Abstract

Title: ”When the scandle falls through the cracks” – A quantitative comparison- and content analysis of two Swedish political scandals

Authors: Hugo Göthberg, Josefin Bengtsson and Yasmine Christensson Kavur

Level: Bachelor thesis in Journalism

Term: Autumn 2022

Supervisor: Britt Börjesson, MKG Gothenburg

The major objective of this study is to investigate how exstensive the media coverage was in the largest newspapers, TV-news programmes and radio-news around two political Swedish scandals that took place 20 years apart. The two investigations in question for this thesis are Valstugereportaget, conducted by the programme Uppdrag granskning in 2002 (SVT 1), and the second one is Partiernas hemliga pengar, conducted by the programme Kalla fakta in 2022 (TV4). This study has been done through quantitative comparison- and content analysis method. We have constructed a theoretical framework based on the theory of medialization (Hernes, 1978) and the theory of media hunting criteria (Allern & Pollack 2009). To give an answer to our thesis, three questions were constructed:

1. Can both political scandals count as subjects of media hunting?
2. What similarities and differencies can be seen in the reporting coverage regarding the two political investigations in press, radio and television?
3. Which factors can be assumed plays a part in the two scandals reporting range in press, radio and TV?

We have sorted articles and news broadcasts in both television and radio covering the two scandals using an analysis schedule. The sorted content was published during a one week period, in this case from the day the original investigation was broadcasted and six days forward. All the empirical material for this study was collected in November of 2022, and resulted in a total of 322 units of analysis.

The first question resulted in the conclusion that both political scandals could be defined as subjects of media hunting. As for the second question, the most prominent conclusion was that newspapers were the media that which reported most frequently  about both scandals. However the reporting range of Partiernas hemliga pengar subsided much faster than Valstugereportaget. The third question was answered by the multiple factors we found during this study, that can be applied as reasons for the different reporting coverage regarding the two scandals. The conclusion that can be drawn  from our study, in addition to the fact that both cases can be seen as subjects of media hunting , is that Valstugereportaget was reported on 33 more times than Partiernas hemliga pengar. We were able to draw the conclution that factors such as medialization, economic winnings and the changes in the media landscape possibly can play a part in the differences that have been seen throughout the study.

Keywords: Media hunting, scandal, medialization, the media landscape, media coverage

Abstract
Title: I populismens farvatten
Authors: Andreas Andersson, Peter Karlberg & Harald Vedin Sjötröm
Level: Bachelor’s thesis in journalism
Term: HT 2022
Supervisor: Annika Bergström
Keywords: Populism, Media populism, News interviews, Neutrality, Journalism

Aim of thesis:
This thesis seeks to study the occurrence of media populism in Sweden’s television’s (SVT) party leader questionings leading up to the 2022 Swedish parliamentary election. The main question we seek to answer is: Are there elements of a populist interview style in the party
leader questionings?

Theoretical framework:
The main framework used in this thesis is based on Benjamin Moffitt’s (2016) definition of populism as a political style. This definition contains three main features; an appeal to “the people” versus “the elite”, Bad manners, and Crisis, Breakdown and Threat. This framework is further complemented by the ways Steven Clayman (1988) identified that journalists display neutrality in interviews.

Method:
The central method used to analyze the questionings is conversation analysis. This way it is possible to examine each of the episodes and see to what extent different central aspects of populism as a political style appear, and in what context.

Results:
The results of the study show that each of the three features of populism as a political style appear in the questionings, but not to a large enough extent to claim that the questionings overall are populist in nature. It also appears that the times that an appeal to “the people” versus “the elite” and to “crisis, breakdown and threat” often are used to preface questions for the party leaders. However, further and wider research in the subject is required to draw more reliable conclusions.

Abstract
Title: Speaking is silver, running the discourse is gold
Authors: Adam Kohls Josefsson, Elias Åhlander and Erika Uutela Larsson
Level: Bachelor thesis in Journalism
Term: HT 2022
Supervisor: Monika Djerf-Pierre

Aim of thesis: This essay aims to investigate the framing of actors in climate journalism. To investigate the framing of actors the framing of the news subject climate change was also investigated.

Theoretical framework: An actor for this thesis could be any person or organization that was a part taker or a participant in a news article. The concept of an actor was viewed as a subject as well as an object. Therefore an actor could be quoted or just mentioned in the article. The most central theory for this essay was the theory that viewed framing as a principle of selection and choices. The theory was presented by Anders Hansen (2019). When an article is written by a journalist a big amount of choices is made about what the actor at hand is to be used for in the article. With a quantitative survey a mapping of what choices journalists make in relation to actors could be made. Who is chosen, how will they participate and what role are they playing in the context of the article?

Methods(s): A quantitative survey was executed to map the choices that journalists make in relations to actors. A codebook was constructed with a big amount of variables that was created to be
able to answer the questions at issue. Over 200 actors were collected and different aspects of how they were framed in the articles was coded. The actors were collected from news articles from four of the biggest newspapers in Sweden, Svenska Dagbladet, Dagens Nyheter,
Aftonbladet, and Expressen.

Results: The most common actor was an adult man presented as a politician, who was quoted about the subject of political decisions and was treated in a neutral way. The actor also got to play a responsible role in the article. An important point to make is that there was equalization from 2010 to 2022 regarding how many men and women appeared as actors in the articles. The amount of appearances has gone from being quite uneven in the favor of men to be smoothed
out.

Abstract
A picture says more than 1000 words
Sara Romano and Anja Magnusson
Bachelor thesis in Journalism
HT 2022

The purpose of this essay is to analyze how often female and male athletes are presented in images, captions and headlines on the front pages in the Swedish magazines Aftonbladet and Sportbladet every twelve years in the summer Olympic games from 1936. The intention of
the essay is to establish how female and male athletes are described in Aftonbladet and Sportbladet in relation to nation, achievements, the perspective which the photographs are taken from and the activity of the athletes. In the essay, two theories are addressed, the agenda setting theory and the gender system theory of Hirdman. A quantitative content analysis is applied to answer the study’s first question about how often the athletes appear. The quantitative content analysis is then used to systemize the material. The second question about how athletes are portrayed can be answered through a qualitative method, an image analysis, which is based on the systematized material. The study shows that there is a higher frequency of male athletes on the front pages in the studied material, there were 188 male athletes and 120 females. It was reported more about male than female athletes in all of the analyzed Olympic games except for München 1972 and Tokyo 2020 (2021). In relation to the number of participants there were two years that were distinctive. In 2008, it was reported more about male athletes, while there were more female participants in the Olympics that year. In 2020, it was reported more about female athletes than males and there were also more female participants. The study also shows that there is a strong nationalism in the reporting. In the study 80 percent of the athletes represented Sweden. When it comes to the
achievements of the athletes our study shows that men are more often than women portrayed as winners. The result also presents that male athletes more often than females were portrayed from below. This can be linked to the fact that the male athletes more often than females are portrayed in a position of power when the viewer looks up at the image subject (Fogde, 2013). When it comes to the portrayal of the athletes, males were more often than females portrayed performing their own sport.

Key words: gender, athletics, the Olympic games, Aftonbladet, Sportbladet, sport journalism
Nyckelord: genus, idrott, Olympiska spelen, Aftonbladet, Sportbladet, sportjournalistik

Abstract
Title: This is why you should click here
Authors: Linnea Andersson and Emma Johansson
Level: Bachelor thesis in Journalism
Term: HT 2022
Supervisor: Emil Östlund

The aim of this thesis is to investigate what characterizes the content of push notifications. More specifically, the study examines what defines push notifications, the tone of the notifications, and how the content differs between public service and commercial media.

The study’s framework is based on theories surrounding news selection and commercialization. The results are also analyzed through previous research on forwardreferencing headlines, news selection by different media types, as well as the frequency of conflicts, individualization, and emotionally charged words.

The thesis is based on a quantitative analysis conducted over the course of one week, from November 22, 2022 to November 29, 2022. The basis of the study is the eight most popular news apps in Play Store and App Store. These are Aftonbladet, Dagens Nyheter, Expressen, Göteborgs-Posten, Svenska Dagbladet, Sveriges Radio Play, SVT Nyheter, and TV4 Nyheterna. In total, 892 push notifications were collected.

The results show that interesting news subjects such as sports and crime/law far outweigh important news such as politics and economy in push notifications. Public service media tend to report more informative news. In a similar fashion, famous people (profiles in culture or sports) appear considerably more often than important people (politicians or other people of power). Evening newspapers have a higher share of famous people than other media types, and report more breaking news. However, general news updates were far more common than breaking news notifications.

Within all types of media, negative news is the most common. Push notifications often contain emotionally charged words, particularly negative ones. A large majority of the notifications do not portray any conflict. However, the results divided by subject area show that conflicts are most common in political journalism. A large majority also do not contain forward-referencing headlines, but the results indicate that this type of headline is more often used in exclusive news and in content locked behind a paywall.

Key words: Push notifications, news application, digitalization, news selection, commercialization, news media, public service, commercial media

Abstract
Title: Interviewing a Populist – A Conversation Analytical Study of Interviews with Donald Trump
Author: Zuzanna Ratka
Level: Bachelor thesis in Journalism
Term: HT 2022
Supervisor: Mathias Färdigh

The purpose of this case study is to examine the interaction between American journalists and Donald Trump in news interviews during the time Donald Trump ran for president in 2016. The interviews are analyzed using Conversation Analysis in order to acquire knowledge regarding populism and its growing influence in politics throughout the
world. The methodology applied in the study is Conversation Analysis, combined with other theories. Using data drawn from broadcast news interviews, this paper anatomizes face threatening acts that can be observed analyzing the interaction between Donald Trump and
journalists as well how threatening acts are managed by the journalists and Donald Trump throughout the interaction. The findings shed light upon how the adversarial and confrontational interviewing style of American journalists, vigorously pursuing extreme and sensational views and by their endeavor to disprove Trumps claims and theories
paradoxically make it easier for Trump to dominate the discourse with his populistic political rhetoric. Another words, the study shows that Donald Trump tends to use face threatening questions, statements and arguments on the part of the journalists to his advantage. The results show that the more adversarial the journalists are in the way they approach Donald Trump and the more they strive to disprove his theories and political standpoints during the interaction the more he 1. holds on to them, emphasizes and vindicates them 2. portays himself in a positive light and other, officials who criticize him in particular, in a negative light. Furthermore, the findings show that, in order to save and uphold their professional reputation, journalists confine themselves to the responsibilities related to the watchdog-role when interacting with Trump. However, it seems possible that their endeavor to being true to their professional mission also had been taken advantage of by Trump during the interaction for the benefit of his own political reputation.

Keywords: Interaction, Conversation Analysis, Face, Interview, Interaction

Abstract
Title: “Och så, mer politik”
Authors: Hannah Zemack and Hannah Andersson
Level: Bachelor thesis in Journalism
Term: HT 2022
Supervisor: Marina Ghersetti

The aim of our study is to examine to what extent the media reports about the politicalmatters and how this reporting looks during the swedish election 2022. Specifically how the news programs Rapport and TV4Nyheterna reported during a Swedish election. Through a
quantitative study of the tb programs we investigate this matter with a basis of three questions as a foundation for further review: 1. Which political matter does TV4Nyheterna respectively Rapport report most about during the last month of the election campaign? And how are these presented? 2. Do reporting priorities change over time? 3. Do Rapport and TV4Nyheterna report on what is most important to the audience?

In order to have theories to base our study on, and to have something to use to explain our findings in the analysis. The two theories that build our theoretical framework are news evaluation and framing theory.

To fulfill the aim of this study we, with the help of a quantitative analysis, studied the different news programs. Before we started the study we wrote a codebook that the data retrieval was based on. We chose two of Sweden’s biggest news programs, Rapport and
TV4Nyheterna. The period we chose to study was between 10th of august to 10th of september. This is because the Swedish election takes place on the 11th of september.

The result of this study shows that the chosen news programs are mostly not reporting about what the public deems as important. When we refer to the public opinion we refer to the Novus opinion survey that takes place before the election. Rapport reported most about
energy policies and TV4Nyheterna reported most about scandals. However can we see that these were the most reported because of events that were important to include in the program. Novus concludes that the most important political matter during this election was healthcare. Together Rapport and TV4Nyheterna only reported in 7 of the 275 features we collected as data. We could also see that the number of features increased during the second half of the month we studied, in other words did they increase the features closer to the election. Our conclusion is therefore that the media does not report about what the public deems as most important. However this does not mean that the media is in the wrong.

Keywords: News evaluation, framing theory, news broadcasts, election monitoring, psephology, politics, public opinion, quantitative content analysis.
Nyckelord: Nyhetsvärdering, gestaltningsteorin, nyhetssändningar, valbevakning, valforskning, politik, publikens opinion, kvantitativ innehållsanalys.

Abstract
Title: Answer the question! – A Conversation Analytical Study of interview techniques in the program Agenda and 30 minutes.
Authors: Elin Dahlström, Laura Vandelin och Tove Mattsson
Level: Bachelor thesis in Journalism
Term: HT 2022
Supervisor: Mats Ekström

This article investigates how the three different interview techniques mirroring, hypothetical questions and multiple questions directly following each other, which are not commonly associated with standard journalist practice, are used and met in political interviews. Using Conversation Analysis, the interview interaction consisting of the institutional genre, political interviews, is analyzed. The specific interviews chosen for investigation are taken from two different Swedish interview programs, Agenda and 30 minutes. Both programs are between a journalist and a Swedish politician, broadcasted in 2022 on Swedish Television (SVT). Previous research has shown that both hypothetical questions and multiple questions directly following each other are rarely recommended in journalistic interviews. However, the authors argue that these three interview techniques result in both pros and cons in how the interview develops and whether the journalist’s question is being answered by the politicians or not. The study shows that politicians tend to question the premise of the question when both
multiple questions directly following each other and hypothetical questions are used, which impairs the chances of the question being answered. Mirroring, which is originally a technique used in psychotherapy, is in a journalistic context mainly used as a way of
questioning the politician’s answer. The combination of an interruption and a repetition of the politician’s statement is also done with the aim of persisting with what the politician said previously. However, when the interviewed politician agrees with the premises of the question, all three techniques tend to result in evolved and detailed responses.
Keywords: Political interview, Conversation Analysis, Interview techniques, Interaction.

Abstract
Title: The right-wing populist visits – A critical discourse analysis of Swedish newspapers’ portrayal of the easter riots.
Authors: Emelie Nilsson
Level: Bachelor thesis in Journalism
Term: HT 2022
Supervisor: Marina Ghersetti

In April 2022, the right-wing politician Rasmus Paludan burns the holy book of islam, the Quran in part of a tour in several Swedish cities. This gets a lot of attention among the citizens of several Swedish cities as well as in the media’s reporting. As a consequence of Rasmus Paludan’s islamophobic manifestation came violent riots, violence against the police and vandalism. An event which in the Swedish press was named; “The easter riots”. This study has analyzed the media’s reporting of the event in two different journalistic genres; editorials and news articles. These genres were selected citing that they differ in terms of expression of opinions and values. In this context, the intention was to see if the basis of values could also be discerned in news articles. The analysis material was selected, of which three editorials and six news articles from the newspapers Aftonbladet, Svenska Dagbladet and Dagens Nyheter. The aim of the study has through a critical discourse analysis been able to interpret and analyze the material in order to discern on which base of values it rests. To
achieve the purpose of the study and identify the basis of values the following associated specified research questions was formulated:

– How is Rasmus Paludan and his party, Stram Kurs, described in the journalistic reporting related to the easter riots?
– How has the media portrayed those upset by Rasmus Paludan and his party?

The results of the study has shown that the context of the editorials and news articles matters when it comes to the expression of values. In the news articles, this shows when Muslims are allowed to speak out and are represented in the texts. Here a discussion appears about
Rasmus Paludan’s anti-islamic manifestations with reference to the fact that it can be regarded as agitation against muslims as an ethnic group. In the articles that were centered in a context where Muslims were not heard, instead a rhetoric appeared where the constitutional law, freedom of expression should be prioritized in politics. It appeared as a prerequisite for an open and free society.

Keywords: Right wing populist, extremist, muslims, islam, islamophobia, discourse, agency

Abstract
Title: The party which entered the warmth
Authors: Hannah Attefall, Elina Mattsson and Charlotte Månsson
Level: Bachelor thesis in Journalism
Term: HT 2022
Supervisor: Bengt Johansson

Aim of thesis: The purpose of this study is to explore how the Swedish populist party, the Swedish Democrats, have been framed in the morning newspapers and in the evening newspapers one week before the Swedish election 2010 and 2022. By doing this we want to see if and how newspapers have changed the way they frame a populistic party as the Swedish Democrats has achieved major parliamentary success.

Theoretical framework: The theoretical framework used in this study is the framing theory. To better understand how the populist party, the Swedish Democrats, have been framed in the Swedish newspapers we have mainly focused on the already existing framing theory based on the meanings given to populism in the Nordic press (Herkman, 2016a).

Methods(s): The study uses a quantitative content analysis of 409 articles about the Swedish Democrats published in the morning newspapers Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet, and the evening newspapers Aftonbladet and Expressen. We used the search words SD and Sverigedemokrat* to collect the relevant articles. The articles extend from one week before the Swedish election 2010 and 2022 until one day before the election day. The theoretical framework has been operationalized to create a codebook for analyzing the articles.

Results: The results of the study show that the most common way to frame the populist party, the Swedish Democrats, in newspapers was to frame them like any other normal parliamentary party. This shows that the populistic party has become more normalized since the election 2010, which was the first time they won seats in the Swedish parliament. The results also show that there have been changes in the way newspapers frame the party between the years 2010 and 2022. For example, it was more common to frame the Swedish Democrats xenophobic in 2010, compared to 2022. However it has become more common to frame them xenophobic in editorial pages, which does not go hand in hand with the overall result. The result also shows that it is more common for evening newspapers to frame the Swedish Democrats as a party which is irresponsible and uses ugly tricks to get ahead, whereas in the morning newspapers it is more usual to describe the party as nationalistic.

Key words: Populism, the Swedish Democrats, framing theory, morning newspaper, evening newspaper, journalism, radical right
Nyckelord: Populism, Sverigedemokraterna, gestaltningsteorin, morgontidning, kvällstidning, journalistik, radikal höger