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The gap between rural and urban is widening in ways that reward urban lifestyles and undermine the interests of rural communities. The asymmetrical power relation between rural and urban is relevant in a Swedish context where Norrland, Sweden's northernmost region, is experiencing outmigration and cutbacks in welfare services all the while urban centers in southern Sweden attract innovation, economic capital and an inflow of young, educated people. This study examines what perceptions of Norrland that are dominating the Swedish media landscape and by doing so aims to investigate how power relations between urban and rural are constructed in the sustainability discourses ecological modernization and the environmental justice framework. The study is based on a discourse analysis of printed articles in the national press and TT news agency over a 10 to 12 years time span. In addition to discourse analysis, a theoretical framework concerning visions of sustainability and urban/rural divisions are applied. The result suggest that the material primarily articulate Norrland as a natural resource base for economic profit and as a site for realizing ideas inherent to the ecological modernization discourse. Resistance against Norrland as a site for production and exploitation are embedded in the environmental justice discourse and shed light on the socially unequal and geographically uneven patterns of injustice.

Context: This thesis analyzes media coverage in Canada of environmentally displaced people (EDP) due to their recent prominence in political discussions on a national and international level as well as in the literature. Objectives: This thesis has three goals, notably (1) to raise awareness of EDP as a social phenomenon; (2) to understand how EDP are currently constructed in the public sphere; and (3) to analyze whether Canadian media characterizes EDP within discourses of victimization and/or devictimization. Ultimately, this thesis investigates: How does Canadian print media represent environmentally displaced people? Methodology: A total of 149 (132 English and 17 French) Canadian news articles, appearing from 2000 to 2017, were selected for analysis through a search strategy that included specific key words. The articles selected appeared in the Toronto Star, Globe & Mail, Montreal Gazette, Ottawa Citizen, Vancouver Sun, Le Journal de Québec, La Presse, and Canada Newswire. Results: The results were analyzed by using a frame analysis. Based on this analysis, a few key points were commonly used to represent EDP, including the uncertainty over which terms to use, their quantification, as well as a scare tactic to entice action towards climate change. Overall, the media tended to portray EDP using themes of devictimization. Conclusion: Future research should be conducted to continue to analyze media representations of those displaced. It is also imperative to collect more data on EDP in order to resolve the debate around their definition and officially recognize one term to help facilitate research and increase the legitimacy of those displaced - whether they are recognized as migrants or refugees.

Youth is a contested term which has been described as difficult to define and ‘pin down analytically’ (De Boek and Honwana 2005:3). In much youth development related issues, youth is categorised as a person between the ages of 15-24, which is defining a person only in terms of one’s chronological age. Age is a good indicator of where in life a person is, I used thus a wider range to include also older youth. Youth are often viewed in relation to other social categories as adults or children, and notions of youth are often as becomings, dependent, powerless, rebellious, risky (behaviour) and irresponsible, a focus merely on ‘negative’ aspects of youthhood, are these notions really describing the general youth? This study explores given youth identities in terms of behavioural patterns of being ‘in place’ and/or ‘out of place’. Identities are in this thesis approached as socially constructed, and people can hold multiple identities. This thesis therefore presents different identity narratives of Jamaican Youth ‘faces’. I used qualitative research methodology to collect and analyse the empirical data generated during fieldwork in Jamaica, Port Antonio in the period of February to beginning of May 2009. Methods such as informal conversations, observations, key informant interviews and photography is the main sources of the collected data, but also secondary data has been used in the analysis to grasp the surrounding realities. The youth participants of this study, 37, are persons who define themselves as youth and are viewed as youth by the Jamaica society based on their activities and behaviour, and are not dependent of their age, gender, class or occupation. In addition twelve (12) adults have contributed to the outsider’s views. The analytical concept of place is used to examine youth’s different behavioural patterns, based on socially accepted activities which are preformed in socially constructed youth places. The social meanings that identity performance have for the sense of being ‘in place’ and belonging to a place are explored to examine how this affects their identity building processes within a specific place. Also outside processes as national youth policy making, media representations and statements from ‘locals’, are evaluated as contributing to the present perceived Jamaican youth identities. I found multiple constructed ‘faces’of Jamaican youth; ‘the naughty’, ‘the nice’, the sexy’, ‘the wise’ and ‘the runner’ , are presented. These identities are fluid and transferable between different places in society and in time. The participants in this study each hold several of these ‘faces’, but often one which are more prominent in relation to the place one uses at that time. The located youth places; the youth centre place, the marina place and the dancehall place, are sites where the identity building processes takes form and social identities are constructed in relations to the socially acceptable conventions in the places in which youth occupy. These social conventions and identities may be negotiated, modified, reconstructed, challenged, contested or resisted in the ‘never-ending’ identity and place production processes. Identity, which is a complex term, holds several of attributes within categories as gender, race, age ect., but none of these attributes exist alone, and place as a contributor to the identity building processes is in this thesis seen as significant in the dynamic relation to all the attributes a person holds, which are preformed at different scales in society, both to be ‘in place’ and/or ‘out of place’. The youth ‘faces’ in Jamaica are also related and part of the national identity, they should therefore be accepted rather than rejected as ‘unwanted behaviour’, since a person rarely just hold one identity.

Drawing on the fieldwork in a village community in Eastern Thailand, Ban Noen PutsaPluak Ked, this thesis explores the complex relationships between processes of globaIisation, representations in the mainstream media and activist media; and villagers' responses to change. The research, summarised here has three interrelated objectives: First, to examine how globalisation and industrialisation are represented in the mainstream and activist media. Second, to investigate the role played by the activist media in promoting counter visions of possible futures. Thirdly, to investigate the practices and ideas that local people have developed to resist or accept globalisation. The research employs a multi-method approach combining ethnographic methods, a questionnaire survey; textual analysis; and focus groups. The findings point to a complex relationship between mediated representations and visions of modernity. They also demonstrate that villagers' responses are strongly stratified by age, length of residence, and relation to the pivot of the new industriaIisation- a major chemical plant and that they remain strongly influenced by the crucial nexus of traditional Thai society, the patron client system. Additionally, content analysis and critical discourse analysis suggest that Thai news television programmes reproduced both the ideology of globalism and the celebration of consumerism. Moreover, the voices of marginalized groups and local people are also absent from the activist media.

While many have investigated media constructions of newsworthy crimes, the overwhelming focus of these analyses has been upon violent crime in its myriad forms. In marked contrast, this thesis examines the Canadian print media's construction of art fraud - the offence, its victims and offenders - and, in particular, its response to acclaimed artist Norval Morrisseau's reports of victimization. It finds that, just as art fraud is not thought of as normal crime news and is bracketed away elsewhere, the victims of art fraud tend not to be regarded as ideal victims. The Canadian print media rarely framed art fraud as a crime against culture; more commonly, it was depicted as a low-risk crime that pays, with its perpetrators cast as charming rogues or artful dodgers and the most notorious depicted as heroes. This curious portrayal may promote schadenfreude, have incentive effects for some and discourage others from reporting experiences of criminal victimization.

Representations of the Other in Contemporary Australia is a thesis consisting of a novel, Brother Nation, and an exegesis in a separate volume. Brother Nation is set in Australia at the beginning of the twenty-first century, a time of great political and social change. The novel explores ambiguities in issues of race, crime and moral justice through the eyes of an adolescent who comes of age amidst a chain of disturbing events. Omar Assaf is a sensitive sixteen-year-old with a problem—he needs to lose his virginity. However, like most boys his age, he is anxious and naive about matters of sex and love. When a young female friend, Belle, rejects his romantic overtures, Omar is crushed. He rapidly falls under the corrupting influence of his older brother, Sam, and Sam’s motley band of miscreant friends. Fuelled by drugs, alcohol and pornography, the boys roam the migrant suburbs of southwest Sydney, alleviating their boredom and frustration by flirting with crime, cruising in cars and pursuing girls. However, Omar soon learns that being involved with Sam and the boys has dangerous consequences. In compensating for his sense of emasculation, Omar finds himself taking part in a series of attacks, including a betrayal of Belle. Though ambivalent about and at times sickened by his complicity, Omar realises much too late that he and his brother have entered a theatre where their fate will be determined by broader, more powerful forces than he could ever have imagined. The exegesis charts the creation of Brother Nation via the author’s movement from a mode of autopoiesis to allopoiesis, through the practice of narrative research. That is, the essay is structured to illustrate how the process of researching the novel resulted in the production of knowledge external to the creative work itself. In doing this I discuss the genesis of the idea to write the novel, the basis and modes of my narrative research, the style of the finished work in relation to the genre of the ‘faction’ or ‘non-fiction novel’, and the internal and external conflicts that arose in relation to the representation of demonised Arabic Other characters in the story. I also contextualise the work in relation to other relevant fiction and non-fiction texts that address similar subject matter, and make a case for holding a non-essentialised notion of cultural identity regarding my own speaking position. In particular, this exegesis investigates problematic questions in relation to representations of contemporary characters with an immigrant Other background; and, via the framework of Bakhtinian theories of dialogism and heteroglossia, considers the extent to which seemingly incompatible moral viewpoints can be coherently instantiated in fiction through a multiplicity of characters’ voices. / v. 1 [Novel]: Brother Nation -- v. 2 [Exegesis]: Representations of the Other in contemporary Australia. / Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Humanities, 2007

The aim of this thesis is to provide new insights and add to existing knowledge regarding how news media represents female politicians. Previous studies across the world have shown that throughout decades and still today, women tend to be underrepresented in political news or be heard only in regard to ‘feminine’ issues like education or family. Additionally, when it comes to female politicians, the focus is more often on their physical appearance, than it is with their male colleagues. In this thesis the focus is turned to Finland and the election of the country’s current Prime Minister, 34-year-old Sanna Marin. By conducting a thematic analysis, informed by the perspective of framing and representation theory, of news articles published around Marin’s election, this thesis explores the re-occurring themes regarding her representation in these articles and places these themes in a wider context of the media representation of female politicians. Framing theory helps to highlight the role media has in constructing reality whereas representation theory adds to the understanding of how people interpret the world, in this case the news, and helps to further argue why these presented representations matter. The analysis shows that the performance of a young female politician might seem accepted at first glance and doubtfulness is only found after one takes a look under the surface. Even though Finland can be considered a fairly gender equal country, gender stereotypes are still subtly reinforced by the media. Ultimately, it is not about how someone is represented, but rather what is left out. All this indicates that gender representations continue to be a salient issue and that female politicians like Sanna Marin still need to constantly prove their ability and competence as political subjects.

Current debates about representations of female athletes in the media consist mainly of textual analyses research produced by scholars who observe the topic from different theoretical frameworks. To better comprehend the relation between women athletes and media’s representation of them, in particularly advertising, this thesis aims to converse with up-and-coming professional and collegiate sportswomen as a way to examine what kind of correlation, if any, there is between sports commercials’ portrayals of female athletes and their actual reality. As there has been a shift in sports marketing approaches towards women through ‘femvertising’ (which challenges traditional gender stereotypes), a common belief is that gender equality in sport has been achieved. Taken as my case study, I use Nike’s commercials I Feel Pretty (2006) and Dream Crazier (2019) as auxiliary ‘props’ to get the discussion about advertisements’ representations of female athletes off ground in my conversations with several women athletes. Nike stands as one of the most prominent sporting brands in the world, and since the early 90s, the brand has been leading in “female athlete empowerment” advertising. Thus, by conducting a focus group interview in addition to in-depth semi-structured interviews with women athletes from the United States and Europe, the analysis draws on a postfeminist critique as a way to better understand the relation between the representations of sportswomen in sport advertisements versus their real-life experiences. Ultimately, the results of this research work imply that even though sport brands make a good case for the visibility of sportswomen, it does not match the experiences of the female athletes without celebrity status. Finally, this thesis is a contribution to the field of media and communication studies as it privileges the voices of up-and-coming professional and collegiate female athletes. It serves in hope of inspiring other scholars to further investigate sport in relation to gender and media through the lived experiences of the sportswomen about which they theorize.

This thesis explores how children perceive extreme manifestations of social inequalities - poverty and wealth, and what role do media and media representations play in this process. Based on the literature, it is focusing on media construction of reality, media representations, and social inequalities in general, at the same time it deals with poverty and wealth in the context of perception and media representations, and it also explores the relationship between children and media. Furthermore, by analyzing the results of interviews with children the thesis directly examines how they perceive poverty and wealth and what role do media play in this process. The main finding concerning the social inequalities is that most children perceive them as legitimate and to justify them they use the method of naturalization or/and romanticization of poverty. The main finding concerning the media influence is that media affect children subconsciously and that their thoughts and attitudes to poverty and wealth correspond with media representations of the same in the media production for children.