On September 2 2015 a three-year-old Syrian boy named Alan Kurdi was found dead on the beach in Bodrum, Turkey. Alan Kurdi is one of thousands refugees who have drowned while taking the dangerous boat ride over the Mediterranean Sea to escape terror and war in Syria. The shocking picture of his body became the starting point of massive media coverage of the refugee situation in Europe today. According to UNHCR, over 50 million people in the world are refugees today and about 900.000 of them have arrived in Europe by the Mediterranean Sea in 2015. In this Bachelor thesis we are examining the Swedish media portrayal of the refugee situation in Europe. By using a quantitative method and applying theories of newsworthiness and social identity, we have studied 490 articles from September 2015 in Sweden’s four largest newspapers: Dagens Nyheter, Svenska Dagbladet, Aftonbladet and Expressen. Our aim is to find out how the refugee is portrayed by looking at each person’s gender, age, name, title and position in the article. We want to find out if there is any stereotypical way of presenting the refugees. Furthermore, we want to know if the refugees get to define their own situation or if there are other actors such as politicians, organizations or journalists speaking above their head. Our results show that the newspapers are providing a rather chaotic picture of the refugee situation. Words such as catastrophe, crisis and stream are frequently used to reinforce the impression of turmoil. Forceful words like these can create negative associations amongst the readers and has the potential to influence their opinion about refugees. Refugees get to speak in approximately 60 percent of the articles, but they are rarely the most cited actor. Politicians and columnist are often speaking above their heads. Moreover, we have found a significant difference in the portrayal of men and women. Men are overrepresented in all of the categories in our study. This can partly be explained by the fact that there are more men than women amongst the refugees (according to UNHCR). Nevertheless, the female refugees that do occur in the articles are less likely to be presented with a professional title and less often occurs as the main actor.

The purpose of this study is to analyze how the Swedish media publishes personal records in their coverage of three infamous murder cases in Sweden in 2015: the murder of Lisa Holm, the murders at Ikea in Västerås and the school attack in Trollhättan. The study also seeks to compare differences between alternative right wing media’s and mainstream media’s coverage of the cases. The results of the study will be compared to the Swedish rules of press ethics. The method in use will be content analysis, and the material will consist of articles in the Swedish daily newspapers Aftonbladet and Expressen, together with the right wing alternative news sites Avpixlat and Fria Tider. Articles that are published within the first month of the events. The main results showed that there are big differences between how the alternative and the mainstream media publishes personal records. The alternative media has for example published the name of the suspects in all three cases. They also have a bigger focus on ethnicity when writing about both suspects and victims. The alternative media have also broken more of the Swedish rules of press ethics, although the traditional media also has broken quite a few.

In this bachelor thesis in journalism studies we explore how the role of the mother is portrayed in the swedish magazine Mama. Mama is marketed towards women and is one of Sweden’s most widespread magazines in the segment of children and parents. Every issue of this magazine includes a profile story portraying a famous mother. We have analysed twelve of these stories. With the method of qualitative textual analysis we have studied four areas of interest: the relationship between the mother and her career, the relationship between the mother and her children, the relationship between the mother and her partner and what part the journalist takes in creating the discourse surrounding motherhood in these portraits, regarding in what way questions are asked and what hidden premise that may shine through in remarks made by the journalist. Our main results include that most of the women are portrayed as a supermother, who can handle a very successful career whilst still taking the main responsibility at home. We can also conclude the norm of the conjugal family is still strong in our material. Furthermore the study shows that the journalists who have written the profile stories often take the role of a friend and entrusted both towards the interviewee and the magazine readers.

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether Swedish foreign aid and diplomatic policies has any effect on the selection of foreign news in Swedish news media. We set out to study news concerning countries that experienced a change in their relation to the former Swedish government, which was in rule between 2006 and 2014. The countries we chose for this was Nicaragua, Laos and Senegal, where the Swedish embassies were closed in this period. For Nicaragua and Laos the aid was also reduced. Further, Bolivia, Cambodia and Mali were chosen since the Swedish government opened embassies there, as well as strengthening existing aid programs. Our theoretical points of departure have mainly been a set of different studies on news values; the science of what events becomes news. We have included both the broader theories concerning foreign journalism in general and more specifically those concerning the relationship between foreign journalism and foreign policies. We had two research questions: Has there been any change in the amount of news material from reaching us from these countries since the changes in Swedish representation took place? Has there been any change in the kind of information that reaches us from these countries? Our study was conducted as a quantitative content analysis in which we have studied the amount and nature of news material from our countries of choice in Swedish news media, before and after the changes in Swedish relations towards these countries took place. The results of the study shows that changes in Swedish relations did not seem to affect the presence of those countries in Swedish news media, nor how they were represented in the major Swedish newspapers. No clear patterns were found except that of the general decrease of news from the countries we chose for our study.Our conclusion was that any further studies on this subject would need to encompass a much greater amount of material and a greater knowledge of the editorial circumstances of each news media-object.

The purpose of this study is to compare employed journalists’ and freelance journalists’ attitudes to work with information-, communication- and PR-assignments. Our research questions are:

• What are the attitudes to work with information-, communication- and PR-assignments among employed journalists and freelance journalists?

• Why are journalists willing or not willing to work with information-, communication- and PR-assignments?

• What impact has the labour market on the attitude to work with information-, communication- and PR-assignments?

• Has the professional journalistic identity any impact on the attitude to work with information-, communication- and PR-assignments? To answer the questions we used different theories about the labour market and also described the journalistic ideals and the relation between information, communication, PR and journalism. Our intention was to reach general conclusions, and we decided that the best way to answer our questions was to do a quantitative study. Therefore we made an online survey. This was also the most time- and resource-efficient way. It was sent to all reporters who worked at local stations in public service radio or public service TV. It was also sent to all reporters who worked in the daily press in the same towns as mentioned above. The survey was also sent to all the freelancers in the freelance catalogue in the same towns as above.

Our survey was sent to 1158 journalists in Sweden, 566 journalists answered the survey. The results show that freelancers are more positive to work with information-, communication- and PR-assignments than employed journalists, although journalists overall are more positive than negative. The freelancers are positive to these types of assignments mainly because of economic reasons. The employees, on the other hand, have a positive attitude mainly because this kind of business provides more work opportunities.

The different attitudes of the two groups of journalists can be explained with the differentiation on the labour market. Among the employees the jobs are becoming fewer and the freelancers have a harder economic situation. A clear majority of the freelancers are willing to work with these assignments even at the same time as journalistic assignments. Among the employees, on the other hand, most of them are not willing to work with both kinds of assignments simultaneously. Furthermore, the study shows that journalists who have experience of information-, communication- and PR-assignments also are more positive than others. The results show as well that the journalistic ideals that are associated with the profession overall are strong. They are stronger among the employees than among the freelancers. The freelancers are willing to work with information-, communication- and PR-assignments regardless of what ideals they agree with. The employees are more positive to these kinds of jobs if they to a larger extent agree to the ideals that today are less associated with the profession.

In this study we have done an explorative study of the Swedish magazine industry. In light of recent years staggering development of technology and new devices we found it imperative to examine how the editorial environment has changed. The purpose was to study how editors approach the web as an editorial platform. Which problems and difficulties they experience and how they intend to approach this predicament. Since research in this area is scarce and problematic due to the constantly shifting environment. We are hoping that our results would fill a gap that could clarify and assist the market in how they can approach the web. Our theoretical framework relies on the assessment of seeing a magazine as a business. Where the structures, business models and income is the main aspects. The theories also consider the public as the major influential factor. Even though the main focus in this paper is not on the public, we define that they have an indirect effect on every decision made by the editors in magazines. To get a comprehensive assessment of the situation we decided to undertake two studies. Initially through a survey which was sent to the editors of a large proportion of the magazine industry. Thereafter we did a few qualitative research interviews with editors. The magazines they represented were distinctly different concerning resources, capabilities, ownership and so on. The result we gathered was interpreted and generalised on the industry. We do not consider the results to characterize every single title on the Swedish market. We do however claim that the conclusions and results are good estimations and predictions. What we found was that there is a great concern in the industry regarding the web. The main issue is that editors have no clear idea on how to capitalize the content especially from the readers. A vast majority consider their presence and work on the web as vital. And it will continue to be important in the future. Furthermore there are some indications that the web is becoming more important than the traditional paper. And that the products will become two separate commodities, joint together by the brand. There are some predictions that longer text and a new model for distributing the content will become a reality in the nearby future. This study confirms that former studies are somewhat out-dated even though they were satisfactory at the time of their publication. In that sense this paper offers an updated view on the digital problematic for the Swedish magazine industry. Our goal was to uncover answers where there are none. Nevertheless this exploration is valuable in the sense that it presents indications and provides a better understanding for the problematic in this day and age.

Title: ”Mina svala europeiska ögon” – En kritisk diskursanalys av reportage i magasinet RES Authors: Joel Larsson och Joel Sund Subject: Undergraduate research paper in journalism studies, Dept. of journalism, media and communication (JMG) Gothenburg University Term: Spring 2015 Supervisor: Orla Vigsö, JMG, Gothenburg University Pages/words: 58 pages/21 378 words (excluding appendix) Purpose: The main purpose was to examine what image the travel magazine RES presents of the world outside of the western world, whether it is based on exotifying stereotypes and how that correlates with the responsibilities and ethics of journalism. Method: Qualitative text analysis using critical discourse analysis with a postcolonial perspective. Results: The results show that the travel magazine RES describes a variety of subjects but a pattern is visible when how they describe them is analyzed. In nearly all of the selected articles both places and people were subjected to exotifying stereotypes to some extent. Through postcolonial theory and close reading, we discovered power structures embedded in the discourse. The four biggest patterns made visible were summed up in four different themes. Positivity, perspectives on reality, eurocentrism and “the Other”. Positivism was what dominated almost all of the analyzed articles. Nearly everything in the articles, places, experiences and people, were described in a positive light. This presented a one-sided picture of the world outside of the Western world. Perspectives on reality mean (in this case) who had the power and opportunity to create the “reality”. In the articles it was obvious that this power belonged to the journalist, as opposed to the inhabitants of the visited country. The results also showed a Eurocentric picture of the world presented in the articles. The eurocentrism was observed in many comparisons between the places visited in the articles and the Western world. The last of the four was how the journalists created “the Other” by exotifying people and places, making them seem different, weird, fantastic or just something that the Western world is not. All of this correlates poorly with the responsibilities and ideals of journalism. Traveling journalism cannot be judged by the same standards that news journalism can, however, this dissertation has shown that travel journalism indeed has the power to produce and reproduce exotifying stereotypes.

To investigate how men and women are represented in nationwide newspapers, we implemented a study focusing on gender typing in news content and in the newsroom. Gender typing is a theory that can be used for investigating how certain duties or news subjects are assiged to a journalist of a certain gender based on stereotypes. We also investigated gender typing in the news content, i.e. which roles are assigned to which gender. Several media companies worked actively for gender equality in their newsrooms but with the digitalisation of media that eventually led to staff cuts and reorganization, equality of men and women were no longer a priority. Previous research testifies to a widespread gender typing in both swedish and international media. There has been research of gender typing done for instance in tv-news or in specific areas such as sports or crime. With this study we will contribute to new results based on a specific type of news, nation news. The purpose of the study includes to investigate the extent of gender typing in nation news published in nationwide newspapers; Dagens Nyheter, Svenska Dagbladet, Aftonbladet and Expressen. We also wanted to see what roles men and women were given in the articles and which subject those articles affected. We were curious to see if there were a difference in articles written by men or women regarding gender representation of the contributors. We also took the size of the articles and photos into consideration. We implemented our questions into variables and performed a quantitative content analysis on a total of 993 articles. First of all the results shows us that the national news material in the newspapers are dominated by male journalists even though research shows that there are 50 percent women amongst swedish journalists. Our results points to widespread gender typing both regarding journalists being assigned to write certain news based on their gender and regaring what roles men and women have as participants in the articles, within specific subjects. The conclusion of our results concentrates on comprehensive organisational problems where stereotypes are reproduced and outdated sturctures proceeds to influence the production of news.

Background: Previous studies in media and law make visible that the asylum seeker or the conceptual immigrant is being mediated as a stereotype. Whether or how the words of the conceptual immigrant are mediated to the media consumer has not been investigated further, though. Therefore, this study analyses 25 articles published in the Swedish dayli news magazine Norrbottens-Kuriren; all concerning a hunger strike that took place in Boden in the spring of 2013. The study’s approach is limited to the specific media event of the Boden strike, which according to media scoolar Nick Couldry is the place for a ritualization of journalistic practice such as objectivity. The event is chosen because of its duration, making possible a longer preiod of media coverage than what usual news stories on the conceptual immigrant most often holds. The media event is also taking place in a central part of the town of Boden, which also is a news value criteria (closeness), not often connected to the conceptual immigrant.

Method: With the methods of the critical discourse analysis (CDA), this study investigates significant tendencies in the reproduction on the journalist’s possible objectivity and dependence on inner and outer institutions is making this. Therefore, inter-discursive and inter-institutional relations and their linkage to the potential subject’s voice are made visible. Since neither the media consumer, nor the one to carry out the research can be expected to have been present during the interviews, only published material is analysed. According to the CDA method, the position of the subject depends on other subject’s positions, as well as on surrounding discourses in a bigger, sociocultural context. Therefore, the CDA method enables thematic, linguistic and contextual analyses of the selected material, which is of high scientific relevance for the specific study. The CDA also makes visible hidden and neutralised structures that are not always detected in quantitative studies. (Esaiasson et al, 2012:212-3).

Result: The 25 articles published between April 19 2013 July 3 2013 are all written because of the same event; the on-going hunger strike. The fact that no article on the subject is published thereafter shows the temporality of the result. All of the articles handles the notions of the hunger strike, and the different discourses; the one of the local citizen, the one of the journalist and the one of the Other, they all made visible the dependence on institutions. In three articles out of 25, the asylum seeker was enabled a subjects position where his/hers words were cited. Most often this person was described as a far distant group without sexes, names or opinions. At the samet time, the media event – the hunger – strike is discussed by surrounding institutions, politicains and citizens. Conclusion: The asylum seeker embodies the media event, but the subjects position and the voice is for others to take hold of. According to Nick Couldry, the media event is ambulant, why the possible future subject position of the asylum seeker wont be part of this event (Ibid 2003, s. 90). This is also made possible by the naming of “strikers”, that which is nothing after a strike. Therefor, the asylum seekers are to embody, but to be excluded from the news event, or to always be situated by the side if it’s border. Therefore, this study proposes reasons to, as Ylva Brune once did, (Brune 2004, s. 344) regard dependence on institutions and ritualised ideals of objectivity as part of the (re-)preoduction of the Other, where the asylum seeker serves as place for the news story, being telled by and for a ”we”, that is not him/her. Does or can even a media event include the Other, that is; the one without a subject’s position? Using the words of Trinh-t Min-ha (Chen, N. M, 2002), the closest the Other can get is to speak nearby.