During the so-called ‘migration crisis’ of 2015, 51,338 Syrians applied for asylum in Sweden. First, Swedish politicians called for Swedes to ‘open their hearts’, public support was strong, and media coverage was full of possibilities and humanizing images. As the crisis developed, Sweden’s generous asylum legislation switched to the EU minimum, the political climate toughened and media’s positive frames soon shifted to discussing negative consequences. This degree project focuses on those least visible in the media’s representation of the migration crisis – refugee women. By using Chouliaraki and Zaborowski’s (2017) model ‘voice by narrative’, it answers the research question; How are refugee women from Syria represented in national and local Swedish newspapers?, as well as the following sub-questions: What news frames are used in texts where Syrian women are featured? In what ways are refugee women given visibility and space to speak? What types of representations, wording, and stereotypes are used? What differences can be found between 2015 and 2020, national and local newspapers? The project examines news frames, gendered representations, typical stereotypes, visibility, and space given to Syrian women in Swedish newspapers. It does so by content analysis of newspaper articles from three newspapers published in 2015 and 2020. The project uses theories of othering, intersectionality, and post-colonial power structures as well as literature on representations in European media during the migration crisis to understand representations, voice, and news frames in Swedish newspapers. The results indicated that refugee women are often silenced and spoken of instead of given space to speak. The most commonly used news frames among the analyzed texts were negative geopolitical and women were often decontextualized. Victimization and normalization were the most commonly used stereotypes assigned to refugee women. The majority of representations of refugee women were collective and the women were in many ways othered. Refugee women are othered, decontextualized, silenced, and collectivized, which will have its consequences as they are methods that limit refugee women’s status and position in society – maintaining their position as ‘others’ in Swedish society.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:mau-43354 |
| Date | January 2021 |
| Creators | Beattie, Ebba |
| Publisher | Malmö universitet, Institutionen för konst, kultur och kommunikation (K3) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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