När blir en ensam galning terrorist?

Authors: Oskar Dahlgren, Madeleine Gartéus, Mohamed Yussuf
Title: When does a lone madman become a terrorist? – a quantitative content analysis on how media describes loneoffenders of violence with connections to ideology.
Level: Bachelor in Journalism
Location: Gothenburg University
Language: Swedish
Number of pages: 39
The purpose of this study is to analyze how Swedish printed media reported from three different acts of violence, and if (and how) they described the offenders as terrorists. The study is based on printed editions of the Swedish newspapers Aftonbladet, Dagens Nyheter
and Svenska Dagbladet. The study is set on analyzing the initial seven days related to the issue of each offender.
The study will display how the offenders were described by each of the Swedish newspapers, and if they were described as terrorists. If not, the study will display how they were described instead. Mainly, the study will focus on whether the religious and ideological beliefs play a role in medias use of the word terrorist.
The study is a quantitative content analysis, containing a total number of 242 articles, and is based on news evaluationand
media framing theory.
The result shows that there are some differences between how the media use the word terrorism based on international and national terrorism.
The most usual description based on our results is that Lundin Pettersson is a right wing extremist, while Abdulwahab is a terrorist with a deviant perception of reality.
Keywords: terrorism, madman, news evaluation, Swedish media, Aftonbladet, Dagens Nyheter, Svenska Dagbladet.
Nyckelord: terrorism, galning, nyhetsvärdering, svensk media, Aftonbladet, Dagens Nyheter, Svenska Dagbladet.