Many reports in recent years are suggesting that young people should be involved in the development of the digital society. The Swedish government's Digidel campaign launched in 2011 involved adolescents to train elderly people. This thesis builds on the campaign with its major aim being to investigate how young people think about digital society and their own knowledge and skills to promote digital inclusion. The research questions were set to examine how adolescents look upon the competencies needed in today's digital society, what specific skills and capital the adolescents suggest that they have which can promote digital inclusion and how projects in this direction are perceived by the participants. The theoretical framework is based on theories about social capital. It encompasses Bourdieu's theories about symbolic capital and people's habitus, Putnam's theories about social capital and the power of the organization and Gidden's vision about how people are organizing themselves in the modern world. By interviewing four adolescents who worked as IT-guides for the elderly we get a picture of the skills and capital the adolescents consider themselves to possess that helped them to increase digital inclusion. The results show that it is not merely digital skills that the adolescents deem important to increase digital inclusion. In many ways their social abilities and the mutual learning laid a foundation for the elders to visit, and revisit, the IT-guides and enhanced the elders' curiosity about computers and the internet.

Syftet med studien var att undersöka hur användningen av digitala verktyg tog sig uttryck i avgränsade aktiviteter - samling, spontan lek, planerad undervisning och utevistelse, i två olika förskoleverksamheter. Där fokus låg på att synliggöra hur de digitala verktygen användes av både barn och pedagoger, samt vilken kompetens som krävs av pedagogerna för att möjliggöra en digital delaktighet. Studien tar sin teoretiska grund i det pragmatismen, där begreppen learning by doing, erfarenheter, reflektion och lärande genom inquiry varit centrala. Tidigare forskning tar upp kring användningen av digitala verktyg och då främst fokus på surfplattan, samt kring pedagogers digitala kompetens. Studien har en kvalitativ grund, där datainsamlingen utfördes genom observationer. Resultatet visar att surfplattan är det verktyg som användes under avgränsade aktiviteter i bägge förskolorna. Även att funtable användes i den ena förskolan. Hur dessa verktyg användes såg olika ut från förskola till förskola, men även från aktivitet till aktivitet. Det förekom i bägge förskolor en fysisk användning av surfplattan hos pedagogerna och en indirekt användning hos barnen, men med ett pedagogiskt syfte bakom. Däremot förekom det i den ena förskolan en högre grad av fysisk användning av surfplattan och funtable hos barnen, där pedagogerna fanns närvarande men samtidigt höll sig i bakgrunden. Vidare visar resultatet att det krävs en djupare digital kompetens för att utveckla barnen i deras lärande kring hur det digitala verktyget fungerar och på så sätt göra de digitalt delaktiga.

Att besitta goda digitala färdigheter blir en allt viktigare förutsättning för att både kunna vara aktiv och delta i ett demokratiskt samhälle samt klara vardagsnära sysslor. Biblioteket har i många fall kommit att bli en plats som både erbjuder digitala verktyg men också där man kan få hjälp med frågor av digital karaktär.  Syftet med den här studien var att förstå hur personal på folkbibliotek uppfattar arbetet med digital delaktighet och skapa en förståelse för hur folkbiblioteket främjar den delaktigheten. För att uppnå vårt syfte gjordes en fallstudie där fallet var projektet Ökad digital delaktighet i Örnsköldsviks kommun. Ett antal dokument kopplade till projektet analyserades och fem semistrukturerade intervjuer utfördes med nyckelpersoner i projektet. Programteori tillämpades för att beskriva strukturen i projektet och förstå hur de olika antaganden som gjordes relaterade till varandra medan ett teoretiskt ramverk över den digitala klyftan utformad av Jan Van Dijk användes  som begreppslig stomme i analysen. Analysen resulterade i en logisk modell som belyste att personalen på folkbibliotek har insett att deras och bibliotekets roll med att stödja personer i digitalt utanförskap är viktigt. Studien visade vidare att aktiviteter behöver anpassas utifrån användares olika förutsättningar och behov. Inte minst visade uppsatsen att arbete med digital delaktighet kräver samarbete med olika organisationer och myndigheter och att folkbibliotek kan vara en drivande kraft i lokala samhället.

I denna studie presenteras digital delaktighet och utanförskap hos äldre i Angered, Göteborg. 1,1 miljoner svenskar står idag utanför internet och den största anledningen till det är hög ålder. Sverige är, liksom många andra länder, i en utveckling mot ett digitalt samhälle. Kontakt med myndigheter, vården eller sociala relationer är i ett skifte att bli allt mer digitaliserat, men är hela samhället redo för en sådan utveckling? / In this study, digital participation is presented in elderly people living in Angered, Gothenburg. 1.1 million Swedes are excluded from the internet and the biggest reason for that is age. Sweden, like many other countries, is in a development towards a digital society. Contact with authorities, healthcare or social relations is in a shift to become increasingly digitalized, but is the entire society ready for such development?

This thesis is about the formation of recommendations fore-participation for the Swedish municipality of Kungälv. The municipality does currently not offer any web based tools for dialogue through citizens’ active participation in the political process. Therefore we examined which types of dialogue tools that are being used by other municipalities similar to Kungälv. These tools where tested on users in order to determine which aspects are beneficial or detrimental from a usability perspective. To our help, we developed a framework by modifying the Interdisciplinary User Experience Dimensions evaluation tool developed by Lachner, Naegelein, Kowalski, Spannoch Butz (2016). This framework is intended as a base for further studies into the development of a tool to quantify and compare a wide range of different aspects of web sites focusing on civil dialogue. The results reveal a number of problems and opportunities concerning different dialogue tools in the areas of content, usability and design.

The aim of this bachelor thesis Digital Inclusion – An Interview Study with Public and School Librarians on Work to Reduce the Digital Divide is to examine how the democratic task takes shape in public and school librarians’ work to strengthen citizens’ digital inclusion. The research questions are: How do public and school librarians work to support citizens’ digital inclusion? What challenges do public and school librarians experience in this work? How do public and school librarians describe the digital divide? Three themes are in focus: An Active Citizenship, Working for Digital Inclusion and The Digital Divide. Within library and information science this bachelor thesis mainly relates to information practices where media and information literacy (MIL) is studied but also to cultural policy when the democratic role of public and school libraries is examined. A sociocultural perspective is used as a theoretical approach and a few of its concepts – social practices, tools and appropriation – are used as analytical tools. Van Dijk’s cumulative and recursive model of successive kinds of access to digital technologies is used as a structure. The method used is semi-structured interviews with six librarians, whereof three public librarians and three school librarians. The results show that digital tools are significant to public and school librarians’ work strengthening digital inclusion in its users. While school librarians mainly focus on instruction to increase student’s skills concerning digital competence, public librarians focus more on developing skills concerning user’s digital everyday life although MIL goals are also in effect. Activities for learning show that public and school librarians use different approaches but all stress the importance to connect activities to student needs and realities. The professional role is prominent when working for digital inclusion. Relinquishing the role of the expert means that shared learning opportunities can occur which is beneficial for both librarians and users. Regulatory documents such as the curriculum are considered important tools by most of the librarians. Some mutual challenges for the librarians are lack of interest or competence in the digital aspects of the job, lack of time, fear and insecurities related to digital technologies and tools causing users to feel ashamed. While school librarians are challenged by teachers who are inaccessible and students who are overly confident about their competencies, public librarians are challenged by marketing and limitations in what they can and cannot help users with. The librarians observe how the digital divide manifests itself: all users have shortcomings with digital competencies that prevent them from becoming active citizens in society. School librarians claim that students in general are considered more knowledgeable about technical tools such as computers and smartphones but in fact they lack competencies outside their frame of reference. Public librarians claim users are unable to perform daily tasks and that many lack access to technical tools.

The aim of this bachelor thesis is to examine if public libraries live up to the expectations that the society have when it comes to giving information technology service to older people. The reason behind this is to highlight the target group older people in swedish library plans, because they are the group in the society that feel least involved in the digital society. The method in this study consist of a content analysis where sixty-two library plans have been reviewed. Based on the background, four themes have been selected in the results section, the digital divide, digital participation, the public library as an institution and the elderly.  The themes together with Eriksson-Zetterquist description of the new institutional theory and Warschauers model for literacy and ICT-access, formed the content of the analysis section. The findings show that the majority of the library plans have not mentioned elderly people in a digital context. The most common context to mention the elderly are in reading promotion. Older people have also not been identified as a priority target group within the institution, which reflects on the contents of the library plans.

In this study, Nordic children’s librarians work with promoting children’s participation during the covid-19 pandemic is investigated. Focus is in particular on how the participants ways of working have changed and what difficulties and opportunities were brought by the pandemic. The theoretical framework is based on two models for children’s participation and the concepts of child perspective, children’s perspectives, empowerment and view of children. Ten qualitative, semistructured interviews were conducted. The empirical data were analyzed and structured according to a theory-driven approach. The results show that the restrictions which have been imposed on the physical library room have led to various difficulties in the children's librarians abilities to communicate and interact with the children. This, in turn, has affected the participants' possibilities to include, inspire, involve and challenge the children in the library activities. Furthermore, the results show that the children's librarians child perspective has not been able to meet the children's own perspective to the same extent as before, which has led to the children's influence in the activities diminishing. However, the transition to digital channels and fora has brought new opportunities to enable participation, albeit in a changed form. Further research is needed on how the changed conditions for children’s participation in the library activities can be understood from the perspectives of children and their adults. Studies regarding the participation of especially vulnerable children and children with disabilities are also suggested.

Societal changes caused by the widespread digitalization of several important public as well as private sectors of everyday life has led to increased demands for digital literacy amongst the general public. Meanwhile, there are several demographic groups that for different reasons are excluded from the digital arena, the elderly especially. The public libraries, leaning on it’s democratic as well as it’s educational mission, has taken widespread action to extenuate the problem through digital inclusion efforts, in particular the cooperation through the Digidel network. The purpose of this thesis is twofold, first we strive to gain knowledge in regards to the users experiences and use of digital technology, second we examine the users experiences of the libraries digital inclusion activities. The theoretical framework applied consisted mainly of Van Dijk & Hackers analysis of the four barriers of the digital divide. As a complement Prenskys digital natives, digital immigrantstheory has also been applied. Four semistructured interviews were conducted with elderly participants of the Digitala första hjälpen program activity at Motala digidelcenter at Motala stadsbibliotek. The results indicate that material access to digital technology is a nonproblem for the participants, and that the technology is used in a variety of ways, although mainly for information seeking and communication purposes. Use of digital technology is considered relatively complex and anxiety inducing, which library guidance help mitigate. Furthermore, the study shows how digital inclusion guidance works both in a problem solving and a competence improving capacity. Lastly our results indicate how appreciated these activities are amongst the participants.

The aim of the thesis is to examine a number of librarians’ descriptions and opinions of what makerspace in public libraries is. The questions which will be answered are: How do the librarians in this study express and explain what makerspace is? In which ways can makerspace contribute to achieve the missions given to the public libraries, as directed in the library law, according to the librarians in this study? In which way can makerspace contribute to expand the mission of the public libraries, according to the librarians in this study? The material is derived from seven semi structured interviews, with essential personnel from makerspaces. Qualitative content analysis and the four spaces model by Henrik Jochumsen, Casper Hvenegaard Rasmussen and Dorte Skot-Hansen. (2012) were used to analyse the interviews. The results show that makerspaces in public libraries look different all over the country. The local community shapes the makerspace, in ways of form, offer, activities, machines etc. Makerspace expand the traditional resources and offer of public libraries, by also offering digital participation. The new modern libraries with makerspace can be seen as something new and old. This because one might consider they are both. Makerspace is old in the traditional way of offering new knowledge to the public. It’s new in the way the knowledge is presented, instead of learning by reading you can now participate in activities or create and build things in order to learn how they work.  Makerspace can contribute to achieve the mission but not to expand it.