Since the birth of hip hop it has been a voice and channel of communication for the minorities who feel they lack a platform to express themselves. During the last couple of decades, the genre of music has grown significant and by this process also penetrated the mainstream media and culture. Even after merging to mainstream media, it has been kept and preserved as a voice for the minorities and people in the society that lacks representation in media. Previous research tends to be based around the concept of how hip hop-artists who originate from minorities get portrayed in the mainstream media in other countries. Alternatively, how mainstream media tends to work around these situations to preserve neutrality and be as included as possible in their writing.  Through the theoretical framework of othering, framing and identity theory that supports this study it highlights how the main Swedish newspapers tend to construct the identity of the hip hop-artist Yasin. The artist who in 2021 released an album, won two of Sweden’s most respectable awards for his music and also got sentenced to ten months in prison for his involvement in the kidnapping of the hip hop-artist Einár. The study uses Van Dijks approach of the method critical discourse analysis and analyzes 17 texts from the two leading newspapers in Sweden, Dagens Nyheter and Aftonbladet during 2021.The study is based on highlighting how Yasins identity as well as his art is constructed as a main actor. And if his art is victimized in the shadow of his criminal associations.

Reports of gang violence have become a prominent focus in the media. The rhetoric used in reporting gang related crime will have an impact on the reader's perception of the seriousness of gang crime. The media coverage can result in outbreaks of ‘moral panic’, where by aspecific group is demonized and held responsible for societal problems. The aim of this thesis is to study representations of gang related crime, and specifically two rival gangs from Rinkeby, Stockholm, “Shottaz” and “Dödspatrullen”, in the two Swedish newspapers Aftonbladet and Svenska Dagbladet, between the years 2019 and 2022. This is done using critical discourse analysis as method and theory, complemented by the concept of moral panic. The analysis is based on Fairclough’s three-dimensional methodological framework; a sample of newspaper articles dealing with gang crime are analyzed with a focus on the degree of modality, intertextuality and interdiscoursivity. The resultant findings indicate the nature of a dominant discourse and another, less prominent counter discourse. The dominant discourse can be assumed to play a role in triggering moral panic; the findings indicate a link between the story society tells itself about gang crime and a concomitant societal moral panic relating to gang crime. Only one of the newspaper articles analyzed for this study interviews peopleactually affected by gang conflict. This identified counter discourse offers a more nuanced representation of the conflict between “Shottaz” and “Dödspatrullen”, and of the Stockholm suburb of Rinkeby. Music also contributes to the alternative counter narrative, telling a story at odds with that which this study indicates to be the dominant societal discourse.