The majority of the predators in Sweden are men. More specifically, 90 percent of all homicides are committed by men. This means that there are not many female murderers in Sweden. This awoke the question how the news media portrays the female predator compared to the male predator. The purpose of this study is therefore to analyze the differences in how news media portrays the female predator compared to the male predator. This study also aims to understand why there are differences in how female predators are portrayed by the news media compared to male predators. This study has used a qualitative text analysis to answer these questions. The study has analyzed six crime cases where articles have been selected for the analysis. The results show that the news media portrays the female predator from motives such as jealousy, motherhood and backgroundswhich includes family, education and interests. The news media doesn’t focus onmotives or backgrounds when the predator is a male. The background news media is writing about when it is a male predator is the criminal background. The newsmedia also focus on the victim when it’s a male predator. The differences betweenthe sexes may be due to the social construction of gender. The social construction of gender creates norms for the different genders in society such as normative femininity and masculinity. This creates notions of what is seen as feminine and masculine. When a woman is aggressive and violent, she goes against the normative femininity. She is seen as a deviant woman. A male who is aggressive and violent does not go against the notions of masculinity. This means he is not seen as a deviant man. This could be the reason why the news media portrays female predators different compared to male predators.

This study examines how local newspapers frame female and male murderers. Thestudy specifies two murder cases that recieved a lot of media coverage, and themurderers are Johanna Möller and Billy Fagerström. The purpose is to see how the localnewspapers for each case, Vestmanlands Läns Tidning and Hudiksvalls Tidning, framethe murderers in terms of characteristics, description, name and personal facts and howthe differences appear between them. The research question awoke because the localnewspapers have a position in the society that can impact how people view the worldand murderers as a phenomenon. The news is the first source for the citizens oninformation about crimes and therefore have a significant impact on how people buildtheir perceptions about female and male killers. Research regarding crime journalism ona local level is relatively unexplored concerning crime journalism on a higher level, forexample, in the Swedish evening press. This study has used qualitative and quantitativetext analysis to answer these questions. The study has analyzed two local newspapersabout two convicted murderers, one male and one female, to see how media frames murderers in relation to their gender. The study has profound support from the framing-theory, gender-theory and Yvonne Jewkes stereotypes. Among other things, our results show that the local newspapers frame Johanna as controlling, manipulating, threatening,and lacking of empathy. Johanna's background, such as profession, upbringing,motherhood has a much more significant part in the articles in contrast to articles aboutBilly. Johanna is portrayed like this because she committed a crime and is also a womanand is therefore not only deviating once but twice from the female stereotype. This didnot appear in the analysis of Billy, who was portrayed mainly as a violent ex-boyfriend,which is nothing new in how the media frames a man who kills his ex-girlfriend.