‘The Swedish model’ is a term which has a long history in the Swedish political debate. In recent years, the term has often been contested in terms of what it actually means; it has even been accused of being inherently meaningless. The purpose of this thesis is thus to examine how meaning is constructed in relation to the Swedish model through examining statements by the party leaders of the two biggest Swedish parties, the Social Democrats and the Moderates, during 2009, 2014 and 2018. Through applying aspects of the theoretical framework laid out by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe to articulations of the Swedish model in party leader debates in the Swedish parliament, chains of equivalence and discourses centered around nodal points are constructed. A distinction can be drawn between several discourses, the threats to the model that they emphasize, and their construction of liberty and safety in relation to the Swedish model.

Earlier research of the historical change of format, language and power in Swedish political debates is non existent. The general attitude is that the political debates have gotten more aggresive and rough.The purpose with this thesis was to examine in what way the swedish political debates have changed. The main focus was on the interpersonal structure, which laguage they use to create power relations. The analyzing method was a critical discourse analysis and a comparative analysis of four different parliament debates; two older ones and two newer ones. The thesis result showed that the debate climate in swedish political debates have become more kindhearted and with more positive language use. On the other hand have the political debates increased in the matter of tempo and format, this gives people the perception of an more aggresive and negative debate.The conclusion is that the swedish political debates of today is more positive in form of building relations, though further research is necessary. / Det finns ingen tidigare forskning på den historiska förändringen i format, språk och makt i den svenska politiska debatten. Den generella attityden gentemot den svenska politiska debatten är att den har blivit mer aggressiv och hård. Syftet med studien var att undersöka på vilka sätt som den svenska politiska debatten har förändrats. Det huvudsakliga fokuset låg på den interpersonella strukturen, vilket språk de använder för att skapa maktförhållanden. Analysmetoden var en kritisk diskursanalys samt en komparativ analys av fyra olika partiledardebatter; två äldre och två nyare. Studien visade på att den svenska politiska debattens klimat blivit mer godhjärtad och innehåller mer positivt språkbruk. Å andra sidan så har dagens politiska debatter ökat i fråga om tempo och format, det bidrar till den generella uppfattningen som folk har; en aggressivare och mer negativ debatt. Slutsatsen är att dagens svenska politiska debatt har blivit mer positiv när det gäller relationsbyggande, det krävs dock mer omfattande forskning på ämnet.

Syftet med föreliggande undersökning är att utröna huruvida det skett en förskjutning av den ideologiska hegemonins ramar skönjbar i slutdebatterna inför riksdagsvalen 1976, 1982, 1991 samt 1994. Vidare sätts denna eventuella förskjutningen i relation till de ekonomiska kriser som Sverige genomled under 1970-talet och det tidiga 1990-talet. För att utröna skiftningar i den ideologiska hegemonin analyseras partiledarnas framträdande mot bakgrund av Ljunggrens definition av vad som utgör en ideologi. Jag fann att det skett en förändring i vad som ryms inom den ideologiska hegemonins ramar. Vikten av att framstå som regeringsdugliga har ökat och debatterna har även i viss mån avideologiserats. Vidare kan man även notera en inte obetydlig ideologisk förskjutning åt höger. Det är troligt att de ekonomiska kriserna under 1970- och 1990-talet inverkade på denna förskjutning av den ideologiska hegemonin.

In line with the growing importance of today’s media the concept of mediatization has grown. Mediatization is described as the dynamic relationship between media and politics, and the process of change that has increased the influence of media. When it comes to research about mediatization in politics, it is still a somewhat undiscovered field. The previous research that has been made has for the most part focused on the news media’s coverage of the election campaigns, but not so much in other political contexts such as TV-broadcasted debates. This study has focused on the Swedish public service channel SVT and the commercial newspaper Aftonbladet, and their final debate before the Swedish election in 2022. Why these TV-broadcasted debates were focused on in this study, is because of their big impact on the election’s outcome. This impact is something that has grown bigger and bigger, and in today’s society, the final debates are the ones that have the biggest impact during the election campaigns. Because of this, the study is important and relevant for closing a research gap. The main purpose of the study was to compare the two debates, researching in which ways the debates differ in mediatization and looking into if there are any differences between public service and commercial media. To accomplish this, a quantitative content analysis was made, where several different variables designed according to previous studie’s indications on mediatization were looked at in the debates. All these indications that were studied, are indications on mediatization and are good tools to examine when researching mediatization. The results of the study showed that there were a difference between the two media’s when it comes to mediatization in their final debate before the election. Mediatization occurred in both, but the commercial media, Aftonbladet, were more embossed by mediatization. Of the four examined indications of mediatization, three were in favor of Aftonbladet. Interesting though is that the indication which is how commercialized the debate was, the commercial media (Aftonbladet) and the public service (SVT), almost had no difference between them. But looking at the greater picture, the commercial media’s debate was more mediatized and the difference was in the end significant.