Colonial legacies continue to impact representational practices in contemporary society. Social media platforms have provided a patriarchal marketplace in which female bodies become commodifiable products as ‘influencers’ and processes of racialisation and Othering are reproduced. A novel feature is the emergence of computer-generated imagery depicting feminized and racialised figures, or avatars, created by US and UK companies for profit. The objective of this thesis is to examine the problematics of the avatars in their construction, discursive practices and potential social and political impact by examining a range of material spanning from articles to social media images. To this end, a critical discourse analysis is conducted with a theoretical framework comprising feminist postcolonial theory and intersectionality. Building on feminist works on colonial legacy, conceptions of the Other, and Donna Haraway’s cyborg idea, measures of objectification and exotification are investigated. Exemplified by two leading avatars, the thesis explores their potential implications for power dynamics in society. The analysis found that while claiming to enhance representation and diversity the avatars effectively work against these goals. Considering histories of colonialism and the avatars’ profitability for patriarchal and capitalist agendas, they overtly and subtly reinforce systemic inequalities and materialise processes of Othering and racialisation embedded in social discourse. Expanding on existing disparities the avatars produce a novel marketable feature for corporations through social media that influences and shapes social perceptions spanning from fashionable ideals to, ultimately, political beliefs.

Hip-hop as a cultural phenomenon has gradually taken on a position as one of the post popular music genres in recent history. A form of music that still strongly relies on its roots as an artform for black males. Which has generated an excluding culture that enhances the dominating norm of masculinity. In regard to Sweden’s case of being an egalitarian country and even so having a hip-hop scene that reflects a different type of discourse in accordance with the dominating masculine norm. This generates an interest in how Swedish hip-hop artists (both female and male) construct gender from 2001 to 2021 which this thesis seeks to contribute to understand. Through critical discourse analysis which aims to facilitate the understanding of song lyrics through a three-step analysis of text, discursive practice, and social practice. Through six albums from 2001, 2011 and 2021 the interpretation and analysis came to an understanding that norms and structural circumstances seeks to exclude women and enhance a continued masculine music industry. With variations in the order of discourse with an underlying will of empowerment and autonomy.

This thesis analyses media portrayal of the People's Protection Units (YPG) and the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) in US media by making use of Fairclough’s three-dimensional model of critical discourse analysis. The thesis investigates if these portrayals have been used as a justification by the United States White House to intervene militarily in the conflict in Rojava. Three ways of portraying the YPG and YPJ have been identified: an Orientalist portrayal contrasting the YPG and YPJ to the Orient and including them in a Western ‘us’, a liberal feminist portrayal where the YPJ are contrasted and distanced to the ‘Third World woman’, and the portrayal of the fighters as nationalist and violent suicide bombers, placing them as ‘the Other’. The Orientalist ‘us’ portrayal was found to be used by the US government to justify military intervention. The contextual analysis of US media and politics showed that these portrayals depend on political agendas and therefore say much more about the political climate in the US than being representative of the YPG and YPJ which in its turn causes troubling misrepresentations of the YPG and YPJ.

During the past couple of years, shootings in Malmö have been given considerable amount of attention and not the least by the news media. The tabloids have often been dominated by headlines which indicate an increase of violent shootings in Sweden’s third largest city. Comparing shootings in Malmö to other cities in Sweden is a difficult task as the local police collects data based on different criteria, nevertheless comparisons are frequently made. The objective of this project is to examine how newspapers portray shootings in Malmö by analyzing articles from major newspapers in Sweden. This thesis focuses on the language that is used and in the light of moral panics theory it is discusses whether the news articles in question are instigating moral panics. It is evaluated what discourses are produced and reproduced by the language used in the context of shootings in Malmö through critical discourse analysis (CDA). The main findings reveal that news media tend to promote certain ideas about the severity and the circumstances regarding shootings in Malmö that are symbolic for the instigation of moral panics. In the context of shootings in Malmö the most frequent points that are raised is that shootings are “symptomatic”, shootings are becoming normalized and shootings pose a threat to “normal people” as well. The main implications from this project is that future research is needed on the subject of how data regarding shootings is collected by to police in order to conduct research similar to this. There is a need of a uniformity within the police regarding the definition and classification of shootings in order to facilitate research that compares shootings across the nation. As a follow up to the current project it would be beneficial to investigate the social reactions to the style of journalism discussed in this paper.

In this paper I will examine how the Finnish Armed Forces use representation to portraywomen within the military, in the context of marketing. I will do this partly by analyzingvisual texts, but also by performing a critical discourse analysis. Part of my aim is to reveal which discourses are present in the empirical material, which consists of three recruitmentbrochures. I also examine in what way the Finnish Armed Forces use these discourses toeither change or (re)produce the existing order of discourse. The main theoretical frameworkconsists of representation theory by Stuart Hall. Representation can according to Hall be usedas a power tool to control and (re)produce discourses in society. As a government institutionthe Armed Forces have the power to exclude or under-represent groups from a discourse,which results in a hegemony upheld by the same institutions. My results help uncover the ways in which military organizations, even in countries that are seen as rather equal, still havesome way to go until they reach full equality. My empirical findings show that the Finnish Armed Forces have not succeeded in representing women and men equally. Both men andwomen are often portrayed in a stereotypical manner. Consequently, The Finnish Armed Forces are contributing to a (re)production of existing traditional discourses, and are thereforecurrently not challenging any norms regarding what women in the Finnish Armed Forces canbe like.

Thesis advisor: Hans de Wit / Thesis advisor: Ana M. Martínez Alemán / This project aimed to understand the relationship between theoretical interpretations of multiple values and ideas of the universities from within and across different disciplines and their influence on higher education and its internationalisation within the real international organisation (IO) policy context. With this foundation, I derived a theoretical construct to gauge the often implicit presence of values and ideas of the university in policy. The theoretical construct consisted of: (i) an academic idea of the university from philosophy of higher education literature; (ii) a globalised idea of the university from international higher education literature; and (iii) a developmental idea of the university from international development higher education literature. To apply the theoretical construct using theory-testing via critical discourse analysis of IO policy, I framed IOs as leaders in the global governance of HE, possessing significant linguistic capital (Bourdieu, 1991) in international development higher education. I used the concept of elite capture to describe the phenomenon of IO power over knowledge and values via policy channels enabling them to “describe, define, and create political realities (Táíwò, 2022, p. 32). The theoretical claim I tested, via the two theory-testing cases of UNESCO and the World Bank, was that the values held by IOs with regards to HE and its internationalisation practically shape IO structures and policy processes. I focused on internationalisation of higher education and academic research collaboration as specific policy areas for theory-testing. I found that idealised theoretical ideas of the university are useful for this analytic approach and play a part in shaping IO structures and processes, but in complex ways not neatly represented by disciplinary-bounded theoretical categories. Further, the discursive function of IO strategic priorities shapes discursive construction of higher education policy, how higher education is broadly treated, and the bounds within which internationalisation of higher education is approached. I recommend a richer and more complex theorisation of the university to account for rationales of different stakeholders, including academic, developmental, and globalised ideas of the university, to support policy-makers in international development higher education. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2023. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.

This thesis examines written autism info materials from web searches and autism expertrecommendations across Germany, Sweden, and the US. Making use of Conceptual MetaphorTheory and Critical Discourse Analysis, the different materials were analyzed with the help of codeschemes by marking down conceptual metaphors and other ideological words. The most commonmetaphors, and alternatives, with their implications for the view on autism, as well as the influenceof the Neurodiversity Movement pushing for a paradigm shift on autism, were analyzed. The mainfindings include the capitalist ideology causing autism to be seen as deficits to be cured through theconceptualization of autists as dysfunctional machines in need of fixing which is made possiblethrough turning autism into a concrete object situated in a human container. This allows theassumption that it is possible to remove ‘the autism’ from its container without altering it. However,especially in expert-recommended sources, the neurodiversity paradigm which aims to shift awayfrom a pathological perspective is finding more foothold which challenges the classical medicalparadigm dominating autism discourses. / Den här kandidatuppsatsen undersöker informationsmaterial om autism från webbsökningar ochautismexperters rekommendationer från Sverige, Tyskland och USA. Uppsatsen använder sig avConceptual metaphor theory och kritisk diskursanalys för att undersöka de främst förekommandemetaforer och de underliggande ideologier samt som implikationer dessa synsätten på autism har.Dessutom undersöker kandidatuppsatsen ett eventuellt pågående paradigmskifte, neurodiversitets-paradigmet, som inte ser på autism som en sjukdom utan en naurligt förekommande funktions-variation. De mest väsentliga resultaten innefattar hur kapitalistiska ideologier legitimerar kon-ceptualiseringen av autism som en sjukdom som ska botas. Det möjliggörs genom att se autismsom ett konkret objekt som finns inne i en mänsklig behållare och därmed går att ta bort. Dockbörjar neurodiversitetsparadigmet att utmana det hegemoniska synsättet på autism som en sjukdom,särskilt i informationsmaterial som rekommenderas av expterter.

Sweden is considered prominent in gender equality issues. Despite that, Sweden was the last of the Nordic countries to have a female prime minister, and previous studies demonstrate that gender stereotypes remain. The aim of this thesis is to critically analyze how the former Prime Ministers – Magdalena Andersson, Stefan Löfven and Fredrik Reinfeldt – have been portrayed in Swedish newspapers from a gendered perspective. For the aim of the thesis were a gendered theoretical framework developed. A critical discourse analysis was conducted through a methodological framework developed based on Fairclough's three-dimensional model. The results demonstrate how all three of the former Prime Ministers are related to male norms in the portrayal of them in the newspaper articles. However, it differs between the former Prime Ministers in how the male attributes are ascribed to them and if the attributes are considered positive or negative. Through these findings, it is concluded that the portrayal of Andersson does not follow the pattern shown by previous research of negatively portraying the politician from a stereotypical female perspective.

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’.

no / Verbal-textual hostility plays a significant role in victims¿ subjective perceptions of hatred and police officers¿ assessment of a hate crime. Yet, to date, the role of hate speech in hate crime has been largely uninterrogated. The aim of this research project is to assess and evaluate the forensic possibilities contained in a closer reading of the words used in hate crimes. Through a critical discourse analysis of incident characteristics and officers¿ narratives of incidents, this report maps out how key hate speech-text indicators may assist to better evaluate the force and effects of hate crimes. It is expected that this type of contextual analysis will lead to the development of more sophisticated risk assessment tools for use in frontline policing, and more targeted service-enhancements for victims of hate crimes.