Representation of autism and people with autism spectrum disorders in Czech national newspapers

In this thesis, I focus on the representations of autism and people with autism spectrum disorder in seven Czech national daily newspapers. Before I proceed to my own analysis, I deal with the definition of the term ʻmedia representationʼ. There exists an incorrect idea about this term which suggests that media only passively present something that is already given. But in fact, media actively help to shape the notion of autism. Based on foreign literature I describe how media represent people with disabilities, as well as how media portray autism and people with autism spectrum disorder. Research focusing on media representation of autism in Australia, United States, United Kingdom and China is described in detail. These works inspired me and served as the basis of my own research aiming at Czech media. In my research, I study which aspects of autism are usually mentioned, if and how media write about causes and solutions of autism, what are the different modes of representation and in connection with which frames, themes and sources we usually come to learn about autism. I also explore the changes of representation between years 2006 to 2016. With regard to these research questions I analyze the content of 539 newspaper articles. Furthermore, I illustrate my results with graphs and tables. In..