The aim of this study is to examine if ethnic diversity is included in the regulatory documents of Swedish journalism educations. It will also examine how the prevalence of ethnic diversity changes over the time. This was achieved by examination of the three following aspects: (i) In which way ethnic diversity is included in the regulatory documents; (ii) What differences that occur in the documents over time; (iii) The difference between how gender and ethnic diversity are included in the documents.
The theoretical framework used to analyse and interpret the results of our study is rooted in postcolonialism: the theory of ”we and them”, orientalism and hegemony. Furthermore the theory of discursive discrimination was used. Earlier research has been a contributing factor to analyze the results as well.
This study was carried out using a qualitative text analysis and consisted of analyzing all journalism educations in Sweden. To discover any changes over time we examined the years, 1989, 1999, 2009 and 2019. Four different questions were used to analyze how and in which way the concepts “ethnic diversity” and “gender” was included in the regulatory documents. The questions were:
1. What is said about ethnic diversity?
2. Are there any notions in the documents that can be interpreted as ethnic diversity?
3. What is said about gender?
4. Are there any notions in the documents that can be interpreted as gender?
With a total of six different journalism educations and over 30 regulatory documents, the results shows that ethnic diversity is not generally included in the regulatory documents. The results show differences in how frequently gender occurs in comparison to ethnic diversity. Furthermore the result show an increase in 2009 where ethnic diversity is mentioned at least once in every journalism program. In 2019 it decreases and most documents regress to excluding ethnic diversity in the regulatory documents.

Aim of thesis: The aim of the study is to investigate how young adolescents aged 16 to 29 argues and motivates a distrust in the traditional news media.

Theoretical framework: Institutional trust, Dunning Kruger effect, Uses and gratification, Confirmation bias.

Methods: Qualitative focus groups interviews consisting of teenagers aged 16 to 19 enrolled in high school programmes in Västerås, Sweden.

Results: The results of the study showed that a distrust in the traditional news media was motivated by a general knowledge that the media is controlled by other forces in society in contrast to the one of being an objective mirror of world events. Powers of the market, censorship and propaganda are mentioned as well as the media having their own political agenda. An awareness of one’s own inability to fully determine what is true or not also affect the level of distrust. The respondents further discuss how the consequences on trust of spreading fake news depends on the motive of the source. A few of the mentioned factors that increase the distrust towards the media are mainly exaggerated and angled news as well as having a history of spreading false news.

Previous research surrounding environmental journalism has shown that it fluctuates heavily over time regarding the amount of medial content being produced on the subject. This phenomenon is, in this field of research, commonly referred to as attention cycles. Studies have shown that in 2007 environmental journalism reached a new peak in Sweden in which the dominating category of the subject was climate journalism. Climate journalism differs from environmental journalism in that it is solely focused on climate where the effects of global warming are central, whereas environmental journalism is a much broader term.

The next year to show a clear peak in the amount of climate journalism being produced in Sweden was 2018. The purpose of our study was to examine if and in what way the medial content during these two years changed. We examined how the problem was presented, which actors appeared in our analysis units and how they were depicted.

The theories taken into account were media logic and framing theory and the method of choice to compare similarities and differences in climate journalism during the years 2007 and 2018 was critical discourse analysis (CDA). Twelve articles from the four biggest newspapers in Sweden were analysed, six articles from 2007 and six from 2018. The results of the study showed that the two years differed in how the “climate crisis” was presented. In 2007 it was depicted as a future problem in 2007, whereas it was as an ongoing crisis in 2018. The results also showed similarities between the years where solutions to the climate crisis are rarely mentioned or explored, and that journalists often make conclusions that are not backed by the statements made by the scientists that are interviewed in the same articles. Our study also finds that climate sceptics are depicted as more confrontative than the advocates of human made climate change.

During the refugee crisis of 2015 and 2016 the European Union experienced an unparalleled amount of refugee and migrant arrivals. ​As member states and political parties disagreed on how to respond to the migratory pressures, ​the parliaments ​2014​-​2019​ legislative ​term would be characterized by numerous internal conflicts.

The purpose of this study is to examine Swedish news coverage of the asylum issue at EU level during the parliamentary period of 2014-2019. We will examine how frequent the news coverage has been and how the issue has been framed by implementing a quantitative content analysis. The material that was analyzed consists of news articles from four major Swedish newspapers. For comparison we chose two daily national newspapers; Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet, and two tabloid newspapers; Aftonbladet and Expressen. We sampled content from five years of daily newspaper editions by selecting 20 constructed weeks, and using keywords to single out content relevant to our study. We investigated the prevalence of six generic frames described in previous research on framing common in media coverage of politics; attribution of responsibility, human interest, conflict, economic consequences, strategy and morality frame. We also base our quantitative content analysis in the theory of issue-attention-cycles, that are the way in which the media or the public pay attention to an issue over time.

The main findings in this study show that Swedish news-coverage of asylum issues on an EU-level follow a cyclical pattern, and that coverage of the issue peaked in the third quarter of 2015. The daily press accounted for 68% of the coverage on the issue and DN had an existing coverage throughout the parliamentary term of office, while the coverage by the tabloids was mostly concentrated in 2015 and 2016. Overall, the attribution of responsibility frame was most commonly used in the news published in the printed press by the four news outlets.

Keywords: Framing, issue-attention-cycle, media-attention-cycle, EU, refugee, refugee-crisis, Dagens Nyheter, Svenska Dagbladet, Aftonbladet, Expressen, quantitative content analysis

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the seemingly increase in public debate over the past two decades has affected the amount of opinion pieces in the paper edition of Aftonbladet.

The main questions we have answered in this study are the following; has the number of opinion pieces in Aftonbladets paper edition changed over the past twenty years, what topics and text genres are most frequent and has there been a change over time. Lastly; has the writers of opinion pieces changed over time.

We have chosen to use a quantitative content analysis to conduct this study. The empirical evidence of this study consists of 84 paper editions of Aftonbladet equally spread over the years 1997 to 2017. We used theories of digitisation, commercialisation, public orientation and agenda setting to be able to understand the results of our study.

The main results of this study shows that the amount of opinion pieces in the paper edition of Aftonbladet has decreased with more that 40 percent over the past twenty years, which can be explained due to the decrease of the text genre “letter to the editor”. The results also shows that the most common subject for the opinion pieces is political criticism. It was also the most common subject each year.

Results regarding the text genre showed that the letter to the editor where the most common overall. As mentioned before, this text genre decreased over the years, however still remaining the most common each year, most likely due to the short format of the pieces. The debate articles, columns and editorials did not change much over the years, but remained constant.

As for the writers of opinion pieces it was shown that nearly half of the writers were male, yet only a quarter were female. The remaining quarter was made up by the writers that could not be defined as neither sex. The most common type of writer was the private individual, most likely due to the great amount of letters to the editor. However this changed over time. As the letters to the editor decreased, the paid writers, such as journalist and columnists, increased, and during the past ten years becoming the most common type of writer.

The aim of this analysis has been to investigate how Greta Thunberg and Malala Yousafzai are portrayed in news articles in five of Sweden’s largest newspapers: Aftonbladet, Dagens Nyheter, Expressen, Göteborgs-Posten and Svenska Dagbladet. First, 55 articles were analyzed with a content analysis. Out of the 55 articles, 8 articles were selected based on meticulously discussed criteria and a text analysis of these 8 articles was carried out.

The 55 articles were selected with help from a list of criteria, where 38 of these articles are about Greta Thunberg and 17 of them are about Malala Yousafzai. The articles about Greta Thunberg were published during the period February to April 2019, and the articles about Malala Yousafzai were published during the period of October to December 2014. The time periods were chosen based on the fact that these months were the months both of them had been published the most so far in Swedish news media. Theories about gender, representation and framing have been used to guide the study and analyze its results.

The results of the content analysis show that Greta Thunberg’s age is mentioned
a lot more than Malala Yousafzai’s age. The quantitative result also show that Greta Thunberg is referred to as an activist significantly more often than Malala Yousafzai, who is only referred to as an activist in one of her 17 articles. Both Greta Thunberg and Malala Yousafzai have the majority of all the articles’ quotes, and there is also a lot of focus on their person rather than their activism.

The qualitative result showed us that Greta Thunberg and Malala Yousafzai doesn’t have a lot in common with the theory about how women or young people are portrayed within the media. The articles write about them in a positive character. The media’s fascination with these young activists can be directly connected to them as a unique phenomenon, rather than how typical female adolescents are portrayed.

The main purpose of this study is to examine people’s comprehension and interpretation of different kinds of pictures in Swedish news. More specific to study the possible differences that people might register between user-generated content – also referred to as amateur imagery – and professional news photography.

Theoretical framework: Our analysis is based on the theory regarding rhetoric within the field of imagery. We argue that images are able to create different meanings, tell stories and persuade its observers. Another theory we used is the framing theory which implies that all human beings interpret the world differently based on our previous experiences. In this case our interpretation of an image will always depend on the context in which it is presented to us.

Method: Qualitative in-depth interviews with five respondents presenting their own opinions about amateur images and professional images within Swedish news media. During the interviews the respondents were introduced to six different pictures. Half of the photos were taken by amateur photographers and half of them were taken by professional photographers. The respondents did not know whether they were presented to an amateur picture or to a professional picture.

Results: When presented to pictures taken by both amateurs and professional news photographers the respondents in this study rated the professional pictures as better than the amateur pictures. The reason why is because the professional news pictures were perceived as more informative and better able to tell a story because they generally had a higher level of technical quality. Pictures that seemed to lack these qualities were perceived as less trustworthy and not informative due to bad technical quality which made it difficult for the respondents to grasp the situation of the picture.

Amateur pictures and professional pictures were said to evoke similar feelings although amateur images could come across as more violent and chaotic. Therefore, amateur images were also said to be more suitable for being published in evening tabloids rather than in the daily broadsheet newspapers or public service media, if published at all.