Global Journalism: A fancy concept of wishful thinking or a news style on the rise?

Abstract

This thesis aims to examine the occurrence of global journalism as a news style in Swedish newspapers, and to show not only to what extent global journalism occurs in relation to the more traditional domestic and foreign styles of reporting news, but also in what way the results vary depending on whether the magazine is a national or a local newspaper. Previous research has shown that scholars have been split in the question of whether or not global journalism exists. Some researchers argue that it has developed gradually as the world has become increasingly interconnected, and others argue there have been few empirical signs of it. This study is a contribution to the academic discussion regarding the existence of global journalism as a news style. The research method chosen to fulfil the aim of the study has been qualitative content analysis, used to analyze different news styles and modes of reporting news in Swedish newspaper articles. The thesis concludes that global journalism does occur in the news reporting examined in this study, but not to the same extent as the more traditional domestic and foreign news styles, and that it occurs more often in a national than local setting.