Gender Stereotypes in Online News Headlines: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Online News Headlines Around the Case of Ksenia Sobchak

Abstract: This thesis is a critical analysis of the discourses used in online news headlines to reporttwo events that took place during 2018 Russian Presidential debates (on February 14,2018 and March 14, 2018) and focused on Ksenia Sobchak, the only female presidentialcandidate of the 2018 election. By analyzing 52 headlines published in Russia’s mostpopular and most read online news outlets, the purpose of this study is to investigatewhether there are any gender stereotypes used by the journalists to create a particularrepresentation of Sobchak, and to understand if, through this representation, a particularideology is put forward. The framework used to carry out the research is based onFairclough’s critical discourse analysis method combined with a sociolinguisticapproach influenced by Halliday. The application of this framework resulted in studyingthe three interrelated elements of discourse: sociocultural practices, which explore therole of women in the Russian political arena and put headlines under analysis into animmediate context; discourse practices, which focus on the peculiarities of online newsproduction, particularly headlines; and linguistic analysis of the headlines themselves,in which lexical choice, quotation patterns, and transitivity analyses were performed.The analysis revealed that headlines include hidden gender stereotypes, which alignwith Russia’s patriarchal ideology and which are used to represent Sobchak lessfavourably in comparison to her male opponents.