The aim of this study was to describe how girls and boys have been represented in the Swedish children?s? magazine Kamratposten from 1950 until 2010. Kamratposten was chosen because it has both boys and girls as target audience. Three articles about children from the years 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000 and 2010 were chosen as material of the study.The study is a discourse analysis that deconstruct the gender discourse of Kamratposten. The analysis is done with a gender perspective.

Abortion remains a contentious issue, which greatly raises ethical problems. This thesis examines the leading arguments in the Swedish abortion debate around the ? in terms of legislation ? critical years of 1938 and 1974. With Foucault's genealogical method, Butler's theories of gender as a social construction in relation to power and doxa, the study examines what the development of the argumentation says about the views on morality, the woman's body, life, individual and state? How has the arguments pro and against abortion changed over time and what does this say about the norms that guide and orientate the arguments? The most obvious change in argumentation is seen in the shift from an absolute moral and conservative position into an increasingly relativistic and liberal position, and this study will argue that this shift has its prerequisites in the changing status of the citizen and state.

The aim of this thesis is to analyze the media discussions of the rape in Bjästa 2009 and to reveal how stereotypical illusions of ethnicity, religion and gender affect how media understands and defines violence. The rape in Bjästa occurred in a ?Swedish context? but has been defined as honor related in other arenas outside media. This discussion occurred because the whole village turned against the woman that was raped and supported the perpetrator? a phenomena that speaks against the idea of an equal society and a behavior that is usually understood as honor related and something that the ?others? do.

For the past decades, culture has been given a role as a factor for local and regional development. But what is meant by development and in what ways culture can be of importance in this aspect can be unclear. This thesis examines the perception of the role for local and regional development of one specific cultural place and network ? the cultural cooperative Not Quite in Fengersfors, Sweden. I study the way the role as developer is expressed and interpreted in the discourse of the cultural workers who are members of the network and in the discourse of public cultural policy in the region Västra Götaland and in Åmål municipality.

The main purpose of this essay is to study ideas concerning the concept of ?art? within the discourse of the exhibition space that is part of a fanart community. In order to do so I have used a hermeneutical and to some extent structuralistic, discourse analysis. I have examined structure and rhetorics in two established and popular communities, Fanart-Central and deviantART.My conclusions states that personal ideas regarding artistic value are undermined the joint policies, because of a collective rhetoric somewhat inherent in the community structure.When a lot of works are being based on internal knowledge of symbolics and historical narratives, this may to some extent have consequences where unfamiliar observers might fail to notice elements of possible significance. Moreover, certain interests in keeping a united front of ?quality art? may also affect a general idea immediate to what signifies fanart.

This essay is about security and safety in the city. More precisely it is concerned about the role of the institutions that aims to raise the perceived security and safety and their understanding of these concepts. I study two of the municipality's project in this field in the city of Malmö. Documents concerning these projects are analysed with a discourse analysis inspired by Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau as well as Michel Foucault. The two projects consist of one discourse each; the surveillance discourse and the discourse about meetings.

This thesis takes as its point of departure the Swedish governmental family policy and the debate on the proposed reform ?vårdnadsbidraget?. The supporters of the reform present it as something that will increase the freedom of choice for families and benefit the children, whereas the opponents warn for decreased equality and a return to the male breadwinner-model.From a constructivist perspective, language is closely related to power through defining and ascribing meaning to reality. By applying a feminist political theory on the debate within the Swedish national parliament 2007/2008 and conducting a discourse analysis, the aim of this paper is to analyse which concepts are used and how they construct to what makes a family within the political debate ? is there any difference or similarity between the view of the opponents and the supporters of ?vårdnadsbidraget??The main conclusion of this paper is that even though the political ideal and rhetorical concepts differ between the supporters and the opponents, they still constitute the heterosexual nuclear family as an obvious norm in family politics.

Through discourse analysis of twelve Library and Information Science theses, covering the period between 1975 and 2007, this thesis examines representations of homosexuality and homosexual identities. By using queer theory as a point of reference aspects such as essence/construct, equality/difference, notions of gender and views on the historical and contemporary situation of homosexuals are brought to the fore in the analysis. It is shown how the material unequivocally posits the contemporary situation of homosexuals favourably in comparison to a past signified by prejudices and oppression. This can be seen as an implicit essentialism in the texts, though ambivalences open up the possibility that it in some cases may be only strategically used while explicitly adhering to constructionist views. In linking concepts of a homosexual difference to prejudices, frequently involving notions of inverted gender performances or sexual ?extremes?, the discourse of progression posits normalcy and assimilation as positive values.

Sweden?s most trusted news distributor, Sveriges Radio (Swedish Public Service radio broadcaster), has high ambitions with the journalism it broadcasts ? especially when it comes to gender equality and diversity. This thesis examines how gender is constructed in Dagens Eko (Today?s Echo) to find if and how power structures are expressed language-wise. Queer theory is used to look at how gender is constructed and how one can look at, and question, gender and gender hierarchies.

Drawing on theories of ethnic representations in mainstream news media and racial discrimination (van Dijk 2000, Hultén 2006, Husband & Downing 2005, Wodak 2011), and using methods of critical discourse analysis (mainly van Dijk 1993, 1991, Fairclough 1995) this bachelor thesis aims to investigate the inter-textual and inter-discursive relationship between selected editorial and opinion pieces written by three mainstream right wing ?symbolic elites? and the xenophobic blog ?Avpixlat?. The three selected symbolic elites are: Per Gudmundsson, editorial writer at the second largest Swedish newspaper SvD, Andreas Johansson Heinö, academic with a P.H.D. in political science, specialized on issues of integration and ethnic relations, and Paulina Neuding, editorial writer at SvD and editor in chief for right-wing oriented magazine Neo. All three are actively taking part in the mediated discussion of ethnic relations in Sweden from a liberal-conservative perspective.

In Shop! Daniel Svensson is studying the Public Consume Conversation during the 90´s. Focus is based on two local papers in the Swedish town Norrköping and the Public Media Conversation, which these two represent. What kind of discourses has been dominating this conversation, that is the most important question in Shop! To answer this, Daniel Svensson uses the Critical Discourse Analysis, by Norman Fairclough, as an analytic tool. This method provides him with the possibility to connect the micro level of text with the macro level of the society. But this demands theories of the contemporary society at a macro level.

The goal of this essay is to analyse how women belonging to a right wing political discourse talk about feminism and equality. This analysis will be used to determine if right wing feminism exists. The analysis is based on Laclau and Mouffe´s  discourse theory as the primary base. The focus is articulation, antagonism and hegmony; the central terms of Laclau and Moffe´s theroy. The material consists of five interviews with representatives of women wings of liberal political in Sweaden; Liberala kvinnor, Centerkvinnor and Moderatkvinnor.The study shows that there are different opinions regarding feminism in the liberal political discouse, and that those opinions have an antagonistic relationship.

In Sweden there is an integration policy and a policy for national minorities. The integration policy aims to integrate newly arrived immigrants (nyanlända invandrare), whereas the minority policy aims to maintain and strengthen the rights of the national minorities. The national minorities are though, at times, included into the integration policy, even though they hold a minority status in Sweden. This paper aims to, through discourse analysis, investigate the research question: ?how is the content of integration referred to, when it is related to immigrants, contra when it is related to national minorities?.

Abortion remains a contentious issue, which greatly raises ethical problems. This thesis examines the leading arguments in the Swedish abortion debate around the ? in terms of legislation ? critical years of 1938 and 1974. With Foucault's genealogical method, Butler's theories of gender as a social construction in relation to power and doxa, the study examines what the development of the argumentation says about the views on morality, the woman's body, life, individual and state? How has the arguments pro and against abortion changed over time and what does this say about the norms that guide and orientate the arguments? The most obvious change in argumentation is seen in the shift from an absolute moral and conservative position into an increasingly relativistic and liberal position, and this study will argue that this shift has its prerequisites in the changing status of the citizen and state.

This bachelor thesis investigates the discourses on violence among pupils in a school environment. The overall aim is to gain knowledge on how it is researched, interpreted and understood. The methods employed are genealogical analysis, discourse analysis and intersectional analysis. The analyzed texts consist of research reports, articles, dissertations and government authority guidelines. The theoretical framework drawn upon is post modernistic theory, social constructivism and intersectional theory.