Swedish News Media Research Articles

Men’s Violence against Women as Portrayed in the Swedish Media: The Construction of Victimhood and the Role of the Perpetrator

Men’s violence against women is an international problem and while global and national initiatives have been created to better the criminalization process, the influence of news reporting on violence against women has not been successfully addressed in such policy. The aim of this study is to contribute to understanding how media frames violence against women in the Swedish context, which is both highly protective of crime reporting and where violence against women is a central policy and public discussion issue. A mixed methods approach was used in the analysis of 295 digital news articles that were published by four media outlets (Aftonbladet, Expressen, Svenska Dagbladet and Dagens Nyheter) within the period January 1st, 2019–December 31st, 2021. The study found that digital news articles first frame the issue of violence against women as episodic, but later transform into a thematic frame when follow-up articles were written on a given case. The study found a construction of victimhood by Swedish news media that allowed for two victim personas to be identified: the ideal victim and the ideal minority victim. In connection with the portrayal of the victim, the study also identified two different portrayals of the perpetrator: the ideal foreign perpetrator and the Swedish perpetrator. Both the description of the victim and perpetrator allowed for insights to be made regarding the role of racialization in news reporting and how this effects the framing of social issues. Finally, the study presented a set of news values that were most frequently found in articles that reveal several news factors of violence against women that contribute to the topic being seen as newsworthy.

Humanitarian discourse as racism disclaimer

Abstract Roma communities remain Europe’s most marginalized and disadvantaged population, facing increasing discrimination, especially after the 2015 refugee crisis. European media often portrays them as criminals or anti-social, furthering misunderstanding and social exclusion. This article examines Swedish news media’s representation of Roma, which, at a surface level, appears much less negative. Using Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis, we analyze two Swedish newspapers’ coverage of the controversial law which sought to criminalize begging, which targeted Eastern European Roma migrants. Our findings reveal that ‘Swedish exceptionalism’–a discourse of human rights, equality, colorblindness, characterized by limited racial literacy–serves to obscure and act as a disclaimer for anti-Roma sentiment and government actions which in fact resemble those criticized in other EU countries.

Hope Springs Eternal

When South Africa is covered in the Swedish media, the focus is often on the history of South Africa, the role of Sweden in theanti-apartheid movement and, in more recent years, the political and socio-economic landscape of postapartheid South Africa, marked by increased wealth gaps, social unrest, and corruption. How South Africa is covered by foreign media is important and politicians, as well as businesses and organisations such as Investment South Africa, Brand South Africa, and South African Tourism, keep a keen eye on the media as a gauge for maintaining diplomatic relations, as well as for attracting foreign investment. As a former journalist who has covered South Africa for Scandinavian media, I have had ample opportunity to ponder and research the media coverage of SouthAfrica and the African continent in the Swedish media, as well as Scandinavian and wider international media. Drawing upon my own experience, as well as an analysis of coverage of South Africa in the Swedish news media, I ask what the image of South Africa isin the Swedish media, how this has changed over the last 30 years and, importantly, what this might mean for South African-Swedish relations?

De-contextualisation fuels controversy: the double-edged sword of humour in a hybrid media environment

Humour has a unique way of delineating social boundaries, and comedy can function as a double-edged sword; it can strengthen bonds and bring people together, or divide through provocation and violation of social norms. As a consequence, humour controversies are telling events that contain the possibility of highlighting cultural and political sensibilities – even more in the current political landscape, with increasing media fragmentation. This study analysed four humour functions through the theoretical lens of media framing, via three cases of humorous content that caused controversies in the Swedish news media. These cases were one divisive radio roast of a politician, one TV satire segment that was received as racist, and one audio podcast with young women who challenged a Swedish political consensus climate. Framing is the power of media to select and highlight certain aspects of issues, and by extension, shape public opinion. By subjecting the media coverage of these three controversies to a qualitative content analysis, the framing was examined and discussed in the light of four humour functions: identification, clarification, enforcement, and differentiation (Meyer 2000). Furthermore, the study examined the media context and the role it played in the framing of the controversies. One main finding was that the most uniting humour function of identification could be transformed into the most dividing humour function of differentiation through a shift in media context.

Discourses of fact-checking in Swedish news media

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine how contemporary fact-checking is discursively constructed in Swedish news media; this serves to gain insight into how this practice is understood in society.Design/methodology/approachA selection of texts on the topic of fact-checking published by two of Sweden’s largest morning newspapers is analyzed through the lens of Fairclough’s discourse theoretical framework.FindingsThree key discourses of fact-checking were identified, each of which included multiple sub-discourses. First, a discourse that has been labeled as “the affirmative discourse,” representing fact-checking as something positive, was identified. This discourse embraces ideas about fact-checking as something that, for example, strengthens democracy. Second, a contrasting discourse that has been labeled “the adverse discourse” was identified. This discourse represents fact-checking as something precarious that, for example, poses a risk to democracy. Third, a discourse labeled “the agency discourse” was identified. This discourse conveys ideas on whose responsibility it is to conduct fact-checking.Originality/valueA better understanding of the discursive construction of fact-checking provides insights into social practices pertaining to it and the expectations of its role in contemporary society. The results are relevant for journalists and professionals who engage in fact-checking and for others who have a particular interest in fact-checking, e.g. librarians and educators engaged in media and information literacy projects.

‘They would be bullied in ordinary schools’ – exploring public discourses on inclusionary schooling

Though research on inclusive education makes up a considerable part of the special education research field, very few studies have explored how beliefs and ideas about inclusion and exclusion emerge in general media discourses of education and schooling. Using positioning theory as a theoretical framework, this paper explores public discourses on inclusionary/exclusionary schooling by analysing newspaper articles about a segregated type of school in Sweden for pupils with intellectual disability. Seventy-nine articles meeting the criteria for inclusion and published between 1 January 2010 and 31 December 2018 were identified in the two national daily newspapers of Sweden. Four general storylines and associated positions were identified. The four storylines, together and in different ways, construct a rationale for a segregated school system based on notions such as equality, equity, justice, and democracy. We argue that this rationale is embedded within a discourse that we propose calling a discourse of ‘segrequality’. Points of interest Education plays an important role in the development of an inclusive society and inclusive education is a goal supported by many countries and their school systems. Even so, the percentage of pupils educated in segregated settings have increased in many countries in Europe. This article explores how Swedish news media portrays education for pupils with intellectual disability. The research found a dominant rationale where segregated educational settings are seen as essential. Four main narratives were identified. All of them, in different ways, argue for the importance of segregated education in order to give every child an education based on notions such as equality, equity, justice, and democracy. Researchers of inclusion are suggested to take a more active part in a public discussion of education as well as in policy-making on both national and local levels.

Class struggle in the era of post-politics: Representing the Swedish port conflict in the news media

Abstract This article addresses how class as a category of conflict and struggle is understood and shaped discursively in mainstream media today. We utilise a case study of how Swedish news media represents the long-lasting conflict in the Swedish labour market between the Swedish Dockworkers’ Union and the employer organisation, Sweden's Ports. Using critical discourse analysis, we show two ways in which class relations are recontextualised in three Swedish newspapers. One is through obscuring class and centring the conflict around business and nationalist discourses, which in the end legitimise a corporate perspective. The other, more marginalised, way is through the critique of class relations that appears in subjective discourse types. This handling of class, we argue, serves the reproduction of a post-political condition.

Mobile bystanders and rubbernecks, disaster tourists, and helpers. Towards a theoretical framework for critically studying action possibilities at accident sites

This article addresses the phenomenon of mobile bystanders who use their smartphones to film or take photographs at accident scenes, instead of offering their help to people in need or to assist medical units. This phenomenon has been extensively discussed in Swedish news media in recent years since it has been described as a growing problem for first responders, such as paramedics, police, and firefighters. This article aims to identify theoretical perspectives that are relevant for analyzing mobile media practices and discuss the ethical implications of these perspectives. Our purpose is twofold: we want to develop a theoretical framework for critically approaching mobile media practices, and we want to contribute to discussions concerning well-being in a time marked by mediatization and digitalization. In this pursuit, we combine theory from social psychology about how people behave at traumatic scenes with discussions about witnessing in and through media, as developed in media and communication studies. Both perspectives offer various implications for normative inquiry, and in our discussion, we argue that mobile bystanders must be considered simultaneously as transgressors of social norms and as emphatic witnesses behaving in accordance with the digital media age. The article ends with a discussion regarding the implications for further research.

EU citizens and undocumented migrants in the news: quantitative patterns of representation in Swedish news media 2006-2016

ABSTRACT Undocumented migrants and poor EU citizens have been frequent topics for Swedish political debate and media reports in recent years. However, there is a lack of representative, large-scale studies on media representation of these groups. This study aims to compare and analyse (1) the broad patterns of representation of EU citizens and undocumented migrants in Swedish national press and (2) how these patterns relate to relevant regulative events over the period 2006–2016. Theoretically, it draws on critical discourse analysis and social problems theory. The sample includes 10 022 referrals in 5411 news articles and the methodological strategy is inspired by corpus-driven discourse studies. Words that tend to occur in the near vicinity of the migrant categories (collocates) are a primary focus for the analysis. The study finds that media referred to EU citizens by employing poverty related discourses during the period 2013–2016 and that the governmental term ‘vulnerable’ EU citizens was adopted in media when a national coordinator was appointed. In contrast, undocumented migrants were associated with discourses on social rights over a time period (2008–2013) when rights to health care and education were debated and subsequently introduced.

Beyond expertise: the public construction of legitimacy for EU agencies

ABSTRACT How is the power of independent agencies legitimized? This is a central question in modern democratic societies. Earlier research has privileged technical expertise as the predominant source of legitimacy for such agencies. While recent contributions have challenged this assumption, we have seen few attempts to systematically analyze the conditions under which different sources of legitimacy are established in public discourse. We address this gap by proposing a conceptual framework of four legitimation arguments and test their prevalence through an empirical analysis of the public legitimation of EU agencies. We hypothesize that the prevalence of each argument depends on characteristics of the agency, especially its scientific ‘hardness’ and its public salience. We test our hypotheses in three steps. We first combine automated text classification and qualitative content analysis to analyze Swedish news media coverage of three EU agencies, 2005–2019. In a third step, we quantitatively analyze aggregated data on the Swedish news coverage of all EU agencies 2005–2019. We find more technical-expertise discourse in coverage of hard-science agencies, and more political-control discourse where agencies are ‘softer’ or more salient. Our findings are therefore relevant for ongoing normative and empirical discussions on the legitimacy of independent agencies.

The legitimization of the use of sweat shops by H&M in the Swedish press

Abstract In the Swedish news-media we find sporadic critical, or reflective, reporting on the production conditions of Swedish ‘sweat-shop’ factories in the Global South, used to supply Transnational Corporations (TNCs). In this paper we carry out a critical discourse analysis, in particular using Van Leeuwen’s social actor and social action analysis, to look at examples from a larger corpus of 88 news reports and editorials from the Swedish press, between 2012–2017, which report and comment on activities of the Swedish company H&M in relation to its production chains. Analysis reveals how these recontextualize events, processes and motives, to represent Sweden and Swedish TNCs as characterized by a benevolent, democratic, humane, form of capitalism, drawing on discourses of a former social democratic Sweden of the 1960s before it became highly neo-liberalized. This nationalism converges with other discourses promoting the exploitation of the Global South.

Representation of Intimate Partner Violence Against Women in Swedish News Media: A Discourse Analysis.

Despite being rated as some of the world’s most gender equal countries, Sweden and neighboring Nordic nations show high rates of intimate partner violence against women (IPVAW). As the news media contribute to the shaping of public attitudes, this article pursues a two-step discourse analysis of how IPVAW was represented in seven Swedish newspapers during 2018. Although an individualistic discourse on IPVAW was found to be most prevalent, articles where perpetrators were presented as non-Swedish more frequently contained a structural framing of IPVAW. This confirms previously noted tendencies toward individualization and othering of IPVAW in Sweden.

The #MeToo Movement: Men and Masculinity in Swedish News Media

This article analyses the coverage of the #MeToo movement in Swedish news media. The aim of the study was to explore how men and masculinity were represented. The results showed that masculinity was associated with violence, harassment, and a culture of abuse, as well as with progressive ideas of a “new man” that is both strong and gentle at the same time. The article discusses how the represented masculinities might be problematic in relation to the #MeToo movement’s ambition to reform a sexist society because of the stereotypical and gender-dualistic tendencies that permeate the material and the tendencies to individualize the represented assaults and perpetrators.

The Promise of Kiruna’s Iron Ore in the Swedish Imagination, c. 1901–1915

Iron ore mining in the Norrbotten region of Sweden began in the early years of the twentieth century as a commercially uncertain and even dangerous proposition. But even before it began to generate profits, public debate began over the appropriate role of the state and of private capital (including foreign investors). This included whether iron ore should be exported for profit or retained for future processing in Sweden—even though the technology and infrastructure for such domestic industry did not exist. Tracing the evolution of this debate in the Swedish news media through to the First World War, this paper argues that the revenue generated by exports became more attractive than the promise of future domestic industry because that revenue could underwrite pressing political objectives. Although domestic iron ore processing remained linked to visions of future industrial prosperity, uncertain visions of future prosperity lost appeal as the capacity for export revenues to generate prosperity in the present became more potent.

News Media and the Öresund Region

AbstractThis article presents a first attempt to investigate the news content and news routines of Danish and Swedish news media covering the Öresund region. From a theoretical perspective, the Öresund region can be considered a possible best-case example of what is categorised as horizontal Europeanisation, in other words, of the potential for increased communication linkages in news media content among European Union (EU) member states. We investigate this topic by analysing news content published by selected media outlets from 2002 to 2012 and by interviewing Danish and Swedish journalists who cover the region. We find that most news content does not mention the Öresund region, and that one reason for this lack might be that neither Danish nor Swedish reporters consider the region to be newsworthy.

“We’re not magicians!” On the use of rhetorical resources in Swedish news media narratives portraying the social services and social workers

This article focuses on how the Swedish news media depicts the functioning of the social services and the situation of social workers. The empirical material consists of 586 articles published online during the years 2010–2015. A discursive approach makes up the theoretical and methodological framework. The aims of the article are to identify and categorise media narratives about social services and social workers, how they are portrayed, what is conveyed and how the stakeholders’ (politicians, managers and social workers) negotiate the question of responsibility for the situation in the social services. The study identifies and categorises seven different types of media narrative. In these narratives, social workers are portrayed in various ways, such as unwilling to stay in the profession, concerned, hardworking, etc. Reports on the crisis in the social services tend to dominate, e.g. how the social services fail to follow-up cases of child abuse, social workers’ heavy workload and that legal security cannot be guaranteed. Stakeholders, faced with reported criticism, maintain credibility by taking some responsibility and/or displacing liability by using various rhetorical resources. The media produces a public image of the lack of responsibility for solving the problematic situation. In this respect, the take-action-narratives are central to the debate, which argues for joint action to be taken to find solutions. Although the media is a powerful and scrutinising tool, it also needs to report on the improvements that have been made in order to give a more balanced picture of the social services.

Writing up the region: anchor firm dismantling and the construction of a perceived regional advantage in Swedish news media

ABSTRACTThis study investigates how geographic representations and regional industrial identity in news media are used to mobilize local/regional actors and to attract inward and outward investments by mediating and narrating stories of the recovery and rebirth of a region in distress – that is, how media contribute to economic development in or of the region. The study targets media attention covering the dismantling and relocation of two regionally embedded life science and likewise anchor firms: the Pharmacia and Upjohn merger in Uppsala in 1995 and the closure of AstraZeneca's operations in Lund in 2010. By drawing on the method of framing and content analysis of news articles derived from a public media database, the analysis show that: (a) geographic representation and associations are intensified in times of media turbulence; (b) news coverage follows two subsequent phases (an initial ‘crisis’ phase and a following more optimistic ‘recovery’ phase) and (c) news media (as intermediary actors and arenas) by communicating ideas of a shared regional industrial identity contribute to the construction of a ‘perceived regional advantage’ (as understood and communicated by news media). Thus, regional industrial identity-building and how the region is perceived by internal and external audiences are important for regional development.

Does media coverage of research misconduct impact on public trust in science? A study of news reporting and confidence in research in Sweden 2002–2013

Over the past decade, there has been a gradual decline in public trust in science in Sweden. Questions have been raised as to whether or not this decline is the result of news media reports on research misconduct. Taking off in a theoretical discussion about the news media agenda-setting function, this study examined the extent to which, if any, there really is a connection between public trust and news content. It did so by drawing empirical support from a content analysis of the largest Swedish news media reporting on research misconduct in the years 2002–2013 and also from annual surveys of Swedes´ media consumption and trust in science, conducted over the same time period. Using news consumption, i.e. media exposure, as a proxy variable in the analysis, this study came to the conclusion that exposure to this type of news reporting had a positive rather than negative effect on public trust in science. The article discusses why this is so and also identifies some important questions that require to be further researched in order to understand public trust in science.

Metaphorical expressions used in Swedish news media narratives to portray the shortage of nurses and their working conditions.

The aim of the study is to uncover and reveal how nurses as a profession and their working conditions are dramatized and portrayed in Swedish media narratives about the shortage of nurses. The media is an arena where stakeholders can air their views of the healthcare sector in general and the situation for nurses in particular. The focus in this study is the debate in Sweden on the shortage of nurses. Qualitative discursive study. A discourse analysis of media narratives about nurses and their working conditions published in several Swedish newspapers from 2009-2014. 1779 articles were included in the study. A selection (113 articles) of these articles was further analysed using a qualitative discursive psychological approach. Nurses are portrayed as being good, concerned about and critical of healthcare managers and politicians for not taking action. The accused actors justify their actions by partially accepting or displacing responsibility. The shortage of nurses is framed as a social problem - a threat to patients' safety. Seven different types of metaphorical expression frame the problem as inevitable, beyond control, abstract, an individual and collegial problem and nurses as replaceable. In addition, nurses and patients are dehumanized and no-one is held responsible. This study analyses the role of the media in emphasizing the seriousness or obscurity of the problem and possible solutions to it. Alternative narratives are needed to re-frame the nursing shortage and to find sustainable solutions.

Stem Cells between Ethics and Entrepreneurship: How a Contested Bio-Object Became ‘Normal’

Human Embryonic Stem Cell (hESC) research has been described by many scholars as a controversial issue. However, in Swedish media reporting, hESC research is no longer described as contested. The aim of this paper is to explore how this research field has been normalized through discursive shifts which have had effects in terms of the lack of debate around novel biotechnologies. The article compares the reporting of Swedish newspapers on hESC research during year 2001 and onwards. The reason for this selection is that during 2001 there was a heated debate around hESC. After that point, media reporting is characterized by a lack of debate. Therefore, Swedish media reporting makes an interesting case for understanding how an ethical controversy can end. To conceptualize the contemporary lack of media reporting and debate, this paper analyzes discourses operating in news media reports during and after 2001 through studying how different researcher/subject positions and hESC bio-identities are articulated during different times, and how these open up for different issues to be, or not to be, reported and discussed. Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory, as well as a theoretical framework of bio-objectification inspire the analysis. The result shows how ethical and political discourses about hESC in the Swedish news media have been replaced with engineering and economical discourses. The main point is that this new discursive formation has closed opportunities for oppositional ways of talking about hESC research, for example, as an ethical issue or an area for political debate and legislation. Instead, scientific-technological-therapeutic progress has been bound to a belief in economic progress. The final part of this article discusses how this discursive change can be understood in the perspective of changing relations between the public and academia, but also how dissolving positions can open up hegemonic discourses and challenge fixed meanings.