Despite intensified and concerted efforts to realise sustainable development. Western industrialised countries have in recent years experienced several mass protests against institutions perceived variously to have the potential to govern the global economy in environmentally sustainable or unsustainable ways. This thesis examines how different actors in the news media attempt to legitimate and de-legitimate neoliberal approaches to economic governance on grounds that these approaches are or are not environmentally sustainable. By using a critical discourse analysis perspective to analyse texts produced by actors with competing political commitments (neo-liberal and left-liberal), it discusses how primarily profit-driven generic conventions can govern what can and cannot be said in debates on sustainability. The thesis suggests that the effectiveness of (cultural) politics aimed at legitimating and de-legitimating neo-liberal approaches can be understood in teens of the relationship between an instrumental rationality geared at maximising the effectiveness of existing institutional systems and a communicative rationality geared at achieving understanding.

This dissertation explored the ways in which the everyday life practices of most urban Indians embodied the "modernization of tradition" (Hancock, 1999) and the role that media texts played in facilitating and encouraging this modernization. The research is based on six months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted from June through December 2005, in the south-Indian city of Chennai, which has traditionally been regarded as a conservative city. Examining the Indian media as a discursive site where normative ideologies are not only constructed but also co-constructed, the study explored and examined how the discourses of tradition and modernity were contested in the south Indian media. It also identified and interpreted the ways in which dominant ideologies at the nexus of color/caste and gender/morality were negotiated by an urban city and its residents in the move towards modernity.Data included three different but inter-related sub-genres of print media texts -- visual images, textual advertisements, and news articles. The primary dataset of visual images consisted of 300 product advertisements culled from four, nationally available, English-language magazines gathered from the two genres of news and film. Textual data sets comprising the matrimonial advertisements and the news articles were gathered from the local editions of two nationally-available English-language newspapers. The broader ethnographic investigation included participant observations, individual formal and informal interviews, and focus group discussions with adult residents of Chennai. The data were analyzed using a multi-discursive and multidisciplinary approach. The analyses were informed by conceptual approaches which included: social semiotics and the multimodal theory of communication, genre analysis, critical discourse and feminist critical discourse analyses, and alternative modernities.In examining the media texts as the site where dominant sociocultural ideologies were being constantly configured and reconfigured, the analyses identified and examined the workings of three interconnected themes - fairness (in relation to skin color), gender, and morality. Through these themes, the dissertation examined the larger contestations and negotiations between the discourses of traditions and modernities as experienced by adult residents of urban Chennai. The discourses of identity construction and reconstruction were thus examined at the nexus of the individual self situated within the larger frame of the city.

En géographie, les représentations permettent d’analyser la façon dont les individus appréhendent le monde, ou une partie du monde, à partir d’espaces expérimentés ou envisagés à travers leur dimension idéelle. Dans cette perspective, cette thèse traite de la question des représentations du conflit israélo-palestinien vu de France. Il s’agit de s’intéresser à un territoire complexe, morcelé, cadre d’un conflit territorial et d’examiner la façon dont les représentations de cet espace, obtenues par une expérience indirecte, peuvent être abordées. Ce travail s’appuie sur l’analyse du discours des médias –intermédiaires essentiels dans la construction des représentations – à travers notamment le traitement par la presse écrite de la conférence d’Annapolis (novembre 2007). Ce travail se base également sur une enquête par questionnaires menée auprès d’une population d’étudiants afin de déterminer leur perception du conflit par l’utilisation de la cartographiementale. Les résultats mettent à jour un certain nombre de représentations collectives qui s’apparentent alors à des déformations partagées. En dépassant le simple constat du niveau de connaissances, cette étude met en évidence la façon dont les individus appréhendent un territoire, objet d’une médiatisation importante, de représentations contradictoires, soumis ainsi à de multiples déformations. Cette approche du conflit israélo-palestinien par le biaisdes représentations constitue une échelle d’analyse originale dans l’appréhension de la construction des rapports de l’individu au monde. / In geography, representations allow an analysis of the way people represent the world, or a part of it, from experienced spaces to those apprehended only through their ideational dimensions. From this perspective, this PhD deals with the issue of representations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at it is perceived in France. The purpose is to consider here acomplex and fragmented territory, which is the context of a territorial conflict and to consider how representations of this territory – provided by an indirect environmental experience - can be apprehended. This study is based on the analysis of media discourses – key link in the construction of representations – particularly through the coverage of the Annapolis conference by the press (November 2007). This study is also based on a questionnaires survey conducted among a population of undergraduates in order to specify their perception of the conflict, in particular through the use of mental maps. The results reveal a number of collective representations, which are then rather similar to shared distortions. Beyond the observation of the level of knowledge, this study highlights the way people apprehend a territory, subject to significant media coverage, to contradictory representations and thus submitted to several distortions. This approach of the Israeli- Palestinian conflict trough representations constitutes an original scale of analysis of the construction of the relationship of the individual to the world.

År 2019 förstärktes Sveriges skollag och därmed förskolans uppdrag med att främja Sveriges nationella minoriteters språk och kulturer i förskolan (Skolverket, 2018a). Trots förstärkningen i skollagen framgår det i tidigare forskning att det förekommer kunskapsbrister i skolan, därmed även i förskolans verksamhet, kring Sveriges nationella minoriteters språk och kulturer (Rodell Olgaç, 2020). Syftet med föreliggande studie är att undersöka om en del av svaret på kunskapsbristerna kan återspeglas i de diskurser som dominerar samhällsdebatten kring nationella minoriteters språk och kulturer i Sverige. En viktig plattform för skapandet och reflektionen av dessa diskurser är media (Fairclough, 1995). Studien har därför genomförts som en dokumentanalys, där fokuset har varit på mediediskurser som berör nationella minoriteters språk och kulturer. Analysen har sedan fortsatt med att undersöka på vilket sätt de framträdande mediediskurser potentiellt kan påverka förskolans pedagogiska verksamhet. Det insamlade materialet bestod av tidningsartiklar från tre av Sveriges största dagstidningar under år 2010- år 2022. För att identifiera och analysera mediediskurser har kritisk diskursanalys använts samt Faircloughs (1992; 2015) tredimensionella analysmodell. För att utforska hur dessa mediediskurser kan påverka förskolans pedagogiska verksamhet har även Nancy Frasers teori om social rättvisa tillämpats (Fraser, 2003; 2008; 2011). Resultaten av studien tyder på att mediematerialet som behandlar nationella minoriteter genomgående uttrycker bland annat en assimilerande och diskriminerande diskurs under hela den analyserade tidsperioden. En analys med utgångspunkt i Frasers (2003) teori om social rättvisa har resulterat i att dessa diskurser kan utgöra hinder för förskolans främjande av nationella minoriteters språk och kulturer. Den framträdande diskrimineringsdiskursen och assimileringsdiskursen kan i sin tur riskera att öka den kulturella dominansen på samhällelig nivå och förstärka en enspråkig norm där svenska språket och kulturen anses vara överordnat andra språk och kulturer, inklusive nationella minoriteters språk och kulturer. Dessa konsekvenser av diskurserna kan i sin tur riskera att negativt påverka förskolans pedagogiska arbete genom att politiska beslut om förskolans läroplansinnehåll inte prioriterar nationella minoriteters språk och kulturer samt att förskolans strävan mot en likvärdig förskola, där alla barn har rätt till sitt/sina språk, riskeras att motverkas. En slutsats som kan dras utifrån resultatet är att det är av stor vikt att förskolepersonal intar ett normkritiskt perspektiv för att bli medvetna om de normer och strukturer som hindrar främjandet av de nationella minoriteternas språk och kulturer i förskolan och på så sätt kunna arbeta för en mer socialt rättvis förskoleverksamhet.

Eva Dahlbeck was one of Sweden’s most respected and popular actresses from the 1940s to the 1960s and is now remembered for her work with Ingmar Bergman, who allegedly nicknamed her “Pansarskeppet kvinnligheten” (“H.M.S. Femininity”). However, Dahlbeck had already established herself as a star long before her collaborations with Bergman. The popularity of Bergman’s three comedies (Waiting Women (Kvinnors väntan, 1952), A Lesson in Love (En lektion i kärlek, 1954), and Smiles of a Summer Night (Sommarnattens leende, 1955)) suggests that they catered to the Swedish audience’s desire to see the star Dahlbeck. To explore the interrelation between Swedish post-war popular film culture and the auteur Bergman, this thesis examines the stardom of Dahlbeck, who can, as inter-texts between various films, bridge the gap between popular film and auteur film. Focusing on the decade from 1946 to 1956, the process whereby her star image was created, the aspects that constructed it, and its relation to her characters in three Bergman titles will be analysed. In doing so, this thesis will illustrate how the concept “Pansarskeppet kvinnligheten” was interactively constructed by Bergman’s films, the post-war Swedish film industry, and the media discourses which cultivated the star cult as a part of popular culture.