In a large number of applications, the processing relies on objects or area of interests, and the pixel-based image representation is notwell adapted. These applications would benefit from a region-based processing. Early examples of region-based processing can be found in the area of image segmentation, such as the quad tree. Recently, in mathematical morphology, the connected operators have received much attention. They are region-based filtering tools that act by merging flat zones. They have good contour preservation properties in the sense that they do not create any new boundaries, neither do they shift the existing ones. One popular implementation for connected operators relies on tree-based image representations, notably threshold decomposition representations and hierarchical representations. Those tree-based image representations are widely used in many image processing and computer vision applications. Tree-based connected operators consist in constructing a set of nested or disjoint connected components, followed by a filtering of these connected components based on an attribute function characterizing each connected component. Finally, the filtered image is reconstructed from the simplified tree composed of the remaining connected components. In the work presented in this thesis, we propose to expand the ideas of tree-based connected operators. We introduce the notion of tree-based shape spaces, built from tree-based image representations. Many state-of-the-art methods relying on tree-based image representations consist of analyzing this shape space. A first consequence of this change of point of view is our proposition of a local feature detector, called the tree-based Morse regions (TBMR). It can be seen as a variant of the MSER method. The selection of TBMRs is based on topological information, and hence it extracts the regions independently of the contrast, which makes it truly contrast invariant and quasi parameters free. The accuracy and robustness of the TBMR approach are demonstrated by the repeatability test and by applications to image registration and 3D reconstruction, as compared to some state-of-the-art methods. The basic idea of the main proposition in this thesis is to apply connected filters on the shape space. Such a processing is called the framework of shape-based morphology. It is a versatile framework that deals with region-based image representations. It has three main consequences. 1) For filtering purpose, it is a generalization of the existing tree-based connected operators. Indeed, the framework encompasses classical existing connected operators by attributes. Besides, It also allows us to propose two classes of novel connected operators: shape-based lower/upper levelings and shapings. 2) This framework can be used to object detection/segmentation by selecting relevant points in the shape space. 3) We can also use this framework to transform the hierarchies using the extinction values, so that a hierarchical simplification or segmentation is obtained. Some applications are developed using the framework of shape-based morphology to demonstrate its usefulness. The applications of the shape-based filtering to retinal image analysis show that a mere filtering step that we compare to more evolved processings, achieves state-of-the-art results. An efficient shaping used for image simplification is proposed by minimizing Mumford-Shah functional subordinated to the topographic map. For object detection/segmentation, we proposed a context-based energy estimator that is suitable to characterize object meaningfulness. Last, we extend the hierarchy of constrained connectivity using the aspect of hierarchy transformation of constrained connectivity using the aspect ofhierarchy transformation.

This study has investigated the thoughts and the emotions concerning climate change among children. The main purpose of the thesis is to study how the children cope with the threat of climate change and if they see it as something concerning their on lives. The theoretical roots of the study are to be found within appraisal theory, social representations, coping and self-efficacy. The children who are included in this study are 12-13 years old and live in the western part of Sweden. The data collection is based on the interviews with 27 children. The interviews have been thematically analysed and the aim was to get a deeper understanding of how the children think and feel concerning climate change. In the analysis four main themes emerged which focus on: how the children perceive and relate to climate change, the contexts in which the children face the discussions on climate change, how they cope with the emotions that are awakened and how they feel that they can influence issues related to climate change and the environment. It can be stated that the results have many nuances. The majority of the children see climate change as something abstract and distant that doesn’t affect their own lives. Regarding the future of the planet the children express both hope and worry, but also ambivalence. They mean that we, the humans, have the decision in our hands. The children meet the discussion of climate change in different places like: in media, in school, at home and through own experiences. They use several different strategies to cope with their emotions; problem –focused coping, emotion-focused coping and meaning-focused coping. Most of the children feel that they can affect the environment positively through small, simple everyday actions, bur there are also children that feel that there is nothing they can do. The children’s own experiences affect how they think and feel regarding climate change It can be concluded that many of the interviewed children are involved in issues concerning the environment and climate change and that they possess knowledge that adults don’t have, but also that climate change must be transformed into something tangible and seen as a personal responsibility for a change to occur.There, the community, the adult world and the school have a great responsibility

Les auteurs que nous étudions ont changé de langue. Ils ont dénudé jusqu’au plus profond de leur être, renoncé à leur langue maternelle, pour se reconstruire dans une autre langue : le français. Paradoxalement, ce renoncement au plus intime, la langue maternelle, a permis un approfondissement de l’être et un véritable devenir à soi-même. Loin de rejeter dans l’oubli d’une mémoire refoulée la première vie, ce passage au français, son élection, a permis à la mémoire de se dire, à l’histoire de s’écrire, à l’identité de s’affirmer, dans la distance d’une langue neuve, naïve et nouvelle. Que l’écriture adopte la voie directe du témoignage ou le détour narratif d’une fiction, il semble que le choix d’une langue étrangère, le français, constitue le passage obligé où, pour devenir soi-même, il faille accepter d’être un autre. C’est dans cette dialectique subtile de l’identité et de l’altérité que s’est opérée, par le détour de l’écriture, la transformation identitaire. L’Histoire, en toile de fond, nous tenterons de cerner les raisons liées au choix d’écrire en français, de voir les représentations qui lui sont associées. / The writers under study have changed their language. They have laid bare their utmost being, renounced their mother tongue to make themselves anew in a foreign language: the French language. Paradoxically, this renouncement to the most intimate – the mother tongue – has brougt them to delve deeper into their selves and made them become truly themselves. Far from casting their first lives into repressed oblivion, switching to French has enabled memory to be told, history to be written, identities to be asserted, in the very distance of a new and naive language. Whether the writer adopts the direct path of the witness or a fictional detour, it seems that the choice of a foreign language constitutes the compulsory passage where in order to become oneself one must first accept to be other. It is through this dialectics between identity and otherness that the change of languages has generated an identical metamorphosis.In a historical perspective, we shall try to grasp the reasons that motivated those writers to choose French and the representations associated to it.

The discourse on Norrland (literally ‘North land’ in English) as essentially ‘different’ has been(re)produced in literature, politics and science for as long as the idea of ‘Norrland’ has existed. Thus,when investigating the discourse that constructs the identity of Norrland in opposition to a Swedishnational identity, it is important to connect these representations to their contemporary (andchanging) political-economic contexts. The aim of this thesis is to analyze contemporaryrepresentations in news, film, advertising and interviews to show how representations constructstereotypes informed by neoliberal ideals and internationally familiar stereotypes of a traditionalintransigent population positioned in Norrland and a modern and progressive population in theurban South. The findings in this thesis can be summarized as follows. First, Norrland has beenconsistently reproduced, resisted and reworked through various discursive networks and practicesover centuries, as simultaneously authentic and obsolete. Drawing on these discourses makes therepresentations of Norrland in the news become part of a wider discursive network that representsNorrland as an ‘internal other’ within Sweden. Secondly, discourses on Swedish modernity and onneoliberal growth and competition reproduce Norrland and its people as inferior to the rest ofSweden. These representations are reworked and resisted and result in ‘real’ material effects in, forinstance, the news media, place marketing and film. Thirdly, in order to resist these representationsand become part of the ‘modern’, progressive world, places and people need to adjust to neoliberalideals of competitiveness and growth. And, finally, people’s identities are affected by theseneoliberal ideals as they have to relate and react to the representations of different places andpeople and the discourse on the urban as progress. This results in different strategies in theconstruction of narrative identities. I conclude by arguing that these representations serve not onlyas contrasts but also as strategies in the quest to scapegoat certain groups for problems that initiallyoriginated in unequal opportunities and structures of power related to, for instance, ethnicity, class,gender and disabilities – something that is exacerbated by neoliberalist policies and ideologies. Themore pressure is put on individuals and places to produce constant growth, the more certain peopleand places are viewed as ‘unproductive’ and problematic. The problems of depopulation anddiminishing job opportunities in the inland areas of Norrland are thus blamed on the population through the representations of Norrland as an internal ‘other.’ / Away from the periphery – migration, livelihood strategies and place discourse in the periphery of Norrland

Syftet med denna studie var att undersöka vilka föreställningar kring socialsekreterare som svensk dagspress reproducerar. Det empiriska materialet för studien består av 120 artiklar publicerade i morgontidningarna Dagens Nyheter och Svenska Dagbladet mellan år 2015 och 2016. Metoden för studien är kvalitativ idé- och innehållsanalys och det analytiska ramverket som används är format av idéer och dimensioner som framkommit ur tidigare forskning. Analysen utgår i huvudsak från fyra idealtyper av socialsekreterare som media beskriver. I resultatet framgår det att socialsekreterare i huvudsak framställs som offer i sin yrkesroll på grund av problem i system och struktur. Beskrivningar av socialsekreterare som hjälpsamma och inkompetenta är i många fall relaterade till rollen som offer. Föreställningen om socialsekreterare som ovilliga och elaka förekommer i mindre utsträckning än andra roller och är begränsad till specifika områden av den mediala rapporteringen. / The aim of this study was to give understanding to the representations of social workers in the daily press in Sweden. The empirical material of this study consists of 120 articles published in the morning newspapers Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet in the years of 2015 and 2016. The method used were qualitative analysis of ideas and content analysis and the analytical framework used is based on ideas about social workers that has been identified in previous research. The analysis is based mainly on four ideas of social workers as the media describes the profession. From the results it appears that socials workers are mainly described as victims due to systematic and structural shortages. The descriptions of social workers as helpers and incompetent are often linked to the description of them as victims. The description of social workers as cruel and malicious are fewer than the other categories and are limited to specific areas presented in the news.

While the inclusion of gay and lesbian individuals in the media is not a recent phenomenon, the increased representation of families headed by gay and lesbian couples is somewhat new. Research has shown that mediatized representations of gay and lesbian individuals and couples more often than not adhere to stereotypes and perpetuate ideas that the constructors of these representations want their audiences to consume. Research has also focused on audiences’ reception and processing of the messages that these representations may carry. This study, instead, focuses on the construction of representations of gay and lesbian couples and their families, bringing to the forefront the importance of discursive practices that are used to construct visual, linguistic, and aural elements of the media consumed by audiences. Looking specifically at advertisements (both for and against) concerning California’s Proposition 8, a ballot measure proposing to ban same-sex marriages, this study shows how elements of the composition of the advertisements coalesce and mutually enhance each other to create particular understandings of gay and lesbian families. Using Critical Discourse Analysis and Social Semiotics, this study uncovers the underlying ideologies that inform the discursive and semiotic choices that have been made. Together, the music, the visuals, and the language are formed into a coherent whole, the advertisement. This thesis argues that how gay and lesbian people are represented is equally as important as the overt messages that are being disseminated to the audiences. By studying the discursive practices utilized by these advertisements, we are able to see that ideologies of idealistic family life and heterosexual relationships influence both advertisements in their characterisation of gay and lesbian couples and their respective families. / Graduate / 0626 / 0628 / df.tabangcura@gmail.com

Cette analyse dresse le portrait des différentes représentations de la télévision à travers le cinéma américain de 1970 à 1999. Ce travail porte sur un corpus de quatorze films et s’intéresse à quatre dimensions de la télévision : l’appareil électrique, le téléspectateur, le contenu et l’univers professionnel. Les hypothèses soulevées sont que la télévision est majoritairement présentée de façon négative, que les représentations s’inscrivent dans un contexte culturel précis et qu’il y a un consensus entre les écrits universitaires et les cinéastes au sujet de l’écran cathodique. Bien que certaines critiques soient récurrentes d’une décennie à l’autre, il y a une évolution des représentations. Dans les années 1970, la télévision est un objet de risée. Son contenu est caricaturé et les professionnels qui travaillent pour la télévision sont personnifiés comme des êtres incompétents. Dans les années 1980, le petit écran est montré comme un objet dangereux. Sa très grande popularité en ferait un puissant diffuseur idéologique qui transforme tout en spectacle même la mort. Cette même popularité servira de prétexte aux cinéastes des années 1990 pour utiliser la télévision comme symbole de l’Amérique. Le portrait est peu flatteur : une Amérique corrompue, violente et en manque d’idéaux. Cette analyse montre également qu’au fil des décennies, les mêmes idées circulent entre cinéastes et penseurs américains. Enfin, cette attitude par rapport à la télévision est d’ailleurs symptomatique d’un mépris de l’élite intellectuel envers l’art populaire. / This analysis examines the multiple representations of the television in the American movie from 1970 to 1999. Four angles have been studied: the television set, the TV viewer, his content and the work environment. The hypothesis are theses: all the representations are negative, these representations are placed in a particular social context and there is a consensus between intellectuals and cineastes about the cathodic screen. Even if there are similarities between each decade, there is an evolution of the television representation. In the seventies, the cineastes laugh about the television. They show that the content is ridiculous and the TV workers are incompetent. In the eighties, the television is show like a dangerous object. His great popularity allows the owners to use the television as an ideological device. This popularity is used in the nineties like a pretext for the cineaste to talk about the United States over the television. The America’s portrait is negative: a violent and corrupted country. This analysis also shows that during these years, the same conclusions go through literature and cinema. Finally, this attitude toward television is symptomatic of an intellectual elite forward the popular art.

Archipel des Petites Antilles, la Martinique est une société née de la traite transatlantique, de l’esclavage et du colonialisme français. Cette société créole, liée à sa métropole depuis près de quatre siècles, est devenue un département français en 1946, conférant à ses habitants le statut de citoyen français. Dès lors, l’émigration vers son centre, l’Ile-de-France, s’intensifia peu à peu pour s’institutionnaliser au cours des années 1960 grâce à un organisme d’Etat, le BUMIDOM. La présence antillaise en France est aujourd’hui telle, qu’on parle de la métropole comme d’une « troisième île ». Toutefois, on assiste de nos jours à de nouvelles pratiques de mobilités transatlantiques, plurales et multiformes, dont les migrations de retour font partie intégrante. Les acteurs du retour, les dits « retournés » ou « négropolitains », ont témoigné de plusieurs obstacles à l’heure de réintégrer leur terre d’origine. La présente étude entend démontrer cette tendance à considérer le migrant de retour comme un nouveau type d’ « outsider », soit comme un étranger culturel ; manifestation inédite qui dévoile une autre facette de l’altérité à la Martinique ainsi qu’une nouvelle configuration de sa relation postcoloniale avec la République française. Suite à un terrain ethnographique auprès de ces « retournés », et d’une observation participante auprès de la population locale, cette étude entend soumettre les représentations de l’île et de ses habitants à une analyse qualitative et comprendre comment l’expérience en territoire français transformera le migrant, sa façon d’appartenir à la culture martiniquaise et/ou à la culture française. Nous nous livrons ainsi à un examen des représentations et des pratiques des acteurs du retour pour permettre un éclairage novateur sur les nouvelles allégeances identitaires et les nouveaux déterminants de l’altérité à l’intersection de ces deux espaces à la fois proches et distants. Aussi, nous interrogerons comment le prisme du retour s’articule au cas martiniquais. En effet, le retour acquiert une dimension particulière dans le contexte de ces itinéraires de mobilité de « citoyens de couleur » qui expérimentent souvent un double rejet social et ce, sans même s’être écartés de leurs frontières nationales. / The Lesser Antilles Archipelago Martinique is a society born of the transatlantic slave trade, slavery and French colonialism. This Creole society, tied to its metropolis for nearly four centuries, became a French department in 1946 giving its residents the status of French citizens. As a result, migration to the colonial center, Paris and the metropolitan region (Ile-de-France), intensified gradually to the point of institutionalization in the 1960's, thanks to the state agency BUMIDOM. The Caribbean presence in France is now such that the metropolis is refered to by immigrants as a "third island". However, in the contemporary setting there are new transatlantic mobility practices, plural and multifaceted – an integral part of which are centered around return-migration. The protagonists of return, the so-called "returnees" or "négropolitains" encounter several obstacles upon return to their homeland. This study examines the tendency to consider the returnee as a new type of "outsider" – more precisely, as a cultural foreigner; revealing another facet of otherness in Martinique and a new configuration of its postcolonial relationship with the French Republic. Following ethnographic fieldwork with these "returnees" and with the local population, a qualitative analysis of representations of the island and its inhabitants reveals how their experience in the French territory transforms the migrant and their way of belonging to Martinican and/or French culture. The representations and practices of the returnees are examined, shedding light on the emergence of new allied identities and new determinants of otherness at the intersection of these two areas, at once near and far. Also, we will examine how the prism of return as an object of study, is transposed and reconfigured in the case of Martinique. The return acquires a special dimension for "citizens of color" who often experience social rejection and a double exclusion without stepping outside their national borders.

L’enseignement fait l’objet de nombreux débats au Québec et à travers le monde, pratiquement depuis qu’il existe. L’implantation du nouveau programme de formation au Québec durant les années 2000 a donné lieu à des débats particulièrement vigoureux. En effet, ceux-ci ont mené à la révision des programmes d’histoire du Québec au secondaire moins de dix ans après leur mise en application. Au cœur de ces discussions se trouvait la place de la nation et de la mémoire collective. Pour plusieurs, le nouveau curriculum négligeait de transmettre aux élèves les principales connaissances historiques liées aux origines et à l’évolution de la nation québécoise. Notre recherche tente de mieux comprendre le rôle que joue l’identification à la nation dans l’enseignement de l’histoire et l’impact que peut avoir le programme de formation sur cet aspect de la pratique enseignante. Pour apporter des éléments de réponse à cette question, nous avons mis en place deux dispositifs méthodologiques : un qualitatif et un quantitatif. Nous visions ainsi à cerner les représentations sociales des enseignants à propos des finalités de l’enseignement de l’histoire et de la place que doit y tenir l’identification à la nation. Pour ce faire, nous avons situé les réponses des participants à l’aide des finalités de l’enseignement de l’histoire évoquées par Audigier (1995): patrimoniales et civiques, intellectuelles et critiques ainsi que pratiques. La phase qualitative de notre étude consiste en des entrevues avec huit enseignants d’histoire du Québec au secondaire. Fondées sur les écrits à propos des représentations sociales, les entrevues présentent le profil de huit enseignants qui intègrent, à leur façon, la nation dans leur enseignement. Les données recueillies lors de cette phase de la recherche nous ont permis de créer un sondage à l'aide duquel nous avons recueilli des données pour la phase quantitative de la recherche. Ce sondage, mené auprès de 36 enseignants d’histoire du Québec au secondaire, montre que les finalités patrimoniales iii et civiques de l’enseignement de l’histoire sont toujours bien présentes dans les représentations sociales des enseignants, malgré le changement de programme. / History education has been the object of many debates in Québec and around the world almost since it was introduced in schools. The adoption of a new history curriculum in Québec in recent years sparked a particularly intense debate. These discussions even triggered a revision of the new curriculum, not even ten years after it was put into place. Nation and collective memory are at the heart of the discussions. For many, the new curriculum does not adequately transmit basic historical facts about the origins of the nation to students. Our research tries to better understand the place of national identification in Québec history education and the impact that the curriculum can have on that aspect of teaching. We have put into place two different methodologies to try to find answers to that question: one qualitative and one quantitative. We thus aim to identify the history teachers' social representations about the objectives of history education and the role national identification plays in it. To do that, we have analyzed the subjects' responses according to Audigier's (1995) framework, which identifies three types of objectives to history education: national and civic, intellectual and critic as well as practical. The qualitative phase of our research consists of height interviews with history teachers at the secondary level. These interviews present the profiles of height teachers who integrate the national past in their own way into their teaching practices. The data collected during that phase of the research allowed us to create a survey that served as the main tool of the quantitative phase. In total, 36 history teachers took the survey and the results show that national and civic objectives of history education remain at the forefront, despite the curriculum change.

La Confédération Sénégambienne (1981-1989) résulte de l'association de deux États indépendants de l'Afrique de l'ouest: le Sénégal et la Gambie; afin de renforcer leur unité en s'appuyant sur leurs similitudes (géographie, langues, cultures...). Cependant, ce dessein se substitue rapidement, en une inquiétude de la classe populaire gambienne. Celle-ci soupçonne son voisin de cacher l'ambition d'annexer et de transformer la Gambie en une région sénégalaise. L'introduction de l'armée sénégalaise dans les territoires gambiens, après la tentative de coup d’État contre le PrésidentDawda Jawara, n'arrangera pas les choses et déclenche les hostilités. Une revendication identitaire et un nationalisme anti-sénégalais, sont nettement visibles dans la littérature, les discours politiques et médiatiques de l'époque. La langue anglaise et les traditions britanniques deviennent ainsi en Gambie des traits de démarcation. Simultanément, la langue française est perçue de façon péjorative, comme une langue sénégalaise à éloigner des frontières gambiennes. Elle cesse alors d'être une langue universelle. Toutefois, la dissolution du pacte confédéral en 1989 et la signature du Traité d'amitié en 1991, donne un nouvel élan positif, pour la promotion du français en Gambie. L’État gambien opte désormais pour l'ouverture au monde francophone, afin d'exhorter aux partenariats culturels, économiques, politiques … C'est dans ce cadre que cette thèse propose d'analyser les représentations, les attitudes que les Gambiens ont de la Francophonie (langue, espaces, habitants). Sont-elles restées négatives et confondues à l'espace sénégalais, ou ont-elles au contraire, évolué positivement ? Elle a aussi pour objectif de signaler les mesures prises pour la diffusion du français en Gambie et de rendre compte des obstacles rencontrés par les acteurs. Pour ce faire, une enquête de terrain a été menée en 2010, au sein de certains établissements scolaires, de l'université et de quelques organismes étrangers et nationaux à Banjul et à Brikama. Et c'est sur la base des résultats obtenus que notre travail s'articulera. / Senegambia Confederation (1981-1989) results from the combination of two independent states of West Africa: Senegal and the Gambia to strengthen their unity based on their similarities : geography, languages, cultures … But this aim is quickly replaced by a concern. The Gambian people suspects his neighbor to hide the ambition to transform their country into a region of Senegal. The attendance of the Senegalese army in the Gambia after the attempted coup against President Dawda Jawara leads hostilities. Gambian nationalism appears in the literature, the media and political discourse. English and British traditions become symbols of identity in the Gambia. Simultaneously, French is perceived in a negative way, as a Senegalese language. The agreement between two countries is canceled in 1989. Since 1991, a new cooperation based on a friendship and partnership is born. Gradually, Gambian authorities promote the French language. Then, positive attitudes about French-speaking world are observed. This thesis analyze the Gambian representations of French: language, spaces and people. It will indicate steps and difficulties of the promotion. Our work will focus on the results of investigation conducted in Banjul and Brikama in 2010 in schools, at the university and some national and foreign agencies and national.