Representation of gender in Swedish youth TV series : A multimodal critical discourse analysis of the gender representation in Young Royals and Störst av allt (Quicksand)

The purpose of the study “Representation of gender in Swedish youth TV series” is to illustrate how genders are represented in Swedish youth tv-series. Young people are influenced by the media when creating their identities and shaping their views of the world. The media reproduces gender sterotypes which affects young people’s perception of gender and sexuality, which is why it’s important to analyse what kind of gender representations are visible in popular culture today. Earlier research shows most movies reproduce gender stereotypes and homosexual characters are often discriminated against or not displayed at all. The TV series analysed are the popular Netflix shows Young Royals and Störst av allt (Quicksand). Our research questions were “How aremasculinites and femininites represented in the tv-series based on norms and stereotypes? and “What similarities and differences in these representations can be found in the two tv-series?” The theoretical framework used is gender theory, representation theory, feminist film theory as well as masculinites and stereotypes. A list of stereotypical male and female traits was compiled to be used when analysing the characters. By using the method multimodal critical discourse analysis five analytical tools were chosen, which were lexical choices, attributes, setting, body language and image representation. These were used when analysing the first season of Young Royals and Störst av allt which were six episodes each. The analysis resulted in 16 thematic discourses that illustrate the gender representationes in the series. The study found that both series showed stereotypical and non-stereotypical traits in the characters. Some of the non-stereotypical discourses were “men as caring and thoughtful”, “women in positions of power” and “men expressing emotions”. Some of the prominent stereotypical discourses were “men in positions of power”, “violent men”, “women as victims” and “women as caring and thoughtful”. The non-stereotypical gender representations indicate that society’s view and expectations on the genders may be changing and developing