Gaffas portrayal of female artists : A thematic analysis of the portrayal of womenartists in the music magazine Gaffa

The purpose of this study is to investigate how one of Sweden’s most beloved music magazines portrays female artists. The study also aims to study whether the magazine has depicted the female artists in the same way or whether the portrayal is different depending on the artist’s skin color. Studies have shown that black female artists are commonly underrepresented in media of different kinds, and only several studies have studied how black female artists are portrayed in music magazines. Studies also show that black women in general, are portrayed negatively and stereotypically in the media. It is interesting to examine if the music magazine has depicted the female artists in various ways depending on the color of their skin. To go deeper in the study a thematic analysis was used to answer the aim of this study. The study analyzed fourteen articles, where a black female artist and a white female artist was the main subject of the article. The result shows that the music magazine portrays female artists in a similar way, however, it also depicted black artists differently. For instance, the black female artist is portrayed as being more personal in questions considering her family and is more likely to open up about her personal life and experiences, whereas the white female artist was more closed off and only mentioned her personal life briefly. A similarity between how the magazine portrayed the female artists was that both were depicted as emotional and used their feelings as inspiration to music.