The 2020 Summer Olympicsand the Paralympic Games were scheduledto take placein Tokyo. This sporting mega-event has affected change in the public and social spheres of the host country, Japan, but with regard to athletes’ gender and sexual orientation Japan’s mainstream media seem still considerably biased. Little has been reported on openly LGBTpro athletes from Japan and their involvement in advocating the Olympic values:diversity, inclusiveness and equality.This thesis investigates howLGBTiconsare portrayed by the media, or more specifically,the national newspapers, LGBTcommunity sources and social media, and withregard to the first it questions whetherthere are differences in the portrayalof Shiho Shimoyamada, the first openly homosexual female soccer athlete fromJapan, between Japanese and English language media.In the attempt to interrelate sports studies, queer studies and media studies, this thesis investigates in the main the representationof Shiho ShimoyamadainAsahi Shimbun, Japan’s second largest newspaper, and inthe English-language newspaperThe Japan Times. It also provides an overview of the athlete’s self-representation on Twitter which relates closely to her LGBT activism.Investigation of the media sources is executed by qualitative and quantitative analysis of data collected within 13 months(January 1, 2019 -February 28,2020). Categorizing tweets bygroups, the findingsdemonstrategaps in media representation ofsociallyimportant activism and presents the social media self-promotion strategies used by the athlete.

Public policies are often driven by a combination of factors, such as the elected government's political profile and the public opinion and pressure.  Media plays a vital role in documenting and educating public opinion on relevant issues, and that is not different for the feminist and LGBTQIA+ demands. This study analyses the Brazilian media representation of feminist movements through qualitative textual and visual analyses of selected news material from the two most prominent national newspapers ranging between 2010 and 2022. The study critically examines how the media has portrayed feminist movements in Brazil and therefore sheds light on the challenges faced by feminist activists in bringing these movements to the forefront of public discourse and driving public opinion in their favour. Overall, this thesis provides important insights into the role of the media in shaping public opinion and influencing policy outcomes. It also highlights the importance of media literacy in shaping public opinion and advancing social justice movements.

The diploma thesis "Media Representation of Female Doctors' Status in the Czech Republic" focuses on how the media reflects the trend of feminization in medicine. It discusses what aspects affecting the female doctors' status are accentuated by the media and whether the media representation of female doctors' status in mainstream and professional media differs. Indeed, surveys show that female doctors in the Czech Republic face discrimination due to persistent negative stereotypes about the unsuitability of women particularly in surgical fields. They are disadvantaged due to the assumption of pregnancy and career interruption due to motherhood (Stieranková & Veselská, 2020). Using grounded theory (Strauss & Corbinová, 1999), this study qualitatively analyzes articles dealing comprehensively with female doctors' status in the Czech Republic. It takes into consideration articles that have appeared in Czech mainstream and professional media in printed or electronic versions approximately over the last eleven years. The time frame is explained and justified in the thesis. A subsequent analysis of the articles found no significant difference in the media representation of the female doctors' status in mainstream and professional media. The vast majority of the analyzed articles reflected the female...

This thesis draws on queer theory, media representation, intersectionality and news values to conduct a combined queerfeminist visual and critical discourse analysis examining how representation of same-sex attraction and queer relationships in British teen television—and the media’s reaction to them—has changed between 1994 and 2019.  The queerfeminist visual analysis compares two scenes featuring same-sex attraction between male teenagers in two TV shows: Byker Grove (1989-2006), which featured a chaste but angrily rejected kiss in 1994 and Sex Education (2019-2023), which featured an unseen but implicitly enjoyed blow job in 2019. The Byker Grove scene was the first gay kiss on British children’s television. Sex Education has been praised for its diverse LGBTQ+ cast and storylines. Two series are thus valuable bookends for this quarter-century-spanning but limited comparative study. Supported by a brief content analysis of national and local press coverage of Byker Grove from 1994 and online coverage of Sex Education on the selected newspapers’ websites, the queerfeminist critical discourse analysis compares four news items reporting on each TV show in contrasting British newspapers: populist “red top” The Sun and liberal “quality” paper The Guardian.  The combined study finds that 1) there are visual similarities in the framing of each scene but significant differences in narratives and messaging, especially when decoded by different audiences, and 2) the social discourse has shifted significantly from one of outright opposition to invisibilisation on the political right and from silence to praise on the left.  The thesis fills a gap in queer television studies scholarship that has mostly overlooked British teen/children’s television in favour of American TV shows and makes recommendations for further research, particularly in the fields of audience studies and social sexual script theory with a focus on LGBTQ+ teen and adult viewers.

The highest Swedish football division, Allsvenskan, is not known for playing the best football or having the best players in the world on the pitch. However, Allsvenskan has one of the worlds’ best average audience rates and is well known globally for their large supporter culture. Thus, the topic of supporter culture and supporter related violence are a frequently discussed matter in Swedish media and has inspired the research topic for this study. The aim has been to study Swedish medias’ representation of football supporters and supporter related violence and if it perhaps has occurred a discursive change between the years 2014-2022. Traditional news articles published online within the chosen years, from several different newspapers, have been analyzed through a critical discourse analysis. Accompanied by critical discourse analysis, the study has used a theoretical framework consisting of media power, media hegemony and moral panic to analyze and conclude the results. The results provided three distinct discourses existing in Swedish media about football supporters being; supporters are a threat against the nuclear family, the supporter culture is a threat against society and lastly, medias’ large representation of moral panic as a response to supporters and supporter related violence. In addition, the study shows how there has been a discursive change in medias’ representation of supporters over time which confirms how media truly has the power to control society and its attitudes as well as determining and maintaining its ‘status quo’.

In this thesis we delve into the profile doping scandals involving Marion Jones and Lance Armstrong. Our aim is to analyze how the online news media portray doping allegations in sports specifically on these two athletes. Through a textual analysis and approach encompassing framing theory and intersectionality we explore the gender biases that may exist in media coverage and examine the influence of these representations. The connection between media coverage of suspected drug usage and public sentiment was investigated by using methods mentioned above between two fields of sports- cycling and track and field. This research reveals that the choices made by the media when framing their stories about doping shape opinion. This study also underscores the role played on representation by the media on doping crises within sports. It emphasizes the importance of transparent reporting that fosters discussions. By using these findings as a foundation, we can promote fairness, objectivity and evidence-based reporting when addressing instances of doping in sports.  Furthermore, this study contributes to existing literature on how the media portrays doping allegations by providing a framework for examining how these incidents are depicted by media outlets.

Public policies are often driven by a combination of factors, such as the elected government's political profile and the public opinion and pressure.  Media plays a vital role in documenting and educating public opinion on relevant issues, and that is not different for the feminist and LGBTQIA+ demands. This study analyses the Brazilian media representation of feminist movements through qualitative textual and visual analyses of selected news material from the two most prominent national newspapers ranging between 2010 and 2022. The study critically examines how the media has portrayed feminist movements in Brazil and therefore sheds light on the challenges faced by feminist activists in bringing these movements to the forefront of public discourse and driving public opinion in their favour. Overall, this thesis provides important insights into the role of the media in shaping public opinion and influencing policy outcomes. It also highlights the importance of media literacy in shaping public opinion and advancing social justice movements.

This research study focuses on the development in media representation of the transaction – Volvo sold to China, from its conception up to finality. Rather than accepting the power of media in the dissemination of information, this study argues that the representation of China in Dagens Industri is deeply rooted in embedded core values, having it known that Volvo is the pride of Sweden. By analyzing the content of the twenty selected articles based on designed categories and their relevance to the period it falls, it is shown how it is possible for embedded core values of Sweden be reinforced by media and shape the representation of China. While the influence of media is perceptible, the analysis of the articles suggests the existence of reference points and the meaning of perceptible faculties only through comparison. Using the theoretical frameworks of orientalism and representation, it was made evident that the negative representation is higher when the dominant motives of media supports and reinforces the embedded Swedish core values.

This thesis examines the media representation of refugees in the Finnish national news companyYLE by comparing media discourses from two different refugee situations. The cases comparedare the 2015 refugee crisis and the inflow of Ukrainian refugees in 2022. The material of theanalysis consists of YLE’s news articles about the two refugee situations. The articles areanalyzed with the help of tools from critical discourse analysis, and the results are theorizedthrough the concepts of securitization and victim-pariah nexus. The findings suggest that in themedia discourse of 2015 refugees were portrayed more as a threat, but the differences were not sosignificant as what could be assumed from the previous research concerning the topic. Thefindings, together with the theoretical framework, show that the 2015 media discourse representsmore clearly the traditional victim-pariah nexus found in previous research, while the 2022discourse represents a new discourse normalizing refugees.

The underrepresentation of sportswomen in all forms of news coverage has been widely acknowledged by feminist media scholars. However, some researchers claim that there is a shift towards greater gender equality of sports media coverage, especially during the Olympic Games. In light of such studies, the present study examined the quantitative and qualitative media representations of male and female athletes in six German news media outlets during the Olympic Games 2016. The empirical analysis focused on the coverage of the German men’s and women’s hockey team. In contrast to previous studies, the chosen example represents a special case, since on the factual level, hockey can be seen as a gender equal sport, because hockey is played by men and women equally in Germany and both teams won the bronze medal at the Olympics 2016. Content analysis and feminist critical discourse analyses were used to examine in what ways the media portrays male and female hockey players differently and thereby plays a part in the ideological construction of gender. The study found that, although the selected German media outlets gave more coverage to the hockey women than sportswomen usually receive, the coverage was filled with narratives based on hegemonic masculinity that produces striking contrasts between the female and male hockey players. Results show that the media was more likely to minimize the athleticism of the hockey women, by comparing them to the men’s team, including non-sport relevant information or emphasizing their traditional gender roles as wives and mothers. Moreover, the coverage of the female hockey players typically employed expressions which imitate femininity, whereas the language used to report on the male athletes contained power descriptors, conforming to the hegemonic notions of masculinity. Thus, the media reporting produces gender differences and naturalizes a gender hierarchy in which sportswomen are represented as inferior.