Moderation does not constitute a monolithic model and the difference in the moderation process will influence the way a political party manages its internal dynamics. The cases of the AKP and the PKS show that both have different levels of moderation due to the different contexts of their social and political environments. The AKP has to deal with an extreme interpretation of secularism in Turkey that influences the party’s members to refrain from any confrontation with secular strongholds. The PKS has more freedom to express its ideology in the Indonesian democratic political system; hence the party is able to develop internal organisational procedures and programmes based on religious principles. To anticipate difficulties arising from from moderation, the AKP uses an organisational approach to give space for open and dynamic internal management and reduce the role of ideology significantly. The PKS still utilises its ideology in managing the impact of moderation by defining religious values as principles of organisation in parallel with organisational principles. Both parties are relatively successful in convincing their members to trust the party and its leaders in different ways. Party vision and personal charisma are more apparent for the AKP, although the PKS has to rely on interpretation of ideology as the main source of trust. By placing more emphasis on organisation, the AKP employs definition of violation toward party’s rules and decisions based on an organisational approach. In contrast, the definition of violation in the PKS relies on both religious and organisational principles. As a result, the AKP implements policies to dismiss members based on unambiguous principles with relatively insignificant opposition. The PKS has to deal with complaints of dismissal since the policies are taken based on interpretation of procedures and reasons. It is also proven that the AKP is able to convince voters by offering programmes to meet popular demands without relying on a religious agenda. While the PKS has been successful in developing an effective and solid party, it still has many problems in gaining support during elections as its pragmatic adjustment moderation also generates confusion internally and externally.

<p>Purpose/Aim: The comprehensive purpose is to study how the political journalism is framed, and how the party leaders, with focus on the authority, are constructed in the press.</p><p>Material/Method: Firstly 84 articles articles printed in the swedish newspapers Aftonbladet, Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet have been analysed. Secondly, a textual analysis by means of a critical discourse analysis.</p><p>Main results: Media are inclined to frame politics as a game or a strategic race. The partyleaders are ascribed authority in different ways. This ascribed authority can also be deconstructed.</p><p>Key words: Media and politics, party leader, discourse, democracy, framing theory</p>

Purpose/Aim: The comprehensive purpose is to study how the political journalism is framed, and how the party leaders, with focus on the authority, are constructed in the press. Material/Method: Firstly 84 articles articles printed in the swedish newspapers Aftonbladet, Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet have been analysed. Secondly, a textual analysis by means of a critical discourse analysis. Main results: Media are inclined to frame politics as a game or a strategic race. The partyleaders are ascribed authority in different ways. This ascribed authority can also be deconstructed. Key words: Media and politics, party leader, discourse, democracy, framing theory

In recent years, populism has spread around the world like wildfire. In some places, populist parties are growing in strength and several countries currently have populist leaders. In this essay, we use a qualitative content analysis to investigate whether populist rhetoric has seeped into state power in Sweden through examination of the speeches presented by Swedish party leaders during party leader debates in the Swedish Parliament in 2019 and 2020. The analyses of the party leader debates showed that several components of populist rhetoric could be found in speeches made in the Swedish parliament in 2019 and 2020, especially when it comes to anti-elitist rhetoric. However, the use of populist rhetoric is not widespread, but is mainly used by one of the eight Swedish party leaders, with some tendencies to a spillover-effect.

In order to maintain a democratic society, journalism as a third state power plays a major role. Impartial journalism is therefore important to preserve a well-functioning democracy, which is what this study is about. The purpose of the thesis is to investigate whether Aftonbladet's party leader debate in 2022 was biased or unbiased based on the following research questions: - How biased has Aftonbladet been during their party leader debate in 2022? - In that case, which parties/blocks has Aftonbladet benefited through a biased party leader debate? The study aims to contribute to increased understanding of media's impartial role in a well-functioning democracy and to provide information about Aftonbladet's reliability and impartiality. In order to see whether the media presents a political debate biased or unbiased we have chosen to limit ourselves to Aftonbladets Party Leader Debate 2022. In the study, we carry out a quantitative content analysis where bias is an important and recurring concept that is central to the entire study. Based on Kent Asp's previous reports on the same subject (2003 and 2006) we have created our own analytical schemes, code instructions, codebook and codeschemes which we have used for our analysis of the debate. The study uses Agenda Setting Theory and Objectivity Theory to increase reliability. Our aim with this study is to analyze how Aftonbladet contributes to a democratic society and if they fulfill the ideal of objectivity. The results of our study shows how Aftonbladet during their party leader debate 2022 led a partisan debate in the favor of the left liberal and green parties. They did this by rhetorically asking more critical questions to the moderate, conservative and nationalist parties. They also chose to actively select biased journalists as moderators and commentators which influenced the debate. They also chose to silence the right moderate, conservative and nationalist parties many times during the debate which caused arguments between party leaders and moderator.

The majority of the Swedish political organizations use social media today since it allows them to quickly and directly communicate with potential voters. By sharing personal content on the side of politics, politicians have contributed to create a digital landscape where they no longer depend on traditional media to reach out with their agendas. Political communication on social media, and especially Instagram, is in need of further exploration in order to develop a wider understanding of communicative strategies on the platform. This thesis is based on two posts each from five of the biggest Swedish political party leaders individual user accounts on Instagram. The time period of one month before the former election of the year 2022 is defined to limit the analysis during a period when the political communication is particularly intense. The purpose of the thesis is by the use of a qualitative multimodal analysis as a method investigate how the party leaders frame their Instagram posts in order to represent themselves through pictures with the belonging captions, and at the same time analyze how they frame their professional and/or personal persona in the very same posts. At last resemblances and/or differences in the posts are investigated in order to identify whether or not there might be certain patterns in the political communication to be acknowledged during the election campaign.   The thesis is mainly found from Erving Goffman's theory about dramaturgical perspectives, and uses specific terms from its papers such as ‘frontstage’ and ‘backstage’ to describe what kind of persona (professional and/or personal) the party leaders intend to portray in each post. Serge Moscovici's theory about social representations is also used to better understand the usage of for example cultural symbols in the posts, but the theory is only used to a certain extent to complete where we found Goffman’s theory to lack perspective.  The results from the analysis of the party leaders' posts were that they still used the same kind of strategic communication to portray themselves as hard working politicians, as former studies showed they did before the election of 2018. Although some leaders showed a bit more content from their backstage/personal life than others, it turned out that none of the posts was non-political, hence every post was set out to be performed in their professional role as political party leader. This means that the Swedish party leaders still use Instagram as a platform to mainly communicate political agendas, and not to show themselves off as celebrities or influencers which some media have contributed them to be portrayed as.

This thesis studies political elites’ beliefs about the ideal party leader. This ideal, like other human ideals, is characterized by ambivalence. The thesis explores the ambivalence expressed in party elites’ leadership ideal and how it can be understood. The study draws primarily on qualitative interviews with members of the party elites in the Social Democratic Party and the Liberal Party in Sweden. Specifically, it analyzes the “life world” of the party leaders, party secretaries, group leaders in the Swedish Parliament, and election committee chairmen. Building on classical and modern research on leadership and political parties, the thesis derives an analytical tool to guide the interviews which covers six aspects of party leadership: Characteristics, Leadership style, Tasks, Freedom of action, Representation, and Status. The empirical analysis shows that the elites’ party leadership ideal is ambivalent and different across the two parties. The ambiguities can be summarized as dichotomies, where the ideal leader should encompass both sides of the dichotomy. The Social Democratic Party elites’ ideal is represented by two dichotomies: the leader versus the team and the party versus the government. To bridge the ambiguities, the elite resort to the idea of “anchoring”. This notion resolves conflicts between the leader and the surrounding team and the party and the government. The ideal of the Liberal Party’s elites includes four dichotomies: dogmatism versus pragmatism; idea versus person; appearance (outward-looking) versus action (inward-looking); and free versus constrained. Unlike the case of the Social Democratic Party, it is less evident how the Liberal Party’s elites accommodate the ambiguities. However, an emphasis on accountability and maintaining a balance between existing conflicts, partially remedies the dilemma. Also, the idea of leadership within the Liberal Party is less problematic compared to the Social Democratic Party. In sum, while the Social Democrats’ ideal resembles the “friendly father figure”, the Liberals’ ideal is portrayed by the “superficial intellectual”. The findings also indicate that the way in which the parties were established, their experience of being in government, size, ideology, and position within the party system affect their beliefs about leadership ideals.

The purpose of this Bachelor’s thesis is to investigate how party leaders appear in pictures in newspapers in relation to how they portray themselves in pictures in their own social media. We have conducted a quantitative content analysis of pictures from two newspapers and two social media. The material consists of pictures of party leaders from the six largest parties in the Swedish Parliament. Research findings are that civic and everyday environments appear to a greater extent in the pictures on social media. Close-ups appear to a greater extent in the newspapers. The party leaders smile and look into the camera to a greater extent at the pictures on social media than they do in the news media. The female party leaders smile and look into the camera to a greater extent than the male ones. Images where party leaders express themselves with gestures are rare.

This study aims from a gender perspective to examine how the audience pay attention to people of power in news media. To examine this we viewed how televiewers pay attention to party leaders in televised political debates. The studys gender perspective can be divided into two main aspects, on one hand whether the party leaders gender have any impact on the televiewers attention and on the other hand whether the televiewers gender have any impact on how they divide their attention. The questions examined are “how do televiewers pay attention to male versus female party leaders in political televised debates?” and “what differences and similarities can be found in how male versus female televiewers pay attention to party leaders in political televised debates?”. To get a comprehensive understanding of the audiences attention we combined two different methods; eye tracking methodology and qualitative interview. Eye tracking generated objective knowledge of the televiewers visual fixations while the qualitative interview gave us a deeper understanding of their memorialization. Five men and five women participated in this study.  Our results show that our participants give more detailed attention to the female party leaders appearances, while to a greater extent remembering the male party leaders political statements. We found more similarities than differences in how male versus female televiewers pay attention to party leaders, both with and without regard of the party leaders gender. For example male politicians seem to be the norm for what makes a party leader, since many participants primarily tend to fixate on them while also remembering their statements. However, our male participants tend to make fewer but longer fixations while our female participants instead tend to make more but shorter fixations. To summarize the results, we can see that both the party leaders and the televiewers gender have an significance to the televiewers attention.

Den här uppsatsen undersöker hur medielogik och public service-värdena uttrycks i SVT:s partiledarutfrågning hösten 2010. En totalundersökning i form av kvantitativ och kvalitativ innehållsanalys är gjord av samtliga partiledarutfrågningar som sändes i SVT veckorna före valet, samt respektive partis valmanifest. Fyra frågor mättes först kvantitativt och analyserades därefter kvalitativt med utgångspunkt i vilka medborgargrupper som synliggörs, hur partiledarnas privata angelägenheter exponeras, hur valmanifestens innehåll överensstämmer med de teman som journalisterna tar upp i utfrågningarna, samt regeringsbildningskomplikationer och samarbetssvårigheter av olika slag. I den kvantitativa analysen framkom att konsumentperspektivet dominerar, men skillnaden är stor i de olika partiledarutfrågningarna. Den personliga exponeringen av partiledarna ger minst utrymme åt dåvarande statsministerkandidaterna Fredrik Reinfeldt (m) och Mona Sahlin (s), men även åt Maud Olofsson (c). Valmanifestens överensstämmelse med de journalistiska frågeställningarna visade på stora skillnader mellan de olika partiledarutfrågningarna. Mest kommunikationsutrymme åt komplikationer ges med det Rödgröna blocket (och då främst de mindre partierna Miljöpartiet och Vänsterpartiet.) Resultaten av vår undersökning är varierande, beroende på vilken frågeställning det gäller. Delar av public service-värdet verkar ha haft olika stor genomslagskraft hos de större partierna jämfört med de mindre partierna gällande konsekvenserna för de enskilda fallen och partiets politik. Ett återkommande tema är skildringen av politik som att den tar ifrån människor något snarare än att politiken tillför människor något. Ett annat drag vi har noterat är att medborgaren framställs som offer för något (nya bensinpriset, sjukförsäkringen, gymnasiereformen…) I ett samhälle som får allt större problem att engagera medborgarna i det politiska livet, kan det vara av värde att fråga sig hur stort ansvar medierna har för detta. Poängteras bör slutligen att de resultat vi kommer fram till inte ska refereras till journalistiken som profession, utan snarare belysa vikten av att en medveten strategi behövs för att lyfta fram de krafter som strävar mot medielogikens komponenter i form av polarisering, konkretisering och förenkling. / This essay examines how media logic and public service values are expressed in the SVT party leaders hearing fall of 2010. A comprehensive study in the form of quantitative and qualitative content analysis was made by all party leaders hearings broadcast on SVT weeks before the election, and each party's election manifesto. Four questions were measured primary quantitatively, and were then assayed qualitatively on the basis of the civic groups that are made visible, how the party leaders' private affairs are exposed, how the manifesto contents are consistent with the journalistic issues during the hearings, and government complications and cooperation difficulties of various kinds. The quantitative analysis indicated that consumer perspective dominates, but the difference is large in the various party leaders hearings. The personal exposure of the party leaders will have the least room for the then prime minister candidates Fredrik Reinfeldt (m) and Mona Sahlin (s), but also to Maud Olofsson (c). Manifesto conformity with the journalistic issues showed significant differences between the various party leaders hearings. Most communications space to complications are exposed with the Rödgröna blocket (and particularly the smaller parties, Miljöpartiet and Vänsterpartiet.) The results of our study are varied, depending on the issue in question. Components of the public service value seems to have a greater impact in the major parties compared to the smaller parties regarding the consequences for the individual cases and party policies. An overall theme is the presentation of policy that it takes away something from people rather than it adds. Another feature we have noticed is that the people were presented as victims of something (new price of gasoline, health insurance, upper secondary school reform ...) In a society of growing problems with involving the citizens in the political life, it may be useful to ask how much responsibility the media has of this. Finally it should be pointed out, that the results we arrive at should not be referred to journalism as a profession, but rather emphasize the necessity of a planned strategy to highlight the forces that strive to media logic components in the form of polarization, concretization and simplification.