There is a risk of skilled labour shortages in rural areas in Sweden due to demographic change. Distance education is one manner to meet those challenges. This study focuses on people's experiences of distance education in a rural municipality and what it meant to them. The study is based on interviews with people who have completed higher education through distance learning in the Vilhelmina municipality and is compared with previous studies. The results show that career opportunities and personal development within the municipality are highlighted as valuable outcomes of distance education.

In sparsely populated municipalities, there is a large increase of elderly people in relation to people of working age. This will entail a great need for housing for the elderly, and at the same time resources for the care of the elderly. The aim for this study is to examine how older people within Storuman-, Sorsele and Vilhelmina municipality perceive their current housing and other forms of housing for the future, and also to analyze how the housing demand is met now or in the plans for future development within the municipalities. Interviews have been conducted with both elderly but also with people who work with housing issues within the municipalities. There are incentives that the demand of shared housing will increase. The elderly feel a lack of meeting places and they prefer shared forms of housing over regular apartments. The municipalities have different challenges and different housing supply and therefore they have different approaches and plans to cope with the future housing demand for elderly.

This surveys hypothesis is based on the notion that all citizens have the right to access information of the municipality they live in. The aim of the study is to examine how residents of Vilhelmina municipality take note of the current information, and also how they would proceed to access information in the future. In order to conceptualise the results these following theories were used: digital divide, digital immigrants, digital native, uses and gratification theory, social capital, communications strategies and two-way communication. The survey is conducted with four focus group interviews and one separate interview with a person working at the municipal office. The focus groups were divided into age categories in order to see the similarities and differences between the groups' media habits and preferences of future communications. The study material consists of the transcribed texts from the abovementioned interviews. The results of this research demonstrate that there is significant difference between age groups. According to the early theory of digital divide the gap in information between groups exists only due to the individual’s ability to access the Internet, which not match this study’s results. More current updates of the theory of digital divide declare that motivation may be a cause to the gap.  During the course of this research the issue of motivation emerged and a few of the interview participants stated motivation to find information as a key point. With the help of the participants requests communications strategies were presented for future communication based on the target groups' media choices. / Undersökningens utgångspunkt är att alla medborgare har rätt att ta del av information av kommunen de bor i. Studiens syfte var att undersöka hur invånare i Vilhelmina kommun tar del av information nu och hur de skulle vilja gå tillväga i framtiden. För att synliggöra och begripliggöra resultatet användes teorierna digital divide, digital immigrant, digital natives, uses and gratification theory, socialt kapital, inifrån- och utifrånstrategier samt tvåvägskommunikation. Undersökningen genomfördes med fyra fokusgruppsintervjuer samt en informantintervju med en insatt person från Vilhelmina kommuns kommunkontor. Fokusgrupperna var indelade i ålderskategorier för att kunna se likheter och skillnader mellan gruppernas medievanor och önskemål på framtida kommunikation. Studiens material bestod av de transkriberade texterna från de tidigare nämnda intervjuerna. Resultatet påvisade att det finns stora skillnader mellan åldersgrupperna, dock inte så stora gap som den tidiga teorin om digital divide, utan att skillnaderna mellan åldersgrupperna låg i vilka medier de använde som huvudkälla. Samt var skillnaderna mellan grupperna hur motiverade de var att sätta sig in i kommunal information. Med hjälp av deltagarnas önskemål samt kommunikationsstrategier gavs förslag på framtida kommunikation baserat på målgruppernas medieval.