The main purpose of this thesis is to explore journalists’ views of the role of journalism in the asylum processes. The potentially problematic phenomenon is growing, and its spread will affect the way publishing decisions are made in the future. The subject is new and foreign to many journalists, and little to no research has previously been done on the subject. Our study will therefore provide new insight in the field of journalism ethics. We have conducted a qualitative study based on interviews with eight Swedish journalists who in one way or another have reported on threatened asylum seekers. In order to understand the journalists’ responses in a broader context, an interview with lawyer Aino Gröndahl was also included in the study. The analysis is based on theories of journalistic values and ethics, specifically consequence neutrality, objectivity and social responsibility. In addition, journalistic ethics in a changing and global media landscape has been an important theoretical field. The analyze method is based on P. Burnards’ (2008) thematic content analysis. In the analysis we assumed four analytical themes; The Journalistic Task, Relationship to the Source, The View of Consequences and Responsibilities, and The Role in Specific Cases. One of the more interesting results of our study is that journalists are largely unaware of media attention being used as a strategy in the asylum process. Journalists tend to de-emphasize their own importance in asylum cases. Aino Gröndahl, however, confirms that journalists’ actions greatly effect the asylum process. The journalists hardly reflect over the impact an article can create, even though they operate in a globalized and connected world. Journalists often implement consequence neutrality – but respecting the sources’ security is an important factor.

Authors: Malin Andersson & Mattias Åsén Titel: “Det här är ett plagiat” Level: Bachelor of Journalism Location: University of Gothenburg Language: Swedish Number of pages: 44 (without appendix) Sportbladet is Sweden’s biggest sports newspaper online. Their audience, as for all online newspaper’s audience, has big expectations of a steady flow of news. The economic conditions of journalism, together with the interests from the owners, may force newspapers to produce large quantities of news for cheap costs. One way to achieve this is to take other media’s news and write them in your own words, so-called “rewrites”. The purpose of this study is to investigate how Sportbladet relates to copyright laws when they rewrite articles online. To answer this question we begin with a quantitative content analysis and continue with a qualitative text analysis. Our quantitative results show that 34% of all articles in a week were rewrites. We found that most articles use three or four “stolen” quotes, but that 29 of 115 articles use more than five stolen quotes. We also found that 18% of the articles use a stolen quote in the heading, subheading and the lead. Furthermore did our qualitative results show us that it is highly likely that some of Sportbladet’s articles are breaking the copyright law. We’ve had the copyright law and previous convicted cases as a base for our analyses and have seen that all of our three examples have a lot of similarities to the previous convicted case we have compared to. Two out of three examples also show to lack an own contribution to the text. They have almost identical disposition to the original text and they use some words from the original text in a way that could be nothing else but imitation. To have a law that few care about and that do not have consequences must be considered a problem. The question is what the reason behind this behavior is? And why is no one being convicted? What will the future bring? In this essay, we discuss this according to theories about economy, digitalization and commercialization. To our help, we have an interview with Aftonbladet’s publisher Jan Helin and a discussion in a podcast episode with Jan Helin and Expressen’s editor in chief Thomas Mattsson.

The purpose of this study is to examine the mediatization of Swedish politics on a municipal level. We live in a world were media affects many aspects of life. One of those aspects is the communication between the citizens and the politicians. Our main research questions are: To what extent do politicians communicate with journalists and who initiates these contacts? Do politicians talk to some types of media rather than others? What factors make a politician choose to speak to media? To what extent do leading Swedish municipal politicians use media strategies? To answer these questions we have used various theories to help us understand media’s role of today. First we explain the transformation that has taken part in Swedish media over the last century, from political party press to independent media companies. Then we explain the theories about the mediatization of the politics and the difference between media logic and political logic. Lastly we also go through media’s role in a democratic society. To answer our research questions we constructed an online survey which we sent to all chairmen and vice chairmen of the municipal boards in Sweden, a total of 786 politicians. 525, 68 percent, chose to take the survey. Our study shows that a vast majority of leading Swedish municipal politicians talk to journalists at least once a week. A majority of the politicians also experience that the coverage of their politics differ between different media sources and many also find it hard to reach out to the citizens with their politics through media. Nearly half of the respondents work with media strategies. The study confirms previous studies that the politics are mediatization and that the media affects the politicians’ work to a considerable extent.

On subsequent days, the 18th and 19th of December 2012, large groups of young people gathered to protest in the centre of Gothenburg. The gatherings mainly occurred outside two high schools: Plusgymnasiet and Framtidsgymnasiet. The reason behind the gathering has often been explained by the young people’s reaction to an Instagram account, on which offensive pictures and comments of and about young boys and girls had been published. As a reaction to the protest, police force including helicopters and mounted police, was sent to the streets. Disorder occurred. The high schools were closed. About 20 protesters were temporarily taken in to custody. Ever since, the events has, in Swedish mass-media, often been referred to as the “Instagram-riots” or the “Instagram-uprising”. Our study aims, with help from Ethnographic Content Analysis (ECA) and a quantitative content analysis, to show how this protest was framed in four Swedish newspapers: Aftonbladet, Göteborgs-Posten, Göteborg-Tidningen and Metro Göteborg. The study is based on the theoretical perspective of framing, it’s components, and on earlier research of protests. The mass-media today possess a powerful position. By framing they may affect how the public will understand and evaluate a protest-movement. Our major findings show that violent elements of a “riot”, episodic interpretations of cause and solution, a coverage mainly based on police sources, and a negative tone is prominent in framing the events.

Title: ”Varför går man inte hårdare fram? – En studie i krigsorienterad journalistik av Public Service från Ukrainakonflikten” Authors: Cemil Arikan, Staffan Florén Sandberg and Karl Henrik Olsson Subject: Undergraduate research paper in journalism studies, Dept. of journalism, media and communication (JMG) Gothenburg University Term: Spring 2014 Supervisor: Mathias Färdigh, JMG, Gothenburg University Pages/words: 48 pages/16701 words Purpose: The main purpose of the paper was to examine if and to what extent the conflict coverage of two Swedish public service news programmes from the ongoing Ukrainian conflict could be said to orientate towards either war or peace journalism. Method: Quantitative and qualitative content analysis Procedure: News broadcasts from Rapport 19:30 and Dagens Eko kvart-i-fem, covering the Ukrainian conflict, over a period of two months, were analyzed from the normative perspective of Johan Galtung’s peace journalism theory and Wilhelm Kempf’s theory of war and peace discourse. Results: Both Rapport and Dagens Eko were found orientating towards war journalism. Reports were given, in a great extent, to events of violence and verbal threats. The conflict was largely conceptualized and constructed as a competitive struggle between Russia on the one side and Ukraine with its western allies on the other.

Title: Two sides of the same coin. A quantative content analysis of how Swedish daily press frames begging Authors: Mirjam Hultin, Linda Moström & Caroline Widenheim Subject: Undergraduate research paper in journalism studies Location: Dept. of journalism, media and communication (JMG) University of Gothenburg Term: Spring 2014 Supervisor: Britt Börjesson, JMG, University of Gothenburg Language: Swedish Number of pages: 45 (excluding appendix) Background: During the late twentieth century, there was a debate in the daily press concerning the increase of homeless and beggars in Stockholm. Voices arose wanting to make it illegal to beg, especially in the subways. Today, the issue is again up for debate now focusing on the increase of migrants from poor countries of the European Union. Purpose: The main purpose is to examine how the phenomena beggary is portrayed in the daily press. We aimed to make a comparison between two periods, 1997-2000 and 2007-2013, and between different newspapers. Method: A quantitative content analysis of four major Swedish newspapers using a digital archive and a search string designed to sort out all articles concerning beggars in Sweden. A total of 352 articles from four major newspapers from the first and the second period were coded and analysed. Results: In our compared periods of time, we met two different portrayals of people begging and beggary. The person who is begging is in most cases being talked about and may rarely be heard, while as politicians and/or office holders are most frequent as main agents. In the nineties, the person begging is (implicitly) swedish, while during the 21st century, half of the articles presents the “beggar” to be from Romania. The most common is to not state a cause to the beggary, but when they did in the nineties the most common was homelessness, addiction and poverty. In the 21st century, the most common cause is poverty, though it is interesting that coercion and discrimination never was mentioned in the nineties, while today it’s mentioned frequently.

Authors: Agnes Källén & Amanda Redin Title: Level: Bachelor of Journalism Location: University of Gothenburg Language: Swedish Number of Pages: 39 With this study we aimed to answer the following questions: has the amount of brand exposure on the Tv4 show “Nyhetsmorgon” increased between the years 2008 and 2013? And if so, how can the increase be explained by well-recognized research in the field? The media industry is changing toward an increasingly commercial content. In television, this change is mainly caused by the growth in shows watched on the web and through time shift, which is the act of watching something on a digital video recorder, or DVR. This gives the viewer the possibility to fast forward through the commercial breaks, and therefore forces the networks as well as the advertizer to find new ways to reach consumers. Hence the plausible growth in product placement and brand exposure. A Swedish new radio and tv law that came into effect in 2010, regulated the previously unregulated area of product placement, which adds an interesting paradox to our above stated questions. Our findings were that the brand exposure indeed had increased, but only slightly. The difference in registered brand exposures was shown to only be about 6.5 procent. However, other findings were that the number of brand exposures increased on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, as to prepare the viewers for potential purchases during the weekend. Other patterns within the brand exposures were found as well, for example that most exposures were found to be considered as “neutral”, portraying the brand neither positively nor negatively. All findings were then connected to and explained by established research theories.

The world today is not an equal place. We see children starve, people being discriminated and women’s rights being neglected. The media coverage of women’s sports is no exception. In this study we have explored the difference between men’s and women’s media coverage in Swedish sports journalism. This has been done by using quantitative method together with interviews in order to define why the coverage is the way it is. Our theoretical points of departure are gender theories, identification theory and the news value theories gatekeeping and agenda setting. A central part of our study has been to analyze which factors determine how much space women’s sports get in Swedish media today and if it’s possible to change these. Our main research questions have been: – How is the space divided between men’s sports and women’s sports in SVT, TV4, Sportbladet and Sportexpressen? – Why is the space divided the way it is? We found that Swedish media covers women’s sports much less than men’s sports. In general, men’s sports take 80 percent of the media coverage and women’s sports take the remaining 20.The reasons for this could be the lack of female sport journalists, the economic interests of media and/or the overall public interest in women’s sports. These factors depend on each other. Therefor we have come to the conclusion that we need more women in the sports journalism field in Sweden, both as reporters and on the executive posts to make sports and sports media coverage more equal.

Title: “Du är partiledare (…) men inte minst en helt vanlig människa” – En studie av partiledarnas framträdanden i Nyfiken på partiledaren. Authors: Marcus Alakangas and Martin Ridderstolpe Subject: Undergraduate research paper in journalism studies, Dept. of journalism, media and communication (JMG) Gothenburg University Term: Spring 2014 Supervisor: Mats Ekström, JMG, Gothenburg University Purpose: Our main purpose is to examine whether there is a pattern of similarities to which the Swedish party leaders adapt to in their narratives and presentation of self in the television show Nyfiken på partiledaren. Method: Etnographic Content Analysis Procedure: The first part of all eight episodes was transcribed and analyzed from the perspective that the interviewee is doing a presentation of self. Results: There are tendencies that the party leaders adapt to similar patterns in their narratives and presentation of self. The main aspect of that is in the way they portrait themselves as ordinary persons that people can relate to. Another aspect is that the narratives they put forth are in coherence with their political views. The private and political personas of the party leaders intertwine.