Människans bästa vän eller feminismens värsta fiende? : En tematisk analys följt av en kritisk diskursanalys av kommentarer om Sabrina Carpenters albumomslag till Man’s Best Friend.

Sammanfattning

Sabrina Carpenter is one of the most popular artists today with 73.8 million monthly listeners on Spotify in 2025. In June 2025, Carpenter presented her new album cover for Man’s Best Friend, which sparked debate in the media. This study examines the themes and discourses that emerge in the audience’s interpretations of the album cover from an Instagram comment section. It also analyzes how feminism, power and norms are constructed in the comments. Based on Stuart Hall’s theory of encoding and decoding, a thematic analysis was conducted followed by a critical discourse analysis based on Fairclough’s model and Rosalind Gill’s theory of postfeminist sensibility. The result show two dominant feminist discourses. The first one is a postfeminist discourse where the cover is interpreted as self-determination and empowering. The second one is a critical feminist discourse where the cover is interpreted as harmful and reproduces patriarchal norms. Negotiating discourses also emerge where ambivalence is expressed around the boundary between self-determination and sexualization. This study also shows how power in the comments is constructed as both individual choice and structural, and how norms around female sexuality are shaped through discussions about responsibility and morality. In addition, this study highlights how the debate is not only about the artist or the image, but about broader discussions about feminism, power and norms. It also highlights the audience’s active role in creating meaning around representations in social media.