“Anguish” : En kvalitativ studie om ideologiska uttryck i hardcore musikvideor

Sammanfattning

The purpose of this qualitative study is to analyze music videos from hardcore bands and identify, through social semiotics and critical discourse analysis with a multimodal approach, what ideological messages are expressed in the hardcore genre. In this study, we are conducting our analysis around three hardcore bands which are Knocked Loose, Kublai Khan TX and Thrown. In the analysis, we selected two videos per band and then apply social semiotics and critical discourse analysis. To do so, we developed the following research question: How are ideological messages and discourses communicated through visual, aural and textual elements in music videos from the hardcore bands: Knocked Loose, Kublai Khan TX och Thrown? The relevance of the study is based on not only the media's power to potentially influence its consumers through social media like Youtube, but also the potential for artists to act as opinion leaders. Youtube is currently the most popular website to view music videos (Osborn, 2021) but also accounts for more than half of all streamed music across all platforms. This makes Youtube a vital source for the consumption of music and thus it's relevant to conduct research based on its reach and what ideological messages it and its users convey and how. The results conclude that bands within the hardocre genre are able to convey ideological messages through semiotic resources such as composition, lighting, color, framing, props and the location itself. It is with these resources that the bands are able to portray themselves as outcasts and opponents of mainstream culture, and at the same time a rallying posts for people who relate to those sentiments. By using critical discourse analysis, the study is able to decipher both topics and themes that appear within the lyrical content of the music video. Here, topics like anxiety, depression and paranoia are present, as well as themes like drug abuse, unrequited love and mental health issues. The study confirms that the topics and themes that are presented help the band to communicate societal issues to their audience that the bands feel are unresolved or swept away in the mainstream. The result of the study shows that the themes that are presented match that of previous literature. But through extreme sounds, jarring visuals and out-spoken lyrical content, the bands are able to communicate these messages in unique and stylized ways that make them worth analyzing. The analysis found discourses like exclusion in society, mental illness, betrayal and drug abuse. These discourses were communicated through semiotic resources like contrast, dark colors, camera movements and angles, distorted musical instruments and screaming vocals.