The aim of this study has been to, through a quantitative content analysis and a qualitative text analysis, determine which meaning nationality is given in news reports in Swedish daily press, and how it creates the event as a scandal. Focusing on two major scandals in cross country skiing, articles from the Finnish scandal in Lahtis 2001 and the revealing of doped Russian skiers in 2016 has been analysed. The theoretical framework for the study has been Stuart Halls representation theory, the framing theory, and theories regarding media scandals and nationality. The results from the quantitative and qualitative analyses has been divided into four themes: Imagined communities, Us and them, Individual and corporate and Fallen star. The results show that nationality is given meaning through the creation of imagined communities. It creates a gap between us and them, a sense of the nations parting from each other in form of cultural and moral aspects. There is also a difference between the representation of the countries. In the Russian doping scandal, Russia is considered as a doped nation, with a systematic doping where little guilt is to be put on the skiers themselves. In Finland, the nation stands for the people and is not in any ways to be associated with the doping scandal. Instead, the skiers get all the blame and little notion is made about the doping as being organised. This has also made the scandals to be divided into individual or corporate doping. As for the framing of the event as a scandal, attributes as “cheating” and a portrayal of the skiers as fallen stars is represented. By revealing the names of the suspected dopers it increases the news worth. An unexpected outcome was that the Russian dopers was not mentioned by name as often as the Finnish, which could enhance the event as a scandal even more. Furthermore, doping scandals could be studied in many different ways and is an interesting subject to immerse oneself in.

Abstract: During the past decade, media researchers have intensified the study of media scandals and the role of journalism as an institution that holds social actors responsible for malfeasance and wrongdoings. On a micro level of analysis, the main attention has beendirected towards the journalistic interview and its use to promote the impression of guilt and journalistic neutrality. However, such studies have not been able to address the editing dimension of TV journalism that transforms conversation to another type of communicativepractice – that of communication through TV-flows composed of speech sequences, pictures,and sounds. This doctoral thesis develops a theoretical framework for analysis of the functions of editing inthe process of guilt attribution by journalistic TV-flows – e.g. investigative TV reporting. The purpose is also to contribute to an understanding of the relationship between the communicative competences of viewers and the contextualization of speech acts through the composition of TV-flows. The developed perspective consists of three parts: 1) A division of viewers’ reception of TV-flows in two types of interpersonal relations (to a speaker and to the composer) that involves six levels of cognitive activities. This division is based on the Habermasian notion of communicative rationality; 2) An intent-model, that lists communicative intentions expressed by the composer when speech sequences are merged and pictures are inserted; 3) A guilt-model, that encompasses guilt as a mental structure of ontologically separated elements (e.g. deed,intention, norm) and the associative relations that the viewer uses to create a meaningful whole– a fabula of guilt. The conveyed analysis of three cases of investigative reporting illustrates how the developed framework can be applied in the study of guilt attribution. The analyses also describe several compositional strategies by which the viewer is encouraged to make certain meaning, evaluate, and judge. The strategies concern the following areas: promotion of certain understanding of speech, promotion of certain evaluation of the validity claims, and promotion of certain understanding of the speaker’s intentions. Also strategies of positioning of the reporter in constructed discourses, that enhance the impression of her performances and argumentation, are explored. Furthermore, the composer’s strategies for masking intentions to interfere with the speech acts, by increasing intent ambiguity, are described. The guilt-model is used to understand the workings of the TV-flow on an overreaching level of meaning (the fabula level). Here, the analysis explains the interplay between portrayed intentions and acts, and the different ways in which condemning norms can be activated and highlighted. Furthermore, the model explores the possible employment of categorization in theprocess of guilt attribution (e.g. when properties of an individual are transferred to a group). In sum, this thesis contributes to a new way of understanding the reception of current affairs programs and TV journalism, as relation building between composer and viewer, by means of contextualization of speech acts.