The earlier studies of how gender is visually constructed in lifestyle magazines have mainly been done on photographs. But, photographs are only one part of the entire magazine Therefor3, we saw the importance in examining one of the other big parts, typography. We have been studying if gender can be constructed in lifestyle magazines through the shape and color of typography and the color context. It is important to point out that we have not been studying the written word but only the shape and color of the typography. The study has been conducted through a qualitative content analysis with a comparative process of the selected magazines. The analysis began with a semiotic analysis of selected parts of the magazines. The result was then analyzed with a feminist theoretical approach. The result of the study shows that gender can be constructed through typography in a number of different ways. This depends on what feminist approach it is looked upon. In one way gender is constructed in a traditional perspective where the boundaries of masculinity and femininity is constrained to stereotypes. In another way it is constructed through a modern perspective where the boundaries of gender is no longer fixed.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka om det går att finna relevanta skillnader i framställandet av mannen över tidsperioden 1999 till 2011. Om en förändring har skett vill vi försöka ta reda på hur den ser ut. Utifrån en socialkonstruktivistisk utgångspunkt och med hjälp av begreppsliga redogörelser av genus, maskuliniteter och homosocialitet ämnar vi analysera de båda livsstilsmagasinen Café och Slitz. Vi kommer särskilt ta fasta på studier om massmedia och dess inverkan på människors vardagliga liv. Metoden som används för att vi närmare ska kunna analysera materialet är kritisk diskursanalys, som går ut på att skärskåda textens grundläggande meningssammanhang. Materialet vi utgår ifrån är begränsat till alla Cafés och Slitz utgåvor från 1999. För att se om förändring skett analyserar vi två utgåvor av Café från 2010 och sex från 2011, samt sex utgåvor av Slitz från 2009 och tre från 2011. Därigenom är vår ambition att försöka presentera en intressant bild av denna mångnyanserade kontext och dess diskursiva aspekter. Det generella resultatet är följande: i Slitz har vi inte funnit någon relevant skillnad, men däremot i Café finner vi en diskursiv skillnad från 1999 till 2011. / The purpose of this essay is to examine whether it is possible to find relevant differences in the presentation of the man over the time period from 1999 to 2011. If a change has occurred, we want to try to find out how it looks like. From a social constructivist approach and using conceptual explanations of gender, masculinity and homosociality, we intend to analyze the two Swedish lifestyle magazines Café and Slitz. We will take particular note of studies on mass media and its impact on people's everyday lives. The method used to enable us to further analyze the material is critical discourse analysis, which is to scrutinize the basic sentence context of the text. The material we assume is limited to all Café’s and Slitz’ editions from 1999. To see if changes are made, we analyze two editions of Café from 2010 and six from 2011, and six editions of Slitz from 2009 and three from 2011. Thus, our aim is to try to present an interesting picture of these multi-nuanced contextual and discursive aspects. The general results are as follows: in Slitz, we found no relevant difference, but in the Café, we find a discursive difference between 1999 to 2011.

This study examines how two lifestyle magazines produce gender through their covers, and how young men and women are affected by the covers in their thoughts on gender constructions. The starting point for the study is Erving Goffman's visual codes describing the portrayal of gender in advertising. By applying Roland Barthes method, semiotic image analysis the result show that the two lifestyle magazines create a relatively stereotypical image of male and female. In the analysis of the cover, for example, posing, clothing choices, color choices and more are taken up for review. How these covers affects young men and women was examined through the qualitative focus group method. The results indicate that both sexes are affected to some extent by these images, where women are more affected by comparison and that they try to adhere to a certain ideal.

<p>The aim of this study was to identify what kind of masculinity is shown in 54 articles of the Swedish lifestyle magazine Magazine Café of 1993 and 2008, and in which way this masculinity may be different from eachother.</p><p>The study included four magazine issues of each year with analysis focus on main articles and abolishment of reviews and press items.  The method was semiotic analysis with focus on manly characteristics and stereotypes. </p><p>The result showed that the normative man pictured in Magazine Café in 1993 was a man’s-man interested in manly characteristic business as sports, outdoor adventures and women. Fifteen years later not much has changed. The manly characteristics are the same but they have been complemented with a man-by-man accepted and homosexually inspired vain.</p>

Lifestyle magazines portray women in different manners and have an influence on how media consumers create self-images. The importance of knowing how different visual representation of the female acts out in magazines with large target audiences is therefore of weight for the magazines’ readers to understand. This thesis analyze how the two lifestyle magazines ELLE and LOVE portrays women in images and how they in turn create ideal images of women. The thesis has been conducted through a qualitative analysis of 5 images from each magazine that represents the magazines artistic styles. The theories used in this study are semiotic image analysis and visual text analysis viewed from a gender- and discourse perspective. The conclusion of this thesis is that ELLE portrays women as strong, happy and feminine, with at tendency towards androgyny, while LOVE describes women as inferior and sexual objects constructed for the male gaze. The magazines, which belong to a classic- respectively a post-modern genre within lifestyle magazines, thereby switch places with each other and becomes each other’s counterparts.

Mot bakgrund av att medier kan definieras som en socialiseringsfaktor samt att sexualitet är ett ämne som ofta vädras i olika medier är syftet med den här kvalitativa studien att undersöka hur livsstilsmagasin, i sina texter, skildrar sexualitet och då närmare bestämt kvinnors sexualitet. Kvinnors sexualitet undersöks av den anledningen att kvinnor under 1800-talet drabbades av en avsexualisering, det vill säga deras sexualitet förminskades i förhållande till männens, vilket sannolikt påverkar samhället än idag.                       Studien har tre frågeställningar där den första rör huruvida denna avsexualisering präglar livsstilsmagasin. Den andra frågeställningen undersöker vilka ord som används i livsstilsmagasinen för att beskriva det kvinnliga könsorganet. Den tredje frågeställningen har fokus på hur stor del av innehållet i livsstilsmagasinen som präglas av sexualitet, på ett direkt eller indirekt sätt. Ur ett medie- och kommunikationsvetenskapligt perspektiv lutar sig studien mot ett teoretiskt ramverk kring mediers påverkan, då främst hur unga människor påverkas, samt agenda setting. Jenny Kitzingers forskning har en central roll. Ur ett sociologiskt och sexologiskt perspektiv kretsar det teoretiska ramverket kring Gisela Helmius definitioner av samhällelig sexualsyn samt Gayle Rubins sexhierarki. De metoder som använts är huvudsakligen en kritisk diskursanalys med fokus på texternas konstruktivistiska funktion samt en mindre kvantitativ analys som ger svar på hur stor del av medieinnehållet som berör sexualitet. Empirin grundas på elva stycken livsstilsmagasin riktade till unga kvinnor.                       Av analysen framkommer att cirka nio procent av innehållet i de undersökta tidningarna berör sexualitet i någon form. Det framkommer också att de undersökta tidningarna är präglade av den restriktiva sexualsyn som råder i Sverige, vilken sannolikt delvis är ett resultat av ovan nämnda avsexualisering. Detta yttrar sig främst i ett befästande av den rådande kärleksideologin där sexualiteten endast får röra sig inom kärlekens, heterosexualitetens och tvåsamhetens ramar. Det framkom också att de undersökta tidningarna bidrar till ett osynliggörande av det kvinnliga sexuella könet. / Given that the media can be defined as a socialization factor and that sexuality is a topic that is often aired in various media, the purpose of this qualitative analysis is to examine how the media portrays sexuality and more specifically women's sexuality. The reason for examining women's sexuality is that women during the 17th century were constrained in their sexuality compared to men, and this constraint most likely has made an inprint on society to this day. This study poses three questions, the first concerns if the desexualisation of women characterizes the lifestyle magazines today. The second question examines which words that are used in lifestyle magazines to describe the female genitalia. The third question focuses on to which extent the media content in lifestyle magasines is characterized, directly or indirectly, by sexuality. From a media and communications perspective the study has a theoretical framework based on agenda setting and how media is able to influence its users, the young users in particular. The research done by Jenny Kitzinger plays a central part. From a sociological and a sexological perspective the theoretical framework revolves around Gisela Helmius' definitions on ideas of sexuality in society and Gayle Rubin's hierarchical valuation of sex acts. The methods that have been used are a critical discourse analysis which examines the constructivist function of the texts and a smaller quantitative analysis to examine to which extent the media content concerns sexuality. The empirical data is based on eleven lifestyle magazines aimed at young women. The analysis reveals that nine percent of the content in the examined magazines concerns sexuality in some way. It also reveals that the examined magazines are characterized by the idea of a restrictive sexuality which prevails in Sweden, which problably is a result of the above mentioned desexualisation. This manifests primarily in the consolidation of the prevailing ideology of love, where sexuality only is allowed within a framework of love, heterosexuality and monogamy. The magazines also contribute to making invisible the female sexual genitalia.

The aim of this study was to identify what kind of masculinity is shown in 54 articles of the Swedish lifestyle magazine Magazine Café of 1993 and 2008, and in which way this masculinity may be different from eachother. The study included four magazine issues of each year with analysis focus on main articles and abolishment of reviews and press items.  The method was semiotic analysis with focus on manly characteristics and stereotypes.  The result showed that the normative man pictured in Magazine Café in 1993 was a man’s-man interested in manly characteristic business as sports, outdoor adventures and women. Fifteen years later not much has changed. The manly characteristics are the same but they have been complemented with a man-by-man accepted and homosexually inspired vain.

Univerzita Karlova v Praze Fakulta sociálních věd Institu komunikačních studií a žurnalistiky Denisa Mannová Diplomová práce Senioři jako cílová skupina lifestylových časopisů (Seniors as the target group of lifestyle magazines) Abstract This thesis deals with seniors' view on the magazines market and tries to find out whether seniors know about magazines which are produced for them. Apart from that, the thesis analyses a sample of four magazines focused on seniors: Generace, Revue 50plus, Vital plus, Magazín 55+ (or Magazín Plus), year 2010. In order to understand the subject matter of this thesis, the first chapter deals with definitions and their interpretation. The first subchapter discusses the term "age" or "oldness" as well as the current status of seniors in our society. The second subchapter defines the term "lifestyle magazine". The following chapter is dedicated to the media market, specifically to the area of printed periodicals. It introduces the most widely read magazines on the Czech market, discusses periodicals focused on seniors in the Czech Republic (whether printed or electronic) and, marginally, also mentions magazines focused on senior published in other countries. The third chapter deals with advertising, evaluates the relationship between advertisers and the abovementioned magazines....

In the current media landscape, visual content is an influential and contributing part in the shaping of societal attitudes, conceptions and norms about gender. The main purpose of this qualitative study is thus to research how gender is visually displayed on the cover pages of two Swedish lifestyle magazines. Moreover, the aim is to investigate how the magazines visual portrayal of gender maintains, or challenges, traditional stereotypes about masculinity and femininity. The analysis is mainly based on Goffman’s theory of Gender Advertisements. Through a visual semiotic analysis, this study examines the cover models physical attributes, along with other semiotic resources such as setting, color and camera angle. From the overall results of the analysis, the conclusion drawn is that both men and women are depicted mostly in line with traditional gender stereotypes, with only small amounts of challenging characteristics made visible.

Vergleichsweise wenige Texte in den Printmedien beschäftigen sich mit Allergie als Gegenstand öffentlichen Interesses. Deshalb untersucht die Dissertation die Darstellung von Allergien in Lifestyle-Magazinen im englisch- und amerikanischsprachigen Raum. Die vorliegende Arbeit befasst sich mit der Verbreitung von medizinischem Wissen durch die Medien. Sie zeigt, ob und wie die Medien zu Aufklärung und Information über Krankheiten, deren Relevanz, Diagnostik und Therapie, beitragen. Sie geht dabei besonders auf den Bedeutungsbereich von Wörtern ein, die als Metaphern benutzt werden. Das Fundament der Überlegungen bildet der Essay „Illness as Metaphor“ von Susan Sontag, in dem sie die Darstellung von Krankheiten und die Benutzung von Stereotypen abhandelt und Fragen, die im Zusammenhang mit Krankheit als sozialer und kultureller Angelegenheit stehen, aufwirft. Um den populärwissenschaftlichen Diskurs der analysierten Artikel in dieser Arbeit zu verstehen, wurde die von Jürgen Link entwickelte Diskursanalyse herangezogen, die sich eng an die Diskurstheorie Foucaults anlehnt. Die semiotischen Deutungsansätze werden mit Hilfe der Untersuchungen von Roland Barthes erklärt. Ziel der Arbeit ist es zu zeigen, wie die verschiedenen Diskurse ineinander greifen, welcher Mechanismus sich dahinter verbirgt und wo Ansatzpunkte für eine sachgerechte publizistische Behandlung des Themas liegen. Der Nutzen von Metaphern in der Beschreibung von Krankheiten liegt darin, dass sie kollektive Gefühlslagen ansprechen und den Denkraum des Möglichen erweitern. Dieser Aspekt ist besonders wichtig, da das Wort Allergie zu einer praktischen und populären Metapher für eine Reihe persönlicher, beruflicher oder politischer Antipathien geworden ist. Obwohl allergische Erkrankungen in der modernen Welt immer häufiger auftreten, räumen ihnen die Medien noch nicht den Platz ein, den sie -- auch ausgehend von der volkswirtschaftlichen Bedeutung der Erkrankungen -- dringend haben müssten. / Only a few print media focus on allergies as a matter of public interest. For this reason the dissertation analyzes the presentation of allergies in English and American lifestyle magazines. This thesis examines the propagation of medical knowledge via the media. It shows if and how the media contribute to health education and information about illness, its relevance, diagnostic investigation as well as therapy. The main focus is on those words which are used as metaphors. They represent an important subject of Susan Sontag''s essay „Illness as Metaphor“ which demonstrates the presentation of illness, the use of stereotypes and thus raises issues about illness being a social and cultural matter of interest. To understand the popular scientific discourse of this dissertation Jürgen Links'' discourse analysis is being used which follows closely Foucault''s theory. The semiotic interpretation is supported by the theories developped by Roland Barthes. This dissertation aims to show how the different discourses intertwine, to bring to fore the underlying mechanisms as well as an appropiate journalistic approach. The benefit of using metaphors when describing illness is that the collective state of mind is addressed and thus the range of thinking will be broadened. This aspect is especially important because the word allergy became a convenient and popular metaphor for a number of personal, professional or political aversions. Although allergies are dramatically on the raise in the modern world, their significance is not recognized yet by the media in their complexity as it should be the case, especially against the backdrop of the economic relevance of that illness