Title: Palestinian freelance journalists – self-censorship, customers and role in society Number of pages: 67 Authors: Linnea Fridh and Jens Wingren Mentor: Gabriella Sandstig Course: Bachelor thesis, Journalism studies Period: Spring 2015 University: Faculty of Journalism, Media and Communication (JMG) University of Gothenburg Purpose/ Aim: The aim of the study is to map and analyse the working conditions, possibilities and limitations of Palestinian freelance journalists.. Main results: By analysing the answers of our respondents we have concluded that the main possibility with the working conditions of Palestinian freelance journalists is their flexibility. As long as they are financially safe (for example from working another job) they can be more straightforward and uncompromising in their journalism. Freelance journalists are however limited by the financial scarcity of the Palestinian media that don’t pay them enough and offer lacking support. Feeling excluded from the union is also something that specifically affects the freelance journalists and might make them feel more vulnerable. There is therefore a slight paradox inherent in the situation of the Palestinian freelancer: they have the opportunity to do good and critical journalism, but only if they can support themselves financially in some other way. Another finding of this study is that freelance journalists may alter their implications of professional ideals such as objectivity and neutrality when they work with foreign news desks. Working with this kind of customers also provides a way of expressing oneself with less fear of repercussions from differing factors in Palestinian society that might want to silence dissent.

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: Under the surface – Fredrik Reinfeldt and Stefan Löfven in a comparative photo study Authors: Jon Demred, Fanny Wijk & Olivia Wikström Level: Bachelor of Journalism Location: University of Gothenburg Language: Swedish Number of pages: 39 This thesis compares how Stefan Löfven was being portrayed in Swedish media the week after the general election 2014 with how Fredrik Reinfeldt was portrayed in the first week after 2006’s general election. There has been made a lot of research on how politicians are portrayed in the media, but most of the research focus on text portrayal. This thesis focus on something different, it compares how the two “winners” were portrayed in news photos. A semiotic approach was used to analyse news images in the newspapers Aftonbladet, Expressen, Svenska Dagbladet and Dagens Nyheter. It was important to not only look at the pictures, but also the outer context, i.e the headlines, had to be analysed to come to any conclusions. Fredrik Reinfeldt was portrayed more positive and more as a winner than Stefan Löfven was. This was probably due to the different political situations between the elections. The portrayals, however, had not much to do with the photos themselves, rather the headlines. The analysis shows that the emotions both “winners” expressed in the photos were quite similar. The main difference between how they were portrayed laid not in the pictures but in the outer context. The final conclusion is that even though pictures take up a lot of space in newspapers, they still are subordinate to text.

Today most people are in agreement that the media industry is in crisis. Many newsrooms cut down on staff. At the same time the PR industry is growing. We wanted to research if this could affect the unbiased and independent news in our news media today. Today’s newsrooms receive a lot of press releases every day. How many of these reach the published news? Our main purpose was to study the origin of the news published in four different media. To study how many of the news that came from press releases and learn the opinion about press releases of each news editor, and if they treat different senders in different ways. We examined four different media: one daily newspaper, one tabloid, one local radio sta-tion and one regional television newscast. This we did by examine two days of their news. To find out the source in a reliable way we called the people appearing in the article and not just the reporter. We also interviewed the news editor of each media. Our results show that our theory on cutting down staff would affect the use of press releas-es did not correlate with the reality. According to our study the news editors and news-rooms are mostly positive towards press releases. They use them as any other tip or source. However they all agree that, since they get so many, it takes a lot of their time to sort them all out. Although all editors also agree that they don’t rely on getting news from press re-leases, the result shows otherwise. Press releases seem to be a daily part of the newsrooms, at least the two days we examined. Our result also shows that there is a difference in usage of press releases between the different media organizations, and the press releases that are mostly used come from authorities and not from profit-driven companies. Our study excludes sports and culture, because we wanted to focus on the most unbiased part of the news. If these had not been excluded the result would probably have been very different.

Title: ”världens mest fruktade terrororganisation” en diskursanalys av rapporteringen om Islamiska Staten Author: Martin Landin Subject: Undergraduate research paper in Journalism studies, Dept. Of Journalism, media and communication (JMG) Gothenburg University Term: Autumn 2014 Supervisor: Gabriella Sandstig, JMG Gothenburg Pages/words: 34/16295 Purpose: The purpose is to examine the discourses that characterize the news about the Islamic state (IS) in Swedish newspapers, and to study how these discourses are expressed. Method: Critical Discourse Analysis Procedure: 10 articles from Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet were analysed through Critical Discourse Analysis. Results: The analysed articles shows tendencies of orientalist discourse and of a propagandistic discourse which is a part of war journalism.

Authors: Johannes Andersson, Kim Karlsson and Daniel Sandström Title: The development of crime reporting Level: Bachelor of Journalism Location: University of Gothenburg Language: Swedish Number of pages: 59 Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine how the Swedish crime reporting has changed over time. Question at issue: How do the Swedish newspapers describe the criminality? In what way do the Swedish newspaper describe the offenders in crime-related articles? How has the Swedish crime reporting changed over time? Method and material: Quantitative content analysis of the two newspapers Dagens Nyheter and Göteborgs-Posten. Main result: The Swedish newspaper’s way of describing the criminality has changed over time. During the investigated period of time the frequency of crime reports in the editorial material has dropped. In 2010 the crime report consisted mainly of crime reports regarding offence against the person. That was not the case in 1990. In some ways the newspapers are restrictive in what they are writing and in some ways they are not. Although the Swedish rules of press ethics say to be restrictive describing an offender’s gender or age the newspapers are not. Writing about the ethnicity of an offender is on the other hand very uncommon.

Discussions of structural racism has now moved to the forefront of the Swedish society, and many researchers have sought to understand what form it takes, how it is manifested, how it is exploited and challenged. At the core of this debate we find the media, and its logic embedded with mechanisms of simplification and polarization. Media is our key source of knowledge and information, why it also affects our norms, beliefs and preconceptions. Media thus has the power to mediate, amplify or challenge how we conceptualize the world, and subsequently our (unconscious) racist beliefs. To investigate how media content is influenced by underlying colonial or racist assumptions and stereotypes thus becomes a way to investigate our understanding of reality. In accordance with postcolonial thought, structural and symbolic racism is embedded in language and hidden in images, and surface in the form of domination and feminization, and the portrayal of the subaltern ‘Other’ as passive and irrational. This paper thus departs from postcolonial theory and media logic to undercover hidden patterns of structural, symbolic and historically contingent racism in one of Sweden’s most prominent in-depth foreign TV-magazines, namely Korrespondenterna. Adopting Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), this paper explores to what extent racist and colonial stereotypes are reproduced and/or challenged in Korrespondenterna’s representation of Sub-Saharan Africa. In line with postcolonial theory it is found that historically contingent racialized stereotypes are prevalent in Korrespondenterna, and that tendencies of portraying Africa and Africans as passive, feminine and irrational are prevailing. It is thus argued that media logic, imbedded with mechanisms of simplification, polarization and intensification, contributes to the use of colonial stereotypes in media, and thus to the mediation of structural and symbolic racism.