how Paradise Hotel Season 21 is discursively constructed

through both Viaplay’s promotional press material and Danish online news media

coverage. The aim is to understand how institutional promotion and journalistic

representation interact to frame the show’s participants, emotional dynamics, and

ideological meanings.

The study applies Fairclough’s (1995a) three-dimensional model of Critical Discourse

Analysis (CDA) to both the press release text and a sample of 25 news articles.

Additionally, Gillian Rose’s (2016) visual discourse analysis is used to analyze the

official promotional imagery released by Viaplay, including both the group photo and

individual cast portraits. These combined methods allow for a multimodal and

comparative perspective on how meaning is produced and circulated across media

contexts.

The analysis shows that the press release constructs a nostalgic and emotionally

provocative framing of the show, emphasizing heteronormativity, romantic spectacle,

and strategic gameplay. This framing is reinforced visually through gendered, idealized,

and often sexualized portrayals of the cast, particularly in the individual portraits. In the

news coverage, many of these discourses are echoed especially in tabloid-oriented

outlets but more critical or analytical media also introduce alternative framings,

invoking public service values or moral discourses.

The study concludes that press releases play a central role in setting the interpretive

agenda for media coverage. While journalistic texts display some variation across

genres, the promotional discourse remains dominant. These findings illustrate how

reality television becomes a cultural site where norms around gender, emotion, and

authenticity are constructed, reinforced, and occasionally contested.