Mellan Askim och Angered

Authors: Fanny Edstam & Joacim Kettil Title: Between Askim and Angered. A quantitative research of media’s presentation of individuals in different socio-economic residential areas. Level: Bachelor of Journalism Location: University of Gothenburg Language: Swedish Number of pages: 41 Gothenburg is a city that struggles with the issues of segregation. Residential areas like Askim are poorly integrated and areas like Angered have a high amount of immigrated inhabitants. Our hypothesis, with this in mind, is that one can assume media reports from different socio economic residential areas in different ways. The assumed difference in reporting can have an effect in the readers beliefs that an area can be better or worse than it actually is. In this way media can reinforce or cement an already substantial belief on what residential areas and their inhabitants are like, when the truth can be more balanced. If you only hear positive stories from one area, or on the other hand only negative ones from another, the reader is primed to connect the residents to the same issues. Therefore, the study aims to evaluate how people are portrayed in local media depending on what socio-economic residential area they reside in. A quantitative content analysis on three local newspapers was conducted during the year of 2013 with a total of 633 coded and analyzed units of articles who mention the residential areas. The residential area Nordost and its inhabitants are portrayed in a more negative way compared to the residential areas Centrumväst and Sydväst. The findings are connected to different media theories like framing and priming. It is concluded that our results on the whole match our hypothesis and our theories. But it is problematic to draw any definite conclusions because of the comparatively small amount of variables we analyzed.