Teatri representatsioon Eesti trükimeedias Postimehe näitel
Date
2006
Authors
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)