| Summary: | The aim of this undergraduate thesis was to examine the media’s portrayal of overweight and obese children and their surroundings, using the first and third dimensions of Fairclough’s three dimensional model for critical discourse analysis. The study addressed the following questions: How does the press, in this study represented by two newspapers, portray overweight and obese children? What discourses regarding overweight and obesity among children are the most prominent in these two newspapers? What risks and negative influences in the child’s surroundings are identified, and how are they described? What social representations can the images of overweight and obese children originate from? The analyzed material consisted of 62 articles from Dagens Nyheter and Aftonbladet, which were analyzed using the earlier mentioned method for discourse analysis, as well as the theory of social representations. The results showed that “the fat child” and its environment were portrayed exclusively in negative terms, and a discourse linking obesity and ill-health dominated a large part of the material. A number of risks, for example food risks and lifestyle risks said to play a part in the child’s ill-health were identified. Three social representations were identified throughout the material and said to contribute to, as well as result from, the images of “the fat child”.
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