The purpose of this research paper is to examine how Syrian refugees are visually represented in two of the largest newspapers in Sweden: Dagens Nyheter (Today’s news) and Svenska Dagbladet (The Swedish daily paper). Their choice of images on the Syrian refugee crisis will be analysed, to see what sort of message they send by using those specific images. The reason for this study is because previous studies have implied that the media has an important role in crafting national perceptions of refugees. Therefore, it is intriguing to analyse the images the newspapers published during the fall of 2015 to see how Syrian refugees were represented during that most active and chaotic period in Sweden and if the visual representation of Syrian refugees can influence cultures of hostility in Sweden. The study has been linked with previous studies research of visual representations of refugees (us and them, identifiable victim effect) and the severe consequences it can lead to (dehumanization, moral panic) if used improperly, and three main theories that will be the foundation to custom and analyse the images (agenda setting, framing and representation theory). These were all applied and used when operating the method (quantitative content analysis) to collect information and data and also later when analysing and discussing the results. The result of the study showed that the newspapers images did not only focus on negative aspects of events and stories surrounding Syrian refugees. Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet did not publish many negative images, but after the results, it is discovered that they are following that specific path on some aspects and that can be the start of a pattern that will be used more often in the future. While it is established that hostile and unwelcoming attitudes in the West have risen, the question remains how far its been developed in Sweden and how long it will be until the Swedish media promotes it as well. Key words: Syrian Refugee Crisis, Visual representation, Framing, Agenda setting and Stereotypes

Den här studien har för avsikt att belysa och behandla hur en allmänhet kan tänkas uppfatta och förhålla sig till fördomar, rasism och diskriminering. Hur uppfattningar om etnicitet, ras och nationalitet, relaterar till kulturella skillnader och hur andrafiering och stereotyper motiveras och betraktas. Informanterna i studien visar generellt en stor tolerans mot andra men visar också tydliga tendenser till andrafiering och ingruppsbias. I sina tolkningar av ”den kulturellt andre” märks att de baserar sina antaganden och resonemang på individuella och kollektiva gruppstereotyper. De accepterar inte interpersonella uttryck för rasism och diskriminering men är relativt omedvetna om vad som skapar strukturell diskriminering och de är också mer toleranta mot diskriminering motiverat av vinstintresse. / Through this study I will attempt to show how a public might understand and relate to prejudice, racism and discrimination. How perceptions about ethnicity, race and nationality relate to cultural differences and how othering and stereotypes are being motivated by the informants and how they view them. The participating informants generally show significant tolerance towards others, but also show clear tendencies of othering and in-group bias. In their interpretation of “the cultural other”, assumptions and reasoning suggests that they are based on collective and individual group stereotypes. They do not accept interpersonal racism and discrimination but are seemingly unaware of what constitutes and creates structural discrimination and they are more tolerant towards discrimination based on economic interest.

In this study we seek to understand how ordinary Chinese people perceive Westerners as the Other through examining their intercultural experiences. In contrast to the numerous studies of social elites’ Occidentalism, this study shifts the attention to ordinary people’s perceptions in a fast changing Chinese society. From an interpretive perspective, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 16 participants living in a coastal city in Mainland China. The key findings suggest that the Chinese public has its own way of perceiving and presenting the Western Other. Also, this Other, being defined in an on-going process of intercultural interaction, connotes a wider meaning – a unity of opposition and complementarity, exclusion and inclusion. Thus this study has deepened our understanding of the Chinese construction of the Western Other. The findings can be used in developing intercultural communication training programs to facilitate deeper contact and better dialogue between the Chinese and Westerners.

The magical fictional setting of the Harry Potter novels is not one separated from our own. It features the same nations and the same history as the real world. Its society is parallel to ours due to similar traditions and hierarchies, such as heteronormativity, ageism, racism, and fascism. Some of these are clearly problematised in the novels, others are not. While issues of racism and blood status are clearly at the forefront of the story of Harry Potter, there are layers to the conflict which reveal that there is more to the discriminatory dilemma than the issue of blood purity. This essay aims to investigate how teachers can use J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series to lead a discussion about othering and discrimination, focusing on the issue of ableism in particular. The goal when studying processes of othering in Harry Potter is not necessarily for the reader to identify with the protagonists. Instead, textual silences will be interpreted to investigate whether the othering of people like the readers themselves, an othering the reader partakes in when empathising with the protagonists, can be compared to ableism in the real world, and how teachers can use Harry Potter as means to introduce the idea of able-bodiedness as a social construct. By applying crip theory to the text, it can be stated that the division between the protagonist and his non-magical Other is based on ableist ideologies, which result in a positioning of the non-magical as disabled in the magical society. This position is maintained by naturalising the link between impairment and character flaws.

This thesis explores the notion of rurality as a form of constructed identity. Just as feminist and postcolonial studies identify the formation of hierarchies within gender and ethnicity, I argue that the rural is constructed as inferior in opposition to its binary counterpart, the urban. The effect of this is the othering of the rural. This thesis takes Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights as a case study, using a critical approach to explore the ways in which it presents rurality, and to consider its role in the creation and reproduction of rural identity. The case study suggests that the adoption of a ‘rural reading’, in which an awareness of rural othering is fostered, can be a useful and productive strategy in textual analysis and interpretation. The first three chapters of this thesis focus on rural construction generally. Chapter 1 draws on semiotic theory to examine the creation of binaries, and Derridean notions of linguistic hierarchies to suggest reasons for the inferior position of the rural. Chapter 2 considers the historical location of the urban/rural binary in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, within the context of the Enlightenment, the growth of capitalism, industrialisation and rapid urban expansion. Chapter 3 explores rural othering as a feature of contemporary culture, examining the textual presence of idyllic and anti-idyllic versions of the rural. Chapter 4 introduces the methodology of the case study, explaining the relevance of Wuthering Heights to the study of rural othering, providing a précis of the novel and an overview of previous critical responses. Chapters 5, 6 and 7 explore the three themes of nature, deviance and space. These are derived from the examination of rural construction in Chapter 3. In Chapter 5, the representation of nature in Wuthering Heights is explored, and the presence of animals within the novel in particular. In Chapter 6, the depiction of deviance in Wuthering Heights is discussed, with special focus given to the presence of deviant speech patterns, reflecting changing expectations of behavioural norms in the early nineteenth century. Chapter 7’s consideration of the relationship between space and rurality within Brontë’s novel considers her representation of landscape. Chapter 8 argues that a similar rural reading can be applied to other texts, literary and otherwise, opening up a fresh set of perspectives and possibilities for interpretation.

In Myanmar "othering" has severe consequences for religious groups, including contributing to escalate and sustain violent conflicts. Religious doctrine is among several other factors that inform the views on the "religious other". This paper analyzes "theology of religions" and representation of the "religious other" in one religious group in Myanmar: The majority Christian denomination, the Baptists, with a scope related to Northern Myanmar, particularly Kachin State. The findings are that there is no uniform way in which Christian Baptists in Myanmar, and related to Kachin State, deal with the "religious other". The findings suggest, however, that related to their "theologies of religions" Christian minority voices are mainly concerned with the Buddhist majority. This in a way in which the "religious other" from other religious groups are not of great concern. Conflicts and conflictual relations in which also religious identities across religious groups are present served but more as an implicit backdrop. Instead, positive social representation and explicitly encouraging peace-seeking engagement and relationships with the "religious other" were highlighted by some. Calls for cooperation among Christian groups were also highlighted. In addition, however, an important finding in the analyzed material was that there to a great extent was a Christian inter-group positioning with “in-grouping” and “out-grouping” - including affirmation or rejection of the "theology of religions" - of other Christian sub-groups or individuals. As such, the negative "othering" by some Christians were interestingly not mainly concerned with the "religious other", but with the "denominational other".

The phenomenon of social work combined with traveling have become known for “voluntourism” and is a common way to travel today. This study investigates the external communication of the commercial volunteer abroad organizations that are offering projects that take place in the African continent. The study focuses on how the volunteer and the recipient of the social work is portrayed in the external communication. The study was conducted by using a critical discourse analysis inspired by Fairclough on four of Swedish commercial volunteer abroad organizations websites. By combining postcolonial perspective with othering as the theoretical framework, the results show that the western volunteer is centralized in the communication, while the recipients of the social work is portrayed homogeneously and objectified.

In this study we seek to understand how ordinary Chinese people perceive Westerners as the Other through examining their intercultural experiences. In contrast to the numerous studies of social elites’ Occidentalism, this study shifts the attention to ordinary people’s perceptions in a fast changing Chinese society. From an interpretive perspective, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 16 participants living in a coastal city in Mainland China. The key findings suggest that the Chinese public has its own way of perceiving and presenting the Western Other. Also, this Other, being defined in an on-going process of intercultural interaction, connotes a wider meaning – a unity of opposition and complementarity, exclusion and inclusion. Thus this study has deepened our understanding of the Chinese construction of the Western Other. The findings can be used in developing intercultural communication training programs to facilitate deeper contact and better dialogue between the Chinese and Westerners.

This thesis studies Joseph Conrad&rsquo / s Almayer&rsquo / s Folly in terms of two theoretical concepts / othering and hybridity. The first theoretical concept, othering, is analysed from various perspectives for three main reasons: 1) The question of &ldquo / Who is other to whom?&rdquo / cannot be answered thoroughly because there is a continuous power struggle between the European and the non-European characters. 2) The theme of othering in the novel is based on a view of humanity and its conflicts that is radically ambivalent, and thus cannot be analyzed from one perspective only. 3) Conrad&rsquo / s world view which is reflected in the novel is not limited to one group of people, but tends to be universal. The second theoretical concept, hybridity, is analyzed under three subtitles: ambivalence, mimicry and hybridity.

While it has explained how power and knowledge directly imply one another, constructivist theories of international relations have shown how knowledge and language are extensively used for legitimizing war, conflict and intervention. It has further been shown how not only news media, but increasingly popular culture is powerful in creating meaning and establishing knowledge about war and conflict. At the same time, media scholars have shown that the development in television production is going towards a blur between information and entertainment, fact and fiction. This blur has been shown to often and effectively de-politicize ideological content. This study is a critical discourse analysis of the TV series Krig för fred (War for peace), broadcast on the Swedish public service television during the spring of 2011. The study has through answering questions in terms of genre and ideology, found that the material is an example of a blur between documentary and reality TV and that the material is exclusively from a Swedish point-of-view, yet presented through a discourse of claiming the real. One of the consequences of the mixed genre seemed to have been that as more space was given to individual characters and exoticising images of the Afghan landscape and people, less space was given to criticism, which made this representation of the war entertaining rather than informative to watch. While the only information given about Afghanistan in the TV series is that it is among the poorest countries in the world, more clues have been given as to how the Swedish military view themselves and have been represented in relation to ‘others’ in the world.