This study examines how the media construct the identities of the Other by creating various ‘us’ versus ‘them’ positions (Othering) when covering non-violence-based intercultural conflicts in Arab and Western news media. Othering in this study is understood as an umbrella concept that in general terms refers to the discursive process of constructing and positioning the Self and the Other into separate identities of an ‘us’ and a ‘them.’ This process is analysed using a mixed method approach. A content analysis is used to map the data, and then a closer examination of the discourse is conducted using a qualitative approach inspired by critical discourse analysis. Two empirical studies are conducted based on this analysis: 1) the case of the Swedish newspaper Nerikes Allehanda’s publication of caricatures of the Prophet Mohamed in 2007 and 2) the media coverage of the headscarf ban in French state schools in 2004. This study also employs Galtung’s Peace Journalism model as a frame of reference in the conclusions to discuss how this model could contribute, if applied in journalistic texts, to more balanced constructions of intercultural conflicts. The results show that Othering is a central discursive practice that is commonly adopted in both Arab and Western media coverage of non-violent intercultural conflicts, but it appears in different forms. Many of the previous studies have devoted considerable attention to rather conventional dichotomous constructions of Eastern and Western Others. The present study, in contrast, brings to the fore more non-conventional constructions and, while recognizing the occurrence of the conventional constructions, goes beyond these binary oppositions of ‘us’ and ‘them’. Variations in the types of identity constructions found in my study can be attributed to the mode of the article, the actors/voices included, the media affiliations and the topic and its overall contextualization. The different types of identity constructions in the media coverage may bring about a less black and white understanding of an event and help bring forth a more nuanced picture of what is going on and who is doing what in a conflict situation. Their occurrence in the media can possibly be linked to a new vision of a global society that does not necessarily constitute homogenous groups with the same characteristics, but rather is more consistent with a hybrid identity. This research is timely, as with the recent arrival of large groups of migrants from the Middle East, the ‘fear of Islam,’ and the right wing propaganda regarding Muslims as a threat is increasing. Islamophobia can be seen as a new form of racism used by elites to serve particular agendas. If media practitioners applied a more critical awareness in their writings so as not to reproduce culturally rooted stereotypes, which can inflame conflicts between people and nations, we might see less hostility against migrants and achieve a less racist world.

Othering is central in the rhetoric of both Abu Bakr Naji and Anders Breivik throughout their works. Both authors use it as a device to drive a psychological wedge between the groups of ‘us’ and ‘them’. In the case of Naji, the in group is made up of violence oriented takfiris such as Al Qaeda, but Breivik hoped to appeal to other violence oriented far right groups and individuals, disillusioned with what he perceived to be a slow erosion of ‘traditional’ European life by the far left, feminism and other forces. My research question will revolve around how a use of othering by the authors can reveal what they regard as the major threat to their groups. Superficially, there seem to be many similarities in how each author uses othering to alienate and dehumanise different groups. However, closer inspection reveals entirely different priorities and different methods of othering in play. By examining how othering is used throughout the works, it is possible to see which outside groups are perceived to present the biggest threat to the inside groups and the results are perhaps surprising. Given that The Management of Savagery has been seen as the ISIS strategic manual and the key message throughout the work is try and bring the USA and her allies into a catastrophic war of attrition from which the violence oriented takfiris would rise, I had assumed that the USA, or the ‘Far’ enemy would take the brunt of Naji’s othering drive. Instead, the Shia and all Muslims who are unaligned with Al Qaeda, plus those Muslims closely aligned with the West or Western ideals are the key target for Naji. Likewise, I had expected most of the vitriol from Breivik’s right wing ‘manifesto’ to be directed at Muslim immigrants to Europe. However, his key concern, as evidenced by the othering used throughout his work, is in fact with what he terms ‘cultural Marxists’ – left leaning groups and political parties, which he sees as weakening Europe and allowing outsiders to take over.

On the 22nd October 2015 Anton Lundin Pettersson attacked students with a sword at Kronan elementary school, in the Swedish city of Trollhättan. The school is locally known to have many students with different immigrant backgrounds. When the police arrived at the school they shot the perpetrator and after an investigation the police claimed that the perpetrator had racist motives with the attack. Four persons died in the attack, including the perpetrator. The aim of this study was to compare how a local newspaper and a national newspaper covered and framed the school attack in Trollhättan. Our research questions were: How was the attack framed in the articles? How were the victims and the perpetrator framed in the articles? And are there any differences and/or similarities in the newspaper's coverage of the event? In this study we made a qualitative text analysis to examine the comparison between newspapers TTELA (local) and Aftonbladet (national). The timeframe we analysed for the news coverage was from the day of the attack (October 22nd) and one month forward (November 23rd). Totally 29 articles were examined where 17 was from Aftonbladet and 12 was from TTELA. The results showed that both newspapers framed the attack as something that no one saw coming and they both used the words “attack” or “deed” to describe the incident. The newspapers framed some victims as heroes and others as helpless people. Both newspapers framed the perpetrator as a racist, but only the national newspaper (Aftonbladet) framed him as a “lone wolf”. The results showed that the newspapers reported from different forms of othering.

This essay examines the relationship between language, identity, power and visibility in Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (2019). This is achieved by applying post-colonial theories regarding double consciousness, and the construction of an Other. Theories put forward by Spivak and Fanon are also discussed in relation to this. By looking at how language is used, both by characters and author, we can see what an immense role language playes in the construction of identity and in the establishing of power.

Research on school textbooks, presented by Masoud Kamali and Mia Mikander, shows that othering is a reoccurring matter. Without a national authority to examine the textbooks used in Swedish schools, in relation to teachers not having the time to examine their textbooks of choice, one wonders how this affects the education taking place in Swedish schools. Since the National Agency for Education states that the education should be factual and versatile.  By using the critical discourse analysis, the aim of this study is to analyze if and how history textbooks for pupils in grades 4 - 6 articulates othering. To fulfill the aim of the study the following questions were formulated to enable the analysis of the textbooks:  Where does the subjective modalities occur in the chosen textbooks? Which subjective modalities occurs in the chosen textbooks? Who are included alternatively excluded in the textbooks use of “us”? How could it be? The method used for the study is Faircloughs three-dimensional model with the text analysis as the main focus of the study. The critical analysis is used to analyze how discourses of power are reproduced through the language. The results show that the analyzed textbooks articulate othering by including or excluding groups of people based on the use of pronouns like us, our and ours. This may lead to a reproduction of the hegemony that saturates the society to take place in the Swedish classrooms as well.

On the 24th of February Russia invaded Ukraine from multiple directions, causing a sudden influx of Ukrainians fleeing the country to the EU territories to be safe from the war. The reactions from the neighboring countries were uncharacteristically welcoming and humanitarian aid was promptly delivered to the ones in need. This creates a contrast to the refugees coming from outside Europe and their treatment. This thesis utilizes a three-dimensional Critical Discourse Analysis to examine the discourse on Ukrainian refugees in Deutsche Welle and Aljazeera in the days following the start of the invasion. Poststructural theory of power and identity constructions is employed to uncover hidden assumptions and knowledge production in the discourse. I argue that the notions of Eurocentrism and Eurocentric views on identities are prevailing in the discourse and that this emphasis on Europe as the in-group deepens the divide between the out-group.

This thesis explores the representation of atrocities committed by the Dutch in Indonesia between 1945-1949 in a Dutch mainstream newspaper in the Netherlands. This timeframe represents the decolonisation war between the Netherlands and Indonesia, which is referred to as the Indonesian National Revolution.  From the theoretical angle, this study was created based on the foundations of Hall’s representation theory and postcolonial theory, both theories were supported by the concept of othering. The combined theoretical framework was created to uncover the representation of the committed atrocities by diving into the employed preferred and dominant meaning of the atrocities, the ‘Self’ and the ‘Other’. The methodological aspect of this thesis consists of a qualitative content analysis, semiotic analysis, which includes Hall’s denotation and connotation toolkit, and discourse analysis. The methodological framework enabled a thorough analysis of the representation and the employed discourses. For the corpus, 159 articles revolving around signs of atrocities and disruptive events within the mainstream newspaper Het Vrije Volk were chosen to thoroughly analyse the representation of the chosen preferred meanings and other discourses. The findings show that Het Vrije Volk predominantly embraced a discourse of colonial pride, which relates to the Netherlands not wanting to let go of its past colony. However, the newspaper did represent a counter-hegemonic articulation by making use of critical discourse as well from time to time. The representation of atrocities committed by the Dutch in Indonesia between 1945-1949 in a Dutch mainstream newspaper in the Netherlands is not black and white and requires a critical lens at all times.

This thesis addresses representation of ‘irregular’ migrants in the ‘Süddeutsche Zeitung’ (SZ). The study employs the discourse event of New Year’s Eve 2015 in Cologne as a temporal marker and aims to examine representations of ‘irregular’ migrants prior to and following the event. A critical discourse analysis (CDA) of fourteen articles is conducted, and Fairclough’s three-dimensional model is employed to analyse the material. Following a textual analysis, in which the use of modality is examined, the sociocultural dimension of the newspaper discourse is investigated. This section sees the application of Stuart Hall’s Othering to the analysis, as well as an inspection of prevalent themes found in the material. The analysis concludes with the finding of ‘deservingness’ and ‘semantics of crime and threat’ as prevalent themes. Furthermore, the results show that ‘irregular’ migrants are constructed as the ‘Other’ in SZ articles, however, this finding is not generalisable to the entire sample.

Hate crime and men’s violence against women are two well-recognised and highly prioritised human rights phenomena in both international and local contexts. Yet, the idea of linking the two phenomena together has received very limited support. As a series of lethal acts of Incel- violence – violence characterised by misogynistic motives and an alt-right ideology of male supremacy – have taken place globally in recent years, a discussion on the region of the human rights spectrum where gendered violence and hate crime legislation overlap is more relevant than ever. Thus, this study’s overarching purpose is to – through a comparative analysis of studies on hate crime and men’s violence against women from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Sweden – investigate the definition of hate crime and its scope in relation to gendered violence with a primary objective of identifying factors that explain why violent crimes against women motivated by misogynistic principles are rarely, if ever, recognised as hate crimes. By drawing on explanatory models of normalisation and theories on power relations, the practice of othering, the male norm and the norm of masculinity, and gendered spheres, the study sets out to evaluate a thesis that suggests that the infrequent inclusion of violent crimes with female victims in the legal and general perception of hate crime can be at least partially explained with reference to the normalisation of male violence against women, and the traditional expectation and assumption that violence against women is rooted in personal, emotional conflicts rather than impersonal hate motives. The analysis initially explores how the gender category is positioned within the legal phenomenon of hate crime by looking at a generalised criteria for hate crime, the normative view on hate crime victims, the reporting and statistics of hate crime, and arguments for and against the inclusion of a gender category in legal statues on bias crimes. The analysis then moves on to analyse three different categories of violence against women – domestic abuse, sexual assault and rape, and Incel-violence – in relation to gendered power dynamics and norms. The study’s results show that even though motives of hate can be linked to different forms of gendered violence, the traditional understanding of what constitutes a hate crime and a hate crime victim along with stereotypical assumptions on what male-on-female violence looks like, makes men’s violence against women appear incompatible with the hate crime phenomenon even in situations when cases of gendered violence actually fit into the generalised hate crime criteria that legal authorities and the public accept as the definition of a hate crime.

En kvalitativ studie av HBO-serien Chernobyl från 2019 och hur denna upprätthåller en i västerländsk media producerad för underhållning ofta förekommande stereotyp porträttering av Sovjetunionen och dess invånare. Studiens teoretiska utgångspunkt är centrerad kring filmteori och representationsteori och undersöker huruvida man genom othering i västerländska produktioner upprätthåller en bild av de forna sovjetiska länderna och dess invånare baserad på den uppfattning som lades till grund för i filmer producerade under kalla kriget. Studiens resultat är att serien kan läsas som ett försök att genom adaptionen av en inhemsk sovjetisk skildring av världens största kärnkraftsolycka försöka ge symbolisk upprättelse till katastrofens offer, trots att serien i stor utsträckning bekräftar den stereotypa skildring av sovjetiska medborgare ofta tidigare sedd i västerländsk media. / A qualitative study of the 2019 HBO miniseries Chernobyl and how it perpetuates a stereotype western perception of post Soviet countries and their inhabitants, influenced by the antagonists created during Cold War in film produced by west. The Soviet stereotype is examined through film and representation theory, and seeks to investigate how the practice of othering is carried out by narrative functions throughout pivotal moments of the series. The analysis concludes that the sensitive matter of adapting a domestic Soviet narrative of the worlds greatest nuclear disaster into a Hollywood production can be read as an attempt to grant the real life victims a symbolic kind of solace, yet it also fails to portray Soviet citizens outside of the stereotype conforming depiction often seen in western media.