Author: Camilla Andersson Title: The depiction of female and male elite soccer players in Aftonbladet and Dagens Nyheter –  A quantitative and discursive analysis of the World Cup 2002 and 2003 Level of education: C Subject: Media and Communication Studies Umeå University: Department of Culture and Media Studies Term: Spring 2004 Pages: 70   The purpose of this essay is that from a gender theoretical and critical discourse analysis perspective  study how the image of the Swedish football national teams and players in the 2002 World Cup (men) and 2003 (women) were constructed in the media coverage. I analyze articles published in Dagens Nyheter, Swedens biggest morningpaper and Aftonbladet, biggest eveningpaper. The method is based on a quantitative content analysis, and critical discourse analysis in which I use van Dijk's analytical approach.   Issues : 1. What constructed the World Cup in 2002 and 2003  players and teams, from a gender theoretical perspective in the mediatexts? 2. Can the constructions in question 1 (with respect to the World Cup, players and teams ) be attributed to a specific gender discourse and how can they then be explained from a discursive perspective?   Both the content analysis and critical discourse analysis points to significant differences in the attention value of the World Cup in 2002 and 2002.   • It differs in structure / presentation of the actual event where mens World Cup is constructed as a dramatic and historically important event. It has an impact on all pages in the paper: debate  culture, news sites as well on the sports pages. Articles about the female players are more concentrated on the sports pages. • The difference in the portrayal of the fotball players. The portraits of the men are elaborate and well researched. The portraits of the women are much thinner, more of haste. The male practitioner depicted additionally as potent and purposeful and may control the narrative about himself. The image of the female practitioner will be that she "corrects herself nicely " after the reporter team. Women players are also asked to comment on other events, for instance the men´s competition, than the direct cause of the text that should be a portrait of the female player. They are also compared to male players . There are also some cases of differences in language use with a tendency to reduction of the female player. Important to remember, however, is that this is only a small number of texts that have been analyzed. Remarkable, however, are the results from the content analysis that there is much greater focus on the team when it comes to the ladies, and more focus on individuals when the men are described . • The difference in the quality of production with respect to the number of articles , number of writers and in the construction of the articles. The number of articles is on average 5 times as many during the 2002 World Cup about Swedish national team (men) compared to the VM 2003 and the women's national team. Articles are also backed up in a greater extent by the factfile, tables and general articles relating to the World Cup. For the ladies it does not exist the same editorial back-up to lift the event to a few levels higher in readers' rankings. Here the focus is most of the game situation and to the team.   Attention value is higher for men, not only in terms of quantity but also in terms of where the texts are published. It is clear that in the material there is a dominance and importance discourse connected to gender in the surveillance of the World Cup.   Keywords: Mass Communication, Gender, Sport, Daily News Paper, World Cup, Attention Value