Superhjälte eller hjälplöst offer? Vem är vem? : En genusstudie av kvällspressens offerkonstruktioner efter skjutningen på Utöya.

Sammanfattning: On July 22nd 2011, there was a terrorist attack in Norway. First a bomb exploded in the Parliament House, in Oslo; and shortly after that a man shot 69 politically active young people at a camp on the island Utöya. Throughout the weeks to follow, we could read about the victims' stories. They told of tears, fear and heroism. But who got to tell what? The purpose of this study was to see how the Swedish tabloids described the victims from a gender perspective. Through our investigation we look to determine if men or women were described according to gender stereotypes. Our hypothesis is that sex plays a big role in how a person is portrayed in the media. We did a qualitative study, selecting 20 articles that were published during the first month after the attack. Using discourse analysis, we examined whether the male and female victims were described differently and, if so, how. We complemented this with image analysis to see the bigger picture. The Study shows that male and female victims are described in different ways. Sexes fall into different stereotypes, some of which have a strong dominant sex. There is a difference in the type of victim stereotypes they fall into, but also in the various categories of victims differs construction of male and female victims. The two extremes of stereotypes that we found the most of were "superheroes" and "helpless victims". The "Super Hero" is almost always characterized by a man and the "helpless victims" are almost always women. However, there are exceptions, for there are several stereotypes in which we found both strong and weak men and women. Nonetheless, the general outlines were clear: the men were stronger and braver than women, who were scared and emotional.