Denna uppsats syftar till att undersöka Sverigedemokraternas kriskommunikativa försvar efter kritiken som uppkom mot partiet i samband med högerextremisten Anders Behring Breiviks massmord på Utöya 2011. I detta har jag ur ett narrativt perspektiv undersökt partiledaren Jimmie Åkessons förklaring till krisen och hur denna samspelar med partiets interna berättelse. Den första delen av resultaten visar att Åkesson strukturerar ett narrativ där uppkomsten av krisen för Sverigedemokraterna förklaras genom att det bedrivs en häxjakt på partiet. Den andra delen av resultaten visar att Åkesson genom dikotomisering använder den uppkomna krisen för att förstärka Sverigedemokraternas roll som antietablissemangsparti. I hans krisberättelse tillskrivs kritikerna och Breivik liknande egenskaper, vilket betyder att de står som en gemensam bov i narrativet. Detta i motsats till Sverigedemokraterna som i istället får rollen som en hjälte - demokratins beskyddare i Sverige. / This paper examines the communicative crisis defense of the Sweden democrats after the criticism that appeared after the mass murder by the right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik at Utöya in 2011. In this analysis a narrative examination is made of the party leader Åkessons explanation to why the crisis emerged and how his apology interacts with the party’s internal story. The first part of the results shows that Åkesson structures a narrative where the society’s witch hunt on the party stands as an explanation to why the crisis has emerged. The second part of the analysis shows that Åkesson uses the crisis to strengthen the role of the Sweden democrats as an anti-establishment party by using dichotomies. In his crisis narrative he attributes similar characteristics to his critics and Breivik. The consequence of this is that the two actors stand as a collective villain in the narrative. To the contrary, the Sweden democrats became a hero in the narrative - the protector of democracy in Sweden.

Abstract Title: Konstruktionen av sverigedemokraternas väljare Author: Magnus Persson & Max Lindberg Tutor: Leonor Camauër Course: Bachelor thesis, Media and communication.   The aim of this essay is to use a Critical Discourse Analytical (CDA) approach to analyse the construction of the Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna) voters in news articles to see if and how they are separated as a group from the Swedish democratic community. This aim is broken down into two questions. How are the Sweden Democrats (SD) voters constructed in news articles in Dagens Nyheter (DN) and Aftonbladet (AB) regarding the aftermath of the national elections? What differences are there between the portrayal of the Sweden Democrats voters and the agents that are used as opposition to them? To answer these questions we have used CDA. We have taken our approach from a modified version of Teun Van Dijks CDA model for analysing news articles. Theoretically we have a CDA approach, we also use theory regarding “the other”. The methodological tools we have used are primarily analysis for Global and Local Coherens, analysis of lexicalization and Faircloughs analysis of Framing. We have also analysed the thematic and schematic structures of the news articles. The analysis is based on a schema and from that schema we have analysed nine news articles selected from a time period of seven days after the Swedish national elections in 2010. Four of the articles come from AB and five from DN. From our analyses we have identified three themes. The first one is common for both DN and AB. It is a theme where the SD voters are consistently portrayed as being dissatisfied both on a political and a social level. AB has also had a tendency to enter articles from a position that expects to find that SD is dependent on a climate of conflict between different social groups to be able to grow regionally. In DN we have found a theme where SD voters are portrayed as less politically aware and generally less knowledgeable than those who vote for the other parties of the Swedish parliament. Keywords: Critical discourse analysis, Sweden Democrats, Aftonbladet, Dagens Nyheter, the others, political, right wing, populism.

This paper is a case study of the Sweden Democrats with the aim to better understand the nature of the immigrant-critical nationalist parties, often referred to as right-wing extremist, right-wing populist etc. who has had success in several countries, and their ideological roots. A comparative descriptive analysis has been done of the ideas of the Sweden Democrats' ideology, with the aim to identify and examine the presence of fascism ideas in SD's ideology. On the basis of the existing research has an ideal type been formulated what fascism most basic ideas are. With this idealtype as an analytical tool has SD's party platform, political speeches, SD-kuriren and Jimmie Åkesson's book, etc. been analyzed. It has been possible to demonstrate the similarities and differences between the SD's and fascist ideas. Ideas of SD which is also a typical feature of fascism is the opposition to the conduct of immigration policy and to stop or limit immigration which appears as the party's most prominent idea that is also a typical feature of fascism. The myth of the betrayed people's home “Folkhemmet” appears to be a typical "mystical core" in the SD's thinking which is similar to the example stab-in-the-back legend of Nazism. The idea about the third way and a excluding nationalism that sees diversity as a threat is common within fascism while the differences is that the SD profess democracy and denounces anti-democratic ideas. SD is like the fascists not pacifists but has not, moreover, any typical fascist ideas on the war in its program. The multicultural society is considered a threat, which is similar to the ideas of fascism, and SD considers that a culture war is going on, especially with Islam. SD has some ideas in common with fascism that indicates continuity from the interwar fascism. Other ideas differ from the ideas of fascism, which shows that the party has been partly done up with its ideological roots. The type of thought structures identified in the analysis of the Sweden Democrats have several ideas in common with the fascist discourse, but there are also similarities with the humanist Enlightenment discourse in the affirmation of democracy.

The Sweden Democrats has become the third largest party in Sweden after the parliamentary elections in 2014. Ever since the party was founded in 1988, debates regarding the party’s policy has been of great interests but also the party’s ideological affiliation whether to classify it as a populist radical right party or not. Furthermore, many scientists have arrived at the conclusion that the Sweden Democrats should be seen as a populist radical right party. This conclusion makes it interesting to further investigate what ideological affilitation the party should identify itself with since the party itself argues to be a social conservative party with a nationalist ethos. With this in mind, the purpose of this study is to examine if the party has populist radical right fundamentals in its recent policy program through the use of the method idea analysis and through the use of creating an ideal type of the theory populist radical right. In addition, it has thus been possible to confirm or to deny the Sweden Democrats as a populist radical right party. The result of this thesis has shown that the policy program does consist of populist radical right elements. Hence, it has been concluded that the Sweden Democrats should be categorized as a populist radical right party.

This thesis studies how Liberal Democrat members and supporters use Internet tools to mobilise volunteers within local election campaigns. It also identifies who is most likely to use these tools and who is most likely to perceive that they are useful. Existing studies of the use of Internet tools to mobilise volunteers are limited because they have typically focused upon the Internet-as-a-whole, instead of breaking it down into smaller, more meaningful categories. It is important to study Internet tools individually as they each have different features and some are more deeply integrated into mobilisation practices than others. Therefore, this thesis addresses this limitation by focusing upon three specific Internet tools: Facebook, Twitter and email. It uses data generated from a participant observation, survey and series of semi-structured interviews. Similarly, few studies have been carried out in England or within the context of second order elections. As a result, this thesis explores the perceptions of grassroots activists in relation to English local elections, thus offering a relatively unique perspective upon the link between Internet tools and volunteer mobilisation. The findings confirm that it is beneficial to analyse Internet tools individually because there are significant differences in how they are used, in addition to who uses them and who perceives them to be useful. Email is the most commonly used; it is also perceived to be the most useful for mobilising volunteers and increasing membership. Younger people are more likely to use Facebook and Twitter and to perceive that they are useful tools, whereas older people are less likely to do so. This emphasises the importance of younger supporters, as the party would find it more difficult to reach online audiences without them. This thesis argues that people that become involved as a result of Internet tools are less likely to remain heavily involved over the long-term. For instance, externally elected public officials are less likely to join online or use Internet tools to mobilise volunteers and increase membership. This fits with a wider pattern of engagement amongst party elites and long-term members. It emphasises the importance of using a combination of online and offline tools to mobilise volunteers and increase membership.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the constructed vision of social reality that the Sweden Democrats define and thus defend and legitimizes through their climate and environmental policy. With a focus on the power relations that are constitutive of the Sweden Democrats' definition of social reality, the intention is to clarify the Sweden Democrats' position on the issue of climate change and to make visible what underlies their actions concerning the ratification of the Paris Agreement. To achieve the purpose, critical discourse analysis is used as a method where political documents concerning the Sweden Democrats' climate, environment, and energy policy during the period 2018-2021 constitute the empirical material. The results show that the Sweden Democrats' definition of climate change is both ambiguous and ambivalent, where Sweden's self-image and Swedish interests are prioritized over climate measures. The result also shows that the Sweden Democrats' definition of climate change is constituted by underlying power relations to preserve the power of the nation-state and the subordinate position of developing countries. One conclusion that can be drawn is to reduce the Sweden Democrats to just being climate change deniers is to simplify because their attitude to climate change is characterized by ambivalence and self-interest rather than skepticism and denial. Another conclusion is that the Sweden Democrats' attitude to climate change is more about defending and preserving existing power relations and less about questioning the existence of climate change. A third conclusion that can be drawn is that the Sweden Democrats' action regarding the Paris Agreement is more about opposing a social change that entails increased equality and about legitimizing the nation state's continued relevance in a globalized world, and less about opposing the content and implementation of the Paris Agreement.

This thesis investigates how a change in the municipal asylum seeker share affects voting for the Sweden Democrats (SD), a far-right anti-immigration party, in both national Parliament and Municipal Council elections in Sweden. To circumvent the endogeneity problem, I use an instrumental variables strategy where the share of available apartments in Allmännyttan is used as an instrument for the municipal share of asylum seekers living in Migration Agency provided accommodation (ABO). I have exploited municipal level panel data on municipality characteristics, allocations of asylum seekers and national elections. I am not able to find support for any effect of a change in the municipal share of asylum seekers on voting for the Sweden Democrats. Consequently, I cannot provide any support for either the group position theory or the contact hypothesis.

In 2018, the Sweden Democrats party has gained 17.5 per cent of the votes during the Swedish general elections. Consequently, with this success, they became the third largest party in the riksdag. However, the party’s rapid growth has created several questions in the political arena and the Swedish society about the party’s ideological affiliations and evolutions. The political scientists, Mudde (2010) and Widfeldt (2008) argue that in order to understand a party’s improvements, it is important to explore a party’s ideological evolution. Scholars have argued that Sweden Democrats have normalized their ideas and values; adopted liberal values in some policy areas in order to attract a large number of voters, succeed and survive in the political system. The aim of this study is to explore the party’s idea/ideology changes since its creation in 1988 until present 2019. Hence, the main purpose is to find out if the core ideologies of the Sweden Democrats - that is nativism, authoritarianism and populism- as expressed in their party programs respectively electoral manifestos, are characterized by continuity or by normalization, and adaptation to liberal values. Using Marie Demker’s (1993) concept of ideology, ideal types for radical right populism and liberalism have been constructed as analytical tool. The study shows that throughout the years, the party’s nativist world view and strategy have been changed and normalized, the authoritarian world view has mainly been constant but the strategy has had major changes; shifted to liberal values, and finally regarding populism; both world view and strategy are characterized by continuity.

Euroscepticism has recently started to enjoy a renaissance, boasting many different works in different formats whether it be a comparative study of two European countries or, investigating Euroscepticism in different national contexts to account for possible variations of Euroscepticism. This work aims to show the contrary. Using country case studies of the Czech Republic and the UK this paper shows that regardless of temporal differences and differences in national contexts, Euroscepticism is intrinsically linked to some lines of argument concerning economy and democracy.

Euroscepticism has recently started to enjoy a renaissance, boasting many different works in different formats whether it be a comparative study of two European countries or, investigating Euroscepticism in different national contexts to account for possible variations of Euroscepticism. This work aims to show the contrary. Using country case studies of the Czech Republic and the UK, this paper shows that regardless of temporal differences and differences in national contexts, Euroscepticism is intrinsically linked to some lines of argument concerning economy and democracy.