Librarians in the daily press : A discourse analytic study

The aim of this thesis is to examine how the Swedish daily press portraits librarians and the profession. I have used a discourse analytic study in my purpose to examine the image of librarians and the profession. I have analysed 34 articles between January 1, 2009 until January 1, 2010 from Aftonbladet and Dagens Nyheter, which are the two daily newspapers with the largest circulation in Sweden. I have used three major questions to answer the aim of my study: In what context do librarians and the profession appear in the daily press?What qualities are librarians assigned in the daily press?What views and attitudes about librarians and the profession appear in the articles?My analysis resulted in three discourses; discourse about librarians’ relation to literature, discourse about librarians and the labour market and discourse about librarians and information. My study concludes that the image of librarians and the profession in the daily press are versatile and mostly positive. Librarians are described as reading loving persons with a great knowledge in literature and information in their professional work. Another image of librarians is that they are useful as a resource to help and guide children and youngsters with social problems. The negative images in the daily press are for the most part about the future trends of the labour market