The aim of the study was to examine how two newspapers covered the murder of Lisa Holm. The questions examined were: How are Lisa Holm, the perpetrator and the local community represented and what are the differences and similarities between the local news paper, Skaraborgs Allehanda, and the tabloid, Aftonbladet?  We made a discourse analysis of 13 news articles from six different time periodes. The result shows that the victim is represented as an innocent, young girl who is described as good, happy and perfect. The local news paper represents her as a part of the local community and the tabloid is highlighting attributes that people can identify with. The perpetrator is represented as an evil and callous foreign in both newspapers, but Aftonbladet also represents him as a usual person. Skaraborgs Allehanda focus on his guilt of the murder. The local community is represented as a certain group with common emotions who is also the light in the darkness. They share the grief and help each other to process it. The tabloid focus on highlighting the geografic closeness between the people in the articles and the murder. In Aftonbladet, the local community is also described as a dangerous place. Our study shows that the distance between the newspaper and the crime scene affect the representations of the people involved.

The aim of this study is to examine how the local newspapers (Barometern, Falu-kuriren, Hudiksvalls tidning, Skaraborgs Allehanda) and the tabloid (Aftonbladet) portray the local community in a village after a murder occured and how it affects the image of the village over time. In this study we therefore studied four different murders that occured in small swedish villages. We analysed how the newspapers construct the imagined community after the murder and what similarities and differences they have.   In this study we applied the critical discourse analysis and in total we investigated twelve articles that all had social constructions and therefore were relevant for the study. The results show that both the local newspapers and the tabloid Aftonbladet portrayed that the murders had a huge impact on the community. The safe place that they once knew is gone and therefore they seek support in each other and stand united. The victim gets more space in the articles than the perpetrator. We also discovered that you don’t have to live in the village to be a part of the community as long as you show compassion. The difference showed that the local newspapers only included the locals to mourn while the evening paper included the whole nation to be a part of the imagined community.