The aim of this study was to examine differences and similarities in the news coverage among the presidential candidates Joe Biden and Donald Trump in the presidential election 2020. We also examined how the candidates are framed in the different newspapers. In this study, similarities and differences regarding national variances in news articles from Swedish and American newspapers, also where a important part of the research. We did a qualitative text analysis based on 48 online articles from 6 different newspapers, the 3 largest from each country. The newspapers in question are USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times from USA and Aftonbladet, Dagens Nyheter and Expressen from Sweden. The result showed that there were more differences between the two candidates than similarities, in the way they were presented in news media. Donald Trump was often portrayed as the president that had a very harsh tone in his statements, and he was throwing out accusations towards Biden and the Democrats without having any facts to back them up. This made him look rather ignorant and sometimes even dumb. Biden, on the other hand, was portrayed as the one who is more fitting for the role as president, based on the writings about his previous experience, and many of the articles in the analysis portrayed him as a friendly family man. The focus point on both candidates during the election was who was leading the election, who was leading in which state, and how much that specific candidate was winning by. This was a topic that frequently showed up in articles from both countries and they often portrayed the whole election as some kind of contest or game, instead of focusing on what the candidates wanted to do and change about the country. The American newspapers more frequently wrote about the statistics when it came to who was leading the election, and their news coverage wasn't as clear as the Swedish news coverage. The Swedish newspaper often used secondary sources, for example from American newspapers, since they weren't able to be where the election takes place, which means they are re-telling the things that happened during the election. Other than that, there weren't that many differences between the news coverage in the US and Sweden.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:lnu-100034 |
| Date | January 2021 |
| Creators | Holmgren, Joel, de Kriek, Janet |
| Publisher | Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för medier och journalistik (MJ), Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för medier och journalistik (MJ) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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