”TÄNK PÅ ERA GRANNAR – DET STINKER NÄR DEN BRINNER”. En kvantitativ innehållsanalys om gestaltningarna av påskupploppen i Sverige 2022 och upploppen i Danmark 2019

Abstract

During the easter of 2022, Sweden was met with various riots near numerous Swedish cities. The riots were due to various Quran-burnings that had taken place at the same time. Three years earlier, similar events had taken place in Denmark. During both the riots in Sweden and the ones in Denmark, Rasmus Paludan, the frontal person for the Danish political party Stram Kurs had been given permission to burn a Quran in protest against Muslims and Islam. Which in turn led to violent riots, hundreds of arrests, and destruction of police equipment. There have been various studies which focuses on the news framing of either protests or antimuslim actions. However, since Quran-burnings is a relatively new phenomenon, there have not been a lot of studies which specifically focuses on those kinds of riots. From earlier studies we know that media plays a big role in how it frames certain events and how the framing can vary depending on the event that the news are reporting about. But we were curious to know how the news framing of these two riots differed from each other and if the newsrooms of the different countries framed the events in different ways. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to compare news frames of the riots in Sweden and Denmark after the Quran-burnings during 2019 and 2022, through a quantitative content analysis. The timeframe of this study is between the years 2019-2023. This is to capture the media reporting’s during the period of the riots, and the following debate. The news frames we looked for were “freedom of speech”, “hate speech” and “attribution of responsibility”. The results of the study were that the Swedish press put the blame on the protesters, whereas the Danish press put the blame on Rasmus Paludan. The debate about freedom of speech versus hate speech, divided the countries’ press. The Swedish press argued for freedom of speech and the Danish press argued for hate speech. With this result conclusions can be drawn, first that the Swedish press stood behind Rasmus Paludan and were positive of his right to freedom of speech. This could be because the protesters violence, previous studies have shown that violent riots create bad publicity for the protesters and makes people forget about the person who started it all. The Danish press stood behind the protesters and argued toward hate speech, this could be because of the new legislation in Denmark against the Quran-burnings.