In Xinjiang, China’s largest autonomous region situated in the country’s north-western corner, severe violations against the human rights of its inhabitants, primarily the native muslim minority Uyghur people, has been committed by the Chinese state. According to investigations from the European Parliament in 2020, over a million people are currently, or have previously been, incarcerated in so-called internment camps in 2020. These internment camps have received worldwide attention since their reveal; something that the Chinese state have worked to succumb by restricting access by foreign journalists through barring their entrance to the Xinjiang province, an action taken to limit the reports about the camps, according to Amnesty International.In view of this background, this study aims to draw conclusions on the ability of Swedish journalists to accurately report on the issue of the Uyghurs given the Chinese authoritarian rule. It also focuses on investigating how the media reporting frames the Uyghur issue and creates a discours for reporting on this very issue. Continuing, the study consists of interviews with six Swedish correspondents based in China and one foreign editor, as well as a critical discourse analysis of 16 articles from the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter. Given the research questions and the interviews, this study draws the conclusion that the interviewed Swedish foreign correspondents lack proper access to the issue at hand to accurately report on it. This, because of actions taken by the Chinese state to limit access to the Xinjiang region through surveillance and pressure. This, furthermore, creates a situation in which the reporting could be considered static given this very lack of access and new information on the issue. Additionally the analysis of the 16 articles show that there is an apparent lack of cohesion in what words are used primarily describing the camps in Xinjiang; which in turn creates different connotations for the readers.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:lnu-109344 |
| Date | January 2021 |
| Creators | Sunnelius Aldén, Alice, Hallqvist, Sigrid |
| Publisher | 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 |
Page generated in 0.002 seconds