Court use of web-based videoconferencing software like Zoom to host court hearings grew exponentially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Shifting hearings online has had some benefits—it has reduced travel time for participants and allowed the courts to conduct hearings during government shutdown, for example. There is hope that these video hearings can help courts rectify longstanding access barriers that have made the courts less accessible than they should be to people with limited economic resources, those socially marginalized due to their racial, language, or other group membership, those without attorney representation, and/or those living with disabilities. Yet, prior court technologies like electronic filing have disproportionately benefited those with resources and legal training instead, and early empirical research on video hearings shows a similar trend. This dual-sided relationship between injustice and court communication technology creates a paradox: How can court communication technology support equal access when it creates its own injustices? Communication scholarship offers a fresh perspective to this intractable problem. Drawing on communication technology affordances, software design justice, and political philosopher Amartya Sen’s ideas on injustice-reduction, this dissertation proposes a normative, analytical framework—the Justice Enhancing Communication Technologies (JECT) Framework. The framework provides philosophical grounding for collaborative efforts aimed at re-imagining court technologies alongside the communities that have been harmed by them. The JECT framework consists of five analytical steps tailored towards discovering the just actions courts can take when using communication technologies:1) listening for the manifest injustice, 2) acknowledging and apologizing for the institution’s role in the injustice, 3) understanding the communicative aspects of the injustice, 4) committing to address the injustice, and 5) cooperatively planning, implementing, and evaluating with members of the public. These steps point those dedicated to enhancing court access towards injustice-reducing action. The framework can be used by communication scholars and others that study the courts, court information technology practitioners, judges and court staff that utilize the technologies, court program evaluators, and court diversity, equity, and inclusion consultants. To illustrate how the framework can be utilized, the dissertation applies it to an illustrative, empirical case study of video hearings. / Media & Communication

Multiple accelerated cultural and social changes have been attributed to social media, from mobilizing social movements to problematizing or normalizing terms and concepts. Digital platforms are considered a vital element in the ecosystem for realizing change in societies, yet the focus is often on overtly sociopolitical content and the issue-driven or identity-driven networked society content. However, and despise the ubiquitous nature of digital media, the accumulative impact of mundane casual interaction has rarely been scrutinized beyond its ability to support rapport building. This research explores the influence of the mundane content in communities’ cultural repertoire. It positions it in the schema of narrative (re)building and meaning (re)making tools, processes that contribute to making lasting impactful change in society. The research especially highlights how the mundane content serves to aid the cultural evolvement of marginalized communities annihilated from the public sphere. Utilizing Paolo Freire’s critical consciousness, Andrea Brock’s work on Black cyberculture, and Zizi Papacharissi’s affective public thesis, this research explores how cultural and digital practices of the (stateless) Bidoon community in Kuwait intertwine in their everyday usage of Twitter. Through digital ethnography that involved discourse analysis of tweets and in-depth interviews with eight participants from the Bidoon community, this research exhibits how mundane Twitter usage has allowed the Bidoon community to reinterpret and recontextualize their cause through weaving their interpersonal grievances into a collective narrative, and how regaining power over their story and using the platform to spread their voice empowered a sense of agency to not only imagine a new world but also find creative ways to realize it. Mundane Twitter has allowed Bidoons to create counternarratives, penetrate the public sphere, control the advocacy rhetoric, and regain power over cultural symbols and thus their relationship with their collective memory. Through highlighting how what appears to be inefficient mundane tweets actually intertwine cultural with digital practices and motivate critical dialogue and reflective processes, this research identifies the importance of raising critical consciousness as an affordance of mundane Twitter, and it encourages extending the scoop of what is considered critical action to be inclusive of the accumulative digital efforts of communities suffering from cultural erasure. / Media & Communication

Denna studie utforskar hur vi kan förhålla oss till naturliga material och lokala resurser i samband med att färgtillverkning inkorporeras som en aktivitet i gymnasieskolans bildundervisning. Idag är inte färgtillverkning något som ofta görs i skolor, då mycket av det färgmaterial som används kommer färdigblandat i en tub eller kaka. Studien lyfter frågor som berör vilka möjligheter till lärande som skapas när färgtillverkning integreras i gymnasieskolans bildundervisning samt hur tillverkning av färg skulle kunna bidra till en djupare förståelse för måleri som både ett hantverk och en konstnärlig uttrycksform. Undersökningen lyfter även frågor om varför detta ämne är relevant idag, med en koppling till ett hållbarhetsperspektiv i färgtillverkningsprocesser i bildpedagogiska situationer.  Med hjälp av forskningsmetoden research-creation organiseras fyra forskningshändelser, vars syfte är att skapa en djupare förståelse för färgtillverkningsprocesser och öppna upp för hur detta skulle kunna inkorporeras i skolan.   Utöver denna uppsats har undersökningen resulterat i en visuell gestaltning i form av en film som visar en färgtillverkningsprocess som ställdes ut på Konstfacks vårutställning.  Teorier om att lära genom att göra, samt multimodal teori med hjälp av formuleringen resources and their affordances används för att skapa en tolkningsram för de olika forskningshändelserna.  Djupekologi används även som en filosofisk inriktning för att diskutera hur människan idag kan uppfattas som frånkopplad från naturen. Denna filosofiska inriktning vill lyfta hur en vändning till att utforska naturliga material och lokala resurser kan bidra till en djupare förståelse och uppskattning för den materiella världen i skapandeprocesser.

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Idag pågår en omfattande urbanisering, och utifrån rådande hållbara stadsutvecklingsideal är den täta blandstaden eftersträvansvärd. Detta skapar konkurrens om stadens mark. Många barn växer upp i staden men barnperspektivet ges ett begränsat utrymme i planeringen av den byggda miljön. Över tid har olika mycket hänsyn tagits till barnperspektivet, exempelvis gavs barnperspektivet stort utrymme under efterkrigstidens stadsplanering och bostadsbyggande, idag hänvisas barn oftare till specifika ytor och kan inte ta del av hela staden. Frågan om vem som ges rätten till stadens offentliga rum blir därmed relevant. Studien belyser problematiken utifrån framförallt två teorier; The right to the city (Harvey, 2008; Mitchell, 2003) och genom en vidareutveckling av miljöpsykologiska begreppet affordances (Kyttä, 2003). De två perspektiven har möjliggjort en analys på ett strukturellt plan såväl som i en mer detaljerad skala. Studien består av en fallstudie med fokus på tre offentliga rum i Hyllie, en skolgård med en angränsande park, ett stationstorg och ett bostadsområde. Det empiriska materialet har samlats in genomintervjuer och en dokumentanalys. Fokus ligger på hur barnperspektivet beaktas i planeringen idag och på hur detta perspektiv kan vidareutvecklas för att skapa barnvänliga urbana miljöer. Resultatet visar att rekreations- och lekytor, är för få, för små eller för tillrättalagda och att det planeras för en hög grad av biltrafikalstrande verksamheter i området. Slutsatsen är att barns rörelsefrihet kommer att begränsas i Hyllie, om så inte ska ske är föräldrarnas resurser avgörande samt är det nödvändigt med en medveten planeringsstrategi om denna utveckling ska kunna vändas. / In today’s western societies an ongoing urbanization is taking place simultaneously as the dense mixed city is desirable based on current sustainable urban development ideals. This leads to a competition of space in the city. Many children in Sweden grow up in cities today. However, the child's perspective is given a limited focus in the planning of urban environments. Over time, varying degree of the child’s perspective has been taken into account. The child’s perspective was given great consideration during post-war urban planning. Today children are directed to specific areas and have limited access to the city as a whole. The question of who is given the right to public spaces is therefore relevant. The thesis highlights the problem on basis of two main theories; "The Right to the City" (Harvey, 2008; Mitchell, 2003) and through further development of environmental psychology concept "affordances" (Kyttä, 2003). The two perspectives enable an analysis on a structural level as well as in micro scale. A case study is conducted focusing on three public spaces in Hyllie, a schoolyard with an adjacent park, a station square and a residential area. The study focuses on how the child’s perspective is used in planning today and how the perspective can be developed further to creates child-friendly urban environments. Through interviews and document analysis, conclusions have been drawn about the planning of Hyllie from the child's perspective. The result indicates that recreation- and playground areas are too small, too few or too well designed and that the detail plans enables a high degree of traffic evoking activities. The conclusions are that the child's freedom of movement will be limited in Hyllie, if not to happen, it is crucial parental resources and it is necessary with a conscious planning strategy if the trend is to be turned.

The present study is an investigation of a recent phenomenon, the creation and maintenance of a student-centered online community using Line, a Web 2.0 mobile messaging (MIM) application. In recent years, mobile instant messaging has become the most widely utilized form of social media (Clement, 2019a), and has been increasingly used by students to interact about schoolwork (e.g., Cetinkaya, 2017; Bouhnik & Deshen, 2014; Tanaka, 2014). With the ubiquity of mobile technology use amongst students, how interactions in student-centered online groups contribute to the achievement of academic goals warrants further research. Therefore, this study had three purposes. The first purpose was to utilize Wenger’s (1998) community of practice framework to investigate whether an online group formed by the students could evolve into an academic community of practice. A second purpose was to analyze online interactions through the lens of uses and gratifications theory (Katz, Blumler, & Gurevitch, 1973) to discover the specific academic uses of MIM valued by the participants. Furthermore, the affordances (Gibson, 1977) that made the application amenable to academic purposes were investigated. The third purpose was to further analyze online interactions to uncover the specific ways in which the practices of the online academic group contributed to and conflicted with the achievement of course objectives. A case study approach (Yin, 2014) was used to provide a thick descriptive account of the online group and achieve the objectives of the study. The 12 participants in this study were members of an intact EAP course, which was part of an English-medium economics curriculum at a private Japanese university. The main source of data were two online groups created using the Line application, one group consisting of all members of the class and the other a group of four students created to work on the course project. Other sources of data included online documents saved to Google Drive, a survey, interviews, and course materials. Data from all sources were coded and analyzed first inductively, using codes from the three frameworks used in the study, and then inductively, to discover any other themes that emerged from the data. The analysis suggested that the online group created by the participants evolved into an academic community of practice. There was evidence of a focused academic domain because the vast majority of online posts dealt directly with course content. Moreover, interactions revealed the development of trust, reciprocity, and commitment, all key components of mutual engagement. Various group practices also emerged that supported students in their coursework and contributed to group learning. A key factor in community formation was attributed to the Line application meeting the academic needs of students. Key gratifications associated with the needs of the students included online interaction with a closed group, convenience, quickness, retrievability, information sharing, and emotional support. The affordances that enabled these gratifications to be obtained were selective connectivity, context-free access, asynchronous/synchronous communication, information aggregation, and multi-user content creation. Further analysis of the online interactions supported by these affordances showed that the prominent group practices directly supported course objectives. However, there were several conflicts associated with the use of MIM, such as problems with the constant flow of messages, unequal levels of contribution, and academically questionable activities. Finally, a summative analysis led to the creation of a model that demonstrated the relationships between learning objectives, student academic needs, gratifications, and affordances in the formation of a community within the context of a traditional university course. / Applied Linguistics

Syftet med studien är att fördjupa förståelsen om vilka upplevelser och attityder kring artificiell intelligens som kan inverka på IT-anställdas yrkesidentitet både idag och i framtiden. Vi tog kontakt med ett IT-konsultföretag och genomförde sju intervjuer med organisationens anställda. Datainsamlingen skedde genom en halvstrukturerad intervjuguide. I vår teoribakgrund har vi utgått ifrån en Teknikacceptansmodell (TAM), begreppet affordances, Goffmans identitetsteori samt en modell av interaktionen mellan arbete och identitet. Resultatet visar att samtliga respondenter använder sig av den generativa typen av AI där majoriteten är positivt inställda till tekniken och ser den som ett stöd och verktyg i det dagliga arbetet. De anställda ser artificiell intelligens som en bidragande och stärkande faktor i relation till deras yrkesidentitet idag, där AI som verktyg stöttar och frigör mer tid för kreativa, meningsfulla och relationsskapande arbetsuppgifter. Majoriteten av de anställda är positivt inställda och ser AI som en stärkande faktor för yrkesidentiteten i framtiden. Däremot fann vi en viss oro kring jobbförlust och professionell avkvalificering i framtiden, där AI:s potentiella kapacitet kan orsaka lidande för de IT-anställdas yrkesidentitet.