”Allt handlar om korruption, brott, demonstrationer och om diktatorn Putin”

Title: ”It’s all about corruption, crimes, demonstrations and the dictator Putin” A quantitative study of Dagens Nyheters coverage of the Soviet union and Russia. Authors: Axel Bjurklint & Simon Löfving Subject: Undergraduate research paper in journalism studies Location: Dept of journalism, media and communication (JMG) University of Gothenburg Number of pages:50 Background: Today there is an ongoing debate between Swedish journalists on how they are portraying Russia. And there are severe differences between their opinions. Soviet and Russia´s actions has always concerned Sweden. And affected Swedish politics. Purpose: The main purpose was to examine how the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter has been portraying Soviet and Russia over time. Further, explaining why the media image has changed or how it has been upheld. Method: A quantitative content analysis of Dagens Nyheter using a digital search string designed to short out all the news concerning Russia in March 2003 & 2013. The articles from 1983 & 1993 were collected from the press archive in the library of Gothenburg university. The total amount of articles: 131. The articles were coded and registrated in the statistic program SPSS with 21 different variables. Results: The media image has been continuously negative from 1983 to 2013. Only eight percent of all the articles in this study have been positive. The results might be explained by Sweden’s interest in portraying Soviet and Russia as their cultural and political antithesis.