The aim of this thesis was to examine how newspaper journalism is portraying gender on the sports pages during the Olympic Games. In what way do media portray gender? Is there any difference between men and women? Is there any difference in the way media portray gender between the Olympics in Seoul 1988 and Beijing 2008?

We examined texts from one daily Swedish newspaper, Aftonbladet. We chose this newspaper because it has shown through time that they have invested on the sports pages. The method we used were discourse analysis, with focus on gender, representation and stereotypes. We also used Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding model to interpret the hidden messages in the articles. The study only includes articles that were printed on the sports pages and who had the Olympics as their main subject.

The result showed that women were underrepresented in news texts about the Olympic Games in Seoul 1988. The result also showed that there is a change between 1988 and 2008. In news texts about the Olympic Games 2008 in Beijing women receive more media coverage but the big difference is that the Swedish squad has a larger amount of women. This can explain the increase of media coverage. Women are stereotyped as weak, and often relying on men. In several cases there is a boyfriend or a father by the side of the active woman. Athletic men on the other hand are associated with strength and it is their achievements that are the essential in most articles.

Keywords: gender, sport, sports, the Olympic games, journalism, newspaper, Aftonbladet, media coverage, hegemony, discourse analysis