In this paper I will examine the five Pussy Riot music videos that the group has published online on their official You Tube website. I will examine them through a ?gender lens? looking at their visual representations of gender vis-à-vis the hegemonic gender discourse in Russia. In addition I will examine their potential effects and if/how these visual representations can be understood as resistance.In my study I will take on a constructionist approach and the main theories being used to understand and analyze the Pussy Riot music videos are discourse- and representational theory including deconstruction, performativity and the social construction of gender as well as ?in-between? and deviant representations.

This study is about youths, democracy and school. It seeks to describe and problemize the school's role in the democratic society. Firstly, using Social representations Theory, 44 upper secondary shool pupils? representations, or conceptions, of democracy are described and discussed. These representations are then analyzed in relation to the school's role in the democratic society, as it is described by different researchers.The results show that many of the youths have a rather simplistic and abstract view of democracy, describing it only in terms of general principles and the main features of the representative democracy, such as voting in national elections.

The purpose of this thesis is to study how homosexuals and homosexuality were represented in the press during the trials against the Pentecostal pastor Åke Green, and to what kind of Social representations and narratives these representations can be related.Using critical discourse analysis and theories about the differentiation between in- and outgroups I try to unveil implicit meanings and attitudes towards gay people mainly at the local text level. The material consists of articles in Ölandsbladet and Dagens Nyheter that were produced before, during and after the trials.The analysis suggests that homosexuals are construed as a deviant outgroup and that the majority, the ingroup, is presented as an essentially heterosexual, tolerant community. Homosexuality is wrong and heterosexuality is the right way of living. Homosexuals, in terms of group lobbyism, are construed as an enemy, a threat, against Western ideals such as family values and freedom of speech. They indirectly become a threat to Swedish democracy.

The aim of this undergraduate thesis was to examine the media?s portrayal of overweight and obese children and their surroundings, using the first and third dimensions of Fairclough?s three dimensional model for critical discourse analysis. The study addressed the following questions: How does the press, in this study represented by two newspapers, portray overweight and obese children? What discourses regarding overweight and obesity among children are the most prominent in these two newspapers? What risks and negative influences in the child?s surroundings are identified, and how are they described? What Social representations can the images of overweight and obese children originate from? The analyzed material consisted of 62 articles from Dagens Nyheter and Aftonbladet, which were analyzed using the earlier mentioned method for discourse analysis, as well as the theory of Social representations. The results showed that ?the fat child? and its environment were portrayed exclusively in negative terms, and a discourse linking obesity and ill-health dominated a large part of the material.

The society of suburbs is frequently discussed in media, which often focus on the problems related to these areas. The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to examine how Swedish contemporary youth literature may contribute to create, strengthen and articulate Social representations of the society of suburbs. The analysis is based upon six youth novels published during 2003 to 2007. The theoretical framework consists of two parts and is based on Anthony Giddens? theories about late modern society in which the youth novels in our study take place, and those living conditions that this society creates.

Cultural bias in health assessment has been asserted in various scientific reports. The aim of this study was to determine whether ethnicity effects how patients are represented in such medical certificates that are needed to obtain a certain Swedish social insurance. The setting was an analysis of 18 medical certificates for patients whose parents were born in Sweden, respectively of 18 medical certificates of patients whose parents immigrated to Sweden from non European countries. The main objective was comparison of the two groups to test for ethnical heteronormative representations of the patients and their parents. The method used is mainly based on critical discourse analysis in combination with Fowlers (1996) semantic tools used to decipher disparity in the discourse.

This research paper aims to show how racism, power, Social representations and identity are created and reproduced through the media. The research paper will analyse newspaper articles presented about Cronulla riot in The Sydney Morning Herald, The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph using Fairclough?s critical discourse analysis, CDA, as a theory and method. The research paper aims to demonstrate how inequality in the Australian society is reproduced by the media through the use stereotypes and certain Social representations and how knowledge and awareness about this is relevant to social work of today..

The opinion of social workers towards their work with children and young persons wasstudied in this essay. Even their point of view with reference to the term the child?s bestinterest has being considered and special focus was laid on the social workers attitudestowards media coverage and its criticism towards their work. A qualitative approach was usedconsisted of six interviews. The theoretical frameworks were based on the theory aboutfreedom of action and the theory of Social representations.

This thesis uses the ?What's the problem?-approach developed by Carol LeeBacchi. This approach studies how the problem that a certain policy is supposedto take care of is represented. Each representation will rest upon certainassumptions and will accordingly support certain solutions while other solutionswill be considered less suitable to the problem as it is represented.The thesis therefore evaluates the competing problem representations forgender mainstreaming in Sweden. The theory chapter explores two developmentpossibilities for gender mainstreaming, based on diversity and deliberativedemocracy.

The aim of this study was to seek knowledge about how the media audience interprets media representations of immigrants as well as the construction of ?us? and ?them? that is created from the media report.We implemented two focus group interviews, one containing only ethnical Swedes and one holding a variety of people with different ethnical backgrounds. The focus groups got to read nine news articles from different Swedish news papers selected by us, based upon previous research. These articles got to serve as the basis of the discussion.To supplement the focus groups, which got to represent the media audience, we also interviewed two different persons we choose to call informants, whom are both immigrants and are or have been politically active and often appear in local media.The interviews were our empirical material which was used for analysis. The method we used was qualitative analysis of meaning and was based upon a hermeneutic starting point, meaning that all humans are interpreting beings.

I am a glassblower and I am a woman. In this project I've been working with alternative representations of the female body, muscles and technology. Mouthblown objects contains traces of body and form representations.I've been using muscle sensors to collect data from my arms while I blow glass. A special has made 3D-models from the collected data and I've blown these viritual objects in glass.My work is based around issues like: What happens when I measure my muscles? Am I (and my process) affected by the data gathering? How can I create alternative representations of the female body? What is the relation between glassblowing, the objects, body and gender?.

This paper investigates the representations of Africans in the Swedish comic press around the time 1880-1920, with the purpose of establishing how Africans were depicted and how these representations can be explained. The sources consist of four comic magazines: Kasper, Söndags-Nisse, Strix and Naggen.Results show that images of Africans in the late 19th and early 20th century Swedish comic press highly conform to international representations. Traditional stereotypes and overall caricatures are widely applied, mediating racial difference and black subordination. The comic strips and jokes can be divided into categories, defined by their main theme: 1) Exotic animals and nature 2) Skin colour 3) The unintelligent or uncivilised savage 4) Cannibalism 5) The civilised African 6) Imperialistic overtones. The use of international stereotypes indicates that some comic strips might have been directly copied from foreign publications, and incorporated into Swedish contexts.Several theories, likely interacting, can be considered in explaining the imagery.

This paper takes it points of departure in a gender equality perspective and the perceived paradox between the governmental labour market policy and family policy. The first policy area has the aim to put people to work, whereas the other introduces a reform, vårdnadsbidraget, that point in the opposite direction. Which are the problem representations within the two policy areas and are the problem representations concordant or contradictive? From a constructivist perspective, langue is closely related to power through defining and ascribing meaning to reality. Drawing on political documents, speeches and articles formulated within the government, this paper analyzes problem representations through the use of discourse analysis and feminist political theory.

The aim of this study is to analyze how problems are represented within SOU 2008:27. Further more, the aim is to analyze how the new subject plan for history can bee seen as a product of this document. The method used, and the theoretical frame of the study, is based on Carol Lee Bacchi?s ?what´s the problem represented to be?? approach, which basic principle is that policies are filled with representations of problems and that these representations need to be examined. These problem representations are then themselves subject for scrutiny, the second step being an analysis of the texts presumptions and assumptions concerning view of man and perception of knowledge. The results show, among other things, that a problem representations can be found in the SOU; the school system is too vague and unclear.

The essay's aim was to see which attitudes county council's and municipality representatives had about themes like: collaboration and competence in the work around double diagnosed persons. Its objective was to zero in on the attitudes of the representatives regarding a coallocated collaboration project in Stockholm. Also, it sought to find out what attitudes the representatives had about the other representatives attitudes concerning the above mentioned themes. A number of attitudes were presented during the qualitative interviews with the representatives, highlighting which attitudes seemed strongest. Then the interviews were analyzed using meaning condensation and then set against the theory of Social representations.The analysis showed that before work with the target group starts, there?s a need for synchronization of the different representatives involved in the collaboration project.