In the Swedish public administration responsibility is an essential condition and is made explicit when the public administration is challenged by unexpected crises. In general, crisis management research can be considered comprehensive. However, there is a lack of studies regarding the idea of organizational responsibility in connection with major crises. This qualitative comparative case study aims to analyze responsibility at the national level in the crisis management of the Tsunami disaster and the Corona crisis. The study is done by qualitative content analysis. The study's analysis is performed using a self-constructed theory with two distinct types of organizational responsibilities; Traditional and Modern. The research question to be answered is: How have ideas about organizational responsibility changed between the Tsunami disaster and the Corona crisis?   The study has found a change in the idea of responsibility and the way it was practiced between the crises. During the crisis management of the Tsunami, it was strongly marked by a responsibility as hierarchically constructed with legal and routine-based frameworks. To a change towards a responsibility interpreted as a cooperation during the Corona crisis. Then the responsibility was governed by a stronger flexibility and responsiveness towards the actors who were involved during the crisis management. The kind of responsibility that has been established for several decades is difficult to completely change. This explains that parts of the responsibility during the Tsunami has been found in the Corona crisis. The study has therefore found a shift of responsibility from Traditional to Modern responsibility during this sixteen-year period.

In 2021, Sweden was ranked as the European country with the highest number of fatal shootings per million inhabitants. As a result, gang violence is described as a national crisis and has turned in to one of the main debate themes among political parties ahead of the parliamentary election in 2022. In the debates on gang violence, it is often linked to migration politics. Swedish Television (SVT) has broadcasted numerous programs on gang violence, and these programs are the main material used in this study.  Drawing on feminist- and critical whiteness theory I examine how ideas of gender, whiteness and Swedishness interplay in the construction of gang violence as a national crisis. By using a retrotopic, a security politic and an affective theoretical perspective it is possible to analyze who is portrayed as vulnerable or problematic in relation to the gang violence. A further ambition of this study is to investigate the connection between folkhem nostalgia and the construction of gang violence as a national crisis. I argue that the Swedish exceptionalism is being used to establish collective feelings of folkhem nostalgia, which contributes to the understanding of gang violence as a national crisis. Based on a thematic analysis (Braun & Clark 2006) I show how feelings of folkhem nostalgia are used to establish narratives of a threatening and problematic Other; a male non-white threat within the nation. Further, the debates and documentaries broadcasted on SVT can be seen as part of political and national interests, where a (hi)story of folkhemmetas a part of the Swedish exceptionalism is being used to establish certain feelings and perceptions related to gender and race. This enables a placement of gang violence in another place, in another culture and in another body.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how national identity is discursively constructed by Hizbullah at a time of national crisis, and to shed light on its potential effects on the social world. The critical discourse analysis focuses on how difference and otherness are constructed on Hizbullah’s television channel Al-Manar. It illuminates Hizbullah’s discursive construal of a national in-group and an ‘enemy’ out-group, and identifies the main discourses that Hizbullah draws upon. The backdrop is the violent events in the Lebanese town of Arsal, erupting in early August 2014 and soon amounting to a national crisis. How Hizbullah, one of the main political actors in Lebanon and the region, constructs the world discursively does arguably have impact on the social world. The analysis identifies an order of discourse that on the one hand is permeated by pluralism and inclusion and on the other hand influenced by an exclusionary discourse connecting the out-group to terrorism. The author suggests that the Western discourse of ‘war on terrorism’ has been recontextualised by Hizbullah, and argues that there are reasons to pay close attention to the potentially harmful socially constructive effects of this discourse. Nevertheless, a cross-confessional national unity is simultaneously highlighted in Hizbullah’s discourse.