Det är ju bara en bild : En semiotisk bildanalys om hur genus konstrueras i reklambilder.

Advertising images have a history of being criticized for its manipulative character and negative portrayals of men and women. Previous studies have shown that advertising images have a distorting effect on society. There have been lively debates in Sweden the past years about gender equality and how stereotypical portrayals of men and women inhibit the progress towards an equal society. The purpose of this study was to examine how gender is constructed in Swedish advertising images published in Swedish newspapers today. The theoretical framework used in this study consists of former studies of stereotypic portrayals and theories of semiotics, gender and representation. To study signs present in the images a qualitative method and a semiotic perspective was used. The result showed that the studied images contained a lot of stereotypic portrayals of men and women. It was surprising to see such heavy use of stereotypes considering the awareness present in Swedish debates regarding negative portrayals of gender