Paywalls have quickly become a large part of the media industry and are constantly evolving. Most news media today use a form of paywall to be able to earn revenue off their content. In this study we have made a qualitative text analysis where we compared themes between COVID-19 articles behind paywalls and articles which are free to read on Aftonbladet and Expressen. By using theories concerning news value, news selection and media logic, we were able to examine what kind of themes we could find in the articles placed behind paywalls and compare that to the articles that is free to read. The results showed that there were more differences than similarities between the content that is placed behind paywalls and the content that is free to read on Aftonbladet and Expressen. When the articles were free to read, they frequently had content that focused on the simplification of information from the authorities, calming articles where experts are not worried and articles about the individuals and their role in a crisis. For the articles that were placed behind paywalls, clickbait captions were more frequently used, probably because of a financial aspect. Most of the articles that were placed behind paywalls had a negative tone where words such as death, panic and worry were involved. According to this result, we came to the conclusion that the articles in the analyzed online newspapers have two different media logics: one for the news that is placed behind paywalls and one for the news that is free to read.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:lnu-101921 |
| Date | January 2021 |
| Creators | Lindén, Sarah, Ottestam, Hedda |
| 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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