<p><p>In our study we examined recurrent patterns and changes in the representation of</p><p>homosexual persons in Swedish daily newspapers 1987, 1997 and 2007.</p><p>We analysed articles about HIV-infected persons and articles with a view to portray the</p><p>life conditions of gay and lesbian persons from the three different years. We chose to</p><p>only analyze news articles that intend to represent real human beings, which mean that</p><p>we did not analyze reports that only reproduce abstract knowledge from authorities.</p><p>With analytical tools from semiotics and discourse analysis we identified some recurrent</p><p>patterns in the representation of homosexual people. We found that a recurrent pattern in</p><p>that when homosexual people are seen as groups, they are described as deviant,</p><p>discriminated and some times as a threat. When portrayed as individuals the nonanonymous</p><p>persons appear in articles and pictures as normal, strong and healthy. Lesbian</p><p>women are not represented in the articles from 1987, but in articles from 1997 and 2007</p><p>they appear as unhappy when single and happy in a relationship.</p><p>The results also showed some interesting differences in news representation of</p><p>homosexual persons between the three investigated years. One example of this is that the</p><p>media stopped referring to homosexual men as a ‘hazard group’ in terms of HIV at some</p><p>point after the year 1987. We recognize this as an important change in the news medias</p><p>perspective on both HIV and love between men.</p></p>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA/oai:DiVA.org:hik-1369 |
| Date | January 2009 |
| Creators | Malm, Louise, Werlid, Linnea |
| Publisher | University of Kalmar, School of Communication and Design, University of Kalmar, School of Communication and Design |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, text |
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