A picture says more than thousand words - an analysis of GQ Magazine´s cover images and ninth grade student´s views of them is an essay in media and communication studies covering 15 hp. This essay examines how men and women are depicted on the cover of GQ Magazine and how ninth grade students perceive these images. Our research questions are: How is gender presented in cover images? How do the students interpret these images? What possible differencies or similarities are there? Our theoretical framework is based on gender theory. Methods used are a survey conducted at Tegs Central school and a semiotic analysis of the cover images.

This study is about underlying discourses of two tv-series for children from opposite parts of the globe. Focus lays on which morals and values adults choose to teach children through popular culture, even on an unaware basis and how does differ, or not, between different societies.The theoretical framework chosen for this study are semiotics in combination with the concept of the gaze by Laura Mulvey. Semiotics is the study of signs and their underlying meanings constructed by society. By studying popular culture with the tools provided by semiotic analysis it is possible to discouver underlying myths, social constructions of society, that are reproduced over and over again to remain alive. Mulveys theory of the gaze is helpfull in the process of decoding those constructions to discover the dominant partys and norms represented.In this particular study underlying structures such as patriarcal power relations, unequality between the representation of different ethnicities and the consistent presents of the male gaze where discovered.