This paper set out to find out how actors have framed Sweden's tax on aviation, and compared the debates around the two times the tax has been enacted, 2006 and 2018. Connecting the specific issue of the aviation tax to the broader narrative on climate change, the framing process was formulated as a two-level game with both issue-specific frames and general master frames that have wider cultural resonance. The framing analysis was conducted observing the debates as a framing contest between frame sponsors (focusing on framing efforts from the aviation industry and the Green Party) in interaction with news journalists and opinion writers. The best way to describe the 2006 debate is that it was dominated by discussion of the tax from an economic standpoint, latching on to a master frame of economic consequences with regional impact. The 2018 debate focused on the environmental aspects of the tax, mostly disregarding the explicit effects of the tax and focusing on the harm of flying, connected with a moral frame together with a responsibility frame towards the individual. As I interpret the debates, the actor who effectively connected their issue frame to a master frame had control of the narrative, which meant for example that the Green Party did not get to discuss environmental aspects in 2006, and that they did not need to discuss economic aspects in 2018.

This bachelor’s essay discusses the Swedish political party The Sweden Democrats’ presence on the social media Facebook and Twitter during the month of January 2017. The essay’s purpose is to discuss and analyse the party’s posts with picture- and text analysis, in relation to nationalism, populism and from a historical perspective. The party’s connections to nationalism and populism are visible in their social media posts and an ongoing theme of their social media presence is the connection between fugitives and crime, where rape and gang crimes are blamed on fugitives from the Middle East. The party’s self-announced political standpoint as Sweden’s only oppositional party is also discussed in relation to their social media posts. The conclusion of the essay is that the political party has internalized a postcolonial view of Europe and the rest of the world as binary opposites, where Sweden and the West has come further in their social and cultural development than the world outside of Europe. This causes The Sweden Democrats to post and retweet/share posts on social media that represents and reproduces the image of immigrants as a threat to the Swedish nation.

Human trafficking is a serious crime which restricts people's fundamental rights and privileges. Worldwide, human trafficking is controlled by organized communities including Sweden. It is a widespread problem that’s affecting a lot of people. The debate about human trafficking is being pushed out of the way by shootings and disposal of drugs. Gang crimes are being raised in many different types of contexts and you can read daily about new shootings and different kinds of promises from the politicians. But in the shadow of gang crime, we find people who’re forced into sexual exploitation. Worldwide, humans are being sold for sexual purposes, the statistics are unclear, but it is around 20.9 million people, this is a really serious problem that we have to overcome. The main purpose with this essay is to compare Socialdemokraterna, Sverigedemokraterna and Moderaternas plan of action to decrease human trafficking by using Bacchi’s WPR method - What's the problem represented to be? The study intends to apply the research from Sexuell människohandel - En fråga om tillgång och efterfrågan together with Expertstöd mot människohandel - kända fall 2021 maintained by Jämställdhetsmyndigheten. In this research we’re going to apply the theories Demand theory and Publicity of prostitution written by Thozama Mandisa and Mark Lanier. The essay is based on a triangulation and is based on motions, propositions and the parties' party programs and also a survey that we have sent out to members of the parties. In the result we did a parallel discussion of what kind of actions Socialdemokraterna, Sverigedemokraterna and Moderaterna talked about when it came down to the problem with human trafficking. This essay emphasizes that the parties Socialdemokraterna, Sverigedemokraterna and Moderaterna have a strong belief in restricting the legislation and a demand for increased resources. The problem is based on demands and the parties are considered to be in agreement. Despite that, the problem remains.

In October 2022 the Swedish governing parties and the Sweden Democrats signed an agreement called Tidöavtalet. The aim of this thesis is to explore what the problem regarding criminality is represented to be in that political agreement. To answer the research question the analysis have been based on Carol Bacchi´s methodological and theoretical approach “What´s the problem represented to be?” (WPR) to through the suggested solutions understand the underlying representations of the problem. Additionally, theories of punishment have been used to better understand the material. Following four main problems have been identified: Insufficient laws and punishments, insufficient methods to solve crimes, gang violence and immigration. The method also targets what is left unproblematic and since drug policy and zero tolerance historically have been the salient topic of criminal policy in Sweden, the absence of a discussion regarding drugs in Tidöavtalet was surprising. Furthermore, the rehabilitative process of convicted criminals is also left unproblematic, and the deleterious consequences of incapacitation are not addressed. / <p>2023-06-09</p>

In this essay the framing of the politics of the two prime minister candidates Magdalena Andersson and Ulf Kristersson have been analyzed. This during two interviews broadcasted before the election 2022 on public service channel 1 (SVT 1) in a program called Election 2022: The Hearing (Val 2022: Utfrågningen). The study has looked at several different types of framing including thematic, episodic and gameframing to be able to analyze how the politics are portrayed. The study has also acknowledged the importance of the power relations that take place between interviewee and journalist in a political interview. Also how the role of the journalist acting as a program manager affects the framing of the politics. The conclusion is that politics are framed in all kinds of framing analyzed. But there are differences between how Andersson and Kristersson´s politics are framed through the analyzed frames. The program managers had different strategies to confront the politicians depending on who they interviewed.

This work takes off in earlier studies concerning motivational factors to interact in various social media in relation to societal and political discussions. The aim for this study is to garner a deeper understanding about how users on Twitter are motivated to take part in debates beneath the hashtag #svpol. Also, this work contributes with the personal experience of entering the Twittersphere as a new user without the capital of trust or knowledge prerequisite to the participation in the community of #svpol. Through semi-structured interviews six respondents shared their experiences of political dialogue on Twitter. Further, this study presents a new form of gathering data by using Twitter as a channel for textual responses through the function of Direct Messages where 3 respondents answered in text. The results presented confirms earlier theory in some respects regarding motivational factors to engage in political commentary and debate on Twitter. Also, this study presents nuances which can be recognized as pre-dispositioning motivational factors addressed in earlier research. The respondents in this work show differences in their social orientation displaying both relation orientation and antagonistic features in the community of #svpol. Their motivation and gratifications differ, and the result are discussed and concluded in the final chapter. This study does not generalize by the findings presented, rather it describes a small window of the community of #svpol and political commentary on Twitter. Rather than posing any absolute truths or widely held conceptions, this study contributes by giving some depth to the notion of nine Twitter users and their perception of the activity beneath #svpol on the Twitter platform. This work also shines light hardships which a researcher might encounter on the way to a qualitative approach to Twitter users in a general, largely anonymous, network within a national setting.

The relationship between the state and the people is a central theme in political theory. Discussions in this field have often centered on how a people can come to constitute a state. Less attention, however, has been directed toward the state’s role in constituting and recreating its people. This book examines the Swedish state’s role in forming the people by regulating the use of reproductive techniques: insemination, in vitro fertilization (IVF), and donations of sperm and eggs. The study focuses on how the issue of assisted reproduction was handled and problematized in Swedish policymaking between 1981 and 2005. What problem representations dominated the political debates and decision-making processes surrounding assisted reproduction? How was conflict expressed within the field of reproductive politics (i.e., what aspects caused conflict or political disagreement)? How did collective fantasies play into the political treatment of reproductive technologies? Using historical government and Riksdag material, four major policy debates have been analyzed, from the first legal regulation of assisted reproduction in Sweden in the 1980s up until the inclusion of lesbian couples as beneficiaries of gamete donation. Theoretically, the study is inspired by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s political discourse theory, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and the “logics approach” developed by Jason Glynos and David Howarth. This combination of perspectives allows for a dual focus on both the form of political articulations and their affective force. Thus, the analysis tries to capture what was taken for granted within the discourse on reproduction (social logics), what arose as points of political conflict or contention (political logics), as well as the affective underpinnings of these social constructions and struggles (fantasmatic logics). The main result of the study is that even though the period saw a quite revolutionary development of new reproductive technologies, the reproduction policies under study took on much more moderate and hesitant character. Throughout the analyzed period there was a more or less consensual view that new reproductive technologies should only be allowed if they did not go against the “child’s best interest.” At the same time, there was significant political conflict over what constituted this interest. Moreover, the reforms that were made never fully embraced the radical implications of the new technologies. Rather, they clung on to previously established patterns of what a “real” family looked like. Thus, every move to allow a new technology or include another category of people as legitimate users of that technology was contingent upon the articulation of a discursive equivalence with previously naturalized methods of reproduction, ultimately taking the heterosexual, nuclear family as an implicit model. Finally, I argue that the production of “sense” in this terrain of radical undecidability was dependent on the mobilization of a series of collective fantasies about “natural life processes,” “nature’s imperfections,” “a humanist view of mankind,” “the stable, original nuclear family”, and so on.

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.

This master thesis is concerned with nostalgia and the uses of nostalgia in Swedish politics. Nostalgia as a political tool has been used to great effect through out the western world in the last decades, with the most notable examples being for instance Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in the USA or the success of Brexit in the United Kingdom. The rising frequency of nostalgia in politics has led some scholars to suggest that we are living in the age of nostalgia. Despite this, and the fact that scholars from multiple disciplins agree that nostalgia is a tool not just used by populist parties, there are few studies regarding the use of nostalgia as a political tool in Sweden that does not solely focus on the use of nostalgia by said populist parties. This thesis therefore seeks to fill a knowledge gap and study the use of nostalgia by different parts of the Swedish political sphere. The source material examined in the study is the political commercials made by the eight different parties in the Swedish Parliament in the time period of 2010-2022. The research questions of the thesis concerns to which extent nostalgia is used in Swedish politics, how nostalgia appears in the political advertisement, which political messages it is loaded with and which role the use of nostalgia play in the political parties visions of the future. The thesis is divided into two parts, with the first part studying to which extent nostalgia is present in the source material. By using a qualitative content analys to gather the nostalgic allusions in the commercials, and by also dividing the allusions into aestethic and explicit nostalgia to show that nostalgia can also be present in the visual aspects of the commercials, the result of the study show that nostalgic allusions are present in commercials from all parties during the time period, although some parties use it more than others. The second part of the analysis focuses on the uses of nostalgia by three parties with different ideologies in the Swedish parliament, The Social Democrats, The Left Party and The Sweden Democrats. The analysis is done by analysing the uses of nostalgia in the three parties political commercials as uses of history. The results indicate that all three parties uses vague nostalgic uses of history as a way of looking back at a past that is a perfect snapshot of a golden age of society, in contrast to the chaotic present. The past thus becomes something we need to return to in order to change society for the better. It also shows that the three parties all seem to be nostalgic for the same vague time period in which the Swedish peoples home was strong, even though they have different views on what the peoples home actually constitutes.