Medias framställning av unga kvinnor i marginaliserade områden : En kritisk diskursanalys av medieporträtteringen av unga kvinnor i tre Stockholmsförorter

Sammanfattning: Media’s representation of places and individuals shape public understanding of these places and of their residents, as well as shaping residents’ own understanding of their communities and themselves. Media discourse about marginalized areas is often male dominated and focused on violence and crime which has attracted much attention in previous research. The purpose of this dissertation has instead been to study media discourse about young women living in three marginalized suburban areas south of Stockholm. By studying which discourses about young women in these areas are (re)produced in media we can gain knowledge about the opportunities and obstacles young women face. The study is based upon a critical discourse analysis of a large empirical material of media texts, informed by theory on territorial stigmatization. The analysis has an intersectional perspective. The texts cover a wide range of topics, with three recurrent subdiscourses described: “owning one’s place”, “safety” and “otherness”. The results are in line with previous research in some respects, but also deviate in important ways. Young women in these texts are on one hand, not depicted as responsible for the problems often associated with marginalized areas, but on the other hand, are depicted as responsible for their parents’ integration.