Med det här kandidatarbetet vill vi belysa en alternativ väg att gå för att ge även de karaktärer som inte är knutna till det narrativa en större och mer betydelsefull plats inom digitala spel. Tillsammans med Bruno Latours Actor-Network Theory undersöker vi relationer mellan bland annat tid, plats och den vardagliga människan. Med observationer som startpunkt undersöker vi hur en identitet kan brytas ner för att omformas till något nytt, något som kan skapa en känsla av unikt och levande till den annars relativt tomma existens som är en ickespelbar karaktär. För att ta det här steget blir begreppet persona en viktig beståndsdel i skapandet av något mer lekfullt och livfullt. Genom att forma identiteter baserade på observationer och sedan förstå relationen mellan dessa identiteter och dess fiktiva egenskaper skapar vi personas med egna behov och bekymmer.   Detta kandidatarbete kommer att förklara olika metoder och processer till att skapa karaktärer och sedan analysera och diskutera resultatet i form av animationer där individers unika egenskaper och attribut förklaras och visualiseras. / With this bachelor thesis we want to shine a light upon an alternative path to take when it comes to giving characters that is not hard knitted to the narrative a greater and more meaningful place inside a digital game. Together with Bruno Latour's Actor-Network Theory we research the relations between time, place and the everyday person. With observation as a starting point we look at how we can break down an identity to reshape and make something new from it, something that can create a lifelike and unique feeling in the otherwise relatively plain and empty existence that is a non-playable character. For us to be able to take that step we include the concept of persona, an important factor in creating something more full of fun and life. Through the shaping of identities based on observation and understanding the relationship between these identities and their fictive attributes a persona is created with its own needs and worries.  This bachelor thesis will also explain the methods and processes needed to create characters followed by analysing and discussions based on the results, the animation of the unique attributes of individuals and how it is explained and visualised.

This study explores the social, technological economic, and environmental development of single-family residential water conservation programs at the Austin Water Utility and asks: What makes a conservation program successful? I hypothesize that water conservation programs will be successful if both institutional-producer goals and citizen-consumer goals are satisfied. While the findings suggest that this may be partially true, it also has become clear that my original actor-network model was too simple to predict the various types of influences on program success. Not only did I find other significant ‘actors’ involved in water conservation, I also found that utility and participant groups themselves represent a wide variety of interests. This study seeks to answer the research question by creating a series of narratives that critically explore water infrastructure and water conservation programs in Austin, Texas. Through a methodological lens referred to as ‘critical constructivism,’ I use mixed methods to analyze and interpret historic documents, interviews, and quantitative data as primary sources. Literature from Science and Technology Studies (STS) are used as secondary sources. This study will add to a body of knowledge that describes how and why we manage our environmental resources. The subject of conservation is especially relevant as urban growth continues with fewer affordable opportunities to increase regional water supplies. As we enter an era of expected water conflict, knowing how to conserve water effectively will help provide more opportunities for sharing a common resource amongst communities, industry, agriculture, and the environment. / text

I det här kandidatarbetet har jag valt att undersöka hur man kan förnya erfarna bilisters körkunskaper som har kört bil i 30-40 år genom en anpassad E-learning applikation. Mitt mål är att förnya erfarna bilisters körkunskaper, så de får lära sig uppdaterade regler, vägmärken och körsätt. Detta för att förbättra trafikmiljön. För att kunna undersöka problemområdet skapade jag en lärplattform tillsammans med erfarna bilister där jag använder mig av körkortsregler, vägmärken, filmklipp och frågesport för att testa deras kunskaper. Genom att lysa upp dem viktiga aspekterna i de nya reglerna och körsättet samt få erfarna bilister att testa sina kunskaper på ett roande sätt via körkorts frågesporten får man användarna att förnya sina kunskaper  via deras nyfikenhet till ny information som har hänt 30-40 år senare efter dem tagit körkort. / In this bachelor thesis I have chosen to investigate how you can renew experienced drivers driving skills that have been driving for 30-40 years through a customized e-learning application. My goal is to renew the drivers driving skills as they learn the new rules , road signs and driving style to improve the traffic environment . In order to investigate the problem area , I created a learning platform with experienced drivers, where I use driving rules , road signs , movie clips and quizzes to test their knowledge. By highlighting the important aspects of the new rules and driving style, as well as getting experienced drivers to test their skills in a entertaining way, through driving license quizzes,   users will be able to renew their skills through their curiosity to new information that happened after 30-40 years  later they have taken a driving license.

Teknologi har blivit en viktig del i barn och ungdomars liv. Spel, kommunikation, bloggar, skolarbeten och att umgås via sociala nätverk tillhör aktiviteterna online. Syftet med den här litteraturstudien var att utifrån ett teoretiskt perspektiv där bland annat Actor-Network-Theory (ANT) ingår belysa och utforska barns och unga människors interaktioner på och med Internet och det lärande och förutsättningar för hälsa som kan skapas. Tjugotre artiklar från tidskrifter med en disciplinär bredd, som bland annat innefattar utbildningsteknologi, psykologi, socio-logi och mediakunskap, har studerats. Interaktion var ett genomgående tema i artiklarna. Barn och ungdomar interagerade med varandra och med andra på olika sätt och med olika syften. Delaktighet och gemenskap var viktiga begrepp. Kamratstöd online har visat sig vara betydelsefullt för unga med allvarliga sjukdomar. Många av de populära spelen är onlinespel som kan spelas av ett stort antal spelare samtidigt. Spelarna umgicks med sina vänner, lärde känna nya människor, hjälpte varandra genom olika uppdrag i spelet och firade uppnådda mål tillsammans. Olika roller framträdde i de olika kontexterna, både självvalda och tilldelade av andra. Det lärande som uppstod i de olika kontexterna var situerat och bestod likaväl av akademiska kunskaper och digitala färdigheter som av social kompetens, socialisering och ”livsfärdigheter”. Den teoretiska referensramen i uppsatsen var inspirerad av bland andra Latour, Bandura, Antonovsky samt Lave och Wenger. Jag kallar den ”Del i det hela” och menar att ett aktörskap i ett heterogent nätverk med en gemensam aktivitet kan bidra till en känsla av sammanhang (KASAM), en känsla av mening. Dessa delar har betydelse för vår hälsa – den psykiska, den sociala samt den existentiella hälsan. / Technology has become an important part of children and young people’s lifes. Games, communication, blogs, school work and hanging out in social networks are examples of online activities. Using a theoretical perspective including Actor-Network-Theory (ANT), the aim of this literature review was to illustrate and explore children and youth’s interactions on and with the Internet, and the learning processes and conditions for health that can emerge. Twenty-three articles from journals of different disciplines, such as educational technology, psychology, sociology, and media science, were included. Interaction was a constant theme throughout the articles. Children and young people interacted with each other and with others in different ways and with different purposes. Participation and fellowship were important concepts. Online peer support has shown to be significant for youth with severe disease. Many of the popular games are online games that can be played by many players simultaneously. The players socialized with their friends, got to know new people, helped each other through various missions in the game and celebrated achieved goals together. Different roles appeared in the different contexts, some self-selected and some assigned by others. The learning processes that occurred in the different contexts were situated and consisted of academic knowledge and digital skills, as well as of social competence, socialization and life skills. The theoretical framework used in this essay was inspired by Latour, Bandura, Antonovsky, and Lave and Wenger. I call it “Part of it all” and believe that an actorship in a heterogeneous network with a collective activity may contribute to a sense of coherence (SOC), a sense of meaning. These elements are significant for our health – the psychological, the social, and the existential health.

The aim of this dissertation is to study exchange students’ movement and exchange studies as a trajectory in time and space. The dissertation is based on interviews with fourteen Korean exchange students at Swedish universities. The theoretical framework is based on Actor–Network Theory (ANT). ANT argues that everything that does something is an actor (human and non-human) and that an actor cannot be separated from a network that acts through the actor. ANT also argues that one’s location is not explained only in terms of Euclidean space and time but also in terms of spatiality and temporality, which are a network’s production. The dissertation shows that the students were enrolled and mobilized in the exchange programs by heterogeneous actors and that there were specific network spaces that produced exchange students at the home universities. The exchange students were excluded at the Swedish host universities by being formally included without direction. At the host universities, they went off course from their educational trajectories because the curriculum disappeared during their exchange studies. The dissertation also shows that the exchange students were enrolled and mobilized in the networks of “international students” at the host universities. Theses exchange students instead moved in the same way as the other exchange students, which stabilized the networks of “international students” at the host universities. It describes how the exchange students acted at a distance as actor of networks in Korea. When they returned, many of them had to prolong their educational period. This was a result of the translation of exchange studies at the home universities. In this dissertation, it shows that the exchange program was performed not only by individual exchange students; rather, it was performed in the associations of heterogeneous actors. / Syftet med avhandlingen är att undersöka utbytesstudenters rörelser och utbytesstudier som banor i tid och rum. Avhandlingen baseras på intervjuer med fjorton koreanska utbytesstudenter som vistats på olika svenska värduniversitet. Den teoretiska referensramen grundar sig i Actor-Network Theory (ANT). ANT argumenterar för att allt som gör något är en aktör, oavsett om den är mänsklig eller icke-mänsklig. En aktör kan inte urskiljas från nätverket vilken agerar genom aktören. Aktörens lokalisering kan inte enbart förklaras i termer av det euklidiska rummet och tiden, utan också i termer av rumslighet och tolkningar av tidsförloppen vilka är nätverksprodukter. Avhandlingen visar att studenterna enrollerades och mobiliserades till utbytesprogrammen av heterogena aktörer och att det fanns specifika rum där utbytesstudenterna skapades. På värduniversiteten exkluderades de genom att formellt inkluderas i olika kurser utan att dessa ofta hade någon riktning i deras studier. Utbytesstudenternas studier kom ur kurs jämfört med deras ordinarie utbildningar eftersom en läroplan saknades på värduniversiteten. Avhandlingen visar att utbytesstudenterna enrollerades och mobiliserades in i nätverk av de internationella studenterna på värduniversiteten. Utbytesstudenterna rörde sig på samma sätt som andra utbytesstudenter, vilket stabiliserade nätverken av ”internationella studenter” på värduniversiteten. I avhandlingen beskrivs även utbytesstudenternas fortsatta agerande som aktörer i nätverken i Korea. När de återvänt till Korea behövde de flesta förlänga sin utbildningstid och detta var ett resultat av hur utbytesperioden tillgodoräknades på hemuniversiteten. Det var ett resultat av översättningen i utbytesprogrammen på hemuniversiteten. Avhandlingen visar att utbytesprogrammen inte enbart genomfördes av de individuella utbytesstudenterna; snarare genomfördes de i förbindelser med heterogena (mänskliga och icke-mänskliga) aktörer.

Czech animated allegories of the period of 1946 to 2012 encode their political ideas in objects and things, rather than through conventional narrative techniques such as voice-over or dialogue. The existence of these objects in cinematic time and space is integral to this process of political encoding, which is achieved through the selection of objects, cinematography and editing. In some of these films, time and space themselves are politically encoded. Materialist critical approaches to the film texts can help illuminate these latent political meanings. 'Thing theory', which puts a critical emphasis upon reading objects and things, exposes the politically resistant role of simple, domestic objects in the films of Jiří Trnka and Hermína Týrlová. Trnka's cinema in particular defends traditional, pastoral modes of being in which the individual is rooted within their environment. 'Actor-network-theory', a means of interrogating the relationship between actors in networks, resonates with the political ideas present in the cinema of Surrealist artist Jan Švankmajer. Švankmajer's central political project is an interrogation of anthropocentrism and attempts by humans to exert systems of control and order upon non-human actors. Rather than celebrating functional, domestic objects like Trnka or Týrlová, Švankmajer's cinema is radically anti-utilitarian. Objects are depicted as things that resist categorisation. 'Rhythmanalysis' – a mode of poetic-scientific investigation developed by philosopher Henri Lefebvre – can be used to unpick the rhythms in the animations of Jirí Barta. Barta's films critique rational clock time and the design of urban spaces through the use of editing patterns and repetition. Finally, all three materialist approaches in combination help illustrate the political content of animated films (and live-action films with significant passages of animation) produced in the wake of the Velvet Revolution. Such films often question the relationship between the individual Czech citizen and the Czech capital city of Prague. The animated films of the aforementioned directors and historical periods, tend to give precedence to the material world of objects over the semiotic world of humans, though these two realms are often shown to be inter-dependent. To this end, the political messages of the films are conveyed not through language, but through images and things.

Idag råder det en ständig debatt om hur kvinnor porträtteras inom spel och vad för betydelse det har på oss spelkonsumenter. Tidigare forskning och studier påvisar att kvinnliga karaktärer inom spel är betydligt mer sexualiserade än deras manliga motsvarigheter. I det här arbetet behandlas min frågeställning: ” Vad är det för faktorer när det kommer till visuell design inom spelvärlden som gör sexualiserade karaktärsporträtteringar av kvinnliga karaktärer icke konsistenta i jämförelse med deras manliga motsvarigheter?” Genom en djupgående undersökning om karaktärsporträttering och bildanalys av en samling speltitlar från år 2010-2015, kunde en slutsats dras att upprätthållandet av en intern logisk kontinuitet inom karaktärsporträtteringen kan vara ett steg bort ifrån sexualiseringen av spelkaraktärer. / Today there is a constant debate about how women are portrayed in games and what effect is has on us game consumers. Past research and studies show that female characters in games are considerably more sexualized than their male counterpart. In this thesis my question formulation discuss “What are the factors when it comes to visual design in the gaming world that makes sexualized character portrayal of the female character non consistent compared to their male counterpart?” Through a thorough inquiry about character portrayal and image analysis of a collection of game titles from year 2010-2015, a conclusion could be made that the upholding of an internal and logical consistency within the portrayal of characters could be a step against the sexualisation of video game characters.

abstract: This study employed Participatory Action Research (PAR) which applied critical pedagogy, actor-network theory, and social network theory to create and implement an Application Framework for Critical Pedagogy (AFCP) with the goal of making critical pedagogy more broadly accessible to a wider range of faculty in higher education. Participants in the study included faculty, staff, and students from Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions of Arizona State University, and data was collected in the form of surveys, interviews, written interactions, and video observations of multidisciplinary committee meetings to build the framework. The study concluded with a functional framework from which faculty and instructional designers alike can work to create better, more effective courses. Including participants of diverse backgrounds, varying power levels, and sometimes opposing perspectives in the study created a diversity of thought and experience which offered the opportunity to refine the purpose, expectations, and specific language of the tool. While the framework is not intended to be a definitive source of critical pedagogy application, this refinement allows the possibility that more faculty, instructional designers, and other higher education stakeholders may find utility in the revised framework as a tool for self-advocating and for professional pedagogical growth. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Leadership and Innovation 2020

Sammanfattning Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka vilken betydelse ickemänniskor har i förskolans innemiljö under barns fria lek och vilken betydelse de har för barns subjektskapande. För att samla in vår empiri har vi använt oss av en kvalitativ ansats och genomfört en deltagande observation på en förskoleavdelning med hjälp av anteckningar. För att få fatt i vårt syfte och våra frågeställningar har vi utgått från ett posthumanistiskt perspektiv och tagit stöd av ett flertal performativa begrepp. I våra analyser har vi lyft fram ickemänniskor som till exempel rum, ytor, möbler, leksaker och material som generellt sätt kan ses som mindre betydelsefulla i förskolans vardag. Dessa ickemänniskor kan ses som performativa aktörer som deltar, får saker att hända och tillför förändringar i barnens fria lek. I analysen går det även att förstå hur ickemänniskor blir medskapare i barnens subjektskapande och att barnens handlande inte beror på hur de är innerst inne. Med en posthumanistisk syn kan pedagoger i förskolan bemöta barnen mer etiskt då de uppmärksammar hur ickemänniskor är deltagare och medskapare i barnens fria lek.

More than 35 years ago, calls were made for research on the constitutive role of accounting. Since then, many statements have been made to specify what accounting is or is not. This study describes what accounting does, in order to amalgamate a fragmented picture of accounting in practice, instead of seeking the answer to the existential question of what accounting really is. The purpose of this study was to investigate and describe what accounting does, and how this is done on the basis of business meetings in order to contribute to a better understanding of the role of accounting in practice.This study is based on the actor-network theory approach. Particular attention hasbeen paid to accounting as named numbers, when becoming a performative participantin framed situations. The framed situations of business meetings contained three elements; 1) pure calculation, 2) qualculation which include both calculation and judgments, and 3) calqulation as a collective social process. An ethnographically inspired field studywas carried out at Eton Fashion AB, a Swedish shirt making company. Data was collected by participant observations of business meetings supported by interviews. Photography, sound recording, and field notes were used as techniques for documentation.Diagnoses of five business meetings revealed that; 1) accounting restricted time,place and content, 2) accounting brought past and future into the present, 3) accounting summarized and obscured discontinuities, 4) accounting defined people and things, and 5) accounting called for the filling of content. Accounting became an actor in these five ways as they were allied with people and things that appeared in the meetings. Accounting was in a context where people made sense of situations by making both estimates and judgments. During the meetings, an ongoing reduction of complexity was taking place. Step by step, diversity and complexity were reduced until an order filled with numbers was the only thing remaining. At the same time, something was gained, as we step by step achieved greater legibility, transportability and universality. In this way the situation could subsist. It might move to new situations and it might allow for new summaries and new situations to take place. The situation of a meeting contained elements of pure calculation representing the cold, anonymous and empty part. Oftenthough, calculation, because of its emptiness, initiated for qualculation and calqulation to begin. Accounting as an idea is a taken for granted phenomenon, with influence, often far beyond what we can see when we find ourselves in a given situation. I conclude that it could have been some other way. It is not accounting in itself, its own excellence or ability to represent the truth, which makes it successful. The success story of accounting is simply about “the others” with whom accounting is an ally. / För avläggande av ekonomie doktorsexamen i företagsekonomi som med tillstånd av Handelshögskolans fakultetsnämnd vid Göteborgs universitet framlägges för offentlig granskning fredagen den 30 mars kl. 13.15 i CGsalen vid Företagsekonomiska institutionen, Vasagatan 1, Göteborg.