Representations of Religion and Secularity in Women's and Men's lifestyle magazines.

My PhD thesis is a study of representations of religion and secularity in women's and men's lifestyle magazines published in the Scandinavian countries in 1988, 1998 and 2008. My theme of interest is religious change during this time period. More specific ally, my thesis centers on possible religious change expressed within a gendered media context during this time period, and further possible differences between the countries concerning the representations of religion. Possible changes will be explained b y exploring four possible factors: gender, media, national context and the religious landscape. Furthermore, based on the findings I will discuss what the possible religious changes imply or suggest about the role of religion in Scandinavian societies dur ing the past two decades. The research questions will be answered on basis of a quantitative content analysis of the magazines followed up by a social semiotics analysis and critical media discourse analysis of selected material. There has been limited systematic research on media´s coverage on religion. Dr. Diane Winston and Dr. Thomas Goodnight, my direct associations at University of Southern California (USC), Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, are authorities on religion and media as well as communication. I attend to affiliate to their department which offers PhD courses and seminars which are higly relevant for my study. In addition, I also plan to familiarize mysef with the work of Centre for Religion and Civic Culture at USC, and attend their meetings and seminars. Hence I will get excellent opportunities to discuss theoretical and methodological issues, as well as empirical findings pertaining to my dissertation. Furthermore, I will disseminate the exchange of knowledge on rel igion in the public sphere and media's coverage of religion, to my co workers in the NOREL project (The role of religion in the public sphere), which my study is undertaken.