Mediebilder av prinsessen og sjamanen: Fremstillingen av Märtha Louise og Durek Verrett i VG og på Instagram

Abstract

In May 2019 Princess Märtha Louise of Norway went public and declared her love to the American shaman Durek Verrett. This announcement made headlines in the Norwegian press, and articles about the relationship and upcoming workshop started flooding the media. The workshop called “The Princess and the Shaman” received lot of negative feedback, the main criticism being that Märtha Louise used her title in order to advertise the event. In the months following, the media wrote a plethora of articles concerning the princess and shaman. Often negative articles regarding their business in the New Age milieu, and the possible healing powers shaman Durek claimed he possessed. The Press often referred to Verrett as a “self-proclaimed” shaman amongst other negative attributes. One question that presents itself is, how New Age and people connected to the New Age milieu like Märtha Louise and Durek Verrett are represented in the newspaper VG, and if this is characterized by negative and unilateral representations. While the media wrote a lot of different articles concerning Märtha Louise and Durek Verrett, they often referred to their social media posts for comments, as the two rarely gave interviews or answered questions from the press. Both Märtha Louise and Verrett are active on the social media platform Instagram and use the application to reach out to followers and like-minded people. This masters’ thesis will discuss how New Age thoughts and belief is communicated through both vehicles of traditional media (TV, Newspaper etc.) and newer platforms such as social media applications such as Instagram. Using Stig Hjarvards mediatization theory of religion, focusing on “journalism on religion” and “religious media” as a basis and categorization for further analysis. I have used qualitative content analysis on 25 articles from the Norwegian newspaper VG and 70 Instagram posts from Märtha Louises and Durek Verretts Instagram accounts. The thesis analyses how New Age is represented both in the news press and social media, the main question being what characterizes New Age representation on these two platforms focusing explicitly on the representations of Märtha Louise and Durek Verrett.