Victims and Intruders

Abstract

This article sets out to investigate how the Swedish regional press framed anti-Jewish violence in Russia and Jewish immigration to Sweden between 1881 and 1921. Furthermore, it analyses how the Swedish newspapers framed differences between the Jewish minority and the Swedish majority, and between the newly arrived Jews and the already established Jewish community in Sweden. The study, which combines quantitative and qualitative methods, is based on articles gathered from the National Library of Sweden’s digital database Digitized Swedish Newspapers. An analysis of some 400 articles suggests that sympathy towards the Jews in Russia dominates the reports on violence in the tsarist empire. In these texts, the Jews are mainly framed as innocent victims of brutal violence. In the articles concerning the eastern European Jewish immigration to Sweden, however, hostile attitudes are the most prominent. The Jewish immigrants are framed as menacing intruders, threatening law and order and the general welfare of Sweden.