Publikationer från Stockholms universitet
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Vem bär ansvaret? : En kritisk diskursanalys av domar om oaktsam våldtäkt
No full textEn ny sexualbrottslagstiftning trädde i kraft år 2018 då samstyckeslagen introducerades, och i samband med det lagen om oaktsam våldtäkt. Mot bakgrund av detta syftar studien till att synliggöra hur brottsoffer och gärningspersoner konstrueras i domarna, samt vilka föreställningar om frivillighet och ansvar som kommer till uttryck i domsskälen. Studien har genom tillämpning av en kritisk diskursanalys undersökt 20 tingsrättsdomar om oaktsam våldtäkt, en jämn fördelning mellan friande respektive fällande domar. Analysen tar avstamp i Faircloughs tredimensionella modell och synliggör således hur domskälens språkliga praktiker ger uttryck för diskurser om ansvar, frivillighet och trovärdighet, samt sympatiserande och skuldbeläggande föreställningar. De teoretiska ramverk som studien tar avstamp i är Nils Christies ”Det ideala offret” och Kate Mannes ”himpathy”. Dessa teorier används för att förklara hur tingsrätten som institution används för att konstruera offer och gärningsmän och de egenskaper som dessa samtidigt tillskrivs. Vid analysen identifierades fyra övergripande teman: Skuldbeläggande av offer, sympati för den tilltalade, ansvar läggs på den tilltalade, det trovärdiga offret respektive gärningsmannen. Vidare visar resultaten en inkonsekvens vid tingsrättens bedömningar. Friande domar präglas i större utsträckning av en ansvarsförskjutning från den tilltalade till målsägande, vilket ofta sker genom tillämpning av våldtäktsmyter och genom sympatiserande föreställningar av den tilltalade. Fällande domar visar däremot en större benägenhet att ta samtyckeslagen i beaktning, genom att lägga ansvar på den tilltalade. Sammantaget är resultaten i linje med tidigare forskning som betonar de praktiska svårigheterna vid tolkning och tillämpning av lagstiftningen
Deciphering immune, microbial and metabolic signatures in allergic diseases
No full textAllergic diseases have reached epidemic proportions over the past decades, affecting millions of people worldwide and continuing to rise in prevalence in developing countries. Environmental and microbial exposures have been suggested to play a key role in this trend. In particular, the gut microbiota, which matures in parallel with the immune system early in life, influences immune profiles locally and systemically, mainly through metabolite production, and its disruption has been associated with allergy development. However, how microbial, metabolic, and immune factors are linked to allergic disease, whether these connections persist from early life into adulthood, and whether allergy treatment affects them is still not fully clear. This thesis aimed to provide a deeper understanding through mechanistic studies and analyses of patient samples. In Paper I, we showed that factors secreted by Staphylococcus aureus, a common commensal and opportunistic pathogen, promote the differentiation of TH9 cells and IL-9 production, accompanied by a transcriptional program associated with allergic inflammation. Retinoic acid, a vitamin A-derived compound, attenuated this response, demonstrating that microbial and dietary metabolites can interact to influence allergy-relevant immune pathways. In Paper II, we investigated the effects of peanut oral immunotherapy (OIT), an emerging allergy treatment, in young children, exploring a broad range of immunological parameters. OIT led to reduced T cell activation following peanut stimulation, suppressed TH2- and TH17-associated responses, shifts in peanut-specific antibody production from IgE to IgG4, and alterations in dendritic cell (DC) activation markers. Furthermore, changes at the transcriptional level, including immune and metabolic pathways, were observed. These interconnected shifts across adaptive and innate compartments may collectively counteract immune pathways characterizing allergy progression, which were observed in untreated children. In Paper III, we explored gut microbiota and plasma metabolic changes in the same cohort and found that OIT is associated with increased microbial diversity and enrichment of taxa linked with healthy conditions, as well as distinct alterations in the metabolic profile, especially lipid-derived compounds. These findings suggest that microbial and metabolic shifts accompany immune modulation during treatment. In Paper IV, we examined whether early-life immune and gut microbiota profiles are associated with allergic asthma in young adulthood. Twenty-year-old asthmatics differed from non-asthmatics in DC markers and circulating immune cell transcriptome profiles, particularly in RNA processing and immune signalling pathways, already at age two. Distinct bacterial trajectories were found from one week of life, suggesting that early gut microbiota alterations can have long-lasting consequences for allergic asthma susceptibility beyond genetic risk. In summary, combining immunological, microbial, and metabolic perspectives, this work provides novel insights into allergic disease development from early life to adulthood and into mechanisms of tolerance induction, highlighting opportunities for prevention and intervention measures.
#Reunification : A Corpus- and Discourse-Linguistic Study of Memory Cultures of the German Reunification on Twitter
No full textThis dissertation investigates how the memory of German reunification is negotiated on Twitter and how the platform functions as a digital site of memory. Twitter is approached as a medium of negotiation and a many-to-many environment that links individual and collective memory processes as well as private and public forms of remembering. Drawing on cultural, communicative and connective memory theories (Assmann, Sabrow, Erll, Hoskins), the study adapts classical models of memory to platform logics and conceptualizes Twitter as a hybrid, dynamic memory environment. The analysis is based on a large Twitter corpus comprising more than 3.5 million German-language tweets collected between October 2019 and November 2020, enriched with relevant metadata. The methodological approach combines discourse-linguistic, corpus-linguistic and big-social-data perspectives to examine linguistic patterns, interactional dynamics and event-driven peaks. The study additionally distinguishes productive and reproductive linguistic practices to analyse how memory discourse is generated, circulated and reconfigured. Situated within research on digital memory cultures, the study shows that commemoration on Twitter is fragmented, selective and strongly oriented toward present concerns. The past is invoked largely for contemporary interpretation, often within counter-public settings. Memory communities form not through stable shared narratives but through interaction patterns, clustering and the affordances provided by the platform. The findings reveal that mnemonic content appears predominantly as short, keyword-driven expressions, influenced by the platform’s 280-character limit. Clear temporal peaks occur around major anniversaries, and transhistorical analogies (e.g. equating the peaceful revolution of 1989 with the 2020 corona demonstrations) and transhistorical continuities (e.g. attributing contemporary political decisions to presumed ideological legacies) strongly shape discursive framing. Dominant fields include historical guilt attribution, democracy and freedom of speech, East-West identity and right-wing extremism. Sabrow’s dictatorship memory predominates, while arrangement memories remain marginal. Discursive shaping power is unevenly distributed: male West-German users and journalistic accounts occupy central positions in shaping memory discourse, and delegitimizing strategies frequently draw on GDR biographies. The study identifies four types of digital memory communities: follower-based, reply-based, hashtag-based and cluster-based. It also shows that Twitter’s theoretical democratizing potential is curtailed by algorithmic visibility, unequal reach and the prevalence of reproductive content. Overall, the dissertation offers empirical, theoretical and methodological contributions to the study of digital memory culture, conceptualizes transhistorical analogies as a key mnemonic practice and adapts classical memory frameworks to platformized publics. It demonstrates how references to the GDR and reunification are mobilized to delegitimize contemporary actors and how East-West identities are negotiated in the digital sphere
Understanding Women’s Leadership Motivation : The role of participative decision making and leader role framing
No full textPersistent gender inequalities in leadership representation, and thereby in decision-making influence, remain a significant obstacle to workplace equality. Theoretical perspectives and empirical findings suggest that gender stereotypes embedded in organizational structures shape women’s and men’s experiences of organizational influence, their leadership aspirations, and their willingness to apply for leadership positions. Building on theories that emphasize the value of more feminine conceptions of leadership as a counterbalance to masculine defaults, this thesis investigates how organizational practices—such as participative decision making (PDM) and the feminine framing of leadership roles—relate to women’s leadership motivation. Study I examined women’s and men’s experiences of being included in decision-making at both the workplace and organizational levels, using nationally representative data from the Swedish Longitudinal Occupational Survey of Health (SLOSH; N = 10,500). The study found that women reported lower levels of inclusion in organizational decision-making than men, whereas no gender differences emerged in workplace decision-making. Furthermore, the findings indicated that women felt less included than men across both male-typed and non-male-typed professions, regardless of whether they occupied leadership positions or not. As such, even women in leadership roles reported having less influence over organizational decisions, indicating that gender disparities in perceived inclusion in decision-making persist across occupational hierarchies. Study II investigated the relationship between PDM and leadership aspirations and whether this relationship differs between women and men, among leaders and among non-leaders. Using survey data from Swedish employees (N = 989), the study found that PDM was positively associated with leadership aspirations among both leaders and non-leaders, and for both women and men, although the strength of this association differed across groups. For non-leaders, the association was stronger for women, suggesting that inclusion in decision-making may be particularly motivating for women’s leadership aspirations if they have not yet entered leadership positions. Among leaders, however, the association was stronger for men, pointing to potential gendered differences in how leadership and influence are experienced at higher organizational levels. Study III tested the validity of the widely circulated claim that women are less likely than men to apply for a leadership position when they do not meet all job requirements, and examined whether this pattern is moderated by masculine versus feminine framing of the role as reflected in the requirements. Using two U.S. samples, Study IIIa (N = 575) found that women reported lower application intentions than men when they perceived themselves as fulfilling fewer of the stated requirements, whereas Study IIIb (N = 792) showed that this gender gap emerged only when the requirements reflected stereotypically masculine characteristics. When the leader role framing emphasized stereotypically feminine characteristics, the gender gap in application intentions at lower levels of requirement fulfillment did not emerge. Taken together, the three studies underscore that gendered organizational structures—reflected in differential inclusion in decision-making processes—and the persistence of masculine leadership norms continue to shape women’s and men’s pathways to leadership. The findings illustrate how organizations can promote gender equality through participative decision-making and by integrating more feminine aspects into descriptions of leadership
singleRcapture: An R Package for Single-Source Capture-Recapture Models
No full textPopulation size estimation is a major challenge in official statistics, social sciences, and natural sciences. The problem can be tackled by applying capture-recapture methods, which vary depending on the number of sources used, particularly on whether a single or multiple sources are involved. This paper focuses on the first group of methods and introduces a novel R package: singleRcapture. The package implements state-of-the-art single-source capture-recapture (SSCR) models (e.g., zero-truncated one-inflated regression) together with new developments proposed by the authors, and provides a user-friendly application programming interface (API). This self-contained package can be used to produce point estimates and their variance and implements several bootstrap variance estimators or diagnostics to assess quality and conduct sensitivity analysis. It is intended for users interested in estimating the size of populations, particularly those that are difficult to reach or measure, for which information is available only from one source and dual/multiple system estimation is not applicable. Our package serves to bridge a significant gap, as the SSCR methods are either not available at all or are only partially implemented in existing R packages and other open-source software
Turf Protection or Policy Expansion? How European Agencies Shape Their Reputation Through Social Media Communication
No full textWe approach public communication of bureaucratic organizations as a means of reputation management and argue that social media communication that abstains from making reference to other agencies is in line with a turf-protective strategy, whereas communication that seeks to establish a link to other agencies is in line with a strategy to embrace new issues and expand policy competencies. Using climate policy communication by EU agencies on the social media platform Twitter (currently X), we show that agencies operating in policy fields traditionally linked to climate policy and holding a policy mandate refer less to their counterparts in their social media communication than agencies without such a climate mandate and operating in policy fields more recently linked to the issue. We find that agencies opt for either turf protective and risk-averse or expansive and reputation-building strategies, depending on what fits their interest best
Normality, Belonging and Welfare Inclusion among Young People with Drug Problems : A Commentary
No full textRemote Control of Autonomous Vehicles in VR Exploring the Impact of Speed on Interaction Methods in Remote Driving
No full textIntroduction As autonomous vehicles advance, human–machine interaction (HMI) in remote driving scenarios requiring manual intervention becomes increasingly critical. This thesis explores how driving speed impacts user performance, comfort, and cognitive load within a gesture-based VR remote driving environment. Research Question The primary research question is: “How does driving speed influence cognitive workload, usability, and driving performance in a gesture-based VR remote driving system?” Method Twelve licensed drivers participated in a within-subjects experiment using a Meta Quest Pro headset to control a virtual vehicle via hand gestures at three speed levels (30, 50, 70 km/h). Objective metrics (Road Edge Collisions, Obstacle Collisions) and subjective questionnaires (NASA Raw-TLX, two SUS items (ease of use, confidence), and custom experiential items) were collected. Data analysis employed repeated-measures ANOVA and Wilcoxon signed-rank tests with Holm correction. Results Results show that higher speeds increase cognitive workload, collision rates, and motion sickness symptoms, while moderate speed (50 km/h) yields optimal usability, comfort, and perceived safety. Subjective and objective metrics consistently indicate participants’ preference for moderate speeds in remote VR driving scenarios. Discussion These findings emphasize the importance of adaptive speed control in VR gesture-based remote driving interfaces to balance performance and user comfort. Limitations include the small sample size and simulated environment constraints. Future research should explore multimodal feedback integration and real-world validations to further improve system safety and user experience
Shaping for the hunt : Harpoon point ecomorphology in Mesolithic Sweden
No full textThis thesis examines the relationship between humans and the paleoenvironment in the Swedish Mesolithic through the study of harpoon points. While Scandinavian Mesolithic weapon components are often investigated when broader historical narratives are constructed, few artifacts are analyzed in terms of form and function. Drawing inspiration from biological ecomorphology, this study aims to investigate morphological variation in Swedish Mesolithic harpoon points in relation to both environmental and cultural-historical factors. This thesis employs a combination of geometric morphometrics, archaeozoological data and stable isotope analysis to explore the ecomorphology of Swedish Mesolithic harpoon points. In addition, to investigate weapon ecomorphology from a situated perspective, continuum mechanical simulations, geometric morphometrics, and experimental archaeology are employed—drawing on principles from ecological psychology and dynamic systems theory. The thesis comprises five papers. The first paper develops a methodological approach for separating functional and spatiotemporal information inherent in harpoon point shapes. The second paper outlines analytical models for assessing hunting- and conflict-related dimensions in the hypothesized use of Stone Age hunter-gatherer weapon points. The third paper examines eastern middle Swedish harpoon point morphology in relation to broader developments in craft traditions and hunting strategies across the circum-Baltic Sea region, as well as in relation to environmental and faunal changes. The fourth paper presents an experimental study investigating how weapon use influences subsequent modification and manufacture of weapon points. The fifth paper analyzes the development of Swedish harpoon point morphology in relation to environmental and faunal change during the 8.2 ka cal BP cold event. The thesis demonstrates how Mesolithic Swedish harpoon point morphology relates to both environmental and cultural-historical factors. Full-body and distal silhouette shape correlate with the regional presence of large terrestrial prey, while proximal width and full-body silhouette shape correlate with landscape settings. It is suggested that slim proximal parts reflect more frequent use of javelins in certain aquatic environments during the Late Mesolithic, whereas full-body silhouette shape may indicate the continued use of spearthrowers throughout the Early Mesolithic in open landscapes with abundant large terrestrial prey. The morphology of Swedish harpoon point barbs and proximal parts also changes in relation to cultural-historical developments, particularly during the transition from the Early to the Middle Mesolithic and during the 8.2 ka cal BP cold event. In addition, the thesis outlines how the ecomorphological aspects of pre-modern weapons can be examined from a situated perspective, treating weapons as components of the microenvironment through experimental archaeology. This approach allows fine-grained morphological variation to be explored across different physical settings, with cultural-historical factors conceptualized as rules or task constraints
Hidden Scripts Behind Silenced Racism : Chinese immigrants' reasserting national identity as dissociative or coping strategies to the COVID-19 racism in Stockholm
No full textThe thesis investigates how Chinese immigrants in Stockholm experienced racism during COVID-19, and how their subjective tendency to China as the ascribed country of origin affects such experiences. Using an interpretive phenomenological approach, nine semi-structured interviews and one expert interview were conducted and analyzed. Theoretical understandings of ethnic boundary negotiation and everyday nationalism illuminate four central themes in the data: COVID-19-related racism, differing perceptions of racism, reasserting Chinese national identity, and uncomfortable everyday experiences. The study shows that racism occurred during COVID-19, mainly in forms of deliberate avoidance, and occasionally in verbal forms. While international working environments invite some participants to interact with ethnic others, which arguably mitigates perceived discomfort, the nation-state, as an internalized and embodied category of practice, produces and reproduces cognitive boundaries with different value orientations and preferences from those of ethnic others. Consequently, COVID-19 led most participants to reassert their Chinese national identities, primarily through intra-ethnic relations and cultural affinity. Notably, China-related professionals and males tend to deploy elite discourses of China's accomplished economic development and/or rising global influence. Those traits, though not publicly recognized by the host society, serve as dissociative or coping strategies in perceiving racism, which is not necessarily limited to COVID-19