Erratic Mothers and Wild Animals: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Online Newspapers' Representations of Female and Male Opioid Users

This thesis critically investigates how female and male opioid users are represented in local newspapers in Ohio, one of the states which has been most severely affected by the ongoing ‘opioid crisis’ in the United States. Through an analysis of 20 articles from the The Plain Dealer and The Columbus Dispatch, the study aims to highlight how women and men who use opioids are portrayed, and what ideologies are hidden in the texts. Guided by Fairclough’s framework for critical discourse analysis and van Dijk’s sociocognitive approach, the analysis was performed on three levels: text-level, whereby journalists’ word choices, contextualisation and linguistic emphasis were studied; discursive level, which focused on processes involved in the production and consumption of the news pieces, and; sociocultural level, which entailed analysing historical and current developments of drug policy locally and nationally. The study finds that journalists downplay the seriousness of (white) male opioid use by calling men by their nicknames, by portraying them as ‘mischievous’ and by using jokey undertones when referring to their drug use. Female opioid use is constructed as abnormal by use of words such as ‘erratic’ and ‘unruly’ and women are discursively penalised for failing in their roles as caregivers to children. This thesis exemplifies how language use by local journalists’ in Ohio reinforces societal perceptions of male and female opioid users, which may influence counteractive measures by authorities