The portrayal of female suicide bombers in the media: securitization and stereotipization

The title of this bachelor thesis is “The Portrayal of Female Suicide Bombers in the Media: Securitization and Stereotypization”, its aim is to analyze how media portrays female suicide bombers. The main purpose of this study is to examine portrayals of female suicide bombers in articles published by New York Times, Fox News, Guardian, Daily Mail and Al Jazeera, identify and discern stereotypes about female suicide bombers based on their gender. The problem arises when descriptions of suicide terrorism raises serious questions about how journalistic news can balance the criteria of truth and objectivity when evaluating extreme political conflicts. Although some portrayals of female suicide bombers are close to reality, many of them are biased traditional stereotypes. The problem is that traditional stereotypes often identify women as pacifists, moderate, but not radical, life givers, the “guardians” of the family, etc. However, such a traditional framing of women for the purpose of describing female suicide bombers in the media, excludes individual aspects of different attacks, this way forming an over-simplified public opinion about the involvement, motives and role of women in suicide attacks, subjectively assessing reality, or even questioning agency of women in suicide-terrorism