Identity, Image and Profile. A Discourse Study of Malmö Public Library

The aim of this master’s thesis is to examine the discourses about Malmö public library that can be identified in several documents published by the library, articles, and various WebPages. Furthermore, our intention is to study the relation between the library’s identity, image and profile. The questions posed in the study are: Which identity discourses are Malmö public library giving expression for? What kind of conflicts between these discourses can we find? How is the identity, image and profile of the library in relation to one another? How does Malmö public library profile and market itself as a non-profit organization? Our theoretical and methodological building ground is in the discourse analytical field, with Enesto Laclau’s and Chantal Mouffe’s theories about discourse and society, as a starting-point. The method used is discourse analysis. The results of the analysis is that the library is influenced by two major discourses, the educational/informational discourse, which can be characterized by the concepts high culture, reading, books, adult education, tradition, nostalgia, production. The other major discourse is the joy/experience discourse which can be characterized by the concepts popular culture, new medias, experiences, renewal, future, consumption. Furthermore, our result implies that these two discourses operate in different levels within the organization. The educational/informational is more frequently seen in documents of a very broad and general function, hence the joy/experience discourse is observed on a more concrete level of the organization. This led us to the conclusion that a gap between identity, profile and image existed.Uppsatsnivå: