The condemnation of suicide is a historical product whose presence has been sealed throughout history. Increased liberal views on humanity and gentle penal codes led to the desecration of the unfortunate dead being strongly questioned and subsequently spared from condemning customs and practices. This study focuses on a time when suicide was decriminalized in Sweden to examine the interpretations of suicide in Swedish newspapers during the period 1864–1904. In the extension, the study intends to contribute to a nuanced theoretical discussion of the subject, which is achieved via Judith Butler’s theory of grievability. A thematic analysis could ascertain four themes – sorrow, carelessness, laconic, and dramatic – which should be understood as representations of the newspapers’, Aftonbladet and Nya dagligt allehanda, view on suicide and as stereotypes of the suicide victims. The results show that condemnatory interpretations of suicide are of a subtle nature anchored in the discourse of history and marked by contemporary class ideals. This means that whoever seeks to understand historical suicide interpretations is dependent on contextualization. However, a homogeneous suicide image does not emerge from the material. The themes demonstrate two extremes that represent each other’s opposites in the hierarchy of grief which also actualizes the question of whether suicide as an act is grievable or whether who commits the act is decisive.

This thesis is motivated by a lack of studies on the history of mental illness in South Korea. It builds upon existing studies by historians Theodore Yoo and Bang Hyun Lee, who have also used newspapers to analyze the discourse surrounding mental illness during Colonial Korea (1910-1945). Specifically, I analyze newspapers in the decades following this period to revisit three themes that both Yoo and Lee noted about the colonial period: (1) the religious practice of hitting individuals with mental illnesses, (2) the strong support for the sterilization of people with mental illnesses, and (3) the association between crime and mental illness. Because the colonial period was when people with mental illnesses were increasingly treated as social outcasts, comparing shifts or continuances from the colonial period was useful in exploring the stigma attached to mental illness in Korea. The articles surrounding the first theme revealed that despite the stigma attached to Shamanistic practices of beating during the colonial period due to a growing biomedical understanding of mental illness, they surprisingly persisted. There were also new developments, in which people with mental illnesses were beaten, chained, and isolated in “treatment” institutions across the nation for no particular reason. Articles surrounding the second theme showed that though inflamed rhetoric surrounding sterilization operations were not found post-1950, rhetoric with eugenics undertones lingered. Newspapers reported on these inhumane practices until as late as 1999. For the third theme, this study finds that the press continued to strongly associate mental illness with crime. These associations that effectively equated individuals with mental illnesses to criminals still frequently occur in newspapers today, particularly with what the media calls “Don’t Ask” crimes. Based on these findings, this study discovers that the negative treatment and perception of people with mental illnesses persisted long beyond Colonial Korea. It also stresses the importance of examining the role the press plays in contributing to the stigma attached to mental illness and shaping the way mental illness is understood.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how Swedish newspapers chose to portray the mass-suicide of the new religious movement Heaven’s Gate in 1997. The study aims to gain insight into how the Swedish mass-media portrayed the religious leader Marshall Applewhites' actions, and the rest of the members and discuss what patterns of the reporting can be related to other depictions of “sects” investigated in previous research.    Laycock's theory of how the media portrays new religious movements is used to categorize the use of Heaven's Gate in the articles.   By searching the Swedish Royal library’s (KB) newspaper database, 496 articles are found that mention “Heaven’s Gate* and 99 articles that mention Applewhite*. Of these, 89 are considered relevant articles that are included in the source material. The material will be analyzed using a qualitative text analytical method. With the help of previous research about how new religious movements are portrayed in the media, a context is established which is also linked back to strengthen the result and is discussed in the final discussion of the study.  The results indicate that all concepts in Laycock's theory appear in the media portrayal of Heaven's Gate. Moreover, most of the responsibility for the suicides is attributed to Applewhite in the source material. Finally, a couple of concluding reflections on the content are presented.

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This study is an examination of the ideologies present in celebrity substance abuse news stories in The New York Times online from December 2012 to December 2013. I analyzed news stories by employing a critical discourse analysis to determine the dominant discourses in celebrity substance abuse news articles. Drawing from cultivation and framing theories, celebrity substance abuse stories in The New York Times are presented in a limited, individual fashion with relatively little effort when it comes to recovery. Rather than treating substance abuse as a serious social issue and a medical condition, it is presented as an individual, moral problem. Moreover, recovery from substance abuse is presented as a personal choice which involves very little to no assistance and is easy to acquire.

Im Jahre 1954 verkündete Indiens erster Premierminister Jawaharlal Nehru, dass Staudämme die “Tempel des modernen Indiens” seien. Ausgehend von der These, dass dieser Aussage eine „developmental imagination“ zugrunde liegt, die bis heute ein auffälliges Merkmal vieler Diskurse zu Großprojekten in Indien ist, und dass die Medien eine wichtige Rolle darin spielen, diese Diskurse zu zeichnen, betrachtet die Dissertation die Frage, wie große Wasserinfrastrukturprojekte in der indischen Medienlandschaft dargestellt werden. Um diese Frage zu beantworten, wird in der Dissertation eine Medienanalyse durchgeführt, bei welcher die Berichterstattung zum Indischen River Linking Projekt (NRLP) und zu zwei Vorhaben, die im Rahmen des NRLP stattfinden (Ken-Betwa und Polavaram), im Fokus stehen. Das 168-Milliarden Dollar teure NRLP Projekt ist das weltweit größte sich im Bau befindliche Wasserprojekt und sieht den Bau vieler Staudämme und Verbindungskanäle vor. Kontrovers debattiert wird das NRLP insbesondere in Bezug auf die hohen ökologischen und sozialen Kosten: Nach einer historischen Einbettung des Themas wird die Medienanalyse anhand einer Auswahl an Zeitungs- und Zeitschriftenartikeln aus dem Zeitraum 2000 bis 2016 durchgeführt. Darüber hinaus beinhaltet die Arbeit ein Kapitel, welches sich auf Feldforschung im Polavaram Staudammgebiet bezieht, um Perspektiven, die ansonsten in Mediendiskursen häufig marginalisiert werden, aufzuzeigen; die der von Umsiedelung betroffenen Communities. Die Dissertation zeigt das Kontinuum der „developmental imaginations“ in Indiens Diskursen zu großen Infrastrukturprojekten auf, weist auf die Machthierarchien hin, die ausschlaggebend dafür sind, wem die Möglichkeit zukommt sich überhaupt an Diskursen zu beteiligen, und hebt politische Narrative hervor, die in dem Kontext eine starke Verbindung zu „Nationbuilding“ oder „Statebuilding“ Diskursen aufweisen. / In 1954 India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru proclaimed dams to be the “temples of modern India”. Based on the theses that this “developmental imagination” so visible in Nehru’s statement continues to be a prominent feature in discourses on large scale infrastructure projects in India until today, and that the media plays an important role in shaping these public discourses, the dissertation considers the question of how large scale water infrastructure schemes are covered within the Indian media landscape. To answer that question, a media analysis is conducted which focuses on the reporting on the Indian National River Linking Project (NRLP) and on two schemes being implemented under the NRLP: The Ken-Betwa and the Polavaram Dam Projects. The 168-billion-dollar NRLP project is the world’s largest water project in the making and includes the construction of several dams. It is designed to connect the majority of Indian rivers to a gigantic water grid. It is controversially debated, especially with regard of ecological and social costs. After a historical embedding of the topic, the media analysis is conducted through a choice of magazines and newspapers in a time period from 2000 until 2016. Furthermore, the dissertation incorporates a chapter based on field work in the Polavaram Dam area in order to shed light on perspectives often marginalised in the media discourses: those of the affected communities. The dissertation reveals the continuum of developmental imaginations in the discourses on India’s large scale infrastructure projects until today, points out how power hierarchies are at work with regard to who is able to participate in the discourses and who is not, and highlights narratives closely linked to ideas of nation- or statebuilding that are used by politicians within the media discourses.