During the Covid-19 pandemic in Sweden, the younger generation has been portrayed by the
media as an unconcerned group that doesn’t follow the Covid-19 restrictions issued by the
Public Health Agency of Sweden and the Swedish government. In our study, we wanted to
look into if and how the pandemic has had an impact on the youths news habits and choice of
news sources. We also asked ourselves the question if their degree of news consumption has
had an impact on the youths perception of the Covid-19 virus and the pandemic.
The research questions we want to answer in our study are the following:

1. Has the pandemic affected the youths news habits regarding:
a. Their news consumption?
b. Their choice of news sources?
2. Has the youths degree of news consumption had an impact on their perception
of the pandemic?

The theoretical framework used in our study consists of the theory of uses and gratification, the theory of sensemaking, the theory of different media users during an ongoing crisis, the theory of news find me-perception and the theoretical idea of news seekers and news avoiders. To answer our research questions we used the method of qualitative interviews, where we interviewed 16 interviewees of the ages 16-25 years old. Our result shows that the
youths news habits and their choice of news sources has been affected by the pandemic. However, we found no convincing evidence of the youths’ perception of the pandemic being affected by their degree of news consumption.

This study makes no claim of generalization. The results are to be viewed as examples of
young people’s opinions and thoughts on the subject, to give a deeper understanding of media
habits during the pandemic.

Title: “Inget strösslande med namnpubliceringar” – En kvalitativ intervjustudie av sportredaktioners etiska förhållningssätt kring namnpublicering av dömda idrottare.

Subject: Undergraduate research paper in journalism studies, Department of journalism, media and communication (JMG), University of Gothenburg.

Purpose: The main purpose of this study is to examine Swedish sports editorial offices’
ethical approach to the publication of names of convicted athletes.

Method: Qualitative in-depth interviews with four Swedish heads of sports, representing four
different newspapers.

Procedure: We have interviewed four heads of sports, representing the sports editorial
offices of four different Swedish newspapers, and transcribed and analyzed them based on
theories about media ethics, news values and intermedia agenda setting.

Results: The Swedish sports editorial offices have a restrictive ethical approach to the publication of names of convicted athletes. The editors emphasize showing consideration to the sanctity of private life. Why an athlete’s name could be published when convicted with crime is partly because of its informal power as a role model.

The results show a structured way of working with these questions. It is a complex subject
and therefore the sports editorial offices also work to prevent unethical publications and
improve their ethical way of working.
Regarding the differences between morning- and evening press, they both have a fairly
equivalent approach to these questions, only finding Dagens Nyheter being a bit more
restrained in one or two questions.

The covid-19 pandemic has affected the whole world in different ways and each country has had a unique approach towards the crisis. Russia and the United States are both powerful nations that regularly appear in the Swedish media coverage. But how does the Swedish news reflect the current situation in Russia and the United States? In this thesis we have
comparatively examined the two biggest Swedish newspapers; Aftonbladet and Dagens Nyheter of the basis of this issue.

Our purpose is to look deeper into the media coverage and to see which images are
reproduced of the two countries. We also want to see if there are any differences between the
countries and how they are presented. The question we wanted to ask ourselves whilst doing
this is “what picture is given by Trump and the US during the Corona pandemic?” And the same thing but about Putin and Russia. We also asked ourselves “Does the image produced by the media coverage indicate any differences between the countries and if so, then how?” The theories we are using to examine this are above all the Theory of Framing, media logic and journalism during crises.

There are two methods used in this thesis, one quantitative method and one qualitative method. The quantitative method is used to see the media coverage in a bigger perspective, how much is reported in general from the both countries? Also as a pilot study to guide us through the qualitative method. During the qualitative text analysis we have looked deeper into the texts to understand the explicit and implicit meanings of the news articles.

The main findings in this study is that there is an existing negative picture of the news from
both countries. They are looked at in different ways, but there is still a framing done to
mediate a negative picture. Donald Trump receives a lot of criticism towards him as a person,
while Vladimir Putin is represented within a bigger picture of the whole political system of
Russia that receives criticism from its inhabitants. Trump is the main focus in the articles that
we’ve studied and Putin has a more anonymous approach. The differences can be summarized
to the focus on Donald Trump’s actions versus the abstraction of the Russian state.

There is a growing interest and understanding of the global climate crisis and the effect that it has on
the world. Through this growing interest, there has correspondingly been an increased amount of
attention that the climate question has been given in media. The purpose of the study is to research
how the journalism of climate change is portrayed in the alternative online newspapers Fria Tider and
Samhällsnytt. Both of these news sources have a right-wing nationalistic context. Through previous
research, it is known that there is a strong correlation between right wing nationalism and denying the concept of climate change. The theoretical points that we have decided to base our analysis on are logic within media, the deign theory and the ideologically critical perspectives. By using these, we will get a better understanding of the research that we acquire.

We decided to divide the research into three parts. The first phase, the mapping phase, gave us
answers to our quantitative research question. Within this stage, we wanted to find out to what extent Fria Tider and Samhällsnytt respond and report to climate change. In the second phase, the qualitative phase, we were able to obtain articles concerning climate change. We then analysed these extensively through a critical discourse study. In the third and last phase, the deepening phase, we researched the most prominent parts to see if the same details and elements were apparent in previously published articles. From here we analysed using the same three factors: diction, favoritism and imagery.

The study shows, in the mapping phase, that climate issues are a low priority, making up around just
one percent of the total articles published on both sites under the span of a three-month period. The
selection of articles presented on the issue, followed by the critical discourse analysis, showed that the articles in fact had very little to do with actual climate change. Instead, the articles in Samhällsnytt often gave way to criticism towards renewable energy while the articles in Fria Tider focused on the actions of activists and politicians or new rules and legislations, often with a significant focus on the opposing voices.

The second phase of the research showed remarkable language details, especially with the use of
quotation marks, questioning terms about climate change and displaying an unserious view of the
people associated with the issue. People with a critical voice towards climate activists or politicians implementing climate regulations were given a lot of space in both media. Images were used in the articles to portray Greta Thunberg in an unprofessional manner. The research also showed that in most articles, critical voices towards people fighting for climate action were prioritized.

The third phase confirmed our previous research. However, just as in the second phase, images in
Samhällsnytt were used in an objective manner. Unprofessional images of Greta Thunberg were less
frequent in the third phase.

Our study concludes that both Fria Tider and Samhällsnytt are skeptical to climate change being
caused by human activity and about acknowledging the concept of a climate crisis.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the media construction of the State Epidemiologist Anders Tegnell in Aftonbladet and Dagens Nyheter. The aim is to see if there is a pattern in how frequently he appears in the corona reporting, which roles he has been assigned and if they have changed from week 10 to week 48. Furthermore, the study aims to see if there is a difference in the media construction of Anders Tegnell between the newspapers Aftonbladet and Dagens Nyheter.

This has been achieved by performing a combined quantitative content analysis and qualitative text analysis. The first part of the study was carried out by collecting 990 articles from Mediearkivet Retriever to see how frequently he appeared over the chosen period of time. Moreover, we determined a number of criteria and through them we ended up with 99 articles which we analysed with an analysis schedule constructed by us.

With the help of a theoretical framework consisting of News as Stories, Framing, Personification, Crisis Journalism, Media Logic, State-orientated Risk Culture and the terms Role and State Epidemiologist we have been able to understand the media construction of Anders Tegnell.

The primary findings of this study were that the media construction was divided into two parts: Anders Tegnell was either assigned a role or evaluated by others. The four roles were The Teacher, The Pilot, The Defender and The Private Person. The Teacher was the most common role, but they all integrated with each other during the chosen period of time. In excess of the roles, he and his actions were evaluated by others with the help of stylistic figures such as “hero”, “father of the land” and that he should “get off his high horse”.

The purpose of this study is to analyse the effects of personalization in media, specifically media covering climate change. Personalization in media is a widely spread journalistic norm, yet it is not without some criticism from the academic world. Climate change is said to be one of our generation’s toughest battles, and thus one of the greatest news stories. With political leaders, international corporations and organisations finding ways to tackle the issue – the journalistic sector should do the same.

Media covering the climate change today is, in our opinion, dominated by scholars, politicians and NGOs. Which is also supported by studies of swedish and american media. In this study we want to research if this it the right way when engaging the public in the issue. Our frame of analysis and the aim of our study is the aspects of public interest; does personalization have an effect on the public interest of climate change issues? And issue importance; does personalization have an effect on the public’s perceived issue importance of climate change issues? The following question is if different groups of the public are affected differently.

We have conducted an experimental survey analysis in which we have given two different groups of responders, different stimulus. One with an article about climate change without a personalized case; and the other with an article about climate change which contained a personalized case. The content of analysis is the responders answers to questions following the stimuli. The questions was of different characters; mapping different characters of the responders, establishing index for issue importance and interest, and control questions to establish cause for the result. Each survey got 129 responses with responders from different demographic groups.

Our result showed that personalization has little effect on the public as a group. It had, however, some effect on specific demographic groups, specifically regarding the aspect of perceived issue importance. In the response group who received the non-personalized article, there was high correlation between issue importance, and gender, education, age and perceived knowledge and preexisting interest of the climate change issue. However this correlation did not exist in said demographic groups in the other group of responders, with the personalized article.

This tells us that the article without the personalized case was less accessible. However the personalized article also had some negative effects on, among others, women, highly educated and on the ones who previously stated high knowledge.

The intention of this analysis has been to investigate how two missing 12-year old boys, Dante and Mahmoud, and their disappearance are portrayed in news articles in the four largest daily newspapers in Sweden; Aftonbladet, Expressen, Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet. Another intention was to analyze the amount of articles about each case, in the same newspapers.

The material that was analyzed consists of 64 articles, 16 of them covering Mahmoud and his disappearance, and 48 covering Dante and his disappearance. The material that was selected to the analysis is news articles published in the four newspapers during the two first weeks after each boy had disappeared. The articles written about Dante were published during November 2018, and the articles about Mahmoud in August 2019.

Theories about representation and framing of racial minorities and people with intellectual disabilities in news media have been used to guide the analysis, and to draw conclusions. To establish a schedule for the analysis, Robert Entman’s theories on framing and his article Framing, Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm ​were used.​​ Each article was analyzed with the same questions and frames, based on Entman’s framing theories.

The results of the analysis show that Dante and his disappearance was covered by the newspapers with more frequency and a significantly larger quantity than Mahmoud’s. The results also show that Dante is more frequently framed in a way to stir emotions in the reader than Mahmoud. Another major difference is the reporters way of describing the boys and the cases with their own words. In Mahmoud’s case, the reporters tend to be more objective, and do not use emotionally charged words. In the reporting on Dante on the other hand, they are more subjective, and frequently use words of a more emotional character.

The purpose of this study is to examine age and the representation of elderly in Gothenburg’s major local newspaper, Göteborgs-Posten. This is studied through quantitative and qualitative analyses of 14 editions of the newspaper (995 articles) in the spring of 2019 where factors such as age, gender, topic, and role played by the subject of the article were analyzed.

The study uses different theories to further understand and analyze the material. For example theories about diversity, representation, and agenda-setting. These theories help explain what news are, how and why some news stories are chosen over others, and how different types of mediums, such as text and pictures, can affect the way people are perceived. There is little previous research in the subject, ageism in media, but the few studies that there are have shown that elderly usually are very underrepresented in the media. The questions at issue are: which ages are present in Göteborgs-Posten? In which context are elderly present and what kind of role are they playing? How are elderly described in the articles? This study adds to the existing research and contributes to the more specific subject area, ageism in media.

The results of the analyses show that elderly are underrepresented in the Göteborgs-Posten, but that they have increased in visibility in the media since previous research. From 5 to 10 percent to 12 percent. The arenas in which elderly are more prone to be a part of are international and entertainment news. This could be due to many political leaders and other types of leaders from other cultures being older. The results also showed that the majority of the subjects of the articles were men, and the topic most written about generally is sport. From the qualitative analysis, it was found that most articles about elderly were neutral and did generally not use negative words to describe them. The most used descriptive word was ‘successful’, but other words like ‘stubborn’, ‘aged’ and ‘understanding’ were also used.

The conclusion made is that elderly are still underrepresented in the media, but that, generally speaking, the subjects were described in a positive or a neutral way. Most of the subject were public figures (~39 percent), which means that if you are older than 65, you are much more interesting to the media, and likely to be present in the newspaper, if you are famous.

Purpose: The purpose of the study is to investigate why people use social media to consume news. Through in-depth interviews with five different groups consisting of people in the same life situations, the group’s consuming of
news on social media is examined in different contexts, as well as similarities and differences between the different groups.

Method: Qualitative in-depth interviews with five different groups consisting of people in the same life situation.

Procedure: Five interviews with groups containing people in the same life situation,
were transcribed and analyzed using Marc Prensky’s perspective and the theory of uses and gratification. The study builds on the core concepts motivation,​ ​situation​, ​individual​ and ​structure​, which are linked to uses and gratification.

Results: The results of the study shows that the younger audience tend to use social
media for consuming news to a greater extent than the older audience. Also, the older audience seem to be more sensitive in terms of “screen time”. On the contrary, the younger interviewees turned out to use their phones and social media for the majority of their consumption of news. What turned out to be the main reason to active use of social media was, among other things, interests and life situation. However, the use of news on social media is more passive than it is active. The analysis shows that news consuming on social media allways can be explained by the four core concepts of uses and gratification.