Often when we think about democracy our thoughts are drawn to the thought of a political election. The US has for a very long time had low election turnout regarding to the presidential elections. In this qualitative case study the author analyzed two possible factors to study if they could explain the turnout rates in West Virginia and in Minnesota. The two possible explanation factors that were analyzed in this report was legal factors and socioeconomic factors. The theories that were used in this report was; rational choice theory, the standard socioeconomic status model and Jan Teorells explanation theory for voter turnout. The author concluded in the end of the study that both factors could explain the differences in the voter turnout between the two states.

The aim of the study was to examine the ways in which the presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were portrayed in articles regarding the first presidential debate of 2016. We also wanted to examine the differences and similarities between the framing of the two candidates as well as which frames varied between the newspapers from Sweden and the USA and which they had in common. We made a qualitative framing analysis of 14 articles from 14 different newspapers half of which were from Sweden and half from the USA. The result shows that Hillary Clinton is most often portrayed as an experienced and professional politician whereas Donald Trump is portrayed as her opposite in both regards. The framing of Trump shows him as an outsider from the business world, who has a history of controversial behavior in which he is accused of both racism and sexism. Both candidates are portrayed as highly disliked by the American people. They are also portrayed as dishonest as a consequence of their respective scandals where they are being accused of having hidden something from the public – Clinton in her use of a private e-mail server during her time as secretary of state – Trump due to his unreleased tax returns. The American and the Swedish articles frame the candidates similarly, although the American newspapers are more prone to the usage of harsh language in describing the candidates and their actions in the debate. The Swedish newspapers tend to use less emotive words in re-telling the debate.

This study seeks to illuminate which understanding of democracy the written U.S. digital news media propagates to its readers, through the lens of the 2016 presidential election. This is done through discourse theory and analysis inspired by Laclau & Mouffes work on nodal points and discursive webs. Other theories involve polyarchy as a definition of democracy as well as rational models for voter participation. Written digital articles related to the 2016 election, chosen through entering keywords related to democracy and voting, from a broad range of larger media houses are used as material for the study. The study found that the discourse created and mediated by the news articles, when taken as a whole, understands democracy as a contest between different demographical groups. Race or ethnicity are the most commonly referenced groups. The election is a battle between the candidates’ personalities to entice “their” specific groups to get out and vote. Policy or political issues are rarely mentioned in the articles. Voter participation is low according to the discourse, but that might not be such a big problem according to the discourse. A larger problem for democracy is corruption, political elitism and a poorly designed electoral system.