Media Recipes for Happiness

This diploma thesis with the title Media Recipes for Happiness focuses on media representation of happiness in the Czech Republic. In the first part, the thesis outlines essential media theories, with emphasis on media representations and on the construction of reality, then it conceptualises happiness in the sociological viewpoints on it in its two opposing perspectives - happiness as a hedonistic short-term satisfaction connected to owning things, and happiness as an eudaimonic long-term state of inner satisfaction. The second methodical part provides a description of used research methods, namely qualitative content analysis, and selection of specific representatives of Czech print media. The third and last analytical part of this thesis describes how the representation of happiness looks on the pages of lifestyle magazines Elle, Žena a život a Blesk pro ženy and how each magazine differs in their representation