The role of media in society is significant, and what the media reports influences people. The agenda-setting theory suggests that the issues covered by the media become important topics in society, and through descriptions and attributes, the media can shape public opinions. Sweden's military non-alignment ended with its membership in Nato becoming a reality in 2024. Until 2012, public opinion in Sweden strongly opposed joining Nato. However, a shift occurred, and the gap between supporters and opponents narrowed. This study, through a qualitative content analysis, examined how the editorial pages of three Swedish newspapers described Swedish Nato membership from 2008 to 2015, and how the relationship between these descriptions and public opinion evolved. The results clearly show that, over time, the editorials increasingly portrayed Swedish Nato membership positively rather than negatively. There is a correlation between these descriptions and public opinion. However, it is not possible to conclude whetherthe editorials influenced public opinion or if the reverse is true.

The purpose of this study was to analyze how two major online newspapers, Aftonbladet.se & Expressen.se, have framed and portrayed the actions of the environmental organization Återställ Våtmarker in their reporting. Additionally, the study also examines whether the portrayal of the organization has changed over time. A qualitative content analysis was conducted on 23 articles. The analysis was based on framing and agenda setting theory and included both text and image analysis. The results of the study showed that initially in the first half of 2022 Återställ Våtmarker was framed as a “peaceful” organization, where the conflicts and drama arose due to public reactions and actions. This however changed in the later half of 2022, Återställ Våtmarker began to be framed and portrayed as an organization who was seeking conflicts and drama. The articles and their reporting began to indicate that their primary focus was to highlight the demonstrations and actions as “annoying” and “disruptive” to the public. But also how “chaotic” scenes and “turmoil” constantly arose due to Återställ Våtmarker and their demonstrations. However, it can be argued that the reporting was a textual overdramatization as there was a clear discrepancy between the text and the images in the reporting, Thus, it can be speculated that the articles overdramatized the text to attract more readers, which in turn leads to more revenue for the newspaper.

Problem Statement and Purpose: In recent years, skepticism towards AI has increased among Swedes. This study aims to investigate whether there is a correlation between this skepticism and how AI is portrayed by the media. The purpose is to present a depiction of how AI and its development are portrayed in the media, as well as to examine whether reinforcing images are used more or less depending on the nature of the news. Additionally, the study aims to explore differences between public and commercial media's reporting on AI.   Method and Material: The chosen method for this study is a quantitative content analysis. A total of 251 publications were analyzed, all from Aftonbladet, Dagens Nyheter, SVT, and Sveriges Radio. The publications are from the first quarter of 2023 and 2024 and were sourced from the media archive Research Retriever. After collection, the material was analyzed using the statistical analysis tool SPSS.   Main Results: There is a correlation with the widespread skepticism as media reporting on AI is predominantly negative. However, the results indicate that media reporting was somewhat more positive in 2024 compared to 2023. One reason for the increasing skepticism, despite this, may be that according to Agenda Setting Theory, the media has highlighted AI as particularly important to the public. As the negative angle remains dominant, the impression is that it is something to be concerned about. The results show that the difference between public service and commercial media in how they portray AI development is minimal. Profit-driven media tends to publish more frequently. Regarding the use of reinforcement images, it can be concluded that most publications are accompanied by some associated image. Public service uses more positive reinforcement images than commercial actors, according to the study's results. Commercial actors more frequently use reinforcement images in negatively angled articles compared to public service.

This study focuses on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the U.S. Representative for New York's 14th Congressional District, and how news media portray her based on her gender, age, and ethnicity, which still play essential roles in the political system in the United States. The analysis of previous academic research, newspaper articles from the New York Times and the Washington Post (June 1, 2018 to June 30, 2019) and framing and feminist theories are used to evaluate coverage of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The newspaper stories are examined based on the framing of traits including being the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, being Latina, and being one the most progressive politicians in the Congress. The main objective of this study is to shed light on a topic that at this moment in time is more relevant than ever because the 116th Congress has the highest number of women and women of color in U.S. history. I examine media coverage that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez receives for stereotypical frames, so that, overall, all women running or holding public office may receive unbiased and more balanced media coverage. This study also intends to hold media outlets accountable for the way they portray different candidates because it has a significant influence on the voting population.

The present doctoral thesis arises from my own experience working within the juvenile justice system. It was in this context where I met minors who had assaulted their parents. The attempt to explain the rapid development of this type of violence and to analyze the interpretations that were emerging lays the groundwork for this work. Therefore, the origin of this work is not disconnected from professional practice and the contact with these minors and their families. The term child to parent violence (CPV) refers to aggressions that parents experience, perpetrated by their children. This concept is specifically used to refer to aggressions by young children, therefore, it is different from the violence suffered by elderly people. In the case of Spain, on occasions it is limited to the age of criminal responsibility, which comprises the ages from 14 to 17 years old. Nonetheless, there are also investigations interested as well for this violence in aggressors younger than 14 years old or young adults. The interest on CPV has been experiencing a meaningful increase over the last two decades; particularly significant in Spain. This type of violence has rapidly evolved from being practically unknown and absent from reference works on family violence to expanding its relevance to varied ambits. Therefore, the works presented next illustrate the approach to CPV from its impact on the academic ambit, the influence on the public system of intervention with the families and the minors, where the child protection service and the juvenile justice system take place, and, lastly, the public ambit. In this last section, the works included have investigated the reaction from the traditional media and the population of Twitter users, among who can be found professionals, institutions and population, in general. The number of academic publications on this type of aggression towards parents escalated simultaneously with the concern of the public institutions that dealt with the minors and their families. During the last years of the first decade in this century, the statistics provided by the Juvenile Prosecution service reflected a significant increment on the amount of minors diverted to the juvenile justice system by cause of assaults towards their progenitors. This rise became significant in a brief period of time, less than a decade. This phenomenon triggered a social reaction that involved both academic and socio-legal ambits, and the public opinion. The following dissertation articulates an interpretation from a sociological perspective to understand the origin of this violence and its social reaction. To achieve this, it proposes a paradigmatic change in the approach of the study of this violence, detaching itself from a positivist perspective centered on the minor’s characteristics. Instead, it focuses on the need for a constructivist comprehension of the minor as an aggressor. At the same time, it adopts a critical position as it incorporates to the analysis the institution’s role in the future of this social phenomenon. The methods used to understand the CPV include the comparison of the data obtained from different sources, both official and obtained from social studies, due to the particularity of the official data, and that this type of data encounters to reflect the real tendency of certain criminal forms. In this context, it is understood the evolution of the figures provided by the public institutions in the action and political decisions reflected in the legal reforms of the juvenile justice system. In addition to this, an analysis on content and critical discourse analysis (CDA) have been done with the data obtained from Twitter, to explore the public opinion on this issue. Adopting a critical posture has endured identifying the main agents and subjects from that discourse, as well as its relationship with the underlying ideology and the social practices associated with it. Therefore, it can be possible to explain the causes behind the rise of these cases of violence and their diversion to the juvenile justice system. The conclusions of this dissertation offer a new interpretation of the development of the CPV in Spain and the social reaction that reveals the influence of the process of legal reform and the subsequent judicialization of certain behaviors. Along with the modification of the criminal legislation of the minors, a social reaction emerges; where the interest of a certain group of social agents that have controlled the discourse on this matter, have priority. The most recent data provided by the Juvenile Prosecution service reflect a drop of the figures, while the numerous publications on the recurrence of this violence do not allow us to conclude that it is rising. Moreover, numerous investigations expose the presence of other forms of family violence previous to the CPV and that oppose stigmatizing conceptions of these minors that had been formed due to some publications. The key question that guides the dissertation is : What has happened in Spain so that in less than a decade, the CPV has evolved from being unknown to generating social concern, and that institutions with so much influence and status such as the Juvenile Prosecution service refer to the lack of social values and the incapacity of families to educate their children? The works included next answer this question from different perspectives under the conception of it being an evaded question until this moment and that, however, it is considered fundamental to be able to understand the characteristics of this violence. Consequently, it is considered that these works add a complementary vision that enriches the perspectives approached until nowadays.

Debattsidan i Dagens Nyheter har sedan 1980-talet varit en av Sveriges viktigaste opinionsbildare, och den fyller en värdefull funktion för fri åsiktsbildning i en väl fungerande demokrati. Denna studie fokuserar på hur debattsidan förändrats under de senaste 25 åren med utgångspunkt i kön (vem får oftast komma till tals på debattsidan, kvinnor eller män? – och hur har könsfördelningen utvecklats sedan 1980- talet?) och roll (exempelvis politiker, chefer och forskare). Vi har gjort en kvantitativ undersökning med början första helåret som DN Debatt hade en egen sida i tidningen, 1985, fram till 2010. Med hjälp av konstruerade veckor har sju dagar per år slumpmässigt valts ut. Resultaten visar att av våra författare (n = 498) är 75,3 procent av de undersökta författarna män, och 24,7 procent är kvinnor. Skillnaden mellan kvinnor och män minskar. Politiker är den största yrkesgruppen, och andelen politiker ökar ytterligare. Forskarna har legat på en relativt jämn nivå medan företagen publiceras på DN Debatt i allt högre grad. / The daily discussion feature ”DN Debatt” within the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter has been one of the country’s most influencial opinion formers since the 1980’s. With the starting point in theories within media and communication, we hade studied this important institution with focus on how the gender distribution and the authors’ professional roles – for example politicians, researchers and journalists – have changed over the last 25 years. The results show that of our total population of authors (n = 498), 75,3 percent are men and 24,7 percent are women. The difference between men and women is decreasing. The professional roles that dominate our study are politicians, followed by researchers, journalists, CEOs and other representatives from companies, authorities and organizations. The ”common man” without some kind of established professional role is not published on DN Debatt.

Worldwide, the remarkable diffusion of transparency and access to information laws poses a monumental challenge to the state’s most enduringly undemocratic feature— excessive secrecy. Will recent laws lead to an effective surrender of secrecy? The incipient literature on transparency reform says little about the strength of current legislation or how strong laws emerge. This dissertation addresses these theoretical and empirical gaps. First, it articulates a theory on the political determinants of strong access to information laws. Second, employing an original evaluation, it scores the strength of twelve access to information laws advanced throughout Latin America between 2002 and 2010. Two extreme outcomes are examined in detail: a failed comprehensive reform in Argentina (1999-2005), which resulted in a limited presidential decree (2003), and the adoption of a seminal law in Mexico (2002). These cases are then compared with others across Latin America with special attention placed on Brazil, Chile, Guatemala, and Uruguay. I find considerable variance in the strength of the region’s laws: the average score is “moderately strong,” while the median and mode scores are “moderately weak.” Evidence shows that while civic coalitions and external pressure often help drive reform, they cannot explain observed variation in legal strength. Rather, I find that laws emerge more robust and earlier-on within the electoral cycle (within the first half of a president’s term of office), in countries where 1) presidents lack control over the legislature and 2) news media coverage of access to information laws is strong. By contrast, where news media coverage is weak and presidents possess strong negative agenda setting powers (partisan majorities or constitutional means of denying a vote), I find that laws tend to emerge later-on during the electoral cycle (within the last third), and are considerably weaker. I also find that press advocacy for access to information laws tended to be greater in countries where presidents were weaker and news media ownership concentration was low. The dissertation addresses key institutional preconditions for good governance and transparency reform. More specifically, it speaks to the determinants and power of the news media as an agent of democratic advancement (and stagnation), and the importance of weak leaders and partisan competition in promoting good governance reform. / text

According to earlier studies, men dominates the sports pages in Swedish newspapers. The gender balance is far from equal and the purpose of this thesis is therefore to look into how Swedish local and regional newspapers covered gender in their sports pages during the year of 2013. The study also examines the news values of men’s and women’s sports, whether there are any differences compared to previous studies and whether there are any differences across the country. The study uses a quantitative content analysis and the result is based on editorial material from six randomly selected newspapers in 18 randomly selected days. We have analyzed 2005 separate units in 108 copies of newspapers. The study shows, as in previous studies, that the news feed is mainly concentrated on sports practiced by men, and it isn’t any significant differences across the country regarding the coverage of gender. Sports practiced by men also have a higher newsworthiness since it gets more space and are more promoted on the frontpages of the newspapers. The conclusion is therefore that sports practiced by women are marginalized as a deviation from the male norm.

Submitted by Bruno Soares Machado (bruno@3comunica.com.br) on 2015-10-26T14:38:57Z No. of bitstreams: 1 DissertaFinalBM.pdf: 15822313 bytes, checksum: a1551da3adb21fcc0c057e00c84b4e9f (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by ÁUREA CORRÊA DA FONSECA CORRÊA DA FONSECA (aurea.fonseca@fgv.br) on 2015-10-29T13:54:06Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 DissertaFinalBM.pdf: 15822313 bytes, checksum: a1551da3adb21fcc0c057e00c84b4e9f (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Marcia Bacha (marcia.bacha@fgv.br) on 2015-10-30T11:25:33Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 DissertaFinalBM.pdf: 15822313 bytes, checksum: a1551da3adb21fcc0c057e00c84b4e9f (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-10-30T11:25:46Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 DissertaFinalBM.pdf: 15822313 bytes, checksum: a1551da3adb21fcc0c057e00c84b4e9f (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-09-25 / The purpose of this dissertation is to analyze the interaction between press offices of Brazilian municipalities and local newspapers. To this end, two municipalities are analyzed, observing the relationship between the public relations arm of mayoral offices and salient press vehicles. The study evaluates how often newspapers publish government releases on their pages - which may suggest the extent of press independence. Case studies examine the cities of Bauru and Piracicaba, - which, besides being prosperous cities, located in the state of São Paulo, have several characteristics in common, such as the number of inhabitants, the municipal budget, economic output and human development Index scores. The study thus uses a similar systems, controlled comparison to understand variation in local media independence in one of Brazil`s wealthier regions. The analysis broaches the theory of agenda setting, and the relationship between media and democracy. Research shows that there is a high degree of correspondence between governmental press releases and local newspaper coverage in the city of Bauru. Whereas the Jornal da Cidade aired matters related to City Hall, including identical to full or partial releases, 48% of the time, in the case of the Jornal de Piracicaba, only 5% of the news items contained text partially or completely related to releases published by the mayor`s office. The evidence thus indicates a high degree of governmental media capture in Bauru and high independence in Piracicaba. An analysis of both cities illustrates that the most likely explanation has to do with media competition or the lack thereof. / O objetivo dessa dissertação consiste em analisar a interação entre assessorias de imprensa de prefeituras brasileiras e jornais locais. Para tal, dois municípios são analisados, observando a relação existente entre as assessorias e os veículos. É verificado, por exemplo, a frequência com que estes publicam releases governamentais em suas páginas, o que fornece um indício chave do grau de independência da mídia local. Apresentam-se dois estudos de caso, realizado com as cidades de Bauru e Piracicaba - que, além de serem cidades prósperas, localizadas no interior do Estado de São Paulo, apresentam diversas características que as aproximam, como: número de habitantes, orçamento municipal, PIB e IDH - permitindo comparar e analisar a relação das assessorias de comunicação de suas prefeituras, com um jornal impresso local diário, de cada uma das cidades. Embasa o trabalho na teoria do agenda setting, e da relação entre mídia e democracia. Procura-se compreender ainda, de acordo com a literatura, os outros papéis da mídia, como watchdog e gatekeeper. A pesquisa demonstra que existe alto grau de correspondência na cidade de Bauru, onde 48% das vezes em que o Jornal da Cidade veiculou matérias relacionadas a prefeitura, ele o fez aproveitando de forma integral, ou parcial (com pequenas alterações), os releases enviados pela assessoria de comunicação da prefeitura. Já no caso de Piracicaba, apenas 5% das vezes em que o Jornal de Piracicaba veiculou matérias relacionadas à prefeitura, ele o fez aproveitando de forma integral, ou parcial (com pequenas alterações), os releases enviados pela assessoria de comunicação da prefeitura. Quando publica matérias sobre a prefeitura, o Jornal de Piracicaba publica matérias com 1773 caracteres, em média. Enquanto o Jornal da Cidade apresenta uma média de 2453 caracteres.

Master Thesis "Criteria for selection of news from the European Parliament into the Czech media" deals with the factors that affect the classification of reports about events in the European Parliament in the Czech print and online journals as well as defining characteristics that are typical for these reports. In the theoretical part presents political and media communication and logic and goes to the main concepts of news production, such as agenda setting, framing and priming. This Thesis is also about media and intermedia agenda and presents the information already known concerning the relationship between the European Union and the media. Research is a part of practical section. It's aim is to map by content analysis the characteristics typical for reporting about the European Parliament as a specific institution of the European Union. Further aim is the verification of assumptions based on previously conducted research abroad focusing on the theme of the EU. Trying to better determine what characters show mass media content which is to the Czech public the main source of information about European structures by large extends. The Thesis also tries to answer the question often discussed the lack of presentation of the European agenda in news media agendas, the communities of the European Union...