This paper seeks to unravel the existing discourses within the Swedish football supporter movement, and their criticism towards the Swedish police authority and the implementation of a new strategy known as"Villkorstrappan". The strategy faced heavy criticism from the supporters’ clubs, calling it counterproductive and harmful. The Swedish football supporters’ union soon launched an initiative called "Rädda svensk fotboll!". Almost every supporters’ club affiliated with football clubs in the Swedish top flight, joined the initiative leading to nationwide protests both online, and in the stadiums. The theoretical framework consists of Norman Fairclough's three-dimensional model of CDA. In addition the paper seeks to examine the creation of collective identity in the movement, this by using Melucci's theory and Burke's rhetorical identification theory. The research material has consisted of texts produced by Swedish supporters’ clubs and of pictures of message-banners presented in the stands during games. The results revealed three main discourses within the supporters’ movement and the criticism towards Villkorstrappan: “The police is a threat towards Swedish football”; "Football as democratic, and belonging to the people''; and “The importance of the supporterculture”. Regarding collective identity, various findings indicated an increasing unity within the Swedish football supporter movement, when uniting against a common enemy. Overall the results emphasize the importance of the swedish football supporters’movement, as a democratic actor, as a social movement and as crucial to swedish football in general.

The highest Swedish football division, Allsvenskan, is not known for playing the best football or having the best players in the world on the pitch. However, Allsvenskan has one of the worlds’ best average audience rates and is well known globally for their large supporter culture. Thus, the topic of supporter culture and supporter related violence are a frequently discussed matter in Swedish media and has inspired the research topic for this study. The aim has been to study Swedish medias’ representation of football supporters and supporter related violence and if it perhaps has occurred a discursive change between the years 2014-2022. Traditional news articles published online within the chosen years, from several different newspapers, have been analyzed through a critical discourse analysis. Accompanied by critical discourse analysis, the study has used a theoretical framework consisting of media power, media hegemony and moral panic to analyze and conclude the results. The results provided three distinct discourses existing in Swedish media about football supporters being; supporters are a threat against the nuclear family, the supporter culture is a threat against society and lastly, medias’ large representation of moral panic as a response to supporters and supporter related violence. In addition, the study shows how there has been a discursive change in medias’ representation of supporters over time which confirms how media truly has the power to control society and its attitudes as well as determining and maintaining its ‘status quo’.