyserade texterna ger resultat ett den hegemoniska intentionen i att precisera didaktiken inte innebär att definiera begreppet utan snarare att beskriva på vilka sätt studenterna tillägnar sig denna didaktiska kompetens. / Teachers, educators, authors, researchers and authorities - virtually everyone who has a professional connection to School-Age Educare - have different thoughts, ideas and speeches that shape and reshape discourses regarding the didactics of the School-Age Educare. The School-Age Educare now has a school-based mission and will complement the school. The pedagogical activities are, however, something other than the school's needs, which also justifies the need for this study. An educational activity that helps to stimulate students' learning and development of abilities by focusing on their interests, needs, curiosity and experience. I believe that the School Age-Educare´s unique activities thus give children greater independence in both the choice of content and with other means and methods than the school's generally more structured activities do. The purpose of this study is to, from a discourse theoretical perspective, examine how the discourse regarding didactics in School-Age Educare is presented in twelve higher education institutions' self-evaluations and the University Chancellor's Office's twelve opinions when assessing the quality of primary teacher education with a focus on work in School-Age Educare. With a discourse theoretical approach, the discursive image that the various institutions and the authority give the concept of didactics in relation to teaching in School-Age Educare and students' future professional role is studied.The results show that there are hegemonic intentions aimed to clarify both the didactics and the subject-specific didactics in relation to the School-Age Educare pedagogy. The degree objective, which states that students must specifically demonstrate the ability to apply such didactics and subject didactics, including methodology required for teaching and learning in the School-Age Educare area and in the subject or subjects to which the education relates and for professional practice in general, becomes in itself a hegemonic chain of equivalence. The results show that the concept of didactics is described from several different aspects, but what the didactics of the School-Age Educare or subject didactics are, is not reported more than in a few antagonistic examples. The hegemonic intention of the University Chancellor's Office as an authority in specifying didactics does not mean defining the concept but rather describing the ways in which students acquire this didactic competence.

Title: What is a refugee, crisis & disaster? A comparative discourse analyses of SVT:s and Avpixlats reporting about refugees. The war in Syria, refugees and ISIS have been on the news agenda for a while. The perspective have been shifting throw different happenings about refugees, crisis, disaster and terrorism on one side. On the other side is what kind of newsagent that is reporting and there standing in society. Public service like SVT have there place on how to inform the public about different events around the world and then you have smaller news-agents thats growing in readers like Avpixlat who call themselves alternative journalism. They have less rules and regulations to follow in there news reporting and can therefor frame and angle information in a more free way. The purpose in this study is to compare how the image of refugees are created by reports from SVT and Avpixlat and how it relates to xenophobia of different kinds. The method that is used is discourse analysis and more precise Chantal Laclau och Ernesto Mouffes discourse theory. The specifik theories for the framework are ”orientalism", ”whiteness”, ”islamofobia”, ”myths”, earlier studies whit the theory of ”communitarian figures” and statistik misrepresentation of muslims as terrorists in news channels. Two different discourses where found in the material, ”refugee-crises” and refugee-crieses whiteout situation marks. The first one origins från Avpixlat and build on that there are no crises alongside the war in Syria, ISIS and refugees that flee from these factors. Refugees are fake, they are immigrants that come whit economic and potential terrorist purpose to other parts around the globe, with Europe in mind and especially Sweden. Refugees where seen as ”the other” in negativ terms, high rates if islamofobia were found, Sweden represent ”the good moral” and Syria represent the ”worst moral” in terms on symbolic witness. Europe and mostly Sweden portrays as the victim rather than refugees, SVT portrays the other way around and a drowned boy symbols refugee disasters around Mediterranean.

This study builds on the idea that discourses have the power to show that national identity did influence the puzzling foreign policy behaviour of India in March 2014 during the Crimean crisis. When analysing the material and illustrating the identified discourses, discourse- theorists Laclau and Mouffe’s framework is used both as theory and method. Discourse analysis has its starting point in the idea that the reality is accessed by the means of language. The use of Laclau and Mouffe’s discursive framework is motivated by the fact that it aims to create an understanding of the social phenomena in question (e.g. the Indian puzzling foreign policy behaviour) by applying discourse analytical tools on texts. Moreover, discourse analysis claims that identities are the result of discursive processes and that political articulation, e.g. foreign policy behaviour, creates the society; ideas that goes well with this paper. Since language is “structured discourses” and because it creates the world which we live in, it is possible to turn to the use of language when conducting a discourse analysis. To decipher which discourses that evolved around the Crimean crisis in March 2014, and to make the connection between national identity and foreign policy behaviour, articles from the three most read Indian newspapers in English are used as material. These articles are triangulated with statements published during 2014 on the homepage of the Indian Ministry of External Affairs. This paper tells a rather alternative story compared to that of interest- and power based explanations with roots in realism, since it emphasises that national identity influences foreign policy behaviour. The analysis concludes that two discourses can be deciphered in the material, namely Democracy and Multipolarity, which thus can be seen as elements of Indian national identity. These two discourses imply that the Indian national identity can explain its puzzling foreign policy behaviour in the Crimean crisis in March 2014.

The aim of this Master’s thesis is to examine how public librarians, including school librarians, express themselves about librarians in library journals. Questions asked in the study are: How is the knowledge, tasks and roles of librarians described? How do the librarians describe their own and others perceptions of librarians? Are there any contradictions in how the librarian profession is described and if so, what are they? 56 articles from three Swedish library journals, Biblioteksbladet, bis and DIK-forum in the period from 1990 to 2007, are analysed. The theory and method used is discourse analysis. Concepts from Ernesto Laclau’s and Chantal Mouffe’s discourse theory, such as elements and nodal points are used in an analysis model in four steps. The results show that the knowledge of librarians is described with such words as information, literature, tacit knowledge and their ability to systematize and organize. Tasks and roles described are mostly related to the pedagogical aspects of the librarian profession, such as teaching, conveying and guiding. Two positions are distinguishable in the discourse, information and culture. Both are important parts of librarians’ work, but the information tasks are sometimes seen as too dominating at the expense of the cultural aspects of the librarians’ work. The contradiction can also be seen in how perceptions about librarians are described. The librarians express, often in a negative tone, that others mostly associate them with books. They also express that they need to be more visible and become better at communicating the knowledge of their profession.

The aim of this thesis is to study through discourse analysis how users talk about librarians and the librarian profession and what perceptions they have regarding it. I have tried to do this by asking the questions: How do the users describe librarians and the librarian profession? Are there any patterns in what they say? The method and theory I have used is Laclau and Mouffes’ discourse theory and partially structured interviews. The material consists of interviews with eight users that are both women and men, both students and members of the public and they were between 25 and 50 years old. In the material I found two discourses: the discourse about librarians and the discourse about the librarian profession. I have come to the conclusion that images exists of librarians being older women who are caring and forthcoming but also inaccessible. The image of the librarians also includes them working with books in different ways and that they read and know a lot about literature. When the users have talked about the librarians’ knowledge they have described that librarians have different knowledge based on what they work with. Some librarians work with inter library loans and therefore have more knowledge about that.

Swedish libraries are currently discussing andimplementing the classification system Dewey (DDC).Most libraries in Sweden have used the Swedishclassification system SAB until recently. In 2008 TheRoyal Library of Sweden (KB) decided to switch fromSAB to DDC. Many academic libraries chose to followKB’s example and by January 2011 a switch was made atKB and at many academic libraries.The aim of this master thesis is to examine and analysethe library sector’s discussion that occurred before andduring the Swedish switch from SAB to DDC. The mainquestion asked is; What is being discussed about Dewey2010-2011 and in what manner? To organize and anlysethis discussion discourse analysis is used. Discourseanalysis by Laclau and Mouffe is used both as methodand theoretic ground. The material which has beenanalyzed consists of the library sector’s discussions andstatements found in journals, reports, blogs, meetingprotocols and seminar.The analysis shows four different discourses; thetransition discourse, the spatial discourse, the instrumentaldiscourse and the public library discourse. In conclusion,it can be argued that the transfer to Dewey has gone froma planning stage to an implementing stage at academiclibraries. Public libraries in Sweden have shown lessinterest and are considered to be in a planning stageparallel to the academic libraries implementing stage.Earlier discussions about pros and cons with Dewey havealmost disappeared 2010-2011 and discussions of spatialmatters are frequently occurring in the material. / Program: Bibliotekarie