The motive of our study was to examine the differences and the similarities between how tabloids write about male versus female cross-country skiing participants. The main focus was to examine their adversities and successes at the Olympics in Pyeongchang 2018. The study had two main questions to analyze this: “How does Swedish tabloids report about the female and male cross-country skiing teams at the Olympics in Pyeongchang 2018?” and “How do Swedish tabloids report about the setbacks and successes regarding the Swedish cross-country skiing teams at the Olympics in Pyeongchang 2018?”. The result of our discourse analysis showed us that the tabloids present the female national team’s performance differently to how they present the male national team's performance. We made a discourse analysis of nine different articles from the Swedish tabloids Aftonbladet and Expressen. The tabloids write about the female national team’s performances and successes and they balance it by also writing about their setbacks. The reasoning we found as to why the tabloids writes about female athletes more in-depthly than the men is because there is a larger demand for it, owing to their huge success in the Olympics.In contrary, the articles about the male national team, the tabloids write about their setbacks without questioning underlying factors or previous training that could be the basis of their failures. The tabloids also choose to publish articles with more private themes when it comes to the female athletes. This does not occur in the articles about the male cross country national team. In the articles about the men, the tabloids choose not to include personal facts of any kind, all analysed articles deal instead with performance or setback related types of themes.

Tränare och idrottsledare har en viktig fostrande roll i dagens samhälle. Det omfattande ansvaret berör även formandet av fysisk självkänsla bland unga idrottare och ett positivt förhållande till den egna kroppen ska främjas. Denna studie är ett samarbetsprojekt med förbundet Finlands Svenska Idrotts projekt "På samma linje" med ett syfte att skapa en fördjupad förståelse för hur tränare konstruerar kroppsideal i relationen till längdskidåkare i tonåren.  Data samlades in genom semistrukturerade intervjuer i två fokusgrupper. Totalt åtta tränare för längdskidåkande tonåringar deltog i intervjuerna. Resultatet visade att kroppsideal från många olika samhällsinstitutioner upplevs påverka idrottarna genom exempelvis sociala medier. Tränarna arbetar framför allt med idrottarnas fysiska egenskaper och förespråkar individualisering av träningsupplägg utgående från den kropp som finns till förfogande. En stor utmaning är att skapa ett öppet kommunikationsklimat där längdskidåkarna själva vågar ta ansvar i relationen till tränarna. Genom att jämna ut maktstrukturerna mellan tränare och idrottare kan en långsiktig och hållbar idrottssatsning eftersträvas.  Studiens resultat analyserades utgående från Merleau-Pontys tankar om kroppens psykofysiska helhet samt Jowetts relationsteori mellan tränare och idrottare. / Coaches have an important role as caretakers in today's society. This responsibility includes the shaping of adolescents' physical self-esteem and a positive relation to the body should be emphasised. This study is a cooperation with the federation Finlands Svenska Idrotts' project "På samma linje". The purpose of the study is to deepen the understanding of coaches' perception of body-image amongst teenage cross-country skiers.  Two focus groups were conducted with a total of eight coaches. According to the results young athletes are strongly affected by body-images from different institutions in the society, mainly through social media. Coaches primarily work with the athletes' physical qualities and advocate individualisation of training programs due to different body types. A great challange in working with body-image amongst adolescent cross-country skiers, is to develop a climate with open communication where athletes take responsibility in the relationship with their coaches. By equalizing the power-structures between the coach and the athlete, a sustainable sports career can be maintained.  The results of this study was analyzed through Merleau-Ponty's thoughts about the body as a psychological and physical whole along with Jowett's coach-adept relationship theory.

The aim of this study has been to, through a quantitative content analysis and a qualitative text analysis, determine which meaning nationality is given in news reports in Swedish daily press, and how it creates the event as a scandal. Focusing on two major scandals in cross country skiing, articles from the Finnish scandal in Lahtis 2001 and the revealing of doped Russian skiers in 2016 has been analysed. The theoretical framework for the study has been Stuart Halls representation theory, the framing theory, and theories regarding media scandals and nationality. The results from the quantitative and qualitative analyses has been divided into four themes: Imagined communities, Us and them, Individual and corporate and Fallen star. The results show that nationality is given meaning through the creation of imagined communities. It creates a gap between us and them, a sense of the nations parting from each other in form of cultural and moral aspects. There is also a difference between the representation of the countries. In the Russian doping scandal, Russia is considered as a doped nation, with a systematic doping where little guilt is to be put on the skiers themselves. In Finland, the nation stands for the people and is not in any ways to be associated with the doping scandal. Instead, the skiers get all the blame and little notion is made about the doping as being organised. This has also made the scandals to be divided into individual or corporate doping. As for the framing of the event as a scandal, attributes as “cheating” and a portrayal of the skiers as fallen stars is represented. By revealing the names of the suspected dopers it increases the news worth. An unexpected outcome was that the Russian dopers was not mentioned by name as often as the Finnish, which could enhance the event as a scandal even more. Furthermore, doping scandals could be studied in many different ways and is an interesting subject to immerse oneself in.

We studied close to 100 articles about the Swedish cup in cross country skiing, published by the three media outlets that cover the entire series; www.sweski.com , www.langd.se and www.skidzonen.com. The articles were published between 2015 and 2018 and by using a quantitative analysis we discovered that in these articles, the men and the women received almost exactly the same amount of attention, as far as counting words goes. In the articles which focused on both the female and the male athletes, the editors usually chose a picture from the women’s competition as the top image. We also saw a pattern where the women were far more often mentioned by their first names only, whereas the men were usually mentioned by their full names or their last names only. Another interesting theme that we found through a qualitative text analysis regarded how the athletes were portrayed in the articles, where the women seemed to be looked upon as less mature than the men. For example, they were often called “girls” instead of “women”, but the men the same age were never referred to as “boys”. These are seen by us as signs of trivialization and infantlization of the female athletes. However, we did not find any signs of the women being described as weak, or with a focus on their appearances and private lives. These were common patterns in the previous research on the subject. / Vi undersökte knappt 100 artiklar om den svenska cupen i längdskidåkning, publicerade av de tre medierna som bevakar hela serien; www.sweski.com , www.langd.se och www.skidzonen.com. Artiklarna publicerades mellan 2015 och 2018 och med hjälp av en kvantitativ innehållsanalys fann vi att damerna och herrarna fick nästan exakt lika mycket utrymme i dessa artiklar, räknat i antal ord. I de artiklar där båda könen stod i fokus var det  betydligt oftare som en bild från damklassen valdes som toppbild. Vi såg ett mönster där damerna oftare blev omnämnda med enbart sina förnamn, jämfört med herrarna som oftast omtalades med sina hela namn eller enbart efternamn. Ett annat intressant tema som vi fann genom en kvalitativ textanalys gällde hur utövarna porträtterades i artiklarna, där damerna tycktes bli sedda som mindre mogna och vuxna än herrarna. Till exempel kallades de ofta “tjejer” istället för “kvinnor” eller “damer”, samtidigt som de jämnåriga herrarna aldrig blev kallade “killar”. Dessa ser vi som tecken på en trivialisering och en infantilisering av de kvinnliga utövarna. Däremot hittade vi inga tecken på att kvinnorna beskrevs som svaga eller med ett större fokus på deras utseenden och deras privatliv, fenomen som har varit tydligt framträdande i tidigare forskning på ämnet.