In 2017 a 17-year-old girl called Wilma Andersson went missing in the Swedish town Uddevalla. A few weeks later the police made a discovery that confirmed that she was dead. Her former boyfriend Tishko Ahmed was prosecuted and convicted for her murder and sentenced to 18 years in prison. The murder of Wilma Andersson is a murder case that touched a lot of people and was very big in Swedish news media. This study ́s purpose was to investigate how tabloidization effect crime journalism. Four research questions were asked in order to investigate this. The questions were: 1. How is Wilma Andersson framed in Aftonbladet and Dagens Nyheter? 2. How is Tishko Ahmed framed in Aftonbladet and Dagens Nyheter? 3. What similarities and differences are there in how Wilma Andersson and Tishko Ahmed are framed in Aftonbladet and Dagens Nyheter? 3a. How does tabloidization effect the framing and the crime journalism? The results of this study show that Wilma Andersson is framed as an innocent, kind and orderly girl by the tabloid paper Aftonbladet. The findings also show that Aftonbladet framed the perpetrator, Tishko Ahmed, in several ways. He is framed as a normal guy that no one thought would be capable of murder, but he is also framed as a violent boyfriend and mentally unstable. The broad sheet paper, Dagens Nyheter, framed Wilma Andersson as a vulnerable girl who had a difficult life situation and the perpetrator Tishko was framed as mentally unstable and unreliable. The result of the study show that the tabloid newspaper framed the victim and perpetrator in a more personal and dramatic way by using writing technique and personal sources. The tabloid newspaper also used pictures more than the broad sheet, which empathized the dramatic and personal framing. The findings in this study show that tabloidization effect crime journalism by making it more dramatic and entertaining in order to attract readers and make money.

The aim of this study was to examine how two different newspapers covered the disappearance and murder of Wilma Andersson. The research questions were: How are the victim and perpetrator portrayed? What differences and similarities can we see in national news media versus local news media, and how did the image of the victim and perpetrator change over the course of the coverage?   The method used was critical discourse analyses of 14 articles in the local newspaper Bohusläningen and the national tabloid Aftonbladet. By analysing the assigned characteristics from each source, it was determined that the victim, Wilma Andersson, was portrayed to the reader as a young and innocent girl. She was described as caring, responsible and ambitious. She was depicted as a girl with a bright future and love of life. The local newspaper labeled her as a part of the community, while the national tabloid focused on describing her character through family members. The perpetrator, Tishko Ahmed, was portrayed as a cold and sinister man who was indifferent to Wilma Andersson’s disappearance and death. However, early on in the national tabloid’s coverage he was also described as an everyday man. The local newspaper was more prone to cover the story in a neutral manner, while the national tabloid dramatized the event to a greater extent. Our study shows that the geographical distance between the newspaper and the place of the crime scene is the main factor in the differences between the portrayals of the people involved. The closer the newspaper is to the crime scene, the closer they are to people who knew the victim and perpetrator. This results in the newspaper being more cautious in how they cover the story.

This study examines the difference in Expressen’s portrayal of two similar murder cases in Sweden with the key difference being the ethnicity of the perpetrators. The main purpose is to determine if the media is using a discriminatory rhetoric in their covering of crime and if they are upholding a “we and them” view of the world. Former research shows signs of othering in the media around discourse of crime and immigrants and discusses medias’ cementing of a post-colonial worldview. This study uses framing theory and othering theory as a theoretical framework and is conducted through a quantitative content analysis of the written articles, about the murder cases of Wilma Andersson and Tova Moberg, across the time period of them going missing, to the point where the murderer is sentenced. The results show no signs of othering or discrimination in the Expressen articles and both the perpetrators and victims are framed equally in almost every aspect. Furthermore there is no significant connection between the sources cited and the framing in those articles, which could indicate an awareness in Expressens news process and how they influence the public.