In October 2015 and April 2017, Sweden was hit by two of the most notorious deadly attacks in modern history. The first was directed towards people of immigrant backgrounds at a school in Trollhättan, the second took place in Stockholm, where a truck drove straight through the crowded pedestrian street of Drottninggatan. In this thesis, frame analysis is used to study how four major Swedish newspapers (Aftonbladet, Expressen, Dagens Nyheter and Göteborgs-Posten) portray the acts of the assailants Anton Lundin Pettersson (N = 89) and Rakhmat Akilov (N = 173), respectively and comparatively. Previous research suggests a disparity in the framing of “international” (i.e. Islamist) and “domestic” (e.g. right-wing) extremists, where the former are typically politicized and treated as part of a larger terrorist threat while the latter are described as mentally ill lunatics with individual motives. This thesis partly enforces this, by showing how Lundin Pettersson’s actions are psychologized to a larger extent than Akilov’s, which are rather put in a standard terrorism frame, as a symbol of “the terrorists’” war on “the West”. The results also show several similarities in framing, like how counterimages are used to strengthen the norms and values of the ingroup after both attacks.

Nyhetsmedia har en stor påverkan på samhället, det är till dem vi med största sannolikhet vänder oss till när en stor händelse drabbar oss. Under de senaste åren har nyhetsmedia fått motstå kritik för hur de särbehandlar olika fall och händelser beroende på vem gärningsmannen är. Vi ville utforska om det faktiskt stämde att vita gärningsmän blir klassificerade som psykisk sjuka, när icke-vita gärningsmän blir beskrivna som terrorister. Genom att fokusera på representation, gestaltningsteorin och attributdagordningen utfördes en multimodal analys på Aftonbladets och Dagens Nyheters rapportering kring händelsen i Trollhättan respektive Drottninggatan. Målet var att se om det fanns några tendenser för särbehandling vid rapporteringen och porträtteringen av gärningsmän och deras dåd. Studien gav inte några definitiva resultat, däremot lade vi bland annat märke till att det fanns nyanser i artiklarna som kunde peka på särbehandling. Vi märkte bland annat att porträtteringen av gärningsmännen skilde sig drastiskt, när Rakhmat Akilov beskrivs som den invandrade brutala gärningsmannen med IS-sympatier, gestaltas Anton Lundin Pettersson som den tillbakadragne, svenska killen som tyckte om hårdrock OCH Nazityskland. / The influence news media has on society is huge, we most certainly turn to the news media whenever a big event affects us. For the last couple of years critique has been directed towards the news media concerning the coverage of crime and how some cases get special treatment depending on who the perpetrator is. We wanted to investigate if it actually is true that white criminals get described as ‘mentally ill’, while non white criminals are categorized as ‘terrorists’. By focusing on representation, the Attribute framing theory and the Framing theory, we did a multimodal analysis on the Swedish newspapers Aftonbladet's and Dagens Nyheter’s coverage of the events in Trollhättan and at Drottninggatan. Our goal was to distinguish if there actually are any tendencies for special treatment while covering a case and portraying a perpetrator within the news media. With this study, we weren’t able to come to any conclusions, but the study did show that there were some nuances which pointed towards special treatment in the news articles. For instance we discovered that there were some differences in the portraying of the perpetrators; while Rakhmat Akilov was described as the immigrating veil criminal who shared sympathies with ISIS, Anton Lundin Pettersson was portrayed as the shy guy from Sweden who was passionate about metal AND Nazi Germany.