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.

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 our study was to research people’s media habits when it comes to news consumption through social media, Facebook in particular, and to try to ascertain if our theory that people today are lacking in source criticism skills has any basis in reality. Our theory is that social media users who rely solely or primarily on Facebook for news consumption are less likely to compare media coverage between outlets and channels, and validate sources, than consumers of traditional media. Broken down into component parts, the main questions we were looking to answer were: • To what extent does our population rely on Facebook as a primary or sole source for news and media coverage? • In what manner does relying primarily or solely on Facebook for news content influence criticism of sources and user acceptance of news content posted directly to their curated feeds? The method we chose was a quantitative study, as we believed that it was more important to begin with finding the frequency of these phenomena before studying the subject on a deeper level. This was done through an online survey that we had intended to send to certain groups of Swedes within the age range of 18-36, but due to being unable to find a way to reach this population we were forced to lessen our scope, and ended up with a highly limited group of respondents that led to a total of only 122 replies. As a result, our conclusions are only relevant for Swedish students of media, journalism and communication sciences. But within that subset, we did not find any conclusive evidence that the theories that we based our study on are grounded in reality. Also, due to the training and expertise of our population, it is not unlikely that they have a more critical approach to news, especially unsourced reports on social media sites. It also seems prudent to assume that they spend more time consuming news than the average person. In conclusion, it would seem that students of these sciences have a very balanced and self-aware approach to source control and criticism in social media environments, applying the same or even stricter guidelines. We also believe that our theoretical framework is sound and that the groundwork that we have done is solid, and as such present this thesis in part as a proof of concept with components that would be suited to be used for larger studies within the field in the future.

The purpose of the study was firstly to describe the use of news articles from the largest Swedish news agency, TT Nyhetsbyrån, in four Swedish newspapers. Secondly, the purpose was to see if there was a homogenization of which TT-articles that was used. This was carried out by examining articles on the newspapers’ local, domestic and foreign pages. The newspapers that was chosen were Aftonbladet, Dagens Nyheter, Göteborgs-Posten and Nerikes Allehanda. They were chosen due to their size and their coverage area. This was because of a hypothesis that larger newspapers in general have more resources and should therefore not be as dependent on material from news agencies. As for the coverage area, the chosen newspapers were divided into two local and two nationwide, to be easier to compare in those categories. The theoretical premises for the study was first and foremost the normative demands of journalism in a democracy and were based on the theories regarding information value, brought forth by Kent Asp, as well as other theories regarding normative demands. Previous research in the area is somewhat frugal even though there are quite a few previous studies that have examined TT. The study was a quantitative content analysis carried out through a template by own construction. The four chosen newspapers were analyzed between 14-18 October 2013. These dates were determined by a pilot study where Aftonbladet and Dagens Nyheter had been analyzed throughout the year 2013. The conclusion drawn from the pilot study was that the medium number of TT-articles in the newspapers appeared in October, which is why those dates were chosen. The results of the study showed that 41 percent of the analyzed articles were produced by TT, while 56 percent was produced by the newspaper itself. 3 percent of the articles had no byline. However, on the local pages, the amount of articles from TT was only 9 percent, while the amount on the domestic and foreign pages were 53 and 49 percent. When it comes to the homogenization of articles, it was shown that out of 189 separate TTarticles, 4 occurred in three of the newspapers, 43 occurred in two of the newspapers and the remaining 142 TT-articles were found in one of the newspapers. In conclusion, the study showed that by the study itself it is impossible to determine whether or not the normative demands of journalism were upheld by the newspapers use of TT-material. This was to some extent due to the possibility of different interpretations of the results.