Kvinnliga mördare - de hämndlystna avvikelserna : En kritisk diskursanalys av kvinnliga mördares framställning i medier

Sammanfattning: Murder is something that both horrifies and arouses interest in our society. The media is acontributing factor to the different portrayals of murderers, potentially affecting the public'sunderstanding of the crime and the perpetrators behind it. This study analyses the representation of female murderers in podcasts. The research questions are based on Norman Fairclough's three-dimensional model of critical discourse analysis. Thus, they aim to analyse how women are represented in podcasts, how the representations challenge or reproduce female stereotypes, andhow this can be seen problematic from a broader social context. This is done through a criticaldiscourse analytic perspective, where the aim is to understand how different linguistic choices andnarratives about female murderers can challenge or reproduce different discourses about women.To understand the deeper meaning of the text, we use a theoretical framework consisting offraming theory, gender theory, narratology and a theoretical understanding of stereotypes. The study is concluding that the female murderers included in the empirical material of the studyare portrayed as both emotionally driven as well as evil and vengeful. The former characteristic canbe linked to how the stereotypical woman is considered and the latter to the stereotypical femalemurderer. The consistent discourses that are interpreted from the empirical material are that thewoman is the weaker gender and that female murderers are the opposite of the stereotypicalwoman. The study is also concluding that this can be seen as problematic in a wider social context.This can influence the public's perception of the reality of female murderers and help to perpetuatethe discourses and stereotypes as well as gender roles in society. The study also finds that revengeis often portrayed as the motive for the murder even though there could be other underlying causes,such as women abuse and mental illness which were not discussed in the material. The conclusions of the study are that the empirical material reproduces the different stereotypesof what a woman is and is not. This can be further problematised by the fact that the work ofdissolving gender roles and stereotypes is halted or made more difficult. It is also possible tointerpret that those who benefit from this are the media who receive news with higher news value.The study is also concluding that there may be underlying motives for the murders that are hiddenin larger societal problems, such as the abuse of women and mental illness. Failure of the media toaddress such perspectives could be problematic for society and individuals by continuing to taboothese topics, which are currently major societal problems.