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Abstract
In the Soviet Union during the 1970s, many service workers, such as salespeople, hairdressers, and car mechanics who worked in the state-owned retail sector, rose to prominent financial positions. They achieved this mobility because they had access to coveted goods and services that were in short supply. Soviet citizens' disposable incomes were growing, producing a desire to consume in a more sophisticated way. However, shortages of the planned economy meant that people often could not satisfy their growing demands for consumption. Service providers illegally sold goods and services on the side for higher prices and became wealthy by collecting a huge portion of the money that the populace could not spend in the state retail system. The Soviet state was reluctant to prosecute these dealers because it needed their services to provide for consumers and to avoid pursuing large-scale economic reform. However, the enrichment of service workers caused resentment among the broader population. The newly rich, as opposed to members of an older Soviet upper class including party and state officials and the cultural and academic elite, flaunted their wealth and created a new mass culture of luxurious lifestyle. They not only became role models for some Soviet youth, but also created a sense among many Soviet citizens that socialism was in crisis. The prominent status of this new elite and its conspicuous consumption contradicted traditional socialist values of modesty, collectivism, and the priority of spiritual over material concerns.

El objetivo general de esta tesis es investigar el lenguaje utilizado por Barack Obama en Internet durante su presidencia desde 2009 hasta 2011. La tesis pretende ir más allá del clásico análisis del lenguaje ¿online¿, el cual se ha limitado hasta la fecha al estudio del sistema de signos utilizados en internet (Crystal, 2001; Herring, 2004; Androutsopoulos, 2006; Baron, 2008; Williams, 2009); por ejemplo los textos utilizados en distintos tipos de plataformas digitales: correos electrónicos, ¿chats¿, foros, blogs, etc. En la consecución de este objetivo se ha utilizado principalmente una estrategia doble, junto con el análisis lingüístico se han aplicado técnicas de Interacción Humano-Computadora (¿Human-Computer Interaction¿ o HCI) como herramienta para desvelar una nueva faceta del lenguaje utilizado por Obama en Internet. Para lograr este propósito, la tesis aborda los siguientes objetivos principales: 1. Analizar y describir la estructura, distribución de la información y su recuperación de la página oficial de Barack Obama ¿Organizing for America¿. 2. Analizar y describir el lenguaje utilizado por Barack Obama en Internet a través del análisis de sus discursos retóricos y referencias deícticas más importantes en la plataforma Twitter. La estrategia de trabajo recurrente a lo largo de la tesis es el estudio del espacio y el tiempo, los contenidos y como estos contenidos son presentados, tanto visualmente como en el propio discurso en la página web. De tal forma, los resultados demuestran que espacio y tiempo son dos parámetros generales que constituyen a) una faceta HCI (elemento implícito) del lenguaje de Obama en Internet; y b) una faceta lingüística (elemento explícito) de este lenguaje. Por consiguiente, los resultados obtenidos en relación con la noción de tiempo y espacio revelaron una nueva visión de cómo la comunicación humana está organizada en Internet. Analizando esta noción en el ejemplo de Obama, la tesis mostró cómo la utilizó de la forma más ventajosa para organizar su propio universo ¿online¿. ; The general aim of this thesis is to investigate Barack Obama¿s online language during his governing period in 2009-2011. The thesis aims to go beyond the classic approach to the analysis of online language which up to these days has been limited to the study of sign system used online (Crystal, 2001; Herring, 2004; Androutsopoulos, 2006; Baron, 2008; Williams, 2009), i.e. the text used in different kinds of online technologies: emails, chats, forums, blogs, etc. In achieving this aim, the thesis takes a twofold approach, mainly, together with linguistic analysis it addresses Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) techniques as a means to uncover a new facet of Obama¿s online language. For the attainment of this goal, the thesis addresses the following main objectives: 1. To analyze and describe the structure, information distribution and its retrieval from Barack Obama¿s official website Organizing for America. 2. To analyze and describe Barack Obama¿s online language through the analysis of his main rhetorical appeals and deictic references on Twitter platform. The recurrent framework along the dissertation is space and time, contents and how these contents are presented, both visually on a web page, and in the discourse themselves. Thus, the outcomes demonstrate that space and time are two general parameters that constitute a) HCI facet (implicit element) of (Obama¿s) language on the Internet; and b) linguistic facet (explicit element) of (Obama¿s) language on the Internet. Hence, the emerged results connected with the notions of space and time opened up a new vision on how human communication is organized online. By looking at these notions in Obama¿s example, the thesis showed how he employed them to organize his own online world to the best advantage.

As a striking phenomenon of Soviet consumption, Beriozka stores appeared in the late 1950s and existed until the end of the 1980s. This chain of stores was a state trade organization selling goods that were otherwise in short supply (cars, fashionable clothes, household appliances, etc.) for special 'checks' used as equivalents of foreign currency by special groups of Soviet citizens. Similar stores existed in other socialist countries. The article shows that these stores on the one hand became an element of the existing system of state-granted entitlements. The customers were Soviet citizens who earned money abroad as well as people who did not go abroad but received remittances from foreign sources. On the other hand, the development of the black market (barely persecuted by the state) made it possible to purchase Beriozka checks for roubles; so it granted access to sought-after goods (among them even goods from the West) to a wide range of consumers. Paradoxically, Beriozka was criticized and much frequented at the same time.

This dissertation gives a new perspective on the language of the Internet in the 21st century. In previous CMC studies this language stood for a system of signs employed for communication by means of information transmission from screen to a user. In most cases, this system was presented in the form of a written text, i.e. the term "language of the Internet" was limited only to its textual component. However, given the rise and development of Internet technologies in new millennium, I claim that "language of the Internet" is not only about words used during online communication, it is also about the flow of this communication. Being invisible, non-physical substance, this process occurs mostly at unconscious level, and up to these days, it was (and it is) part of Human-Computer Interaction, mainly, usability studies, which focus on the ease of information retrieval from a website as part of its pre-launch testing. This dissertation proposes to extend the notion of "language of the Internet" that has overstepped its textual limits and comprises a broader meaning in the context of modern Internet technologies. This evolution of language on the Internet is demonstrated using Barack Obama's presidential governing online. The choice is caused by his revolutionary election campaign in 2008 that converted him into "the first Internet President" of the United States. As Greengard, (2009) puts it: "Barack Obama's presidential campaign utilized the Internet and information technology unlike any previous political campaign. How politicians and the public interact will never be the same" (p. 16). Thus, the main aim of this thesis is to give a description of Barack Obama's presidential governing online from two different perspectives: Human-Computer Interaction and Corpus Linguistics, and their combination is claimed to form Obama's discourse online. For the attainment of this goal, the thesis addresses the following main objectives: 1. To analyze and describe the structure, information distribution and its retrieval from Barack Obama's official website Organizing for America. 2. To analyze and describe Barack Obama's online language through the analysis of his main rhetorical appeals and deictic references on Twitter platform. The first objective is achieved using Human-Computer Interaction theoretical background. The dissertation does not attempt to give a profound technical analysis of Obama's website neither it is aimed at comparing it with another site; rather, the purpose to study Obama's website is merely to demonstrate the other facet of language of the Internet. The dissertation analyzes how the text is distributed on a visually framework (the static approach) along with its hyperlink organization (the dynamic approach). In doing so, I believe we can understand better how the online discourse is structured. To discover whether this structure is effective, the dissertation has adopted a method inspired in Web Design and Computer Sciences which consists of experimentation in usability testing, both in a qualitative and quantitative measurement. On the one hand, I have applied a usability test in which potential users of Obama's site have given their impressions in what I consider a qualitative approach to the study. On the other hand, I have measured the users' moves throughout the different hyperlinks in the site to discover whether specific informationoriented tasks could be accomplished in a more or less effectively way. This is what I consider a quantitative approach to analyzing the information distribution on the site. The qualitative approach will give us good insight into user's acceptability and good reception of the information conveyed on the webpage. The quantitative approach will give us optimal understanding on how fluent the communication between the sender (Obama's office, in this case) and the receiver (the citizenship) is proved to be. The second objective is achieved using Corpus Linguistics techniques such as semantic tagging of the corpus, compilation of its wordlist, concordance lists for the selected nodes, and statistical analysis of the corpus. The combination of these components will result in a new, revised notion of "language of the Internet" using political domain as an experimental instrument. In Chapter 3, a detailed presentation of the materials and methods is offered, together with the specific objectives, namely, rhetorical space and deixis. The main idea behind the study is to know, first, about the topics Barack Obama talks about. Then, the analysis of the deictic elements (we vs. they, here vs. there, this vs. that, these vs. those, now vs. then; etc.) will give us a good insight in how he delivers those topics to the public. The recurrent framework along the dissertation will be space and time, contents and how these contents are presented, both visually on a web page, and in the discourse themselves. I will make reference to inclusive and exclusive language, structure of information and will finally give a deep discussion on how language on the Internet becomes more than just a collection of words to be complemented by visual elements, interaction in time and organization at the visual level. A full description of the methods, results and discussion is offered in the following sections. Thus, it is claimed that the Internet language of new millennium is treated as a tandem of linguistic and technological components which are closely interconnected and perceived as a single whole. The question under discussion now is not what spelling/grammar features characterize language used online; rather, the intention is to suggest a new approach to the notion of language of the Internet through its use by Barack Obama on his website and Twitter platform as far as it is possible. This is what the following thesis is about.

To be able to offer a deeper understanding of the topic this work will first examine the concept of legal personality, its meaning and application in the legal framework of international law over the years. Without claiming advanced technological knowledge in scientific areas like robotics and engineering the paper will then try to present some basic overview over the latest developments concerning Artificial Intelligence, such as quantum computing and emotional intelligence. Consequently some suggestions about possibilities of connecting these two topics will be made. The questions introduced will engage with the nature and different forms of legal personhood, its connection to intelligence, autonomy and/or consciousness. This paper aims to create a more practical and not a general, hypothetical idea of how an AI agent could be granted international legal personality and what could be the possible effects of that (for example rights and obligations). For this purpose it will focus on the recognised subjects of international law and examine on their example an AI agent as a possible future actor in international legal relationships. Subject of reference will be international law and recent developments in EU law, such as the European Parliament initiative to regulate Artificial Intelligence as well as some regulations and "visions" of national legislation, for example Estonia and China. Consequently the dangers of granting legal personhood to AI agents will be presented and discussed. The arguments against the creation of a "technical veil" will be examined closely. The work will then refer to possible advantages and positive aspects of an AI's legal personhood under international law. In the final chapter a conclusion and some recommendation will be made.

The paper assesses the impact of fiscal spillovers on growth in the context of a coordinated exit from crisis management policies. We find that despite potentially sizeable domestic effects from consolidation, aggregate negative spillovers to other countries are likely to be contained in 2011-2012 unless fiscal multipliers and/or imports elasticities are very large. Small and open European economies, however, will be substantially affected in any case. In contrast, the coordinated exit from fiscal stimulus will have limited direct effect on European peripheral countries since they are relativ