The reporting of the media will never be an exact copy of reality. Through medias way of presenting, or framing, the world that surround us all they must also affect our interpretation of it. The role of the journalist includes both chosing and excluding in the way they describe things. Studies have been made by the wellknown mediaresearcher, Kent Asp, that show how media reported in more negative wordings about Mona Sahlin, than her opponent Fredrik Reinfeldt in the period building up to the swedish elections 2010. The purpose of our study has been to compare how these politicians were being described, or framed, in the media, in regards to their gender.Our study has shown that Mona Sahlin more often than Fredrik Reinfeldt was described as being less knowledgeable, and were mentioned in the context of scandals or conflicts. Sahlin was also, more often than Reinfeldt, mentioned in articles where the subjects of healthcare, schooling and education, and equality between men and women. Where as Reinfeldt was, more often than Sahlin, mentioned in articles where the subjects were the labour market, economy and foreign politics.

<p> <p> </p></p><p> </p><p>Did the mass media report in a different way about the real estate tax before the Swedish national election 2006 than they did after the election? If there were differences, what could be the cause?</p><p>This study aims to answer these questions by using a quantitative analysis of articles about the real estate tax published in the Dagens Nyheter (DN), the biggest morning daily.</p><p> </p><p>The summer before the election, the ‘Alliance’, (the non-socialist coalition, launched an election promise to abolish the real estate tax. Instead they planned to introduce a low community charge.The Alliance won the election and formed a government to implement their election promise.</p><p> </p><p>The analysis was made on all the published articles in DN that covered the real estate tax issue. In total there were 43 such articles. These where all published between the launch of the campaign promise until the electionday and a month before the proposal was launched 19/9 2007, until the proposal was implemented in 2008.</p><p> </p><p>The study results in three interesting conclusions. After the election, when the election promise was about to become political reality, DN reported more negatively about this specific issue. The genre of the articles varied heavily before and after the election. Before the election more news articles where published than after the election and the letters-to-the-editor about the real estate tax were published almost only before the election. This study also treats the intresting phenomenon that the Alliance, before the election, had the power to define their election promise but after the election they seem to have lost this power and instead the real estate tax question was defined by the media. The Alliance claimed that they would  ”abolish the real estate tax and introduce a low community charge” and DN used this definition in their newspaper. After the election, DN reported about the election as a new real estate tax, which is a very different thing.</p>

Did the mass media report in a different way about the real estate tax before the Swedish national election 2006 than they did after the election? If there were differences, what could be the cause? This study aims to answer these questions by using a quantitative analysis of articles about the real estate tax published in the Dagens Nyheter (DN), the biggest morning daily.   The summer before the election, the ‘Alliance’, (the non-socialist coalition, launched an election promise to abolish the real estate tax. Instead they planned to introduce a low community charge.The Alliance won the election and formed a government to implement their election promise.   The analysis was made on all the published articles in DN that covered the real estate tax issue. In total there were 43 such articles. These where all published between the launch of the campaign promise until the electionday and a month before the proposal was launched 19/9 2007, until the proposal was implemented in 2008.   The study results in three interesting conclusions. After the election, when the election promise was about to become political reality, DN reported more negatively about this specific issue. The genre of the articles varied heavily before and after the election. Before the election more news articles where published than after the election and the letters-to-the-editor about the real estate tax were published almost only before the election. This study also treats the intresting phenomenon that the Alliance, before the election, had the power to define their election promise but after the election they seem to have lost this power and instead the real estate tax question was defined by the media. The Alliance claimed that they would  ”abolish the real estate tax and introduce a low community charge” and DN used this definition in their newspaper. After the election, DN reported about the election as a new real estate tax, which is a very different thing.

With the rise of social media, people have gained a platform to express opinions and discuss current subjects with others. This thesis investigates whether a simple sentiment analysis — determining how positive a tweet about a given party is — can be used to predict the results of the Swedish general election and compares the results to betting odds and opinion polls. The results show that while the idea is an interesting one, and sometimes the data can point in the right direction, it is by far a reliable source to predict election outcomes.

Syftet med den här masteruppsatsen är att förstå nyhetsdiskurser i public service och invandringskritiska alternativmedier i Sverige. Uppsatsen fokuserar på hur de fyra största politiska partierna behandlar invandringsfrågan månaden före det riksdagsvalet 2018. Uppsatsen syftar mot att förstå skillnader och likheter i diskursiva praktiker om invandringsfrågan i två public service medier (Sveriges Television och Sveriges Radio) samt två invandringskritiska alternativmedier (Fria Tider och Nyheter Idag), och för att undersöka hur detta kan kopplas till minskat förtroende i traditionella medier.Uppsatsen grundar analysen på diskursteori av Fairclough i sammanhanhet av minskat förtroende för traditionella nyhetsmedier. För analys av resultaten används gestaltningteorin och dagordningsteorin, tillsammans med teorier om kommersialiserad journalistik.Metoderna som används är en kritisk diskursanalys baserad på Faircloughs tredimensionella modell, tillsammans med en retorisk analys som appliceras på Faircloughs textnivå. Dessa metoder användes på tolv medietexter som handlade om samma nyhet under augusti 2018.Resultaten visade en Överlägsenhetsdiskurs, där de invandringskritiska medierna intar en roll som överlägnsa de andra deltagarna i det politiska "spelet". Jag presebterar också en erkännandediskurs för att förklara en tredimensionell modell som innehåller politiker i botten, traditionella medier på andra nivån och invandringskritiska medier på toppen. Den sista diskursen är en "Vänskaps"-diskurs där de invandringskritiska medierna intar en "vänskaplig" roll mot andra aktörer i det politiska spelet, vilket ytterligare expanderar på teorier om politisk nyhetsjournalistik som ett spel.Framtida forskning kan riktas mot att bredda analysen och inkludera flera sorters alternativa medier, utföras i andra länder eller utveckla den model jag presenterar. / The aim of this master’s thesis is to understand news discursive practices in public service and the immigration critical alternative media of Sweden. The thesis focus on how the four largest political parties addresses the topic of immigration the month before the Swedish election in 2018. The thesis aims at identifying and understanding similarities and differences in the discursive construction of immigration as a political topic in two public service media (Sveriges Television and Sveriges Radio) and two immigration critical alternative media (Fria Tider and Nyheter Idag), and to examine how this connects to the diminished trust in mainstream media.The thesis bases the analysis on discourse theory by Fairclough, and the context of distrust in traditional news media. To analyze the result, framing and agenda setting theories are used along with the theory of commercialized journalism.The methods used are a Critical Discourse Analysis based on Fairclough’s model supported by a rhetorical analysis which is applied on the text layer in Fairclough’s model. These methods are applied to a total of twelve media texts that covered the same stories during August of 2018.The results showed a superiority discourse where the immigration critical media enters a role of superior to other actors in the political “game”. I also present an acknowledgement discourse to support a three-level model, which consists of politics at the bottom, the mainstream media on the second level, and the alternative media on the top. The final discourse is the “Friendship” discourse where immigration critical media takes on a “friendship” role towards other actors in the political game, to further expand upon political journalism as a game.Future research could be aimed at widening the analysis to cover other forms of alternative media, be placed in other countries, or develop the model I propose.

The overall aim with this study is to understand how and why the political environment in Sweden changed so drastically during the first years of the 1990s. The political mayfly New Democracy took office in the Swedish parliament in 1991 to 1994. At the time they were branded as a rightwing, xenophobic populist party. While our Nordic neighbors have had political parties resembling New Democracy since the beginning of the 1970’s, the established parties in Sweden managed to cover most of these controversial questions for some time. In a world that was dominated by western capitalism and libertinism following the collapse of the Soviet union, with increasing immigration also from outside of Europe, the Swedish people wanted to see change and the 1991 election turned out to be historical in that about 30% of the voters changed party allegiance. Enter New Democracy, a party that had been formally created in February 1991. They had been formed by 2 strong characters who met in November 1990 for the very first time: Ian Wachtmeister and Bert Karlsson. Karlsson was the person with impeccable instincts for publicity. Wachtmeister was the man behind most of the ideas that came to make up the party program. Their leading idea was that politics should be governed by common sense. In this spirit (and the lack of time) they postponed a lot of principal and basic discussions on key matters, with the idea that they would sort them out once elected. This did not work out too well and they soon started to disintegrate from within and by the next election in 1994 they had basically stopped working as a party. The aim of the study is achieved through evaluating the following areas: how did New Democracy communicate with their voters as well as how they worked in parliament seen in the light of their party program; the second evaluates New Democracy from an ideology standpoint and finally; how did the voters look at the political situation in Sweden at this time? What relatively little has been written and researched about New Democracy has seemingly always taken the starting view of looking at them as a populist party. In this thesis I look atthis unconditionally, and start with an analysis of ideologies and populism. The characteristics identified from this are then applied on New Democracy based on what they said they wanted to achieve as well as how they applied their ideas in real life. In order to firmly establish the current theories on ideologies in general and populist theory in particular I have drawn upon some of the most well renown researchers in these areas. As fo rthe study of New Democracy I have been using whatever little material they published themselves, in addition I’ve been using the archives of the Swedish government and a series of books and research on New Democracy. Furthermore I’ve conducted an interview with a former New Democracy parliament member to add and confirm much of the written material. The analysis shows that New Democracy was a party that in some ways were ahead of their time as it took another couple of years and then many of their ideas had been implemented. Their messages and ways to go about it were seen as extraordinary at the time. This provides an interesting parallel to the political debate of today considering what is seen as politically correct. Although they were seen as rebels at the time, by today’s standards they appear as rather harmless. They were seen as a populist party of their day. By comparing to current definitions of a populist parti they would rather be seen as a discontent party. Today they would not stand out even nearly in the same way as they did then. And finally, I would argue that the development of a party like New Democracy was inevitable at the time given all political changes in Sweden and in our vicinity.

Modellen för röstmaximerande politiska partier i ett proportionerligt valsystem presenterad av Lindbeck och Weibull (1987) respektive Dixit och Londregan (1996) används för att testa svenska regeringens taktiska användning av de allmänna statsbidragen till kommunerna under åren 2007–2010. Resultaten tyder på att statsbidragen använts taktiskt vilket korroborerar teorin. Liknande analys för åren 2015–2018 kunde inte replikera resultaten. Svensk valundersökning används för att identifiera väljarnas ideologiska preferens för regeringen under tiden för riksdagsvalet 2006 varefter mätmodellen presenterad av Johansson (2003) och Dahlberg och Johansson (2002) används för att skatta poängen mot den latenta faktorn "ideologisk bias". Dessa poäng delas upp efter valkrets och används för att skatta den ideologiska biasens täthetsfördelning i respektive valkrets. Valresultatet används för att identifiera indifferenspunkterna där väljarna i respektive valkrets är indifferenta mellan båda politiska blocken. Täthetsfunktionerna utvärderas vid dessa punkter varefter betydelsen av tätheterna som determinant för mängden allmänna statsbidrag en kommun erhåller testas genom linjär regression. / A version of the model for voter share maximizing political parties in a proportional electoral system developed by Lindbeck and Weibull (1987) and Dixit and Londregan (1996) respectively is presented. This model is used to test if there is evidence for the tactical use of intergovernmental grants from the central incumbent government to the local governments at the municipal level during the first term of office 2007-2010 of the conservative Reinfeldt government in Sweden. The results show that such tactical use did occur, and which corroborates the theoretical framework for competing parties. Similar results were obtained for the periods 2011-2014 (conservative government) and 2015-2018 (socialist government). Data from the Swedish election studies are used to identify the voter’s ideological preferences for the incumbent central government during the time of the 2006 general election to the Swedish parliament. The theory behind the model presented by Johansson (2003) and Dahlberg and Johansson (2002) respectively was the guideline to estimate the factor scores against the latent factor “ideological bias”. The Gaussian kernel density function is used to estimate the ideological bias in each constituency: The actual election results are used to approximate the indifference cutpoint where the voters are indifferent between both political alternatives. The probability distribution functions were evaluated at these cutpoints after which the importance of these densities for the amount of intergovernmental grants a municipality receives is tested using linear regression.

This research explores if Sweden, a country with high trust in the political system could be challenged by social media. The study focuses on one spectrum of social media, TikTok, that exploded during the covid-19 pandemic and is proof of how fast social media develops and reaches out to human beings. The study addresses a research gap regarding this new social media platform as it examines exposure to political content and impact on political behavior. Specifically, the study focuses on first-time voters voting behavior in the Swedish election 2022. This thesis is based on a digital survey sent out to 139 respondents during November 2022. The result indicates that there is a relationship between viewing time on TikTok and voting behavior among young voters in the Swedish election 2022. The study ends with a discussion about how specific political content the respondent was exposed to on TikTok could have had an impact on the political behavior in the Swedish election 2022.

With more political and social discourse taking place online, particularly on social media, theorists have started labeling digital communicative realms as “online public spheres.” However, with the modern public sphere comes modern challenges to political communication; a core antagonist of which is political bots. Political bots are automated accounts that produce content and interact with individuals on political topics on social networks. In this thesis, I analyzed the presence of political bots on Twitter during the 2022 Swedish general election, and by examining the content posted by the bots, I investigated whether they jeopardized democratic functions of the online public sphere by publishing misrepresentation (i.e., artificially increasing the popularity of political actors and political ideas). The analysis uncovered significant bot presence during the 2022 Swedish general election; more than one-fifth of all election-related content was produced by bots, ~90% of which produced misrepresentation. I concluded that political bots jeopardized democratic functions of the online public sphere during the 2022 Swedish general election.