Sweden is top ranked in indexes measuring democracy, but the country is also a major weapons exporter. The contradiction is reflected upon in this paper, where Sweden as a well established democracy seems to be going against its own democratic values when exporting weapons to non-democracies. Previous research is limited and lacks sufficient explanation to why Sweden exports weapons to non-democratic states.  The aim of this study is therefore to analyze arguments behind the Swedish weapons exportation to countries with a low degree of democratic freedom. By applying Framing theory and argumentation analysis, selected statements arguing for weapons exports, expressed by Swedish government representatives have been analyzed. The justifications for weapons exportation to dictatorships have been categorized, depending on emphasis, into four frames namely; security, development, credibility and reliability. The research result showed that the most commonly used arguments to justify weapons exports to non-democracies include following; (1) There is a need of a defense industry for Swedish security reasons, (2) It is positive for international exchange and trade and (3) The rules for weapons exports are strict enough and well established in politics. The different ways of justifying the weapons export shows that the concerned Swedish government representatives frame their arguments in a way that supports their political opinion and the current government.

Master of Science / Department of Journalism and Mass Communications / Angela Powers / The country of Myanmar started political reforms in 2010. Along with the process of becoming more democratic, peace and reconciliation have become very important due to the decades-long civil wars that continue to rage between ethnic minority groups and Myanmar Army. The Myanmar media have the potential to play a huge role in national reconciliation. One conflict between the Muslim and the Buddhist of Rakhine State of Myanmar has gained international attention. Research shows that media play a destructive or constructive role in conflict resolution depending on which news frames they adopt in reporting. This uses the theoretic peace journalism perspective, in which media take a careful, consistent and conscientious approach to report stories that create opportunities for society at large and emphasizes non-violent responses to conflict (Lynch, 2008). Using mass media framing theory and existing peace journalism literature, this study investigates the prominence of war and peace journalism framing in the media coverage of an ongoing conflict in the Northern Rakhine State of Myanmar between a group of Muslims and Buddhists who inhabit the region. This study employed a comparative analysis to examine war and peace journalism frames from stories published in four newspapers; two from Myanmar, one from Bangladesh, and one from the U.S. The analysis was guided by Galtung’s (1986) classifications of peace and war journalism and operational definitions derived by Lee and Maslog (2005). Findings suggest that war journalism frames are dominant in the coverage of the Rakhine conflict regardless of media origin. Even though not statistically significant, the government-run newspaper from Myanmar was revealed to produce more peace journalism stories than the other three newspapers. There was a slight difference in coverage of the conflict between English-language and Burmese-language newspapers in terms of peace/war journalism framing. English news stories were more likely to be framed as war journalism than peace journalism. In addition, news stories produced by U.S. journalists and foreign news wire services such as the Associated Press and Reuters were more war-dominant than stories produced by local/regional journalists of Myanmar and Bangladesh. This study calls for international and local journalists to reevaluate their current conflict reporting practices to promote their positive roles in peace processes.

Previous research has shown a difference on the athletes’ portrayal based on gendered language use on television broadcasting of sporting events. A content analysis on the 2018 Tennis US Open Championship Weekend for both men’s and women’s tennis matches explains the structure of the broadcasting commentating done by the network that has the rights to this tournament. The study looks at different categories of the content of the comments and the descriptors that are used to refer to both female and male athletes. Framing and priming theories were the theoretical frameworks for this study. Findings revealed no significant change was observed with athletic skill and strategy-based comments for either gender. The findings also showed that descriptors related to emotionality were more common in the commentary with women.

This study offers the framing analysis of local and foreign-based media on the coverage of "Rohingya: Gambia files case against Myanmar at ICJ" for over nine months period and examines the bias in their new contents and attention to the case. Evaluation of the number of coverage published by each media shows that local media do not pay as much attention as foreign-based media, and undermines the seriousness of the issue. Moreover, the finding highlights that the news representation of local media is evidently in favor of the Myanmar government in support of iconic national leader - Aung San Suu Kyi while abetting in covering up the violent action of the Myanmar military. Findings also suggest that foreign- based media covered the case most with genocide frame whereas self-defense frame was the most popular one in the coverage of local media. This study employed comparative content analysis to detect the bias and observe the different framings of media. Keywords: Bias, Frames, media frames, Framing theory, Myanmar, Rakhine, Bangladesh.

This study focuses on how important foreign policy crises are interpreted and used to construct images and framing of transnational threats. Since Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Ukraine 2014, the security order in Europe and within the European Union has been affected in various ways because of how Russia is portrayed as a potential threat. Accordingly, the aim of the study is the examination of the extent of EU’s framing of Russia as a military and political threat in the annual Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) reports between 2012-2020. Through a qualitative content analysis with a quantitative conception, the aim is to identify the negative frames of demonization that can be distinguished in the CFSP reports that correlate to EU’s framing of Russia as a threat. The theories of neoclassical realism, demonization and framing are used to provide the deductive approach of indicators that construct the frames of categorization for Russia as a military and political threat within the CFSP reports. The study concludes that the EU has framed Russia as a military threat in relation to Russia’s border transgression within Ukraine, implementing the annexation of Crimea, and Georgia. Russia is also demonized as a political threat through means that intend to cause instability in neighboring states in order to influence domestic policies, for example economic-induced pressures, spread of disinformation, and different kinds of hybrid weapons.

This essay has sought out to study the ideological debate in the Swedish press using the Spanish civil war. To complete this task three newspapers editorial pages were studied during the period 13/07-14/10 -1936. The three newspapers that were studied were Dagens Nyheter (liberal), Norrskensflamman (communist) and Svenska Dagbladet (moderat). This essay used qualitative methods to reach the answers it set out to achieve. The method consisted of thoroughly reading through the editorial pages of the chosen newspapers to highlight how each newspaper framed certain aspects of the conflict. Since this essay was on a small scale the results can only be seen as an indication of how the debate looked and was framed. If the same study was conducted but with more newspapers and a longer time period the results could have been broader. The results show that the different newspapers differentiated on who was to blame, why the civil war had broken out and who they wanted to win. The results also show that the different newspapers framed certain aspects of the war differently. / <p>Slutgiltigt godkännandedatum: 2023-06-02</p>

Recent calls in environmental communication literature suggest researchers should understand the relationships between media message content, message construction, and audience effects. This thesis analyzed environmental advertising frames over time to inform strategic environmental communication research and practice. The study was a media content analysis guided by framing theory. Framing theory asserts the construction of media messages involves the selection and salience of particular message characteristics (Entman, 1993). Thus, the analysis examined the characteristics of environmental advertisements (N=449) published in Newsweek, Time, and U.S. News and World Report in 1990, 2000, and 2010. Advertisements were classified based on whether the environmental appeal was issue-specific (e.g., pollution, species/habitat protection) or generic. Findings indicate that responsibility frames were overwhelmingly dominant as the strategy used to advertise products, goods and services. The responsibility frame was also prevalent in issue-specific ads. Macro-frames, which attempt to identify organizing lenses through which environmental advertising appeals are advanced, were not present in advertisements at significant levels during the time periods analyzed. The species/habitat protection issue was the dominant issue in 1990, while energy efficiency was the prevalent issue in 2000 and 2010. Advertisements appearing in the newsmagazine pages primarily were sponsored by for-profit organizations. Environmental advertisements had an overwhelmingly positive valence over time. Results have implications for future environmental communication research exploring media content and effects, public opinion and persuasion, and strategic communication practice. / Master of Arts

This study is a diachronic comparative analysis of russophobic discourse and enemy images in Helsingin Sanomat's (HS) editorials before and after the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the beginning of a full-scale War in Ukraine in 2022. The aim of the research is investigating shifts in discourse and opinions within Helsingin Sanomat's editorials regarding the Russian actions. This study uses editorials by HS as its data. Utilizing the analytical framework of framing theory by Robert Entman, the study focuses on how Russia is framed in the editorials and by employing a diachronic comparison method, the research explores shifts in the frames over time, in this case the before and after of the two major geopolitical events. The study found that there has been a significant change in frames, especially between the two events, most notably after the beginning of the war in Ukraine, there is a drastic change to the former.

In a democratic world, newspapers serve the role of one of the biggest and most important contributions about knowledge of events and conflicts. This is why this thesis analyzes how Palestine-Israel conflict is framed in three major Swedish newspapers, Aftonbladet, Svenska Dagbladet and Dagens Nyheter. Using key search terms 22 editorials have been identified during the month of October 2023 and analyzed using the framing theory to identify differences in their framing. In the analysis it was found that while there were some. Conflicts have for a long time been a focal point of newspapers reporting which is why it has been studied on many occasions. Research suggests that they report on different topics with different amounts of bias, as it has been deemed impossible to completely avoid it, however, differences come in how they decide to frame and discuss these differences. The study concludes that the different newspapers do have different ways of framing the conflict, with each having a strong focus on different parts of it. However, they all share a strong anti-Hamas and anti-suffering angle, no matter the ideology of the paper.

In recent years, research has focused more on the importance of language in crisis communication instead of just developing frameworks and strategies. A phenomenon that has recently become a relevant part of this is Framing theory and how this tool can change individual behaviors in situations that require such input. This paper aims to investigate the use of framing within a swedish region’s, Region Västerbotten, crisis communication during covid-19. This in order to underline the importance of language in communication for crises with uncertain time courses. This study examines the region’s press conferences and press releases in order to crystallize important themes related to framing. The method used for this purpose is qualitative content analysis. The results of this study show that the region has used framing to a large extent in terms of measures and facts. This communication has changed over time from being more individual-oriented and rational during the pre-crisis stage, to focus more on measures and used emotional stories during the acute and chronic phases of the crisis. In resolving the crisis, the region has hardly used this type of framing at all. This can be explained by the fact that the communication followed the development of the crisis and used more measures when the individuals in society needed to change their behavior.