Aim of thesis: The purpose of this study is to explore whether female and male actors get treated differently by entertainment journalists during press junket interviews and to see when and how gender is defined and created during an interview. To do this, we looked at different indicators such as eyeline, body language, subject of the questions, the length and substance of answers, the number of questions directed at each person, interruptions and turntaking. We also examined the role of the journalist, especially in relation to the answers given by the interviewees. The material included twelve video taped interviews with actors from
the Marvel Cinematic Universe, from four different movies and with publications of different
nationalities.

Theoretical framework: The theoretical framework of this study mainly focuses on gender theory, agenda-setting and framing theory. We have applied these theories to understand, analyse and possibly explain the results of the study.

Methods(s): The method used was a conversation analysis, a form of qualitative content analysis.

Results: Our findings show that there is a difference in the way women and men are treated
in the twelve interviews we have analysed. The main differences are shown in the eyeline of the journalist and the number of questions, in both factors the men are favoured by the journalist. We found indications that there is a difference regarding the subject of questions directed towards women and men, in that women tend to get more personal questions than men. We do want to make it clear that, because our material was very specific and rather small, our results are not necessarily applicable to all entertainment interviews in general. However, this was never the intention of the study, as we aimed to lay down a foundation
that future studies might build upon.

The aim of the thesis is to examine journalism students’ views on journalistic ideals and if
they have any role models. By seeing how students value different journalistic ideals, this thesis aims to examine if the students are a part of a socialization process, how they socialize into the field of journalism. It further examines if students have any role models and what ideals these role models represent. Role models are a part of any work-based identity and someone to look up to. Are these heroes and icons prevailing in an increasingly digitalized media landscape, where almost anyone can be seen or heard?

The thesis uses theories about the socialization process and fields, professionalization and the
importance of role models.

The method used in the thesis is a survey-based examination. A survey consisting of twelve
questions was sent out to 440 students at four universities in Sweden who offer a journalism
education on a Bachelor’s level. 208 of the students completed the survey.

The results show that most of the journalism students agree that the ideals of scrutiny,
objectivity, neutrality, explaining complicated events and allowing different opinions to be
heard are the most important for journalists. The level of disagreement is higher when it
comes to ideals like influencing opinions in society and giving people amusement. These ideals also get lower averages. Students do not seem to become neither more nor less like minded during the course of their education. The differences between the schools are also insignificant. Women and men value some ideals differently, however they largely agree on the most important ideals.

The students’ role models are active within various journalistic fields. The football journalist
Erik Niva received the highest number of mentions, twelve. Many of the role models only received one mention, which indicates that for many students role models are something rather individual.

Aim of thesis: The aim of the essay is to investigate whether female and male party leaders are being interrupted equally, during the 2010s final debates in Sveriges Television (SVT). This,
due to Public Service’s requirements of conducting equal programme activities, where interruptions are used as a measurement of equality.

Theoretical framework and methods: The size of the material selection and intention of answering questions about the 2010:s, makes a quantitative analysis suitable for this essay. Data from the three final debates are coded in the statistical analysis platform SPSS. The theoretical framework used is Conversational analysis (CA), which is an approach to study social interactions. The phenomenon of interruptions is only a minor component of CA, but is focused on here since it is the relevant part for this essay. There are numerous definitions of what an interruption is, but the one used in the analysis is based on one of the developers of CA, Sacks’, definition: if A is talking along and B starts to talk in the course of it somewhere, then we might say that B is interrupting A (Sacks, 1992, s. 323). The reason for the usage is the simplicity of his definition, which improves the reliability and replicability and reduces the risk of interpretation.

Results: The result shows that journalists interrupt men and women differently, where men
generally are the disadvantageous ones. Men receive more interruptions and get to speak
shorter time before an interruption is made by a journalist. The opposite is true for women.
This goes against previous research about inequality in the media, where women generally are
the disadvantageous ones. This may be problematic because of the Public Service’s requirements to conduct equal programme activities. The result finds that the journalist’s handling of the politicians’ interruptions of one another is relatively equally conducted.

To see if the interruption rate depends on the gender of the politicians, another aspect is also
studied, namely political coalition. A difference between both gender and different political
coalitions are found here. Meaning that it is not only the gender of the politician that affects
how often and after how long time they get interrupted. However, the difference between the
interruptions of female and male politicians is problematic, concerning the requirements that
SVT have on conducting equal programme activities.

The aim of this study is to look into the work conditions of eight Swedish crime journalists
and investigate how they experience their work environment, the support from employees, their safety and how they are coping with threats, hatred and strains. We will look into if and
how their work covering crime affects their personal lives and if threats and hatred risks to lead to self-censorship. To fulfil this aim, three main questions were constructed:
1. How do Swedish crime journalists experience their work? Are they exposed to hatred
and/or threats?
2. How does the crime journalist’s personal lives get affected by their work?
3. How do Swedish crime journalists cope with hatred, threats and strains?
a) How do they experience the support from their employees?
b) Does hatred and threats risk to lead to self-censorship?

We have used a qualitative interview method to help us answer our questions.

With Monica Löfgren Nilssons quantitative research: Hatred and threats against Swedish journalists as a starting point, we hope to look deeper into specific journalists’ work environments and what kind of hatred, threats and strains they experience.

The theoretical framework of the study includes the Coping theory, Job-Control-Demand-Support model and the Role theory. The theories helped us to analyze
and discuss our results which lead us to a numerous of conclusions. First of all, working with crime journalism is a very stressful and consuming job which requires a strong belief in the journalistic professional standards. All the interviewees share the perception that working with crime journalism is “a way of life”. They find it challenging to keep a distans to work when they enter their private life.

The majority of our interviewees have experienced some kind of hate and/or threats connected to their work. Their coping methods vary but some of the most common ones were to accept their situation and talk to colleagues or partners. Some of the interviewees are in need of safety precautions due to threats, for example protected personal information or
camera surveillance. Measures like this have an impact on their families as well. We found that most of the interviewees are pleased with the support that they receive from their employers, but that some find that there is room for improvement.

We found that self-censorship occurred in two cases, but that it does not seem to be a
common pattern among the crime journalists we spoke to.

The aim of this study was to investigate how a strategic selection of journalists at Swedish
local newspapers perceive that the significance of audience demand, expressed through web
statistics and clicks, influences and affects their work with news values and news selection
online. Additionally, the purpose was to find out how journalists at Swedish local newspapers
handle the dilemma between reporting about news subjects that they consider to be of
importance for their audience, and news that the audience demands seen through different
web analytic tools.

The study is based on a theoretical framework consisting of journalistic news evaluation
(Galtung and Ruge, 1965; Gans, 2004) and the increasing commercialization of modern
journalism. In the latter, we have reevaluated and processed the known study about the
importance of the four different markets of commercialized media, originally created by John
H. McManus (1994), to better fit the current state of the local media climate in Sweden. As a
result, we have used the processed version of McManus theory in the operationalization of
the study. This theory tool was later used to analyze the results of the study.

The study used a qualitative interviewing method to answer the empirical research questions.
A semi-structured interview guide was constructed where the questions asked were based on
previous research and the theoretical framework mentioned above. Eight semi-structured
interviews were then carried out based on a strategic selection of journalists from eight
different local newspapers in Sweden. Besides the different geographical positions, the
strategic selection included a variety of ages, work roles, media concerns, previous
experiences and genders.

The findings of this study implied that the usage of statistics and clicks, as a tool to examine
what the audience demand, greatly affects the news evaluation at Swedish local newspapers.
The interviewed journalists perceive that these statistics influence the work in many aspects.
For instance, the journalists know which news subjects will perform well online and will
therefore adapt the news evaluation accordingly. More so, the amount of attention news gets
from the audience greatly affects the exposure on the front page. The result of the study also
shows that the local journalists believe that reporting about important subjects, such as local
politics, is crucial. At the same time they also experience that these coverages have decreased
as a result of how they perform online. To prevent the “important” news from disappearing
completely, the journalists seek to present them in a more attractive way.