<p>This study in contemporary history describes the transformation of the public sphere in Sweden during the period 1969-1999, and analyses the role of information technology and politics in the process. The overall aim of the study is to explain how, and why, the public sphere in Jürgen Habermas sense has deteriorated during a period of rapid technological and political change, when increasing attention has been given to information technology as a new tool for improving democracy and empowering citizens.</p><p>Theoretical inspiration is drawn from two perspectives within the modern history of technology and sociology of technology; the LTS (Large Technical Systems) and STS (Science, Technology and Society) approaches, as well as from the regime theory concept within political science. This multidisciplinary framework provides the theoretical basis for the study, including terms as socio-technical systems, system builder, technification, interpretative flexibility, stabilization, closing and regime change. In addition, the analysis draws upon previous research in economic history, where focus often has been on the important role of institutions. The term path dependence is central in this tradition.</p><p>The starting point for the study is the process of a mutual legitimization between citizens and political actors that traditionally has taken place within the public sphere. In return for citizens support and trust, political actors have granted format rights to the public space. Two aspects of this interdependence are addressed: Freedom of speech and citizen’s access to public information, and their access to arenas where an exchange of political ideas and opinions is taking place. In the study, the former is a question of the legal system and the limits to freedom of speech in new medias such as the Internet, while the latter concerns citizen’s technical means and possibilities to connect to electronic networks.</p><p>Research interest is concentrated on the formal political system, focusing both actors and structural factors such as technological development, media convergence, ideological change and international integration in the transformation process. Four case studies of institutional changes during formative moments, within what is defined as the legal and the technical infrastructures, are conducted and represent the empirical base of the thesis. The case studies are centered on Swedish governmental commissions, on the government itself and on proceedings in the parliament, and concerns formation and transformation of computer law, as well as the deregulation and privatization of the technical infrastructure.</p><p>In the latter process Televerket (Swedish Telecom) has been an influential promoter of competition and institutional separation between tele- and data communications, representing a major regime change in favour of market relations in the technical infrastructure. In the area of computer law, the Swedish regime dominated by SCB (Statistics Sweden) was incorporated into a joint European data protection regime, resulting in limitations of freedom of speech on the Internet. These regime changes have also transformed the role of the state, constituting a “net watchers state”. </p><p>Another important finding is that promotion of democracy and improvement of access to the public sphere, never was on the agenda in the political transformation processes studied, although a parallel discourse on democracy and information technology existed throughout the period studied.</p>

<p>This essay concerns graffiti, and in particular graffiti removal regarded as iconoclasm.</p><p>Graffiti is described as a visual symbol laden with both negative and positive values, and sometimes as a meaningful expression in the urban public space. One problem with graffiti as a field of study is the diversity of both the meaning of the term as well as the diversity of the phenomenon itself. Therefore I have defined the term graffiti as follows: words and images painted on public walls by a person usually in an unauthorised manner. Specific examples of graffiti and related phenomena are presented. Within the Swedish anti-graffiti discourse the pejorative term klotter (scribbling) is used to describe what I above define as graffiti. A short analysis of this discourse is followed by case studies of specific examples of graffiti removal that can be regarded as iconoclasm.</p>

<p>The Swedish election year of 2010 has just begun and the political actors are mobilizing their communication efforts to win the votes of the public. The political campaigns of 2010 have the potential to be the first where a new channel for political communication has the potential to make a difference – the social media. This paper aims to describe in what ways a Member of Parliament, Nina Larsson (FP), together with the PR-agency Hello Clarice are using social media to conduct political campaigning on the web. It also aims to study if the professional consultants of Hello Clarice have any influence over Nina Larsson’s political communication.</p><p>The theoretical framework which is the base for this study are theories of an extended public sphere in the age of mediation. The information age has created new forms of interaction between humans over geographical distance which also is a key starting-point in Manuel Castells theories of the network society. This theory is therefore a theoretical foundation of this paper. The paper also uses theories of political communication and the idea of the professionalization of political communication. The research was conducted with a netnographic approach with observational studies of Nina Larsson’s two blogs and her activities on the social network Twitter. As a compliment to the observational studies research has also been conducted trough qualitative interviews with both Nina Larsson and representatives from the PR-agency Hello Clarice.</p><p>The results show that Nina Larsson’s political communication has to a degree been affected by the professional consultants of Hello Clarice. The paper has also shown an indication of the potential of social media in use of strategic political communication, in which different channels serve with different purposes. Our research has also shown that in this specific case social media can decrease the communicative distance between politician and citizen.</p> / <p>Valåret 2010 har precis tagit sin början och de politiska aktörerna mobiliserar sina kommunikationsinsatser för att på bästa sätt kunna vinna väljarnas förtroende och i slutändan röster. Årets valrörelse kan också bli den första där en ny kanal för politisk kommunikation är av betydelse – de sociala medierna. Denna uppsats syftar till att beskriva på vilka sätt en riksdagsledamot, Nina Larsson (FP), tillsammans med en kommunikationsbyrå, Hello Clarice, arbetar för att bedriva politiskt kampanjarbete i de sociala medierna. Uppsatsens mål är också att undersöka om kommunikationsbyrån påverkar de politiska budskap som Nina Larsson kommunicerar i de sociala medierna. </p><p>För att skapa förståelse för det som studeras baserar sig studien på ett övergripande plan i olika teoretiska synsätt om utvidgningen av det offentliga rummet som skett i samband med medieutvecklingen. Informationssamhällets utbredning har skapat nya förutsättningar för interaktion mellan människor i ett geografiskt avstånd. Manuel Castells teorier om nätverkssamhällets framväxt, i vilket dessa interaktiva aktiviteter sker, är därför också en övergripande teoretisk utgångspunkt för studien. För att skapa förståelse för de aktiviteter som studeras grundar sig studien också i teorier om politisk kommunikation och tankesätt om professionaliseringen av den politiska kommunikationen. En netnografisk ansats har använts för att bedriva observationsstudier av Nina Larssons två bloggar och av hennes konto på mikrobloggen Twitter. Studien har också kompletterats genom kvalitativa intervjuer med Nina Larsson och med representanter från kommunikationsbyrån Hello Clarice. </p><p>Studiens resultat visar att Nina Larssons politiska budskap delvis har påverkats av kommunikationsbyrån Hello Clarice. Studien visar också de sociala mediernas potential för att bedriva strategisk politisk kommunikation där de olika kanalerna som Nina Larsson kontrollerar tjänar olika syften. Syften som sammantaget ska stärka de politiska mål som Nina Larsson har. Våra observationer av Nina Larssons kanaler visar också att de sociala medierna kan fungera som ett verktyg för att minska det kommunikativa avståndet mellan medborgare och folkvald, vilket i detta specifika fall visat sig genom att Nina Larsson visat en vilja till dubbelriktad kommunikation.</p>

<p>Mainly focusing on the big picture regarding the research concerning the religious sphere in Bronze Age Scandinavia, the research field has been missing out on the smaller picture. The results have a tendency to produce a picture where the big landscape monuments, social structures and cosmology appear in the foreground. This essay is a comment to this phenomena and a methodological and terminological discussion regarding the way in which we as archaeologist’s works with questions about religion and rites. The main task though is to make an attempt in trying to identify the ritual performers and to answer the question whether it's possible or not to do that. This kind of work needs empirical studies with a theoretical background. The grave material can be the key to find these individuals since it's a context where the person’s belongings can be connected with the individual. The theoretical stance is that the Bronze Age research has been unable to identify these performers and that this in factcan be done. The etuis of belongings discovered for the first time in 1845 with the archaeological excavation of the Hvidegaard grave outside Copenhagen in Denmark, containing objects referred to as magical objects, can be one way to make these actors of rites come alive.The etuis of belongings and other grave material are presented in this work and a discussion about the graves material is made. The approach to study the bigger picture by studying the small empirical material is also made in this essay where a model of the ritual sphere is presented in the results with an attempt to show a none official cult existing side by side and in interaction with the official one.</p>

Apatites are a diverse class of phosphate minerals that are important in a great variety of natural and industrial processes. They are, for example, used as raw material in fertiliser production and in the remediation of metal-contaminated soils. Hydroxyapatite Ca5(PO4)3OH, (HAP) and fluorapatite Ca5(PO4)3F, (FAP) are similar to the biological apatite that is the main constituent of mammalian bone and teeth, and they are therefore promising materials for artificial bone and tooth implants. This thesis is a summary of four papers with focus on dissolution and surface complexation reactions of HAP and FAP in the absence and presence of both organic ligands and the natural and commonly occurring iron oxide goethite (α-FeOOH). The dissolution and surface complexation of HAP and FAP was investigated with a combination of different techniques. Potentiometric acid/base titrations and batch experiments were combined with X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) and Attenuated Total Reflectance Fourier Transform Infrared (ATR-FTIR) Spectroscopy to generate dissolution and surface complexation models for both apatites. The results from these studies showed that both apatites form surface layers that are different from their bulk compositions when equilibrated in aqueous solutions. The modeling efforts predicted speciation of these surfaces as well as the concentration of the dissolution products in the solution. The interaction between organic ligands and the apatite surfaces was also investigated and the results from this study show that the organic ligands form outer-sphere complexes on the apatite surfaces over a large pH interval, and that this adsorption enhances the dissolution of apatites. The presence of goethite also enhances the dissolution of FAP as it acts as a sink for the phosphate released from FAP. Phase transformation in this system was detected using ATR-FTIR as the phosphate adsorbed to the goethite surface precipitates as FePO4 (s) after approximately 15 days of reaction time. This changes the speciation, and possibly also the bioavailability of phosphate in this two-mineral system.

This thesis consists of two main chapters along with an introduction andconclusion. In the introduction, we address the inspiration for the thesis, whichoriginates in a common calculus problem wherein travel time is minimized across two media separated by a single, straight boundary line. We then discuss the correlation of this problem with physics via Snells Law. The first core chapter takes this idea and develops it to include the concept of two media with a circular border. To make the problem easier to discuss, we talk about it in terms of running and swimming speeds. We first address the case where the starting and ending points for the passage are both on the boundary. We find the possible optimal paths, and also determine the conditions under which we travel along each path. Next we move the starting point to a location outside the boundary. While we are not able to determine the exact optimal path, we do arrive at some conclusions about what does not constitute the optimal path. In the second chapter, we alter this problem to address a rectangular enclosed boundary, which we refer to as a swimming pool. The variations in this scenario prove complex enough that we focus on the case where both starting and ending points are on the boundary. We start by considering starting and ending points on adjacent sides of the rectangle. We identify three possibilities for the fastest path, and are able to identify the conditions that will make each path optimal. We then address the case where the points are on opposite sides of the pool. We identify the possible paths for a minimum time and once again ascertain the conditions that make each path optimal. We conclude by briefly designating some other scenarios that we began to investigate, but were not able to explore in depth. They promise insightful results, and we hope to be able to address them in the future.

La tesi affronta la questione delle culture civiche presenti su internet a partire dal dibattito teorico sulla rete e le sue implicazioni in relazione al discorso e alla prassi politica. Nella prima parte verranno messi in luce i presupposti delle riflessioni più recenti che tematizzano la possibilità che il web, in quanto luogo di discussione e partecipazione tendenzialmente libero e inclusivo, possa rappresentare l’incarnazione del modello idealtipico di sfera pubblica borghese, magistralmente elaborato da Habermas (1962). Grazie all’interattività, ai bassi costi di produzione e distribuzione, a una nuova struttura di comunicazione many-to-many, le nuove tecnologie digitali sembrerebbero consentire la realizzazione di una intersoggettività pura, autenticamente orientata all’intesa reciproca e non contaminata dall’agire strumentale dei sistemi politici ed economici. Tuttavia, se si analizzano le ricerche empiriche finora condotte (tra gli altri Whilelm 1999, Tsaliki 2002, Wright e Street 2007), si osserva che, accanto a contributi che evidenziano una notevole capacità deliberativa delle discussioni online, ne esistono altrettanti che, al contrario, mettono in luce un gap profondo tra l’ideale normativo e la prassi concretamente messa in atto. Attraverso un doppio binario, induttivo e deduttivo, si tenterà di provare come la contraddittorietà radicale di tali risultati empirici sia in ultima istanza riconducibile alle problematicità insite nel modello habermasiano e alla sua inadeguatezza nel cogliere la complessità dei processi della partecipazione politica che hanno luogo sulla rete. A partire da questa constatazione, si dimostrerà come la sua applicazione possa ancora essere feconda a patto che si ipotizzi di considerare l’ideale di sfera pubblica habermasiano come uno dei paradigmi che ancora informano gli immaginari sociali moderni (Taylor, 2005), piuttosto che come ideale contro-fattuale (Dryzek, 1990) rispetto al quale commisurare criticamente le imperfezioni del reale. Ne discenderà una traslazione della prospettiva analitica, sintetizzabile nel passaggio da un approccio normativo – prescrittivo, rigidamente ancorato a una determinata concezione del “dover-essere”, a un approccio culturale - diagnostico che invece indaga la contingenza del reale alla luce delle sue precondizioni sociologiche e culturali (Nieminen, 2006). Nella seconda parte, si analizzerà il caso empirico del blog curato dal comico italiano Beppe Grillo (www.beppegrillo.it) attorno al quale si è sviluppato un movimento politico altamente articolato ed eterogeneo, capace di promuovere incursioni sempre più frequenti nella politica istituzionale. L’analisi empirica scaturirà dall’applicazione di un modello analitico che attinge al paradigma delle culture civiche proposto da Dahlgren (2009) e in parte lo riformula alla luce del concetto di mediazione sviluppato da Silverstone (1999). Attraverso l’analisi del contenuto dei post del blog e di un corpus di interviste realizzate su lettori del blog e attivisti del movimento, si tenterà di dimostrare come il fenomeno sviluppatosi attorno a Beppe Grillo abbia funzionato come una “public sphericule” (Gitlin, 1998), una piccola sfera pubblica capace di maturare una propria cultura civica, contraddistinta da autonomi processi di mediazione e di valorizzazione del quadro socio-tecnologico a disposizione. / The notions of deliberation and the frame of the discourse theory of democracy (Habermas, 1996), have inspired a substantial strand of studies focused on the internet’s democratic potential (See e.g. Kellner (1999), Rheingold (1993), and Wilhelm (1999)). The central accomplishment of these various contributions lies in the assessment of the extent to which dialogical exchanges taking place in the cyberspace conform to the normative requirements of the ‘counter-factual ideal’ of public sphere (Dryzek, 1990). However, the contradictions that appear when analyzing practical research findings from a comparative global view, pose a dilemma that deals more with theoretical assumptions rather than with the empirical methods applied. The basic aim of the thesis will be the proposal of a cultural turn in the analysis of online public spheres, inspired by the model of “civil cultures” developed by Dahlgren (2009). For this purpose, two major lines of reasoning will be developed. On one hand, the theoretical roots of the concept of deliberation and the long wave of criticisms drawn out by them, will be explored in order to underscore the intrinsic shortages of the notion. It will be argued that the model of “civic cultures” seems to offer a more adequate analytical frame in order to make sense of the pluralized and fragmented online environment. In fact, its original assumptions offer a real antidote to technological determinism. If it is true that technology only makes sense within a social context from which it receives symbolic and pragmatic meanings (Lievrouw, 2002), we can think of civic cultures as a ‘community of practices’ (Wenger, 1998) within which specific ways of using and interpreting technologies are carried out in order to achieve political and civic purposes. On the other hand, the theoretical path will be supported by the references to an empirical case study that will show how the model can be conveniently used to study what is concretely happening in the living public spheres of the internet. The case study will be focused on Beppegrillo.it, an Italian weblog acting as a communicative platform for the development of a civic and political movement which is lead by Beppe Grillo, a well-known comedian.

This paper deals with online political discussion on social networking sites. Drawing from Habermas’ concept of the public sphere and former adaptations of public sphere theory to Internet research, the study examines to what extent political discussion on social networking sites displays public issue focus as well as deliberative, liberal and communitarian characteristics. The empirical analysis is a case study that scrutinizes two opposing Facebook pages created in the context of the topic ‘Stuttgart 21’ – a construction project that evoked a local civic protest movement in the city of Stuttgart in the south of Germany. Using an ethnographic approach, the study takes into account the architecture, culture and discussion style on the two pages and aims at describing the pages in terms of their degree of reciprocity, contestation, ideological homogeneity, rationality and contextualisation with the offline protest movement. The results show two polarized pages that lack deliberation and dialogue, but feature ideological homophily and identification. The results back the fragmentation theory of Internet audiences, while not maintaining the fear of losing the common ground in society. On the contrary, the study suggests that civic political engagement on social networking sites should be discussed in the context of radical democratic processes. It concludes that the utilization of social networks in order to politically inform, stimulate and mobilise scalable publics is desirable.

In the fight to reduce carbon emissions, it is easy to see the necessity of reducing energy consumption. Buildings consume a large amount of energy, and have significant potential for energy savings. One tool for realising these potential savings is building simulation. To be able to use building simulation, accurate models for windows are needed. The models include individual layer models, to determine the solar and longwave radiative behaviours, as well as whole-system models to determine heat flows through the various layers of fenestration systems. This thesis looks at both kinds of models for incorporating windows into building simulations. A new network whole-system model is implemented, and integrated into the California Simulation Engine building simulation software. This model is also used as the calculation engine for a stand-alone rating tool. Additionally, a measurement technique used to measure off-normal solar properties of drapery materials, as part of developing shading layer models, is investigated using a Monte Carlo simulation. The network model uses a very general resistance network, allowing heat transfer between any two layers in a complex fenestration system (CFS), whether they are adjacent or not, between any layer and the indoor or outdoor side, or between the indoor and outdoor sides, although this last case is unlikely. Convective and radiative heat transfer are treated using the same format, resulting in increased stability. This general resistance network is used to calculate indices of merit for the CFS using numerical experiments. This approach requires fewer iterations to solve than previous solution methods, and is more flexible. The off-normal measurement technique which was investigated used a sample holder inserted into an integrating sphere. This is a non-standard way of using an integrating sphere, and early analyses did not provide conclusive information as to the effect of the sample holder. A Monte Carlo analysis confirmed the amount of beam attenuation as being 20% for the sample holder used in the experiments. Also con firmed was the effectiveness of dual-beam integrating spheres in correcting for the presence of a sample holder. The stand-alone rating tool which uses the general network framework, incorporates an easy-to-use visual interface. This tool models multiple types of shading layers with no restrictions on how they are combined. Users can easily change any one layer to see the effects of different arrangements. Users may specify any combination of indoor and outdoor ambient and mean radiant temperatures, insolation, and beam/diffuse split.

The theory of lattices --- a mathematical approach for representing infinite discrete points in Euclidean space, has become a powerful tool to analyze many point-to-point digital and wireless communication systems, particularly, communication systems that can be well-described by the linear Gaussian vector channel model. This is mainly due to the three facts about channel codes constructed using lattices: they have simple structure, their ability to achieve the fundamental limits (the capacity) of the channel, and most importantly, they can be decoded using efficient decoders called lattice decoders. Since its introduction to multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless communication systems, sphere decoders has become an attractive efficient implementation of lattice decoders, especially for small signal dimensions and/or moderate to large signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). In the first part of this dissertation, we consider sphere decoding algorithms that describe lattice decoding. The exact complexity analysis of the basic sphere decoder for general space-time codes applied to MIMO wireless channel is known to be difficult. Characterizing and understanding the complexity distribution is important, especially when the sphere decoder is used under practically relevant runtime constraints. In this work, we shed the light on the (average) computational complexity of sphere decoding for the quasi-static, LAttice Space-Time (LAST) coded MIMO channel. Sphere decoders are only efficient in the high SNR regime and low signal dimensions, and exhibits exponential (average) complexity for low-to-moderate SNR and large signal dimensions. On the other extreme, linear and non-linear receivers such as minimum mean-square error (MMSE), and MMSE decision-feedback equalization (DFE) are considered attractive alternatives to sphere decoders in MIMO channels. Unfortunately, the very low decoding complexity advantage that these decoders can provide comes at the expense of poor performance, especially for large signal dimensions. The problem of designing low complexity receivers for the MIMO channel that achieve near-optimal performance is considered a challenging problem and has driven much research in the past years. The problem can solved through the use of lattice sequential decoding that is capable of bridging the gap between sphere decoders and low complexity linear decoders (e.g., MMSE-DFE decoder). In the second part of this thesis, the asymptotic performance of the lattice sequential decoder for LAST coded MIMO channel is analyzed. We determine the rates achievable by lattice coding and sequential decoding applied to such a channel. The diversity-multiplexing tradeoff under such a decoder is derived as a function of its parameter--- the bias term. In this work, we analyze both the computational complexity distribution and the average complexity of such a decoder in the high SNR regime. We show that there exists a cut-off multiplexing gain for which the average computational complexity of the decoder remains bounded. Our analysis reveals that there exists a finite probability that the number of computations performed by the decoder may become excessive, even at high SNR, during high channel noise. This probability is usually referred to as the probability of a decoding failure. Such probability limits the performance of the lattice sequential decoder, especially for a one-way communication system. For a two-way communication system, such as in MIMO Automatic Repeat reQuest (ARQ) system, the feedback channel can be used to eliminate the decoding failure probability. In this work, we modify the lattice sequential decoder for the MIMO ARQ channel, to predict in advance the occurrence of decoding failure to avoid wasting the time trying to decode the message. This would result in a huge saving in decoding complexity. In particular, we will study the throughput-performance-complexity tradeoffs in sequential decoding algorithms and the effect of preprocessing and termination strategies. We show, analytically and via simulation, that using the lattice sequential decoder that implements a simple yet efficient time-out algorithm for joint error detection and correction, the optimal tradeoff of the MIMO ARQ channel can be achieved with significant reduction in decoding complexity.