| 1. |
- Dahlberg-Grundberg, Michael, 1983-
(författare)
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Digital media and the transnationalization of protests
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Recent developments in communications technology have transformed how social movements might mobilize, and how they can organize their activities. This thesis explores some of the geographical consequences of the use of digital media for political activism. It does this by focusing on the transnationalization of protests. The aim is to analyse how movements with different organizational structures and political scopes are affected by their use of digital media. This is done with a specific focus on how digital media use influences or enables transnational modes of organization and activism. The thesis comprises four different case studies where each study examines a social movement with a specific organizational structure. There are, however, also important similarities between the movements. In each study, somewhat different perspectives and methodological approaches are used. Some of the methods used are semi-structured interviews, content analysis of written data (retrieved from Facebook as well as Twitter), and social network analysis.The analysis indicates that digital media do have a role in the transnationalization of protest. This role, however, differs depending on what type of social movement one studies. The organizational structure of social movements, together with their specific forms of digital media use, influences how the transnationalization of protests and movements is articulated and formed. In cases where a social movement has a hierarchical organizational structure, there is less transnationalization, whereas in social movements with a more non-hierarchical organizational structure one sees more transnationalization. The thesis concludes that the transnationalization of protests is affected by social movements’ organizational structure. The more decentralized the social movement, the more vibrant the transnational public. In order to explain how transnational social movements, using digital media, can emerge in cases where geographical distances might make such coalitions unlikely, the thesis introduces the notion of affectual proximity. This concept helps us understand how transnational social movements, connecting actors from all over the world, can emerge through digital media.
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| 2. |
- Björkman, Martina, 1974-
(författare)
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Essays on Empirical Development Economics: Education, Health and Gender
- 2006
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis consists of three empirical essays in development economics on education, health and gender."Income Shocks and Gender Gaps in Education: Evidence from Uganda" uses exogenous variation in rainfall across districts in Uganda to estimate the causal effects of household income shocks on children's enrollment and cognitive skills conditional on gender. Adverse income shocks have large negative effects on female enrollment and test scores, while boys are only marginally affected. The results imply that households respond to income shocks by varying the quantity and quality of girls' education while boys are to a large extent sheltered."Does Money Matter for Student Performance? Evidence from a Grant Program in Uganda" assesses the effect on student performance of an untied public grant in the education sector. To capture the causal effect of the grant, I exploit the variation in program exposure introduced by a newspaper campaign aimed at boosting schools' and parents' ability to monitor local officials' handling of the grant program. The newspaper campaign was successful, but since newspaper penetration varies greatly across districts, the exposure to information about the program, and thus funding, differed across districts. I use this variation to study the effect of increased funding on student test scores and find significant and quantitatively important effects."Power to the People: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment of a Citizen Report Card Project in Uganda" presents the results of a randomized evaluation of a community-based monitoring intervention intended to enhance rural communities' ability to hold primary health care providers accountable. The intervention improved both the quality and the quantity of health service provision in the treatment communities: One year into the program, average utilization increased by 16 percent, the weight of infants increased and the number of deaths among children under-five fell markedly. The results suggest that the health unit staff increased their effort to serve the community in light of better community monitoring.
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| 3. |
- Eckeskog, Linn, 1984-
(författare)
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Kommunikation i förskolan : förskollärares och barnskötares kommunikation med föräldrar i ett digitaliserat medielandskap
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The overall aim of this doctoral thesis is to study communication work among personnel in Swedish pre-schools, with a particular focus on mediated communication with parents. The purpose is also to analyse what roles are given to the professionals in this communication, to identify what subject positions are constructed and to identify how boundaries are managed within the communication practices.The primary theoretical framework of the thesis is social constructivism and symbolic interactionism. The pre-school organisation and identities are regarded as in a perpetual state of becoming and changes in the media landscape are viewed as rearranging the preconditions for communication practices. Technical innovations are regarded as social products at both ends. Results build upon observations in five pre-schools, interviews with 32 pre-school employees and multimodal analysis of communication material directed to parents. Additional interviews and document studies were conducted in the form of a case study, in order to gain knowledge of the implementation of a digital learning platform.The study shows that the communication environments differ between pre-schools, e.g. concerning how and which mediums are used. Several obstacles to communication are identified, of which many (but not all) are related to the socioeconomic status of parents. Within the mediated communication, pre-school personnel to some extent position themselves as experts concerning practical and pedagogical questions, whilst parents are positioned as actors in need of guidance. A major function of mediated communication is assigning parents’ responsibilities in relation to the pre-school, along with norms regarding what constitutes the “good” (pre-school) parent. Boundary work in relation to parents is conducted using different modalities, used for hedging but also for establishing professional positions. Digitalisation appears as a negative force when introduced top-down, without regards to the needs, previous practices and preconditions within a particular pre- school; but as a positive force when initiated by the professionals themselves and when responding to particular needs within specific pre-schools. As expectations on digitalisation in pre-schools increase, questions of preconditions and communication skills grow in prominence.Although expectations on pre-school professionals’ communication skills are high, communication with parents is not sufficiently acknowledged as part of the actual work in pre-schools. A sign of (and reasons for) the under prioritisation of communication work is the uneven and arbitrary preconditions for communicating, in the forms of relevant education, time and technical equipment. The lack of resources can be connected to three issues: A working environment issue (discrepancy between expectations and preconditions), a democratic issue (communication being random rather than planned/ considered) and a professional issue (multimodal communication not reflecting the professional identity that informants strive towards).Communication with parents (and surrounding society) needs to be acknowledged as part of the work in pre-school, and the personnel need to be given the necessary skills and conditions for communication, in order to provide equality of ac- cess to the parents, but also to give personnel the possibilities of communicating about and reflecting the pre-school organisation as they know it.
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| 4. |
- Lindeblad, Emma, 1975-
(författare)
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Self-concepts and psychological health among children and adolescents with reading disabilities and the influence of assistive technology
- 2017
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis includes three empirical studies that have all aimed to increase the understanding of the interactions and connections between self-concepts, reading impairment, psychological health and Assistive Technology (AT). The use of applications in tablets as assistive technology to facilitate reading and compensate for reading impairment and its impact on the participants’ self-concepts and psychological health as well as on their reading abilities was also of interest.The first study included 67 pupils in school years 4-9. They were assessed by the Beck Youth Inventory (BYI) regarding self-image, anxiety and depression. The results showed no deviance from age-equivalent norm group scores. The second study included 35 pupils in school years 4-6. This study aimed at investigating the transfer effects on decoding and general reading ability after 20 intervention sessions where AT (applications in tablets) were used. Results showed that the decoding ability had progressed at the same rate as that of the norm group. The results also showed that using AT increased motivations to learn, as well as independence and improved family climate. The third study was a randomized control study (RCT) with 137 participants in school years 4, 8 and high school. The results showed that reading impaired children and adolescents to a great extent, but not completely unanimously, did not depict any different self-image or self-esteem than peers with an expected reading ability of the same age. Self-esteem was investigated by the Cultural Free Self Esteem Inventory (CFSEI-3). The CFSEI-3 scores showed no effect by interventions with AT. The results also showed that there were no signs of depression, assessed by BYI, in the investigated groups, but somewhat inconclusive results regarding anxiety where the school-year 4 group depicted higher levels of anxiety.The results generally showed a more positive depiction than what previous studies within the field have presented, which was interpreted as being due to the development of efficient pedagogical strategies and supportive attitudes in the school context, as well as among family members or peers.
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| 5. |
- Olofsson, Jakob, 1980-
(författare)
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Simulation of Microstructure-based Mechanical Behaviour of Cast Components
- 2014
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In the process of developing cast iron and cast aluminium components, a high level of co-operation between product development and production is of great importance. From an engineering standpoint, this co-operation is limited early in the product development phase by e.g. a lack of established methods for the consideration of local variations in the mechanical behaviour of a finished component.This thesis aims to increase the possibilities for co-operation between product development and production during the product realisation process by introducing and studying the use of predicted local mechanical behaviour in structural analyses of cast components. A literature review of existing simulation methods and a work on characterisation of mechanical behaviour from microstructural features have been performed to identify important knowledge gaps. A simulation strategy has been formulated which is able to predict local mechanical behaviour throughout the entire component, and to incorporate this into a Finite Element Method (FEM) simulation of the structural behaviour of the component. In the simulation strategy, componentspecific microstructure-based mechanical behaviour is predicted using a casting process simulation. A computer program was developed to create FEM material definitions which capture the local variations in mechanical behaviour throughout the component. Using a material reduction technique, the local mechanical behaviour can be incorporated without increasing the FEM simulation time.The relevance of the simulation strategy was experimentally verified on cast aluminium samples, where the strain field was observed using Digital Image Correlation (DIC). It was found that the local variations in mechanical behaviour cause a stress-strain distribution that deviates from that predicted by a homogeneous material description, indicating the importance of calculating with and including such variations in material behaviour in FEM simulations. Numerical investigations demonstrate the strategy’s relevance for predicting the behaviour of cast aluminium and ductile iron components.
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| 6. |
- Sen, Sreyashi, 1988-
(författare)
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Essays on Markets and Institutions in Developing Countries
- 2024
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Labour Regulations and Industrial Performance: Evidence from IndiaThis paper investigates the impact of recent state level reforms passed over the period 2003 to 2016 to a central law on industrial relations, the Industrial Disputes Act of 1947, on plant outcomes in the formal manufacturing sector in India. Exploiting variation in the timing of the state level reforms, I use a stacked event study design that compares treated plants to similar control plants in untreated states to estimate the average effect of state level reforms classified as pro-worker or pro-employer. I find that labour reforms that are pro-employer significantly raise plant output, wage bill and the average earnings of workers, while pro-worker reforms are negatively related to average worker earnings but have no other meaningful effects on plant performance. I also find heterogeneity in estimated treatment effects, with place based labour reforms targeting specific industrial locales having higher effects on average compared to other types of labour reforms.The Impact of Size-Dependent Labour Laws on the Allocation of Resources in IndiaI investigate the effect of job security provisions in India that imposed regulatory requirements on plants above a certain size threshold. Using data on plants in the registered manufacturing sector in India over the period 1998 to 2018, I first test for discontinuities in the size distribution of plants at the regulatory threshold of 100 workers. I do not find evidence of significant discontinuities in the plant size distribution at 100 workers. I then use a sharp regression discontinuity design to examine if there are systematic differences in plant outcomes at the regulatory threshold. I provide suggestive evidence that regulatory costs lead to a decline of 6.7% in plant output.A Quantitative Study of Poverty TrapsThis paper undertakes a quantitative exploration of how initial conditions matter for long run economic outcomes when there are capital market imperfections, using a model of occupational choice with financial frictions. The model exhibits both poverty traps at the level of the individual, as well as at the aggregate level. At the level of the individual, I find multiple steady states for similar individuals starting out with different wealth levels, with differences in wealth and consumption that persist over time. Aggregate poverty traps arise in this model due to general equilibrium effects of wages adjusting to individual occupational choices. I numerically show certain initial conditions, in terms of the distribution of wealth and aggregate capital, that determine whether economies converge to a high wage equilibrium or stay trapped in poverty at a low wage equilibrium.
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