Teatri representatsioon Eesti trükimeedias Postimehe näitel

Date

2006

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Tartu Ülikool

Abstract

Description

In my Bachelor’s Thesis, “The Representation of Theatre in the Media – the Case of Eesti Postimees Newspaper”, I examined the representation of theatre in the print media. To do this, I conducted an empirical study with the aim to find out how often theatre is represented in the media, how is it represented and how is it defined, which agents carry the meanings, which values are brought out and which evaluations are given. The hypothesis of my thesis paper is that the news genre is not interested in writing about theatre and that theatre is represented as entertainment. The theoretical basis of my thesis consisted of Stuart Hall’s overview of the history of representation, Teun A. van Dijk’s understanding of ideology and Roland Bathes’ thoughts on myths. To find answers to my research questions I conducted a quantitative and qualitative analysis of texts. The material to be analyzed consisted of 54 articles that were published in Estonia' s biggest quality newspaper Postimees during March 2006. In quantitative content analysis I focused on genres, pages and sections, status of the author and characters/agents. The analysis showed that the most used genre for representing theatre was news, followed closely by the genre of (theatre)reviews. The articles mostly talked about directors of the plays and they were mostly written by journalists who mainly write on topics concerning culture. Half of the analyzed articles were unbiased, but the other half mostly carried positive evaluations. In qualitative content analysis I focused on finding out how theatre is defined, represented and talked about. The analysis showed that although theatre is seen as an art form, it is mostly represented as a looking-glass for society and its main function is to criticize the problems in it and to be in a dialogue with the society. Theatre is to bring forth the problems in society, initiate discussion on those problems and to act as a forum for that public discussion. In addition to that dominant representation, theatre was also seen as text, institution, history, people acting in it and the competition between them. Also, two interesting discourses emerged while reading the articles. The first one was a way how the articles talked about theatre Vanemuine, reproving its orientation towards commercialism and renouncing artistical ideals. The Vanemuise discourse was mainly built on subtle hints about the inappropriate and dissatisfactory state of one of Estonia' s biggest and most important theatres. The other discourse was about the phenomenon of a specific innovation in Estonian theatre in the 1960s and ' 70s, when new language and form were found in theatre, it has also been called metaphorical theatre. The discourse represents the "teatriuuendus" as the golden age of Estonian theatre that is greatly missed and needed nowadays. The most important conclusion of my bachelor' s thesis is that, on the contrary to my hypothesis that theatre is represented only as entertainment and can not be found in the genre of news articles, theatre occurred in that genre quite often, meaning that theatre is considered important, and that theatre was actually represented and seen as a serious topic, that acts as a ground for public discussion and critique.

Keywords

H Social Sciences (General), bakalaureusetööd, teatrid, representatsioon, ajalehed, trükiajakirjandus, Postimees (ajaleht)

Citation