Covid-19 has been the focus on international, national, local and individual level during thelast 1,5 years, and it has been a constant subject in international media reporting. This studyaims to investigate how Anglo-Saxon media has described Sweden during this time of crisis.We have chosen to investigate specific features of Swedish exceptionalism which are thewelfare state, public administration and economy, and how these have been framed by themedia. This is done through investigating Anglo-Saxon articles in relation to Sweden and thepandemic, where we have selected articles related to our predefined features, which will bethe foundation for the analysis. Since we are investigating material consisting of text, wehave used a qualitative text analysis in order to expose and examine how Sweden has beenframed internationally. Based on the empirical section, as well as the theoretical framework,we conclude that media reporting has used features of Swedish exceptionalism to describeSweden have been frequently occuring in our material. Public administration has been themost prominent aspect in the material, followed by the economic feature, and thereafter thewelfare state. The tonality has varied, but a majority of the article expressed a positivetonality.

This study aims to research the implications of Afro-Swedish women's relationship with their hair and how it pertains to their view of femininity and beauty. Four one-on-one semi-structured interviews with Afro-Swedish women were conducted to collect relevant material. During these interviews, the women shared their relationship with their hair, experiences relating to their hair in Sweden, and how and if it has affected their perception of their beauty and level of femininity. The findings of this study demonstrate that Afro-Swedish women relate femininity to hair that is associated with whiteness, which means hair that is smoother and straighter but also longer than the afro-textured hair associated with black people. The results showed how representations of black women in relation to beauty and femininity were seen as limited by the informants, as those were rarely there to begin with and/or only inclusive of lighter-skinned black women with wigs, weaves, straightened or relaxed hair. All the informants shared experiences of their hair being touched, with or without consent. Through comparison to earlier research, it was found that the experiences and opinions of these Afro-Swedishwomen were more similar than different to black women from the USA for example. To conclude, this study disproves the notion of Swedish exceptionalism in relation to the racialization and discrimination of afro-textured hair, as well as the not so colorblind representations of beauty and femininity. These results also show that there is a vast amount of information concerning the lived experiences of Afro-Swedish women, relating to hair and other themes, to be uncovered by researchers in gender studies.

This thesis aims to determine if there is a discourse of Swedish exceptionalism in the Swedish Government’s Statements of Foreign Policy between 2002 and 2018. Discourse analysis have been used to analyze eight statements, based on a constructivist framework and the theoretical concept of Swedish exceptionalism. Swedish exceptionalism is the idea of Sweden having a self-image of being superior to others, mainly based on the country’s understanding of itself as being a “moral superpower”.   The research question formulated was: Are the Swedish Government’s Statements of Foreign Policy, between 2002 and 2018, articulated through a discourse of Swedish exceptionalism?   To determine if there was a discourse of Swedish exceptionalism in the Statements of Foreign Policy, seven key representations of the concept were established. Those were   Sweden:   1.     being military non-aligned 2.     having an active foreign policy 3.     being pioneering or “leading the way” 4.     bringing security, stability, and peace 5.     being a champion of human rights and democracy 6.     acting as mediator and/or a bridge builder 7.     showing solidarity with “less fortune states” (developing, vulnerable and/or small)   The results of the empirical study were that all key representations were present in all of the statements analyzed, which lead to the conclusion is that the Statements of Foreign Policy between 2002 and 2018 were articulated through a discourse of Swedish exceptionalism.

In 2021, Sweden was ranked as the European country with the highest number of fatal shootings per million inhabitants. As a result, gang violence is described as a national crisis and has turned in to one of the main debate themes among political parties ahead of the parliamentary election in 2022. In the debates on gang violence, it is often linked to migration politics. Swedish Television (SVT) has broadcasted numerous programs on gang violence, and these programs are the main material used in this study.  Drawing on feminist- and critical whiteness theory I examine how ideas of gender, whiteness and Swedishness interplay in the construction of gang violence as a national crisis. By using a retrotopic, a security politic and an affective theoretical perspective it is possible to analyze who is portrayed as vulnerable or problematic in relation to the gang violence. A further ambition of this study is to investigate the connection between folkhem nostalgia and the construction of gang violence as a national crisis. I argue that the Swedish exceptionalism is being used to establish collective feelings of folkhem nostalgia, which contributes to the understanding of gang violence as a national crisis. Based on a thematic analysis (Braun & Clark 2006) I show how feelings of folkhem nostalgia are used to establish narratives of a threatening and problematic Other; a male non-white threat within the nation. Further, the debates and documentaries broadcasted on SVT can be seen as part of political and national interests, where a (hi)story of folkhemmetas a part of the Swedish exceptionalism is being used to establish certain feelings and perceptions related to gender and race. This enables a placement of gang violence in another place, in another culture and in another body.

In 2020, the year the Covid-19 pandemic struck, the Swedish Covid-19 response differed radically from the general policy of total lockdown and strict enforcement of Covid-measures and regulations recommended by the WHO. Instead, Sweden strove early on to achieve herd immunity, with no mandatory measures to limit numbers in shopping malls, buses, and other public events, nor mask requirements. Hence, during the height of the pandemic, Swedish Covid-19 policy was a highly debated issue in the international media, within academia and the World Health Organization. The aim of this study is to examine the international media discourse on the Swedish Covid-19 strategy in the international print media. The focus has been on newspapers from the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The research has been done by investigating how Sweden’s Covid-19 strategy is discursively constructed, through major themes and sub-themes that have emerged. Additionally, the differences in discourse between Dutch, English and American media have been explored. As well as the use of language, ideologies, and linguistic devices within the international discourse have been investigated. A total of 178 articles, published between the period of 1 January 2020 until 6 February 2022, have been collected and analyzed. This study uses Qualitative Content Analysis (QCA) as main method and has been inspired by Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). A coding frame has inductively been created, by having used a sample of 20 newspaper articles in a pilot study. The software of NVivo has been used for the coding process. The major themes that emerged from my analyses of media discourses are: Anders Tegnell, Strategy, Trust and Image of Sweden and Swedes. My study found that media discourses on the Swedish Covid-19 policy are not positive. Rather these tend to be negative or at best neutral. Images of Sweden tend to vary in tandem with increase or decreases of Covid-19 infections and/or deaths. As the Swedish strategy became more or less aligned with the ‘norm’ of the WHO, the coverage of Sweden in media declined and lost its newsworthiness.