Dissertation｜2460442M Abstract The discourses structuring news coverage of terrorist attacks influence our understanding of the nature, drivers and severity of the threat emanating from a specific extremist actor category. Therefore, they are a powerful tool to further socio-political goals. Acknowledging the role of language in shaping reality, this dissertation project uses Critical Discourse Analysis/Critical Discourse Studies to reveal current discursive trends in the understudied coverage of Islamist and right-wing extremist attacks in the Swiss press. With the dominant social factor distinguishing the two extremist categories being ethnicity, it hypothesises that Western media discourses reflect the presuppositions of Orientalism and Critical Race Theory. Both theories expect texts to express, enact and legitimise social hierarchies based on racial affinity to solidify the supremacy of the white elite. The exemplarily analysis of the reporting of two recent extremist incidents by three newspapers representing political perspectives from the right-wing to the left-wing shows that while the Swiss press is indeed influenced by and reproduces racial inequalities, publications do so to a varying degree.

Recent years’ terrorist attacks in Europe and the flow of foreign fighters joining the terrorist organisation Daesh, has made the understanding of radicalisation evermore crucial. This thesis investigates if push and pull factors leading into violent Islamic extremism differentiate between men and women. Furthermore, it assesses how preventive measures from The United Kingdom, Sweden and Denmark targets push and pull factors and if these are sensitive to sex. To fulfil this objective an exploratory thematic analysis was used to synthesise secondary qualitative research surrounding push and pull factors. The push and pull factor analysis revealed three trends: there were limited variation in the overall categories describing the push and pull factors present for men and women; what caused push and pull factors to manifest differed according to sex; and, there were differences in how much men and women were affected by these factors. The assessment of prevention measures showed that none of the measures explicitly mentioned push and pull factors, yet they all had the potential of targeting these. Sex was included in some aspects of the measures, but was not a consideration in relation to the targeting of push and pull factors. The thesis ends with a discussion of what implications the found results have for practice and offers suggestions to how prevention measures can be improved.

In this thesis, I try to analyze how Sweden prevents violent Islamist extremism. First, by using alienation and network theories I explain how various socio-economic factors create an alienating environment in which individuals who have inappropriate social network can move towards violent Islamist extremism. Second, by analyzing the policy and practice of preventive work with a focus on activities of the National Coordinator Against Violent Extremism I try to identify achievements and shortcomings in this area, and eventually suggest how preventive work in Sweden can be improved.

The new phenomena of “school attacks” has emerged in Sweden since 2015. Between 2015 and today (2022), Sweden has been a subject of four “school attacks”, whereas three of these attacks have occurred within a period of seven months. In this thesis I aim to gain an in-depth insight about how “school attacks” are represented in the Swedish national strategy against violent extremism and further, to distinguish whether “school attacks” have been securitized in the national strategy. To study this, I will apply the securitization theory by Thierry Balzacq through the methodological framework of a WPR (What’s the problem represented to be?) discourse analysis on the material consisting of the Swedish national strategy against violent extremism from 2016. The findings suggest that there appears to be an undermining of right-wing extremism and exclusion of the loneactor of extremism in the strategy’s claims regarding what is the most prominent extremism-related threat to the State of Sweden and Swedish interests. Furthermore, I was able to distinguish that “school attacks” were not securitized in the Swedish national strategy against violent extremism.