Allt går åt helvete och det är politikernas fel.

The aim of this study is to examine how climate change is framed in Swedish climate reporting, published on the website of national newspapers – Dagens Nyheter, Svenska Dagbladet, Aftonbladet and Expressen – from September 2018 throughout August 2019. Through a quantitative content study regarding climate change published online in chosen newspapers, the goal is to map out how Swedish newspapers use frames – consciously or not – to affect the public.

Through a perspective of the framing theory – invented and coined by Erving Goffman in the 1970’s – questions about frames are asked while reading chosen articles on climate change, to see which frames are most prominent. From previous scientific studies, it is suggested that certain frames in the news-media has certain effects on the readers. This study may hopefully contribute to the debate on how news in media are affecting the view on the climate change in Sweden.

The findings of the study show that the structural responsibility frame was the one frame used the most throughout all four newspapers, even though the outcome frame was the most common category. While found in 54 percent of all articles studied, the structural responsibility frame also tended to be dominant in most of these cases. While the loss frame was less common than the structural responsibility frame, it was dominant in the same amount of articles. The frame least used was the system critical frame, as it only appeared in 3,4 percent of the articles. As for sources, the one most used by all newspapers was academic/expert, in 27,8 percent of the articles, while sceptics were the least asked, 0,4 percent. The study also shows that the overall prominence of each frame was quite similar between the newspapers, with a few exceptions. The structural responsibility frame was the most common in all newspapers, with Expressen as exception, with the loss frame as most common. The loss frame was present in all papers, but was least prominent in Dagens Nyheter. The system critical frame was the least found frame in all papers, except in Aftonbladet, where the moral frame was the least prominent. No systematic differences between morning- and evening papers were found.