“ATT KLIPPA NÅGON ÄR JAG LÄTT PÅ”. En tematisk analys av hur unga kriminella gestaltas i svenska nyhetsartiklar och podcasts

Abstract

Young criminality is a topic that is very relevant in today's society, in relation to the current conflict between criminal networks in the Swedish society. Media reporting about young criminals can give an incorrect picture of reality, if it's not representing the actual rate of crime being committed. This study will examine how young criminals are framed in Swedish media and how ethnicity is constructed in relation to young criminals. We wanted to examine how the construction of ethnicity could play a part in how young criminals are framed in Swedish media. With our first question, we wanted to analyze how young criminals were framed in Swedish media, which leads us to our first question, Q1: How are young criminals portrayed in Swedish media? Secondly, we wanted to analyze how ethnicity was constructed in relation to the framing of young criminals, Q2: How is ethnicity constructed in Swedish criminal reporting on young criminals? Third, we wanted to analyze if there were any patterns in different types of media, Q3: Can different patterns be identified depending on the media form? To answer these questions we used two methods, thematic analysis and critical discourse analysis. According to Braun & Clarke (2006), thematic analysis is a method for identifying, analyzing and reporting patterns within a data set (Braun & Clarke, 2006:79). We used thematic analysis to code our material and then separated the codes into themes. Besides our thematic analysis, we added critical discourse analysis as a supplement to divide our codes into explicit and implicit ones. Critical discourse analysis implies that meaning is created through text, pictures or speech and is understood as a discourse (Berglez, 2021:226). Our study is based on framing theory, which has a number of different definitions. We chose the definition according to Chong & Druckman (2007) as well as Entman (1993). According to Chong & Druckman (2007:104-105) framing theory is about attitude towards an object that is created through ideas about that object. We combined this definition with Entman's (2007:52), which implies that framing theory has four functions; (1) framing defines problems, (2) framing diagnoses causes, (3) framing makes moral judgment and (4) framing suggests problem solutions. The material analyzed in this study is based on eight news articles and four podcast episodes. Four of the news articles are produced by the Swedish broadsheet Dagens Nyheter and four of the news articles are produced by the Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet. Two of the podcast episodes are from the podcast Krimrummet, which is produced by the Swedish tabloid Expressen. The other two podcast episodes are from the Swedish public service podcast P3 Krim. We chose news articles from broadsheets and tabloids as well as a commercial and a public service podcast episodes to get a broader understanding of the framing of young criminals, but also to be able to analyze patterns in how young criminals are framed in different media forms. The result of this study, related to our first and second questions, can be defined by five themes: (1) young criminals are framed as victims, (2) young criminals are framed as perpetrators, (3) young criminals are framed as victims and perpetrators, (4) hierarchy and (5) construction of ethnicity and class. These were the themes that were the most important, prominent and recurring in our material. As well as the five themes, the result of this study also contains the answer to our third question: Can different patterns be identified depending on the media form? We could not find any differences in framing of young criminals between the broadsheet articles and the tabloid articles, which is contradictive to some earlier studies which states that young criminality is overrepresented in tabloids compared to broadsheets. However, we could find that the commercial podcast Krimrummet focused on discussion of the problem of young criminals to a higher degree, as well as thematic frames being more common. The public service podcast P3 Krim was more specific and discussed the current case more in depth, while episodic frames were more common. The difference in the pattern between podcasts and newspapers could also be defined. We found that the framing of young criminals as victims as well as perpetrators were quite similar. When it comes to our fourth theme, hierarchy, we found that this theme was only represented in the podcasts and not in the newspapers. The construction of ethnicity was hard to find in our material therefore we also find it hard to see the differences in pattern when it comes to this theme. Finally, this study gives an insight into how young criminals are framed in podcasts and newspapers. Also, we come to a conclusion that ethnicity is not often constructed in media when in relation to young criminals. We think that this subject is interesting and that it should be researched further.