During the past couple of years, shootings in Malmö have been given considerable amount of attention and not the least by the news media. The tabloids have often been dominated by headlines which indicate an increase of violent shootings in Sweden’s third largest city. Comparing shootings in Malmö to other cities in Sweden is a difficult task as the local police collects data based on different criteria, nevertheless comparisons are frequently made. The objective of this project is to examine how newspapers portray shootings in Malmö by analyzing articles from major newspapers in Sweden. This thesis focuses on the language that is used and in the light of moral panics theory it is discusses whether the news articles in question are instigating moral panics. It is evaluated what discourses are produced and reproduced by the language used in the context of shootings in Malmö through critical discourse analysis (CDA). The main findings reveal that news media tend to promote certain ideas about the severity and the circumstances regarding shootings in Malmö that are symbolic for the instigation of moral panics. In the context of shootings in Malmö the most frequent points that are raised is that shootings are “symptomatic”, shootings are becoming normalized and shootings pose a threat to “normal people” as well. The main implications from this project is that future research is needed on the subject of how data regarding shootings is collected by to police in order to conduct research similar to this. There is a need of a uniformity within the police regarding the definition and classification of shootings in order to facilitate research that compares shootings across the nation. As a follow up to the current project it would be beneficial to investigate the social reactions to the style of journalism discussed in this paper.

Using Nixon’s (2011) conceptualisation of slow violence, this study explores how violence is portrayed in English-language news articles reporting the Kyrgyz-Tajik border conflicts in April 2021 and September 2022. This study aims to discover the ways in which violence is communicated to English-speaking audiences, and, in a larger context, it contributes to the understanding of violence produced in border conflicts. The study analyses 50 news articles from four different media outlets through thematic analysis. The findings from this study suggest that the news reporting on the border conflicts focuses on casualties and “visible” violence, aligning with Nixon’s arguments that slow violence, the gradual degradation and suffering, is being marginalised in the public discourse. Moreover, the study finds that slow violence is best communicated in articles that build on personal interviews with the people living in the border communities.

Deepfakes are synthetic content, like pictures, videos, and sounds, that are generated with advanced deep learning and AI-technology. Anyone can create deepfakes and therefore, deepfakes create threats to the individual, financially and to the society. For example, bullying, defamation, fraud, damage to democracy and news media manipulation. The aim of the study is to analyze and discuss whether deepfakes potentially can affect the way society views and uses news media in a positive or negative way. The research methodology chosen was a cross-sectional study. A cross-sectional study is done to measure a particular aspect of a social phenomenon or trend. In this study the phenomenon is deepfakes and how they might affect the way news media is used, what are the affordances and constraints with this phenomenon? The study was conducted in two steps. The first step of was to study discussion forums and blogs. Discussion forums and blogs where AI and deepfakes were discussed. The second step was to conduct semi-structured interviews with people selected through purposive sampling. The results show that deepfakes have both positive and negative aspects to them. Deepfakes could have great impact on the entertainment business and within news media and journalism. They can be used to show things that only are speculative or very hard to capture on video or in a picture. They can be used within news media or journalism to protect people and get a broader following. The results also shows that deepfakes can lead to psychological, financial and social harm. Source criticism is a topic that needs to be more discussed and have a bigger part in education. Without source criticism and with a larger use of deepfakes people could experience a lot of fear and confusion since it might get harder to know what source to trust and to determine whether published content is fake or not.

The focus of this paper is gaining a deeper understanding of the discursive ways in which Ukrainian female soldiers are represented in international news media by analyzing online newspaper articles. The research questions are centred around finding out what common discursive representations are predominant in the articles, how these representations are visible, and what discourses are meant to be favored by the authors or publishers. The theory is based on a Foucauldian approach to discourse analysis. A total of eight articles were chosen for analysis from four major newspapers based in the United Kingdom and the United States. The data consisted of both text and images featured in the articles. The main findings of the paper are that even though there is a strong discourse that promotes stereotypical representations of female soldiers, there is also a counter-discourse that brings female soldiers’ voices to the forefront and challenges historically predominant stereotypical representations.

The threat of lone offenders is a growing problem in Sweden and the world. In this study, three major Swedish newspapers have been selected and analyzed based on their portrayal of a lone wolf perpetrator: Theodor Engström, the man behind the knife murder of the psychiatry coordinator Ing-Marie Wieselgren during the political week in Almedalen, 2022. Using critical discourse analysis, we found a discursive construction of Engström as an extremist, terror suspect and mentally ill. We also found that these constructions emerged at different times during the course of the reporting from the first day of the attack until the end of the trials. This contributed to a complex and diverse representation of Engström and an indication of a creative discursive practice in the media news discourse. The analysis also revealed the distribution of discourses in terms of who was allowed to speak and from which perspectives Engström is presented. The results showed that the majority of all statements and claims were made by authoritarian voices in society or presented as objective truths. Thus, we also found an assumption that unjust power structures and dominance relations are reproduced in the media news discourse. The analysis also showed that the articles predominantly focused on the specific event and the individual Engström and made little reference to other individuals, events or situations. This can be interpreted to mean that the media news discourse is dominated by one perspective and that societal problems are individualized rather than placed in a broader social context. In the analysis of the social practice, the relationship between the discursive practice and theories of stigma was examined. The results showed that the representations of Engström as responsible for the act can lead to stigmatization and that this in turn can also contribute to an individualization of social problems. The result also showed that the relationship between the text, the discursive practice and the social practice both shapes and is shaped by stigma and that this can have consequences in the form of perpetuating and reproducing stereotypical ideas about different individuals and groups. / Hotet från ensamagerande gärningspersoner är en växande problematik i Sverige och världen. I den här studien har tre stora svenska tidningar har valts ut och analyserats utifrån hur de framställt en enensamagerande gärningsman: Theodor Engström, mannen bakom knivmordet på psykiatrisamordnaren Ing-Marie Wieselgren under politikerveckan i Almedalen, 2022. Med hjälp av kritisk diskursanalys fann vi en diskursiv konstruktion av Engström som extremist, terrormisstänkt och psykiskt sjuk. Vi fann också att dessa konstruktioner framkom vid olika tidpunkter under rapporteringens gång från dådets första dag fram till att rättegångarna avslutats. Detta bidrog till en komplex och mångsidig framställning av Engström och en indikation på en kreativ diskursivpraktik i den mediala nyhetsdiskursen. Av analysen framkom också hur fördelningen av diskurser sett ut i form av vilka som fått uttala sig och från vilka perspektiv som Engström framställs utifrån. Resultatet visade att majoriteten av alla yttringar och påståenden uttalats av auktoritära röster i samhället eller framställts som objektiva sanningar. Därmed fann vi också ett förmodande om att orättvisa maktordningar och dominansrelationer reproduceras i mediala nyhetsdiskursen. Analysen visade även att artiklarna övervägande fokuserade på den specifika händelsen och individen Engström och i låg grad refererade till andra individer, händelser eller situationer. Detta kan tolkas som att den mediala nyhetsdiskursen domineras av ett perspektiv samt att samhällsproblem individualiseras snarare än att sättas i en bredare social kontext. I analysen av den sociala praktiken undersöktes relationen mellan den diskursiva praktiken och teorier om stigma. Resultatet visade att framställningarna av Engström som ansvarig för dådet kan leda till stigmatisering och att detta i sin tur också är något som kan bidra till en individualisering av sociala problem. Resultatet visade även att förhållandet mellan texten, den diskursiva praktiken och den sociala praktiken både formar och formas av stigma och att detta kan få konsekvenser i form av att stereotypiska föreställningar om olika individer och grupper befästes och reproduceras.

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This study focus on Western constructions of two categories of women – the female Kurdish fighters of the YPJ and the Western Muhaajirat – actively engaging in the Syrian conflict at the time of writing. Using Norman Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis in combination with postcolonial feminist theory, I have scrutinized 12 news pieces selected from Swedish, British and North American influential news media houses, in order to provide a deeper understanding of the discourses underpinning these constructions. The outcome of the analysis show that news media tend to reproduce reductionist and orientalist views on these particular women. The YPJ is generally constructed as the liberated woman and the ideal Other, whereas the Western Muhaajirat tend to be understood as the victim and/or conservative and backwards, thus neatly positioning them as opposites so as to promote specific (Western) ways of progression, development and gender equality. Women’s agency is constructed and judged according to Western standards, and results in the continuous reproduction of imperialist discourses and the European gender order where femininity remains less valuable than masculinity.