<p><p>We have inquired into how the amount of foreign news has changed over the last 30 years in two major Swedish newspapers, which subjects and regions has dominated the content of the foreign news and what subjects dominate the reporting from certain regions. This was done with a quantitative analysis of subjects and regions written about in 1100 news texts during a week in each year of 1978, 1988, 1998 and 2008. To further broaden our study, we also charted with the analysis how the newspapers domesticate foreign news and how they use international news agencies. As a basis for our discussion we use Van Ginnekens theories of world news centres, Westerståhl & Johanssons and Galtung & Ruges theories of foreign news selection as well as the theories of Hjarvard and Biltereyst about the domestication of foreign news due to commercial pressures and objectives on the newspapers. Our result of the amount of foreign news in the two newspapers is also compared to several similar empirical studies by different researchers. The study shows that the amount of foreign news is dropping in swedish media, although not as fast-paced as many researchers claim they do in other countries. In Dagens Nyheter there is just marginal difference while the decreasing amount of news can be seen more clearly in Aftonbladet. The amount of news texts is not reducing, more the size of them shrinks. The study also shows that news about Europe and the USA dominates the foreign news in the newspapers and averagely less than a half of the foreign news is left for the rest of the world. Africa, the Middle East and places that are more culturally and geographically distant are more often presented with tragic, hard news, often about war and conflict. While the happy and soft news is more likely to be about the western culturally similar regions. The purpose of our study was to find out which subjects and places in the world are most written about in the newspapers and with what subjects the papers present certain places in the world. The study can be used as necessary data for further study into why the amount of foreign news is shrinking and why certain places and subjects occur more often in the newspapers.</p></p>

We have inquired into how the amount of foreign news has changed over the last 30 years in two major Swedish newspapers, which subjects and regions has dominated the content of the foreign news and what subjects dominate the reporting from certain regions. This was done with a quantitative analysis of subjects and regions written about in 1100 news texts during a week in each year of 1978, 1988, 1998 and 2008. To further broaden our study, we also charted with the analysis how the newspapers domesticate foreign news and how they use international news agencies. As a basis for our discussion we use Van Ginnekens theories of world news centres, Westerståhl &amp; Johanssons and Galtung &amp; Ruges theories of foreign news selection as well as the theories of Hjarvard and Biltereyst about the domestication of foreign news due to commercial pressures and objectives on the newspapers. Our result of the amount of foreign news in the two newspapers is also compared to several similar empirical studies by different researchers. The study shows that the amount of foreign news is dropping in swedish media, although not as fast-paced as many researchers claim they do in other countries. In Dagens Nyheter there is just marginal difference while the decreasing amount of news can be seen more clearly in Aftonbladet. The amount of news texts is not reducing, more the size of them shrinks. The study also shows that news about Europe and the USA dominates the foreign news in the newspapers and averagely less than a half of the foreign news is left for the rest of the world. Africa, the Middle East and places that are more culturally and geographically distant are more often presented with tragic, hard news, often about war and conflict. While the happy and soft news is more likely to be about the western culturally similar regions. The purpose of our study was to find out which subjects and places in the world are most written about in the newspapers and with what subjects the papers present certain places in the world. The study can be used as necessary data for further study into why the amount of foreign news is shrinking and why certain places and subjects occur more often in the newspapers.