Opioid overdose deaths have impacted the lives of countless Canadians at unprecedented rates and have taken the lives of over 19,000 people since 2016, over 4,000 of those deaths occurred in 2017. The overdose crisis has been repeatedly represented in the media and how the issues are represented by key stakeholders is an area left primarily unresearched. Online news media articles stemming from International Overdose Awareness Day in 2017 were collected and methodologically reviewed via Critical discourse analysis to answer the following: What messages, and from which key stakeholders, how key stakeholders challenged or accepted constructions of substances and PWUD, and how messages converged and/or diverged amongst key stakeholders. Loved Ones most the most cited, then Frontline Providers, followed by Experiential People, Government Officials, and Indigenous People the least. Themes that emerged included the Stigma Experience, Sharing Experience of Grief, Loss, and Substance Use, and Problems and Solutions. Competing and divergent views also presented themselves through the stakeholder voices and often revolved around similar goals but different approaches. The voices in the media for International Overdose Awareness Day advocated and disrupted pre-conceived notions yet also contributed to constructions directly connected to the stigma and oppression PWUD face. / Graduate

Intimate Partner Sexual Violence (IPSV) is a global issue that impacts women of all social locations, but it disproportionately impacts racialized immigrant women. While there is a lack of literature on the topic of IPSV in general, there is a particular dearth of research on the prosecution of IPSV cases involving racialized immigrant women in Canada. There is little research on how these women are revictimized within the criminal justice system because of rape myths pertaining to IPSV, race, and citizenship. In this project, I aim to interrogate the legal rhetoric within judicial decisions regarding cases of IPSV involving racialized immigrant women. In so doing, I ask: How do judges conceptualize racialized immigrant women in cases of IPSV? How do these conceptualizations reproduce myths and stereotypes about these women who report IPSV? I use Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (FCDA) to mobilize law as a gendering and racializing practice in my analysis of eight summaries of judicial decisions of criminal and immigration proceedings pertaining to IPSV. Critical Race Theory (CRT) contributes to my theoretical framework to advance our understanding of law as a gendering and racializing practice. Through an abductive process, I find three discourses that dominate judicial decisions: ‘ideal’ victims resist sexual assault and do not delay in reporting; ‘ideal’ victims do not know or maintain ongoing contact with the accused; and judges excuse defendants of sexual assault due to the beliefs that male sexuality is uncontrollable, and women pursue false allegations. These rape myths normalize violence against women of colour and immigrant women by reinforcing the view that they are ‘non-ideal’ victims.

abstract: This dissertation investigates a subtle yet complex contemporary issue of colorism in India that traces its ideological roots back in the British colonial period or even prior to that. It focuses on the issue of skin-color discrimination in urban Indian men, which is significantly under-researched. This project aims at investigating the issue of skin-color discrimination through analyzing a small corpus of thirteen YouTube commercials dating from 2005 to 2017 for men’s skin-lightening products of a popular skin-care brand called “Fair and Handsome” from a multimodal critical discourse analytic perspective. This study further aims to understand how the discourse of colorism is operating in these Indian commercials for men’s skin-lightening products, what kinds of semiotic and socio-cultural (discourse) elements are naturalizing the notion of “fairness,” and finally, how the construction of male gender is facilitated. Although the project’s main theoretical arc is critical discourse analysis (CDA), the methodological needs necessarily require drawing upon theoretical tools from advertisement analysis, multimodal analysis, gender studies, social psychology, history, cultural anthropology, race theory, and other related fields of study. After successfully facilitating an exhaustive analytical undertaking, this dissertation contributes to the understanding of colorism as more than intra-group racism in India and situates this perpetuating issue as a contemporary research target in the socio-cultural contexts of globalization and urbanization. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation English 2019

Language is affected by the society in which it is used. Men and women have not had the same status in society, which means that the language used about them may potentially be different. A domain in society that was created for men is sports, yet, nowadays women also feature in sports. The aim of this study is to explore how women and their performances in sports are represented in newspapers. Previous research in the field of language, gender and sports has found that women are not depicted in the same way as men (Lundquist Wanneberg, 2011; Bissel, 2006; Segrave, McDowell and King III, 2006). To study how women are represented in sports articles, six articles about female athletes were analyzed through Critical Discourse Analysis. The analysis was based on Fairclough and Wodak’s (2010) framework that focuses on the domains of representation, relations and identities. These domains were divided into five categories: terms used to refer to the athletes, attributes, performance, sport descriptions and emotions. This allowed an analysis which showed how the world of sports views women, how women are represented as athletes, and the relation between the athletes and their sports. The analysis showed that women are depicted as ‘female’ athletes, not just athletes. This could be found through the usage of, for example, the noun and possessive marker women’s, which is used as a premodifier to describe the sports throughout the texts. It was also found that the world of sports is normally one where men are active and therefore it had to be explained when women were excellent at their sport, even when compared to men. This could be found through the usage of explanatory language, which clearly stated that the female athletes in question are or can be better than men.

This is a study of how three national newspapers in Indonesia frame and build the frames of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) reportage. Indonesia is one out of the 193 countries who signed the SDGs, which is a form of a globalization project. Using the Critical Discourse Analysis, several articles from Kompas, The Jakarta Post (the JP), and Media Indonesia (MI) are analyzed. By using Lecheller and de Vreese’s stages of framing model, findings of the CDA are then explained and put into the context of frame-building. CDA is also applied through interviewing the editors-in chief to apprehend the professional ideology of media institutions which influences the frame-building and the form of frames in the news.     The study finds that frame in the news of the SDGs reportage in Kompas, MI, and the JP thematizing Indonesia’s achievements within three main themes namely gender equality, partnership, and environment. The introverted domestications with domestic outlook dominate the SDGs reportage. According to the editorial policy makers in the newspapers, the frame-building of frequent absence of the global outlook and extraverted domestication are influenced by the target readers  (Kompas), reader’s occupation and limited human and financial resources (the JP), and the editorial policy of supporting the government (the JP and MI).

Enligt agenda 2030 är jämställdhet mellan kvinnor och män en förutsättningför en hållbar och fredlig utveckling. Mycket arbete pågår i politiken och i samhället men olika rapporter och undersökningar visar att det är en lång väg kvar innan vi når målen för jämställdhet. Forskning visar att den kultur som råder i samhället påverkas av rådande normer och värderingar och att dessa i sin tur också bidrar till konstruktionen av kön och därmed att synen på jämställdhet bibehålls. Media har en roll i att både konstruera och rekonstruera normer och värderingar. I den här studien undersöks om en stor medialhändelse som #metoo kan påverka rådande normer och värderingar i samhället. Detta görs genom att undersöka om och hur svensk affärsmedia har förändrat sitt sätt att konstruera genus vad gäller män och kvinnor som ledare i svenskt affärsliv efter att #metoo briserade 2017. I studien används Faircloughs tredimensionella modell som analysverktyg samt som teoretisk och metodologisk utgångspunkt. Det är en replikeringsstudie som utgår från Gottfridsson och Raanaes C-uppsats från 2015, som sedermera blev utvecklad till en vetenskaplig artikel ”The boss and daddys´s little girl: on the construction of gender in Swedish business media” (Hansson, Gottfridsson & Raanaes, 2019). Analys och resultat från denna studie visar att det skett förändringar i hur media konstruerar män och kvinnor som ledare före och efter #metoo. Män som ledare ifrågasätts och görs ansvariga i sina handlingar i flera fall än innan #metoo och kvinnor som ledare beskrivs i flera fall med mer fokus på företaget och inte lika mycket på person. Analysen ger inte ett entydigt svar på om förändringen beror på #metoo. Studien visar att trots att det skett en förändring i hur män och kvinnor beskrivs som ledare har det ännu inte påverkat så mycket i praktiken.

The Master's thesis called "The Effects of Securitising Migration: The case of Slovakia and the Czech Republic" aims to analyse the extent to which is migration constructed as a security threat in crucial conceptual and strategic documents regarding migration, drafted by the Ministry of Interior of the Slovak Republic and the Ministry of Interior of the Czech Republic. Given that the Ministry of Interior is a key player in the field of migration in both countries setting the direction of migration policy on conceptual, legislative and implementation level, it enters a discursive field of migration by offering its own understanding of migration, which has a great impact on the policymaking in the area of migration, migration practice and consequently on the life of migrants. Despite the fact that both Slovakia and the Czech Republic have one of the lowest shares of foreigners within population in the whole European Union as well as neither of the two countries have been the final destinations of migrants during the so called refugee crisis, we can identify the dominant role of security discourse in both countries. To get a better insight into a wider social context, the thesis also builds on the number of "texts and talks" dealing with the issue of migration beside the official policy documents and...

This paper examines the Swedish tabloid press coverage of three rape case allegations where the accused was a high-profile sport star. Critical discourse analysis was applied as the theoretical and methodological framework combined with the theoretical concepts of monstering and rape myths. The three cases we examined were the rape allegations against Cristiano Ronaldo, the rape allegations against three Swedish hockey players and the child rape case involving the Malmö FF player Kingsley Sarfo.    Monstering is a term used to describe the process in which the media portrays a rapist as a “monster” or “pervert”.  By doing so the rapist is separated from “ordinary men”. If the problem is never identified as “men raping” then the solution can never be “stop men from raping”   Rape myths on the other hand, focuses on how media reports on rape creates and sustains stereotypic ideas about rape. Research have found that if the media writes about rape in a stereotypical way then this perception of rape will spread to the readers.    We found that monstering appeared regularly in each of the three cases mostly through naming and reference of the alleged perpetrators and the accusers. Rape myths also appeared in each of the three cases but to a lesser degree. Rape myths was prominent through a linguistic separation between the alleged rapist and the rape.    Our results also showed that a patriarchal discourse was prevalent in the reporting on rape in the Swedish tabloid press.

The purpose of this essay is to investigate two Swedish, national newspapers and their depiction of football related violence. Through a critical discourse analysis this essay aims to illuminate the discourse practices that are being reproduced in media and also how the discourses have changed over time. The essay analysis articles around two casualties in Sweden (2002 & 2014) that are a direct result of football violence. The material contains of twenty-four analyzed articles from Aftonbladet and Expressen. A critical discourse analysis has been used for both the theoretical framework and method, with Fairclough’s three-dimensional model as analytical tool.   The result shows that both Aftonbladet and Expressen depict football violence through a wide perspective and describes the problem with the help of multiple agents that have varied experience on the subject. The main discourses that have been distinguished have been named; The discourse of responsibility, The discourse of amendment and The discourse of security. Another less recurrent discourse that have been distinguished is the discourse of the victim. In the analysis it is manifested that the order of discourses has changed over time and that some discourses have been more or less established.

This study strives to provide an insight as to how gender is dealt with by global news agencies within the context of climate change. The capacity to adapt to change is shaped by power relations related to social identities of people and group. Gender is a key element of these identities. Global news agencies are to a large extent responsible for what we see and understand of that world. However, in the media research field, few media studies has examined how global news agencies discusses gender in the context of climate change. Through a critical discourse analysis combined with a postcolonial feminist perspective, this study has closely examined articles about climate change from the world’s three largest news agencies - Reuters, Associate Press and Agence France-Presse. Through the analysis four main categories have emerged: Poor women in need of help; Women getting help; Women within familial systems; and Women as experts. The result showed that the concepts of women was narrow and existed within imperialistic, mainstream discourses on women. Through these discursive constructions of women, news agencies risk reinforce a North-South bias and stereotypes of the ‘third world woman’.