Religion och politik - en villkorad relation : en diskursanalys av mediedebatterna om de politiska utnämningarna av Omar Mustafa och Elisabeth Svantesson

Sammanfattning: This thesis analyzes the media debates generated by the election of Omar Mustafa to the board of the social democratic party, and the appointment of the conservative Minister of Labour, Elisabeth Svantesson. More specifically, the aim is to analyze newspaper material through a discourse analyze, to see if and how religious affiliation effects the possibilities to act as a political representative. Theories of othering and intersectionality serve as theoretical points of departure. Further, chains of equivalence from Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory are used to study how categories as “us” and “the other” are constructed in the material, and how these processes of categorization relate to the intersection of religion, gender and ethnicity. This study concludes that the discourse affects the possibilities to be categorized as a part of an “us” or “the other” and, according to this categorization, to act as political representatives. Related to the studied media debates, this result can be seen as a part of the explanation of the development in the specific cases; Mustafa is leaving all of his political assignments, while Svantesson remains as Minister of Labour.