The overall aim of this study is to examine how Swedish women’s youth- magazines describes women. Through a social constructivist perspective, this essay particularly focuses on how the magazines deals with issues of gender and sexuality and what norms they reproduce. The magazine’s image of the young Swedish woman is a somewhat complex one, although one thing is strikingly clear: she is very different from men. While adjectives as hard, cold and tough are being ascribed to the latter, the woman is often depicted with more “soft” qualities. In some cases she is portrayed as an emotional and goodhearted little princess that faithfully is waiting for “mr. Right” (heterosexuality is a consistent assumption), while in other cases the magazines seem to urge her to take responsibility for both her own and the man’s sexuality and pleasure.

Symbolic interactionism has scarcely been used as a framework in the field of music education. The purpose of this case study was to understand the verbal and nonverbal interactions of four fifth-grade general music students while they collaborated with peers to compose original songs. Through the lens of symbolic interactionism, data from video and audio recordings, student artifacts, and researcher memos were examined to answer the following research questions: 1) How do fifth-grade general music students interact with their peers during composition activities in a constructivist learning environment? 2) How do fifth-grade general music students self-indicate and create shared meanings through verbal and nonverbal symbolic interactions? A within and cross-case analysis revealed that students interacted with their peers through communicative acts, forming friendships, nonverbal gestures, and forming social roles. The participants self-indicated and created shared meanings as a result of shared responsibilities, musical dialogue, improvisation, and symbolic exclusion. Findings suggested that fifth-grade students develop social roles and engage in follower and leader behaviors in situations where teacher scaffolding is purposefully suspended. The results of the research contribute to an existing body of literature regarding fifth-grade general music students’ abilities to self-direct their own learning during collaborative activities.

This study analyzes the discursive content of four history textbooks in order to demonstrate how national identities are formed and how they differ from each other. This was done through discourse analysis guided by social constructivism and John M. Hobson’s dichotomy of East and West. The study shows that textbooks mainly construct national identities in three ways; first by making a clear distinction between “The Self” and “The Other”, second by preserving a world order based on the notions of the invariant hegemony of the nation-state, and third by utilizing stereotype based dissimilarities in order to accentuate existing differences between nationalities.Implicit ideals and values in the historical discourse play an important part in the construction of identities; however sends a contradictory and ambiguous message. It allows the Swede to error and commit morally questionable acts, yet sustain the title as the most democratic, equal people in the world, always in stark contrast to its surroundings. This can be understood with the help of the applied theories, which identifies an inherent power relationship in producing and maintaining a discourse. It is important to expose and deconstruct the established discourse in order to avoid legitimised policies standing in the way for an inclusive and representative way of conveying history.

The purpose of this thesis is to, through media, observe and map the political controversies during the XXII Olympic Winter Games in Sochi and once the games have finished summarize and analyze them in order to close in on a comprehensive understanding of them. In addition to being tinged by the hermeneutics and inductive reasoning the study uses a methodology referred to as a qualitative explanatory case study with an intensive approach. In applying IR-theory, and more specifically the theoretical perspectives of realism, liberalism and social constructivism, the study manage to shy away from mainstream Olympic research. The thesis finds that the political controversies during the Games in Sochi were fewer than anticipated and offers various understandings of why that is, including the realist notion of the triumph of the principle of sovereignty over human rights, the within liberalism found belief of the good nature of mankind, and the social constructivist idea of actions being constrained by social structures.

Several countries are beginning to introduce computer science education at an elementary school level in response to the increasing demand of technologically skilled workers. In the transitionary period of establishing the curriculum and expectations, there is an opportunity to revolutionize certain aspects of the teaching and learning process within the classroom. In many ways, we can use technology to enhance this experience. For teachers, it can automate repetitive tasks, as well as provide immediate feedback on class progress. For students, it can offer engaging interfaces, helpful hints and innovative ways to collaborate with one another. To put this challenge and opportunity into context, we review what is known about learning theories, and survey existing applications. A large majority of these applications support behaviourist learning styles, what most would call "traditional" teaching methods. Much like pen and paper drill exercises, they reinforce information previously presented to the user for passive consumption. This is in spite of the fact that academic researchers strongly favour constructivist and especially social constructivist methods. In fact, this perpetuates a known gap between theory and practice in education, and may be contributing to the lack of adoption within the classroom. MacVenture is an iOS application designed to facilitate social constructivist teaching styles by allowing students to create gamebooks for themselves and for their peers by incorporating material from across the curriculum. This work outlines the structure and design of MacVenture, presents examples to illustrate the range of uses it supports, and discusses proposed future developments to enable new methods for collaboration among peers, and new motivational and analytical tools for teachers. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc) / Several countries are beginning to introduce computer science education at an elementary school level in response to the increasing demand of technologically skilled workers. In the transitionary period of establishing the curriculum and expectations, there is an opportunity to revolutionize certain aspects of the teaching and learning process within the classroom. In many ways, we can use technology to enhance this experience. For teachers, it can automate repetitive tasks, as well as provide immediate feedback on class progress. For students, it can offer engaging interfaces, helpful hints and innovative ways to collaborate with one another. To put this challenge and opportunity into context, we review what is known about learning theories, and survey existing applications. A large majority of these applications support behaviourist learning styles, what most would call "traditional" teaching methods. Much like pen and paper drill exercises, they reinforce information previously presented to the user for passive consumption. This is in spite of the fact that academic researchers strongly favour constructivist and especially social constructivist methods. In fact, this perpetuates a known gap between theory and practice in education, and may be contributing to the lack of adoption within the classroom. MacVenture is an iOS application designed to facilitate social constructivist teaching styles by allowing students to create gamebooks for themselves and for their peers by incorporating material from across the curriculum. This work outlines the structure and design of MacVenture, presents examples to illustrate the range of uses it supports, and discusses proposed future developments to enable new methods for collaboration among peers, and new motivational and analytical tools for teachers.

For studies of social movements, media is the most crucial aspect when it comes to understanding the movement. And for a civil society choosing to protest under an authoritarian regime, the media is more than crucial, it is key. Based on the social media attention the protests in Iran after Mahsa Aminis death received, this study intends to see how the Swedish daily newspapers SvD and DN framed the protest, focusing on message, political actors and local voices- the key aspects to include when framing a protest. The empirical data for this study consists of articles published between September 16, 2022 and November 16, 2022, making it up to 124 articles to examine. By using a coding scheme for the content analysis, it is based on previous studies regarding the protest paradigm, which is a theory applied to understand the focus on spectacle in media's portrayal of protests. This study developed two coding schemes where the first one is for the aim of identifying the overall portrayal and the second intends to identify frames that further contribute to the constructions of the political actors. Along with the content analysis, framing theory and the protest paradigm, the study adopts the social constructivist view of language to be able to understand the role of news in shaping public perceptions. Analyzing news coverage through this perspective allowed this study to gain a deeper understanding of how knowledge is constructed and how it shapes our understanding of the world. Lastly, by applying discourse analysis the study was able to examine the language within the frames and how it was used to construct reality and political actors in different ways. It was helpful in finding out the influence of the articles in creating as well as changing political and societal discourse around the issue. The study revealed a result that challenged the protest paradigm as well as confirming some results in previous research. Violence frames were in previous literature the main frames, which it was in this study too, however, in this study the violence frames did not get interpreted as in the protest paradigm theory since protest under authoritarian regimes needed another analytical eye focusing more on the context and the way in which the violence was directed towards.

This paper emphasizes a social constructivist theoretical viewpoint when looking to analyze the EEZ dispute in the Eastern Mediterranean between Turkey and Greece. The recent authoritarian shift taken by Turkey, moving away from EU and international law values under the regime of President Erdogan has caused an aggravation of the chronically present tensions with its EU neighbour and NATO ally. The growing chasm away from democracy internally reflected in the waters of the Eastern Mediterranean, especially in light of the recent gas discoveries and elections on both sides, destabilizing the region majorly. Through Discourse Analysis (DA), the EU response to these orally-inflamed Greek-Turkish tensions regarding their overlapping EEZ claims in this specific geopolitical context is examined, taking into account the ideational, identity, and normative factors that are largely at play. In this way, an exploration is made concluding that EU collective identity and its mechanisms are perceiving themselves as threatened, based on the extent and potency of their reaction in terms of political rhetoric and institutional documents delineating the parameters of its collective identity and shaping EU foreign policy so far toward Turkey’s EEZ denial in the Eastern Mediterranean, in the time frame January 2019- February 2023.

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The hijra subculture in Bangladesh remains one of the most marginalized and violated minority groups in Bangladesh. However, with recent legislative change in Bangladesh, the group has gained legal recognition in that a third official gender has been introduced. The people that conform to the third gender are now allowed to, in any formal and official documents within the nation, list hijra as their gender. This thesis investigates the media representation of the hijra movement’s struggle before, and after the legislative change. To serve this end, the productions of three leading English speaking media platforms have been analyzed. The aim is to further increase the understanding of the representation and visibility of the hijra rights movement, and the hijra situation in the public sphere of media. Subsequently, the study concerns the normative structures in Bangladesh, and how media as a communicative tool can focus the audience’s attention, whilst adding to these structures or challenging them. The context of culture, media as a tool for communication, and the functions of social constructivism constitute the foundation for the analysis. The investigation consists mainly of a textual discourse analysis of chosen articles from the three different media platforms.

The current study was conducted with the purpose of investigating what influence a pandemic may have on the everyday lives and border perceptions of people living on a border, and also how such a change might influence the social construction of that border. To fulfill this purpose, focus was set on the border between northern Sweden and Finland during the border-defining Covid-19 pandemic. Six border landers and cross-border commuters from both sides of the Sweden-Finland border were therefore interviewed during the tail-end of the Covid-19 pandemic in Sweden. This collected material was subject to thematic analysis and organized temporally to depict how behavior and border perceptions changed depending on what stage of the pandemic was active: pre-covid, mid-covid, or post-covid. While the pre-covid border was discussed positively, characterized as imperceivable, and as enabling of cross-border practices, things changed when the border manifested, and mid-covid times started. During this time, the border instead became a source for distinction, resulting in prejudices, and behavior became more restricted. During post-covid, the informants reacted positively to the disappearance of the border, and the return to the normal, although it was not quite the same normal as before. The main finding of the study was that the impercievability and manifestation of the border were two counteracting states which influenced its assigned meaning. The importance of this study for the field of sociology comes from having investigated how pandemics and shutting down a border can disrupt regular social life and cross-border practices, thereby influencing the socially constructed meaning of that same border.