Är ledarsidorna partipressens sista andetag?

Abstract

In the following study the subject of party press within the editorial pages will be researched. The aim of this thesis is to investigate whether papers with different political and ideological standings prioritize subjects differently yet also see how they value different political parties and politicians. Two main research questions have been formed to reach a generalizable conclusion: 1. How does the choice of subjects differentiate between Aftonbladet and Expressen? and 2. How do the papers value political parties on the editorial pages? To be able to draw conclusions from the data, Lars Nord’s theories about editorial pages in the future will be applied, these were published in his PhD Vår tids ledare – en studie av ledarsidor i svensk dagspress (2001). These three are idea based, news based and market based, which will provide an interesting model to apply the results onto. Furthermore, Nord’s take on the theory of party press (ibid) and Shoemakers & Reese’s model of hierarchy (Strömbäck, 2019) will be utilized to give other aspects to the results. The study has been conducted through a quantitative content analysis, with material collected from Aftonbladet’s (independent social democratic) and Expressen’s (independent liberal) printed editorial pages during the spring of 2022 and the spring of 2023. Five synthetic weeks were made within these time periods to achieve a randomized selection. These two time periods were ideal to this study, in regard of the election and government shift of autumn 2022. In total 247 editorial articles were coded through 14 variables. To be able to answer the research questions in the best way the writers of this essay has proceeded mainly from V2, V5 and V9-V14. The results from the collected data illustrated how the papers tend to publish more about subjects that correlate to each paper coherent political side. Different subjects were published in different extent between the years; however, a correlation was to be found in the paper’s choice of subject and the related parties main election points. Most of the valuation of political actors consisted of critique from the papers, of which the largest parties received the majority. The results additionally show a pattern in criticizing the opposite political side’s actors, especially when the opposition, in relation to the paper in question, is in the government. Percentage of critique also tended to, in some extent, fall in the same order as the number of seats in government. Finally, the study showed that there are very few signs of party press in the editorial pages today, however the results indicate that a new era is upon us, what we would like to define as the bloc-based press.