En kompis i brevlådan

Title: En kompis i brevlådan. En kvantitativ studie om flickor och pojkar i Kamratposten under 1993 och 2013 Authors: Malin Magnusson & Malou Tranlöv Subject: Undergraduate research paper in journalism studies, Department of Journalism, Media and Communication, University of Gothenburg Term: Spring 2014 Supervisor: Ulrika Hedman Language: Swedish Kamratposten is a Swedish magazine for children aged 8-14. The target audience is both girls and boys. This makes it the only magazine on the Swedish market that aims to reach both sexes within this age group. Our main purpose with this study is to explore how girls and boys are portrayed in Kamratposten in 1993 and 2013. This was done using a quantitative methodology. By comparing articles from 2013 with articles from 1993 we examined changes over time. The main questions in this study are: ● Are there an equal amount of girls and boys in the material? ● Do girls and boys get equal amounts of space in the magazine? ● Are girls and boys to an equal extent portrayed as active versus passive in the texts and images? ● To what extent can you find gender stereotypes in the texts and images? ● Have these issues changed during the 20 year period? Our results are based on a quantitative content analysis. We have used a code chart to analyse our material. 623 units were analysed, 334 from 1993 and 289 from 2013. We have established a theory basis for this paper on research on children and gender, children and media and child psychology. Our results show that there are overall more girls than boys in the researched material, but when it comes to adults they are, during both years researched, more frequently male. We also found that Kamratposten is a quite neutral magazine for children in regards to how it portrays boys and girls, both in the texts and images.