On the 11th of march, the coronavirus was declared as a pandemic and during the following weeks the media coverage about the virus drastically increased. The aim of this essay was to examine how two swedish newspapers, Dagens Nyheter and Aftonbladet, reported about and framed the news about the coronavirus. This was achieved by examining the difference between the reporting of the two newspapers and the difference between how the coronavirus was framed depending on which country was reported about. The framework of this study contains of framing theory, agenda setting theory, the studies of news values, stereotypes, and the Other. The method used to examine this topic was a quantitative content analysis based on 331 articles about the coronavirus. The results of this study show that even though the coronavirus was classified as a pandemic, that spread across the world, the main focus of the reporting centered around the coronavirus in Sweden. The places that the newspapers focused the least on was Africa and South America with barely any news about the spread of the coronavirus. In accordance with previous research, the most utilized theme in relation to the coronavirus was actions to slow the virus down and management of the virus. The most commonly used sources of the articles were other media outlets. The second most commonly used source spokespeople for different companies, they often spoke about the negative consequences that fell upon the companies due to the coronavirus. Aftonbladet produced 77 more articles than Dagens Nyheter, measured during the same timespan. Dagens Nyheter produced more articles about the economic effects that were caused by the coronavirus than Aftonbladet, they focused more on articles about actions to slow the virus down. The choice of angles of the articles also differed between the newspapers. Aftonbladet focused more on the negative effects of the coronavirus, while Dagens Nyheter did not have one specific angle that was more prominent.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:umu-172661 |
| Date | January 2020 |
| Creators | Säfvenberg, Angelica, Jonsson, Desirée |
| Publisher | Umeå universitet, Institutionen för kultur- och medievetenskaper, Umeå universitet, Institutionen för kultur- och medievetenskaper |
| 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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