Personen i fokus

The person in focus – A study of the changing role of individuals’ on the newspaper’s front pages over the last 50 years Written by: Victor Kennmark, Fredrik Palmqvist & Anders Wollner Bachelor’s degree of Journalism Department of Journalism, Media and Communication Autumn term 2013 University of Gothenburg Our purpose with this study is to examine if and how the person-centeredness and personalization has changed on the front pages in the four biggest newspapers in Sweden over the last five decades; 1962-2012. Our angle is to look at the changes to see if the tabloidization, commercialization, and marketization having a bigger impact on our media landscape, and media content, in current years compared to earlier years. ! We have used both Swedish and international studies and theories. When it comes to commercialization we have mainly focused on studies by Ingela Wadbring, and Sigurd Allern. We have used Sigurd Allern’s, Ingela Wadbring’s and Josefine Sternvik’s theories on tabloidization. We’ve also include Marina Ghersetti’s theories about sensational journalism, personalization and news values. For the theories about medialization, personalization and agenda setting we’ve used Jesper Strömbäck’s studies. Ulrika Andersson and Jenny Wiik’s theories about marketization is also included in our study. ! The study has carried out in a quantative content analysis, by coding 1788 articles and using 16 different variables. We have examined four different newspapers, two tabloids – Aftonbladet and Expressen, and two morning papers – Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet. These are the four biggest newspapers in terms of a national distribution. Aftonbladet and Expressen has used the tabloid format since before 1962, but Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet converted to the tabloid format in 2004, and 2000. We saw a significant increase in personalization after the two morning papers changed their format. ! Our results also shows that both person-centeredness and personalization having a bigger and more crucial part overall on the biggest newspapers front pages in 2012 than in 1962 if we see in terms of how the newspapers uses personalization. The amount of personalization is bigger, but not that noticeable. Instead we can see a big change in how the individuals are described on the front pages. In short: it’s more about the individuals as persons instead of the individuals as representatives. ! Another significant change can be seen in how the newspapers use the pictures and the amount of pictures that is being used. In the earlier front pages that we’ve studied there is a lot of body text and smaller pictures, not necessarily with people in them. On the front pages of today it’s more headliners and bigger pictures, usually with the person in focus.