Computational techniques have transformed the journalistic approach. Journalists now have the opportunity to integrate user-statistics from the news website with their work. Singer (2011) argues that journalists seem particularly afraid of items, which they perceive as trivial or otherwise unsavory, will prove popular - potentially creating management pressures to produce more of those stories. She describes this practice as ‘‘traffic whoring’’. This phenomenon could affect journalists democratic function and their public responsibility. Through qualitative interviews we seek to answer the question: how do journalist perceive traffic whoring and how does it affect their journalistic work? Our study reveals that the interviewed journalists don’t consider themselves to be influenced by traffic whoring. On the contrary, their given statements describes the opposite. Partly due to the visibility of user-preferences, but also due to an increasing management demand to generate high numbers and statistics.

In order for a democracy to fulfill its function, it requires access for information transmission where an exchange of information and opinions occur between citizens and decision-makers. Security and framing correlate with each other since medias’ framing are crucial to understand whether something is considered a threat or a problem. The news media is thus seen as an actor that possesses a certain power through the presentation of threats as it shapes public opinion. This study examines how the Russian threat-images towards Sweden are produced during different time periods and what differences have arisen. In addition, this study aims to investigate how the news medias’ presentation of threat images can influence citizens and decision-makers. This essay consists of a qualitative thematic case study and media analysis where news articles are analyzed in relation to the essays’ chosen theories, which consists of the framing-theory and the agenda-setting-theory. In summary, this study concludes that news media reported on an increased threat picture against Sweden in 2013. However, the focus was mainly on preventive measures and discussions regarding possible measures if the threat would escalate in the future. In 2023, the media changed its tone to emphasize the seriousness and urgency of the situation by using words related to war and danger. The differences between 2013 and 2023 is a more urgent presentation of the threat in 2023. According to the chosen theories, the news medias’ way of presenting the security situation as threatening can result in citizens and decision-makers prioritizing the issue to a greater extent. Based on the material, the news media have mainly focused on the military threat both in 2013 and 2023 but have not to the same extent prioritized reporting regarding other threats that previous research performs. This can result in citizens and decision makers not prioritizing the other threats equally and accordingly not taking sufficient measures.