The aim of this study is to examine how journalists in public service relate to objectivity and neutrality in their private social media. With respect to the requirements from the organization that the journalists should see themselves as a part of the organization and always try to maintain its credibility. We choose this theme primarily because the relevance of the subject. Social media is growing fast and there is a fine line between being personal and transparent and at the same time maintain the credibility of the organization by being objective and neutral. For journalists it can be a struggle to preserve a good balance between these requirements. We start our analysis primarily in theories about the ideal of objectivity and the social- and work identity. Out of these theories and our framing of the question we formed a survey that we sent to journalists at the six biggest Sveriges Radio and Sveriges Television newsrooms in Sweden. Our results show that the journalists tend to keep up with the ideal of objectivity and neutrality of the profession not only in duty, but also in their private life in social media. Partly because of the strict policies that public service have formulated for the journalists to follow and partly because of the results of our survey.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the shares of original material compared with the shares of rewrites and agency material in the Swedish printed national daily press. We want to see how it differs today from 20 years ago. We did this to see whether or not the shares of rewrites and news agency materials have increased over time. In addition to this the study examines what kind of materials are rewritten and bought from news agencies. Through a quantitative content analysis we have examined two trendsetting Swedish newspapers, Aftonbladet and Dagens Nyheter. We have examined a synthetic week for each of the two newspapers from both 1995 and 2015 and analyzed a total of 1646 news articles. Through our study we came, among other things, to the conclusions that the proportion of original material for the entire group is 55 percent today, which is the same level as in 1995. However, the composition of the material that isn’t produced by the newspapers own editorial staff has changed. The proportion of rewrites for the whole group has doubled from 6 to 12 percent, while the amount of news agency materials have dropped from 39 to 33 percent. We then proceeded with examining and comparing the evening and the morning newspapers and the differences then became more remarkable. The changes in general have become more prominent in Sweden’s leading tabloid, Aftonbladet, where the proportion of the internal news output has increased slightly. The most dramatic change, however, is regarding the proportion of rewrites that has more than doubled since 1995. These increases have occurred at the expense of material from news agencies. In Dagens Nyheter, Sweden’s largest morning newspaper, the trend has been slightly different. Here we have seen a constant amount of rewrites, but an increase of the material from news agencies at the expense of their internal news output. In this essays concluding part we use theories regarding tabloidization, digitalization and news evaluation to attempt to explain the changes we have identified.

Due to the increasing popularity of social media, newspapers nowadays have competition from the audience. Ordinary people can write and publish news and opinions easier than ever before. We wanted to find out what four major newspapers in Sweden have chosen to share on their social media accounts on Facebook and Twitter. In this study, we have compared what the four newspapers have shared on the last week of October from the year of 2010 to this year, 2015. We decided to compare Aftonbladet, Expressen, Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet. Prior to the beginning of the study we had made the presumption that opinion journalism has become more and more common over the years. We decided to do a quantitative text analysis, thus we coded all of the newspapers’ shared material according to different variables. After finishing the coding, we made different crosstabs to compare these different variables. We made some discoveries. As we presumed, opinion journalism has increased, but in different ways, depending on the newspaper. Aftonbladet and Expressen shares more columns on social media than ever before. Dagens Nyheter on the other hand, shares a lot more editorial pages. We also found out that all of the newspapers are profiling their journalists more now than ever.

This study explores the heteronormativity of the Swedish teen magazine Frida. Since the year of 1981, the magazine is on a mission to guide teenage girls through adolescence. The magazine is filled with celebrity gossip and fashion tips, but it also has a more serious approach when it writes about sex and STDs. It is keen on giving advice on how to manage your relations with your friends and your partner. Frida describes itself like a fun, yet responsible older sister. But how does this older sister talk about sexual orientation and how well is this magazine suited for those young girls who don’t find themselves taking a romantic interest in guys? The purpose of this study is to reveal who Frida presents as a possible sex and/or love partner for their young readers and what sexual norm the magazine produces. The theoretical framework is queer theory, gender theory and theories of representation. We carried out a quantative content analysis on all of the articles under the relation section from the years 2004 and 2014. This analysis shows that Frida has changed the pronuon in the articles that is about relations and sex between the years. In 2004 the partner is almost always a he, but in 2014 they’ve changed the pronoun to the gender-neutral hen. Does this mean that Frida has stopped writing in a heteronormative way? To fully comprehend this turn to the gender-neutral way of writing, we carried out a qualitative text analysis on some of the articles in the quantative study. We strategically selected articles from both years that we found representative and/or interesting from a queer-theoretic perspective. This qualitative analysis, performed with a semiotic approach, unraveled that a heterosexual norm is still prevailing, despite the use of the gender-neutral pronoun. In 2014 the heteronormativity is produced in the images, since the images, with a few exceptations, portrayes heterosexuality; young girls and boys holding hands, smiling at each other or cuddling in bed. Both years have in common this invisibility of other sexualities than the heterosexual one; in 2004 the obscuring of homosexuality is done by almost never talking about the female sex as a possible sex or love partner and by assuming that the reader takes romantic interest in guys; in 2014 the obscuring is done by letting the gender-neutral texts being accompanied by images portraying heterosexuality. Since text and image is not read separately, but together, the gender-neutral use of the pronuon does not challenge the heteronormativity, rather it turns the gender neutral hen back into a he. This study shows that Frida still promotes heterosexuality as the normal sexuality and the others as deviating from this norm. When the magazine writes about homo- and bisexuality it is from the heterosexual’s point of view. This study finds that Frida is trying to be open minded about different sexual orientations, but rarely lets the homosexual reader comprehend her sexuality as something that is not deviating from the norm.

Sweden proudly emphasize its work to diminish gender inequality, and rightfully so. Since the 1980’s the income differences between the genders has decreased and more women attain higher education. 2015 the World Economic Forum ranked Sweden top five when it comes to gender equality. But in late 2015 the Swedish organization Rättviseförmedlingen published a report concerning the representation of different groups in Swedish news media. The report presented a substantial picture of the Swedish news media and showed that representation was unequal in many categories. For example, men were over-represented, and almost four times more likely to participate in media than women. According to research on media effects underrepresentation of groups in media can lead to trivialization and marginalization of those groups. The purpose of our study is to analyze media’s representation, of different groups, in the field of medical treatment and health, a field that is a female-intensive field. It’s interesting to see how media cover this field. And if there’s been a change the last 20 years. Our main research questions are: – Who participates in the articles? – Which subjects are present in the articles? – Is there a difference between how different newspapers frame the field of medical treatment and health? – Has the media coverage of the field changed throughout the years? We use three main theories to analyze our results. The theory of news evaluation serve as a starting point to explain why some groups and some subjects are more common in media than others. Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of field and forms of capital adds another dimension, and helps us explain structural differences. The gender theory, illustrates how patriarchal structures effect media representation of women. The method we use is a quantitative content analysis of four major Swedish newspapers, using a digital archive and microfilm to analyze two weeks from three years. The years we chose to analyze were 1995, 2005 and 2015, the longitudinal approach makes it possible to see if the representation has changed over time. In total we analyzed more than 500 news articles. The result shows that there has been a substantial change in media’s representation of gender, in the field of medical treatment and health, in the last 20 years. In 1995 men were almost two times more occurring than women. But in 2015 women occurred in 55 percent of the articles and men only in 45 percent. Another result shows that the group who appear most is experts, such as doctors and professors. That group consist of professions that have high socio-economic status and is in the top of the hierarchy in their field. A big exception is the group patients, civilian and relatives that are the second biggest group that appear in the articles. In that aspect media coverage and representation of different groups show some inequality in the field of medical treatment and health, even though gender inequality has decreased.