Women at the Frontlines : Representations of Ukrainian female soldiers in online news media

Abstract: The focus of this paper is gaining a deeper understanding of the discursive ways in which Ukrainian female soldiers are represented in international news media by analyzing online newspaper articles. The research questions are centred around finding out what common discursive representations are predominant in the articles, how these representations are visible, and what discourses are meant to be favored by the authors or publishers. The theory is based on a Foucauldian approach to discourse analysis. A total of eight articles were chosen for analysis from four major newspapers based in the United Kingdom and the United States. The data consisted of both text and images featured in the articles. The main findings of the paper are that even though there is a strong discourse that promotes stereotypical representations of female soldiers, there is also a counter-discourse that brings female soldiers’ voices to the forefront and challenges historically predominant stereotypical representations.