This study investigates the news discourses to find out how deaf people and/or deafness is represented and analyses how the discourses might be affected by or influence common attitudes and prejudices about deaf people and/or deafness. First, however, this study analysed the contents of the news articles quantitatively in order to find frequencies of different news topics with references to deaf people and/or deafness and whether deaf people were allowed to talk or not. After the content analysis, ten articles were selected for the discourse analysis. The results of the content analysis show that deaf people are represented and allowed to talk in most of the articles, but that hearing people are also represented in a majority of the articles. Most articles are about culture and personalities, but there are also articles about for example sign language and hearing devices. Most deaf people are represented as individuals, but they are also represented as representatives for the deaf and as both individuals and representatives. The discourse analysis shows that deaf people are represented as a linguistic and cultural minority in both cultural and personal discourses but represented as broken and in need of being fixed for integration in society in medical discourses. In medical discourses, only experts talk about deafness and no deaf people are represented. In other discourses, both deaf and hearing people talk about deaf people, sign language and deaf culture. In some of the discourses, however, it is clear that deaf people are represented from the hearing viewpoint on deafness. There were discursive discrimination of deafness in medical discourses but occurred rarely in other discourses except when the medical view on deafness is present. Deaf people are represented as a minority distinct from the hearing majority in most articles and some of the cultural discourses show attempts to build a bridge between the deaf world and the hearing society. The majority of the discourses point to pluralism as a social practice but some of those discourses also point to inclusion and exclusion as social practices. The medical discourses however point to both assimilation and exclusion as social practices.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:lnu-52957 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Örlegård, Petra |
| Publisher | Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för medier och journalistik (MJ) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
Page generated in 0.0026 seconds