Among Swedish cultural journalists, conflict and debates are common. It has long been atradition in the cultural pages of newspapers to be a voice in societal debates that discussessubjects like racism, feminism and class issues. The cultural pages have gone throughchanges in the modern era of digitization and economic issues. Because of that, culturaljournalists and critics need to bring something new or unique to be more visible in the newmedia landscape.This study is a case study of two modern debates that revolves around critics and literaturecritique. The purpose of the study was to investigate the cultural journalism field and how theactors in the field position themselves and others in this hierarchy. We wanted to study howthese debates start and develop over time, what the actors describe as good or bad critiqueand how they express that in the debate. By using the framework of Bourdieu's field theorywe could differentiate the capital that the actors possessed and the position and power theymanage in the field.The results showed that the actors that contribute to the debate put on a role. Every rolecarries a different purpose. The idea of what critique should be and what defines good or badcritique was different between every actor in the field but the basic idea was the same. Themain rule was that critique and the critic should work as an informant for the consumer. Thusthey need to be subjective, honest and able to add something new that the author or the bookcannot. The main goal when critiquing an actor in the debate is to undermine the capital andposition that they embody. Many of the writers felt a need to protect the doxa in the fieldsince it is important to their position, capital and therefore the power that they inhabit in thefield. The doxa that they identify with is used as their weapon in the debate to denounce theidea they do not agree with.

At the centre of this study lies the question if normative gender thinking affects the way poetry gets reviewed and how the reviews are written, this in relation to both the gender of the reviewer and the poet. The study crosses three academic fields; gender studies, poetry and journalism, and is based on the cultural studies theory of media affecting and even creating the world around it. The study is based on two types of analysis. One quantitative analysis based on the thematic criticism theory about detail studies that shows bigger patterns, this analysis focuses on how the poet and his/hers work are being treated in the reviews in areas such as how much space they´re given in the newspapers, how they are named by the reviewer and the tendency to quote the reviewed work.  And one qualitative analysis based on the new criticism method of close reading, that focuses on the reviewers way of writing and how that may be connected with theories of gender differences, this both connected to the gender of the reviewers and the poets. The material chosen for this study are all the reviews that were published in the same newspapers and that reviewed two specific poetry works by two specific poets chosen with great sensibility to age and career so that their difference in gender would be the most significant difference between them. The works were chosen based on year of publishing, they were supposed to be published as newly as possible and as close to each other in time as possible. The works I ended up with were Dimman av allt (2001) and Svart som silver (2008) by Bruno K. Öijer and Silverskåp (2000) and Nu försvinner vi eller ingår (2007) by Birgitta Lillpers. The results of this study show several differences in how poetry is being judged and how poetry reviews are being written are connected with the gender of the poets and the reviewer. Lillpers got 35% less space in the newspapers and Öijers poetry got quoted a lot more which confirms that female poetry often is considered as less important than the male poetry, and that men in general tends to be judged as more professional than woman. The male reviewers tended to express themselves with greater certainty than the female reviewers who held a more professional tone in their reviews and focused more on the technical aspects of the poetry. This confirms the theory of the male words are being looked upon as the truth but contradicts the theory of women writing more based on personal experience and of women being less skilled in language techniques. In conclusion, there are differences in how poetry gets reviewed and how the reviews are written that are connected to the genders of the poet and the reviewer but these differences are complex and does not show a clear normative way of thinking about gender

The aim of this study is to study the construction of literary values. I have been looking at how literature awarded with sponsored literary prizes has been reviewed in four major English and American newspapers. I have been studying the reception of literature by Ian McEwan, Hilary Mantel, Colm Tóibín and Zadie Smith between 2000 and 2012. The prizes in focus are the Man Booker Prize, the Orange prize for fiction and the Costa Awards. There seems to be an increasing number of articles related to each author after they have been awarded a prize, however with little change in the content of the reviews. The non critical articles seems to move towards a more personal angle. I have also found that critics tend to position the authors’ works in comparision to canonised authorships rather than discussing the literature as awarded.

This thesis is a reception study of Susanne Ostens book, theatre play and children’s film Flickan, mamman och demonerna. The study aims to examine how proffesional crituiqe, published in daily press and journals, handles the crituiqes genre conventions with the theorie that if the cirtic averts from the crituiqes genre conventions that their/societys doxa on what we expect from children’s art will become more visible, and the inescapable follow up question: does this ecpectation mirror how we perceive children and their capabilities?  The theorie is an investigation of the professor and litterary scholar Anders Johansson’s essay Slitas itu publisched Critica Obscura: Litteraturkritiska essäer, where Johansson makes the claim that socitys doxa will become visible if the ciric does not follow the crituiqes genre conventions and that this will lead to an erosion of the crituiqes porpose. Johanssons theory is acompanied by, amongst others, Jaquline Rose’s The Case of Peter Pan, Or, The Impossibility of Children's Fiction, and Perry Nodelmans article “The Other: Orientalism, Colonialism, and Children’s Literature” pulished in Children’s Literature Association Quarterly17, no, chosen since the thesis as a whole practices a post colonial reading of the chosen crituiqe. The result of the investigation is that: where the critic averts from the crituiques genre conventions, and involves their own oppinions without porper motivation (E.g. where affective failures has occurred) in the text, a clear pattern of our conteporary doxa of how we perceive children and how the art made for them should behave/be. The pattern/tendancy found is that children’s art is expected to have a didactic value, that the piece of art should mirror the childs “reality”, have an indisputable and understandable point, and not evoke too many negative feelings. The thesis is woven, in a esseyistic style, with hard-to-grasp memories of the authors childhood and the academic form.