In September 2017, an online petition urged a Swiss candy factory to change the name of its chocolate covered meringue candy from the questionable name “Mohrenkopf” (engl. moor’s head) to anything non-racist. This demand caused a big public outcry and led to the debate over the legitimacy of the name. The aim of this present thesis is to examine the role of the Swiss news media in a discourse of racism by looking at their response to the petition. The data sample of 30 newspaper articles was analyzed with an analytical framework modeled after van Dijk’s socio-cognitive approach to critical discourse analysis. The theoretical framework for the analysis is based on mass communication theories, discourse theory as well as on the concept of commodity and retro racism. The results demonstrated the power of Swiss news media in the debate and showed how deep denial of racism is rooted in Swiss society, which finds expression in retro racism. Ultimately, the findings question the neutrality of Swiss news media in discourses of racism.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:mau-21128 |
| Date | January 2019 |
| Creators | Chea, Nila |
| Publisher | Malmö universitet, Fakulteten för kultur och samhälle (KS), Malmö universitet/Kultur och samhälle |
| 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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