Aktuella disputationer

From the vantage point of infrastructuring – an assemblage of technologies and user practices – this study explores the constitution of counterpublics in a Russian militarised and authoritarian context. The research seeks to understand how media and their affordances have been mobilised as heuristic instruments to reconfigure public attention and as infrastructures for anti-war civic engagement in Russia and in exile.

The study asks how both Russian activists and ordinary citizens reflect on and narrate their involvement with anti-war activism and the role of media technologies, as embedded into these processes. In what ways do actors perceive, enact and imagine platform affordances in order to renegotiate forms of communicative interaction? How does technology bridge a broad array of dispersed actors in an authoritarian political context of strict surveillance? By providing extensive empirical analysis based on interviews with core activists and broader publics, underpinned by ethnographic immersion, this project reveals that 1) actors enact platform affordances, negotiating possibilities and constraints of media infrastructures in routines of activism and everyday life. It shows how 2) people perceive and imagine infrastructures, by treating them not only as pipelines but as compounds in social systems of human practices, deployed for the constitution of semi-public spaces. 3) Finally, the research arrives at the concept of distributed attention, which helps us to grasp how anti-war actors carry out the struggle for public attention in hostile environments, under governmental restriction and surveillance, and in a situation of geographic dispersion.

• Link to full record in DiVA.
• Link to dissertation as file.

Why do so many automated service encounters feel "hollow" or "brittle"? The answer lies in the gap between the digital interface and the human beings who support it. Contemporary service research has long treated marketing-driven customer experience and HR-driven employee experience as parallel tracks. This thesis argues they are, in fact, two sides of the same coin. By introducing the concept of phygital congruence, this work offers a unified perspective on how to align technical micro-architectures with organizational social resources.

The thesis challenges the traditional separation of the "frontstage" and "backstage." By applying a socio-technical systems lens to five years of research, ranging from field studies in unmanned retail to experimental robotics, it develops a new framework for bridging the ontological divides of the phygital environment. The research argues that a high-tech service system is only as strong as its social subsystem. By positioning human well-being not merely as a desirable outcome, but as a structural necessity, this work provides a roadmap for a more sustainable, human-centric service economy. Ultimately, this thesis validates a core truth for the digital age: the customer's experience can never consistently exceed the reality of the employee.

• Link to full record in DiVA.
• Link to dissertation as file.

Cognitive deficits are common in people with Parkinson’s disease (PD), reduce quality of life, and are poorly addressed by medication. This thesis investigated whether working memory updating (WMU) training can represent a promising cognitive intervention for people with PD. Across three studies, including a feasibility study, a randomized controlled trial, and a qualitative study, the thesis examined the feasibility, effects, and experience of WMU training. The results showed that WMU training is feasible and leads to measurable cognitive improvements. Immediate gains were observed on tasks that share cognitive processes with the training, and delayed improvements in broader cognitive domains. Participants also described emotional, motivational, and metacognitive changes during training that supported transfer to everyday life. Together, these findings may suggest that WMU training enhances both cognitive ability and cognitive efficiency in people with PD.

• Link to full record in DiVA.
• Link to dissertation as file.

Nätverksfördröjningen påverkar prestandan för många av de applikationer som körs över internet. Trots att betydande insatser görs för att minska nätverkslatensen är möjligheten att observera latensen fortfarande begränsad i många nätverksmiljöer. Nätverksoperatörer som förlitar sig på aktiva nätverksmätningar får inte en fullständig bild av latensen för vanlig applikationstrafik, medan de lågfrekventa mätningar som ofta används av nätverksforskare inte lyckas fånga de snabba latensfluktuationerna i trådlösa nätverk.

I denna avhandling undersöker vi potentialen hos tekniker som eBPF och hårdvarutidsstämplar för att förbättra möjligheterna att observera latens i moderna nätverk. Vi använder eBPF för att designa två effektiva passiva övervakningslösningar som körs i operativsystemets kärna, vilka låter nätoperatörer övervaka latensen både över hela nätverket och inom den lokala nätverksstack. Genom att installera dessa verktyg hos en internetleverantör och på servrar i ett globalt distributionsnätverk visar vi att det är möjligt att kontinuerligt övervaka latensen i produktionsmiljöer. Vår analys av mätdata visar att accessnätverk fortfarande orsakar en stor del av latensen i slutanvändarnas internetanslutningar, samt att stora fördröjningar kan uppstå redan tidigt i webservrars mjukvarustack för bearbetning av nätverkspaket. Vidare utvecklar vi metoder som kombinerar högfrekventa aktiva mätningar med exakta hårdvarutidsstämplar för att få en mer detaljerad förståelse av latensen i trådlösa nätverk. Genom att använda våra högupplösta mätningar för att studera Starlink avslöjar vi hur dess resursschemaläggning i länklagret och köhantering påverkar latensen. Genom att studera latensen i olika nätverksmiljöer fördjupar vi därmed vår förståelse av nätverkslatens, och genom att designa nya verktyg för att mäta latens lägger vi grunden för framtida forskning om nätverkslatens.

• Link to full record in DiVA.
• Link to dissertation as file.