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The subject-matter of the social work master's thesis is relevant to the present day, because despite enacted political determinations and legal documents, declaring social integration, participation and parity as one of the main priorities in disability policy, there still are some psychosocial barriers, stereotypes and images based disabled understanding, evaluation and treatment in society, regarding to what social involvement of disabled people is still problematic. After the data examination showed that social images and stereotypes in Lithuanian media were researched only briefly, that raised the aim of the master's thesis to reveal what kind of images and stereotypes are presented in biggest Lithuanian newspapers. There were three major tasks to reach the goal: gather articles about disability in four biggest Lithuanian newspapers; perform quantitative and qualitative content analysis of gathered articles; reveal the main characteristics of disability representation in media. The research part of the thesis was based on qualitative research type – media analysis, gathered data analysis was performed using quantitative and qualitative content analysis. Research of disability images and stereotypes was accomplished in 2009 January – 2010 May period, during this time four biggest Lithuanian newspapers (Lietuvos rytas, Lietuvos žinios, Vakaro žinios, Respublika) were reviewed and provided 136 articles about disability for further analysis. Research results revealed that disability in newspapers is pictured ambiguously and even controversially, because representing disability social and clinical models interlace. Disability images and stereotypes are multidimensional and ambiguous, based on clinical model's attitudes and negative representations of disabled people, herewith social model's ideas about disabled people abilities, parity, social integration and involvement. The final master's project's structure: introduction, key words dictionary, 3 chapters, conclusions, recommendations, literature list, summary in Lithuanian and English.

The subject-matter of the social work master's thesis is relevant to the present day, because despite enacted political determinations and legal documents, declaring social integration, participation and parity as one of the main priorities in disability policy, there still are some psychosocial barriers, stereotypes and images based disabled understanding, evaluation and treatment in society, regarding to what social involvement of disabled people is still problematic. After the data examination showed that social images and stereotypes in Lithuanian media were researched only briefly, that raised the aim of the master's thesis to reveal what kind of images and stereotypes are presented in biggest Lithuanian newspapers. There were three major tasks to reach the goal: gather articles about disability in four biggest Lithuanian newspapers; perform quantitative and qualitative content analysis of gathered articles; reveal the main characteristics of disability representation in media. The research part of the thesis was based on qualitative research type – media analysis, gathered data analysis was performed using quantitative and qualitative content analysis. Research of disability images and stereotypes was accomplished in 2009 January – 2010 May period, during this time four biggest Lithuanian newspapers (Lietuvos rytas, Lietuvos žinios, Vakaro žinios, Respublika) were reviewed and provided 136 articles about disability for further analysis. Research results revealed that disability in newspapers is pictured ambiguously and even controversially, because representing disability social and clinical models interlace. Disability images and stereotypes are multidimensional and ambiguous, based on clinical model's attitudes and negative representations of disabled people, herewith social model's ideas about disabled people abilities, parity, social integration and involvement. The final master's project's structure: introduction, key words dictionary, 3 chapters, conclusions, recommendations, literature list, summary in Lithuanian and English.